But this one-it just looked silly. Its leaves were still fuzzy pink clusters. The little bush looked like it was wrapped in fluffy feather boas. It looked like a geranium playing dress-up in mommy's best furs and rhinestone shoes.

I'd seen shambler bushes from a distance. We'd also seen pictures of a shambler colony exploding, or swarming-or whatever it was they did. We'd seen what happened to the men that had been attacked as well. We'd found their remains with the cameras. And Jason wanted a tame shambler!

For what? A weapon?

Why bother? If you had tame worms, you didn't need anything else.

Besides, how do you train a walking tree? For that matter, how do you train a worm?

Loolie was saying, "Jason thinks this shambler will be a tall one. The tall ones are best, they can go as much as a killo-mere a day. But this'un's just a baby still. It doesn't even have any tenants yet. Jason says we gotta get it outside soon. It's okay, you can come closer. It won't hurt you."

She pointed. "See here? The leaves'll get bigger and darker when it gets bigger. We saw a herd of shamblers once, but Jason wouldn't let us go near 'em, 'cause they didn't know who we were."

"Mm," I said. I squatted down low to see if I could see the roots of the bush, see how it balanced itself, walked, took nourishment from the ground-anything. I wished for a video setup. We could have made time-lapse studies of the shambler to see exactly how it walked.

I realized I was jealous of Loolie's zoo.

"Jim?" Loolie was calling me. I turned to face her and nearly jumped out of my skin. She was holding a very large, bright red-bellied millipede. It was crawling all over her, up her arm, across her shoulders, down her other arm and back up again

"Uh, Loolie," I held my voice calm. I didn't want to alarm her or startle the millipede.

"Don't worry, Jim. It knows me. But you shouldn't come any closer. Not yet. You still smell like Earth. In a few weeks, though; after you've been eating tickleberries and softcorn and everything, you'll smell right. This is Gimmee. We call him that 'cause he always wants more. Jason says he's a gimmee pig, so that's how he got his name."

"Ah, I see. Yes. You're making me very nervous with that, Loolie. Would you put it back?"

"Okay. " She returned Gimmee to a large wire cage. There were several other millipedes in there as well. She paused to let them sniff her fingers and then she stroked them and called them by name. "They're really very friendly, once you get to know them," Loolie said.

"Uh-huh," I nodded nervously. No problem. I could change my shorts later.

There was a sudden rustling and grunting noise at the far end of the room and Loolie went to investigate.

"Ah ha!" she said. "I caught you!" She was waving her finger at something.

I came up behind her to see one of the skinny red bunnymen energetically mounting Hoolihan and pumping away at the libbit like a frenzied little sex fiend. Its-his?-eyes were glassy.

"Lennie!" Loolie shouted. "You're disgusting! You're a pig! Don't you ever stop?" She looked to me and made a gesture of great exasperation. "Lennie fucks everything he gets near."

"Maybe he's training to be a lawyer," I said.

"What's a lawyer?" Loolie asked.

"Never mind. They're big and ugly and mean and they don't have any friends." Hmm, maybe this was paradise.

Loolie wasn't paying attention. "Lennie, you stop that!" She stamped her foot. "Lennie! You remember what happened to Casanova, don't you?"

Lennie was beyond hearing. He was having too good a time. The libbit didn't look all that unhappy either.

Loolie sighed loudly, "Now, I'm gonna have to tell Jason, so he can decide."

"What to do about Lennie?" I wondered if Lennie was going to be elected president soon.

"No. What to do about Hoolihan." Loolie pointed at the libbit. "We gotta decide whether to mate her again so she'll have baby bunnies, or whether to keep her corralled so she'll have baby libbits."

"Excuse me?"

Loolie looked impatient. "Don't you know anything? Bunnydogs like to fuck each other, but some of 'em grow up to be bunnymen and then they like to fuck libbits. If a bunnyman fucks a Iibbit, it makes baby libbits."

I was still trying to pick up my jaw when Loolie added, "Well, that's not actually correct. Jason says I gotta speak correctly. If one bunnyman fucks a libbit, it makes a baby libbit; but if two bunnymen fuck a libbit, it make baby bunnies."

"Oh," I managed to say.

I wished I were in Denver. I wished I were in Oakland. I wished I could talk to Dr. Fletcher right now and tell her what Loolie had just told me.

How stupid we'd been!

We'd been keeping all the creatures separated from each other. No wonder they'd never reproduced-bunnydogs and bunnymen and libbits were all the same species!

Libbits were females and bunnymen were males-they were such disparate animals, they couldn't possibly be related, but they were!

How did Jason discover all this?

How much more did these people know? And how could I get them to teach me?

And-how could I get out of here to get the information to those who most needed to know it?

Ray told me I had the freedom of the camp. I could go wherever I wanted, look at whatever I wanted.

The only constraint was a simple one, but effective. Falstaff, the Chtorran who sat by the door was my constant companion. He was a fat flabby creature, even for a Chtorran, with an annoying tendency for ruminative noises and questioning chirps. He followed me everywhere, grunting and wheezing, blinking and farting; he was a symphony unto himself, a movable feast of dark intestinal noises and incredible purple smells. I hoped to God that wasn't his language. Some of those smells could uncurl your hair.

To his. credit, though, Falstaff was a remarkably patient monster. ;,He stayed with me all afternoon while I prowled the range of the camp.

My explorations were not entirely random. I was trying to estimate how many people there were in this camp, how many vehicles, how many weapons and what kind. I didn't like the numbers I kept coming up with. This was too well organized a band. And there were too many references to other bases of operation and hidden caches of supplies and weapons.

I guessed that there might be thirty or forty adults here and maybe half that many children. Bunnydogs? I wasn't sure. I'd seen at least thirty. And at least a dozen bunnymen: Vehicles? Two more jeeps, at least, and another couple of trucks and a bus.

Wherever I went, people waved and smiled to me and asked me how I was getting along. I felt guilty for hating them and gave them cautious waves and token smiles.

The weird thing was that none of these people seemed to have any intention at all of reprogramming me, or awakening me. Or whatever it was they called it. They just wanted to befriends with me.

I just didn't know what their definition of friend was.

I was sitting under a tree, watching two millipedes chewing at what looked like a hambone-something left over from the last president?-when Jessie waved to me from across the yard and called, "How're you doing, Jim?"

I didn't know whether to answer or not. It was probably rude not to, so I shrugged and waved halfheartedly back. She came over to me then and put her hand on my shoulder. "Relax, Jim. I promise you, nobody wants to hurt you."