"Very much so. All that I can do is send an agent with a slight understanding of the situation of history and physical existence to the people, but he must make the judgments of how to proceed all on his own. If I did tell you, it wouldn't be much different than going myself, and then there would be no human resolution to human problems." "Our lives serve as a spectator sport to the gods, then?" I inquired of him. "I am afraid not," he said, "It is much more serious than that. The Greeks were not all wrong, you know." "Who else, I wonder." "Not many," he sighed, "But tell me, are you ready?" "As I'll ever be." "Then I will begin. The understanding of life begins with the understanding of physical existence," Onan said, "And by physical existence I mean the quality of being materially animated. Not to confuse it with consciousness, which is the ability to think and reason, it is rather the realm in which one has substance and continuity. I will call the elements of physical being time and matter, those words representing widely known concepts. Matter provides the raw substance and time gives those lifeless objects a plane of being to exist in. Without time, matter can do nothing except sit in a sterile state, in a vacuum in which nothing could occur; and without matter, time would flow, but nothing would move with it. Thus, the basis of physical existence is time and matter, each being useless separately, yet together being the perfect combination of a tangible object and the fluid, forward movement to animate it. Imagine it as a three-dimensional painting, matter given depth by time." "Not so complicated," I said cheerfully. "Not yet, you mean," he laughed. "Exactly, tell me more." "Not just yet, Jehu. First you must help me." "The time to begin has come then?" I asked. "Yes, you must go now," he said, "And remember, I'll be watching. Good-bye." And with that, not even standing up, Onan put me into a deep state of comatose and sent me through time to the unknown lands and people whom I was to deliver. I awoke, as you will remember, in the center of the savanna. Now that you know the circumstances of my arrival on Daem, I will go back to where I was before: on the way to the Canitaur's hidden fortress. Chapter 5: The Treeway I was walking in silence through the rugged forests of northern Daem alongside Bernibus the Canitaur, with his fellows Wagner and Taurus before and behind us, respectively, the former leading the way, the latter covering our tracks, and both on the lookout for an ambush. An entire lifetime of guerrilla warfare and privations of all kinds had instilled in the Canitaurs a strong and prevailing sense of caution, which sometimes rendered their lighthearted and almost spiritually frivolous nature to the casual observer a dense, deceiving demeanor used to conceal their true selves. But that was not the case, I believe, for they were, or at least Bernibus was, truly amorous in personality.