Predators and Prey
捕食者和猎物
Devolved predators were common among humanity's feral worlds. Most of the time they resembled the vampires, werewolves and goblins of bygone lore; hunting equally sub-human prey with a combination of derived weaponry. Some had enormous heads with large, killing teeth. Others tore their victims apart with talon-like feet. But the most common kinds bore modified fingers and thumbs, bristling with razor-sharp claws.
在人类的野性世界中，下放为捕食者很常见。大多数时候，它们就像过去传说中的吸血鬼、狼人和妖精；用衍生武器的组合狩猎同样的亚人类猎物。有些人长着巨大的头，长着巨大而致命的牙齿。其他人则用爪子般的双脚将受害者撕裂。但最常见的种类有经过修饰的手指和拇指，长满了锋利的爪子。The most efficient of these predators lived on one of mankind's first off-world colonies. In addition to paw-like hands with switchblade thumbs they also had gaping, tooth studded jaws on disproportionate heads with large, sensitive ears. All of these served to make them the dominant predators on their home planet.
这些食肉动物中效率最高的一种生活在人类最早的脱离殖民地之一。除了长着锯齿状拇指的爪状手外，它们还有张开的、布满牙齿的下巴，它们不成比例的头上长着又大又敏感的耳朵。所有这些都使它们成为其母星上的主要捕食者。
They ran the prairies, stalked the forests and ranged through the mountains in pursuit of different people; herbivorous saltators with bird-like legs. While their prey lapsed into complete animosity, the hunters managed to keep the spark of intelligence alive in their evolutionary honing.
他们在大草原上奔跑，在森林中漫步，在山脉中寻找不同的人；腿像鸟的草食性跳跃者。当他们的猎物陷入完全的憎恶时，猎人们设法在进化的磨练中保持智慧的火花。

歇一歇
zsbd

Mantelopes
羚人
Not all devolved people lapsed into complete bestiality. Some held on to their minds, while losing all of their physiological advantages to the genetic meddling of the Qu.
并不是所有被下放的人都陷入了完全的兽性。一些人保存了自己的意识，同时由于Qu的基因干预而失去了所有的生理优势。
A singular species was a prime exemplar. They had been bred as singers and memory-retainers, acting much like living recorders during the reign of Qu. When their masters left they barely survived, reverting into a quadrupedal stance and occupying a niche as grazing herd animals. This change was so abrupt that the newly evolved Mantelopes endured only due to the forgiving sterility of their artificial biosphere.
这个奇异的物种就是一个典型的例子。它们被培育成歌手和记忆保持者，在Qu统治期间表现得很像活着的录音机。当它们的主人离开时，它们几乎没能存活下来，恢复了四足动物的姿势，并作为食草兽群占据了一席之地。这种变化是如此突然，以至于新生的羚人之所以能存活下来，只是因为它们的人工生物圈的贫瘠。
The Mantelopes, equipped with full (if slightly numbed) Human minds and completely disabled animal bodies, lived agonizing lives. They could see and understand the world around them, but due to their bodies they could do nothing to change it. For centuries, mournful herds roamed the plains, singing songs of desperation and loss. Entire religions and oral traditions were woven around this crippling racial disability, as dramatic and detailed as any on bygone Earth.
羚人拥有完整的（可能有点麻木的）人类思想和完全残疾的动物身体，过着痛苦的生活。他们可以看到和理解周围的世界，但由于他们的身体，他们无法改变它。几个世纪以来，悲伤的牧群在平原上游荡，唱着绝望和失落的歌。整个宗教和口头传统都围绕着这种严重的种族残疾交织在一起，就像过去地球上的任何一种宗教一样戏剧性和详细。
Fortunately, the selective forces of evolution made their agony a short-lived one. Simply put, a brain was not advantageous to develop if it could not be put into good use. A dim-witted, half minded Mantelope grew up faster than a smart one, and grazed just as efficiently. The Mantelopes' animal children overtook them in less than a hundred thousand years, and their melancholic world fell silent for good.
幸运的是，进化的选择力量使他们的痛苦变得短暂。简单地说，如果不能很好地利用大脑，那么大脑的发育就没有优势。一个愚蠢的、三心二意的曼特罗普比一个聪明的羚人成长得更快，吃草也同样高效。在不到十万年的时间里，大步人夫妇的动物孩子们就追上了他们，他们忧郁的世界从此沉寂了下来。

Nothing was sacred in the evolutionary process.
在进化过程中没有什么是神圣的。

Swimmers
游泳者
Perhaps because their life cycle involved an aquatic larval stage, the Qu had transmuted a large number of their human subjects into a bewildering array of aquatic creatures. Taken care of by specially-bred attendants, these post-human water babies came in every shape and size imaginable. There were limbless, ribbon like varieties of eel-people, huge, whale like behemoths, decorative people who swam by squirting water out of their hypertrophied mouths and horrifying multitudes of brainless wallowers that served as food stock.
也许是因为他们的生命周期涉及水生幼体阶段，Qu将大量的人类实验对象变成了一系列令人困惑的水生生物。这些后人类时期的水下婴儿由专门培育的饲养员照顾，有着难以想象的形状和大小。
没有四肢、带状的鳗鱼人、巨大的、鲸鱼般的庞然大物、通过从肥大的嘴里喷出水来游泳的人类装饰品，还有大量可怕的又无脑的蠕动者作为食物储备。
All of them were perfectly domesticated. All of them went extinct when their masters left. All save a few lightly mutated, generalized forms. These swimmers still resembled their human ancestors to a large degree; they had no artificial gills, their hands were still visible through their front flippers, their feet were splayed affairs that functioned like a pair of tail flukes. Recognizably human eyes peeked through their blubbery eyelids and they spoke to each other, though not in words and never in sentient understanding.
他们都完美地被驯化了。当它们的主人离开时，除了一些轻微变异的笼统类群外，其余都灭绝了。
这些游泳者在很大程度上仍然与他们的人类祖先相似；它们没有人工鳃，通过前鳍状肢仍然可以看到它们的手，它们的脚张开，就像一对尾鳍。可辨认的人类眼睛透过他们忧郁的眼睑窥视，他们相互交谈，但其中却没有语言和任何的理解。
For millennia they swam the oceans of their ecologically stunted world, feeding on diversifying kinds of fish and crustaceans; survivors of the food stock originally imported from Earth. With the intervention of the Qu gone, natural selection resumed. The swimmers became more streamlined to better catch their fast prey. The prey responded by getting even faster, or evolving defensive countermeasures such as armor, spikes or poison. Their evolution back on track, the swimmers drifted further and further away from their sentient ancestry. They would wait for a long time indeed to taste that blessing again.
数千年来，它们在生态发育迟缓的世界的海洋中游泳，以多样化的鱼类和甲壳类动物为食:最初从地球进口的粮食储备的幸存者。
随着Qu的介入，自然选择又恢复了。游泳者变得更加流线型，以便更好地捕捉速度快的猎物。猎物的反应是变得更快，或者进化出防御对策，如盔甲、尖刺或毒素。他们的进化回到了正轨，游泳者们越来越远离他们有感知能力的祖先。他们确实要等很长时间才能再次品尝到那份祝福。

Lizard Herders
牧蜥民
They were the lucky ones. Instead of unrecognizably distorting them as they had done to most of their subjects, the Qu had merely erased their sentience and stunted the development of their brains.
他们是幸运儿。Qu并没有像对待大多数受试者那样把它们扭曲得面目全非，而是抹杀了它们的感知能力，阻碍了它们大脑的发育。
Distantly resembling their ancient forebears on Earth, the primitives led feral lives for an unnaturally long time. They never regained sentience after the Qu left, despite having every incentive to do so. This was partially due to the total absence of predators on their garden world, resulting in no advantage for intelligence. Furthermore, the Qu had made some small but integral changes to their brains, tweaking with the structure of cerebellum so that certain features associated with heuristic learning could never emerge again. Once again, the reasons for these baffling changes remained known only to the Qu.
与他们在地球上的古代祖先极为相似，这些原始人在长的不自然的时间内过着野蛮生活。Qu离开后，他们再也没有恢复知觉，尽管他们有充分的动机这样做。这在一定程度上是因为他们的花园世界里完全没有捕食者，导致智力没有优势。此外，Qu对他们的大脑进行了一些微小但完整的改变，调整了小脑的结构，使与启发式学习相关的某些特征永远不会再次出现。再一次，这些令人费解的变化的原因只有曲人才知道。
The dumb people eventually settled in a symbiosis with some of the other creatures that inhabited their planet. They began to instinctively "farm" some of the large, herbivorous reptiles, ancestors of which were brought from Earth as pets.
这些傻子最终与居住在他们星球上的其他一些生物建立了共生关系。他们开始本能地“养殖”一些大型草食性爬行动物，它们的祖先是作为宠物从地球上带过来的。
Soon the balance of this mutualism began to tip in the reptiles' favor. The tropical climate of the planet gave them an inherent advantage, and they underwent a spectacular radiation of different species. They encountered no competition from the only large mammals on the planet; the brain-neutered descendants of the starfarers. Faced with a reptilian turnover, the only adaptation the sub-men could muster was to slip quietly into bestial oblivion.
很快，这种互惠互利的平衡开始向爬行动物倾斜。地球上的热带气候给了它们固有的优势，它们经历了不同物种的壮观辐射。它们没有遇到来自地球上唯一大型哺乳动物的竞争：星际探索者的后代有着被阉割的大脑。面对爬行动物的更替，这些下级人唯一能适应的就是悄悄地被遗忘为野兽。

A lizard herder scans the world with blank eyes as his stock grow stronger and smarter. The future does not seem to belong to him.
一个牧蜴民用一双茫然的眼睛扫视着世界，他的蜥蜴变得越来越强壮和聪明。未来似乎不属于他。

Temptor
诱惑者
In the Temptors' case, the remodeling was done with an almost artistic enthusiasm. How they managed to survive in their bizarre form was not clear; their ancestors were used as sessile decoration and through some miracle of adaptation they had endured.
在诱惑者的案例中，改造是以近乎艺术的热情进行的。它们是如何以奇异的形态生存下来的，目前尚不清楚；它们的祖先被用作固着装饰，奇迹般的适应了这种生活。
No human would have recognized them as their descendants. The females were beaked cones of flesh some two meters tall, rooted in soil like grotesque carnivorous plants. The males on the other hand, resembled contorted, bipedal monkeys. Unlike their mates they were perfectly ambulatory; dozens of them ran around the females'mounds like so many imps. Some would gather food, others would clean the females while others would stand on guard for danger. Although their actions looked purposeful, the males had no will of their own.
没有人会认出他们是自己的后代。雌性是两米高的有喙的肉锥，扎根在土壤中，就像奇异的食肉植物。另一方面，雄性则像扭曲的两足猴子。与他们的同伴不同，他们完全可以走动；他们中的几十个像许多小淘气一样围着女人的眼睛跑。一些人会收集食物，另一些人会清洁雌性，而另一些人则会站岗防范危险。尽管它们的行为看起来是有目的的，但雄性并没有自我意识。
In Temptor society, females controlled everything. Using a combination of vocal and phermonal signals, they guided the masculine hordes into any number of menial tasks, while mating with the strongest, the most obedient and the dumbest to produce even better drones. On certain periods they would also give birth to a few precious females, who would be carried away by subservient males to root themselves.
在诱惑者社会，女性控制着一切。他们结合声音和费洛蒙信号，引导男性群体完成任何数量的卑微任务，同时与最强壮、最顺从和最愚蠢的群体交配，以产生更好的工具。在某些时期，它们还会生下一些珍贵的雌性，这些雌性会被次要的雄性带走扎根。
It was a terribly efficient hegemony that would certainly give rise to civilization in a matter of centuries had fate not intervened. As a stray comet obliterated the Temptors' mound forests, one of Humanity's best chances for re-emergence was cruelly swept away.
这是一种非常有效的霸权，如果没有命运的干预，它肯定会在几个世纪内产生文明。当一颗散落的彗星毁灭了“诱惑者”的山丘森林时，人类重新出现的最佳机会之一被残酷地冲走了。
A male and female Temptor illustrate the sexual discrepancy that is characteristic to their species. Note the female's elongated, pit-like vagina. When mating, the males descend into it like subway commuters.
一只雄性和雌性诱惑者的对比解释了它们物种特有的性别差异。注意雌性细长的凹坑状阴道。交配时，雄性会像地铁通勤者一样钻进去。

人类太惨了吧！

Bone Crusher
碎骨者
Through the deliberate modifications of Qu and the blind molding of evolution, the heavens came to be populated with creatures that would put the myths of their ancestors to shame.
通过Qu的刻意修改和进化的盲目塑造，天堂里出现了让祖先的神话蒙羞的生物。
Their ancestors were pint-sized pets of Qu that were bred for the dazzling colors of their tooth-derived beaks. When their masters left, most of these pampered creatures died, with no one or nothing left to take care of them.
它们的祖先是QU的小宠物，它们的牙齿衍生出的喙闪着耀眼的色彩。当它们的主人离开时，这些养尊处优的生物大多死去，什么都没有留下来照顾它们。
But some, belonging to the hardiest breeds, survived. In less than a geological eyeblink of a few million years, the descendants of such creatures radiated into the evolutionary vacuum of their garden world. One lineage led to a profusion of human herbivores. These were preyed upon by a variety of enamel-beaked raptors, each evolved to deal with a specific prey. Among these generalized niches were entire assemblages of specialized animals, resembling anything from ibis-billed swamp sifters to splendorous forms with bizarre crests that flared out of their toothy beaks.
但有些最顽强的品种存活了下来。在不到几百万年的眨眼般的地质时间里，这些生物的后代就辐射到了他们花园世界的进化真空中。这一个谱系产生了大量的人类草食动物。它们被各种各样的珐琅质喙猛禽捕食，每种猛禽都为了对付特定的猎物而特化。在这些普遍的生态位中，有许多的特化的动物种群，从沼泽里筛食物的涉禽到具有奇异的展开的带齿喙者。There were even secondarily sentient forms, in the shape of the ogre-like bone crushers. To an observer of today they would indeed be the stuff of nightmares; three meters tall and hairy, sporting vicious thumb claws and enormous beaks that suited their scavenging diet.
甚至还有一种有知性的物种，像食人魔一样的碎骨者。对于现在的观察者来说，它们确实是个噩梦；三米高，多毛，长着恶毒的拇指爪和巨大的喙，适合它们的食腐性。
Despite their shortcomings, these corpse eating primitives were one of the first species to attain intelligence, and although primitive, a level of civilization. All of this proved the fallacy of human prejudice in the posthuman galaxy. A creature could feed on putrefying meat, stink like a grave and express its affection by defecating on others, but it might as well be your own grandchild and the last hope of mankind.
尽管这些吃尸体的原始人类有缺点，但他们是第一批获得智慧的物种之一，尽管他们很原始，但也发展了一定的文明。所有这些都证明了人类的偏见在后人类星系中是个谬论。一个生物可以以腐烂的肉为食，散发着坟墓般的臭味，并通过在别人身上排便来表达自己的情感，但它也可能是你的子孙，也是人类最后的希望。
In eventuality, however, not even the bone crushers fulfilled this promise. Their dependency on carrion for food limited their population severely, and their mediaeval civilizations crumbled after a few uneventful millennia.
然而，无论如何，即使是碎骨者也没有兑现这一期望。他们对腐肉的依赖严重限制了他们的人口，在平凡的几千年后，他们的中世纪文明崩溃了。

Flyers
飞行者
They were not uncommon at all in the domain of Qu. At least a dozen worlds sported human-derived flying species of one kind or another. Most resembled the bats or the pterosaurs of the bygone past, dancing through the aether like angels. (Or demons, depending on the point of view.) There were a few bizarre kinds relied on swollen gas glands for floatation as well.
它们在Qu的领地上并不罕见。至少有十几个世界上有这样或那样的人类衍生飞行物种。大多数都像过去的蝙蝠或翼龙，像天使一样在大气中跳舞。（或者魔鬼，这取决于观点。）也有一些奇怪的种类依赖于膨胀的气囊来漂浮。
Sadly, most of these creatures were already too specialized to be anything but flyers. They had forsaken their humanity for the conquest of the sky; they had little potential for further radiation beyond their limited roles.
不幸的是，这些生物中的大多数已经太特化了，除了飞行之外什么都不会。他们为了征服天空而抛弃了人性；除了有限的生态位外，它们几乎没有进一步辐射的潜力。
The only exception proved out to be a monkey-like species that flew on wing membranes stretched across the last two fingers. Their advantage was a unique, turbine like heart, artificially developed during the regime of Qu. No other human flyer in the galaxy had such an adaptation. The starfish shaped organ sat in the middle of their chests, directly funneling oxygen from the lungs to the bloodstream in a supremely efficient way. This meant that the Flyers could develop energy-consuming adaptations such as large brains without having to give up their power of flight.
事实证明，唯一的例外是一种类似猴子的物种，它依靠最后两根手指上的翅膀膜飞行。它们的优势是一颗独特的涡轮状心脏，是在Qu统治时期人工开发的。银河系中没有其他人类飞行者有这样的适应能力。这个海星形状的器官位于它们的胸部中间，以一种极其有效的方式将氧气从肺部直接输送到血液中。这意味着飞人可以在不必放弃飞行能力的情况下发展出高耗能的适应特征，比如说大脑袋。
Not that the flyers were going to reclaim their sentience right away. Instead, they literally exploded into skies, filling the heavens with anything from bomber-sized sailors to impossibly fast predators that raced with sound. Their world was pristine and there were plenty of niches to play in. Intelligence could wait a little more.
飞行者并没有立刻恢复他们的感知能力。相反，它们真的在天空中大爆发了，充满了从轰炸机大小的水手到速度快得不可思议的捕食者的一切。他们的世界是原始的，有很多机会可以发展。智力的到来可以再等一等。

一个始祖飞人在她的自然环境中。尽管笨拙，但这些生物具有人工代谢优势，这给了它们巨大的进化潜力。

Hand Flappers
拍手！
Some flying posthumans re-approached sentience in an entirely different way. Without the augmented metabolisms or the gravitational advantages of their siblings on distant planets, they had no choice but to give up their power of flight in order to develop further.
一些飞行后人类以完全不同的方式重新接近知觉。没有增强的新陈代谢或他们在遥远星球上的兄弟姐妹的低重力优势，他们别无选择，只能放弃飞行能力来进一步发展。
The Hand Flappers were one such species. Their wings, once used for butterfly-like flutters in the unearthly gardens of Qu, had shrunken and reverted back into their manual condition. Their legs were likewise re-adapted, but they bore a splayed awkwardness from their perching ancestry.
拍手鸟人就是这样一个物种。它们的翅膀，曾经在Qu的神秘花园里用来像蝴蝶一样飞翔，但现在已经萎缩，恢复到了手的形态。它们的腿也被重新适应了地面，但由于祖先的栖息，它们长着罗圈腿。
Only a singular, and an almost sadistically simple flaw held them back from developing civilization. In the course of their secondary atrophy, the wings of the Hand Flappers had become useless as hands as well. Their flag like appendages were very useful in signaling and mating dances, but they couldn't hurl missiles, construct shelter or even manufacture basic stone tools. All that they could do with their useless hands was to display each others' sexual availability, so the Hand Flappers did just that; flashing and dancing their way to oblivion.
只有一个单一的、几乎是残酷的简单缺陷阻碍了他们发展文明。在它们的二次萎缩过程中，“拍手鸟人”的翅膀作为手也一样无用。它们的旗帜状附肢在发出信号和交配舞蹈中非常有用，但它们不会投掷物品，不会建造庇护所，甚至不会制造基本的石器。他们用无用的手所能做的就是展示彼此的性能力，所以拍手鸟人就做了这些：在舞蹈信号之中走向湮灭。
A Hand Flapper on the edge of his mating territory. During their almost comical exaggeration of sexual display, his kind has begun to lose their edge at adaptation. Theirs will be a boisterous, ecstatic but ultimately ephemeral existence.
一个在他交配领地边缘的拍手鸟人。在他们滑稽夸张的性表现中，他的同类已经开始失去适应的优势。他们将是一种喧闹、狂喜但最终短暂的存在。

Blind Folk
盲乡民
When the Qu came they dug in, and dug in deep. Inside several continent-sized shelters under their besieged world, they waited for the invaders to pass them by. It was a futile gamble. The Qu located the shelter-caves and remade their inhabitants without effort.
当Qu来的时候，盲乡民们挖了进去，挖得很深。在被围困的世界下面的几个大陆大小的避难所里，他们等待入侵者从他们身边走过去。这是一场徒劳的赌博。
Qu毫不费力地找到了避难所，改造了洞里的居民。
The shelters became home to an entirely different ecology, a realm of perpetual darkness, fueled by the trickle of water and nutrients from the world outside. A surprisingly complex ecology developed on this scant resource; gigantic pale insects; the descendants of common household pests, competed with Dali-esque birds and rodents over fields of overgrown fungi. Predators were not uncommon; almost crocodilian fish patrolled the underground streams and vast blind bats, echolocating with unnerving precision, took their toll on the residents of the cave floor. The kilometer-high ceilings of the shelters glowed in the dark with protean constellations of bioluminescent fungi, and in some cases, animals.
避难所成为了一个完全不同的生态环境的家园，一个永远黑暗的地方，由来自外界的涓涓细流和营养物质推动。在这种稀缺的资源上形成了一个令人惊讶的复杂生态系统；巨大的苍白昆虫；常见家庭害虫的后代，与达利画作般的鸟类和啮齿动物争夺的过度生长的真菌。捕食者并不罕见；鳄鱼形状的鱼在地下溪流中巡逻，巨大的盲蝙蝠以令人不安的精度进行回声定位，杀伤着洞穴底部的居民。避难所一公里高的天花板在黑暗中闪闪发光，有各种各样的生物发光真菌，在某些情况下还有动物。People were present here as well, albeit in unfamiliar forms. They were more often heard than seen, as they tried to find their way in the dark with banshee-like screams. These albino troglodytes lived in a realm where sound and touch, not sight, was the gateway of perception. They had developed long, tactile fingers, enormous whiskers and mobile ears to live in the dark. Where their eyes should have been, there was nothing but a patch of haunting, flawlessly smooth skin. Their perfect adaptation to the world of darkness had erased the most basic feature of human recognition.
人类也出现在这里，尽管他们长相令人陌生。他们往往是听到，而不是看到，因此它们试图在黑暗中用女妖般的尖叫声寻找出路。这些白化的穴居人生活在一个使用声音和触觉而不是用视觉感知的领域。他们长出了长而有敏锐触觉的手指、巨大的胡须和活动的耳朵，可以在黑暗中生活。他们的眼睛本该在的地方只剩下一块令人难忘的、完美光滑的皮肤。他们对黑暗世界的完美适应抹去了人类认知的最基本特征。
As adapted as they were, they were doomed. Before the Blind Folk could develop any kind of intelligence to crawl out of their geographical graves, the glacial constriction of their World's continental plates snuffed out the shelters one by one.
尽管他们适应了环境，但他们注定要失败。在盲乡民能够发展出任何智力来爬出他们的地理坟墓之前，他们世界大陆板块的冰川收缩一个接一个地扼杀了避难所。

Lopsiders
侧倾者
The Qu were grotesquely creative in their redesign of the human worlds. One group of misfortunate souls they transported to a planet with thirty-six times the amount of "normal" gravity, and made them over for life in this bizarrely inhospitable realm.
Qu在重新设计人类世界的过程中有着荒诞的创造力。他们将一群不幸的家伙带到了一个引力是正常水平36倍的星球上，并使他们在这个奇怪的荒凉王国中重生。
The results of these experiments resembled nightmare sketchings of Bosch, Dali or Picasso. They looked like cripples squashed between sheets of glass. Three out of their four limbs had become paddle-like organs for crawling; only one of their arms remained as spindly tool of manipulation. This singular, wizened limb also doubled as an extra sensor, like the antennae of an insect.
这些实验的结果类似于博斯、达利或毕加索的噩梦般的草稿。他们看起来像被挤在玻璃片之间的残疾人。四肢中有三条变成了桨状的爬行器官；只有一只细长的仍然用来操纵工具的手臂。这种奇异的、干瘪的肢体也可以兼作额外的传感器，就像昆虫的触角一样。
Their faces were different horrors altogether. All pretensions of symmetry; the hallmark of terrestrial animals from jawless fish onwards, were completely and utterly done away with. One bulging eye stared directly upward while the other scanned ahead, in the direction of the creature's vertically-opening jaws. The ears were likewise distorted.
他们的脸是全然不同的恐怖。从无颌鱼开始的所有对称地球动物的特征已经完全消失了。一只凸起的眼睛直接向上凝视，另一只眼睛朝着生物垂直张开的下巴向前扫视。耳朵也被扭曲了。
Monstrous as they looked, these ex-men thrived in their heavy-gravity environment. Once again there was the usual explosion of species into every available niche, and the Lopsiders consolidated their chances for a renewed sentience.
尽管他们看起来很怪异，但这些曾经的人类在高重力的环境中茁壮成长。再一次，这个物种像往常一样激增到每一个可用的生态位，
侧倾者巩固了他们重新恢复知性的机会。

A Lopsider feeds some indigenous pets native to his high-gravity world. The domestication of native fauna is the Lopsiders' first step on the long way towards civilization.
一只侧倾者喂养一些当地宠物，这些宠物原产于他的高重力世界。对当地动物的驯化是侧倾者走向文明的漫长道路上的第一步。

Striders
漫步者
While the Lopsiders were redesigned to live under extreme gravity, another species had been adapted for life under the exact opposite conditions; on a Jovian moon with one fifth of Earth's gravity.
虽然侧倾者被重新设计为生活在极端重力下，但另一个物种已经适应了完全相反的条件下的生活：在类木行星的一颗重力是地球的五分之一的卫星上。
It was a world of wonders, where even the grass grew almost ten meters tall and the trees were beyond belief, towering to sizes attained only by the skyscrapers of antiquity. In these surreal forests lived equally spectacular fauna; the descendants of pets, pests and livestock of humans, who in turn had been reduced to animosity as well.
这是一个充满奇迹的世界，连草都长了将近十米高，树也令人难以置信，只有古代摩天大楼才能达到同样的规模。在这些超现实的森林中生活着同样壮观的动物群；人类的宠物、害虫和牲畜的后代，他们反过来变得恶意满满。One could see them in the league-tall forests, almost dancing among the trees as they reared higher and higher to browse. Their arms, legs, and necks had been stretched impossibly thin, great flaps of skin blossomed throughout their bodies to dispense waste heat. Sometimes they would even change their color in order to reflect light and keep cool. Overheating was a great problem for their grotesquely tall, thin bodies.
可以在一里格高（约3英里）的森林中看到它们，当它们爬到高地觅食时，几乎是在树间跳舞。他们的胳膊、腿和脖子都被拉长得细得不可思议，大片的散热皮瓣在他们的身体上绽放。有时，它们甚至会改变颜色以反射光线来保持凉爽。对于他们异常高瘦的身体来说，过热是个大问题。
Although imposing, these Giacomettian wraiths were over-developed as to be sickeningly fragile. Even on their gravitationally forgiving world, a fall could shatter their bones, and slipping down from a branch would prove to be fatal. Sometimes, on the open plains, even a strong wind could bring them down like the toppling masts. They survived entirely due to the merciful conditions of their garden world, which were about to change drastically.
这些贾科梅蒂式的幽灵虽然气势恢宏，但却由于过度生长，脆弱得令人恶心。即使在他们的低重力的世界里，一次摔倒也可能打碎他们的骨头，从树枝上滑下来也会致命。有时，在开阔的平原上，即使是强风也会像推倒桅杆一样把它们吹倒。它们的生存完全归功于花园世界的仁慈条件，而这即将发生巨大变化。
About two million years after the Qu left their towering works of human art, a lineage of fearsome predators evolved from the terrestrial poultry that had gone feral on the planet. Resembling attenuated versions of their dinosaur ancestors, the predators swept through the garden world like wildfires, extinguishing any species too fragile to escape, or resist. The peaceful, delicate striders were among the first to go.
在Qu离开他们高耸的人类艺术作品大约200万年后，一个可怕的捕食者家族从星球上野化的陆生家禽中进化出来。这些食肉动物就像它们恐龙祖先的削弱版，像野火一样席卷了花园世界，消灭了任何脆弱到无法逃脱或抵抗的物种。那些平和而精致的漫步者是第一批退场的。