He had been too occupied before with his own terror and his own rage and, after that, the miracle of new and alien sensation. But now a whole spate of memories stored away in Asha's mind broke loose and flooded into Nelson's. They were not the simple memories of an animal but, in their own strange way, as human as his own.
Cubs rolling in the sun-warmed grass, the newness of the world, the lessons, the first hunt, the first kill, the first sight of Vruun's glittering towers, the entering of the young wolf into the full rights of the pack. Little details, tastes and smells and thoughts and dreams. Yes, dreams, akin to those of the boy Eric Nelson lying under his green Ohio trees, half asleep in the summer stillness.
But these were only the ripples on the broad deep river of Asha's mind. Below them ran strong the currents that bound the individual to the Clan and the Clan to the Brotherhood. In the flashing glimpse of Asha's past Nelson saw a whole new way of life, where intelligent beings had adjusted themselves to a society that was at once as simple as Eden and as complex as modern New York.
A society in which the five great clans-man and wolf, horse and tiger and eagle-lived in perfect equality without even thinking about it, just as in Nelson's own world different races of men lived together and accepted it as natural. A society with its own laws, that forbade murder and theft and governed the rights of the hunt, and in which loyalty was freely given. A sort of freemasonry that was in very reality a brotherhood.
They were not perfect, these creatures of the clans. Some of the memory-flashes gave Nelson a jolt of fear and others made him laugh at the spectacle of foolishness. Again he felt contempt because he had seen cowardice or the theft of another's kill. But their very imperfections made them the more human.
When he shut his mental eyes and looked only at their minds, Nelson was forced at last to realize the truth without reservation. The creatures of the Clans were no more beasts than he. Less, he was forced to admit, for he had killed for money, whereas the Brotherhood killed only for food. And he had killed men, whereas the Brotherhood killed only the deer and the rabbit.
Quite suddenly it did not seem strange at all to Nelson that he was trotting on four legs through the forest. The intimate contact with Asha's mind had dissolved that strangeness. It seemed no more to him now than if he had put on a foreign dress. He was at home.
Abruptly a hare bolted in front of him. He caught it in easy bounds and broke its back and fed.
It was then that the gray brothers of the pack came upon him, drifting silently between the trees from the east. He had no wind to warn him and his hunger had betrayed him into carelessness. He started up from his half-eaten kill and would have run, only that the leader, an old gray dog-wolf who lacked an eye, uttered a thought to him.
"Finish your kill, young one. There is not that much haste."