This gets stranger by the hour.

About noon he managed to give the Ronin the slip. But some of the swordsman's Mushin found him and now they're hovering around the edges of his mind.

Whatever for? There's nothing for them to feed on, is there?

Oh, there's something there, but I don't think they can get at it. Too hidden. He doesn't really have access to it himself. No, I'd say he's safe from the Madness at least.

Then why are the Mind Brothers bothering? Odd. Very odd.

If you think that's odd, wait, I haven't finished yet. A little while ago he stopped for a rest and something completely new showed up.

Well, it's hard to explain. If I call it another mind, that's too much. It doesn't seem all that coherent. More like bits and pieces stuck together. Sc.r.a.ps of a mind, maybe. No, that's not right either. It's whole, but limited. Father, I really can't be any clearer than that. I've never encountered anything like this in my life.

Could the Mushin have anything to do with it?

Hmmmmmmmmm. Never thought of that. It did happen shortly after they showed up. Worthlooking into. Thanks.

Uh, by the way, Father, I estimate two more days minimum before we make it to First Touch.

Provided he doesn't completely disintegrate before then.

Help him if you must, Josh. Don't let him fall apart.

Yeah, I understand. But, uh, you know what he intends to do. I was just wondering if you have any plans I should know about in advance. I mean, I could ...

We will follow the flow, Josh. We will follow the flow even through those areas where the shadow is too deep for us to see the outcome. Get him here, Josh, alive and functioning, at least minimally. He is an important part of the plan.

But he intends to kill- Alive and functioning, Josh. You must do your part so that he can do his part so that I can do my part so that ...round and round, back and forth until the pattern is woven. Remember how much Myali is giving, Josh. Would you have us do any less?

No, Father. And yet...

The root snared his foot and he tumbled down the last few feet of the slope. Dazed, he lay sprawled at the bottom of the ravine for several moments, trying to regain his wits and his breath. He sat up slowly, groaning and cursing as he took stock of his condition. Bad bruises on his shoulder, back, and knee.

Cuts on his face and neck where the brush he crashed through had torn at his flesh. Lacerations and sc.r.a.pes on his hands, especially the palms, which he'd used to break his fall. Gingerly he stood and continued to a.s.sess the damage. His left ankle hurt like crazy, but would carry his weight. Not sprained, thank G.o.d. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the compa.s.s and laser wand. Both were all right.

The smoothstone was still there, too. His pack hadn't opened, and there wasn't anything breakable in it anyway All in all, he decided, not bad. Lucky. But watch it. Because next time your luck might run out.

He looked up and saw the Face staring at him from the branches of a small tree. Anger rapidly followed his first twinge of fear. The d.a.m.n thing was following him! Peeping at him everywhere he went.

He'd tried and tried to ignore it, but everywhere he looked, there it was.

Dunn took a couple of deep breaths to get his anger under control. He glared back at the Face and made a decision.

"Why are you following me?" he demanded "I'm not following you," the Face denied flatly. "You're following me. Every time I try to get away, you come after me."

"That's ridiculous. I'm a Wanderer going to First Touch."

"So you say. I think you're chasing me."

"Good G.o.d! This is stupid. Look, I'm not... oh, what the h.e.l.l. You 're imaginary. I 'm just imagining all this."

"Perhaps. But if so, you're crazy."

Dunn considered for a moment. "No, I don't think so. Exhausted, confused, mentally f.u.c.ked-up, yes.

But not crazy."

"Ergo," the Face responded triumphantly, "I'm real and not imaginary."

"Not necessarily. You could still be imaginary without being the product of a sick mind."

"Huh," the Face snorted. "You mean I'm just a mental sniffle, not a case of double pneumonia. Not very complimentary."

"I think you're some kind of side effect of these d.a.m.n drugs. Myali's never heard of anything like you before, so I doubt if you're something native. And there's nothing in my own experience-"

"Your experience," the Face interrupted with a sneer. "You don't have any experience."

Dunn glared at the Face, his whole body suddenly tense. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean you don't have any experience. Or any memory. Or any anything. You're a cipher, a nonent.i.ty, a blank. h.e.l.l, if either of us is imaginary, you're the most likely candidate!"A fist clenched Dunn's stomach and the feet started kicking the backs of his eyeb.a.l.l.s again. He felt sweat break out all over his body even though he shivered as a chill pa.s.sed up-and down his spine. "I'm ...I'm ...not ...a ...blank ...I'm ...Dunn, "he gritted out between tightly clenched teeth.

"Dunn," the Face snickered nastily. "Oh, sure. Likely story. Dunn."

He drew himself up angrily. "Yes, d.a.m.n it, Dunn! What's so funny about that? I'm Dunn."

"Ha! You claim Dunn's name. But what else of Dunn is there about you? Do you have Dunn's personality? His dreams? His memories? Any of the things that were his and his alone?"

The spy's mind was in such a turmoil of anger, confusion, and fear that he could scarcely think. He fought to stem a rising sense of panic. "No," he growled. "No. I'm Dunn. See!" He held up his left hand and pointed to it with his right. His voice rose toward hysteria as he spoke. "Me! That's me! Dunn! I'm Dunn! Me!"

Coldly, the Face replied. "Shouting a name and pointing at a hand doesn't make you Dunn. Dunn is more than four little letters or a hand. Change the letters around and what have you? Nnud. Unnd. Ndnu.

Meaningless without a reference. Just as Dunn is. And the reference you offer, a hand, what is that?

Every cell in that hand changes constantly, like the water flowing in a river. Point again, right this instant, and it's not the same hand. No, Dunn must go beyond such transient things as shifting letters and flowing hands."

"It does!" cried the man, "It does! I know ... I know..."

"You know!" laughed the Face with evil glee. "Your mind tells you! Ha! Listen carefully to your mind, fool. Is it steady? Is there a beat of Dunn-ness that keeps a measured pace, an unchanging rhythm of self-awareness? Or is there nothing but a ceaseless swirl of changing?

"And where is the Dunn of yesterday?"

The spy panted in terror, his eyes wide and staring as he sank to his knees. "No," he whimpered.

"No. I'm Dunn. I'm me."

"You're you," the Face mocked triumphantly. "And a spy and a girl of this planet. Three, three, not one! Is Dunn the spy? Has Dunn always been the spy? Did Dunn pick yellow eyes on the Plain or listen to a caged lizard sing its despair? Where is the Dunn-ness you cling to? Where does it come from and what does it mean?"

"I KNOW!" the spy screamed as he jumped to his feet. "I KNOW!" he shrieked, his mouth twisted and flecked with foam. "I KNOW!" he bellowed as he whipped the laser wand from his pocket and slashed madly at the tree with its intense blade of light. "I KNOW! I KNOW! I KNOW!"

Suddenly alone, standing in front of the smoldering ruins of the tree, he collapsed in a heap. The pain pulsed through his head in swelling waves. My all, oh G.o.d, Myali. Help me. Take me away from here.

The staff swept toward her ankles. She leapt into the air to avoid the bone-shattering blow. But rather than jump back or straight up, she flew forward, twisting to the right and snapping out a side kick with her right foot.

Her opponent saw it coming and shifted his weight backward at the last moment. The kick caught him on the upper part of his right arm, but his movement absorbed most of the force. He staggered, caught his balance, and aimed another attack at her head as she landed. It came slashing down from left to right across his body. Since she was already halfway turned, with her right side facing the enemy, she continued her spin to the left and thrust a left back kick up under the whizzing staff.

The man's movement made the blow go wide, just grazing his left hip. As she twisted fully around to face him once more, he jabbed at her face with the tip of the staff. She easily blocked upward and drove in with a front kick to the stomach. He swung his left hip back and the blow missed by inches. The other end of the staff came rushing from her left as he drove it with his right hand for the ribs. She barely managed to step back and found herself off balance. Before she had time to regain it, her opponent thrust the right end of the staff between her legs and pushed hard and suddenly on the left end, catching her right leg just behind the knee and knocking her on her back. As she fell, she saw the end of the staff rushing toward her face. She knew it would hit right between the eyes and smash her forebrain.

The staff touched her lightly and the Master stepped back, watching her solemnly as she rose and dusted off the practice robe. When she was finished, he motioned to her to join him and walked acrossthe sunlit practice yard toward a band of shade at its eastern edge. It was only mid-morning, even though she'd been practicing for two hours.

Following the Master's example, she sat in full lotus and composed herself, calming her breathing and slowing the pounding of her heart. The moment she had regained a suitable degree of serenity, he began.

"Not bad. Though you would have died."

"How can that be 'not bad'?"

"You learn. Two months ago you would have died a lot sooner."

"I don't understand what's wrong, Father. At the 'hood I was the best in both the Way of the Fist and the Soft Way. But here ..."

He shrugged. "A tree lizard looks big to a water lizard. But to a Strider, neither is worth the effort of opening its mouth."

She blushed. "I'm ... I'm just a tree lizard?"

"You are what you are."

"But my technique ... Is my technique good?"

"Excellent. The best I've ever seen."

"Then why do you always beat me so easily?"

He gazed at her silently for several moments. Then he began to speak in a quiet voice. "Once a man asked a great artist for a picture of a cat and gave him a large amount of money in advance to draw it.

After a month or so, the man returned to the artist and asked if the picture was ready. The artist said no and sent him away. A few months later, the man returned and again the artist sent him away, angrily declaring he would deliver the picture when it was finished. For a full year, the man waited and waited, hoping his picture would be done at last. Finally, losing all patience, he stormed into the artist's studio and demanded his painting. The artist nodded and calmly took out a sheet of his best paper, lifted his favorite brush from where it lay, and in an instant dashed off a painting of a cat. Without even looking at it, he handed it to the man.

"Gazing at the picture, the man was stunned. It was the most beautiful, most incredible painting he had ever seen. It was perfection. Line, proportion, design- everything, perfection.

"With sudden exasperation, he turned to the artist and demanded to know why, if the artist could do something this magnificent in a few moments, hadn't he given him the picture sooner?

"The artist said nothing. He merely reached out and opened the door of an immense cabinet that stood in his studio. From it tumbled thousands of paintings of cats."

The Master fell silent and sat looking at her expectantly, awaiting her reaction.

Myali was puzzled. "I ... I guess," she began, "the point is that it took the artist that long to master the technique of drawing the cat?"

He shrugged. "That's part of the meaning, surely. But it's more than that. Mastering technique does not make you a Master. Knowing brushwork, understanding the nature of various paper types, studying the characteristics of different inks will not allow you to create a great painting."

"The artist in the story went beyond merely mastering his techniques. Remember, he dashed off his final masterpiece almost carelessly. He had arrived at the point where he had so a.s.similated the technique that he had forgotten it. It was no longer something conscious to be thought of. It merely was. Thus the technique had vanished or become transparent so that only the subject of the technique showed through.

That is why genius is impossible to copy. It is totally transparent and leaves no trace of how it is done."

She nodded. "I see. So that's the meaning of the story."

The Master smiled. "No, that's still only part of the meaning, Myali. In fact, that's the smallest, most insignificant part." She looked blank and he laughed.

"The real purpose of technique is not to produce anything at all. The artist's real purpose in mastering the brush is not to paint. Nor is fighting the real purpose behind a Seeker's mastering the side kick."

"Technique is really a form of knowing, or of coming to know. It's a way of opening up the thing to be known, a revealing that brings forth and makes present the thing as it is. The artist uses his technique to become entirely at home with the thing he paints. Eventually, when he comes to know the thing thoroughly, when its being is revealed fully to him, his technique is no longer necessary because he is trulyin and of the thing itself. If it is a cat, he is totally immersed in its catness and its itness. There are no longer any barriers between the thing and him. It stands naked and open to his view."

Myali sat quietly musing for a few moments. "I... I think I understand," she began hesitantly. "The thing we study in the Way of the Fist is ourselves. The techniques we use-the kicks, punches, blocks, everything-put us in contact with our own bodies. And the mental discipline brings our minds into it, too. We sort of 'learn' ourselves, I guess."

The Master nodded. "Yes. The techniques of Way give us a method for bringing forth our own being.

And in revealing it, we, like the artist, also open a view to something greater yet-being itself."

She gave a sad little laugh. "I'm afraid that's beyond me. I'm still trying to catch a glimpse of my own being. Oh, I understand what you're saying. It's just that I've never experienced it. I don't seem to be able to..." A sudden surge of longing swelled up within her, choking off her voice for an instant. As quickly as it came, it drained away, leaving behind only a bitter residue of empty despair. Confused and frightened, she tried to find something, anything, to say to fill the echoing emptiness before ...

"But...but..." she blurted, achieving a slight sense of security by clutching at things she knew, "that doesn't explain why you beat me so easily. I mean, if my techniques are so good, I should do better."

"I can beat you so easily because you're trying so hard to beat me. You're using the techniques as techniques rather than as a way of knowing. You see my staff coming toward your head and you block.

Then you see it coming toward your ribs and you block again. Each time you fix your attention on my staff and follow it hither and yon in attempts to block or counter. In so doing, you shift your mind to one spot and leave a different one open for attack. Eventually, I draw you so far in one direction, you can't return in time to another, and I win. Only when you are truly immovable, when you are anch.o.r.ed firmly in your being, rather than leaping wildly here and there fixing on all manner of things, only then can you be everywhere by being no one-where."

"The way to achieve such an anchoring in your being is to use technique as a way of knowing instead of merely a way of doing. The artist's painting of the cat was not great because his technique was polished and perfect; it was great because he understood his own true being and that of the cat. And therefore his next painting and every one after will be equally as great."

"This is the deepest lesson to be learned, Myali. Technique is a way of knowing that reveals the thing studied and makes it present in its true being. But the very act of opening the being of a thing to knowing opens our own being to knowing as well. And that, in turn, opens being itself. This is the point we seek to reach. It is only here where we can find a place so firm we cannot be moved."

Myali looked down at the hard-packed dirt of the practice-yard floor. "Then the real goal of what I'm doing is being?"

"Yes. You search for being."

"And if I search and search and find nothing?"

"Ah, but nothing is one of the most important things you can find. Jerome gave us the Way so that we could cut through the commonplace reality constructed by our senses and preconceptions and come face to face with the nothingness of the abyss. When we find it there, yawning bottomlessly just beneath the surface of our everyday existence, we are forced at last to recognize what we have always known but feared to admit: The anxiety which has ever haunted us, the unfocused fear which is so much a part of the human condition, is nothing less than an unconscious awareness of the abyss. As long as it remains unconscious, and unrecognized, it produces nothing but a vague discontent, a m.u.f.fled anguish that casts a continual shadow over our lives. But confronted and known for what it is, this anxiety is the very force that impels us on our search for being."

Myali shuddered involuntarily. "I've known the nothing. I've stood at the brink of the abyss and seen all meaning fall forever into darkness. I've felt the anguish, sharp and clear, and known it as central to my existence. And I've found myself thrown back into the world to seek out that very being the nothing denies and I feel must exist.

"But, Father, I can't find it! I search and search and always, just when I think I can reach out and touch it, it retreats and moves away and I'm left grasping nothing. I... I...At times when things seem most dark, I wonder if what I seek isn't mere illusion. And if the abyss isn't true reality after all." She bowedher head and gazed silently at the ground.

A look of soft compa.s.sion flashed across the Master's face and he half reached out his hand to touch her. "Being, my daughter, always withdraws from us when we actively seek it and try to give it a form that matches our understanding. In its withdrawal, however, it pulls us along behind, and, like a compa.s.s needle in a magnetic field, we become a sign that points to it even in the midst of its concealedness."

"We are signs pointing to being. We cannot read ourselves, because it is only being that gives us meaning, and we do not yet understand being. The most we can do is let ourselves be drawn along and hope that eventually the withdrawal will arrive at a place or a time when the being we seek unfolds in unconcealedness and we recognize what we have been looking at all along."

The young woman gazed up into the old man's face. Tears were welling in her eyes, making her vision fuzzy and blurred. "But, Father," she murmured, "what if the withdrawal always seems to lead back to the abyss? What if the path always leads into the endless night?"

His response was instant. "Then leap into the void and build firm foundations in the nothing."