somewhere else.
"Above you, mate... I think." Jon-Tom's head snapped back, just in time to espy
the absence of whatever it had been. They'd moved down and to his right, behind
a large gingko tree where he couldn't see them because they'd shifted their
position to his left, where they no longer were and...
He was getting dizzy.
It was as if he were hunting a visual echo. He was left teasing his retinas;
every time he turned there were the shadows of ghosts.
"I don't see a thing. I almost do, but never quite."
"Surely you do." Mudge was grinning now. "Just like meself, we're seeing them
after they aren't there any more."
"But you were looking at them a moment ago," said Jon-Tom, feeling very foolish
now because he knew there was definitely something near them in the forest. "You
told me where to look, where they'd moved to."
"You're 'alf right, mate. I told you where t' look, but not where they were. You
can only see where they've been, not where they are." He scratched one ear as he
stared back over a furry shoulder. "It never works. You never can see 'em, but
those folks who are lucky enough not t' almost see 'em never stop from tryin'.
There!"
He gestured sharply to his right. Jon-Tom's head spun around so fast a nerve
spasmed in his neck and he winced in pain. Visual footprints formed in
afterimage in his brain.
"They're all around us," Mudge told him. "Around you, mostly."
"What are?" His brain was getting as twisted as his optic nerves. It was bad
enough not to be able to see something you knew was present without having to
try and imagine what they were. Or weren't. It was like magnets. You could get
the repelling poles close to each other, but at the last possible instant,
they'd always slide apart.
"Gneechees."
Jon-Tom turned sharply to his left. Again his gaze caught nothing. He was
positive if he shifted his eyes just another quarter inch around he'd have
whatever was there in clear focus. "What the hell are gneechees?"
"Blimey, you mean you don't 'ave 'em where you come from?"
"Where I come from we don't have a lot of the things you're used to, Mudge."
"I always thought..." The otter shrugged. "The gneechees be everywhere around
us. Some times they're more visible than at others, or less invisible 'ud be a
better way o' puttin' it. Millions and millions of 'em."
"Millions? Then why can't I see just one?"
Mudge threw up his paws. "Now that's a fine question, ain't it? I don't know.
Nobody knows. Not even Clothahump, I'd wager. As to wot they be, that's another
nice little mystery. 'Bout the best description I ever 'eard of 'em was that
they're the things you seen when you turn your 'ead and there's nothin' there,
but you're sure there was somethin'. Gneechees are wot you almost see out o' the
corner o' your eye, and when you turn to look at it, it's gone. They're the
almost-wases, the nearly theres, the maybe-couldbes. They're always with us and
never there."
Jon-Tom leaned thoughtfully back in his saddle, fighting the urge to glance
constantly to right or left. "Maybe we do have them. But they seem to be just
slightly more visible, just a touch more substantial here than back home." He
wondered if there were millions of gneechees swarming around the university.
They might be the explanation for a lot of things.
"How can you be so sure they're real, if you can never see one?"
"Oh, they're real enough, mate. You know they're real just as I do, because your
noggin tells you there's somethin' there. It's foolin' your mind and not quite
completely foolin' your eyes. Not that I care much 'bout 'em. My concerns are
more prosaic, they are.
" 'Tis mighty frustratin' t' them who worry about such things, though. See,
they're immune t' magic. There's not the wizard been who could slow down a
gneechee long enough t' figure exactly what one was. Not Clothahump, not
Quelnor, not the legendary sorceress Kasadelma could do it.
"They be 'armless, though. I've never 'eard o' anyone bein' affected by 'em one
way or t'other."
"How could you tell?" Jon-Tom wondered. "You can't see them."
"Cor, but you could sure enough see the victim, if they took a notion to go to
troublin' someone."
"They give me the crawlies." He tried not to look around, and found himself
hunting all the harder. It was one thing to think you were seeing things that
weren't, quite another to learn for a fact that millions and millions of minute
creatures of unknown aspect and intent were occupying the air around you.
"Why are they hanging around me?"
"Who knows, mate. 'Cept that I've 'eard gneechees are attracted t' worried folk.
People who be frettin', or upset. Same goes for magick-ers. Now, you fit both
categories. 'Aven't you ever noticed somethin' around you when you've been like
that?"
"Naturally. You always tend to imagine more when you're upset or stressed."
" 'Cept you're not imaginin' them," Mudge explained. "They're 'angin' about all
right. Tis not their fault. I expect that's just wot they're sensitive to, not
t' mention the fact that your emotions and feelin's are otherworldly in nature."
"Well, I wish they'd go away." He turned and shouted, "Go on, go away! All of
you!" He waved his hands as though it were a flock of flies he could shoo from
his psyche. "Harmless or otherwise, I don't want you around. You're making me
nervous!"
"Now that won't do, Jon-Tom." Talea had twisted around in her lead saddle and
was staring back at him. "The more angry you become the more the gneechees will
cling to your presence."
He continued swatting sideways. "How come I can't hit one? I don't have to see
one to hit one. If there's something there, surely I ought to get in a lucky
swipe sooner or later."
Mudge let out a sigh. "Crikey, lad, sometimes I think whoever set you out on the
tightrope o' life forgot t' give you your balancin' pole. If the gneechees be
too fast for us t' see, 'ow do you expect t' fool one with somethin' as slow as
the back o' your 'and? I expect we must seem t' be swimmin' through a vat o'
blackstrap molasses from their point o' view. Maybe we don't seem t' be movin'
at all they just consider us parts o' the landscape. 'Cept we're the parts that
generate the emotions or forces or wotever it is that occasionally attracts 'em
in big numbers. Just thank wotever sign you were born under that they are
'armless."
"I don't believe in astrology." Maybe it was time to change the subject.
Continued talk of gneechees was frustrating as well as fruitless.
"Now who said anything about astrology?" The otter eyed him in puzzlement. "Now
meself was born beneath a cobbler's sign in the riverbank community o'
Rush-the-Rock. 'Ow about you?"
"I don't know... oh heck, I guess I was born under the sign of L.A. County
General."
"Military family, wot?"
"Never mind." His tone was resigned, and he was a little worn out from his
experiments with his newfound abilities, not to mention the discovery that
millions of not quite physical creatures found him attractive. In order to get
rid of them it seemed he was going to have to cease worrying so much, relax, and
stop being strange.
He would work on the first two, but he didn't know if he could do anything about
the third.
He spent an uneasy night. Mudge and Talea slept quietly, save for a single
incident involving a muffled curse followed by the sound of a fist striking
furry flesh.
No matter how hard he tried he could not go to sleep. Trying not to think of the
gneechees' presence was akin to not thinking of a certain word. What happened