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knew. If you weren't related now, wait a year or two.
"Oh my, yes. I hate to think how long ago. I came to this place to study the yeti for my graduate degree
at the University of Lhasa. Vajra has showed me a great deal about this region. I am Dr. Locana Hoa
Chung, by the way. What are your names?"
"I am Mike and this is Chime Cincinnati," Mike answered, bracing himself for all the questions about
how they came to be wandering around in the mountains.
The questions never came. Dr. Chung merely nodded politely and said, "We are pleased that you have
come." Mike thought for some reason that she might add "at last," but she didn't.
"I understand now how, by employing the wisdom of others, you have defended yourself from ghosts,"
Chime said slowly. "But how have you avoided radiation sickness?"
"That's rather an odd story actually. This cave seems to be part of an underground network. I have no
idea how far it goes, though Vajra uses it freely. I'm sure that had I been a paleologist I'd have been
thrilled. But actually, I've always been a wee bit claustrophobic. Vajra had been living here since the rest
of his family was slain by the Chinese trying to build a road through the mountains. Vajra's family had
been living in another cave, and the road-building crew dynamited the mountain, collapsing the cave on
his family. He took me to the site and showed me before-well, before I was blinded."
"How did that happen?" Mike asked, a little absently. He was watching Vajra's tail, wondering how he
kept it from freezing off during very cold weather, and thinking that its graceful waving looked almost as if
Vajra had a third arm, a conservative version of those statues of deities in the books Chime was always
studying.
"Oh, child, you know." She waved her hand to encompass everything in the cave and out."When the
world ended. I watched the missiles cross the sky and the fireballs go up-the ones in the directions of
Lhasa and Katmandu were very remote, and I didn't understand at first what I was watching. But the
fireballs across the Indian-Pakistani border were much closer and I shouldn't have been watching them
directly.My fault. I should have realized. I should have paid better attention. Vajra slept through the
whole thing. Fortunately for me, he found me sitting in the mouth of the cave and pulled me in before the
aftershocks and radiation storms hit. We already had ample supplies Vajra took from the soldiers'
stockpiles. I suppose if any of the soldiers found us they would have wanted to shoot me as a spy,
although whose spy it would be difficult to say, given the complexion of international politics as it was
then. Vajra rolled stones in front of the entrance as his people have always done to escape detection, and
we stayed below for quite some time. There's an underground spring here too. So all in all we avoided
the radiation by staying isolated belowground until the last few years. It's all the same to me, of course,
now that I'm blind, but Vajra seemed to feel it was safe for us to be closer to the surface now. He has
very good instincts about most things."
"Maybe you could come home with-" Mike began, but Chime kicked his knee with her bare toe. "That
is," he added, "if we had a home to go to and weren't lost from it anyway. And besides," he cast a
sidelong glance at Chime, "we have to find the other people left alive in the world, though I don't see how
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we're supposed to find anyone on foot with no shoes or food, especially if wekeep having to fight off
ghosts all the time."
"I'm sure we can find some boots for you, and coats, before Vajra leads you below. And I am so sorry.
I forget my manners. I hope you are fond of Spam?"
They slept that night in a pile of old sleeping bags redolent of yeti, but that was not such a bad smell. The
whole cave smelled like that, a ripe, warm smell, with the sharp scent of the fire an integral part of it. Or
was it that the ashes of the ghosts had not been fully cleaned from their nostrils?
Mike thought that he would fall asleep in a moment, but he lay awake after the fire had gone out and
Vajra crawled away to a ledge he liked to sleep on while the old lady disappeared into a corner.
"Chime?"
"Hmm?"
"Doesn't this all seem too convenient to you? I mean, if Vajra hadn't really picked me up and hauled me
in here, and if I wasn't this very minute full of Spam, I'd think I was dreaming. But I never heard of
anyone dreaming about Spam before. I also was thinking maybe Vajra and Dr. Chung might be ghosts
themselves, but I don't think so, do you?"
"No, Meekay. I think they are real. And they weren't convenient. They were really necessary. I am a
little surprised at the form they took, however."
"Huh?"
"I never expected her to be a professor or him to appear as a yeti. It just never occurred to me."
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you notice their names? Oh, Meekay, if only you had studied the great teachings instead of
colored fairy tales, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Hardy Boys."
"There's nothing wrong with the Hardy Boys," he protested, but she didn't answer except to give a little
snort. So he lay there wondering what names she'd meant. Vajra was as good a name for a yeti as any,
he supposed. A vajra was one of the old Tibetan symbols, he knew that much. It was supposed to be
made from a lightning bolt or something. He had wanted to ask more questions, but although the old lady
and the yeti had been very nice, something about them, about the things Dr. Chung had not talked
about-like where she was from and who her family were-made him feel that it would have been impolite
and perhaps unwise to pry. The yeti and the old woman had saved their lives. That was all he had to
know about them for now.
CHAPTER XIII
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Mike clumped along behind Vajra in a pair of previously owned army boots that smelled so strongly of
their former occupant, after all these years, that they might as well have contained that soldier's ghost.
The coat was nice, though, a parka of indestructible machine-made material rather than fabric hand-spun
and woven or knitted, as was most of the fabric in Kalapa. The best items were socks, a hat, and mittens
spun and knitted from Vajra's fur.
"Well, he doesshed a great deal in the springtime," Dr. Chung had told them, "And one has to do
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