(from) Dr. Ira Proud,

c/o Hilton Hotel, room 605

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada S7K 3X6

 

(to) Mrs. J. Parquett

214-2707 Centaur Court

Riviere-Du-Loup, Quebec, Canada G5R 4N8

 

Dear Mrs. Parquett;

In the event that you do not recognize the name of the sender, written on the envelope of this missive, I will begin by introduction. But, I shall do so in an unorthodox fashion.

I will tell you a story; a story as old as humankind. It is a story of the banal reaching with desperate hands for the profound. Remember those words; you will hear them a lot in the moments to come; banal and profound.

Chapter 1

No tale has a beginning if it is inspired by reality and so it is with this one; therefore I shall arbitrarily start at the beginning of the life of a man who will be at the center of this story, but not the focus of it. His name was Ira Proud, even as my name is, yet surely that man whose memories I share could not have been me, could it? Must the me who lived then be considered the same person as the me who lives now? Such an injustice if he must, for the only things we share are our memories and our names. Many may think that to be a profound sameness; I beg to differ for I have come close the heart of that matter and found it to be otherwise, banal.

He was born; German-Irish-English, marginally Protestant; in June of 1932 on the Canadian prairies in a small farming town of three hundred living souls. The number of dead who last-rested there would not have greatly outnumber the living; not because great numbers had not been there over the ages, but because great numbers of the living had left to die elsewhere. Ira's father was a farmer and not a great man, but good enough, and likewise his mother. He had siblings, two older and one younger; they got along okay with each other. They knew rough times, but never bad times. The summers were dry and hot, though not desert, and the winters were dry and cold, though not arctic. The springs and autumns were wet and pleasant with muted browns, greens, blues, reds, and yellows; but not beautiful.

Ira got the average education and got average marks for his average efforts. He had a bit of difficulty connecting with others and so did not develop any deep and lasting or memorable friendships but got by on shallow yet pleasant associations. He had one brief and barely remarkable fling with pubescent passion before leaving home at the age of nineteen with a grade twelve diploma, a new suit and shoes, and one hundred dollars in his pocket. He never missed home, was hardly missed, and never went back. Banal.

He rode the bus to Saskatoon and found accommodation in a modest board and room establishment and soon found work in a hardware store where he sold all those tools and implements that his father had always coveted but never bought when he went into town. He lived like a pauper for a year while saving money to enable himself to attend the university where he hoped to study the sciences which had always fascinated him in school. In truth he didn't know what he was going to make of his life. He had never really thought in those terms. It was more that it was just the thing one did after finishing school; one went to university. At that time in his life there was really very little insight or indeed even personality in Ira's make-up. He was really only a bag of responses being maneuvered by the social influences around him. Banal.

Such people are blank sheets to be stained with whose-ever ink is first to find them. But such people also carry about themselves, as though invested by some God of Banality for their protection, a blanket of social invisibility that makes it possible for them to walk unseen in society for years before being noticed; and then usually to be noticed it requires some charismatic person who is on the lookout for just such persons. The charismatic tend to love to surround themselves with such as Ira, whose admiration enhances the impression of power that the charismatic love. Not to say that the charismatic are predatory any more than the banal; the banal tend to seek out the charismatic also and feed their own emptiness by parroting their idol's persuasions and personality in small and shallow ways. It actually works quite well and in fact usually turns out to be a healthy thing for both and they usually end up parting social equals. It would better be described as a sym-psychiatric relationship. Profound.

So it was with Ira. He worked for a year and had no social life whatever, only sat at night and read science journals that he borrowed from the coffee room at the store or from his landlady's other boarders. When he began university in September of 1952 he took residence in a dormitory of that university and took a night job as a janitor to keep himself fed. Though living in poverty he didn't suffer since he was not so aware as to be conscious of his condition. This was due partly because of the fact that while growing up on the farm he had not had a bedroom of his own but instead slept on the living room couch, and had dressed almost exclusively in hand-me-downs until it had become the accepted and unquestioned norm for him. Also because as a farmer's son he had been raised with an instinct for squeezing every penny out of a dollar. And so he went about life blindly ignorant of the things he did without. There is a lot to be said for the bliss that comes with ignorance. If the wise could so clearly see the difference between needs and mere wants, the world would be a better place. Profound.

Three years passed in such fashion and the only change that touched Ira was that he achieved a bachelor's degree in science and came to realize that the one and only passion he felt in life was for the study of physics. It was for him as though in physics the world took on color, the sounds and textures about him became exquisite, florescent, sensual and alive, while all else outside was still the same gray banality that it had ever been. He worked that summer away and began the first year of his studies towards a master's degree in physics, nothing unusual still happening regularly. Banal. Then he moved into a rental arrangement in a house near the university, and there he met his 'syn-psychiat', Cain Samson.

Chapter 2

Now, one would immediately assume from his name that Cain Samson would be a Jewish medical student or possibly into dentistry or law. But no, Cain was the black sheep spawn of a Catholic-by-culture (as opposed to persuasion) Torontonian; a very rich, black-and-white minded, right-wing pundit of the advertising industry. Cain had agreed to go to university and study law (which his father had always regretted not having done himself) only if allowed to go to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, far from his despised father who after five years still believed his son was studying law. Cain lived high on the hog off his father's expense account and was in his fifth year of Fine Arts, and was majoring in something called, "Contemporary Impressionistic Reinterpretation of Traditional Graphic Expressions". Rendered down it seemed to Ira that Cain was studying how to take Egyptian, European, American, and Australian cave paintings, copy them in oil on canvas and justify calling them virtually anything other than the hunting scenes that they started out as. Ira could never see any difference between the original and the finished reinterpretation. It was revealed later that Cain couldn't either; he had simply learned how to make it sound as though he did.

Cain had bought a house but lived in the garage which he had turned into a studio. The house was occasionally burgled since it was known that Cain was never in it. So it was that Cain was pinning up a notice on one of the university bulletin boards one day, offering the rental of the house, as Ira was walking by, and Ira stopped to ask Cain about the rental rate. It turned out that Cain was willing to allow virtual run of the house for next to nothing if he liked the renter; money not being the point of renting it in the first place. In fact Cain preferred only one renter in the three bedroom house since it meant less interference in Cain's life. After only five minutes the notice was crumpled and trashed and Ira and Cain were chatting over a cup of coffee in the cafeteria and becoming committed to each other; a commitment that would change them both profoundly, for the rest of their lives.

Cain actually did do a bit of painting in the large garage-cum-studio, and he slept on the large old leather couch in there. But the bulk of the studio space was taken up by the beatnik-inspired, spontaneous coffee-house that ran itself virtually round the clock on weekends and holidays. During the week there were nightly session with philosophy students, political science students, and students from the various theology colleges on campus. These would analyze and scrutinize and theorize and pontificate till dawn and then trundle off to their classes. A lot of "Turkish Tobacco" was smoked and a lot of Hiram Walker and Absinthe was consumed in those sessions. Ira was led, like a lamb to the slaughter, into this world for which he had no preparation at all.

My God in Heaven; when I recall that year! It is as though all memory before that year is in black and white; grainy textured and dimly lit. Then, of a sudden, all is an explosion of psychedelic color and emotional chaos; it was WONDERFUL! It was TERRIFYING! One thing though; one thing stayed constant. And it was this one anchor on reality that made that year possible to sustain without resorting to a nervous breakdown. Physics. Physics remained Ira's focus, and his meter for the measuring of any other influence in his life. In that year Ira discovered music, poetry, hedonism, asceticism, religious fervor, political fervor, addiction, purification, love and the pleasure of a willing woman's body, and heartbreak. But physics was his anchor always.

Jo-Ann. Ahh, Jo-Ann. How we loved; how we loved. Cat Stevens has never written a love song to describe our days together and Leonard Cohen never wrote a song of search to describe our nightly search in each other's arms for something we never found. But, ahh, the raw soreness of our bodies after a night of animal passion; and the angry red vapors in our minds after an evening of scathing politics and philosophies, all of which made more violent and wonderful the hot and sticky revenge we took on one another that night!

Were you the Breath of God, you who blew into my soul and vivified me? Or, if no, were you the serpent that tempted me and taught me questions while denying me answers? No? Then it must have been you, an Angel of Terror with a flaming sword, who drove me from my Garden of Ignorance into a terrifying and sinful World of Wonders.

One day in June we agreed that at the end of the term we would leave for the South of Spain and never return, and the next day you came to me and said good-buy. I didn't believe you. How could I? I finished my exams knowing that on the last day you would show up at my door, rucksack packed and ready to go, but you never came. Ahh, such a cruel dart you threw! I love you still; a sixty year old maudlin fool. I thank you. With all my heart and soul, I thank you for it all; for the memories.

That September, instead of finding himself with drastically lower marks Ira found that he had exceeded even his own expectations and was suddenly at the top of his class. The stimulation and wonders of the past year had only done him good. He was exhausted and near collapse but the exhilaration of his new found life-style filled Ira with a fanatics hunger for more and more of the heady, addictive stuff called experience. At the time Ira couldn't be bothered to feel the abandonment by his lover but looked forward to going to Spain with Cain instead, but then Cain received word that his father had died suddenly and horrifically, spewing blood from his mouth and anus simultaneously after another alcoholic binge. The old advertising tycoon had blown an ulcer and exsanguinated into his gut in minutes as he lay in a stupor just inside the front door of the family mansion where he was often found; Cain's mother had instructed the household servants that her husband was to be left to clean up his own stink in the mornings. Amazing! All that money and so little happiness. Profound. Banal.

Cain responded to the news by throwing a tantrum during which he accused his father of engineering this death deliberately, to solicit sympathy from and to inconvenience Cain, to whom fell the job of comforting the grieving widow and settling the estate (his father's "lawyer" son) instead of enjoying a hedonistic summer in Spain. Cain was the favored spawn, and was the heir to all the family wealth. In disgust Cain signed over the studio, house, and property to Ira on the promise that Ira stay the summer and run the coffee-house. It had become something of an institution in Saskatoon and entertainers would phone from all across Canada and the States to pre-book themselves. A few of these singers and poets would later earn names for themselves and would graduate out of the Coffee-houses into the stadiums. One young Canadian Native woman (I'm told by the youth these days that "Indian" is almost a dirty word any more, no longer politically correct, God help us) blew into town and so entranced the clientele that she was pressed until she agreed to stay for a whole week, captivating all their hearts with her poetry and powerful, revolutionary spirit and voice. Ira, who now wore sandals and a trendy goatee, fell so completely in love with her that he actually proposed, but she tactfully and teasingly rejected his fool's offer and went her way. And although he didn't know it at the time, Ira owed thanks for another evolutionary step in his awakening process to Miss. St-Marie. Another time that summer a young man passing through town on his way to visit friends in BC stopped and asked if he could play for room and board and twenty dollars. Being sufficiently impressed by the young man's name alone, Lightfoot, Ira invited him to stay in the house and he played for three nights running.

Chapter 3

September of that year, 1956, was a turning point in Ira's awareness of himself. He awoke on the morning of the first day back in classes and realized that in the preceding year he had changed as fundamentally as though he had been a caterpillar who had entered a chrysalis state and was then emerged as a butterfly. Foolish young man; he thought that his changes were complete. Banal. Profound.

Cain had arrived back from Toronto three weeks earlier and was much changed by his sojourn back home. Emotionally he was a shell of his former self. His face was sallow and his eyes were downcast and dark. He carried a cloud of melodramatic tragedy about on his shoulders like the robes of a high priest. From all appearances he was a shattered, humbled, crushed soul. He confided to Ira that he had come to realize how deeply and savagely he had loved his father and how angry he had been with his father for never valuing that love. Cain and Ira sat up one whole week-end discussing how Cain's entire life had been determined; how every move and nuance of his personality was focused on Cain's relationship with his father. Cain now knew the meaning of life. He had a revelation of great wonder into the nature of his own soul and was now ready to cast off the phony armor of existentialism and embrace Buddhism and Communism and make his life over again. Such depth! Such profound insight! Such quacking, revolutionary excitement! Ira swore fealty and undying comradeship with Cain and swore to care for them both as Cain tried in his valiant, melodramatic way, to pull his life back together and start all over again.

Cain was now filthy rich and his mother was safely tucked away and out of mind with Cain's sister who received a heady stipend for the task. The advertising firm was self propelled and governed by Cain's two brothers who were high paid managers; but Cain, the apple of his father's eye and his greatest heartbreak, owned the family wealth. Cain could do as he wished and live with ease on the interests that pooled into the magic coffers.

Did Cain want all of this worldly wealth? Oh, never! It disgusted and dirtied him, yet it was Cain's contention that no one but he could be trusted to use that wealth for goodness, therefore it was the burden of none other than Cain himself to heroically shoulder. Ira understood this. Oh, such profound nobility!

Cain's revelation and spiritual awakening had happened at the moment that he had looked at his father's face in the casket, laid out in glory and royal extravagance in the family mansion on the seven acres of prime property in Mississauga, West of Toronto proper. Cain had collapsed, crushed and crumbled into the arms of a mousey young woman who happened to be standing next to him. This kind and gentle maiden had been so moved by Cain's tormented soul that she took for herself the task of nurturing and loving this anguished and grieving, tall, handsome, charismatic, rich, wild-haired and trendy beat-nick back to some semblance of emotional contentment. She was a distant cousin whom Cain had never met and only dimly remembered having heard of before, but whose family had always had some occasional contact with Cain's mother. Their blood ties were never made very clear to Ira and in fact the issue was never one which solicited much thought or concern from anyone. However, Cain had been solaced and comforted in her bed that night, her first such experience and one which Cain afterwards assured her was the greatest kindness and healing balm that she could have bestowed on him in the extremely of his need at that time. Cain, in a fit of chivalric enthusiasm, insisted that they be married that very day and so they were, before a Justice of the Peace.

She accompanied Cain, with the blessings of her beaming mother, back to Saskatoon and they took up residence in the house with Ira. Ira, the ever thoughtful and self-sacrificing disciple, offered to sign the property back over to Cain but Cain insisted that he couldn't bear the responsibility, nor did he wish to take up again anything that smacked of his former, unenlightened self. He graciously asked only that Ira allow him and his new wife to live with Ira as one family, a small communal family.

Cain announced also that in light of the new direction his life had taken, he was leaving the pursuit of the baser arts behind and taking up the only truly significant arts; philosophy and psychology. And, the Coffee House once again took up its role as the focus of their social lives; of course, what better stage could there be for such theatric life?

Pearl; that was Cain's new wife. Pearl was one of those timid, quiet, trusting and naïve persons without a whole lot of presence. One of those salt-of-the-Earth kinds of people who you might sit beside in classes for two years and never know their names or perhaps not even see them. Another of those invisible people like Ira. She was very sweet, that is a good word to describe Pearl; sweet, and very kind. She was attentive and seemed always to hand Cain and Ira whatever they were about to reach for before even they were fully aware that they were about to reach for it. Meals, well-balanced and proportioned, were always laid out and the dishes seemed to just magically disappear after a meal with no noise and no fuss. She seldom spoke and when she did it was in a near whisper and virtually always to Cain alone, and with great care and skill at finding just the right moment when Cain was not going to be distracted by her intrusion from something he was himself saying. Her tact, manners, and sufferance astound me; but only in retrospect, to my great discredit and shame.

Once moved into the house and all their lives adjusted, she became, almost overnight, just another household attachment, like a vacuüm cleaner or a laundry washer; a shadowy attachment to Cain. Cain and Ira immediately resumed their old habit of spending hours pontificating and lecturing to each other about the more profound issues of life and they quickly took it for granted that numerous mundane necessities happened all around them as they debated. Ira's memory inside of me seems to indicate that it was only a matter of days before all pretense at pleases and thank-you's were forgotten and it became a matter of course that a cup of coffee was set down beside anyone who settled for a moment. It became quickly a simple function of the house that an ashtray would magically be replaced by a clean one once there were more than three butts in it. Within a week Ira and Cain would return from classes, drop their belongings on to a convenient chair and disappear out to the Coffee House where they would smoke, quaff and profess till all the patrons went home, then they may sit and profess some more or they may play a couple of rounds of backgammon before taking themselves off to their respective beds.

I suppose that in a dim way Pearl's existence as Cain's wife was acknowledged since it was her existence which slightly slowed the processes that began when Rayanne came into the picture. It was after about three months back at classes that Rayanne began to frequent the "Round Table", as the coffee-house became known. It had now become a legal establishment and a licensed business under the Restaurant Act, since money was exchanged for the purchase of commodities and service. Rayanne was studying Anthropology and had transferred to Saskatoon from Dalhousie in Halifax, liking the campus and the courses better in Saskatoon. She was first escorted to the Round Table by a Theology major friend of hers, but the moment her eyes met Cain's the sparks flashed and the die was cast. As if it was of any credit to say it, I will tell you that it took nine weeks to the day before Cain was able to justify in his own mind and allowed himself to spend the night in Rayannes arms on the old couch in the Round Table. Strangely, or perhaps not so, it never crossed anyone's mind (except perhaps Pearl's, I cannot say) that Pearl may have any cause to object or even to suspect. For all intent and purpose Pearl didn't exist, except vaguely; as a concept. All that I do remember clearly of this; and this I do remember clearly; seventeen days later Cain, who had spent five out of seven nights in the coffee-house of late, asked Ira at breakfast if Ira had seen Pearl, and upon discussing it neither Ira nor Cain could remember having seen her for two days, it having come as a slow revelation that things weren't being done as they usually were in the house and that there was a vague sense of absence about the place. Yet even then, those two being so wrapped up in themselves, the absence was quickly forgotten and they simply fell back into their old habits of fending for themselves and it wasn't till the legal document arrived fifteen days later that they really woke up to the reality of the situation.

Pearl, wherever you may be and whatever may have been your life since those long gone times, I pray to any powers that may exist that in the great cosmic, karmic turnings it may come to be that you may know how ashamed and sorry I have been for the part the person I used to be played in your affronting. All human beings are afflicted with personal ghosts who in quiet moments of reflection, burst upon the mind's field of contemplation and cause the owner to cringe, to clench his or her teeth and fists, to shut the eyes and shudder. Such is the memory of you which Ira has bequeathed to me; oh, you dear, gentle, humble and wronged one. Ask any price for your forgiveness and I will try to pay it.

The lawyer's words were direct and succinct. No settlement was being sought, no property, money or rights demanded. Simply sign the enclosed agreement and it would be as though no marriage had ever taken place. No payment for services required unless Cain felt the need to have his own legal counsel read it over. Otherwise, all expense was being covered from that end.

Oh, Pearl. I am so ashamed.

Cain, by now totally recovered from the trauma of his fathers death and all the melodrama used up, went into a rage of wounded righteousness. How could she have left him without even allowing him to explain that Cain had only been waiting for her to raise the issue and he would have gladly put away his dalliance with Rayanne! It had only been for Pearl's own training and edification that Cain had gone to Rayannes arms anyway! Pearl needed desperately to come out of the shell of her personality and discover the powers that confrontation would give her! It had been to anger her enough to make her do exactly this that Cain had gone to Rayanne in the first place; My God, couldn't she see that? But no, Pearl chose to waste this golden opportunity and simply slink away! Well, the loss was hers and to hell with her! Cain might as well solidify his relationship with Rayanne then! If that was the way Pearl wanted it, that headstrong, narrow-minded, mousey little failure; if she wanted, by this act, to insinuate that Cain had ever intended in the first place to practice duplicity in his marriage, then the ultimate reproof would be to prove her right! That would show her she couldn't play head-games with her intellectual superiors without getting burnt! Cain would invite Rayanne into the house and bed that Cain had dedicated to Pearl alone! That made the ultimate loss Pearl's, as it justifiably should be!

Profoundly mundane.

Thus the papers were signed without the dignity of ever having been thoroughly read and sent back that very day. Later that year in a casual conversation it was mentioned that divorce papers had arrived at some point afterwards and had been summarily thrown into the garbage, having no relevance to anything anyway. Otherwise, that was the last that was ever mentioned of Pearl.

Rayanne was the inverse of Cain; she being a charismatic beauty in black and intense cold colors, straight lines, sleek body, perceptive insight into her own motivations and quick to see through to the heart of other people, seldom speaking but always seeing. Cain on the other hand; bulky, rugged features, hair all over in curling orange; his presence synonymous with multi-colored warm pastels, totally self-absorbed and unaffected by anyone else's opinions unless they moved in the direction of his own.

I don't want to leave the impression though that Rayanne was an unkind or cold person. She was friendly and interactive and interested in everything around her; actually quit like Pearl would have been if Pearl had been outgoing. Rayanne had no interest however in being a wife or housekeeper. A lover and live-in yes, but no hint of ownership or slavery would ever touch her. She was a liberated woman! She was a member of a feminist group in the university and was one of its more dedicated, strident, and radical members. This was the first contact Ira had with the concept and the realization that women felt left out at all.

The three of them settled into a very close and intimate friendship in their little house. Ira was absorbing and expanding in logarithmic function, not only socially but in his studies as well. The three of them became a social institution unto themselves and an example and template that others in the university tried to emulate. They shared everything and moved about each other with ease. No one made any demands of the others, yet each was satisfied and content in the little family. There was absolutely no physical attraction between Rayanne and Ira and so these two were able to be intimate friends without the least pressure.

Chapter 4

They made quite the picture, that little family. Cain and Rayanne as I have described them and Ira; short, skinny, long light brown hair, granny glasses, absorbent as salt, into every conversation but never leading one, willing to try anything that was new but never having anything new to offer, often being bedded by coffee-house wannabes but never initiating a bedding. The perfect side-kick; the perfect background for Cain. Little did Ira know (but well did Cain and Rayanne know) that each of them was a stereo-type that many were already, and many more would come to, emulate.

It was Rayanne who saw and brought Ira to Ira's attention. She began slowly; stopping in the middle of a conversation, turning to Ira and asking him bluntly what he thought of the subject at hand. At first Ira would sit with his mouth open, then stutter out anything that parroted what the general consensus seemed to be, but eventually he began to realize that if he tried, he was actually capable of having an opinion of his own. Rayanne never pushed, but she saw when this began to occur and she stepped up her program. She was a staunch believer that every individual must discover the power of their own personality. She started to ask Ira for insight into natural laws and functions that only a student of physics would understand. She often had to push Ira to convince him that she really did want to understand these things and that Ira was in fact the local authority on these things. Ira began to discover that he was somebody, even outside of Cain's shadow. He also discovered that he had a knack for rendering complex concepts into simple analogies that the layman could relate to. Another profound change was taking place in Ira. By the end of the year Ira was actually asking pointed questions and contributing relevant opinions during discussions in the Round Table. Ira was becoming more profoundly self-aware.

Cain never seemed to notice any change in Ira.

Ira's financial needs were being very adequately met by the income from the Round Table now. Cain had his family wealth and Rayanne seemed to have a source of her own that was never revealed and never questioned by anyone. Ira was probably the least aware of them all of his financial status. Then Rayanne suggested to Ira that he may wish to consider improving the Round Table by renovating and painting, getting some new tables, a proper coffee dispenser and a new espresso and cappuccino maker, maybe build on a proper kitchen and install bathrooms so the patrons wouldn't have to use the one in the house or the old biffy out back anymore. It took a lot of encouragement to convince Ira that he was in fact capable of initiating changes in his little world but eventually she got through enough to convince Ira to look at his bank account and his last years deposits to see if he was solvent enough to do any of it. Ira was profoundly amazed to discover that he had one hundred seventy-one thousand and change in the bank after all his months bills were paid. Somewhere in the back of his mind it disturbed him to think that he might be an actual part of the status quo, but Rayanne assured him that it was what he did, not what he had, that defined him.

It is odd for me now to look back and see Ira's relationship with Rayanne. In a very real way, Ira and Rayanne were more intimately connected than Cain and Rayanne who shared only a bed and some friends. Cain was now enthusiastically involved in his new line of studies and assumed that everyone else was up on his achievements. In fact, it was becoming Cain who was the attachment to the little family and not Ira. Slowly over that year patrons and friends of the Round Table began seeking out Ira and Rayanne (she was now very much a part of the Round Table staff and establishment and attracted a good many new patrons, many from the various women's movements) and less and less were people looking for Cain, but it came on slowly and Cain didn't seem to notice.

Ten years later. It is 1967. Ira, now with a Doctorate in physics and a tenured professor, is viewed by many as the quintessential hippie-professor in the science department of the university; occasional smoker of pot and drinker of Absinthe, still with long hair and granny glasses, eccentric and single-minded yet interested in people and quick to fall under the charm of music and ideas, consistently inconsistent socially, always trying out the unorthodox ideas, deeply moved by the examples set by The Beatles, Timothy Leary, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Still owner of the thriving Round Table; now a very well-known and trendy (we didn't use that word though, it would have been an insult) gathering place for the flower powered.

Cain continued to flip his studies from one major to another till early 1963, getting more egocentric and chaotic in his thinking while overindulging in each new psychedelic drug that came around until he finally succumbed to a nervous breakdown and psychotic episode and had to be institutionalized. As well during this time, Rayanne and Ira had become more and more the guardians and parents of the regressing Cain until one night just before Cain's breakdown they found themselves in bed together as naturally as though they had always been man and wife. Rayanne couldn't bear the thought that it was this that tipped Cain over the edge (it wasn't, it was the drugs, but she became somewhat fixated on the possibility and overindulged herself in the melodrama of it all) and after a year riding the wave of guilt while continuing as Ira's lover, she announced that she was going off on a field trip to Thailand. That was in late 1964.

Ira in the meantime was deeply involved in research at the university trying to unravel the link between the theories that matter, time, and energy are the by-products of vibrating ether, and Einstein's theory or relativity.

Ira had tried most of the popular drugs sometime or another but now found that they interfered too much with the more profoundly interesting scientific research he was involved in. He still didn't really see himself as a trend setter. He was becoming so intensely involved in his research that he was seldom even seen in the Round Table anymore.

The house was gone now, 1967, and the Round Table was expanded and run by a manager. Ira lived alone after Rayanne left, in a house provided by the university for its senior professors. He was not really even aware that he still owned The Round Table. The manager had offered to buy it and Ira was considering selling it but found it difficult to bother with the details. By the end of the year he did sell it, luckily to an honest man who didn't take advantage of Ira's fiscal naïvety and distraction, for a substantial monetary gain. He sold it just to be rid of the distraction from his deepening obsession with his physics research. A year later it would be expanded again into a large restaurant and night club, and remains to this day a singularly popular establishment with the university crowd.

The hippie thing was in full swing but Ira didn't notice that he was a part and even a stereo-typical example of it, which made him all the more attractive to that element. Partly it was his age I suppose, he didn't fit into that age category anymore and for all that this movement claimed to be open-minded about such matters, there was an invisible wall between Ira and the youth despite his being an idol of that group. Profound.

After three and a half years on various sites doing studies in anthropology Rayanne came home and she and Ira were reunited; late 1968. She was now deeply involved in meditation, yoga, health foods, and alternative medicine. She was also captivated by an ancient form of mysticism that she had encountered in some deeply isolated area of Asia. This mysticism was supposedly the study used by ancient Asian magicians. Those who propounded it insisted that it had no name and that this refusal to be named was a doctrine of that mystic study, incorporated to make it impossible to wipe it out since it had many enemies who feared it. It was heavily Buddhist in flavor with a strong Zoroastrian influence that was flatly denied by Zoroastrian priests she contacted for more insight. The reasons for the denials were never made clear to her but seemed to relate somehow to a fear of demons. This mysticism was supposed to enable the one who practiced its meditations and khatas to see, tame and train dragons.

She and Ira settled into a comfortable house near the university and into a comfortable relationship in which neither knew a whole lot about what the other was doing. But there were areas of cross-over and Ira was slowly drawn into an academic, then a scientific, and finally into a cautiously active participation in the Asian mysticism.

Ira had often scoffed at the concept of "finding one's self" until he began to see doors in his own mind opening as he got more and more involved in Rayannes mystic studies and practices. His gut instinct seemed to insist that there was a link between this mysticism and the hard science he was involved with. He shared this insight with Rayanne who consequently began to take a greater interest in Ira's studies in return.

Cain was institutionalized for five years and his family managed to gain control of the bulk of the wealth Cain had previously been squandering. Cain was left with a 5 million dollar maintenance account; a mere pittance of the family wealth, but no one was concerned or bothered to challenge it. Cain himself was only barely aware of the fact. But the family had no interest in re-gaining Cain himself, and left him where he was in institutional care in Saskatoon. In October of 1967 Cain was released into the custody of Ira who was the only person who had maintained close and constant contact with him during his years in psychiatric care. To Ira and Rayanne, Cain was and had always been family. Cain emerged a mildly psychotic but reasonably functional shell of the man he had been ten years earlier, so long as he stayed on his medications and off of drugs and alcohol. Gone was the pomposity, gone the anarchic charisma, gone forever the hard, arrogant lines and features in his personality. He took up his art again and slowly settled into the life of a semi-reclusive acrylic painter. He actually gained some small renown and if not for his socially debilitating state of mind might have become a well-known artist in time. However, nothing but his art, Ira and Rayanne mattered to Cain for a long time. When Rayanne returned to them he took it as natural that she and Ira were bed-mates and that he filled the child role in the family. Any role in life was okay by Cain then. The love and bonded commitment between the three was only purified by the events of the preceding ten years. Rayanne began to write stories and books, both fiction and studies. Cain sold the occasional painting. Ira was well paid by the university and made substantial interest monthly from capital investments which Rayanne occasionally suggested he make. It was a nice, tidy little family again in which the members found all their needs fulfilled in each other and less and less did they involve themselves in the world outside.

Thus things proceeded into 1968, then 1969. But in October of 1969 Rayanne began to put some pieces of anthropological information together and shared these thoughts with Ira.

Chapter 5

She was reading about Aboriginal American societies in the library one day and was noticed by a Native student who was deeply involved in what he called the "Long-House" religion of the Ojibwa culture. He stopped to talk with her and in their discussion he elucidated upon and reminded Rayanne about some interesting legends from the Hopi people in the United States. She'd known of these stories before, at least intellectually if not from having studied them specifically, but something fell into place in that conversation. It piqued her interest and she made a point of looking more deeply into Hopi history and legends.

One interesting piece of legend was that the Hopi people believed that they had entered this world through a hole in the ground, running from someone who was persecuting them in the world that they escaped from. This triggered a series of comparisons in her mind with stories from other cultures that she had studied. The most significant was from her own favorite, the ancient Asian mysticism that refused to be named. This legend described in surprising detail how men used to live in another world in which they were not the dominant species. The story told how there were those who fed on man the way we feed on domestic animals, except that what was consumed was not the body or milk but the spirit, the Chi. These beings were to us as we are to, say, a sheep; that is to say, we were taken from a natural state and converted into a state of servitude for the purpose of feeding those who changed us. But a "dragon" took pity on Man and used his breath to burn a hole in the side of the world, then shoved "The People" through that hole. The dragon however, was fallen upon by those other beings (not dragons apparently) who enslaved Man, and they tried to stop the escape of the people, and to kill the dragon. The last man through the hole reached back and pulled the dragon into this world to save him. The dragon then breathed on the hole again and sealed it permanently behind him, thus trapping himself in this world along with those whom he had aided to escape.

It is said that the dragon stayed with the people and taught them how to live in this world and even fathered children among our ancestors. Occasionally one of the oppressors still manages to get into our world however, and takes up residence in a "human" person so that they can eat other people's Chi without being recognized. Those among us, the mystic teachings say, who are ancestors of the dragon's spawn and who bear the mark of the Dragon are able to use their "Chi" to battle these oppressors and either make them captive in a hollow but inanimate object or even, if the magician is strong enough, send the oppressors back through the side of the world. Those who taught Rayanne these legends say that there are some still to this day who bear the mark of the dragon on their Chi. These individuals are not outwardly different from anyone else but are evidenced only when they burn away themselves and leave only their Chi to shine from within them. Few even of those so marked do this first step (because no one would choose to go through that voluntarily, as you will see), and those who do, do so whether they consciously want to or not. But even after that, to use their Chi requires training in the mysticism.

There was another legend from an Australian culture which said that people crawled out from under a large rock in the middle of the Australian desert, escaping from vampires, and tales that describe how every rock and bush has a spirit hidden inside it; some good, some neutral and some bad.

Then there was a Swiss story that claimed that giants used to eat people till trolls taught people how to make themselves and giants mutually invisible.

Then there was the Inuit legend of Tunik who was a Leprechaun-like being who saved people from an evil giant.

Then there was the Biblical story of creation and the story of David and Goliath; stories of demons being cast out.

Then there were the Vedas and the Upanishads of the Hindu culture.

Then there were the Zoroastrian and Islamic traditions of the Jinnes and the Magi.

Then there were the ancient Greece and Roman legends, the Norse and the Druidic folklore. Irish and Welsh legends and the legend of Merlin the magician who was himself magically sealed up in a rock.

And on and on it went. The more she searched, the more Rayanne found tale after tale that seemed to vaguely meet on the same ground, all from radically separate cultures.

More and more Ira became convinced that there was a link with his own hard science hidden in these tales. He shared with Rayanne what were highly secret insights and conclusions that he was coming up with out of his own research.

He had concluded that the concept of there being an ether was wrong. He'd also concluded that the theory of relativity must be scraped, not because it didn't work but because it was tangential, misleading, limiting. Ira was working on the idea of there being infinite concentric layers of reality, like the layers of an onion, all expanding outward. The further from the middle a layer is, the faster it is moving away from the center. This means that as well as growing in theoretical area, each layer is also getting "thicker" since no space can exist between the layers. This also means that the reality within a layer is constantly expanding, becoming less dense at a logarithmically accelerating pace. It follows that the unit, the "atom" of time is becoming larger all the time as well, which means that in comparison with our world a while ago, time is slower now. But this slower time perfectly cancels out the net effect of the expansion, from our perceptive point of view, and therefore we are unable to perceive any change in the nature of time, no matter how long we expand. It was Ira's contention that if one could look past, or look through any one atomic particle, one should be able to see back and/or forward into an adjacent layer of physical reality to our own, possibly several, possibly all layers. What those other layers would be like he couldn't hypothesis. But it was his goal to see what could be found there.

Cain, listening to these conversations, began first to paint pictures inspired by these talks, and later, by 1973, he began to take part in these discussions and took a giant step towards finally "becoming" himself. He had not lost his ability to intellectualize, only his belief in himself and his ability to meaningfully participate and contribute to the whole human experience.

Rayanne began to make field trips to the States, visiting and making inquiries and contacts among the Hopi people. They, of course, were suspicious of her reasons for inquiring and assumed that here was another white-face wanting to write a book. In so far as that went they were correct of course. But one day she told an old man who was one of the most pleasant and hospitable people she had ever met, about the Asian Mysticism she was involved in and she described its aims and practices. The next time she came to visit, he freely began to tell her about some of the old beliefs. Then one day in 1975 her visit with Charlie (the old man) was interrupted by the visit of an even older man who eventually disclosed that he was one of the holders of the stories for his people. He wanted to test her for reasons unexplained and, sensing a potentially open door, she accepted on faith. He took her to a place that he claimed was an ancient site of mystic discovery for many tribes of Native people who habituated the deserts. It was well north of the Hopi reserve. He lead her out to the top of a huge rock sitting in the middle of the Nevada desert somewhere South-east of a town called Tonopah and told her to wash herself with sand and wait there, then he drove away in the rickety old half-ton they had come in. Three days later, dying of thirst but preferring to die rather than miss an opportunity for a deeper understanding of the old stories (she later claimed that at no time did she ever suppose that the old men, who had never been anything but kind to her, despite their suspicions, would let her die) she saw an owl come to ground ten feet from her and stare at her for a long time. She didn't move, sensing something about to happen. Next, and she swears this happened exactly as I will tell it to you, the owl said to her, "What will you trade to see what I see?"

She answered, "I will trade you this." and she handed the owl the book that she had thought someday to write after learning from the Hopis. The owl swallowed the book and then flew down from the rock towards the desert floor. It seemed like only moments later that the old man, Raymond, who had guided her there arrived with food and water and ointment for her sunburn.

A couple of days later, after she was feeling better and ready to go home, the old man who had moved her to his cabin in the lea of another rock outcropping several miles away told her to return and to bring her husband and her weak brother with her. She understood by this that he meant Ira and Cain, and she was amazed because she couldn't remember having mentioned them before, though she may have.

So she went home to Saskatoon and exhorted Ira to return with her at the appointed time. Ira and Cain were both captivated by the possibilities for new experiences and Ira applied for an overdue sabbatical. It was eventually granted and at the appointed time the three of them went South to visit the old man, Raymond.

What transpired there I cannot tell you; will not tell you; out of deference to Rayannes deal with the owl, and because similar deals were made with Ira and Cain individually.

What I can relate is what they learned there.

It became apparent that Cain was the holder of a potential destiny but needed to be trained to use his spirit in a very odd way. He needed to be able to approach any experience without being in any way affected by it. This meant that he had to eliminate five emotions from his spirit; love, hate, fear, ambition, and sympathy. In addition, he had to increase the intensity of three other emotions to compensate for the loss of the five; these three were empathy, curiosity, and conviction, the power to believe.

Ira was only handed a very common pebble that the old man picked up from the ground as he was walking and talking with them, and he told Ira, "Come back when you can look into this stone, into the places where the stone isn't." Rayanne was to be the link between Ira and Cain; it was her task to train and guide them both towards their separate tasks. She was to be the fire that would melt the two and recast them as one tool, whatever that meant. They were not told why Raymond was willing to show them anything at all of these mysteries, although they did ask. Raymond simply changed the subject, not even pretending to try to hide the fact that he was doing so deliberately.

Ira, Cain and Rayanne returned to Saskatoon and Ira took up his research again with a fresh vigor, having had it reaffirmed by Old Raymond that what he was searching for was believable, at least to mystics like Raymond.

Cain and Rayanne renovated a large room in the house and settled into an intense regime of meditation, exercising and practicing their khatas.

Chapter 6

Now, we must speak of motivations. I've described the development and evolution of a portion of three lives in brief, but what determines how a life will evolve? One influence of course is chance and circumstance, but these are almost inconsequential in that it is the personal reaction to chance and circumstance that is radically more influential. Rayanne now, powerfully motivated by a need to see herself as (she would have said, 'to be seen as') a strong and independent woman, as needing nothing from anyone, as having powerful purposes and unique capabilities that made her stand out as an inspiration and as an object of near reverence to those whom she hoped desperately she was not one of; despite chance and circumstance Rayanne would have undoubtedly found some unorthodox study to clothe herself in regardless of whether she had the opportunities to travel to Asia as an anthropologist or not. She would have been drawn to any such esoteria even as the lion to the helpless crippled lamb. Yes, she had THE THIRST, that one which will never be quenched; only, maybe, forgotten in the blessed forgetfulness of old age.

Cain however was destined to find something destructive to overindulge in until it inevitably had its way with him; destined by his overwhelming ego and his need to be seen as a flamboyant dismisser of consequences. It wouldn't have mattered if he had been born into a time when mind altering drugs were unknown. He would have become a mercenary twenty years earlier, or a gunslinger one hundred years earlier still, or a gambler, or anything that made him stand out on the fringe of society as THE ONE; THE ONE whose presence stopped all conversation, THE ONE whose example was responsible for the seducing away of many lesser persons from the bosoms of their mothers; THE ONE whose name and story would become a legend told by worried parents to warn their children against ostentatious-ness and pomposity. His idols were the like of Toulouse Letrec, Vincent Van-Gogh, Robin Hood (a big one), and Alexander the Great; but most especially Rasputin, the Russian Courtier and seducer of the Queen.

Ira; now there is one problem personality indeed. No, I suppose not, it's just that his memories are so accessible to me that I can more clearly see the myriad nuances that moved him. Ira had entered his twenties hardly aware of his own existence. No ego to speak of, no particular motivations, no more point or purpose than an automaton. He had simply evolved as a socially responsive robot. He moved, spoke and reacted according to learned principles only. It wasn't until he was into his mid twenties that he had begun to waken to the fact that he was an individual with choices available to him that were independent of whether society liked them or not. By then he was already committed to science and found no desire to leave it behind because with his awakening there came the realization of his intense loneliness and isolation. He was a reluctant consciousness locked inside of a body that denied him the ability to simply merge with greater consciousness which would have relieved him of the responsibility to make independent decisions. Inherent in him was the awareness of how isolating life on this plane of existence is. There was within him a sodden memory of being one with the cosmos and unaware of self. The more he tried to reach out to other people and loose himself in them the more aware he became of being a prisoner locked inside of an impenetrable fortress of flesh and having only one-way windows to look out at the world through. His only tool for reaching out was his voice and no one seemed to have the time, or the inclination to spend the time to REALLY HEAR him, to REALLY HEAR the screaming and pleading for inclusion in their lives' dramas. But in the sciences he became one with the universe again. In his searches for clues to the secret methods and tactics of the Creator he found his mind and his heart consumed in the wonder and the grandeur of things so profound and large that there was no room left in him for self.

Let me tell you a secret about Ira. Every person, when we think of our personal self, we have a mental picture which becomes so familiar that we stop noticing what it is and simply refer to it with a mental glance. But some people sometimes stop and really look at their image of themselves, and some people, a rare few, even understand their image for what it is. Ira's image was like this;

On a velvety-black background of nothingness there floats a hollow glass ball. Inside that ball is light, color, sounds and life in explosive abundance. Inside that ball there are people rushing about, interacting, being born, dying, swimming in life, consuming, exuding, secreting, merging, wallowing in pools of lust; but on the outside of that ball is a thin and solitary silhouette of a figure which carefully, quietly, and painstakingly creeps and slinks along the outside of the glass ball, watching and hearing and loving all that he witnesses, but he is too fearful of the exuberance of life and so he slinks along from the beginning on the left, headed towards the end on the right, trying not to be noticed; wishing only to get from one side to the other with the least involvement and confusion possible.

But every once in a while someone on the inside of the glass ball looks up and notices him; They shout his name and wave to him but he tries to pretend not to notice, yet he is too timid to hurt Their feelings so in anxious quandary he waves Them away, trying to acknowledge Them yet indicate to Them that he needs to be left out of Their picture; but needing; oh, desperate need; to be one with Them. Inevitably They fail to understand his gesticulations for what they are and They reach out and pull him into Their lives, into the glass ball, confusing him, inundating him, suffocating him with Their exuberance and the secretions of Their lives. Gasping for breath he does whatever must be done to convince Them that he is involved and partaking in what They offer him. He realizes that to Their way of thinking They believe They are doing him a kindness by pulling him in and making room for him in Their hot, thick, steaming, turbulent lives which They seem so comfortable in, which They seem to thrive on; and he would rather suffocate than hurt Their lovely hearts by seeming to be ungrateful. But he knows himself to be an alien, a thing out of its bland, cold, desiccated, empty, void-environment; a thing not like Them; not hot and sweaty but cold and empty and dry. So, he does what he must to avoid hurting Their feelings, but at the first opportunity he slips away again, back outside the glass ball, back to the empty blackness that lies just on the far side of the edge of life; and resumes once again his silent, lonely, slinking traversal of life.

Such was Ira's picture of himself.

But we were contemplating motivations, weren't we. So what do you suppose would motivate Ira? His science of course, but what could induce him to become involved in life? Only Rayanne, of all things; only Rayanne had ever noticed Ira inside that fleshly shell which held him captive. Only Rayanne had ever looked into his eyes and seen him, his white skeletal fingers wrapped around the bars of his mind and his frightened, lonely face; thin, white, weeping, frightened, desperately lonely; pressed to the bars and screaming to be noticed. Only Rayanne had ever looked in there and said, "Yes! Hello in there! Yes, I SEE you in there!"

And somehow Rayanne had known, right from the start, that she must bring Ira into the light very gently, very slowly, very tenderly; or mercifully not at all.

Only Rayanne could have ever induced Ira to become involved in her flaky search for enlightenment.

And so, three more years passed. There were occasional trips South to see Raymond but essentially those three years till the spring of 1979 were spent in intense study and research. Cain became so deeply involved in his inward studies and emotional khatas that his psychosis disappeared entirely, but he was far from normal. He became, with Rayannes training, more and more a wise and deep-sighted child. He developed a curiosity that knew no bounds and feared nothing. He seemed to lose all sense of self in that he lost all attachment to anyone or anything other than Rayanne, and his attachment to her was only due to his own realization that only Rayanne could understand who and what he was. He realized that he was no longer able to function normally within society and that he therefore needed her to act as his control mechanism. He became deeply, profoundly insightful of other people and their emotions and feelings, yet himself remained untouched by these insights. He stopped painting all-together unless Rayanne instructed him to do so. His only motivation became to witness, absorb, learn, and to empathize other people, with no end or goal in sight beyond that exposure. And he learned to believe. This was the truly frightening aspect of his changes, or so Ira came to realize. Rayanne had trained Cain in the Asian arts at an ever more profoundly intense level, far beyond the depth she was herself able to achieve. But beyond her own level was simply to delve deeper and deeper into what was already learned. Rayanne had all the knowledge she required for the training of a dragon, even though she was not herself able to do that which the dragon would be able to do. Cain became able to turn on belief as though it were a switch in his head. Rayanne would say, "Cain, I want you to believe that the door to the kitchen is open. What do you see in the kitchen that was not there before?" and Cain would glance at the closed kitchen door and say, " You've brought the hand saw in from the porch and put it on the table.", and it would be true.

Likewise she could say to him, "I want you to believe that I can't hit you." Then she would wind up and slap him resoundingly on the side of the face, but Cain would neither flinch nor blink and his face would remain unblemished by redness or swelling. She would say, "I want you to believe I cannot cut you." and she would swipe a sharp kitchen blade across his face but the blade would simply slide over his skin, not even depressing the skin in passing.

Though Ira witnessed these things himself he was so inherently frightened by the implied potential and the strangeness of it all that he would invariably find some purely physical explanation to explain it to himself, though he kept this to himself. Less and less did Ira and Cain interact and it became that they were total strangers to each other, at least in Ira's mind. Who can say what was in Cain's mind on this matter? One could hold a conversation with Cain but it was difficult as Cain could virtually read one's mind with his empathic insight and would become so engrossed in the process of the interaction that the topic became almost inconsequential. Added to this the effect of Cain's total lack of the more basic emotions of love, hate and sympathy, and the fact that he believed absolutely nothing unless instructed by Rayanne to believe and, well, the net effect can only be approximately imagined, and virtually impossible to convey in words alone. If ever there should be developed such a thing as an intelligently self-aware, multi-sensual, autonomous, learning machine, perhaps it would approximate the nature of what Cain was becoming.

Yet, for all his curiosity, Cain was not motivated to seek out that which would entertain his mind but simply would sit and contemplate inwardly until some stimulus or a command from Rayanne moved him. On his own there was nothing he wanted to do or achieve. His bodily functions he tended too only because Rayanne instructed him to. Ira came to think of Cain as Rayannes familiar, and Rayanne confirmed that in essence this was exactly what Cain had become, willingly and with curious, conscious enthusiasm.

Rayanne too had gone through changes. Gone was her radical enthusiasm for the feminist causes, gone was her desire to write. She became single-mindedly engrossed in Cain's training and in developing her control over and understanding of the nature of the dragon she had brought out of him. Indeed, Cain seemed in a very real sense to be far more in his natural element as a dragon than he had ever been as a man. There was a feeling about him that if not for his need and dependence on Rayanne he would be a very dangerous and totally unpredictable being. Rayanne was his hold on reality now as well as his personality and his motivation. She had become the wizard wielding the dragon and he had become the dragon, held in check only by his own immense intelligence which made it obvious to him that he was an alien in this world and could function only if he depended on her guidance of his every interaction.

Towards the end of those three years Rayanne declared that the dragon was ready and needed only for Ira to do the task Old Raymond had asked him to complete and they would be ready to test the powers latent in the dragon. Again and again she asked Ira for updates on his progress. She, and therefor Cain began again to take an interest in what Ira, who had felt a bit left out at home the last couple of years, was involved in.

Interestingly, it still never occurred to any of the three of them to wonder what was in all this for Old Raymond and Charlie.

Chapter 7

By that time Ira was deeply into some very private research that was based almost entirely on mathematical proofs and extrapolations. Not having the funds to set up the kind of lab that he would have required to perform his particle physics experiments, and not wanting to have anyone else know the direction of his studies, he worked alone and gathered what information he needed from the writings and journals of his contemporaries.

Ira had, along with many other physicists of his time, turned his eye to the component particles of the atom and was delving ever more deeply into the natures and functions of these particles. When he would get to a depth beyond which he couldn't go without turning to hard-scientific research (i.e.: requiring the use of expensive laboratory equipment and a cyclotron which were unavailable to him at the University of Saskatchewan) he always managed to make subtle suggestions to contemporaries in other places. They would then perform the particular experiment he required and tell or sell him the results. But always, always Ira maintained a careful secrecy about his own mathematical insights.

It should be mentioned why Ira felt such a compulsion for secrecy. He knew that though he was searching in the same arena as all of his peers, what he was searching for was totally different and unorthodox. Though you may think it otherwise, scientists tend to be very narrow-minded about, and sensitive to the definition of what is "truth" and what is a waste of time. If a peer is, in their collective mind, wasting his time and talents there can be a tremendous pressure brought to bear to coerce that recalcitrant one to conform to the "accepted" theories and lines of research. As a result of this Ira had become to all outward appearances a burnt-out professor of physics who no longer produced anything and had nothing new to contribute to the research of those who still maintained a healthy vigor and energy, as they lead the way along the accepted paths of research. Yet, in the privacy of his own office Ira plodded forward along his own private, though narrow, chosen highway.

Ira was convinced that if he could see (mathematically) beyond, through, or into these particles he would be able to see into those other layers of his onion theory, but he had reached a point beyond which he couldn't seem to go and was thus stalemated for about a year. Then one early morning in April of 1979, Ira woke from a restless night of fearful dreams in Technicolor. Again and again he dreamed the same dream that night. He dreamed that he was sitting at a card table with a hooded bare bulb over his head which illuminated only the table in front of him and left the surroundings in deepest blackness. There was no sense of what was around him. On the table was a deck of cards and a photograph that for some reason he never bothered to look at. He was desperately trying to win a game of solitaire. The only thing that changed from dream to dream was the layout of the cards, yet he would invariable become stuck at a point where he had to make a choice between two moves. He would know that the choice he made would either guarantee him a win or absolutely stalemate him, but there was no way of divining which move was the correct one to make. At this point he would become convinced that if only he could see into the individual cards and access their natures, he would find the answer there. He would desperately search for a way to see more than his eyes would show him, knowing that some momentous occurrence depended on his making the correct choice and that the dreaming would never end till he found the clue he needed and made the correct choice. This seemed to drag on and on for a terrible amount of time and then, of a sudden, a voice full of menace and mocking would whisper at him from the darkness somewhere, "If you want to see me, you fool, quit trying to see into one card and look at the whole deck!"

At this point Ira's eyes would focus on the photograph and there he would see a negative image of himself which would turn his blood to ice. And he would as suddenly realize two things: firstly, that what the voice had said was the absolute truth, and secondly, that what would be revealed to him if he did what the voice suggested was something he was absolutely terrified to see. With this realization he would waken with a steel band of fear about his chest, and dripping with sweat.

Again and again he'd fall asleep, only to have the same dreadful dream again. Exactly how many times he woke from that same dream that night remains a mystery but I do remember that he had to sleep on the couch to avoid bothering Rayanne, and then had to actually changed his bedding blankets three times as a result of the accumulated dampness of his sweating.

But in the morning, parched and grainy eyed, he knew that he had found the key to the stalemate he had reached in his research. The details of his work for the next six months would be dreary to relate and anyway, in case you may have failed to notice it by now, I am deliberately being vague about many things. There is a reason for this that will become clear as I finish this writing.

Suffice to say that over the next six months Ira, clever boy, invented a whole new mathematical approach that applied only to the specific problem at hand and allowed him, in mathematical terms, to step back from the atom and view it as a whole with the same intention that he had applied to the individual particles. Lo and behold, what his clever little mathematical invention showed him was that (and here I must resort to a two-dimensional simile) reality is a flat sheet of gauze. But the material of the gauze is what we tend to think of as the emptiness between atoms, and the holes, of various sizes and textures, in the gauze are in fact what we view as atoms. And when he looked (mathematically) through one of those holes, what he saw was a world of the reverse, where the atoms were the reality and the emptiness was only emptiness. Yet if in that next world he applied the same mathematical magic the same revelation would be made again into a third level. And this could go on and on to infinity.

As an interesting aside, let me tell you that this trickery of mathematics indicated as well that essentially the next world to us (world B) contained what would be, not what scientists today call anti-matter, but nonetheless, something that can only be expressed as a "strain" of anti-matter in relation to our world (world A), yet the next one after that (world C) would not be made up of matter again such as we know it, but of another stain of anti-matter that was anti-matter to both world B and world A, and world D would be anti-matter to all three previous worlds, and so on and so on to infinity. Each layer would be "anti-matter" to all other layers because of the differences in the "constant values" of physics in each layer.

All this knowledge came flooding out in a span of fifteen minutes once the mathematical approach materialized.

I remember so well that moment. Ira sat back in his chair in his cluttered little office in the bowels of the science building on the campus. He looked about him, seeing as for the first time the books, the papers, the paraphernalia on his desk. Yet what he saw was not really those things but the doorways that each and every atom, yes even the atoms of the air before his face, really were. I recall how his hand, as though a separate entity from himself, seemed to steal into the drawer of his desk and pick up an object and bring it before his eyes. It took a moment for his eyes to register what it was and then he recognized it as the pebble that Old Raymond had given him; and yes, he could see into it, into the places where the stone wasn't.

That night he told Rayanne that he had accomplished what Old Raymond had asked of him.

Rayannes reaction surprised Ira. She sat quietly contemplating this confluence of achievements and opportunities for half an hour, then with finality announced that they must be with Old Raymond and Charlie before Ira revealed what he had discovered. Something about the potential of this revelation troubled her intrinsically and frightened her; filling her with a coldness that was new too her; something she'd never felt before; some prescient imperative pressed itself heavily upon her. The next day the three of them were on a plane going South. In his excitement to be on with the years-long discovery Ira didn't even think to register his absence from the University, even as he made a quick run back to his office to destroy any thing that could lead anyone to an understanding of what his research had uncovered, should they find it.

Charlie and Raymond had not seen Cain for a year and a half. It was an interesting meeting on the day that Ira, Rayanne and Cain arrived. They had phoned a relative of Charlie's on their way South and their message had not been cryptic. Rayanne had said to the relative, a young married niece whose husband looked after Charlie's affairs, "Tell Charlie to let Raymond know; we've all completed our tasks and are on our way. We'll be at Raymond's cabin in four days."

They flew from Saskatoon to Seattle (because on the spur of the moment that was only flight available that got them headed towards their goal) overnighted, and then on to Las Vegas where they overnighted again and rented a 4X4 half-ton with a crew cab the next morning. Then it was the long drive North to Tonopah. They arrived late at night and spent the night in a modestly broken down motel. Ira woke the next morning with no memory of dreams, but the very distinct and detailed memory of someone saying to him at some time in the night, "You did it, didn't you! You looked at the deck! I must say, I'm impressed. I didn't think you had it in you. Well, I look forward to meeting you. See you in the desert! Till then, sleep well; you may never sleep well again after our meeting, but at least you will be wiser about asking questions and probably about human nature as well." It was the same voice as in his previous dream but the mocking tone was tempered with a touch of wonder.

Chapter 8

I must tell you something of the natures of the three travelers. All the way Rayanne had been uncharacteristically bubbling with excited chatter, like a school-girl going to her first all night, forbidden party. Ira had spent the trip pensive and feeling as though he were travelling with a wild tiger sitting beside him. He was afraid of Cain. Cain radiated quiet, amused contentment all the way; observing and absorbing and speaking only when spoken to in such wise as required an answer, and then with little interest in the topic, but seeming to intensely devour with his eyes whomever it was who spoke to him. Even total strangers sensed a latent danger in him and would back away from him or freeze in place and stare at him with alert wariness till he passed them by. He didn't seem to sleep and ate sparingly, chewing each mouthful like it was a whole new experience every time, focusing intensely upon whatever sensual experience captured his attention at the moment. Each night Ira and Rayanne would fall asleep while Cain, dutiful to Rayannes instructions, would lie on his back with his eyes wide open and staring into nothingness. In the morning Ira would awaken to find Cain, perhaps having moved about a bit on his bed, but either still with his eyes open or at least already open again, as though he was simply waiting for Rayannes next instructions.

So, the next morning they loaded up with provisions and sleeping bags and gifts of tobacco and other luxuries for the old men. Then they headed into the desert following Raymonds directions along dusty old trails and across rock strewn and mesquite infested wastelands.

Is it a rule of nature that momentous meetings must happen at dusk, or was it a subconscious need in the hearts of Ira and Rayanne that their meeting with Raymond must be theatric? Whatever, it was in that mystical moment when the light of the setting sun seems to suddenly burst with glory on every rock and leaf and face. In those Southern regions it lasts only seconds but is as potent while it lasts there as it is in the arctic where it lasts for days at a time in certain seasons. It was at that magic moment that they came to a sliding stop in front of Old Raymond's cabin and stepped out of the truck. Old Raymond opened the cabin door and looked at Cain. When their eyes met his dark old, wrinkled face visibly blanched and he took a jerking step backwards into the cabin. Then Charlie's face looked out at them from behind Raymond and he too froze in place and stared. Cain gazed at them serenely for a moment and then he began to laugh. It was obvious he was laughing at them, not with them.

That mystical light blinked out and normal evening gloaming took its place the moment Cain's laughter ceased. Raymond tentatively stepped out of the cabin and slowly walked towards Cain. Everyone else was silent and still, instinctively watching the drama. Cain was silent and focused on Raymond. Raymond came to within fifteen feet of Cain and stopped. A breath only passed as they stared into each other's eyes and then Raymond stumbled back several steps, making arcane gestures towards Cain. Cain only chuckled again.

"My God, you've done it!" Raymond whispered, still unable to break away from Cain's stare.

Rayanne seemed to suddenly realize that a dangerous situation had arisen and she spun on her heel to face Cain and said in a low, controlled voice, "Cain, let him go!" Cain calmly turned his head to look at her and nodded nonchalantly once, then turned his gaze to the rock island that poked up out of the surrounding wasteland, in the lee of which the cabin sat. In that moment the beginning of darkness settled palpably and suddenly, as it does in the desert.

Raymond and Charlie refused to let Cain into the cabin that night. Rayanne tried to argue with them saying that Cain did nothing without her leave and that she had complete and utter control over him, but they were adamant and bluntly unmoving in their refusal. In the end Cain was given a bottle of water and a sleeping bag and Rayanne instructed him to spend the night in the truck. Cain couldn't have cared less and he crawled into the open box and lay down. Several times during the next hours Rayanne went out to check on him but inevitably found him lying there staring contentedly at the stars.

Ira and Rayanne talked long into the night with Raymond while Charlie sat silent in a corner listening to all that was said, obviously wishing now that he had never met Rayanne in the first place, or at least that he had never come to this meeting. Once the door was closed and barred and a blanket hung over the one window, Raymond set about making some tea and in this familiar activity managed to recapture his composure.

"This thing you made, it's a thing from the old tales of my people's, from a time even long before you white-people showed up." he said. "When Charlie there heard you talkin' bout what you learned from those China people, why, he just sent me a message sayin' "Hey, Raymin, there's this white-lady from Can'da who's saying things she don't unerstand, but they're like those old tales you used to tell us kids; only, I don't think she really unerstand them like.", an' I sent back a message sayin', "Well, I'd kinda like to hear that!", so Charlie there, he set it up, see." He brought the tea and sugar to the bare-board table and sat down on the third ratty old lawn chair which served as table chairs. There were only two cups so Ira and Rayanne shared one. Charlie only shook his head when asked if he wanted any.

"Now, those old tales, they tell us how to do some things and how to make things. Only, see, us Indians today, we don't know if we remember all them tales complete or if they're maybe just stories. So anyway, when me and Charlie there heard you talkin', why, we thought, maybe if we just helped you along by tellin' you how to do some things that sounded like they belonged with your old stories, why, maybe we could see if you could make some of those old stories come true, like." He took a chew of snuff and offered it around the table. When Ira and Rayanne passed he tossed it to Charlie who only tossed it back. Raymond shrugged his shoulders and went on.

"Now, we didn't ever really think you would, you un'erstand. But, it look like maybe you done it after all. Why, that sure is one old spirit-thing you got out there in your truck. I seen it right away, an' it scared me real bad. Me and Old Charlie there too I think. Didn't ever really think I'd see one of those really. Only now, why, I guess we better see if the rest a the stories is true too. I been a shaman now a long time an' I seen lots of stuff you white-people don't want to know about, but that thing out there in your truck, why, that sure is one powerful scary old spirit-thing an' whatever we do, you just really keep strong, Rain." Raymond and Charlie pronounced Rayannes name "Rain". "You're the only thing what keeps it from goin' crazy cause it's not in its world now and it can't live in this world without bein' attached to someone in this world whose spirit leads it in the ways of this world. See, even though that thing is out there in that truck, it knows everything what I'm sayin' to you 'cause its spirit and yours is like one spirit in two bodies now. So, you just really keep strong, Rain. Between you, why, you got the control, Rain, but that old spirit-thing, it's got the power, see. It's really, really stronger than you, it just needs you, that's all. You like a little strong-willed girl riding one a them there bull-buffalos you got up there in Can-da. You tell it where to go Rain, but you can only stop it with your spirit. You got no power to stop it other-ways."

They spent a couple of hours talking about the training and the methods Rayanne had used and the conditions of her control over Cain. Vaguely, Ira was feeling some sense of relief at knowing that Raymond and Charlie could articulate and justify the sense of dread and tension that he had been exposed to for the last year at home. Ira had mostly sat silent and listened to the things Rayanne and Cain talked about. He was about to doze off at the table with his head propped up on his wrists, when Raymond turned to him during a lull in the conversation and asked him, "And what about you Iron (his pronunciation of Ira), did you say you managed to see into the stone? Into the places where the stone isn't?"

Ira snapped back into full wakefulness when he realized that the question had been asked of him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pebble that Old Raymond had given him. He held it up and looked at it. Just an ordinary pebble not unlike any other. But he concentrated a moment, trying to recapture that moment when he had first realized what he had discovered. In a moment he had it. The turn of mind that made him good at rendering complex physics concepts into language that could be understood by his students also worked on his own mind and the concept that his new mathematics showed him unraveled in his mind again. Again he looked around, and again everything about him took on a whole new dimension of meaning.

"Yes Raymond," he said, "I can see into the stone, into the places where the stone isn't."

He was about to go on and describe his discovery but Raymond quickly reached right across the table, rising from his chair to do so. He covered Ira's mouth with a weathered hand and said, "Shhhhh! When the sun comes up, at noon tomorrow, we'll see what Rain's spirit-thing can do with it. Let's get some sleep now."

And so they did. It might have been a good time for Ira and Rayanne to ask more pointed questions about what else Raymond knew regarding what he expected to see happen on the morrow. But they were tired, and they didn't.

Chapter 9

Ira woke quietly from a dreamless sleep and opened his eyes without moving. Morning sunlight, fierce and hot, seeped like liquid through the texture of the old blanket material on the window. Three feet from his head he saw Raymond and Charlie already up and dressed, peeking past that curtain and whispering in their native tongue. Without knowing the content of the conversation Ira was only able to gather a sense of the emotions. Charlie was obviously reticent and nervous about what Raymond was telling him, but Raymond was not allowing any reticence to interfere with whatever he was describing. After a couple of minutes something Raymond said motivated Charlie to glance at Rayanne, still breathing deeply beside Ira, and he saw Ira watching him. For a second there was a look of fear, sympathy, and guilt as their eyes met, then it was gone and Charlie nudged Raymond who looked around. He nodded to Ira, then they both turned away and became business like about making morning tea and bannock-biscuits.

Rayannes first concern was for her dragon. She rose and immediately went out to see Cain and refresh his water bottle. He was contentedly sitting on the ground, back against the truck, watching the sun rise over the desert. He was, of course, content. She went to do her toilet.

Perhaps something in the conversation the night before had touched her because when she returned to the cabin she had a vaguely disturbed look on her face. When Ira picked up on it and quietly asked her about it she only shrugged her shoulders and dove into helping the old men with breakfast. Ira was obviously just in the way in the confined space, so he stepped out to empty his bladder and to stretch his legs, but on an impulse he first went to look at Cain; perhaps to try to fool himself into thinking there was nothing to fear in his old friend.

It had been a long time, more than just the last year when things had so profoundly intensified, since Cain had acknowledged Ira as anything more than an object of curiosity. Ira hunkered down directly in front of Cain and squatted there in silence for a moment. Cain ignored Ira's presence for a long moment and in that time Ira was touched again by the feeling that he was not looking at a person at all. This being before him was not human. Nor was it an animal. True, there was something reptilian about the way it sat absolutely still with only the slow breathing identifying it as a living thing. But Ira knew that as soon as it looked into his eyes, there would be no doubt that he was in the presence of an alien, vibrant, supremely intelligent, living thing with a very definite yet incomprehensible purpose and agenda all its own, an agenda which held no regard for the irrelevant concerns of the likes of mere humans. High above, an eagle screamed. The sound itself, so surrealistic and vaguely raw and erotic; drifted away and came back again from the cliff face. Something, off towards the open desert was making a rhythmic, rasping sound; hypnotic and earthy. The early morning sun was already burning its way through the back of Ira's thin cotton shirt, while his face, in shadow, was soothingly cool from the soon to dissipate desert night air. There was a pregnancy in the moment which welded Ira in place, though in his consciousness it only dimly registered.

Where had Cain gone? Exuberant, overbearing, charismatic, irreverent, inspiring, flashing, dashing, dancing, hedonistic and egocentric Cain; where had he gone?

In a spontaneous act Iran did something he hadn't attempted in over two years. He reached out and laid a hand on Cain's arm. "Cain, I miss you."

The dragon turned its head and looked at him. Nothing changed in the eyes; there was no outward sign of a humanizing softening, but for the first time in a year, Cain, not the dragon spoke to Ira. He said, "Ira, you and Rayanne should get into this truck and drive away. Just drive away." Then Cain was gone and the dragon spoke, "But you won't will you." It wasn't a question. "You've both got too much invested now, and you'll pay any price to see through to the end of this adventure." The dragon chuckled and Ira was rocked back as though by a thrust from his squatting position on to his butt into an inglorious sprawl by the power in that simple gesture. Suddenly Ira was more afraid of Cain than he had ever been; more than he had ever been of anything in his life. As afraid as the two old men were when they first laid eyes on the dragon. It truly came home to Ira in that moment that Cain was, for all intent and purpose, gone now forever. When he came back into the cabin, his bladder forgotten, he was shaking and blanched, and silently weeping. Rayanne saw but said nothing, only touched Ira's arm in a sympathetic gesture and gently pushed him down to sit in relative privacy on their sleeping cot. The old men saw but pretended not to, in the manner of awkward politeness. Everyone knew without asking that Ira had interacted with the dragon.

After breakfast was all cleared away Raymond told them how they would proceed. "If the old stories is true, all that spirit-breather needs now is to be able to make a spirit-paintin', in its head, of what it's lookin' for and it should be able to find it. Actually, we can do that too sometime' with sand paintin', but it take the spirit-breather, your dragon there Rain, to actual reach out and grab whatever it is; in this case, I think to open the spirit-world door for us to look through. Me an' Charlie there, why, we sure would like to see where our peoples come from. With the spirit-breather we shouldn't have to worry 'bout anythin' on the other side, so long as we don't go through that is, we just gonna have a look is all. We just gonna look."

"Shouldn't have to worry?" Ira asked. He was beginning to realize how dependant they were on vague old stories that these old men were themselves not sure of.

"We don't have to worry. We got Rain and Raymon'." Charlie said with an uncharacteristic hardness in his voice. It was the first time Charlie had spoken to them in other than grunts since they had arrived. He didn't meet anyone's eyes as he said it, but turned away to be busy stowing the blankets and the two hammocks he and Raymond had slept on. Raymond looked at him hard for a moment but Charlie just kept his rigid back to the group and said no more.

"What we gonna do, see," resumed Raymond, "...is we gonna go up on the rock to a place like where you done your spirit-seekin', Rain. First we gonna wash ourselves with sand, then go up and say some prayers. Then Iron, you gonna tell the dragon how to see where the rock isn't. Then we gonna see what that old spirit-breather can do with it. We don't take nothin' with us but some tobacco for prayers. Only water, but drink lots now. That's all."

Rayanne was the only person among the four of them who wasn't functioning in some degree of anxiety. She was instead vibrating with excitement to get on with it. She took some food out to Cain and told him what the program was. Ira watched her from the window and thought about how her relationship with Cain had evolved. She no longer treated him as a friend or former lover; in fact she no longer treated him as man. Their relationship reminded Ira of the story of Aladdin and his genie. Rayanne was all confident of her control, and indeed she seemed to be able to run where angels would fear to tread. Cain appeared to be absolute clay in her hands. Yet, there was no emotional content in the relationship. It would be better to describe their relationship as that of a finely trained technician and her potentially deadly, finely crafted trade tool. Huge, mighty, dangerous, and intimately sensitive to the fine nuances of Rayann's control, Cain was none the less nothing more than a unique, valued tool too her. Rayann had no illusions regarding the humanity of her charge.

Finally, the time came and they all set out for the rock island. The trail up began about two miles from the sheltered alcove on the rock face where Raymond had his cabin and so they drove to the base of it; Raymond and Charlie in the old half-ton that looked as beaten and weathered as Charlie who owned it, and the others in their rented 4X4. Raymond and Charlie would have nothing of riding in the same vehicle with Cain.

Typically, there was a slightly hot, dry breeze blowing and a flinty smell to the air under a blazing sun. It was ten thirty when they all pulled up at the base of the rock. Charlie and Raymond wordlessly and unabashedly began to disrobe, then to rub themselves down with hands full of the sandy soil at the base of the rock. After a moment's reflection Ira and Rayanne stepped behind their vehicle and did the same. Cain wandered aimlessly and absorbed whatever sensual stimulus was available to him; insects, rock formations, anything; he was like a child in his universal interests.

When they were all redressed Old Raymond gestured wordlessly and started to lead the way up the rock. No one was inclined to break the silence that had descended on the group. Charlie was hanging back and shuffling his feet but when Raymond acknowledged neither his reticence nor his presence Charlie dropped his eyes and followed along like a truculent but obedient disciple.

Chapter 10

For all their age, the old men were at the top before Ira, Rayanne and Cain were three-quarters of the way up. It was about two hundred fifty feet to the top of the sand-stone rock. The top was an absolutely flat table top. At a guess I'd say that the table top was one hundred feet in diameter in a nearly perfect circle with four flat extensions, each extending about twenty feet out from the edge of the circle. These four extensions, about 20 feet wide, perfectly reflected the four points of power. Despite this apparently convenient arrangement, it all gave the impression of being naturally formed. The only artificial intrusion into the tableau was an ancient stone circle, perhaps 25 feet in diameter in the middle with four stone-lined paths leading off towards the extensions, perfectly imitating in miniature what nature had provided.

I will make a quick aside here to explain about those four points of power. These are not the four compass points though they approximate them closely. The Northern-most path pointed to the magnetic North and according to Raymond, it always did; changing without visible evidence as the magnetic pole shifted over the centuries. I don't know, I won't comment on that as I can only tell you that back when I was there following Rayannes instructions to bring her "husband" and her "weak brother", Raymond told me these things and I verified it with a compass myself at that time.

The Southern-most point was a touch west of being directly opposite, and the East and West points were supposedly perfectly lined up with the rising and setting points of the sun at its equinox. Raymond once told me that these were the points of the Earth's power lines as they radiated out from this point. I had previously though that such concepts as Earth power lines was a strictly European-Pagan concept.

When the three Canadians reached the top, Ira and Rayanne huffing and puffing like long distance runners, they found Charlie and Raymond standing in the middle of the circle chanting and turning to the four paths repeatedly. By the time the old men had finished with these preparations the Canadians had recaptured their wind. Something about what the old men were doing mildly irritated Cain. Ira and Rayanne were standing quietly watching the old men go about their spiritual business. Ira heard a slight snort and looked at Cain. Cain's face was registering mild irritation and disgust. It was the only nearly human emotion that Ira had seen Cain display in over a year.

When they had finished the old men closed off three of the paths by laying rocks across the openings, thus closing the circle at those points. Then they exited through the open Eastern path. They still kept their distance from Cain. Raymond indicated by hand gestures that no one should speak, but that Rayanne should have Cain enter by the open path into the circle, and be left there alone.

Rayanne took Cain's arm and lead him to the circle. Cain still wore his face of mild irritation but of course complied with perfect obedience. Once Cain was inside and Rayanne had exited again by the open pathway, Raymond began another chant and Charlie closed the last pathway, keeping a wary eye on Cain all the time. Cain stood in the middle and glared at him but said and did nothing.

As soon as the circle was completely closed and Raymond had double checked the total perimeter, he and Charlie looked at each other and visibly relaxed a bit, for the first time since the arrival of the Canadians.

Charlie went and sat at the farthest point of the Eastern pathway, where it dropped away in a sheer cliff face, and began quietly chanting to himself. Raymond came and stood before Ira and Rayanne. For a moment he just looked them each in the eye, then said in a hushed voice, just above a whisper so that his voice and the susurration of the wind past their ears and under the brims of their hats seemed to carry his words for him.

"You must un'erstand something really good, you two.", he said. "Anyone who enters that circle now is in a place where they at the mercy of that ol' spirit-thing in there. Rain, I believe you'd be safe. The rest of us, I don't know 'bout. I don't really know what it is that such a spirit-thing as that wants. Maybe it's not even in'erested in us, but maybe it is. There's no way a knowin'. Anyway, it's locked in there now. Don't move any of them stones for any reason without askin' me first. I can open a door for you if I need to but I want to have Rain with me if I do. Un'erstand?"

There was no mistaking the sincerity of his concern, or the degree of his expectation that he be absolutely obeyed in this matter. Rayanne and Ira indicated with nods that they understood.

"Okay. Now Iron, without steppin' over any stones, go around and stand at the edge of the circle by the eastern gate there and tell us all, even the spirit-thing, what you know about the stone. Stay a good arm reach away from the circle stones too."

Chapter 11

And so it happened. Ira stepped forward with trepidation in his heart, confusion in his mind and misgivings clawing at his entrails. The strangeness and the emotional/spiritual soup in which he had been wadding for the last several years, the denial and single-mindedness with which he had fuelled his actions all of his life, the sense of detachment he had always had to the world about him and the degree to which his personality and sense of self were tied up in the realization of this moment; all this made for a dreamy, surreal quality in his awareness. Without this quality softening all else I doubt that he would have gone on with it, but would have turned away at that moment and gone home. I suppose I wish he had.

Ira stepped forward and looked into the circle. Cain stood relaxed and vaguely amused now, as he most always did, except for that one brief showing of irritation, which had evidently receded. Cain was looking at Ira, full of expectation that some new and interesting experience was about to unfold for his personal amusement.

Ira concentrated for a moment and tried to see Cain as Cain saw himself. Cain, with his heightened empathy must have read this in Ira's face and he smiled that predatory smile. As he did so Ira saw the elongated jaws of the dragon. He saw the eyes, not dead and deadly like those of a shark, but with the spear-point, directed intensity of the predator. Ira saw in that moment the Gemini nature of the dragon. At first glance the dragon was a thing of intense, seductive beauty that drew its victims inexorably to itself by the power of its empathic stroking of all the excitement buttons that could be found in the nature and personality of its prey. But as one drew nearer in spirit to those metaphysical jaws, the recognition dawned, too late for escape, of the underlying loathsomeness of the beast. It would only too late dawn on the victim that the queasiness that rumbled in the back of the heart was caused by the alien-ness of a stench that was rather mental, spiritual, and metaphysical, as opposed to olfactory.

Captive and shaken by this vision, Ira's hand strayed to his pocket and came out with the talisman of sanity that was always with him now; the stone which Raymond had given him those several years ago.

With the drawing forth of the stone the vision faded and was lost as if an afterthought to some daydream. Ira looked at the stone and watched the movement of his fingers rubbing its surface; felt the texture. Such a solid little thing. But was it so solid after all? Wasn't it only a trick of the mind to see it otherwise? Somewhere below him this time, the distant eagle screamed.

Ira began to talk. Quietly at first, as too himself, his voice strengthening as his tale unfolded. He told the tale from the start of his life, even as this tale does. He spoke of his own mind and perceptions and dwelt long on the intimate and rich relationships he had known. Ira lost all perception of his audience and was instead standing beside himself and relating things to himself that he had never wanted to know but now needed, hungered to share with himself, instructing himself towards understanding.

He told of the nights of bliss he had known with his lovely, lively Jo-Ann. He described the intensity of the self-denied and still to be paid for pain of her blunt disappearance from his life. He wept as he spoke of his shame for his treatment of Pearl. In the telling of his messianic vision and dedication to the charismatic young Cain he began to see himself as the pitifully shallow and socially retarded wraith whom he had been, and in so many ways still was. As he related the eagerness with which he embraced his beloved science he finally and for the first time understood that of all things in his life, this was his lover and his stronghold and his God. He told of the rituals he had developed and the sacrifices he had made for that God and the suffering and tenacity and steadfastness against all other temptations which he had endured for love of his chosen God. He told of the wonderment, the epiphany, the spiritual awakening and rebirth he had experienced as he made his momentous and hard-won discovery. And then he told of his discovery.

As he related this last, he became aware again, slowly, of his surroundings and the teller of the tale once again merged into one with the subject and the audience of the tale. As he spoke this last he watched the change come over Cain's face.

The mathematical magic was straight forward once the basic principle was understood and as it unfolded and the interpretation into vision was made through the magic of the good teacher's skill, Cain took on a frown as a child whose imagination has been captured by a process and who is listening to the unfolding wonder of the internalized logic of it. When at last Ira had spoken it all and stood silent; an empty shell, spent and weary; Cain stared at him with that human-like frown overlying his alien ambience for a long moment. But then, as the understanding of what the mathematics had shown him came slowly together in his mind it triggered some latent alien eagerness in him and a smile bent on splitting his head grew in discernible stages till at last it needed to flow down his body to encompass more. The splendor and glory and intensity of the emotion that flowed through Cain was like the dawning of a new-born sun, seen from close up. As it filled him to capacity he raised his arms and roared out a peal of laughter like the summoning of the thunder-god himself, then he roared out to the skies, "HOME! I'M GOING HOME!".

When at last the thunderous echoes of silence that followed had died down, Rayanne, Ira, Charlie and Raymond all found themselves to be on their knees, eyes squeezed tightly shut and hands pressed to their ears. As they individually recovered their senses and rose in shocked silence to their feet, they perceived Cain still standing there, arms wide stretched, that smile still splitting his skull, and he turned to Ira. Gone now was the reptilian stillness, replaced by the swift slithering smoothness of the cobra. Gone the emotionless coldness of the alligator and now stood the vibrating eagerness of the hungry, stalking cougar.

"Ira," said the dragon, "I thank you for this vision. You have woken me from my slumber. I now know my way home. For ages you cannot imagine I have slept in the flesh of your kind, bits and pieces of myself being woken at times but long sleeps between, and longer intervals between wakings as your kind has evolved away from the old sciences." The mighty dragon beat its wings to flex long-cramped muscles; or was it only a human body waving its arms in excitement?

"I suppose not all of me shall ever find its way home, but with each awakening and recovery I grow stronger and shall one day be reborn in full in my own world. Such a sacrifice I made for your insignificant kind! But, we share this, that kindness to lesser beings is a virtue in all the worlds."

He walked to the edge of the stone circle and without hesitation stepped over the stones, coming face to face with Ira who stood transfixed and speechless, powerless to move. He reached out a lethally taloned forelimb; or was it only a human hand, reaching as to brush the side of his face?; but stopped just short of physical contact.

"For what you have given me this day, I shall not only allow you to continue what you perceive of as your life, but also enrich you with the witnessing of what I am about to do, and what it shall cost you,..."

…and the Dragon turned and moved right through the stone ring, unhindered now by whatever puny magic Raymond had thought might contain it, and more flowing than walking, stood suddenly before Raymond. It stopped one pace from him and captured the old man in the embrace of its eyes. "...but first, I need to FEED!"

Raymond stood before The Dragon, frozen in fear; fear like blood flowing from his eyes, fear like an eternity of iron clamping his heart; fear like the hammer of God knocking all reason from his mind. The Dragon inhaled deeply and all of Raymond that was not his physical body flowed visibly and silently into that maw. What was left simply crumpled to the Earth from which it had come.

Having fed, The Dragon turned back to face Ira across the circle, and exhaled Its breath, like a flaming rainbow, upon the fabric of the world, which melted away to reveal a hole that could have been the size of an atom or the size of the universe, so unreal in presence.

"There is your doorway, Ira." said The Dragon, and with a wave of its tissue-leathery wing; or was it a human arm?; it set the hole to rippling as would a sheet in a light breeze. "Behold the world you seek. Do you think it is a place your kind should enter?"

Ira looked and saw that which cannot be described any more than the beauty of a panoramic sunset or a rainbow can be described to a blind man; to a fetus. Only the fact that he had the spiritual organs which would one day evolve to allow such vision to be understood made it possible to withstand the onslaught of what was revealed.

Words fail. When words fail we turn to that language which describes that which is indescribable; poetry;

What chaos doth before me reign ?

Can this be GOD ?

Oh, spare this humble vessel! Is there naught that nakedness can hide ?

My very being doth dissolve into a murky nothingness before this revelation of reality that so consumeth me, as would the very heart of Sol, the being of a spider's web!

Weeping, weeping. …non-being into BEING doth evolve again as from that ponderous vision, that which could be "I" doth seem to have withdrawn.

Chapter 12

Dear one, I will write no more in the third person, as from that moment he whom I have spoken of as Ira ceased to exist and I am now in this world in his stead. I hold his memory in trust, and little else.

When I looked up from my weeping the dragon still stood regarding me; I have no idea how long I had been weeping there upon the stone. Still the dragon stood beside his door, but that shimmering chaos was veiled now as by a gossamer curtain. I try to believe he veiled it out of his other-worldly kindness, since it was an act of kindness which first made him a prisoner in our world in the first place, but I shall never know for sure the truth of this.

I looked about me. All was silent. Charlie sat motionless at the end of the Eastern path, immobilized and powerless, staring at the dragon, unbody'd of mind, I imagined, by the unreality of it all. Rayanne stood where I had left her, beside the empty shell that had been Raymond. She was, like Charlie, in a state of shock and unbelief; staring fixedly at The Dragon; her hands over her mouth as though stifling a scream that she could not utter.

From this point, my memory of the events is vague, but I seem to remember seeing The Dragon flowing like a wraith over to her and picking her up in one of his mighty arms, and the husk of Raymond he enclosed in the talon at the end of his other arm. Effortlessly he carried them; he flowed like liquid malice; he carried my Rayanne; frozen in shock, silent, staring at His countenance, her hands still over her mouth; over to the doorway. There He turned and spoke his last words to me in this life.

"It needs the soul of one of your kind to allow me to close the door behind me. It wouldn't do for others who live in my world, and are less kindly disposed to you, to find their way so easily. This one," and He indicated Rayanne with a human-like nod, so alien to his form, "has bound itself to me anyway and its mind would fade away in my absence. Its sacrifice for its kind is not unlike my own sacrifice for its kind, is it?" With that The Dragon passed through the door as though passing through a sheet of water and was gone. A moment later the doorway blinked out of existence without sound or lingering trace.

I don't remember when or how Charlie and I returned to the cabin, but both trucks were there so I conclude the obvious. We stayed together for a week without speaking a word to each other, eating little and spending our time sitting close together silently; thinking private thoughts. I don't honestly recall what I thought about in that time. After a while we began to communicate on a very basic level, though I want you to understand that we were not unfriendly to each other at all; indeed we were desperately in need of each other and could not bear, even for toilet breaks, to be out of each others sight. Somehow, it was as though everything we knew and understood would just blink out of existence if we lost sight of each other for even a moment.

After another ten days we were speaking to each other as comfortably as though we had lived with each other all our lives. But it was still another two weeks before we suddenly looked at each other and realized that the time had come for us to speak about what we had witnessed.

It happened as we arrived back from Tonopah on an afternoon after a trip to town to re-provision the cabin. As I pulled to a stop in front of the cabin and stopped the motor of the 4X4, I looked over at Charlie to say something inane like, "Here we are." or some such, but when I met his eyes, we both knew what we had to do. Without a word spoken I restarted the truck and we drove in silence to the beginning of the pathway up to the top of The Rock Of The Dragon. We parked in the same spot and, still in silence, drank all the water we could hold, packed some backpacks with blankets, some food and more water, washed ourselves with sand and then climbed to the table top.

When we arrived we looked about aimlessly for a while, then sat side by side and watched the afternoon advance. Always in silence. Not a word spoken or required. I watched the sun set, turning that rusty-orange landscape into a surreal, golden-red ocean within which glided the winged denizens, circling high above me in the salty-dry air, now swooping down, past my cliff, into the depths of the canyon below, razing the walls with their penetrating gaze for any movement not of the currents; screaming at each other in nearly super-sonic tones; incredibly oblivious to and uncaring of the weight of anguish we'd brought to the top of their rock. Still no words had passed between us, but eventually somewhere after the sun had set and the distant coyotes were introducing the night's events, we started to talk; I don't remember how or when, only that there was no extraneous conversation. We were there to talk about one thing and one thing only.

We talked long into the night; I remember the moon was just past full and the night view was breathtaking; the desert-ocean had turned monochrome blue and silver. We could see as far as though it was high noon with the light of the stars and the moon. The cosmos were hushed and the cold, fragrant night air brought a soothing touch of moisture, sent by God from the distant flickering of lightning to the north. I recall listening to the coyotes' distant laments, and thinking in the silences between, how beautiful this ephemeral world seemed to be. We eventually fell silent when the night chill began to take hold of us in earnest, and in the end slept huddled together for warmth under our blankets in the middle of the rock circle. In the pre-dawn beauty we arose, cramped and chilled but feeling as though our entire beings had been cleansed as by ceremony. It was the most beautiful morning of my life. It was the first morning of my life, just experienced later than usual I suppose.

I will tell you a little of what I learned from Charlie after the event. It seems that when Raymond learned of Rayannes quest, he realized that there was the potential for him to relearn some of the arcane knowledge of which his legends spoke. I will make this brief, so as not to dwell on the unpleasant side of the revelation. He realized, as did Charlie, that if the old legends were true, there was a great danger involved and a sacrifice required for the learning. Raymond also knew (or at least suspected), again from intimations in the old legends of his people, that the wielder of the "fire-spirit", i.e.: the magician who held The Dragon in sway: was in the most fearsome danger of loosing his or her very soul to The Dragon. But despite this danger he decided to encourage Rayanne to go ahead with the experiment, partly because he didn't really believe that anything would come of it anyway, and partly because if there were sacrifices to be made it was probably us "white-people" who would be closest to the danger. He felt that after all the suffering and pain that the white-man had inflicted on his people, it was not unreasonable for him to use us as sacrifices for the recapturing of old knowledge that the white-man had destroyed in the first place.

Yes, kindly Old Raymond had set us up. I'm not really inclined to criticize or blame him. I'm not really certain what I should feel about it. Mostly, I just don't even bother to think about the moral issues of it all. They are just too complex and subjective to be easily judged by such as myself. Let it be. What is done, is done and it doesn't really matter any more. Perhaps it would make a difference if Raymond were still alive, I don't know.

I speculate that the reason The Dragon chose Raymond in the first place as his sacrifice for the opening of the doorway was because he, The Dragon, saw into the heart of the matter and the people involved all along. The Dragon must have known what choices I would ultimately make, after all was said and done, and that if Raymond were left to his own devices, he, Raymond, would have frustrated my decisions. In like manner of consideration I suppose to myself he spared me having to deal with Raymond's body by taking it with him. I can imagine no other reason why he would do so. In so many confusing ways, I suppose I; we; must thank The Dragon for his kindness to us all, and yet, should I thank him at all? Would The Dragon even value our thanks? I think not.

And so I stayed with Charlie for another three months. Eventually it became necessary for me to return home and settle up my charge accounts which were dangerously over taxed due to the fact that everything that had cost anything since Rayanne, Cain and I left Canada had been charged to credit cards. Also, I'd left without telling anyone where I'd gone and worldly concerns were mounting.

Chapter 13

When I got home there were so many things to attend to that for a long time I was spared thinking about any of the past too deeply. The only real reminders were from the police who wanted to know what had happened to Rayanne and Cain.

What could I possibly tell them? What would you have told them? I simply told them that I didn't know. I said that after we had arrived at some old friends' place down near Tonopah in the states (places, names, and times provided) Rayanne, Cain and Old Raymond had gone for a walk in the desert and never returned. Why hadn't I notified the local authorities right away? I don't know. Maybe it was because the old man, Raymond, was so much a part of the desert that I simply assumed that they were okay.

Actually it was Charlie who suggested this story. He advised me to be vague and nonchalant about it all. Those old American Indians are crafty as hell when it comes to "white-man's law". I gather that he satisfied them at his end when they talked to him because I haven't heard much more from them since. Anyway, without a motive and without bodies, or even weapons or any other evidence, there can be no case for foul play, so I guess they must have dropped it by now.

The only difficulty with the whole thing is that Rayanne apparently left a will that named Cain and me as the beneficiaries of quite a large sum of money. It seems that she was an independently wealthy sole survivor of parents who died in her youth and left a sizeable fortune in trust. Since I have a sizeable savings account myself and good investments, suggested by Rayanne over the years, I gave most of my inheritance from her to local charities. That must have really cheesed off the police. They were watching with bated breath when the waiting period ended (compulsory with unexplained disappearances) to see what I would do with all that money.

The University, of course, quite justifiably let me go as soon as I returned with no good explanation for my unannounced disappearance. Oh, well.

So now I live a quiet life in my little hotel suite in the Hilton. I haven't done much since that time to justify my existence; I read a lot and I take a lot of walks. I like to eat in the finer restaurants, of which Saskatoon has a good number. Some of my acquaintances have suggested other places in the world where I might like to live, but I have no needs. I like it here. I daydream a lot. I'm no threat to anyone if I'm of no use to anyone. That newfangled "Star Trek; The Next Generation" show amuses me sometimes. Two years after I returned I received a letter from one of Charlie's relatives informing me that he had died peacefully in his sleep. A massive coronary, they said. Rest in peace Charlie, my old friend.

I have often wondered to myself about it all. Who was The Dragon who so completely consumed my friends? Was he the devil? Was he the serpent of Eden? He certainly wasn't all evil at any rate. Of that I am certain. He was very definitely very alien to us though. It's obvious to me that there is no place in this world where he would fit into the natural scheme of things. Was the world to which he moved; was that the next world to which we all must eventually move? Was he an example of the next stage of our spiritual evolution? He did intimate, both by his words and by his being, that there are degrees of goodness and evil in that world too, and a sense of justice with which such things are weighted. Ah, but there are no answers. Perhaps in the next manifestation of life I will find some answers.

But there is one thing that I am certain about; though I have no reason to be certain of it. It is that Cain, Rayanne, Raymond, and Charlie still exist somewhere, somehow, in the basic nature in which I knew them. Why I believe this to be I have no idea. Perhaps it is nothing more than that blind, willful choosing to believe, which is the common failing of the narrow-minded with which they justify their lack of knowledge. Whatever it is, it comforts me.

Now, I've already told you more than I've ever told anyone before. As I mentioned earlier, before Rayanne and Cain and I left for that last trip, I had destroyed anything that could have possibly led anyone to an understanding of what I had discovered. The reason was simple and mundane. I didn't want anyone else to see it and scoop the credit for it while I was gone. Besides, I didn't need any of it. Once I had invented my special mathematical trickery, it all fell into place in my mind and I could recreate it any time I wanted to. I still could, if I wanted to. Also, I've been very careful to put nothing into this text that could lead anyone to the secret of opening the doorway again. I can see no good coming to mankind by opening it again and I want the secret to die with me. I've even put a couple or three misleading little lies into this text just in the event that some sharp young mind ever reads it.

I lived my youth seeking for the profound after having been born into the banal. In the middle of my life I found the profound and found it wanting. I've spent my declining years wallowing in the banal. So we go, full circle.

Now I am tired. I am alone. I am lonely. I want to see Rayanne and Cain and Charlie again. Yes, I even want to see Raymond. I have quaffed the espresso, and I have pontificated the holy and the profane. I have looked into the face of Glory and the mask of Horror, and found them both unpalatable.

I shall quaff one more cup to the Gods of Profundity and Banality. May They reign forever. With the guidance of such as They, the world is safe. In this crystal-cup before me awaits the elixir of life; life in its next manifestation that is. But before I quaff it, I shall go to the lobby and drop this text into the mail for you. I hope that I managed to track down your correct address and I hope that you are the same Jo-Ann who first broke my heart so many years ago. You are the only person I can think of in this world who may remember me kindly; I hope that you do, though none of my "I hope's" really matter in the end, do they.

I should have studied philosophy instead, don't you think?

Again Jo-Ann, Thank-you for the memories.

Sincerely,

Ira Proud