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No metal or plastic walls enclosing him here, only the bare rock he d laboriously tunneled through over
the preceding cycles. As he progressed, the acuteness of the slope he was ascending increased.
There was no electronically operated, camouflaged door at the end of the tunnel. After exiting he rpent
several hours replacing the dead leaves and branches that concealed the opening. A quick inspection of
his surroundings confirmed his solitude. There was no one outside and he had not been fol-lowed. Nor
would he stumble into an official expedition leaving or returning by way of one of the now monitored
exits, as he had so many years ago. He followed their schedules religiously and departed on his own
journeys only when he knew no other Quozl was likely to be abroad.
He had his own exit, carefully excavated and maintained using common repair and maintenance
equipment. His alone. It belonged to him and the spirits with whom he meditated, and they weren t going
to expose him.
It was night. Everyone knew and respected his off-duty marathon medita-tion sessions. Sometimes they
lasted for several days. His piety was oft re-marked upon. When finished he would emerge from the
meditation chamber fit and refreshed. None realized it was not meditation on the Milian Cycle which so
rejuvenated him, but rather his delightful, solitary walks across the invigorating, unique, remarkable, and
highly proscribed surface of Shiraz.
His Shiraz, as he d come to think of it.
x.
Cii~ sCONFIDENCEWENT DOWN WITHTHE SUN. ALLWELL ANDGOOD
to assure your parents of your unmatched courage, quite another to find yourself out in the woods alone,
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miles from the comforting confines of the cabin. He was alone in the forest with the animals who had lived
there since before man. Would they take exception to his presence?
Now that it was growing unimaginably, impossibly dark he wished he d brought the tent despite its
weight. Though the walls were made of insub-stantial fabric, they would serve to shut out the night. His
sleeping bag and rain flap would only block out the darkness behind him and over his head. Movement
on either side or below his feet would be inescapably visible.
During the day the woods had been full of color and song. Now things were on the move that did not
speak to each other, small shadows with flashing eyes that darted furtively from rock to tree. The crickets
and the owl, the frogs that lived in the nearby stream, these were familiar, comforting sounds. It was the
noise of brush being shoved aside, of leaves rustling as spirits squirmed past them, of great unseen wings
beating the air, that sparked a young imagination which refused to rest.
He hadn t planned on building a fire. His sleeping bag would keep him cozy-warm and fire-building was
hard work. His tuna-fish sandwich supper required no heating. But he built a blaze anyway, hurriedly
gathering bits and scraps of wood and dumping them atop a bed of pine needles. He sacrificed a dozen
matches before the miniature pyre reached for the sky. The relief he felt in the presence of light was no
less than that of early Cro-Magnon.
The fire was not big enough to make any truly dangerous animal hesitate, but it was sufficient to force the
shadows back into the trees. They were the real threat.
The stream behind him ran fast and deep. It would shield him from any unnameable horrors trying to
approach from that direction. Its watery roar was comforting. With the fire at his front and the water at
his back he climbed into his sleeping bag and began skinning a Hershey bar. He would eat the sandwich
next, deliberately reversing the usual order. The gesture of independence made him feel better.
It was a moonless night and he wasn t sure whether to be grateful or disappointed. The shadows kept
their distance. He tried to concentrate on
the impossibly bright stars which spilled like sugar across the black velvet sky. After a while the
brighthess blurred and ran together to form a pale opales-cent veil over his eyes.
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