Bet you didn't see this one comin'.
To be honest, neither did I when I was writing it-not until about chapter 39, when Meiersdottir was trying to explain Miller's meltdown to the Edenites. Unlike the way many literature professors try to teach writing fiction, I don't work from an outline. I start with a premise and a set of well-defined (in my own mind, at least) characters and turn them loose. From time to time I'll throw a spanner into the works and see how my characters respond. The Edenites' reaction this time struck me as completely consistent with their mind-set, which given their "think-together" approach is likely to be highly conservative, and I liked the outcome-which also gave me a fairly satisfactory conclusion to a story that could only get repetitive and/or strained if I kept pushing it. Hope you agree. Just one more chapter to go, to wrap things up.