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if not for their succour she could well be dead by now.
    The thing stared at her, or past her, unmoving. She raised a hand to her mouth, mimicked eating. “For the food. Thank you.”
    Without warning, the Gargoyle twisted, from the head down, in a single, flowing movement, until it stood with its back to her, its head angled downwards. Corrie had tried to communicate with the Gargoyles before, but had never got through. The beings didn’t seem to recognise that her sounds and gestures were an attempt to convey information. She wondered, as she had before, if an individual Gargoyle had the capacity to reason through such ideas. So much of their behaviour appeared ritualised, instinctive even. They clearly communicated with each other, but then so too do honey bees and chimps. The aliens showed no sign of curiosity about the humans in their charge, made no effort to communicate other than to ensure that the humans ate. They were highly organised, but in the week or so since first contact Corrie had seen little in the life of the settlement that evidenced culture or society. Were the Gargoyles even sentient at all, she wondered?
    She turned at a sound behind her. A dozen Gargoyles were emerging from the caves in the face of the limestone bluff. They almost ran, leaning forwards, on their double-kneed legs, carrying fruit towards the humans’ cave.
    Corrie felt a finger in her back, prodding her towards the cave. She obeyed, followed the other Gargoyles inside, and returned to her cell.
    This time, though, when a Gargoyle approached and handed her one of the small purple dopefruit, she raised it to her mouth and mimed the act of eating. Satisfied, the alien departed. She looked around the cave. Her colleagues were devouring the fruit, rapt expressions on their bloated faces.
    Corrie lay back, already the act of thinking no longer an impossible labour. She considered the events of the last few days, then remembered her decal and raised her hand. In the failing light of the cave, she made out the illuminated numerals. They still had another 94 days to wait until the arrival of the Darwinian .

    The next day, Corrie discovered that she was bleeding.
    She awoke suddenly from vivid dreams of the firestorm and its aftermath. She sat up and stared around the cave. She no longer felt groggy and distanced, at one remove from the reality around her. She could see clearly and her mind was sharp and alert.
    The sound of the Gargoyles, entering the cave on their morning rounds, had awoken her. She watched the aliens as they filed through the farthest entrance and approached Rachel, Imran and the others. She counted twelve Gargoyles, and this time as she watched them she noted the stylised, ritualistic basis of the feeding ceremony. Before, no doubt, she had been too out of it to notice.
    Now each alien approached its designated human, made a quick, complicated gesture in the air, and proffered the fruit. Corrie watched Rachel reach out and grab the small, green orb, and stuff it into her mouth.
    One by one the humans were fed, and before the Gargoyle bearing her own fruit approached, Corrie knew that again she would simulate the act of eating.
    But this time the Gargoyle turned away, before proffering her fruit, and handed it instead to Jake in the neighbouring cell. While the others ate, Corrie sat upright and experienced the irrational feeling of being excluded. Within minutes, the rest of her team had eaten their fill and were sleeping again.
    She wondered if the Gargoyles were aware that she had feigned eating her dopefruit last night. Was this why they had declined to feed her this morning? She felt a stab of fear that the aliens were one step ahead of her, knew what she was doing. Also, it occurred to her that she would starve without the sustenance of the fruit.
    She stood up and moved towards the cave mouth, and it was only then that she became aware of the dried blood caking her inner thighs and staining the crotch of her