“Dharma Yuan, meet Oscar.”

Oscar rose to his imposing nine-foot height, towering above the five-foot-four-inch China doll—my own heart skipping a beat as every rock formation in and out of the water suddenly melted into a pack of cephalopeds! Adults and juveniles, males and females, some holding squirming infants—all advancing on poor Dharma, who was a stone’s breath from fainting dead away.

Fearing for her life, I waded to shore, only to find my path blocked by a gyrating wall of gelatinous bodies. Swimming to a limestone ledge, I dragged myself out of the river and climbed onto a boulder, looking down upon what I construed to be the cephaloped equivalent of a Texas lynch mob.

The arbitrator was Oscar. One of the big fella’s tentacles was looped around Dharma’s slender neck, its fin coming to rest over her heart. Two more tentacles reached out to two more cephalopeds, who in turn reached out to four more creatures, each member continuing the process until every one of the intelligent beings was part of the bizarre group configuration.

ABE, what are they doing?

THE PROCESS TRANSLATES TO AN UNVEILING OF THE SOUL.

For what purpose?

IN THIS INSTANCE—TO DETERMINE WHETHER DHARMA YUAN SHALL LIVE OR DIE.

Chapter 25

25

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.

—HIS HOLINESS TENZIN GYATSO, the fourteenth Dalai Lama

Eyes closed, Oscar began swaying, setting off a chain reaction among the other thirty or forty cephalopeds. Truth be told, I couldn’t accurately tell you how many of them now encircled Dharma; from my vantage all I saw was an interlocking quilt of hairy brown bodies.

Cross-referencing Oscar’s behavioral patterns with hundreds of research papers on cephalopod rituals and echolocation, ABE offered my subconscious theoretical commentary: OSCAR IS EVALUATING DHARMA YUAN’S CONSCIOUSNESS BASED ON HER THOUGHT-ENERGY PATTERNS. THIS EXPERIENCE IS BEING CHANNELED TO THE GROUP THROUGH PHYSICAL CONTACT.

The swaying and bobbing went on for several minutes until Oscar abruptly released his grip around Dharma’s neck and expelled a deep booming staccato sound from his breathing organ that reminded me of a shofar blast on Rosh Hashanah. The rest of the cephalopeds immediately joined in, creating a thunderous cacophony that reverberated through the cavern.

Perhaps the sounds were a “call to arms” because the grooved calcite walls suddenly became fluid with tentacles as hundreds of camouflaged squid scurried through the water and across the riverbank to join the gathering cephaloped Mecca.

And then there was silence—answered a moment later by Dharma’s wailing exhalation—an agonizing moan that echoed throughout the chamber and made my flesh crawl.

The cry died out, eliciting a chaos of pan-flutish bellows from the exuberant congregation, who converged upon Dharma and lifted her inert form high into the air, passing her atop the throng as if she were the lead singer at a rock concert.