update

Good news and somewhat confusing news. The good news is: it finally runs and produces timings!!! I couldn't be happier about it. The confusing news is this: I have no idea why it runs, and the output it produces is even more confusing (script output,not the timings; timings are fine). When I first tried running topographica from my /work directory it ran but probably froze, because it only completed when it ran out of allocated time (10 minutes). Here's what I found in the output file:

ModuleCmd_Switch.c(172):ERROR:152: Module 'PrgEnv-pgi' is currently not loaded
ModuleCmd_Switch.c(172):ERROR:152: Module 'xt-mpt' is currently not loaded

Of course they are not loaded! I swapped PrgEnv-pgi for PrgEnv-gnu and xt-mpt for xt-mpich2 (mpi4py wouldn't build otherwise). Then I tried swapping the modules back, without recompiling mpi4py. And it worked! Why did it not segfault? Apparently, this means that you can build mpi4py with one set of MPI libraries and run with another?.. However, that's not it: despite the correct execution, the new output file still contained

ModuleCmd_Switch.c(172):ERROR:152: Module 'PrgEnv-pgi' is currently not loaded
ModuleCmd_Switch.c(172):ERROR:152: Module 'xt-mpt' is currently not loaded

huh? Ok, I'm just happy it runs, at last. I have to admit, making topographica run on Hector was a royal pain in the...