The idea of religion was extremely funny to her, but she answered gently, “No.”
“Few of us are—or were, in my day, and I’m sure it’s worse now. But here, against these hills and on these plains, you learn that you are ignorant of almost everything. Call it mechanical, if you will, a part of the Markovian brain’s powers, like our own transformations and this world itself, but accept it: that which is us, our memories, our personality, whatever, can be not only transformed but transferred. Now I—stop looking at me like that! I am not insane. I’ve seen it!”
“Arrh sou stelling moi daht Nathan ist naow e Murnie?” she asked, unwilling to believe but unwilling to disbelieve, either. Too much had already happened to her on this crazy world.
“Not a Murnie,” he replied evenly. “That would involve superimposing his—well, they call it his ‘essence’—on somebody else. No, when someone’s so respected that he rates a Transference of Honor, he is transferred to the best thoroughbred breeding stag or doe. Don’t look so shocked—they are of such high quality that they are instantly recognized. No one would eat them, or even bother them.
“If, then, the body can be successfully brought back to health—which is rare or the Holy Ones would never do the Transference in the first place—he is switched back. If not, he is revered, cared for, and has a happy and peaceful life on the plains.”
“Nathan est un ahntlupe?” she gasped. It was becoming easier to talk, although her pronunciation was still terrible.
“A beautiful pure stag,” the Murnie acknowledged. “I’ve seen him. He’s still drugged. I didn’t want him coming out of that state until you and I were both there to explain it to him.”
“Ist der—ist der unny chants dot hes boody wall liff?” she asked.
“Will his body live?” the Murnie repeated. “I’m sure I don’t know. I honestly doubt it, but I would have said that the Transference of Honor was more likely than going a kilometer with a game leg, a broken back, and busted neck. The outcome will depend on how much damage he receives beyond what’s already done.”
Then he told her of Cousin Bat’s rescue. “He obviously could not consider us civilized or Brazil anything more than the victim of primitive medicine. Would you? So he plucked Brazil’s body up and is even now taking it to Czill where they have a modern hospital. If the body survives the trip—and from what was told me I doubt if it survived the night, let alone the trip—the Czillians will know what happened. One of our people is getting the news to them sometime today just in case. They can sustain the body’s functions indefinitely if it’s still alive, though an empty vessel. Their computers know of the Transference of Honor. If they can heal the body, it can be returned here for retransference, but that is not something to pin your hopes on.
“I said I experienced three Transferences in my eighty years. Of them all, none of the bodies lasted the night.”
Nathan Brazil awoke feeling strange. Everything looked strange, too.
He was on the Murnie plain, he could see that—and it was daylight.
So I’ve survived again, he thought.
Things looked crazy, though, as if they were seen through a fish-eye camera lens—his field of vision was a little larger than he was used to, but it was a round picture vastly distorted. Things around the periphery looked close up; but as the view went toward the center of the field of view, everything seemed to move away as if he were looking down a tunnel. The picture was incredibly clear and detailed, but the distortion as things around the field of view bent toward the fixed center made it difficult to judge distances. And the whole world was brown—an incredible number of shades of brown and white.
Brazil turned his head and looked around. The distortion and color blindness stayed constant.
And he felt funny, crazy, sort of.
He thought back. He remembered the mad dash, the fire, falling off Wuju—then everything was dark.
This is crazy, he thought.
His hearing was incredibly acute. He heard everything crystal-clear, even voices and movements far away. It took him several minutes to sort out the chatter, finally assigning about eighty percent of it to things he could see.
There were Murnies moving around, and they all seemed to be light brown to him, although he remembered them as green. Suddenly he heard footsteps near him, and he turned to see a huge Murnie that was all very deep brown coming toward him.
I must be drugged, he told himself. These are aftereffects of some drug they gave me.
The big Murnie ambled up to him.
I must be standing upright on a rack or something, he thought. I’m as tall as he is, and he’s at least two meters, judging by his size, large compared to the run-of-the-Murnie crowd around.
Two grossly distorted Murnie hands took his head, lowered it slightly, so the creature was looking right into Brazil’s eyes.
The Murnie grunted, and said, in Confederacy, “Ah! Awake, I see! Don’t try to move yet—I want to let you down easy before that. No! Don’t try to talk! You can’t, so don’t bother.”
The creature walked a few steps in front of him and sat down tiredly on the grass.
“I haven’t slept in over a day and a half,” the Murnie said with a sigh. “It feels good just to relax.” He shifted to a more comfortable position, and considered where to begin.
“Look, Nate,” he began, “first things first. You know I’m an Entry, and I’ve been told I’m not the first one who knew you that you’ve run into here. It kinda figures. Well, if your mind can go back ninety years, you might remember Shel Yvomda. Do you? If so, shake your head.”
Brazil thought. It was an odd name, he should remember it—but there were so many people, so many names. He tried to shrug, found he couldn’t, and so moved his head slowly from side to side.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. They call me the Elder Grondel now, Elder because I’ve lived longer than fifty years here and that makes for respect. Grondel is their name—means The Polite Eater, because I continue to be civilized. I’m one of two people in Murithel who can still speak Confederacy. We would have lost it, except we ran into each other and practice for old times’ sake. Well, enough of that. I guess I’d better tell you what happened. You aren’t gonna like this, Nate.”
Brazil was stunned, but he accepted the situation and understood why they had done it and why they had thought it necessary. He even felt a deep affection for Cousin Bat in spite of the fact that he had fouled up the works.
As they sat there, the last of the drug wore off, and he suddenly found himself free to move.
He looked as far down as possible first, and thought, crazily, This is what Wuju must have seen when she first appeared in Dillia. Long, short-furred legs, much more graceful than hers, with dark hooves.
He turned his head and saw his reflection against the tent nearby.
He was a magnificent animal, he thought with no trace of humor. And the antlers! So that’s why his head felt so funny!
He tried to move forward, and felt a tug. The Murnie laughed, and unfastened him from the stake.
He walked around on four legs for the first time, slowly, just around in circles.
So this is what it feels like to be changed, he thought. Strange, but not uncomfortable.
“There are some hitches, Nate,” Grondel said. “It’s not like a transformation. The body you have is that of a great animal, but not a dominant species. You’ve got no hands, tentacles, or any other thing except your snout to pick things up with, and you’ve got no voice. These antelope are totally silent, no equipment to make a noise. And your only defenses are your speed—which is considerable, by the way, cruising at fifteen or more kilometers per hour, sprints up to sixty—and a tremendous kick with the rear legs. And the antlers—those are permanent; they don’t shed and won’t grow unless broken off.”