THAT EVENING

My brilliant but maddening friend David is hosting a party in Silicon Valley. I arrive to find his apartment is a hacker heaven. Grubby, but high tech all over. Taking over. There's an IBM mainframe in the garage. "Well," he explains, "it was on sale..."

The TV's on. Political speeches. The Presidential primary. ALL the Democratic candidates sound better than Reagan. How can people vote for that fool?

Soon I learn. David's gifted, many of his friends are--Val, Charlie, Claudine, Pat, Felicia the artist... yet most tell me they don't bother to vote, aren't even registered.

Maybe they shouldn't vote. When I really talk to Catherine, find she's a political idiot. Shocks me how ignorant.

Go home discouraged. Met no one attractive but Catherine, and...

THAT NIGHT...

We're all talking animals living in the world of the children's book The Wind In The Willows. I'm a delicate graceful fastidious creature with a soft cream-colored pelt, an ermine, maybe? But big ears like a chinchilla, and I don't eat meat; seeds and greens. Whatever I am, I'm leery of humans--they might want to skin me, sell my fur.

My best friend is Rattie; he lives in a nearby burrow. Not a water-rat as in the book, but a sewer rat. Humans scorn his species as vermin, but we don't. Rats didn't make the sewers! Or the sewage.

I bike over for a visit. A careful visit. I need cleaner water and food than Rattie. Oh, I'll nibble and sip to be polite, when he offers, but I mustn't eat or drink much of the ripe stuff he likes--too risky.

My friend's great treasure is a beautiful Blue Egg. He shows it off nestled in the bowl of a ladle. It doesn't match--scrounged, of course--but it looks pretty.

One day, the Egg's gone. We swore to aid Rat if it's ever lost or stolen; it means little to us, but our friend does, so we help him search. Suspect it was stolen, but we're baffled how anyone could have gotten in.

Rat's so nearsighted he doesn't even realize the crag we live on is a ruined castle. The place has a rounded central tower and four more in a square, with high saddles between. It's all adobe, half-melted in our gentle rains... like one of those ancient, bulgy mud-brick fortresses in the Sahel.

We live in little burrows high in the walls. A human couldn't squeeze in.

When we report the theft to the Chief of Animal Detectives, he puffs his pipe and says "Don't you realize where you two live?" Well, no. Ratty's not interested in human names, and I have to avoid humans.

But I think back to all the castles I've read or heard of, in human tales... and a name comes up that fits: Minas Ithil! This could be that ancient fortress in Middle Earth thousands of years later, eroded to smooth curves. Its occupation by the Nine Riders left it renamed Minas Morgul, 'Tower of Black Magic'. Even after Sauron fell the place was toxic for years. But it's safe now.

Well, nearly. Rat's place is still a bit stinky... But then, he chose it for the atmosphere.

"So... you know who lived and ruled here?"

And to my astonishment, Ratty, with his myopia, looks up as if he's the best-read rodent in the world and shouts, just as I do: "GOTHMOG!"

In Lord of the Rings, he was the lieutenant of Saurons's nine Riders, and led the war after Eowyn and Merry together felled his captain the Witch-King. He was based here a thousand years. His ghost must still be lurking round! Who else would know every crack in the old castle wall like that?

Gothmog stole Rat's egg?

NOTES AT DAWN

• Rat & friends: David and his Silicon Valley friends.
• Minas Ithil/Morgul: the worst toxic-waste site in Middle Earth! David's grubby bachelor house and unhealthy party food.
• Strange flowing shapes of the towers: 1: not Minas Ithil, but Orthanc, Saruman's stronghold. "Orthanc" means Cunning Mind: that is, overthinking stuff as hackers do? 2: They're Gaussian bell curves, shapes graphing the range of traits like height or intelligence: a massive hump in the middle--nearly everyone close to normal--but long low flared edges where us freaks orbit. Having been labeled a child prodigy I was painfully aware I was out on the rim of at least one bell curve; why not others?
• I'm an ermine-chinchilla girl who fears humans want to steal her pelt: a few months ago Catherine told me: "As a kid I had this recurring dream I was a black flying horse with golden hooves. I loved to run, fly, swim--in the water, I grew fins. Comfortable whether it's land, air and sea. I was happy, aside from being hunted. Humans coveted my golden hooves and wanted to steal them..." I knew the feeling. Half my childhood classmates sneered at me for being a brain; the other half wanted to exploit it.
• Rat's blue egg: like my fur or Kathy's hooves? His... Precious? Is this dream a sympathetic look at the Gollums of this world, collecting mainframes and deadly rings cuz they're on sale, a steal, and just too cool? Pack rats...
• Gothmog: the only one of the Nine Riders whose personal name is recorded. He has to mean a lingering toxic trace of... what? I had a second intense dream tonight: Brown Dress. There, the old toxin was shame about incestuous feelings toward my sister. This felt different though. Another old pain/shame? I grew up in a conformist suburb where the worst crime was "elitism"--thinking you deserve special treatment in any way. But what about when you DO? When the majority's tastes will KILL you?
• ACTION: Well, if you can't figure out the Blue Egg, go literal. Eat and drink NOTHING at parties but stuff you know is safe. Celery. Carrots. Water.

THAT DAY

Get up... and find I'm VERY sick. Guts. Food poisoning. Something I ate, of course. At David's party.

34 YEARS LATER

I've always had gender-bent dreams, and just as many species-bent dreams. But out of thousands, almost none were both; I recall only five before Ermine (Gyrlfalcon in 1971, Freebird Tower in '75, Reduced to the Studhouse in '80, Artifact and Watership Downtrodden in '83). Such double-bent dreams usually bore major messages--or warnings. In Ermine, both were clear:

• I was in Silicon Valley, that notoriously male-dominated world; the dream pointed out that though I passed as male to the tech boys, I had more in common with the girls they excluded and patronized.
• And species? The pain next morning (and the next!) made that clear. I couldn't eat their food, drink their sewage, breathe their smog, work in their factories, live in their homes. Live in their world.

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