The people of the Earth were all just plants. Slow growing things that turned to see the light, in pots upon a shelf by a window. Outside, somebody walked, up through the trees along a mountain path, and Sand seemed to go along, climbing the rocky slope up to the summit. Fog lapped at the peak, forming an island above the trees. There was nowhere left to go.
Completion finds reprieve in reproduction.
Down into the misty valleys from which they had come, down to where each Culminate must sow its seed into some rich primordial soup, far away on some new virgin planet, it would start again the random wanderings of evolution. Even in his captured state, Sand recognized the history of life on Earth, of life on countless other planets in the universe where some lone Culminate had gone, planting one speck of stardust coated with the complex molecules of life. From these evolved the beings whose hands eventually produced another Culminate, a different Culminate. These hands on Earth were human. The ovaries right now were in Backdoor, in the cathedral, hatching little spheres, forerunners of the one that would climb up on its own summit and become another Culminate.