Brazil stopped walking and thought for a while. Arms he could do without if necessary, and the rest—but not being able to talk bothered him.
Suddenly he stopped and stared at himself. All the time he had been thinking, he had been automatically leaning over and munching grass!
He looked back at Grondel, who just was watching him curiously.
“I think I can guess what you just realized,” the Murnie said at last. “You just started munching grass without thinking. Right?”
Brazil nodded, feeling stranger than before.
“Remember—you, all of that inner self that’s you—was transferred, but it was superimposed on the remarkably dull antelope brain and nervous system. Superimposed, Nate—not exchanged. Unless you directly countermand it, the deer’s going to continue acting like a deer, in every way. That’s automatic, and instinctive. You’re not man into deer, you’re man plus deer.”
Brazil considered it. There would be some problems, then, particularly since he was a brooder given to introspection. What did a deer do? Ate, slept, copulated. Hmmm… The last would cause problems.
There were, as Grondel had said, many hitches.
How do I fit inside this head? he wondered. All of my memories—more, perhaps, than any other man. Weren’t memories chemical? He could see how the chemical chains could at least be duplicated, the brain-wave pattern adjusted—but how did this tiny brain have room for it all?
“Nate!” He heard a call, and looked up. Grondel was running toward him from whatever distance this fish-eye vision couldn’t tell him. He would get used to it, he thought.
He had moved. As he brooded, he had wandered out of the camp and over almost to the herd! He turned and ran back to the camp, surprised at the ease and speed with which he ran, but he slowed when he realized that the distorted vision would take some getting used to. He almost ran the Murnie down.
He started to apologize, but nothing came out.
The Murnie sympathized. “I don’t know the answer, Nate. But get used to it before doing anything rash. Your body’s either dead or it’ll be even better the longer you give it in Czill. Hey! Just thought of something. Come over here to this dirt patch!”
He followed the Murnie curiously.
“Look!” Grondel said excitedly, and made a line in the dirt with his foot. “Now you do it!”
Brazil understood. It was slow and didn’t look all that good, but after a little practice he managed to trace the letters in the dirt with his hoof.
“where is wuju?” he traced.
“She’s here, Nate. Want to see her?”
Brazil thought for a second, then wrote, very large, “no.”
The Murnie rubbed out the old letters so it was again a virgin slate. “Why not?” he asked.
“does she know about me?” Brazil wrote.
“Yes. I—I told her last night. Shouldn’t I have?”
Brazil was seething; a thousand things raced through his mind, none of them logical.
“don’t want,” he had traced when he heard Wuju’s voice.
“Nathan?” she called more than asked. “Is that really you in there?”
He looked up and turned. She was standing there, looking awed, shaking her head back and forth in disbelief.
“It’s him,” Grondel assured her. “See? We’ve been communicating. He can write here in the dirt.”
She looked down at the marks and shook her head sadly. “I—I never learned how to read,” she said, ashamedly.
The Murnie grunted. “Too bad,” he said. “Would have simplified things.” He turned back to Brazil. “Look, Nate, I know you well enough to know that you’ll head off for Czill as soon as you’re confident of making the trip. I know how you feel, but you need her. We can’t go, wouldn’t if we could. And somebody’s got to know you’re you, to keep you from straying, and to do your talking for you. You need her, Nate.”
Brazil looked at them both and thought for a minute, trying to understand his own feelings. Shame? Fear?
No, dependence, he thought.
I’ve never been dependent on anyone, but now I need somebody. For the first time in my long life, I need somebody.
He was dependent on Wuju, almost as much as she had been dependent on him in the early stages of their relationship.
He tried to think up logical reasons for that not being the case, to rationalize his feelings, but he could not.
He traced in the dirt, “but i’m now bigger than you are.”
Grondel laughed and read it to her. She laughed, too.
Then he wrote: “tell her about deer part.” Grondel understood, and explained how Brazil was really two beings—one man, one animal—and how he had already lapsed into deer while thinking.
She understood. When still, such as during the night, he would have to be staked like a common deer to keep him from wandering away. And he couldn’t even drive his own stake!
Dependence. It grated on him as nothing ever had, but it had the feel of inevitability.
He hoped fervently that his body was still alive.
Grondel had finally collapsed in sleep and was snoring loudly in a nearby tent.
Brazil and Wuju were alone for the first time, he suffering the indignity of being staked so he couldn’t wander off.
They had worked most of the day on his getting used to the body, adjusting to the vision and color blindness, the supersensitive senses of hearing and smell. The speed in his sprint amazed him and Wuju both. As fast as she had seemed when he was human, she now seemed terribly slow, ponderous, and exhausted while he was still feeling great. He also discovered that his hind-leg kick could shatter a small tree.
A few things were simplified, of course. No packs needed now, he could eat what she ate. No drag on speed—he could run as fast as Cousin Bat could fly, maybe faster for short periods.
If only he could talk! Make some sort of sound!
Wuju looked at him admiringly. “You know, you’re really beautiful, Nathan. I hope they have mirrors in Czill.” She still talked mildly distorted, but Grondel had been forcing her to use the old language so much during the past day and a half that it was becoming easier, like a second language.
She came and stood beside him, pressing her equine body against his sleek, supermuscled antelope body. She started to rub him, actually pet him gently.
His mind rebelled, though he didn’t try to pull away or stop her.
I’m getting excited as hell! he thought, surprised. And, from the feel of it, there was a lot of him to get excited.
His first impulse was to stop her, but instead he moved his head over and started nuzzling her neck with his muzzle. She leaned forward, so his antlers wouldn’t get in the way.
Is it the animal, or do I want to do this? a corner of his mind asked, but the thought slipped away as irrelevant, as was the thought that they were still two very, very different species.
He stroked her equine back with the bottom of his snout and got to the bony hind end. She sighed and slipped off the leash that was attached to his hind leg. They continued.
This was a crazy, insane way to have sex, but the deer in him showed him how.
Wuju finally had what she wanted from Nathan Brazil.