“It is,” Clutch said warily. “Yet the Principle itself has become bent in practice. It is so badly warped that it may no longer be of service to us as a guide to the various ways things flourish. For by applying the Principle directly to the Principle itself, the risk-taking behaviour seeks an outcome that can’t ever be predicted. It can be likened to a Raccoon holding a broken branch under his feet and trying to walk on it.”
Had he performed one balancing feat too many? he wondered. First, he had taken an awful risk by raising a militia to challenge the Protector. Second, he had taken an even more breathtaking risk by moving his force to the Dead Zone, hoping to tie up the Protector’s forces, which were unknown. Was the exposure to mischance succeeding? He could make out confused sounds from the southern boundary. From the west gate came the bitter defiance of the First Wave. They sounded like they were being forced back up the hill. It wasn’t working out. The fog would lift, revealing a landscape of raccoons panting and licking their wounded spirits. Striding among them, scornful victors. The Ancestor had come to draw out the moral lesson of his defeat and thereby make him a better Raccoon.
“We have agreed, have we not, that as Primates evolve, so Raccoons evolve. Are Raccoons in a time of crisis not justified in copying Primate behaviour?”
Clutch began to feel a massive headache. It felt like a Drooler had caught him out in the open and put its jaws around his head and was closing them slowly, tighter and tighter. Everything the Ancestor had said had confirmed that he had done the right thing in assuming the role of Protector. At the same time, the Great Raccoon was warning him that his improvised leadership required him to take dangerous risks. A single risk was easy to justify; a decision to adopt risk-taking as a general behaviour was another thing entirely. The fever necessary for a cure was like fire-sugar in a bottle found in a recycling bin. Deadly intoxicating. The fever could be more harmful than the disease itself. A raccoon could go around in a fever solving crises that didn’t exist. Then to prolong the excitement of the fever, he’d start making up crises in order to solve them. Why hadn’t the Ancestor mentioned this? Presumably like a good teacher he was enabling his servant Clutch to discover it for himself.
The defeat lament. His Clan Mothers were singing the dirge of defeat to keep their broken spirits together. Where were his runners? Could he ask the Ancestor to allow him to briefly leave his solemn presence and find out what was happening to his Clan?
“Your runners were ambushed one-by-one in the fog,” the Voice said, reading his mind. “And one paw of your army no longer knows what the other paw is doing.”
Clutch felt his spirits turn to the cold slush you find on a street in March when you’re foolish enough to go outdoors before winter is over. The hope of Creek Town was lost. Its people would paddle back in ones and twos to the beloved shore, preparing themselves for a lifetime of bondage and sorrow. Some would flee, as they had done before, to the distant tributaries and headwaters of the creeks. His colleagues, Sleekfoot and Lightfinger, whom he had let down, would walk away from him without a word. His ladyfriend would be taken away to be the servant to some scarred warrior back in the City.
“I can get you out of this,” the Ancestor said. Soft, firm, a kindly whisper.
“What must I do?”
“First, since you are a reasoning Raccoon and make a point of never proceeding without knowing what you are doing and why, I will tell you a story about the philosopher Procyonides and draw out the lesson therefrom.”
“The thinking of Procyonides is always timely, especially at the collapse of hope,” Clutch said. The Great Ancestor seemed fond of the Classics.
“One soft night, it happened that Procyonides was walking in the woods. And the soil was damp on account of a recent rain. The Sage looked behind him and saw that he was leaving footprints. And it occurred to him that each print made by a paw was identical with the last print that the aforementioned paw had made. ‘Eureka!’ exclaimed the Sage. ‘My markings have told me something significant and worthy to be applied to memory. It is that there are two of me. There is the Raccoon who is walking and there is the replica of me walking’.”
The Ancestor paused in the manner of a teacher in a Dialogue. “Would you say this replica is real?”
“No, the replica is not real. There can be only one real maker of the footprint.” He was following the exchange as it was given in the ancient Dialogue. He knew it well. It had been one of Uncle Wily’s favourites.
“‘Yet,’ said the Sage to himself, ‘the footprint is as real as the foot that made it. If you were a blind Raccoon, and you did not know of the footprint, and you sniffed the footprint with your eyes closed, your senses would conjure a real Raccoon for your mind to consider. Your hackles would rise. Your ears would flatten. Your tail would tuck in …’”
“I suppose …”
“That is what Procyonides thought that night. He thought another raccoon, coming along, would sniff the print and imagine that he, Procyonides, a real Raccoon, was present. ‘How then?’ said the Sage, ‘can we say that only one entity is real?’”
“Both are real but not equally so,” Clutch said quickly. Then to himself: Let’s get this over with. I’m losing a battle.
“I shall continue. It came to pass that Procyonides died and alas was no more. But the tracks he had made remained, and became a permanency to his disciples. They coveted the paw prints and they went frequently and sniffed thereof, because they were all that was left behind by the wise and thoughtful Procyonides. For it is said: ‘Who can recall a teacher’s sayings? They are like the wind in the branches. But his prints endure forever.’ But by summer’s end there became no way of remembering the philosopher by his odour, because the rains had come and washed away his scent together with his footprints, and even the tracks of Procyonides were no more to his disciples.”
Clutch felt a tremendous sorrow at the loss of the traces left by the Sage. It was comparable to the sorrow he felt when he surveyed the smear left by Uncle Wily on the pavement on a similar wet night. “But it hapt that a Boy Cub was walking in the same forest one day,” Clutch said, using the measured cadences of his late uncle. “And he saw that some mud had fallen into one remaining footprint that had been spared by the canopy of a tree. And over time the mud had hardened into clay. And he plucked out the hardened clay. And behold! He was holding a copy of the very paw that had made the footprint. Well, you can be sure he did washing motions as carefully as a good raccoon does with a clamshell …”
Here Clutch repeated the Hand Ritual.
“… and he took the model to his burrow, and set it up as a shrine, saying to his kinsfolk, ‘Lo! Here is the eternal imprint of Procyonides the Philosopher. The mould is more important to us than any saying because when pressed against the soil it can re-produce the very paw print of the Sage, and it can repeat it accurately each and every time’.
“‘No,’ they replied. ‘It is but a lump of clay. It is imperfect because it is only an impression, not linked to the Philosopher’s real paw by a scent.’
“Accordingly,” Clutch said, “the story teaches that there can be only one Real. The copy is but a mere sign that this reality existed and is not linked to it physically.”
There came a wailing from the south. The shock and despair of a Clan Mother. She had lost more than a battle.
“That is a quaint version of the story,” the Voice said. “It is outdated.”
“What other version is there?”
“It goes like this: And so it came to be that the Artifact in the shrine became as real as Procyonides. Indeed, more real – because the sometime foolishness of the original Philosopher was forgotten, and instead his solemnity was praised.”
That wasn’t right – it erased the mischievous Procyonides altogether so that it was as if he’d never existed in time. He existed only as an image held in the apparent timelessness of a shrine. Something was tangled in the Ancestor’s reasoning. But there was nothing tangled about his power: the thoughtwaves coming out of the mist were making the leaves cringe.
“And now your task,” the Voice declared.
No! Not yet! The Ancestor’s reasoning was tangled. It had to be corrected first – it had to be corrected because the right reasoning supported the rightness of his, Clutch’s, claim to lead the Clan. If the reasoning was faulty, his claim was faulty. But how could the Ancestor’s thinking contain an error? And such a simple error?
The crying of his kinsfolk travelled through the fog. The First Wave were still fighting as they retreated up the hill towards him – he could now see their contorted bodies through the mist. And there came continued shrieking from the Second Wave at the railway tracks. He sniffed the air of the bough. All he smelled was a variation of himself. Maybe the Ancestor …? What if …?
“Wait! I know another version of the story,” Clutch shouted. “I must recite it.”
“Yet another version? There aren’t any other versions. I do not know of it.”
“Why don’t you know of it?” Clutch shouted. “You’re omniscient!”
No sound came from the top of the bough. But in the thinning fog, a shape began to take form. It was titanic, divine, the shape of a god.
“Reveal yourself! I demand that you reveal yourself!”
No reply.
“Show yourself. Else I shall tell my version.”
“Do not speak it! Do not on any account speak it!”
