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  "But, though provided with water and food, he had no means of propelling the boat and could but go wherever the winds and seas willed. Therefore, after he had partaken sparingly of his provisions, he rolled himself in the slicker—which item, having been cut

  for a large Caucasian, was more than expansive enough for his shorter, more slender stature—and sank at once into the sleep of exhaustion."

  Once yet again, she rubbed at her forearms and said, "Now, Pedro, you can believe this next or not. Mr. Hara believes it and . . . and I do, too ... I think. But it's screwy and spooky and . . . and . . . Well, anyway, here's what he told me.

  "He says that the warm sun on his face wakened him and he sat up to a heart-stopping shock: he was no longer alone in the boat. Not only was he not alone, the man now seated on a thwart was known to him, though he had assumed him dead, drowned with all the rest of the crew of his ill-fated light-cruiser, storm-sunk in the Yellow Sea far to the west, His companion was none other than the Japanese naval officer—the Buddhist monk who had urged him, begged him to forbear from ordering the two great sea-monsters fired upon on the morning before the death of his ship and crew!

  "At the first, Mr. Hara believed himself to be dreaming, still asleep or at least half-asleep and dreaming, but then, realizing that he was, indeed, fully awake, he could only sit, stunned, for a moment. Then he politely asked, 'Lieutenant Shimaszu, are you then a gen, an apparition come to haunt me?"

  "The man, who was not in naval uniform but rather garbed in the robes of his religious calling, bespoke Mr. Hara in a sad, gentle voice, saying, 'Honorable Captain, I am yet in the body, I too survived the shipwreck; no, I am no ghost, but neither am I truly with you here. You see but £ projection of my body, a projection accomplished with the aid of some very

  learned and holy men. I am come to tell you of yourself, of your future life, that you will give over trying to end it abruptly.

  " 'No matter what you may attempt, you see, it will be in vain, for by your deeds you have condemned yourself to life, life that can end only when you have redeemed those cruel deeds by way of actions which are preordained."

  "Mr. Hara says that he then shook his head and avowed his complete mystification, his utter lack of understanding. He says that the likeness of Lieutenant Shimaszu then told him, "Honorable Captain, I am forbidden to further enlighten you at this time, for you must gain wisdom that you now lack before you could hope to truly understand. You must seek out and learn wisdom and, in a future time, in a place far and far from here, we two will again meet, meet both in the true flesh. Then you will be told it all and, grown as you then will be in age and in wisdom, you will understand and accept your punishment and your destiny.'

  "Mr. Hara says that then, of an eyeblink, the boat again rocked upon the sea, empty save for him. And, Pedro, he firmly believes this all, believes that it really happened, that he truly saw and heard all of it. Can you believe it, any of it?"

  His answer was, "Do you, Danna? Do you believe him, his tale?"

  She nodded firmly. "Yes, yes, I do. But don't try to probe into exactly why I do, just accept that I have my reasons for believing that old man, unequivocally."

  He shrugged. "Then what can I do save believe him too? For, as I earlier said, I've never known him to lie to me about any single thing. Was that all of it? How the hell did he get out of the middle of the North Pacific Ocean? Did the merchant ship steam back in search of him, then?" I

  "If it did, it never found him," replied the woman. "No, he continued to drift, helplessly, stretching out his food and fresh water as far as he could. Twice, at the cost of a very thorough drenching, he was able to collect enough rainwater in the rubberized raingear to refill both of his water containers, but he was almost out of food when, of a day, a flying fish—one of a school fleeing predators—plopped into his boat. He said that, although there was not much edible meat on the foot-long creature, he as able to use its guts for bait and thereby catch a sizable tomcod which fed him well for a couple of days, its body-fluids also reducing his need for water from his dwindling supply.

  "Mr. Hara says that he can never be certain just how far he drifted in that uncontrollable boat but, as he never saw another ship at any distance, not even a smudge of smoke on the horizon, he knows that he was out of the shipping lanes. Then, of a night, he awakened from fitful sleep to see what looked to be a masthead light bobbing near the limits of his vision, to the southwards.

  "Making great efforts to move slowly and carefully, he moved up to the bow-locker, retrieved the flaregun, loaded it and fired a signal high into the starry sky, then another and, finally, a third.

  "The crew of the fisher that had found him were a mixture of Polynesians, ethnic Chinese and two third-generation Japanese, all out of Hawaii. They had had the misfortune, in a sudden squall, to lose their half-breed skipper and their rudder. Their mainmast also had been sprung at the same time and they were rather a dispirited lot, more than happy to allow Mr. Hara—who seemed to know what he was about—to take command.

  "When he brought the battered vessel back to its home port, the owners decided he was a man worth keeping around, for all that he then spoke not a word of English. And so our Mr. Hara, scion of an ancient and noble Japanese clan, one-time noble officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy and captain of a large .warship, became the hired skipper of small fishing boats in a backwater of civilization. He continued this work for more than five years."

  Fitz had just finished eating his spit-broiled pheasant and was carefully sipping at his canteen-cup of steaming, fragrant tea when, with the now familiar faint tickling of the mind that bespoke telepathy, a

  ♦ "voice" declared, "I smell fresh meat and like, man,

  m I'm hungry as a lion."

  ; With that, a full-size blue lion strode from among

  ' the brush and bushes and rocks of the hillside into the tiny clearing before the rock shelter, facing Fitz across the firepit. His normal, baby-blue hue was closer to a royal blue, which fact told Fitz that he was or had recently been upset about something. The blue lion flopped down on the rocky ground,

  pointedly eying the pint-size antelope hung in the tree. "Hunting like sucked today, man," he declared dolefully, "Old Saint Germain must of like let some of his damn pets loose around these parts, them fuckers like scare all the game away from wherever they're at, you know, they stink as bad as snakes and alligators. I'm like flat bushed and my stomach's growling like I was still a damn old boar-hog, too."

  Nestling his steel cup back among the coals, Fitz stood up, paced over to the tree, untied the rope, then took the lowered carcass over to the waiting lion. While the huge beast rent flesh and crunched bones, they continued to silently converse.

  "Where's Sir Gautier?" asked Fitz.

  "Well, like, man, he nor me expected you back so damn soon, you know. Like, you ain't been gone a whole day, you know. He went off to see could he find the rest his Normans, man. He shouldn't have no trouble there, like, man, he can just follow the stink." The feeding carnivore added, "He should ought to be back in two, three days, like anyway. Hang around, man. You can spend the time like shooting some more of these; they're good eating, see, but the little fuckers are like too fast for me to catch one, usually. I'll be done with this soon, man, hand me down that bird up there, too, huh?"

  Fitz shook his head. "That pheasant's my breakfast, Cool Blue. Do you want what's left of the one I just ate?"

  "Like is the Pope a Catholic, man?" was the lion's reply, "Like throw them over here; I'm like starving, tramping around these fucking boondocks all day for

  nothing but a few damn frogs. What'd you like do with the guts and the head and legs and all of this little thing, huh, man? Like they're some of the best parts."

  But when Fitz had directed Cool Blue to the spot he had dumped the offal from his kills, little was left aside from bloodstained leaves and stray feathers. The lion's color became almost navy blue and Fitz ended by giving his companion the other pheas
ant, reflecting to himself that he could breakfast out of die supplies he had brought from the other world, Sir Gautier not being on hand to take a share. Then he banked the fire and zipped himself into his sleeping bag under the overhang, the entrance more or less blocked by rocks, the motorcycle and other gear and the huge, blue Hon sleeping just the other side of the firepit.

  Hungry as the lion still remained, Fitz doubted that any edible creature would survive long enough to get across the small clearing to the overhang and him, so he went to sleep feeling as secure as if he had been in the soft bed in his other-world bedroom, guarded by multitudinous alarms and a twelve-foot cyclone fence topped with barbed wire.

  Nonetheless, he awakened a bit after moonrise to the certain knowledge that he no longer lay alone in the rock recess. Opening his eyes to bare slits, he could see between himself and the lit clearing a shape that was patently feline but clearly not the bulk of the baby-blue lion.

  "Tom . . . ?" he projected telepathically, "Puss . . . ? Is that you?"

  "Yes, my dear, old friend," came the silent beaming into his mind from the leopard-sized beast, moving close enough to lick at his face with a broad, rough tongue, "I am the creature you once knew as Tom/ "

  As the hundred-and-a-half pounds of lithe, furry animal lay down beside and snuggled against him, Fitz wondered again—for the umpteenth thousandth time again—if this, any of this, was truly real and, if the events of these last few years had indeed taken place, how it was that they could be real.

  And the huge grey cat read his thoughts, half buried though they had been. "Yes, my old friend, my dear friend, it is, has been and is now real. You must accept it, for all that there yet is too much of the mere human left in you to understand it. You must accept it on the faith that you will in time understand it all."

  "Mere human, Puss?" he beamed. "If f m not a human being, then what the hell am I, pray tell? What am I supposed to be becoming? A cat, like you? A lion, like Cool Blue?"

  He sensed a gentle humor in the silent reply from the now-recumbent feline form. "When once you have proven yourself of true worth, have met with the Dagda and are come fully into your own once more—you and she who will be yours and the Keepers—then will you know and understand everything."

  "What land of an answer is that, Puss?" he demanded in clear exasperation. "Who or what is this Dagda, anyway? Danna says that in the old Irish folk

  tales he was supposed to be the king of the fairies. Are you trying to tell me that Danna and I are fairies, too?"

  The big grey cat's tail which had been curled and twitching slightly began to swish from side to side with a degree of force, lashing against the sleeping bag and his legs within it. "You are trying my patience, old friend. All right, let me essay to put it in terms that anyone could comprehend:

  "A lump of dirty quartz may easily contain as much gold as a shiny coin, but it will not be either beautiful or at all valuable to a human until the raw ore in the quartz has been leached out and refined. Lack of refinement does not lessen the feet that gold is contained in that rock; but only a human with the requisite training or at least experience would know that rock to be different from any other common lump.

  "Now, before you first set foot to those stone stairs on the day you went about digging a grave for the husk my spirit had but so lately quitted, before you first entered this land called Tiro-na-N'Og, you were akin to that chunk of dirty rock, seemingly no different from countless other mere humans. But now, after having been within this blessed land for even as cumulatively short a time as you have, you are beginning to become refined metal; you are acquiring powers—re-acquiring them, rather—no human of the common breed could acquire such powers no matter how long he or she dwelt herein. And it is as I have told you in times before this: the longer you stay in, live in and on the water and foods of this land, the

  greater and more diverse will be the powers you reacquire. In the end, when the Dagda has invested you in the fullest as he alone can, you will be as the bit of pure, refined gold. You will be Sheedey, like the Dagda."

  "Sheedey?" thought Fitz, blankly. "Animal, vegetable or mineral, Puss?"

  The tail lashed again. "You are human, as the Dagda and the other Sheedey, but you are all more than simply human. You Sheedey are descended of the happy breeding between a very early stock of true humans with a few of the last living Elder Race, the beings who preceded you."

  "Look, Puss, I realize this questioning is angering you, but if I don't ask, how can I be expected to understand any of it?" said Fitz. "Now this Elder Race, they mustve been human too, in order to interbreed with humans, right?"

  "Yes . . . after a fashion," was the panthers reply. "They owned the ability—which ability is one of the powers owned by the Sheedey when in possession of their birthright—to shift their shapes at will, even to utilize natural materials with which to fashion new or different husks to inhabit for however long a time they wished. The Elder Ones who bred with humans had human shapes . . . mostly. But so well made and accurate to the tiniest of detail were the husks they had fashioned for themselves, to hold their spirits, that the issues of these matings were so human-appearing as to defy human scrutiny. Only the spirits and brains differed from those of the true, pure humans. Among humans alone, without one to waken

  in them their powers, they might all have lived and died as the pure humans they seemed. But for them the Elder Ones were at hand to show and teach, to instill necessary self-discipline, to begin to channel the abilities of their few offspring and their many half-offspring, as well."

  "If they could breed among themselves," queried Fitz, "then why breed with human beings at all?"

  "The Elder Race," was the reply, "had exceedingly long spans of existence, old friend—thousands upon thousands of Earth-years did they naturally exist from whence they had come—but this place called Earth was not the place of their origin, and certain of its most common constituents were in ways inimical to their health and well-being. These elements not only shortened their lifespans and somewhat curtailed their powers but lowered their fertility drastically. Even so, it was the best place to reside that they had then found in the course of many lifetimes of searching.

  "The exceedingly low birthrate was understood early-on in the earthly existence of this so-wise race, but it was nothing about which they then had much cause to worry—not back then, when so very many of them still existed. However, not even the Elder Ones were truly immortal and, as the courses of hundreds of millennia passed by on the Earth, their overall numbers became fewer and still fewer, as aged spirits flickered out faster than they could produce new carriers of the racial flame.

  "Then did all of the remaining ones of the Elder Race meld their minds and decide upon a course by

  which they might, they hoped, prolong the unique and irreplaceable qualities of their race, if not the race itself. Over a vast span of time, they sought out and subjected to multiple testings a whole host of different creatures, beings native to the place you call Earth. At length, they all decided upon a certain kind of terrestrial primate; you know what kind they chose, old friend."

  "Cave men?" thought Fitz, wonderingly, "Neanderthals? Cro-Magnons?"

  The big cat answered, "No, those of which I speak now were a for less refined raw material than those of whom you are thinking; ten thousand of the then-generations of human life separated them from those chosen by the Elder Race, who then slowly—allowing almost all of the natural courses of events to take place—guided those chosen, obliquely controlled their breeding, the developments of a culture of sorts, provided them now and then with the germs erf technology which could improve their chances of survival.

  "In its fullness, time passed. Continents and islands and seas rearranged themselves upon the face of the planet, mile-thick ice-sheets expanded and contracted many times, lands rose above the seas, then sank back beneath them, seas themselves emptied out and their beds metamorphosed into bone-dry deserts or towering snow-capped mountains
. A huge assortment of animals of all sorts died out in this time, but the Elder Race saw to it that the chosen species was spared despite their many and blatant vulnerabilities.

  "At last, at long last, when the few remaining

  Elder Ones felt that, were their long-envisioned plans to have hope of eventual success, they must begin, they went among the various groups of their primates and, again testing, chose those that they found to be the best—physically, mentally, emotionally— and, after bearing them to certain predetermined locations, began to assume shapes and breed with them.

  "After several generations of hybrids had been guided and taught that which beings of power must know, the Elder Race determined that, although the hybrids and the get of the hybrids matured faster physically than did the pure get of the Elder Race, their powers were slower to develop and that, although significantly longer than pure humans, the life expectancy of the hybrids was even less than the severely-shortened lifespans of the still-extant Elder Ones. In hopes of possibly breeding to counter these distressing tendencies and traits, the Elder Ones visited the areas inhabited by the pure strains of humans on a regular basis, seeking out and bearing away healthy, young specimens of comparatively long-lived stock and with the best minds that pure-strain humans could be expected to have. In the enclaves, these specimens were bred to Elder Ones or hybrids and, very slowly, the strain was slightly improved.