"I've more to tell you, that you must know. By the late seventh century things were normal around Car Truro as regards regression. We began a pilot program of reclamation. The egg hunters captured wild people along the forest edge, still do. But some are beyond saving, and those they kill. We have to pen them like animals at first, but they can be trained to work in the fields, and for a long time now we have had few machines except what we need for war. Their children, on an Earth diet, come back toward normal in size and intelligence. The fourth and fifth generations are normal enough to join in the war. But war has always come first and we have never been able to spare many normals for reclamation work. "Even so, ex-wilds make up more than half our normal population now. That's about forty thousand; there are nearly a hundred thousand on the reclamation ladder, mostly around Car Truro. The ex-wilds have a queer, poetic strain, and mainly through them we've developed a sort of religion along the way. It helps the subnormals who are so powerfully drawn to run back to the forests. It's a strange mixture of poetry and prophecy, but it's breath of life to the ex-wilds. I guess I pretty well believe it myself and even you believe some of it." Cole looked his question, hitching his chair nearer the table. "Yes, your notion of the greater animal, critical biomass, that you spoke of. We speak of Grandfather Stomper and we are trying to kill him. He is trying to enslave Grandfather Man. The whole purpose and meaning of human life, to an ex-wild, is to kill Grandfather Stomper and then to reclaim Grandfather Man from the forest. You would have to hear Morgan sing it to appreciate how deeply they feel that, lad." "I feel it, a little. I understand Morgan now, I think. He's an ex-wild, isn't he?" "Yes, and our master bard. In some ways he has more power than I." Cole got up. "Mind if I pull a curtain? That sun is hot." "No, go ahead. Our coffee is cold," the old man said, rising too. "I'll ask for a fresh pot." Seated again in the shaded room, Bidgrass resumed, "There's not much more. After the barrier was up it seemed as if Grandfather Stomper knew his time was running out. Don't laugh now. Individual stompers don't have intelligence, symbol-using, that is, as far as we know. But they changed from plains to forest. They learned to practise a gruesome kind of animal husbandry--oh, I could tell you things. _Something_ had to figure it out." "I'm not laughing," Cole said. "You're talking sound ecology. Go on." "Well, they began laying eggs right along the barrier and didn't try to defend them. We picked up hundreds, even thousands, every day. The people said Grandfather Stomper was trying to make peace, to pay rent on Lundy Forest. And maybe he was.