Shepherd

Shepherd by Piers Anthony

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Authors: Piers Anthony
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aspect we'll clarify soon. The two of you must get along, if this is to work out.”
    Better to play along and find out what it entailed. “Yes, I should meet her.”
    Mona took him in her car to another address. It was a simple home, and Elasa turned out to be a moderately pretty woman with brown hair, gray eyes, a well filled bosom, and a baby boy. She had been expecting them, and invited them in immediately. “My husband's at work,” she said. “I do have available time. This is my son Bela.” She looked Shep in the eye. “As I understand it, your Colony wife will occupy Mona's body and be your lover here on Earth.”
    “Yes.” It seemed that he needed to persuade Elasa that her friend would not be abused. “That is at least the beginning of it.”
    “Not the whole of it?”
    “It gets complicated.”
    “Please,” Elasa said. “We want to know.”
    The baby, Bela, stirred. Elasa unselfconsciously opened her shirt and put his face to her left breast. No wonder she was full there; she was nursing!
    But Shep had material to cover. He let them have it. “My wife Elen is an elf on Colony Jones. That is, of human stock, but small in stature. She taught me many things, and I now have beliefs that I never had before.”
    “Beliefs?”
    “There are wild sheep there, not like those of Earth. They protect themselves with knife-like bones that project from their bodies when they are attacked, so are considered dangerous, except that they don't attack people. All they want is to be left alone. So people try to ignore them; that's best. But I learned that they have other abilities, such as telepathy.”
    He waited for their looks of disbelief, but they didn't come. “Telepathy is one of those things that seem possible, but have not yet been persuasively demonstrated,” Elasa said. “How do you know this about them?”
    “I was with a small flock of ewes for a month. They not only persuaded me and Elen to join them, they recruited a vulture and a python no assist. None of these animals were intelligent in the human sense, but were enabled to cooperate in the journey by the minds of the sheep. For example, when I made a rope bridge to span a chasm, the vulture carried the lead rope across. There's no way an untrained wild bird would have done what without having the notion projected to its limited mind. The sheep evidently got it from my mind and sent it to the vulture's mind. There were similar incidents with the python. Telepathy made these wild creatures compatible.”
    Mona was intensely interested. “Sheep like that need to be closely studied.”
    “Yes. But there is more. The sheep are precognitive.” He waited again for their open disbelief, but again it did not come. “You are accepting this?”
    Elasa moved the baby to her right breast. “Similarly strange things happen.”
    “Not on Earth,” Shep said.
    “On Earth too,” Elasa said firmly.
    “My father did some research, and found indications,” Mona said. “He is interested in unusual things that might have legal complications. That is why he suggested that I become your wife's host.”
    “So you could investigate for yourself!” Shep exclaimed.
    “That, too. Such a discovery would be a phenomenal breakthrough. What is your evidence for precognition?”
    Shep, relieved to have an accepting audience, told them in detail. “But if they start shooting sheep,” he concluded, “there will be no breakthrough. Somehow we have to get this stopped.”
    “And we can't wait for my investigation,” Mona agreed. “But we need more substantial evidence than your word. I mean no offense.”
    “Elen will endorse everything I have said.”
    “I'm sure she will. But would this cause members of Congress, who owe their offices to special interests like those that are pushing for this legislation, to change their minds?”
    “I doubt it,” Shep said. “Frankly, I don't know what to do.”
    “Father will know,” Mona said.
    “That's why we asked for a

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