“She knows him because his mother is standing right here. Behind her,” the abused Creeker shouted.
“I don’t believe you, Lickfoot. You’re a turncoat spy,” Lockjaw said.
“I smelled her up close. That’s his mom, or my nose is an oil can.”
“Your nose is going to be slimed forever when I’m through with you,” Twitch growled.
“Sssh! Let’s see how this turns out,” Sly whispered.
Lockjaw thrust his head into the hole. “Which one’s the mother?”
“I am that,” Slypaws said in her proudest voice. “And sometime companion to his father too.”
“Fascinating. I want you out here in the sun. And your bargaining agent as well.”
“I’ll proceed first.” The pregnant Creeker pushed between Slypaws and Twitch.
“Not you, you idiot. He means Slypaws.”
Slypaws exited first. Then Twitchwhisker. The Creeker informant began to wail. The automobile wheel slid back into place like the gate of hell.
“Thus perishes a coward bitten by her own timidity,” was Twitch’s comment.
“Don’t be hard on her,” Sly said. “It’s so easy for a person in a servile position to mistake power for security.”
“Her mistake was thinking Lockjaw would find her profitable because she held the proof of your identity. She never thought you’d actually verify who you were. But you did. And now we’re profitable.”
“We’re worth our weight in beer,” Sly said.
47
“So, little one. How do you like being the Protector?”
The voice was patient but weary around the edges – the voice of one who has endured much, the voice of an Ancestor. It had spoken out of the mist in the upper foliage at the top of the tree. How do you address a god? Do you say “Your Infinity” or “Your Omniscience”? There was no account in oral scripture of anyone talking face-to-face with the Great Raccoon. Not even Procyonides the Sage had spoken with him. The only thing to do was to be forthright and try not to tremble.
“I am not the Protector. I am but the servant of my Clan. Possessing some few qualities of leadership, I presume to direct my Clan in the defense of its homeland.”
Silence. Did the tones given off by his heart sound right? Was he really a humble servant or did he secretly aspire to be a Protector? He used the Other’s thoughtful silence as an opportunity to swivel his ears toward the west gate. That chanting in unison was the High Guard. They sounded unnerving. The cries of the Clan Mothers were sporadic and scattered. Not a good sound.
A shuffle in the branches. The Ancestor has altered his position.
“If you are only a servant, why do you adopt the Protector’s instruments of power? The summoning of an army. The control of feeding and breeding?”
Just a flick of mockery. The Ancestor was objecting to his assuming the Protector’s role, but he didn’t sound all that positive either about the subjugation of the Clan Mothers and the portioning out of sustenance. The god was calling upon him to justify his violations of Custom.
“A disease has possessed the thoughts and feelings of Creek Town. I am the fever necessary for a cure.”
He flinched when he gave this answer back to the mist. It sounded vain. And something was agitated? Was he shuddering – no, it was the leaves of the tree. The tree was afraid. Was it afraid for him? Everything now depended on his measured reasoning. If he argued awkwardly, he would lose his balance.
“The cure is the disease made worse.”
The simple statement had the force of a paw-swipe. Yes, he was in fact using the Protector’s methods in order to end the Protector’s regime. And he could easily be corrupted by those methods and merely reproduce the Protector’s state of unfreedom. The worthy Creekers had willingly loaned their freedom to him because he was a good Raccoon and would give them back their freedom when the crisis was over. But power reached for more power to be effective. Power rarely wanted less power. That was what concerned the Ancestor.
“You may relax. Your behaviour is in accord with the sacred rhythms. I have something to tell you if you are going to do the work of a Protector.”
“I heed any wisdom I may receive in so vexatious a matter.”
“Heed this then: Consider this Oak tree you are balanced on. For season after season she decides to withhold her fertility. She produces no acorns. The scarcity of acorns is a message intended for the eyes of squirrels and jays. It tells them they are going to starve and their own fertility will be diminished if they continue to expect this temperamental tree to supply them with nuts. Accordingly, they depart for a better locale where they will be better nourished. But then after a season, behold! the Oak suddenly produces an abundance of acorns – she releases her fertility by the mouthful. The few squirrels and jays who have remained in the vicinity of her beneficence feast gloriously. And the Oak prospers because the greater part of her acorns have fallen to the ground uneaten, and some of them will give rise to stout Oak children.”
A sound teaching! Rooted beings could be tricksters. And the Ancestor had supported his wise counsel by referencing the holy rhythms, specifically the Principle of the Inverse Alternation of Scarcity and Abundance in a Relationship of Hosts and Guests. Destiny had called upon him, Clutch, a senior brother and major son, to restore a balance. This validated his leadership of Creek Town.
There came a hum rather like that of a power transformer atop a telephone pole. Doubtless, the god had again turned his mind inward into its infinite depths. Probably he was taking instantaneous stock of all the rhythms of plenitude and poverty in creation, making sure they were all running smoothly. Clutch took the opportunity to return for an instant to his own immediate worry. Where were his runners? There was a sound of skirmishing down at the southern fenceline where Sleekfoot’s Second Wave was watching the railroad tracks. He couldn’t do anything about it. He was cut off from his forces; cut off from his sister Touchwit’s effort in the City; cut off from the whole world of outlines and distinctions because the fog had turned existence into a deathly sameness. The inscriptions were coming off the stones. He was alone with his god. A cough clearing the fog out of a throat. The Ancestor had come to give him courage.
“Consider the Primates, for it is said ‘As Primates evolve, so Raccoons evolve’.” The Ancestor waited the appropriate interval for the saying to achieve its silencing power of assent. “The Primates, too, engage in this rhythm of withholding and releasing in order to obtain a future for their young. They deny themselves the small immediate comfort in order to obtain the larger future security. Do the Primates not behave like the Oak tree?”
A Dialogue! He used to engage in Dialogues with Uncle Wily, who taught by means of the Procyonic Method. He suddenly realized how much he had missed dialoguing.
“I would say the Primates behave in the same manner as the Oak tree,” Clutch answered. “Yet they perform their behaviour at the end of a very slender limb.”
“Yea!” the Voice from the mist intoned. “They have played with taking risks for so long that their risks have come to be impressed on the sacred rhythms of things. Is it any surprise, therefore, that the sacred rhythms broadcast back those selfsame risks in exaggerated oscillations? This ultimate risk-taking is Earth trying to recover her lost balance. It is dangerous – very dangerous to herself. May we hope that she is magnifying Scarcity in order to exhaust risk-taking behaviour altogether, thereby achieving for the few survivors of her desperate experiment an outlook conducive to a harmonious plenitude!”
“Yes, that is exactly what the sacred rhythms appear to be doing,” Clutch replied, practically swaying with the eloquence of the Ancestor’s prose. “They are denying fertility almost to the point of no return in the hope of averting extinction.” The Ancestor is his wisdom had adopted his fever necessary for a cure argument, and extended it to the behaviour of Earth. So far, the Dialogue was sound. How powerfully the Ancestor reasoned. But where was it going?
“Having so educated the rhythms of things in this habit of risk-taking, it falls to Primates – if they wish to survive themselves – to take their paradoxical logic to the end. They must use their very risk-taking to correct the consequences of their risk-taking.”
“I agree. There is no other option.”
“This they must do,” the Voice went on, “by planting the seeds of future life in new habitats that have been especially fashioned to receive them. Is this recourse not in accord with the Principle of Scarcity and Abundance?”
