“Thank you. We’ve learned that he is renting a female companion for an Occasion, said to be a grand, open-air event. She’s said to be mate-worthy. This is supposed to make him look virile and potent. He is obsessed with becoming a father to many.”
Wry murmurs. Even a chuckle. She is shocked. This isn’t funny. The leader they’re discussing can only be one person. Her father. And he has a name. Meatbreath.
“His seeking a companion suggests the Occasion is imminent.”
“I heard it was tomorrow night.”
“The only reason to have an Occasion is to announce something.”
“Regime change.”
“What can we do? We aren’t organized.”
“We need more time.”
“Can’t we delay the Announcement?”
“How?”
Her body is humming. Humming with ideas. But she can’t choose one idea over another because they’re all wound up around each other like grapevines. The Maker in her is in control – it is thinking Relations, not Things. Hard to do if your paws are designed to grasp objects. Objects are isolated. They can be moved around and put in another place. They can be eaten. They can be buried. But she’s not a handler of Things – she’s a perceiver of Relations, and Relations can’t be tossed away. They can’t be disposed of – they are living things. The Stranger replaced a fish he had eaten. The object turned into a relation again, and the relation swam away … Well, actually, raccoons need to have both skills – perceiving relationships and manipulating things – and they need to braid the two skills together beautifully if they are to be superior Makers. Maybe this is our grace as a species. Grasp this: Meatbreath can’t see beyond his paws. He only sees Things he can grab. He’s a compulsive Grasper. He grasps so blindly that he grabs Relationships and treats them as if they’re Things. Disposable objects. She needs to speak. My body needs to speak. Don’t do it, Touchwit, or you’ll sound like you’re vomiting a stream of poisoned clams.
“I want to speak. May I say something?” That was herself she heard, asking to speak.
“Please go ahead.”
“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. Five points. One for each finger. Need to put what she’s thinking into a pattern for these pattern-thinking Makers. Ready? “Five points. Point one …” Just like her Mother. (What I’m going to tell you will help you survive someday.) She began again:
“Point One: we do not have time to fashion examples of grace for posterity. What has posterity done for us? We need to survive right now ourselves. Point Two: we can’t do anything about the changes in our habitat – that’s a Primate thing – but we can choose leaders who will make wise choices. Point Three: we must absolutely oppose the Protector in every way we can. And we need to muster the Citizen Raccoons of the city to do the same. Point Four: we are Makers. The natural way for us to oppose is to create Makings that subject Old No-name-daddy to ridicule. To cause his followers to see him as what he really is and desert him. And to ridicule him, we need to expose his technique for manipulating others. What is his technique? Simple. It is to duplicate himself. He duplicates himself in names, in rumours, in cubs, in wives, in territories. This one single raccoon simply outnumbers us. But we can mock this endless duplication. One thing we can do is we can make hoards of identical No Name Daddies and place them all over the city. We can do this tonight. Raccoons will get the point really fast.”
She paused. Oh, she shouldn’t have paused because now she can see her colleagues trying to figure out what on earth that last bit was all about. Some are shaking their muzzles as if trying to remove cobwebs. Some are nodding and frowning politely. Point Five. Crumbs! She doesn’t have a point five …
“Point Five,” the Stranger said. “This mindless duplication of sameness: we can counter it by flooding it with diversity. Makings of each and every kind.” A glance across the cellar at her. Whoa! Did time just stand still? “For this diversity we learn from the Makings of other raccoon peoples who have migrated here.” He’s taking her thinking and extending it out into the world. Hap in Heaven! He’s as cosmopolitan as a Seagull. The Stranger’s voice drops. “I guess everybody knows I study Makings from all the Islands of Earth. You wouldn’t believe how far raccoons have spread. We’re in cities that haven’t known wilderness for aeons. And we’re thriving in places where there is wildness with little habitation. Do you know, there are Desert raccoons to the south on our own Island, beyond where the Ancestor goes to his den for the winter? I think what my colleague is saying” (another shy glance in her direction) “is that in each and every locale the Makings of raccoons show a style of surviving that is proper to the habitat and climate in that place. That’s why we should welcome migrating Raccoons. They bring all these different styles of surviving.”
“Style.” The convener at the front of the cellar repeats the word reverentially. “Style is the intuition of Being – not a boast of cleverness as it is a way of saying glory to the Ancestor for enabling a creature to display such dexterity.”
Glory be to Hapticia, she thinks. The Stranger is imagining a treeful of different Customs for Raccoons to choose from, instead of duplicating one Custom endlessly. Oh, it’s going to be fun for smart Raccoons to make the best choices among all these styles of surviving. Say it! She spoke calmly and evenly from the back of the room.
“My colleague” (respectful pause) “has said that to let all these differing styles flourish, we cannot be dictated to. No one, least of all a pop-up Protector, should tell a Raccoon how they’re supposed to think and feel. And Make. Our Makings tell us how to choose a future. They teach us style which is another name for survival. The coordination of paw and eye, the sign of a body alert in its habitat. Nobodaddy” (laughter) “is trying to rip apart that sacred bond between eye and paw. But that’s how we survive. We’re specialists at eye-paw coordination. Raccoons will show the world how to survive.”
That brought the rough scraping together of palms. Applause. She had said enough. She was emptied. Raccoons began nudging their way across the dirt cellar floor to talk to her. She had to wave them away with a regretful smile. She needed air.
Outside, the cool morning had mellowed into a golden, hazy stillness that stretched across the horizon. Autumn was coming. A Seagull stood on top of a steeple guarding her.
“Thanks for thinking with me.”
She turned. The wilderness gentleman held her Making in his paw.
“We don’t have time to present ourselves appropriately through stories. My name is Touchwit.”
“I’m Mindwalker.”
Exactly like his scent-track. He thinks by walking, leaving his mind in each paw print.
“You didn’t need to introduce yourself. Your Making speaks for you. But why did you send it to me?”
Why? Because you’re interesting, that’s why. Because you seemed unapproachable any other way. Because you are totally wrapped up in your Makings. “So you’d recognize me from the Making I put on your statue,” she said.
“You were on the Island?”
She is confused. Only one island? “I don’t mean on your statue on the north island.”
“Oh, the Watcher. He’s guarding the island. To let the Great Anonymity know the Makers have their eye on him.”
“I put my wreath on your Watcher on the south island.”
“I didn’t put a Watcher on the south island.”
She felt a sickening chasm open just beneath her heart. Who? Why?
“Someone must have copied my Making,” he said.
This is bad. This is terribly bad. Take a breath, then say it. “He was stalking me. My own Father. I almost took his lure.”
ACT IV
Setback and Betrayal
Slypaws and Twitchwhisker, ex-mothers and tourists in the City
