Neotony. Maybe that was it.
"Neotony" was a biological term related to a prolonged period of childhood. Humans were the winners in that category, at least on Earth; some species took longer to reach sexual maturity, but nothing required parental care as long as Homo sapiens. From time to time, zoologists hypothesized that neotony was a prime factor in human intelligence. After all, children learn enormous quantities of knowledge in a short span of time — much more than the greatest genius manages later in life. Some experts thought that the length of human childhood kept our brains in a state of accelerated learning for years longer than anything else in the animal kingdom… precisely what put us ahead of other species in terms of thinking capacity. If you keep acquiring knowledge at high speed for ten to fifteen years, you're just naturally going to beat animals who hit their plateau at two months.
Suppose the Melaquin engineers extended the childlike learning phase even longer — decades past us normal-flesh humans. Suppose a forty-year-old could learn languages with the wide-open ease of a toddler. And keeping these glass people childlike wasn't a safety hazard: they were practically invulnerable and had all their needs supplied by machines like the food synthesizer.
On the other hand, childlike brains might have their drawbacks in the end; after decades of operating at top speed, burnout might easily set in. Was there a neural chemical responsible for feelings of interest, curiosity, wonder? To construct childlike minds, the engineers may have pumped that chemical up to intense levels — levels that just couldn't be sustained forever. After years of high-capacity effort, the gland that produced the chemical might simply succumb to overwork. Result? Motivational shutdown. A deep metabolic lethargy.
It was all guesswork, but the logic held together. I gazed at Oar, seated across from me with the campfire's reflection flickering on her face. A sting of tears burned in my eyes. Pity is stupid, I told myself. Every organism breaks down eventually. My father's heart broke down… my mother's liver. Why feel unbearably poignant that Oar's weak spot is her brain?
But the tears did not stop stinging.
Walking (Part 2)
We slept the night in spoon position, with the Bumbler keeping watch for prowling bears. Only my legs got cold — the rest of my body was protected by the insulated remains of my tightsuit. An hour before dawn, I heaped fallen leaves over me from thigh to ankle, so I wasn't directly exposed to the breeze. The improvement was immediate; I kicked myself mentally for not doing it when I first lay down. Something had frazzled my survival instincts, and I couldn't allow that to continue.
The day dawned cloudy, and by noon it was raining. The good news was that we were walking through forest; the bad news was that the trees had shed enough leaves for rain to get through anyway. Little dribbles trickling down Oar's body looked like drops on a windowpane.
The drizzle continued intermittently for a day and a half. It started warm but turned colder on the second morning: a drop of five degrees according to the Bumbler. I hoped this wasn't the tip of the icestorm… but the temperature stabilized during the afternoon of our third day of travel, and the clouds thinned enough to let the sun glimmer through whitely. By then, we had reached the end of full forest and were picking our way through patchier groves down into the great prairie basin.
The next day we had to detour around an enormous herd of buffalo grazing directly in our path. Oar was surprised we didn't walk straight through them; but large bull ruminants are notorious for nasty tempers, and I had no intention of getting trampled. It took four hours to circle to a point where we could turn south again, which tells you how big the herd was… several thousand animals in total, all of them shaggy with winter fur.
In midafternoon, with the herd still visible behind us, we came upon a dozen wolves. No doubt, the pack was shadowing the buffalo; I couldn't remember whether wolves were day or night predators, but they would attack when they were ready, running in to pull down a calf or an elderly animal too weak to defend itself. In the meantime, they eyed us from a judicious distance of a hundred meters, sizing up our food potential.
"Clap your hands," I murmured to Oar.
"Are we expressing admiration for those dogs?"
"Just do it!"
Oar slapped her hands together several times: glass on glass, each impact as loud as a hammer blow. The noise hurt my ears; and the wolf pack vanished like mist at dawn, slipping silently away through the tall grass.
We had no more trouble with animals that day. Most wildlife stayed away from us through the entire journey. As the terrain flattened out, it became easy to spot ground mammals a long way off — prairie dogs, rabbits, coyotes — but they always disappeared before we came near. Birds let us get closer; they stared at us suspiciously from trees or bushes, or flew overhead in vast migratory flocks. It was late the same day we passed the buffalo that I looked up at one flock and said, "Holy shit!"
"Do Explorers revere shit?" Oar asked with interest.
"It's an expression," I said, still staring at the sky. "Do you know what those birds are?"
"No, Festina."
"I can't be sure… but I think they're passenger pigeons."
The Pigeons
"Do those pigeons carry passengers?" Oar asked. "I should enjoy flying on a bird."
"I don't know why they're called passenger pigeons," I told her. "They've been extinct for five hundred years."
"Extinct means dead?"
"Yes."
Oar burst into giggles. "Dead things do not move, Festina. You are very, very stu— confused."
I didn't answer. Over the past few days, I had grudgingly accepted Melaquin as Earth's near-twin; but the sight of an extinct species jolted me. There weren't even passenger pigeons on New Earth — when the League of Peoples built humanity its new home, they could only duplicate what was still alive on…
"Damn, I'm stupid!" I said, hitting my head with my palm.
"No, just confused," Oar insisted generously.
Duplication
In all my time on Melaquin, my mind had been too lost in dismay and distraction to put the pieces together. The League of Peoples had already proved it could duplicate Earth — after the schism that divided humanity, the League had built New Earth as a refuge for those who agreed to respect the galactic peace. Humans who refused to give up armed violence were quarantined on their old planet, stuck with the legacy of pollution and war accumulated over the centuries; but those who abandoned their weapons were given a clean new planet: Earth without the garbage. New Earth was a "Welcome to the Universe" gift from the League of Peoples… along with star drives, YouthBoost, and other goodies no sentient race should do without.
Why had it taken me so long to remember New Earth was artificially constructed? Stupid, Festina: very stupid. But now that my eyes were open, everything made sense.
Some time far in the past — long enough ago that history didn't record it — members of the League must have visited Old Earth. They made the same proposal then that they made to humanity in the twenty-first century: prove your sentience by renouncing violence, and we will give you the stars. As in the more recent contact, some prehistoric people must have said yes while others said no… and those who agreed not to kill were given a new home elsewhere in the galaxy.
Here on Melaquin.
This planet must have been built by the League to duplicate Earth at that long-ago time… including the presence of passenger pigeons. Somewhere Melaquin must also have dodos, moas, and other species that hadn't survived recent times on our Earth; unless the humans who came to Melaquin had killed those animals all over again.