by Robert Adams
Near the confluence of another, smaller stream flowing down from the north to join that which he had followed all day, a very large—over three feet to tip of tail, he guessed—and oddly colored squirrel scolded loudly at him from high up in a tree that Fitz thought looked very much like a chestnut. And as he tramped on along the banks of the enlarged stream, he saw the pines slowly, grudgingly yield up their hegemony to hickories, yellow poplars, sweetgums, smaller varieties of conifers and a real profusion of oaks, many of the deciduous hardwoods clearly of great age, incredibly thick-boled.
The sun, though still bright, was approaching the western horizon when Fitz came out into a small, relatively open spot where another small stream, threading through a narrow, brushy gorge between the two rocky hills that lay to the north, flowed down to add its waters to the now fair-sized stream. Some yards farther west stood an oak that he knew must be six feet thick in the trunk. There was no single limb or branch less than the height of the dangerous cliff his new talent had allowed him to so easily master, and some of the limbs above were thicker than die boles of some of the surrounding trees. Proper precautions being taken, any one of those limbs should provide him a safer and secure, if a bit hard and unyielding, sleeping perch for the night, he thought.
In the wake of having seen the possibly sinister tracks by the pool earlier in the day, and recalling the warnings of Puss and Cool Blue, he felt distinctly edgy at again stripping himself of all his weapons beneath the shade of the massive oak, and constantly looked about him, his eyes peering deep into thick-
ets of brush, his ears striving to detect any untoward noises, body tensed to spring for drilling or revolver.
This time, he raised both himself and the pack together, though he suspected that if while flying he was compelled to lay hand to one of the firearms he would drop like a stone and the pack with him, no doubt. How could he find or buy weapons that incorporated no iron or steel . . . ?
On a hunch, Fitz left the pack sitting securely on a thick limb while he rose even higher in search of he knew not what. But when he found it, he recognized it for what it was on first sight.
At some time in the dim past, some titanic force had snapped off the one-time crown of this particular oak and limbs had then grown from out the trunk just below the shattered stump. All of these new-growth limbs had, of course, reached up toward the sun, the source of life, and as they had flourished and grown in length and thickness, putting out branches of their own, they had almost hidden the area which once had been the upper reaches of the oak's main trunk.
Presently, in the heart of the profusion of limbs and branches, there existed a declivity of sorts that was actually longer than the thickness of the lower trunk. It was filled to some depth with dead leaves, acorn, chestnut and hickory-nut shells, squirrel droppings and remains, fleas and other insects.
Fitz considered sinking down to the pack and bringing up the blaze-dulled machete to use in cleaning out this arboreal Augean stable, then, grimacing in chagrin, thought better on the idea—touching the machete with its steel tang and blade, he would lack
the power to keep himself aloft and, should he by mischance fell from here, he might not have the time to drop the tool and reestablish weightlessness before he made violent contact with the hard ground sixty or eighty feet below.
Hanging in the empty air, Fitz stared at the decaying, flea-hopping mass of animal and vegetable matter, all become or well on the way to becoming humus. This place would no doubt be more than a little uncomfortable for him through the night, but it could easily be made almost foolproof insofar as felling out of it was concerned and, best of all, he doubted that from the ground his presence therein would be even suspected, far less seen. True, a predatory beast might scent him, but it then would have to climb up at least forty feet of thick-barked bole before reaching any limbs and, hopefully, he would hear and be warned by the rasping of claws as the creature climbed.
But if he slept in this uncleaned mess, he would be a virtual flea circus until he could find a place and time safe enough to immerse himself and wash body and hair free of the maddening parasites. However, to simply plunge his arms into it or lack it out would be to end with the same infestation, so how?
From a crevice between two limbs, the chisel-teeth of a long-deceased squirrel winked at him, grinning at his dilemma. Almost without conscious volition, Fitz raised the small skull from its resting place to see it discolored and porous with the effects of tannin and advanced decay, the antennae of what looked to be a large woods-roach wiggling from out an empty eye socket. Hissing with disgust, he floated
the thing and its passenger out into empty air and abruptly released his control of it, watched it plunge to the ground and shatter on impact with a knobby root.
"Goddammit, I'm dense as this tree trunk anymore," he exclaimed. A layer at the time, he proceeded to "think" the years' worth of debris and detritus up from the place of its lengthy lodgement, float it out to random spots among the tree boles and release it to shower down to the ground. When he was down to bark and wood, he floated up the pack, fumbled within it for a few moments, then thoroughly dusted the uncovered area with insecticide. Only then did he begin to prepare for his night's stay.
His meal of canned spaghetti and meat and a handful of raisins washed down with water from his canteen was filling if not very satisfying. As long as there was light, he sat in his aerie and sharpened his machete, but as the light began to fail, he spread his poncho over the floor of the declivity, unrolled his sleeping bag and, after anchoring the bag to convenient limbs or branches with lengths of rope, took off" his boots, loosened his clothing and zipped himself in with his knives and his pistol, though he felt safer this night than he had on any other, camping out in this place.
However, despite his unwonted safety, his bellyfull of food, and his overall tiredness from the long day's hike, he could not find enough comfort in his commandeered squirrels' nest to sleep. Rearranging the positioning of the sleeping bag did no good, nor did trying to adjust placement of his body in the
narrow cavity on and around the bumps and lumps of the uneven surface. He deeply regretted, now, his decision not to include the air mattress in the pack load, this trip. He even thought seriously about flying back to the rock shelter to fetch it.
Then, "I wonder if. . . ?"
After once again sitting up and partially unzipping the bag, he loosened the safety ropes for a few inches all around, lay back down, rezipped the bag and ordered his mind. Slowly, a bit jerkily at first, the bag rose to the limits of the restraints. With his weight it sagged alarmingly in the middle, nor did he know for sure just how much of the undue strain the fabric and stitching would bear without rupturing in one or more spots.
A bit more thought saw Fitz release the mental injunction on the bag, again unzip it, and leave it long enough to use rope and the tough, surplus poncho to fashion a rude hammock, then anchor the bag both to it and the branches. Of course, the poncho sagged too, but he knew damned well that his mere hundred-and-fifty-odd pounds was not going to even approach tearing the rugged, GI canvas.
"So," he mused, as he at last began to relax in comfort and drift off into slumber, "this miraculous new ability Ive found I have isn't always the best thing to use in every case. Ill have to remember that." And, almost asleep, he addended, "If f m going to be putting weight—mine or that of anything else—on objects I cause to rise, they're going to have to be objects already possessing enough strength or rigidity to hold weight without sagging, tearing or cracking. Like other more mundane abilities, I guess,
it's a judgment call of just when, where and how to use it, or whether to use it at all/'
The mantle of sleep closed over Fitz, enfolded him in a great, warm, comforting blanket of oblivion. Then, suddenly, he was wide awake, completely aware, and flying.
For a very brief microsecond of time he panicked, thinking that somehow, in some way, without really knowing it, he must have released the zipper, f
loated up out of the sleeping bag and was sailing, sleep-flying, through the nighted forest. But then he fought down the blinding panic long enough to realize that wherever he now was it was not night but, rather, broad daylight, and that below him lay the rolling swells of open sea, not forest. With calmness came too the realization that his mind was no longer in his own body but once more a "visitor" in that of the blond-bearded young man, Seos—he who had fashioned for himself and for a brief while inhabited the massive body of a huge, wild bull; he who had turned himself back into a man and, with his man's body and unbridled lusts, had so horrified Fitz's civilized, Catholic morality by callously violating the virginity of a dark-haired young girl atop a rock beside a stream; he who then, immediately after the carnal crime, the mortal sin, had proceeded to kidnap his child-victim with the stated purpose of bearing her off to where he dwelt, surely for no purpose which would stand scrutiny, Fitz had thought.
And, as before, Fitz could hear, see, smell, taste, feel, even share in the memories and ongoing thoughts of the young man, Seos, but only as an observer. He could exercise no control over his host.
Now the violated young dark-haired girl (Oo-roh-bah, Fitz recalled she had named herself, as she had sat disheveled and weeping in a pool of her own blood atop the rock whereon Seos had raped her that day) flew beside Seos, on his left hand, while the young, blonde woman, Ehrah, was on his right. Fitz had been less than certain of the relationship between Seos and Ehrah, for although they addressed each other most often as "brother" and "sister," he had thought to sense in their conduct one toward the other an intimate if not an actually sexual familiarity; a delving into the memories of Seos had deeply shocked him even before the outrage on the rock by the stream. He had discovered that, for all that Seos and Ehrah were full blood-sister and brother, they not only were a sexually mated pair of long standing, but that this feet—to him shameful, sinful, criminal— was known and accepted and openly practiced by others in their society and of their race. All three of the flyers were clad in thick, hooded cloaks of unbleached wool against the chill of the upper airs they traversed in their journey's transit.
The trio of flyers bore on a true and unerring course of east-northeast almost directly into the recently risen sun. There was no land in sight, unless feint smudges on the distant horizons were truly islands rather than simply banks of foggy mists not yet burned away by the birth of the new, sunny day. Far, fer beneath them, the purple-blue sea rolled in its endless, ageless motion. Once they flew for some time over a tremendous school of fish, flashing like polished silver in the sun as they leaped from the swells in attempts to escape the predatory sea crea-
tures which swam in pursuit and among them. The only other signs of life to be seen were occasional birds—gulls, terns; far below, larger birds that looked like pelicans.
From Seos's mind, Fitz could understand that several moons' time had passed since he and Ehrah had borne their chance find, the girl Oo-roh-bah, back to their island home and their sire, Keronnos, who ruled over all there, both pure-strain humans and hybrids. Oo-roh-bah had been examined and put to tests of many sorts by Keronnos and others of the oldest, most adept of the hybrids. She had been found to house within her mind so many valuable, if presently latent, talents that Keronnos and his council of hybrids had decided to first awaken certain of those hidden talents, then send her and her kidnappers back to her home to seek out those of her tribe with equal degrees of hybrid traits and make efforts to persuade them all to journey to the island, that their priceless heritage might be bred even more truly over time—rather than be further diluted by breedings with pure-strain humans until those latent talents had been diluted to no talents at all, as had happened far too often in many a land dining the long centuries since the submergences of the islands in the larger sea that had been the homelands of the hybrids and their star-spawn mentors, the Elder Ones.
They had left the home-island of the hybrids with the pale light of the false dawn and flown straight toward their goal ever since. They were speeding to join others of the hybrids who had preceded them. For two moons, now, hidden from all sight by certain of their talents or cloaked in the shapes of beasts
or trees or rocks, they had been spying upon Oo-roh-bah's people, delving unsuspected into their minds, searching out the one most strongly possessing hybrid traits. Seos and Ehrah must confer with these scouts before physically appearing before the mongrel tribe of Oo-roh-bah's sire; such had been the firm order of Seos's own sire.
"There will be none of your private games," Keronnos had said in tones that brooked no demur or dissent. "No guises of fish or fowl or furry beasts, for this is serious, racial business this time, not a frolic among the primitive humans. Upon arrival on the mainland, you will seek out your brothers Mikos and Gabrios before you do aught else. They, not you, are my chosen viceroys in this operation, so you will consider the orders given by them, mine own. Do you both fully understand me?"
"But, my father," Seos had replied, with both sulkiness and a measure of aggrievedness in his voice and manner, "it's not fair to put Mikos and Gabrios in charge. After all, it was I who found the girl, recognized what she was and brought her back to you here."
"Yes," Ehrah had put in, "it was we who found her; you would never have known of her and her tribe, Father-dear, had we not borne her back here. It was us, not Mikos and Gabrios, us, so we should be in charge, not them."
-Keronnos's stern visage had not altered, nor his tone. "No, Mikos and Gabrios are to be in command. Both are almost mature, older, wiser, less inclined to wasting time and talents on childish and sometimes— dangerous frivolities.
"You both feel hurt and that your efforts go unrewarded, unappreciated, now, but in another few centuries, when you too are nearing maturity of both mind and body, you will more fully understand and recognize the necessity of my decision in this grave matter.
"Now go, my children. But remember my words and see that you well heed them/'
Seos recalled how the muscles had rippled under his sire's fair, sun-freckled skin as he arose from his seat after he had finished speaking, for though his red-blond hair and beard were beginning to streak with grey, his body was every bit as firm and fit as that of any man or hybrid upon the island. Seos did not know his sire's exact age; the subject was considered of no importance and it had never occurred to him to inquire. Hybrids of as pure a lineage as Keronnos often lived for twenty and more centuries, usually little changed in physical appearance until two or three centuries before death.
With such lifespans, they should have long-since bred enough hybrids to at least conquer, if not actually cover all the earth. However, with the blessing of long life came the curse of slow and spotty reproduction among hybrids of pure lineage. In all of his long centuries upon the island, Keronnos had gotten fewer than a score of get upon his sister-wives, while Seos had yet to get even one upon Ehrah, though he and other male hybrids had proven to the devastat-ingly potent with humans, wherever and whenever and however these conquests had been found and taken. In fact, the girl Oo-roh-bah even now bore within her still-flat little belly Seos's developing seed.
Seos thought on farther and with remembered relish unhidden of how both he and Ehrah, his sister and wife, had in beast-bodies coupled with wild creatures of the fields and forests, as well as with domesticated animals, to produce progeny that were occasionally not entirely bestial. Fitz was appalled. He wondered just how and why he found himself in the clearly depraved mind of this handsome, ruthless, often childish, human-looking monster.
But then, diving more deeply into his host's memories, Fitz realized that Seos and Ehrah were far from the first of their kind to so comport themselves. The practice was indeed common among young hybrids, whose bodies matured far faster than their minds, talents or judgment. Seos's mind told him that it had been so back almost to the dim beginnings of the hybrid race in some land now lost to the memories of any save the few, scattered, surviving Elder Ones, wherever they might dwell. Kero
nnos, himself, had told often of how he and his siblings had cavorted and had sometimes coupled with sea creatures, spawning on them more than few offspring that were not entirely of the appearance of either parent, though still denizens of the waters.
Fitz then thought back to the story Cool Blue had told him shortly after their first meeting, of how the Count of Saint Germain's mistress, one Sursy, had aroused the now-lion, then-human's lust for her, then had insisted that, in order to slake his passion, he allow her to transform him into a wild boar and in that form swive the sow she became. Could it be that this sorceress, this Sursy—now, according to Cool Blue, a shocking-pink lioness against her will and by
the wiles of the cuckolded and angered Count-one of these hybrids, of the lineage of Seos and his people? How could he or anyone else ever know for sure? If and when he ever found this man of whom Puss kept speaking, this Dagda, perhaps he would know? Well, it would be at least worth the asking.
The three flew on . . . and on, and on. The sun rose almost halfway to its meridian and a feint, hazy smudge appeared on the horizon dead ahead of them. As they drew ever nearer, the haze dissipated and the smudge became dense, solidified into a line of high, rocky clifls surmounted by expanses of coarse grasses, herbs and bushes and low trees. Beyond these seaside clifls, the land descended rapidly to a verdant plain on which grew a very abundance of lush plants of every size and description. One large river cut through this plain within easy sight, several streams of larger and smaller sizes fed the river and distant sparkles of sun on water told of more streams beyond. Hordes of birds and beasts roamed this wild eden. Fish leapt in the river and streams and, along the banks here and there, could be seen the long, thick, scale-armored bodies of crocodiles—called water-dragons by Oo-roh-bah and her people and by Seos and his as well, Fitz had earlier discovered. Seeing them in the flesh, Fitz thought that, though none he could see were as large as the one he had been briefly chased by on the beach, not a few of these sinister creatures were quite large enough to be fairly called dragons.