A JINGLING OF metal woke Eric up.  This, and the sound of his name being called in a strange, faraway voice. But then he realized that the summons came from quite close by, only it seemed pitched for his ears alone.

A shimmering ghost stood in the open flap of the tent.  Bright moonlight on the snow illuminated it.  Eric grunted in alarm at the sight, producing a noise in his throat that sounded alien to him, more like the cry or cough of some doomed animal far away.

"Eric," the phantom called.  "You must come with me."

Within the tent a single candle was burning, though it was almost down to the stub.  None of Eric's companions stirred in their sleep.  Hastily he fumbled for the tin containing his pince-nez and slipped the glasses on.

Now that he could see clearly, what confronted him was even more disconcerting than the ghost might have been.  The face of the apparition was that of a metal bird, with a sharp iron beak and cheek-feathers of rusty iron.  Its eyes were dark holes.  On its head the creature wore a felt cap with kopeks sewn around it.  A caftan hung from its shoulders, decked with long ribbons upon which were sewn dozens of pieces of metal shaped into suns, moons and stars.  When the figure shifted, these ribbons swayed like snakes, all of the pieces jangling together.  What a firmament of stars and discs!  What a weight they must be!  Nor was that the whole of the metal:  an iron breastplate was fastened to the creature's chest with rope.

In one hand the visitor held a little drum; and in the other a wooden staff---the head of the staff was carved into a horse head.

And none of the other sleepers awoke.... Obviously, the monster must be one of the Tungusi, dressed up in the middle of the night like a pagan Archerite.  Why?  To kill and rob them?  Nobody would ever find out.  There would be no justice---only murder.  Eric's thoughts raced fearfully. "Where the hell's that revolver?"

"Matousek, wake up!" He gripped Richard by the shoulder and shook him; but the Czech only grunted and slumbered on.  

"He will not awaken," said the visitor.  "None will.  Only you.  I only called you."

"Basha, is that you?  But you're speaking Russian---quite fluently!"

"He who speaks the tongue of Nature speaks all tongues."

"Really?  Alors, parlez avec moi en francais?"

"For now, I will only speak Russian."

"You are Basha.  I recognize your voice."

"I am Shaman."

"Who?"

"You don't speak Tungus'k.  Never mind.  Give me some tobacco and come outside."

"What?  You expect me to hand over my tobacco?"

"Just a mouthful, no more.  I need tobacco to chew.  You give it---it has to be your tobacco."

"What for?"

"To permit me to dream."

Reluctantly, Eric searched his bag in the candlelight for his precious stock of decent Armenian weed, mailed by Ludmilla.  Basha---who else would it be?---trotted over.  Depositing staff and drum briefly, he scooped up a handful of tobacco. Raising the metal bird-mask a little, he crammed the spoils between his lips and began noisily masticating them.  Then he beat a hasty retreat to the tent flap and held it wide.  "Come!"

"Non-plussed, Eric donned his boots, hugged his clothes about him, and followed.

Basha skipped away smartly into the center of the clearing and started dancing slowly round and round---but with the light step of a ballet dancer, not like someone encumbered with such a weight of metal.  The iron stars clashed and sparkled in the moonlight, but despite the clanking of all these medallions nobody peeped out of any of the tents.  Even the hobbled horses stood like statues.  A trance had fallen upon the world, beyond the trance of sleep.

The great pines and larches that hemmed the clearing were frost-giants crowding together to watch.  Eric could just see the river beyond, in one direction.  Little ice floes raced along it, spinning and colliding.

Dream People will slip out of the trees soon, he thought to himself.  And out of the past they'll slip, too---grinning and sneering, their hearts filled with intrigue.  Then I'll look around, and Ludmilla, Oaxana, and everyone else I love, all of them suffering stupid cruelties at the hands of my phantoms.

But nobody came from the world of memory; and Basha spun himself to a standstill.  Flopping crosslegged on the snow, his metal ribbons spreading around him in a tiny tent, he began to rap his drum with a stick pulled from inside his caftan.

Then he threw his drumstick into the air.  It turned over and over, and fell at Eric's feet, where it jerked for about a moment like a compass needle before coming to rest, pointing north by south.

"Heat!" moaned the bizarre figure.  "Unbearable heat!  The heat of Ogdy burning all the trees which are the roadway from Earth to Sky.  But Shaman does not feel this heat!"

Basha jumped up again suddenly, as if his tail was on fire. Racing towards the closet of the towering, snow-draped firs, he ducked beneath the bottom branches, then heedless of all the pounds of metal he was wearing, he leaped, caught hold, and scrambled up the trunk from branch to branch----showering snow down---till he sat perched on a high limb.

Staring up at the brittle, ice-flake stars in the sky, he cried, "Lord Buga!  Here I am, back where I was before my birth!  Before the time my soul got hauled down from the branches of the World Tree---oh, Tree of All the World!  Hear me now!"

Amazed, Eric walked a few paces.

"Lord Buga, all Your trees lie flat!  What does it mean?  Has Ogdy at last defeated you?  Has He thrown down the sky-ladder?  Must we all decay into beasts without wisdom?"

The iron bird cocked its head to listen.  Then it shinnied down the tree trunk again and ducked out into the clearing to stand rocking and jingling before Eric.  Somewhere inside the dark holes of his mask, glassy eyes stared into his own eyes.  Basha tipped the mask up momentarily, just a little, and spat a brown spent wad into the snow.

Confronted by this aboriginal gibberer---who was undeniably impressive in an uncanny, prehistoric way in the haunted moonlight---Eric felt as if time had been knocked out of joint and had been suddenly plunged one thousand years into the past   Here was the Real World Soul that Lydia had invoked so lyrically and fatuously as they floated down the Yenisei!  

Superstition and absurd ecstasies, weary despair, and sheer terror of some malicious spiritual foe lurking in the vastness of the land:  these were all common fare for the average Christian soul even at the best of times!  Was Basha really any different from them---or they from him?   There was a suspicious similarity between Basha's "Lord Buga" and the Russian term "Bog," meaning "God."

"I hear your words!" the figure cried.  It performed antic capers.  'He, and only He, shall see!  And then He will turn his steps away from the accursed place!"

Basha whipped out an oval mirror from somewhere within his caftan.  It was the size of his palm and framed in bronze.  Puffing, he polished with his cuff before his breath could freeze.

"Look, Eric!"

And Eric did indeed look.  To begin with, it appeared that the silvering behind the glass was severely tarnished; he could only make out a snowstorm or white fog, in place of the clearing.  But then the fog (or whatever it was) dispersed without warning.  To his shock he saw what could only have been the bridge of a ship, in miniature within.  At least so he assumed from all the glass dials, instruments and controls.  As the mirror tipped slightly in Basha's hand, he could see a man strapped in a seat.  The man wore a worried expression on his face---and that face, amazingly, was Eric's own!

Who was he?

He could hardly have been a naval or army officer.  He was wearing such an odd uniform, white, black, and silver, and all of a single piece, with strips of metal on the pockets.  A tricolor flag consisting of three equal horizontal fields; white on the top, blue, in the middle, and red on the bottom, was sewn into his sleeve, near the shoulder.  Now, just what kind of flag was that? Dutch?  American?  No....

As Eric watched, the other man who wore his face fumbled with the buckles holding him---and floated above the seat, weightlessly!

Was this not a ship at all, but one of Tsiolkovsky's spaceships?  But if there were people on Mars (that flag did have red on the bottom) why should they look exactly like people on Earth? Was a twin born on Mars to every soul on Earth?

This had to be a hallucination---a person could be enthralled by a mirror!  Eric shook his head to regain his lucidity.  In kind, Basha shook the mirror backwards and forwards.

Eric blinked.  The scene had changed.  HIs doppelganger was lying on a tatty old sofa in a wood-paneled room.  A burly man with curly black hair and a thin nose, dressed in a suit of an indefinably bizarre cut, was sitting astride a cane on a chair nearby, the way a doctor might sit by his patient's couch.  The "doppelganger" must've hurt his eye; he was wearing a black patch over it.  HIs head rested on a folded jacket, otherwise he was clad in a woolen jersey and a pair of coarse blue trousers apparently cut from sailcloth or tent canvas.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx6tMTFWHYc

An odd box stood on the floor beside the sofa.  It was the size of a little suitcase and what appeared to be glass disc joined by a length of burnt-umber tape were turning around on top while the doctor listened intently to the words of the invalid.  Since Eric couldn't lipread, whatever was being related stayed a mystery---or why the doctor should be glancing at the box from time to time, as if this was the tool of his diagnosis.

Suddenly Eric began to feel that he was falling forward weightlessly---and that in a very short time he would become that figure lying on the sofa!  He cried out without making sense.

A terse jerk on his wrist broke the spell.  He discovered that Basha had cast a little noose of twine around his wrist, with his free hand.  The Tungusi was playing him the way an angler plays a fish. And the mirror was all slow or fog again, quickly Basha tucked it back inside his caftan out of sight.

"You have returned?" said Basha.  "See to it that you return to where you belong."

"I---I don't understand any of this! What did I see? What was it?  Where was it?"

"The question is: 'When was it?'"

"When?!  Now I'm really confused!"288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0DdeErP25I

The Tungusi chuckled softly and led Eric unresistingly back towards the tent, pulling him along by that loop of string.  And one of the horses neighed miserably: a statue brought back to life.

Fatigue overcame Eric the moment the two men reached the tent flap.  He was barely able to pull his boots off in the final guttering flickers from the candle, and creep back into his bedding before he fell into a deep, deep sleep.