‘What do you mean, “Now I know”? I don’t know anything. I’m not even sure who or what I am anymore. Hey, did you just talk in Fox?’
‘That’s good, dear, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m so glad it’s all finally over. I’ve loved you so very much, as only foxes such as we can love, but I couldn’t tell you; you had to find out yourself.’
‘What’re you talking about, Caroline? I haven’t found out anything, only what Wilhelm told me. And it all seems so crazy, impossible, I have a hard time believing any of this stuff. What’s going on?’
Caroline leans down and kisses me again. I keep my eyes open, something I don’t usually do, and as I look into her open eyes they change color until they give off the golden yellow glow, like an amber fire from inside, the way Franky’s eyes always did. It scares me.
‘Dearest, try to let go, and I’ll do my best to loosen you from the bindings on your mind within which you’ve had to live all these years.
‘You’ll never know how many nights I haven’t slept, knowing you for all your wonderful gifts, your insights, your skills, your sensitivity, your massive intelligence, watching you struggle along in this limited human identity we felt you had to adopt so all of us could be preserved. It didn’t seem fair.
‘Sometimes it was like watching a much-loved, favored child who had been stricken blind and deaf, crippled but knowing that inside itself this child remembers all it was before, only can’t really express anything. I’d walk through the farms and hills crying so hard I could scarcely breathe. It was a part of coming back with you I hadn’t thought about, could never have realized.
‘But first let me continue with the story Wilhelm told you. I’ll tell you the parts he couldn’t tell.’
I watch her. She’s slowly becoming something else, someone different from the wife with whom I’ve lived all these years, and at the same time, more – deeper, stronger. I’m loving this person she’s becoming, more powerfully, passionately, than I’ve loved Caroline, and I never thought I could ever love anyone more than I loved my wife.
‘Back there, or perhaps it’s up there, fifty thousand years in the future, when we realized who Franky Furbo really was, we were in a quandary. We knew from our own experience that somehow Franky Furbo had reproduced. I agreed to come back to this time as your mate and live with you, because we loved each other.’
I realize she’s speaking in fluent Fox, beautiful Fox. I can’t move. I still can’t comprehend what she’s saying.
Then Caroline slides onto the bed beside me. She beckons Billy to cuddle up against me and listen. Is she saying what I think she’s saying? I really don’t believe it. But I listen.
‘Our greatest problem after we’d made the decision that I should go back with you was how to ensure the survival of the two of us and our progeny. As you know, from what Wilhelm told you, it was decided we would live as humans. If humans knew there was a species superior to theirs, their first response would be the competitive one: they would destroy us as they try to destroy each other. We had to plan against that.
‘There was also the problem of you. I couldn’t convince the rest of the council that you were not just a primitive, but a very advanced, intelligent being. Not even the testimony of Doctor Aymeis, the psychosociologist who had lived in your mind, could impress them. All her powers of persuasion, her expertise, were not enough.
‘They couldn’t believe that a fifty-thousand-year-old primitive who spoke in what seemed like guttural grunts to them and who was, in their eyes, awkward, backward, could possibly be trusted with the future of the fox species.
‘I should say here that one of the failures of our race, probably another atavistic throwback to the original foxes, our forebears, is our righteousness, our false pride. It’s the same kind of rigidity, difficulty in accepting change or new knowledge, that led to the death of your mother. This is only one of our failings; you will come to know others.
‘You have already experienced another failing – our ruthlessness. Just as we were once primitive, ruthless killers of lesser animals in our aboriginal form, we are ruthless in our minds even now. You are, too, or you wouldn’t have survived alone as well as you did.’
She smiles. I’m between getting lost just listening to the sound of her voice, the beauty of her language, and getting even more lost as she tries to explain whatever it is she’s telling me.
‘I can sense telepathically, and also see from your face, that this isn’t going to work this way. You’ve had so many blocks planted in your mind not to believe what I’m telling you about your true self that, with the limited human-level mind to which we’ve reduced you (even though we left the ability for you to speak and understand Fox), you can never understand. I shall need to take more drastic measures, bring you back, first.
‘This is going to be a terrible shock, more than you would believe, but I think it’s the best way. I’ve often discussed with our monitor how I should handle this part of the revelation, but I could never be sure. Now I see how it must be.’
She smiles. She’s so lovely. Billy, beside me, senses that something important is about to happen. He holds on to me even more tightly. I feel as if I’m catatonic. I can’t move. Caroline has me in some kind of mental hold and all I can do is stare at her, listen, wait. My old idea that I might be crazy seems even more logical, acceptable, than what’s really happening. Is this my Caroline talking, speaking Fox, trying to tell me that I’m Franky Furbo? It’s all insane! I look down at poor Billy and try to smile. I’m sure he’s even more in shock than I am. Could Caroline be putting all this on to shake me out of my belief in Franky Furbo? No, she wouldn’t do that. I really am going bananas.
‘Now, all you need do is relax, my darlings, listen to my voice, let your mind wander, each of you. I’m going to bring you to yourselves at the same time. It will be easier for Billy because I’ve been working with him since he was born. But you, William, have a whole life, a whole world, many blocks inserted between you and yourself, which I must remove. It will take time and much mental effort. Try not to fight me. Whatever you feel, let it happen. I promise I won’t hurt you and what you will know and feel afterward will be worth all you’ve suffered.’
Then, while Billy and I hold each other as if we’re afraid of falling from the bed, from the world, from life itself, we watch as Caroline goes around the room and closes all the shutters, locks them, locks the door, lights a candle and puts it on a table at the foot of the bed. It’s all so spooky, like somebody about to tell a ghost story. I smile down at Billy again.
Then she comes back and straddles the two of us with her knees. She leans close, hovering over us. My heart is beating in something between fear and passion. I wonder what Billy is feeling. She stares into our eyes; hers are glowing brighter than the candle. The intensity of her stare makes me feel as if I’m shrinking and expanding simultaneously. My head begins to spin and then float separate from my body. There’s the sensation of layers and layers of fat or paint being carefully peeled from my brain, from my heart, from all of me. I feel a tightening inside, a loosening, a hardening, surrounded by a softening, of my whole body and mind. I lose all sense of time; it feels as if days and nights are passing, but none of us move. Again, there’s that smell of almonds I smelled when Franky put Wilhelm’s thoughts into my mind. I can’t even be sure if I’m breathing, if any of us are. The passage of whatever passes for lifetime seems suspended.
I can hear Caroline in her beautiful Fox speaking to us. It’s in our own mouths, in our own brains. I’m beyond wondering. I can only follow, wander with Caroline’s voice, her mind, through seemingly endless red and orange tunnels.
But with each twist, each sloughing off of another layer, I feel closer to my inner self, to a self that always seemed to exist only in dreams.
I begin to hear Caroline’s voice clearly again, first almost a whisper from far away, then closer, and finally I hear it with a clarity I’ve never known. I also know it isn’t Caroline, my wife, I’m hearing; it’s Raethe, my wife of so long ago, long ago in the future. She stops. I feel myself released from the weight of her presence.
‘So now you’re ready to know. Perhaps you know already. I’m not sure if I’ve been able, William, I mean Franky, to remove all the blocks between William and yourself. You were given a complete identity by the most masterful mind manipulators in all the world, up there, fifty thousand years from now.’
I’m listening, but at the same time I’m looking. I look at Caroline and she is the most beautiful vixen in all the world, the fox I love. I look down at myself and I’m fox again, myself. I’m truly Franky Furbo. Franky Furbo really does exist, and I’m he! No wonder William had to believe in Franky: if there were no Franky then he didn’t exist.
Thinking this, I find a cloud of doubt, of unreality, pass through my brain. It’s almost like the sensation when you know you know something but can’t remember it.
I turn, and there beside me is Billy. He’s a fox, too. I again think of little Matthew in the story I told. Billy looks exactly like him. There are certain visual memories still in my brain, as William, which apparently can show up at strange times. Billy is enjoying looking down at himself. He turns and speaks to me in perfect Fox, better Fox than I could ever teach him.
‘Boy, look at me! I’m really a fox! I’m like Franky Furbo myself. And you know, I can read minds. I know what you’re thinking, Dad, and what Mom’s thinking, too.’
‘All right, now you two settle down. Move over and give me a little space to stretch out and rest. I’m very tired and both of you should be, too, especially you, Franky. Let’s all take a nice little nap as foxes together, then I’ll tell you the rest of our story.’
With that she climbs in between us, and before I know what’s happening, I’m asleep. In my sleep I have mixed dreams, some dreams of William as they fade, and the rest, dreams of my life as a fox, my life living in my tree, and my life in the time of Raethe, so long in the future, but a place and time where I’ve been. I think some of my dreams are coming to me from Raethe as she’s stretched out beside me. But my mind can enter hers too and perhaps these dreams are hers as much as mine.
It’s going to take some time getting accustomed to the free flow of telepathy. Maybe Franky Furbo got used to it, but poor William Wiley, the person I’ve been for over sixty years, is still uncomfortable with other people’s thoughts flowing through his mind.
When I wake, Raethe and Billy are already awake and mentally speaking to each other, trying not to wake me. I listen for a few seconds, but they know immediately I’m awake by the emanations from my brain to theirs. I look down at my fox body. I look over at Billy and Raethe. It’s all so strange and familiar at the same time. I’m having a hard time adapting to this new identity, to myself, and what really is.
‘Don’t worry, dearest one. It will all come. I’ve been talking with Billy and he’s doing just fine. By the way, his real name isn’t Billy. When our monitor baptized him, he gave me the name he is supposed to have; this is part of our archives. His name is actually Sarva. I hope you don’t mind; I think you’ll get used to it. Billy is a hard-sounding name in Fox, as you probably already know. By the way, as you most likely noticed, Sarva speaks perfect Fox. Surreptitiously, in the night while he slept, I’ve taught him, without his knowing it, over the years. Our other children also speak this beautiful language you invented.’
I realize I do know. Also, I know Sarva is the perfect name for him. He smiles and I smile back.
‘You said monitor, Raethe. Do you mean the priest who came and baptized each of the children was monitoring us? I don’t understand
‘Actually, he was more of a contact for me. When I needed help or wanted to pass information back to the research center, I could use him. He is a specialist in space-time travel and also a psychosociologist. It was very kind of him to stay here in the past with us for the twenty years he did. I don’t know how he managed to have a post as priest in Perugia, but he has tremendous powers of telepathy and hypnosis. He most likely used those to mask himself. He’s the one who knew enough about the mentality of the Italian human peasant to realize baptizing the children would be an aid for our integration and acceptance here, especially mine.’
‘And do the other children have different Fox names as well? I’ve got an awful lot to get used to
‘Yes. I know it’s all very hard for you now, Franky, but you’ll find it much easier as time passes. Our oldest, Kathy, is called Trais, Matthew is Hinva, and Camilla is Panta. All these names have become, in time, common names in Fox. One of the things that interests me is that they are the first, but they are named according to what for them is the future. You see, Franky, even I have trouble sometimes with the time overlap.’
‘And how about “Franky Furbo”? How does that fit in with Fox? I just chose it without any help, even before I invented the language. It’s a name that’s half American English and half Italian. I only knew I wanted a name, so I made it up, or is there some kind of time twist here, too?’
‘It is a name unique to you. It was only when we’d developed our skills in going back to the past that we knew of you and your name. No one in our time is named Franky Furbo; it would be considered sacrilege. It is not a name a fox of our race would choose, anyway. I love your name, Franky, as I loved you when you were William. I would love you by any name. I hope you know that.
‘But now it is time I tell you about yourself, about what is true and what is not.
‘This is very complicated, and I’ve gone over it many times, both to remind myself of all the complications and also to prepare myself for this moment. Most of it concerns you, Franky, but Sarva may listen if he wants.
‘Whenever you have questions, interrupt me and I’ll try to answer them. I could tell you all this by telepathy but I want you to hear with your ears as well as your mind. Try not to read my mind but let it unfold as I tell it to you in Fox. If you try to take in too much too fast you could lose your way and it would only take us longer. Are you ready? I know this is all going to be a terrible shock, especially for you, Franky, but you must know these things. Some of them seem terribly arrogant and ruthless for us to have done to you, but we could see no other way, so much was at risk. It was the only way the council would agree to let me come back here and live with you as your wife. It meant much to me and, I believe, to you too.’
She looks at the two of us, smiles, then closes her eyes briefly as if putting all in order. I shut down my own mind to hers and wait till she’s ready to begin. I have a feeling that after this, much I have valued and loved will be lost. I look around at the comfortable small house we’ve lived in so long, so happily. It is built for human-sized creatures, I can see now from my smaller stature as fox. It all looks strange, huge, different already. Something in me wants to hold on, not to go into this world where Caroline-Raethe is inviting me. I wait.
‘Back there, when we decided the best solution within our history, related to what we knew, was for me to come back with you, there were many decisions to be made.
‘As I’ve said, the research council did not feel you were capable of dissimulating effectively because of your close contact – from their point of view, your contamination – by the world in which you’d been born, the world in which you’d lived.
‘It was decided you had to be given a complete human identity, one that you would accept as your true nature. It had to be an identity within the geography of where I had found you and close, to within a few years, to the time I arrived at your tree house in the forest.
‘When it was explained to you back there, you understood and agreed to what was being suggested. You were so brave, Franky; I was so proud of you. I still am.
‘As you remember, there had been a human war, one of many, which had raged a few years earlier, not far from where you were living in your tree house. We had sent invisible, telepathic-hypnotic technicians to search for someone from the battlefields who, because of the upheavals, injuries and deaths, we might use for your identity when we found you.
‘Finally, they found William Wiley. He was dying. He was in a hole near a bridge not far from where you lived, close enough for our purposes. He was of the right age, and, best of all, he was an orphan and had no family. With him was a German soldier also at the point of death.
‘Before William Wiley died, and there was no way to save him, three telepaths, independently, absorbed every memory left in the dying brain of this young human. They also absorbed every physical feature, including the terrible wounds of the body.’
‘You mean I’m dead? William Wiley is dead? I can’t believe it
I feel faint. There is almost the sensation of dying, as if a breath of me is being extinguished. William Wiley is still inside me, but now he’s dead. I really can’t accept it.
‘But it’s true, Franky dearest. The human you became, William Wiley, has been dead for more than forty years. He was listed as missing in action with the human military of that time. In a sense he was. Our technicians reduced his body to the minimum, about the size of a spider, and buried it on the hillside near to where he died.
‘Before he expired, they also siphoned off the greater part of the identity of the German soldier. They buried him there as well, beside you. That was the real Wilhelm Klug.
‘If you want to, sometime I shall take you there. I have been there myself. Strangely, perhaps because I love you so and have lived with you so long, I wanted to see where the last remains of the body on which you were modeled was lying.
‘In any case, the technicians came back to us, fifty thousand years into what we here call the future, with their psychic, psychological, and physical data. They shared it telepathically with the members of the research center, and it was with this information they designed the human you would become.’
‘You mean, without telling me, you somehow changed me into a dead man named William Wiley and I’ve been living that way, not knowing it, all these years? I’ve lost a good part of my life, have gotten old, not even being myself! Does that seem right to you, Raethe? I feel as if I’ve had a huge part of my real life stolen from me. At the same time, the person I thought I was all this time is gone, in reality, practically never really was
‘As I said, William, we are ruthless. But we are not all bad. We told you everything that was going to happen, everything we wanted you to do. We asked your permission and you agreed. You also agreed it was best if during the time you were William Wiley you did not know you were also Franky Furbo.
‘Still, there was concern that if you lived too long without knowledge of your real self, something of your nature, your strong personality, might be lost. It caused considerable concern for those involved. We sat in on many long meetings while the details of how to bring about the desired results and still not abuse your psyche were discussed. We all really did care for you, Franky. You are sacred to us as our original progenitor, without which none of us could be. Also, there were selfish concerns that if we didn’t prepare this properly, we could make mistakes or even a mistake that would affect or even reverse the progress of our species retroactively.
‘Our knowledge of time sequence is similar to the knowledge humans had of electricity when it was first discovered. We can see the results, use time to our advantage as a convenience, but we don’t know much about its many properties, so we had to be cautious.’
‘OK, so what happened next? Now you’ve got William buried and you have all the essential information about him up there in your time and you’re going to turn me into William Wiley and send me back. Is that right?’
‘Yes, but it was more complicated than that. There were many stories, events, seeming memories, that had to be implanted in your brain as real. There had to be blocks placed so no accidental event in your life – unconsciousness, a fever – could trigger you to lose a part of your William Wiley identity, or discover the reality of yourself.
‘In order to keep the concept, that is, the persona, of Franky Furbo alive, an entire history had to be invented, which you were to believe … more than that – to become. This is the history you probably still believe about you and Wilhelm being in the hole together, dying, and having Franky Furbo, as fox, come to rescue you, take you to his tree, save your life, talk to you about human lives, about how he wanted you to live. It was necessary to implant in you the desire to live apart from humans, thus to protect you and your children.
‘Franky Furbo, as a separate, fictional character totally created from your fox identity, told you much about yourself, what we knew about your real life as a fox, but you were not to know these stories were truly about you; they were to be about a fox, Franky Furbo, independent from you, with whom you stayed briefly at the end of the war along with the German, Wilhelm Klug. That way, you believed in yourself, as Franky Furbo, but didn’t recognize that it was actually you, yourself. Also, for reasons of safety, we implanted the memories and language of Wilhelm in your brain. It helped verify to you, as William Wiley, that you really had lived with Franky and Wilhelm in the tree. Do you understand?’
To be honest, I’m not sure I do anymore. I’m finding myself resentful of being so manipulated, even if I did agree to it forty years ago, or fifty thousand years from now.
I try getting it all arranged in my mind. Those stories I told the children – that I wrote about, that I believed myself, about the fox in the foxhole, about living in the tree, about Franky, about Wilhelm – never actually happened! They were created out of nothing by a bunch of fox scientists in the future. No wonder I used to feel I was crazy sometimes: I was. I had all these different identities, events, true and false, warring together in my mind. I’m feeling weak now, depressed. I didn’t know Franky Furbo could feel that way. This gives some idea of how difficult it is for me to adjust: I’m still thinking of Franky as someone independent of myself. I take a deep breath.
‘So I became William Wiley and you brought me back to my own time, here. Is that it?’
‘No, it couldn’t be done that easily. It would have been impossible for me to transport you, as human, across so much time. It was necessary that you come back as fox, holding close to me while you, as William Wiley, existed only in my brain.
‘Then, when we were here, back in Italy, while resting, recuperating in your tree house, I searched until I found this small house, not far from where I had found you in the first place. We were back in time to only two years after you, that is, William Wiley, died. We worked for a month until everything that had been so carefully stored in my brain was safely lodged in yours, including all the blocks and posthypnotic suggestions. It was so strange watching you change under my own eyes, my hands, my brain into someone else. You became someone who had been in my brain, someone I loved but who was entirely different from the fox I love so deeply.’
So, there doesn’t seem to be anything left that I really did on my own, not even search for and find this house. I’m beginning to feel like a living robot, someone programmed for someone else’s convenience. Would there be anything left to be proud of when Raethe’s finished telling me the whole story? Did I ever actually do anything except be an accidental mutation? I know Raethe knows all that I’m thinking. I look her in the eye. Is this the woman I’ve loved all these years, in two different times?
‘Franky, my love, it was difficult for you then, as it was for me, as it is difficult for you right now. But let me go on, it isn’t much more. Please bear with me.
‘The big advantage for you was that when I was finished, you remembered nothing. I reentered you into the life of William Wiley, as you’d been given to remember it, just at the point in your artificial history where you went up to the American military and told them your story about where you thought you had been during the past many months, that is, living with a fox and a German soldier in a tree in a forest.
‘It had been decided that it would be good if you had the experience of insisting on the identity of Franky Furbo, resisting all attempts to break down your implanted memories, blocks, posthypnotic suggestion, artificial life history. It would at the same time reinforce and test the effectiveness of our transplantation.
‘From that moment on, till now, you lived as a human. We had given strong posthypnotic suggestion for you to go to the West Coast, to Los Angeles, as soon as you received your medical discharge. We didn’t want you to return to the place where William Wiley had been born and where he grew up in Philadelphia; we didn’t want to take that chance. Also, we wanted you to meet me at the University of California at Los Angeles.
‘I was so glad to see you, to flirt with you, to feel us falling in love again. It wasn’t necessary for them to implant the love you had for me, because it was always there, as mine was for you. I know you felt it immediately when we first met. You see, I could still telepath.
‘I had chosen to look the way I look as a human. I didn’t want the very pale skin of a pink American human, but we didn’t want to call attention to our uniqueness unnecessarily, as would happen if I chose any other color; many humans are peculiar about color. I insisted, however, on having hair something close to the color of my tail and a medium-dark skin, just somewhat lighter than my hair. We foxes are very vain. I was so vain I haven’t allowed myself to age as you were allowed to. This has been a subject of much discussion and disagreement with our monitor. So I let myself age somewhat and stayed out of the way of humans in general, mostly staying in this house. I think I might have been afraid you would be like a human and not love me when I had wrinkles and gray hair.
‘Don’t worry, Franky, I know you’re vain as I am; after all, you are a fox, but you are still young by fox standards. You only look old as a human. Remember, we of our race live twice as long as humans. You, at human age sixty-three, are actually only, by fox development, in your early thirties.’
Raethe smiles. She’s so much like the beautiful fox I knew in the future – coquettish, laughing eyes, in the best ways a young vixen, at the same time a full-grown fox. But what she’s telling me is so horrible, so destructive to my own image of myself, both as William Wiley and as Franky Furbo, that she frightens me. I look again at Billy to see how he’s taking all this. He’s staring at me, and I can see it is with awe and wonder. I give him another squeeze. I look at Caroline-Raethe.
‘And so I studied literature and art while you studied economics, and I told you all about Franky Furbo and you convinced me you believed, when you knew so much more than I did. You must have thought I was the most foolish creature in the world. How could you have loved me?’
‘That was no problem, dear one. Hearing you tell me about yourself, as someone else, so conscientiously, so seriously, so anxious that I believe, was such a wonderful proof of your love for me both as Caroline, human, and as Raethe, fox, that I loved you even more. I knew you were doing all you could to help our race of foxes survive. You were my hero. You still are.
‘A part of the posthypnotic suggestion was that when we left the university we would move here to Prepo, to the very house where I’d turned you from a fox to a human. The specialists in mental manipulation were convinced this was important, that this metamorphosis that had taken place be near to where we live and also near to where you had lived as fox.’
‘OK, Caroline-Raethe, let’s talk about the past few days. Why did you decide suddenly to allow Sarva-Billy to deny Franky Furbo? Why did you pretend not to believe in him yourself? Was it all part of the plan? What happened? By the way, what about the other children; what do they know?’
‘When each of them was ready to leave home, to go off and make their own nest in another part of the world, I told them. I not only told them, I broke the blocks I’d put into their minds as I was teaching them, so that now they could truly know themselves for what they are. Each of them experienced briefly being fox, speaking Fox, before they left. Each of them knows they are not to take back their visible fox identity again without my permission, or yours. It is the sacrifice they must make until they are finished breeding. Then they can choose.
‘We, you and I, Franky, are finished breeding now. Our race of foxes has a long life, but our breeding period is relatively short. Foxes will rather consistently have four kits, one at a time, at least five years apart. Our gestation period is exactly one year, 365 1/4 earth days, so we are born almost precisely at the same time of year as we are conceived. No one knows exactly why this should be.
‘You and I have a long, happy life ahead of us to live as we want. It will be pleasant to enjoy our children and grand-children when they can come visit with us.
‘I felt it was time for you to know. I challenged you to prove your belief in Franky Furbo and sent you off to see Wilhelm. It had been decided that it would be far better for your reemergence as fox if you participated in the process, if you weren’t completely passive. Does that answer your question?’
‘Yes, I think so. But what about Wilhelm? Does he exist? If not, with whom did I speak in Bavaria? Or was that all some kind of posthypnotic experience? I don’t feel I know anything anymore. Did I really go see him? Did he actually go visit with Franky Furbo, hear the entire story of Franky fifty thousand years in the future, or did he think he did, or dream he did, or what? He seemed so real to me. I can’t believe I dreamed it or that it didn’t happen. Tell me about that
‘Of course, you did go to see Wilhelm, or the fox who was playing Wilhelm, and you found him. Actually, as I said, we took a record of his entire life when he was in the hole with William Wiley. He was created in your mind, as an extra identity. He was to serve as a comrade in your delusion of life with Franky Furbo, living in the tree. He was also a key, whereby, when the time came, you could gain access to the complex that had become your life. Wilhelm was a catalyst to your comprehension in finding yourself.
‘As I said, while taking information from your brain and about your body, one of the technicians was doing the same with Wilhelm as he died. It was not known then how this information could be used, but in case William Wiley proved inadequate or not of use for our purposes, we might have used him.
‘Almost by accident, this information on Wilhelm Klug proved valuable in this other instance, for the process of introducing you to something of your reality.
‘One of our social research scientists with a special interest in hostility and aggression in humans was there in Bavaria, in that hut in the forest. He wanted to live for a while with Germans, so as to carry out his investigations.’
Caroline-Raethe stops and looks at me carefully, both with her eyes and telepathically. I know I’m manifesting my confusion, resentment, consternation. She goes on more slowly.
‘This investigator assumed the identity of Wilhelm and lived where you found him. His isolation made it possible for him to return to his own time or stay there, as he desired. He has been of great value, not only in helping us understand the nature of aggression in humans but also in our own analysis of some of our more critical faults. His work is highly praised by all.
‘So, it was a lucky chance he was there for you to visit. It made everything much easier. We gave him the story he told you, and I removed the block that had kept you from going to search him out over all these years. The wife Wilhelm had in your version of his identity was a reality in the original Wilhelm’s own life. We hypnotically encouraged her to stay with her family near Nuremburg after Wilhelm’s death. It was then easy to create an illusion of her there in Seeshaupt, to seem to die in childbirth and thus give reason for Wilhelm’s seclusion and disillusionment. Wilhelm’s feigned disillusionment, in turn, forced you to come to terms with much of your own resentment and fear about what you were hearing then and, I hope, with what I’m telling you now.’
‘So, then, William Wiley is dead, really dead. I’m going to miss him, as I miss Wilhelm. Wilhelm, next to you and our children, was my closest friend. I guess I can’t count Franky Furbo, since I seem to be he, myself. It’s hard to be someone, or to think you’re someone for over forty years, when it seems to me like sixty-three
‘Oh, and now I understand why I didn’t have any memory of my life before the orphanage: you didn’t take it
‘William Wiley died before they could complete the reading of his brain. We could have made up some more artificial history, or memory, for you, but most of us felt there was too much danger in doing that; perhaps it could defile your adult personality with unnecessary or unintegrated information. So we left it vaguely blank. You were only to know you had lost your parents when you were eight years old. We gave you no memory of William Wiley’s parents because we had no information on them. Did you miss not having childhood memories?’
‘Not particularly. But maybe it explains my love for children, my desire to write children’s stories, both as Franky Furbo and as William Wiley. Franky never had what could be considered a real fox childhood – his mother died when he was so young – and William had no memory of childhood at all. Perhaps, in both identities, I was making up a childhood for myself when I wrote those stories. It could be
‘So is that all of it, all I should know? And what do we do now? I’m feeling as if I’m simultaneously at a birth and a funeral. Part of me, William, is sad to find he isn’t real, but the main core of me, Franky, is happy to be back, to continue with his life. And what about you, Raethe? How much of what I’ve known as Caroline, as Raethe, is real? Do you really love this primitive, awkward, recessive fox, or this stupid, naive human? I’m not sure of anything anymore
‘Oh Franky-William! This is what I’ve been afraid of all these years, that when it came time for you to know all, you wouldn’t have confidence in the things that truly are real. I know how horrible it must be for you to see, hear everything, everyone you’ve come to believe in, to love, as real – destroyed, taken away, or changed drastically. To see yourself bared – a victim of manipulation, psychic violence, invasion of your most profound inner nature. I was afraid you’d lose your ability to believe anything, even the most true things, such as our love.
‘All I can say is, look into me, hear me, feel me. I open now my heart and my mind to you. Sometimes only saying things means nothing, even in Fox.’
With this, I feel her passively making herself a part of me, entering into me. I know the depth of love, of concern, of admiration, of respect, of passion she has for me. I feel a love in myself for her, with every part of my being, with an intensity of which I didn’t know I was capable. The last fetters between me and myself, Franky Furbo, are finally removed. I’m vibrant with a sense of aliveness.
Words, even Fox words, would never be enough to tell Raethe all I feel. I radiate from my inner being the love I’m feeling and we wrap into each other. Her fur, her paws are so soft. She swirls her tail around me, and I mine around her, so we are as one. Sarva comes and holds on to the two of us.
‘Isn’t it great we can be foxes together, Mom, Dad? I wish Trais, Hinva and Panta could be here with us to share all this. I know they already know, but I guess I’m still human enough that I wish they could really be here.’
‘But they are, Sarva. Didn’t you know? Do you think we’d welcome your dad back, after all these years, without their being here? Look!’
I look, and there, spread out on the bed, each in his or her respective position in their old places, are our three other children. Trais, farthest from us, is very pregnant. Her husband and brother, Hinva, has his arm around her. Panta has come close to Sarva and they wrap their tails around each other. It’s only then that my mind realizes I’m seeing them all for the first time as foxes, as they really are, not as the human forms someone else gave them. Raethe turns to me, then to the others.
‘This is a moment I only managed to convince the research council was fitting because of all we’ve been through together, but it can’t last more than a few minutes. It is too dangerous. Take a good look, each of you, at all of us together, because we should either go invisible or back to our human form very quickly. Even now we are putting in danger the entire continuation of our race. That is why, as we propagate, our young must scatter themselves over the entire planet. Panta, you must go back to your lovely island in the north of Japan this evening. I suggest you transmigrate yourself, the same way you came here. Obviously, Trais and Hinva will be leaving, too, for their home in the Chilean mountains.
‘I hate to be so insistent about this, but it was made clear to me that this is the way it must be. As you all know, we foxes can be ruthless, must be sometimes. But for now, let’s be human and have a big meal together for old times’ sake. I have cooked up special dishes for all of you; each will have his favorite.’
We look around at one another. I’m so proud of our kits. They’re each different but obviously of the same family. We all hug in a circle, wrapping one another in our tails. It’s a wonderful moment for me. Then Raethe speaks again.
‘All right, now let us each transmute into our human bodies again. Is everyone ready?’
Our minds simultaneously confirm, and without any effort on my part, I’m William Wiley and the children are human again. It’s fun because now it all fits. We’re just ordinary human beings, living a not-too-ordinary life in a small house on the side of a hill.
The house is our home again. Caroline and Camilla open the shutters. It’s daytime. It seems like years since Caroline closed the shutters. It turns out to have been two days. It’s good to be resurrected as humans even though we’ll never be the same.
I’m in the process of realizing that I have three separate identities. Starting at the bottom, I have the memories, the language, the childhood of Wilhelm, that is, his life until he was killed at twenty. I also have the seemingly real memories of him I gained as William when we lived together with Franky, then also the pseudomemories of my visit to him just a few days ago in Hohenberg.
After this, I have the entire lifetime, except for some childhood memories, of William Wiley. I have all that was taken from the human, long dead now, with that name, plus what was created for me, my whole ‘seeming experience’ with Franky Furbo as fox, actually with myself in another artificial existence. Then, there’s the time from when Franky, actually Raethe and the research council, took me to the American soldiers and I began what could be called my ‘real’ life as William Wiley in ‘real’ time. It’s very confusing, even for me with all my supposed fox intelligence.
And above all that, most recent in my current memory but the oldest of my identities, my true nature as mutant fox, is Franky Furbo. Born in the first part of the twentieth century, transmigrated bodily to the future, fifty thousand years from now by Raethe, then brought back and put into a hypnotic reserve for forty years, living only in the fantasy of William Wiley, a dead young soldier – a transplanted fantasy at that.
And now what am I? I should be most comfortable in terms of identity as a mutant fox, Franky Furbo, mate to Raethe, father of Trais, Hinva, Panta and Sarva. But that isn’t everything. I have a strong personal as well as foxial history; the most important part of my life – being in love, being married, being father to my children, writing stories for other children – all these things are important, too. They constitute the greater part of what I know of as my life.
Everyone’s waiting for me to sit down at table. It has been our custom as humans to join hands before sharing food, looking into each other’s eyes and saying simultaneously, ‘Hmmmmmmmm mmmm Gooooood!’ I recognize, now, how this is a very foxy way to start a meal.
Caroline reaches for my hand and I hold Kathleen’s. We close the circle. Billy’s eyes are clear, sparkling with excitement. I have a hard time seeing him as fox; I’m not used to it. All I can see is the little boy before me who came to my bed about a week ago and asked for a Franky Furbo story.
We look at one another and I start ‘Hmmmmmmmmmmm,’ everybody joining in until we’re out of breath, then a deep inhale and a strong ‘Goooooooooooooooooooood!’ We all clap and start eating. Caroline has outdone herself. This is food fit for the ‘foxes’.
We eat and talk. We talk about ourselves and human things, as if we all didn’t know. I sense, feel, this is a part of the way it’s to be. As humans, we can know our fox identity now, but we shouldn’t talk about it unless it’s necessary. Even our telepathic skills are blurred like static. I try to communicate directly with Caroline’s mind and she looks at me, shakes her head. OK, I understand.
After dinner, we all help with the dishes, then spread out on the bed. It’s the way it’s always been. Outside, the sun is just going down. Caroline is the one who brings up the subject, the question that’s been bothering me. I think she’s the only one of us who still has telepathic powers intact and can communicate about our foxhood.
‘Well, dearest one, how do you want to live your life now? We should stay here a few more years until Billy is ready to join Camilla, but after that we have a long life to live, and since we’re together now, here, I think it’s a good time to discuss this. We might not have the chance being all together again in one place for a long time; it’s too dangerous.
‘William, I think you should be the one to make the decision. You’re the one who has sacrificed the most. I feel terrible about what you had to go through, and I hope to spend the rest of my life making up for it. You’re the father in a certain way to all of us, even me. How do you want to spend the last three-quarters of your life?’
She stops, smiles her magic smile at me, waits. I know she’d been reading my mind while I was acting so human, being angry, resentful, childish; I forgot she could telepath me. I smile back.
‘Well, I think you have a pretty good idea of the things I’ve been thinking. I don’t feel this is just my decision, though; it concerns all of us. Especially you, Caroline. You’re the one who has left the life you’ve known, grown up in, loved.
‘I was there with you; I know all you’ve given up. If you want, and it’s possible for me to join you, obviously we should go fifty thousand years ahead again and stay there. Is it possible?’
Her love comes rolling into me so my mind seems to stumble, tumble. I try to stand before the force of her power.
‘I think it would be possible, but it is not what happens. I know Franky Furbo never lives in our time.’
‘How do you know? You told me that even foxes of our race cannot know or move into the future, only the past, the past from the time in which they live. You can’t know if Franky Furbo will live in your time.’
‘Yes, but I know.’
She pauses, reaches over and turns into me, whispers in my ear.
‘I’m sorry, it isn’t fair, but I’ve been listening to your mind in its thinking. I think I know what you want to do, and I know what I want to do, also. Remember, in my time, I was considered peculiar because I had such an attachment to things of the primitive past. I tried to create artificially what I thought was the environment in which you lived. I believe now there was a spiritual transmigration into me from your time, probably from you. It’s the only thing that explains my fixation, the passion that made me a specialist in your era, searching you out. I have been very happy here, living the way we’ve lived. I should like to live that way, only with no more secrets between us.
‘The great pain for me has been knowing we were fooling you, taking advantage, and that there were so many things I couldn’t share. I’d like to stay here and live with you as we’ve lived but both of us knowing what we’re doing and why.
‘That’s how I know. Tell the children.’
She leans away from me and looks into my eyes. I’m stumped for a minute but then know she’s right. I sit up in the bed.
‘Well, your mother and I have just had a consultation, and I think that the decision we’ve made is the best for all of us. First, I’ll review the alternatives in case you haven’t considered them.
‘Your mother and I could possibly go into the future from where your mother has come. It is a life of high psychological and technological development, where the foxes are the custodians to the world, constantly curious, investigating all phenomena, trying to create a life that is beautiful and sane. There are comforts you have never known, titillating experiences that stretch the imagination, but since you are born in this time and we foxes cannot move into the future, none of you can go there. If your mother could take me with her again, and that is doubtful, we would have to live alone without you.
‘The second thing we could do is go back and live the original life of Franky Furbo as he designed it for himself. We could go forty years or more into the past and live in the tree house I built, where your mother found me. I could continue writing children’s books and your mother could continue with her anthropological, archaeological explorations. For safety, we could make ourselves invisible to all except ourselves, or we could live as foxes. You could each come to visit us there with your children, or alone, as you desired. It is an attractive alternative and one that we will probably adopt at some time in the future.
‘Our function as progenitors is almost over; we are not ourselves as critical to Fox species survival as we once were. All of you are born and the new generations of foxes are started.’
I look at Matthew, Kathleen, and smile.
‘The third alternative is to continue living here for a while, just as we have the past forty years. It seems strange, considering all the powers we have as foxes, but I know I’ve become quite content living as William Wiley with my wife, Caroline. We would probably need to allow ourselves to seem to age and then leave here before our longevity brought too much attention onto us, but that’s in the future.
‘It would be easy for you to visit with us here. There would be nothing out of the ordinary if you did. The villagers here know and accept us. So, that is probably the course we shall follow. OK?’
I look over at Caroline. She nods her head solemnly.
The children all break out in applause and shouts of approval. Billy stands on the bed. He jumps up and down.
‘It’ll be great knowing, secretly, we’re superfoxes with all kinds of extra powers and at the same time living the wonderful ordinary lives we’ve always lived. We’d have like a private club of just our family. I think that’s neat. I was sort of afraid of what was going to happen. Now it’s nice to know we’re going to be the same, but different. And won’t it be great to go visit in Franky’s, I mean Dad’s, tree house? I’ve dreamed about it so many times. Now I can actually go there someday.’
I’m very happy the decision is made. I feel like someone who’s gotten involved in a monumental decision situation and because the possibilities are enormous, unending, feels overchallenged. The pressure is off for the time being. I sense all of us are sharing similiar feelings. I turn to the children and smile.
Right then, like light coming through a crack in a shutter, comes a compacted thought into my mind from Caroline-Raethe.
‘William, one more thing you should know. I meant to tell you before but forgot. It probably isn’t too important to you, but you should know. We have, as a part of the plan in preparing humans for dominance, invaded the mind of a human born on the same day and year you were, with the same first name you’ve lived with – William. It isn’t really his name any more than William is yours, but it is a name he chose, as you chose Franky when you were a fox.
‘We’ve implanted in him the desire and ability to tell stories to the four children he has, four children, just like a fox. These stories have been about a creature called Franky Furbo, a mutant fox, which he thinks he has invented. He was born in the same city where William Wiley was born in America and went to the same university you went to in California. He studied painting and lived as an artist away from his homeland in Europe, but not in Italy.
‘Ten years ago we gave him the ability to write novels, and now he has written six of them, all after he was fifty years old, and they have had some success. Right now he is writing the seventh novel. It is about you, the life you’ve lived, and the arrival of the mutant foxes. This book will be widely read, and some humans might even suspect that it is true. We think it will be just enough of an introduction for humans without frightening them too much.
‘Now, come, tell us a Franky Furbo, please.’
As Caroline said, all that didn’t particularly interest me, but I was really ready to tell a Franky Furbo story. I had a real one to help celebrate Christmas, which had been bubbling in my mind ever since I started on my trip to find Wilhelm.
‘OK, so who’s interested in hearing a Franky Furbo story? Christmas is just around the corner and I feel a Christmas story, with Franky Furbo, elves, dwarfs, the North Pole, Santa Claus, the workshops, the whole thing, coming into my mind.’
I pause. Everybody snuggles closer. Caroline puts her arms around me and kisses me. I close my eyes.
Franky Furbo and the Year
Christmas Almost Didn’t Happen!
One cold night, just a few weeks before Christmas, Franky Furbo was wakened from his bed by a quiet knocking on his door. At first he thought it was only branches blowing, but then he decided to go down to see.
He opened the door and there were two tiny creatures standing on his doorstep. They leaped in the air and flew right past Franky, standing there in his pajamas, and onto his table. They had wings of gossamer and wore tiny green pointed hats …