"Most of it. Maybe not in deep Africa, nor in places like the South Seas, but wherever there're big enough colonies of so-called white men, we are there." There arose a faint barking, somewhere in the depths of the house. Skagarach shook his head as I snarled. "No, they're ours. We have dogs, of course. The friendship of the dog was not always limited to man. He was our servant too. And will be again."
"Who were we?"
He returned a question. "Do you know why you came here?"
"I was called. Something in my mind—"
"Yes. We're telepathic to a degree." He grinned. "Don't let it go to your head. It's a gift we share with the ants and the bees." We entered the house and I found a spacious living room furnished with big leather armchairs. "Have a drink," he said, pointing to a wall bar. "One worthwhile invention of our friend Man."
"No friend of mine," I said, and then, turning to him, "but why? Why this two-day reversal of my feelings? Why has this thing happened to me, Skagarach?"
"So quickly ... I don't know why it happened so quickly. As for the general why of it, it's blood and bone and sinew and soul come down to us from the beings we once were. It's a powerful strain—so powerful that powerful is a weak word for it. I think it must be the strongest blood-strain that ever ran in animal veins. One drop, I think, would redden an ocean of milk."
"Animal." I repeated. One of the Old Companions put a tall drink in my hand and I nodded thanks. "I know this, but tell me again. We are not men, are we?"
He looked into my eyes with those uncanny gray jewel-orbs. "No, we are not. At least not Homo sapiens pure and simple. I believe we began this hybrid race by stealing and mating with human women—" I recalled my long-ago death by treachery and agreed—"and then possibly the offspring of those unions mated among men. Certainly the Picts were not pure us. Then afterward the breed was watered again when the Picts bred to outlanders. Men always hated us, but women are strange creatures and—well, the unions must have been many. A mere handful that's accounted for by thefts of women couldn't have produced the mighty tide of anti-human passion which runs in us after so many centuries. Many millions must have our taint in them, though comparatively few have it so abundantly as you and I and these Old Companions. Note that I say 'comparatively'. Actually there are thousands of us who recognize our essential difference."