Midnight at the Well of Souls

MURITHEL—SOMEWHERE IN THE INTERIOR

Cousin Bat circled around feeling helpless. Maybe I can pick him up, he thought, looking at Brazil’s battered and bleeding body in the mud. He’s not a very big fellow, and I’ve moved some pretty heavy rocks with these legs.

He was about to give it a try when a group of Murnies came running up the valley. They got to Brazil’s unconscious body before Bat could do anything at all, and the night creature thought, It’s all over. They’ll chomp him into pieces for a late snack now.

But they didn’t. Four of the savages stayed with the body, while two others made for the top of the valley and the plains above. Fascinated, Bat stayed with them, balancing on the air currents.

The two returned a few minutes later with a litter made with tough branches for poles and, apparently, woven grass for the stretcher. Carefully they placed Brazil on the litter. One Murnie picked up the front, the other took the rear. They climbed the bank effortlessly, and Bat followed them, still invisible in the dark.

Darkness had returned to the plain as well. Bat was amazed to see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Murnies beating a large, smoldering area about a thousand meters from the valley where they had plunged. It was a well-coordinated, well-rehearsed fire brigade, with the bulk of the Murnies beating out the last sparks with skin blankets, while an apparently endless chain of the creatures ran a bucket brigade from the creek all the way to the fire scene.

These are savages? Bat asked himself wonderingly. The teamwork and skillful handling of the fire he could not reconcile in his mind with the toothy carnivores who chased live prey with primitive spears and attacked them fiercely with spear and claw.

Brazil’s unmoving form was hauled into a small camp away from the fire scene. A particularly huge Murnie, his light green skin laced with dark brown, examined the man and started barking orders. Even though Bat’s translator would—should—pick up what the big one was saying, he dared not get close enough to hear.

The big Murnie got a bucket of water and started to wash Brazil’s wounds with a gentleness that surprised the bat. Others brought a large hide case and a number of leaves. The big one opened the laces on the case, and from its interior pulled out varicolored jars of what looked like mud and more leaves, some apparently kept soaked in some solution in jars.

Slowly, methodically, the big one administered the muds to Brazil’s open wounds, and used the leaves to form a compress for the man’s head.

He’s a doctor! Cousin Bat realized suddenly. They’re treating him!

Bat felt better, almost relaxed enough to leave, but he did not.

Those wounds are tremendous, he noted. The man’s lost huge amounts of blood, and probably has multiple breaks, concussion, and shock. Even if the medicine man knew the art of transfusion, there is none to give the blood.

Brazil will be dead within hours, no matter what magic this creature can work, Bat realized sadly. But what can I do? And, if they somehow cure him—what then? Prisoner? Pet? Plaything? Slave?

The Murnie medicine man gestured, and a smaller tribesman came into camp leading a huge stag antelope. It was the largest such animal Bat had ever seen, light brown with a white stripe running from the back of the head to the stubby tail, a large set of eerie-looking antlers atop that head. The stag was docile, too much so to be normal, Bat knew. It was drugged or something. He saw with amazement that the deerlike animal wore a collar of carefully twisted skin, from which a small stone dangled.

Someone owns that animal, Bat reflected. Do these savages of the plain breed their food?

Into camp from different directions came five more Murnies, looking like the witch doctor—really large ones, with that curious brown discoloration, more pronounced on some than others.

Six, thought the bat. Of course it would be six. Primitives went in for mystic numbers, and if any number had power here that one certainly did.

They put the stag so that it faced Brazil, and all six moved close. Three of them placed their right hands on the unflinching stag, and took the right hands of the other three in their left. The other three all placed their left hands on Brazil’s body.

Bat stayed aloft as long as he could, but finally decided he had to land. He was just coming out of the fight, and the exhilaration and extra pep that had flowed through him had waned. Reluctantly, he made for the valley and flew along until he found a place with no Murnies in the immediate vicinity. He landed, breathing hard, thinking of what he could do.

In a few minutes he had his wind back, and decided on a plan that the odds said was ridiculous.

He had to try.

No more running, he told himself. If I can do it, I’ll do it.

He took off and flew back to the camp, seeing that he was in luck. The stag was staked to a post in the ground, apparently asleep, away from Brazil, who was covered with the mud compounds and leafy stuff, still in the open.

Brazil weighed around fifty kilos, he guessed. The litter? Five more? Ten? I can’t do it, he thought suddenly, fear shooting through him. That much weight, for all that distance!

Suddenly he thought of the Dillian girl. He had lost track of her while following Brazil, but he couldn’t take the time now. Nothing he could do in her case regardless, he knew. But she had run all out, all that distance on the ground, never stopping, cut and speared—way beyond her limits, while hungry and weak.

You’ve been eating well, Bat told himself sternly. You’re as big and strong and healthy as you’ll ever be. If she can do it…

Without another thought he swooped down to Brazil, and took one side of the litter, folding it over so he held both branches in his feet with Brazil wrapped in the middle. He took a quick glance around. So far so good. Now—could he take off, no ledge, no running start, with this load?

He started beating his great wings furiously, aided by a timely gust of wind that rustled the grass across the plain. He rose, and beat all the more furiously. Too low! he thought nervously. Got to get height!

The furious flapping brought Murnies running from their tents, including the big one.

“No! No! Come back!” the medicine man screamed, but the wind picked up and Bat was on his way, over the stream and down along its course, the unconscious Brazil hanging from the folded litter. Cousin Bat did not believe in gods or prayers, yet he prayed as he struggled to keep up speed, height, and balance. Prayed he would make it to Czill and to modern medicine without killing Brazil, himself, or both.

With shock and dismay the medicine man watched Bat fly into the darkness.

“Ogenon!” he called in a deep, rough voice.

“Yes, Your Holiness?” a smaller, weaker voice replied.

“You saw?”

“The body of the honored warrior has been taken by the one who flies,” Ogenon responded in a tone that seemed to wonder why such a stupid question had been asked.

“The flying one is ignorant of us and our ways, or he would not have done this,” the medicine man said as much to himself as to his aide. “He flew east, so he’s taking the body to Czill. I’ll need a strong runner to get to the border. Now, don’t look at me like that! I know how foul the air is over there, but this has to be done. The Czillians must realize when they see the warrior’s body and hear the winged one’s story what has happened, but, if the body survives—not likely—they will not know of the survival of the essence. Go!”

Ogenon found a warrior willing to make the trip in short order, and the medicine man instructed him what to say and to whom, impressing on the runner the need for speed. “Do the message in relays,” the old one said. “Just make sure it is continuous and that it is not garbled.”

Once the instructions were given and the runner was off into the darkness, the large Murnie turned again to his aide, who was looking extremely bleary-eyed and was yawning repeatedly.

“Get awake, boy!” snapped the elder. “Now, locate the six-limbed creature and tell me where it is.”

“That’s simple, Your Holiness,” Ogenon responded sleepily. “The six-limbed one is under treatment at the Circle of Nine. I saw it being dragged there.”

“Good,” the old one replied. “Now, you’ll have to go to the Base Camp and bring an elder to me, Elder Grondel by name.”

“But that’s—” Ogenon started to protest, yawning again.

“I know how far it is!” the big one roared. “You can make it there and back before dawn!”

“But suppose the Revered Elder won’t come,” the aide wailed, trying to get out of the assignment and to get back to sleep.

“He’ll come,” the medicine man replied confidently. “Just describe to him the three alien creatures we’ve had here this night, and tell him particularly of the honored warrior and of what has happened. He’ll beat you here, I’ll wager, even though he’s eighty years old! Now, off with you! Now!”

Ogenon went, grumbling about how everybody kicked him around and he always had to do everything.

Once out of sight, the elder couldn’t hold back his own yawns anymore, yet he didn’t return to his tent and mat but sat down in the, for him, very chilly night air.

All he could do now was wait.

Wuju relived the nightmare run for hours, then, suddenly, woke up.

I must still be dreaming, she thought. Everything was fuzzy and she was feeling quite high. She couldn’t believe what she saw.

She was in a Murnie camp, in the earliest light of dawn, and there were horribly loud and grotesque snores all around her. Sitting in front of her, arms around its knees, was the biggest Murnie she had ever seen—taller than she, and she stood over two meters. It was also oddly colored, on the whole a deeper brown than she, laced only here and there with spots of the light green that was the usual color of these strange creatures.

From a distance they had looked like walking rectangular bushes. But here, up close, she saw that they had a rough skin that folded and sagged, like partially melted plastic, all over their body. They looked like a large trunk of a body with no head, she thought. The eyes, huge as dinner plates, were located where the breasts should be, and perhaps thirty centimeters below them was that enormous mouth, a huge slit that seemed almost to cleave the trunk in two. There was no sign of hair, genitals, or, for that matter, a nose and ears.

The drug or whatever it was seemed to be wearing off more and more. This isn’t a dream! she thought suddenly, as fear ran through her. She tried to move, but found her legs were all roped to stakes deep in the ground, and her hands were tied behind her. She struggled in panic to pull free, and the sound woke up the big brown Murnie. Its huge eyes opened, deep yellow with perfectly round, black irises that reflected the light almost like a cat’s.

“Do not struggle,” the creature said to her. The words were mushy, as if they were uttered in the midst of a roar, but they were understandable. It was speaking a language it knew but its mouth was not suited to its use.

“I said do not struggle!” the Murnie repeated, getting up and stretching in a very human fashion. “You are quite safe. No one will harm you. Can you understand me? Nod if you can.”

Wuju nodded fearfully, panic still all over her face.

“All right, now listen well. It is difficult for me to speak this tongue, and I must concentrate carefully to get the words out. You can understand me, but I cannot understand you, I don’t think. Say something.”

“What—what is all this?” she almost screamed.

The Murnie scratched his behind with his huge, wide hand. The arms were almost to the ground when drooping by his side. “I thought so. I could not understand a word. You have no translator. You must concentrate hard, like me. Think, then answer. What language am I using?”

She thought for a second, then suddenly realized the truth. “Confederacy!” she exclaimed, amazed. “You are an Entry!”

“All right. I got Confederacy but nothing else. That is because all Entries continue to think in their original tongue. What they say is automatically transformed in the neural passages to the language of the native hex. You can understand me, therefore you can speak it as I do if you think hard, make your mouth form the word you think. Take it slowly, one word at a time. Tell me your name and the name of your companions. Then try a simple phrase, one word at a time.”

Wuju concentrated, the fear and panic evaporating. Once this one had been one of her own kind! A potential friend she would need most of all here. As she started to speak she saw what he meant, and adjusted.

“I-ahm-Wuju,” she managed, and it almost sounded right. Her mouth and tongue wanted to make a different set of words. “Moy frandiz ahar Nathan Brazil ind Cooseen Baht.”

“Nathan Brazil!” the big Murnie exclaimed excitedly, suddenly very wide awake. The rest of what he said was unintelligible.

My god! she thought. Does everybody on this crazy planet know Nathan?

The Murnie suddenly frowned, and scratched the side of his head thoughtfully. “But the other was an old-culture man by description,” he mused, suddenly looking at her again with those huge yellow eyes. “You mean he still looked like his old self?” She nodded, and his great mouth opened in surprise. “I wonder why he wasn’t changed in the Well?”

“Whahr est Nathan?” she managed.

“Well, that’s really the problem,” the Murnie answered. “You see, he’s sort of in two places at once.”

He was a former freighter pilot like Brazil, the native told her, on the line for over two hundred years, facing his fourth rejuve and with all his family and friends dead, his world so changed he couldn’t go home. He had decided to commit suicide, to end the loneliness, when he got a funny distress signal in the middle of nowhere. He had veered to investigate, when suddenly his ship had seemed to cease to exist around him, and he had fallen into the Zone Well and wound up a Murnie.

“They are good people,” he told her. “Just very different. They can use nothing not found in nature or made by hand. No machines at all. They are bisexual, like us—although an alien couldn’t tell who was who. Strong families, communal, with a strong folk art and music—herdsmen who breed the antelope we eat. Very hostile to strangers, though—they would have killed you last night.”

“Den woi om I ailoif?” she managed.

“You’re alive,” he replied, “because you killed about two dozen warriors, directly that is, plus the fire and the like.”

She didn’t understand, and said so.

“The Murnie nation accepts death naturally,” he explained. “We don’t fear it, nor dwell on it. We live for each day. It’s far more enjoyable that way. What are respected most and valued most are honor and courage. You all displayed that last night! It took raw courage to run the plain, and great honor to keep going until you dropped rather than give in. If you had surrendered, they would still have killed you. But they found both you and Brazil, badly wounded, unconscious in different parts of the stream bed. It would have been cowardly and dishonorable to have killed you. You had gained respect—so they dragged each of you to the camp nearest where you were found, and your injuries were tended to. Our medicine is quite advanced—this is a rough hex.”

“Nathan!” she exclaimed. “Ist hay arriot?”

“He was banged up much worse than you,” the Murnie replied gravely. “You’re going to hurt for a while when the herbal anesthetic wears off, but you have nothing more than four or five deep scratches on your back and a lot of bruises. We have treated them, but they will ache.” He paused for a second. “But Brazil, he was much worse. I don’t know how he kept going. It’s not possible. He should be dead, or, at best, totally paralyzed, yet he walked almost a kilometer down that streambed before collapsing. What an incredible will he must have! The Murnies will sing stories of him and tell of his greatness for centuries! In addition to the hundreds of minor bone breaks, the enormous amount of blood he lost from gaping wounds, and a badly lacerated leg, he had a broken back and neck. He got a kilometer with a broken back and neck!”

She thought of poor Nathan, twisted and bleeding, paralyzed and comatose. The thought made her sick, and it was several minutes and several attempts before she could concentrate on speaking Confederacy again. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she couldn’t stop crying for several minutes. The fierce-looking Murnie stood there feeling helpless and sympathetic.

Finally she managed, “Ist—hay ist stull aliff?”

“He is still alive,” the Murnie replied gravely. “Sort of.”

“Hay Ist oncun—uncrunchus?”

“Unconscious, yes,” the Murnie replied. “I said, remember, that this was a rough hex that prized honor and courage, and had a lot of knowledge and wisdom within its limits. Because Murithel is totally nontechnological, the inhabitants have turned, aside from herbal compounds and muds, to the powers of the mind. Some of these doctors—and they are doctors—have enormous mental powers. I don’t understand the powers, and I doubt if they do. These people study and concentrate over half their lives to develop the powers. By the time they’re strong enough to be useful, the wise men—Holy Ones we call them—are elderly, sometimes with only a few years to live and to teach the next generation.” He paused again, and started pacing nervously, trying to think of how to say it.

“When Brazil was brought in so battered and close to death,” he said carefully, “he was already, because of his tremendous courage, the most legendary character ever to be here. The Holy One who examined him did what he could, but saw that death was probable no matter what. He summoned five others—six is a magic number here, for obvious reasons—and they performed a Transference of Honor. It has only been done three or four times since I’ve been here—it shortens the life spans of the Holy Ones by a year or more. They reserve it for the greatest of honor and courage.” He stopped again, his tone changing. “Look, I can see you don’t understand. It is difficult to explain such things when I don’t understand it, either. Umm… Are you a follower of any religion?”

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.”

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.

Brazil awoke feeling really fine, the best in many long years. He glanced over at Wuju, still asleep, although the sun had been up for an hour.

Isn’t it funny, he thought. The transformation, the commitment, the crisis, and the way those people had served me have all come together to do what nothing else had.

He remembered.

He remembered it all, all the way back.

He understood, finally, what he had been doing before, what he was doing now, why he survived.

He considered the vessel he wore. Not of his own choosing, of course, but it was serviceable if he could just get a voice.

How great a change to know it all! His mind was absolutely clear, certain, now that everything was laid out before him. He was in total control now, he knew.

Funny, he thought, that this doesn’t change anything. Knowledge, memory, wisdom aside, he was the culmination of all of the experiences in his incredibly long life.

Nathan Brazil. He rolled the name around in his mind. He still liked it. Out of the—what?—thousand or more names he had had, it had the most comfortable and enigmatic ring.

He let his mind go out across the land. Yes, definitely some sort of breakdown. Not major, but messy. Time dulls all mechanisms, and the infinite complexity of the master equation was bound to have flaws. One can represent infinity mathematically but not as something real, something you can see and understand.

And yet, he thought, I’m still Nathan Brazil, still the same person I was, and I’m here in Murithel in the body of a great stag and I’ve still got to get to the Well before Skander or Varnett or anyone else does.

Czill. If what he had heard was right, they had computers there. A high-technology hex, then. They could give him a voice—and news.

Grondel emerged from a tent and came over to him. He strained at the rope on his left hind leg, and the Murnie understood and freed him. He went immediately to the big patch of bare dirt that was his writing pad. Grondel followed, grumping that he hadn’t had anything to eat yet, but Brazil was adamant and anxious.

“What’s on your mind, Nate?” he asked.

“how far here to czill center” Brazil traced.

“Already, huh?” Grondel muttered. “Somehow I knew it. Well, about a hundred and fifty kilometers, maybe a little more, to the border, then about the same into the Czillian capital. I’m not sure, because I’ve never left this hex. We don’t get along well with our neighbors, which is fine with us.”

“must go,” he scratched. “in control of self now. important.”

“Ummm… Thought you weren’t going there across Murithel for a vacation. All right, then, if I can’t dissuade you. What about the girl?”

“she comes too,” he scratched. “will work out easy code for basic stuff, stop, go, eat, sleep, etc.”

And that was the way they worked it out, Brazil thinking of as many basic concepts as he could and using a right leg, left leg, stomping code for them. Twelve concepts were the most he could work on short notice without fear that she would mix them up. He also had to assure them several times that he would not wander away or stray again. She accepted it, but seemed dubious.

They ate their fill of the grasses. Grondel would ride Wuju with them to the border. Though Nathan was safe as a branded, purebred stag, she was not. A Murnie accompanying them would ease her passage.

They followed the stream, passing first the spot where his body had lain, the mud and bottom still disturbed from the action. They made exceptionally good time, and Brazil enjoyed the experience of being able to move quickly and effortlessly, so powerful that the mud couldn’t trap him, nor could the brisk pace tire him. He just wasn’t built for riding, though; and Wuju had to carry Grondel, which slowed her more than usual. It didn’t matter.

They made the border shortly after dark on the second day. On the morning of the third, after Grondel had refreshed Wuju on the stomp code, they bade him good-bye and crossed into Czill. The air was extremely heavy with an almost oppressive humidity, the kind that wets you with a fine, invisible mist as you move through it. The air was also oppressive with carbon dioxide, which seemed to make up one or more percent of the atmosphere, although oxygen was so far above their previous norms that it made them feel a little light-headed. Were it not for the great humidity, Brazil thought, this would be a hell of a place for fires. As it was, he would be surprised if a match would burn.

They ran into Czillians soon enough, strange-looking creatures that reminded him of smooth-skinned cactuses with two trunks and carved pumpkin heads. Neither he nor Wuju had a translator now, so communication was impossible, but at the first village center they reached, they managed a primitive sort of contact.

The place looked like a great, transparent geodesic dome, and was one of the hundred or more subsidiary research villages outside the Center. The Czillians were surprised to see a Dillian—they knew what Wuju was, but as far as any could remember none of her race had ever reached Czill before. They regarded Brazil as a curiosity, an obvious animal.

About the only thing Wuju could get across to them were their names. She finally gave up in frustration and they continued on the well-maintained road. The Czillians sent the names and the information of their passage on to the Center, where it was much better understood.

Brazil paid a lot of attention to Wuju, and their lovemaking continued nightly. She was happy now and didn’t even wonder how Brazil, who led, was picking the right direction at every junction as if he had been there before. In her mind the only question that mattered was about his human body. She felt a little guilty, but she hoped the body would not be there or would be dead.

She had him now, and she didn’t want to lose him.

Late in the morning of the second day, they came to what was obviously the main highway of the hex, and followed it. It was another day and a half before they got to the Center, though, since it was not in the center of the hex as Grondel had thought, but was situated along the ocean coast.

They arrived just as darkness was falling, and Brazil stomped that they would sleep first. No use going in when there was only minimum staff, he thought.

As he made love to her that night, part of her mind was haunted. The rest of him is inside that building, she thought, and it upset her. This might be their last night.

Cousin Bat woke them up in the wee predawn hours.

“Brazil! Wuju! Wake up!” he shouted excitedly, and they both stirred. Wuju saw who it was and greeted him warmly, all her past suspicions forgotten.

Bat turned to Brazil unbelievingly. “Is that really you in there, Brazil?”

Brazil nodded his antlered head affirmatively.

“He can’t talk, Cousin Bat,” Wuju explained. “No vocal cords of any kind. I think that upsets him more than anything else.”

The bat grew serious. “I’m sorry,” he said softly to Brazil. “I didn’t know.” He snorted. “Big hero, plucking the injured man from the jaws of certain death. All I did was make a mess of it.”

“But you are a hero!” Wuju consoled him. “That was an incredibly brave and wonderful thing.” Well, there was no avoiding it. The question had to be asked.

“Did he—is his body still alive?” she asked softly.

“Yes, it is, somehow,” Bat replied seriously. “But—well, it’s a miracle that it’s alive at all, and there’s no medical reason for it. It’s pretty battered and broken, Wuju. These doctors are good here—unbelievable, in fact. But the only thing that body will ever be good for is cloning. If Brazil were returned to it, he’d be a living vegetable.”

They both looked at Brazil expectantly, but the stag gave no indication whatsoever of emotion.

Wuju tried to remain normal, but the fact that a great deal of tension had suddenly drained from her was obvious in the lighter, more casual tone she used. “Then he’s to stay a deer?”

“Looks that way,” Bat responded slowly. “At least they told me that the injuries were already too severe for me to have caused the final damage. They can’t understand how he survived the Murnie blows that broke his neck and spinal column in two places. Nobody ever survived damage like that. It’s as good as blowing your brains out or getting stabbed through the heart.”

They talked on until dawn, when the still landscape suddenly came alive with awakening Czillians. Bat led them into the Center, and took them to the medical wing, on the river side.

The Czillians were fascinated by Brazil and insisted on checking him with electroencephalographs and all sorts of other equipment. He was impatient but submitted to the tests with growing confidence. If they were this far advanced, perhaps they could give him a voice.

They took Nathan down to a lower level after a while and showed him his body. Wuju came along, but one quick glance was all she needed and she rushed from the room.

They had him floating in a tank, attached to hundreds of instruments and life-sustaining devices. The monitors showed autonomic muscle action, but no cranial activity whatsoever. The body itself had been repaired as much as possible, but it looked as if it had been through a meat grinder. Right leg almost torn off, now sewn back securely but lifeless in the extreme. The giant, clawed hand that had ripped the leg had also castrated him.

Brazil had seen enough. He turned and left the room, climbing the stairs back to the clinic carefully. They were not built to take something his size and weight, and the turns were difficult. He didn’t fit in the elevators, which were designed for Umiau in wheelchairs.

Having a 250-plus-kilo giant stag walk into your office can be unsettling, but the Czillian doctor tried not to let it faze it. The doctor heard from Bat, who had heard it from Wuju, that Brazil could write. Since soft dirt was one thing that was very plentiful in Czill, it had obtained what appeared to be a large sandbox filled with dry, powdery gray sand from the ocean shore.

“What do you want us to do?” the doctor asked.

“can you build me voice box,” Brazil scratched.

The doctor thought a minute. “Perhaps we can, in a way. You might know that the translator devices, which we import, sealed, from another hex far away, work by being implanted and attached to neural passages between the brain and the vocal equipment—whatever it is—of the creature. You had one in your old body. We now have nothing to attach the translator to in your case, and putting anything in there would interfere with eating or breathing. But if we could attach a small plastic diaphragm and match the electrical impulses from your brain to wires leading to it, we might have an external voice box. Not great, of course, but you could be understood—with full translator function. I’ll tell the labs. It’s a simple operation, and if they can come up with anything, we might be able to do it tomorrow or the next day.”

“sooner the better,” he scratched, and started to leave to find Bat and Wuju.

“Just a minute,” the doctor called. “As long as you’re here, alone with me, I’d like to take up something you might not know.”

Brazil stopped, turned back to it, and waited expectantly.

“Our tests show you to be—physically—about four and a half years old. The records show that the average life span of the Murithel antelope is between eight and twelve years, so you can expect to age much more rapidly. You have four to eight more years to live, no more. But that is at least that many years longer than you would have lived without the transfer.” It stopped, looking for a reaction. The stag cocked his head in a gesture that was unmistakably the equivalent of a shrug. He walked back to the sandbox.

“thanks anyway,” he scratched. “not relevant,” he added cryptically, and left.

The doctor stared after him, puzzled. It knew that everyone said Brazil might be the oldest person ever to live, and certainly he had shown incredible, superhuman life and stamina. Maybe he wants to die, it mused. Or maybe he doesn’t think he can, even now.

The operation was a simple one, performed with a local anesthetic. The only problem the surgeon had was in isolating the correct neural signals in an animal brain so undesigned for speech of any kind. The computers were fed all the neural information and some samples of him attempting speech. They finally isolated the needed signals in under an hour. The only remaining concern was for the drilling in the antlers, but when they found that the bony growths had no nerves to convey pain, it simplified everything. They used a small Umiau transistor radio—which meant it was rugged and totally waterproof. Connections were made inside the antler base, and the tiny radio, only about sixty square centimeters, was screwed into the antler base. A little cosmetic surgery and plastic made everything but the speaker grille blend into the antler complex.

“Now say something,” the surgeon urged. “Do it as if you were going to speak.”

“How’s this?” he asked. “Can you hear and understand me?”

“Excellent!” the surgeon said enthusiastically, rubbing its tentacles in glee. “A landmark! There’s even a suggestion of tone and emphasis!”

Brazil was delighted, even though the voice was ever so slightly delayed from the thought, something he would have to get used to. His new voice sounded crazy to his ears, and did not have the internal resonance that came with vocal cords.

It would do.

“You’ll have a pretty big headache after the anesthetic wears off,” the surgeon warned. “Even though there are no pain centers in the antlers, we did have to get into the skull for the little wire contacts.”

“That won’t bother me,” Brazil assured them. “I can will pain away.”

He went out and found the bat and Wuju waiting anxiously in the outer office.

“How do you like my new voice?” he asked them.

“Thin, weak, and tinny, very mechanical-sounding,” Bat replied.

“It doesn’t sound like you at all, Nathan,” Wuju said. “It sounds like a tiny pocket radio, one that a computer was using. Even so, there’s some of you in it—the way you pause, the way you pronounce things.”

“Now I can get to work,” Brazil’s strange new voice said. “I’ll have to talk to the Czillian head of the Skander project, somebody high up in the Umiau, and I’ll need an atlas. In the meantime, Wuju, you get yourself a translator. It’s really a simple operation for you. I don’t want to be caught in the middle of nowhere with you unable to talk to anybody again.”

“I’ll go with you,” said the bat. “I know the place fairly well now. You know, it’s weird, that voice. Not just the tiny sound from such a big character. It doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. I’ll have a time getting used to it.”

“The only part that’s important is your calling me a big character,” Brazil responded dryly. “You don’t know what it’s like to go through life being smaller than everybody else and suddenly wind up the largest person in a whole country.” Brazil felt good; he was in command again.

They walked out, and Wuju was left alone, internally a mass of bewildering emotion. This wasn’t turning out the way she had thought at all. He seemed so cold, so distant, so different— it wasn’t Nathan! Not the voice, she thought. It was something in the voice, a manner, a coldness, a crispness that she had never felt before.

“Get a translator” he had told her, then walked out to business without so much as a good-bye and good luck.

“I want to go down to the old body one last time,” Brazil said to the bat, and they made their way down the stairs to the basement room.

Bat, too, had noticed a change in his manner, and it disturbed him. He wondered whether the transformation had altered or changed Brazil’s mind. Some forms of insanity and personality disorders are organic, he thought. Suppose the deer brain isn’t giving the right stuff in the right amounts? Suppose it’s only partially him?

They walked into the room where his body was floating, still alive according to all the screens and dials. Brazil stood by the tank, just looking at the body, for quite some time. Bat didn’t interrupt, trying to imagine what he would be thinking in the same circumstances.

Finally Brazil said, almost nostalgic in tone, “It was a good vessel. It served me for a long, long time. Well, that’s that. A new one’s as easy as repair this time. Let it go.”

As he uttered the last word, all the meters fell to zero and the screens all showed a cessation of life.

As if on command, the body had died.

Brazil turned and walked out without another word, leaving Bat more confused than ever.

“There’s no question that Skander solved the riddle,” the Czillian project chief, whose name was Manito, told Brazil and Cousin Bat. “Unfortunately, he kept the really key findings to himself and was very careful to wipe the computer when he was through. The only stuff we have is what was in when he and Vardia were kidnapped.”

“What was the major thrust of his research?” Brazil asked.

“He was obsessed with our collection of folklore and legends. Worked mostly with those, and keying in the common phrase: Until midnight at the Well of Souls.”

Brazil nodded. “That’s safe enough,” he replied. “But you say he dropped that line of inquiry when he returned?”

“Shortly after,” the Czillian replied. “He said it was the wrong direction and started researching the Equatorial Barrier.”

Brazil sighed. “That’s bad. That means he’s probably figured the whole thing out.”

“You talk as if you know the answer, too,” the project chief commented. “I don’t see how. I have all the raw data Skander did and I can’t make sense of it.”

“That’s because you have a puzzle with millions of pieces, but no concept of the size and shape of the puzzle even to start putting things together,” Brazil told her—he insisted on thinking of all life forms that could do the act of reproducing, growing a new being, as she. “Skander, after all, had the basic equation. There’s no way you can get that here.”

“I can’t understand why you let him use you so,” Bat put in. “You—both races—gave him a hundred percent protection, cooperation, and access to all the tools he needed without getting anything in return.”

The Czilian shook her head sadly. “We thought we were in control. After all, he was a Umiau. He couldn’t exist outside his own ocean because he couldn’t travel beyond it. And there was, after all, the other—the one who disappeared. He was a mathematician. Whose data banks was he consulting? Was he brilliant enough not to need them? We couldn’t afford not to back Skander!”

“Any idea where they are?” Brazil asked.

“Oh, yes, we know where they are—fat lot of good it does us. They are currently being held captive in a nation of robots called, simply enough, The Nation. We received word that they were there, and, since we have a few informational trades with The Nation, we pulled in all our IOU’s to hold them there as long as possible.”

Brazil was suddenly excited. “Are they still there? Can we get them out?”

“Yes, they’re still there,” Manito replied, “but not for long. There’s been hell to pay from the Akkafians. Their ambassador, a Baron Azkfru, has threatened to bomb as much of The Nation as he can—and he can do a good deal of damage if that’s all he’s out for. That’s the line. They’ll be released today.”

“Who’s in the party?” Bat asked. “If it’s weak enough we might be able to do something yet.”

“We’ve thought of that already,” the Czillian responded. “Nothing that wouldn’t get our person killed along with the rest. Aside from Vardia and Skander, there’s an Akkafian—they are huge insects with great speed, the ability to fly, and nasty stingers, and they eat live prey—named Mar Hain, and a weird Northerner we know little about called The Diviner and The Rel. If they’re one or two I can’t find out.”

“Hain!” Brazil exclaimed. “Of course, it would be. That son of a bitch would be in the middle of anything dirty.”

“You know this Hain?” Bat asked curiously.

Brazil nodded. “The gang’s all here, it looks like.” He turned to Manito suddenly. “Did you bring the atlas I asked for?”

“I did,” the Czillian replied, and lifted a huge book onto a table. Brazil walked over to it and flipped it open with his nose, then started turning pages with his broad tongue. Finally he found the Southern Hemisphere map and studied it intently. “Damned nuisance,” he said. “Antelope don’t need very good vision.”

“I can help,” the Cziillian said, and walked toward the stag. “It is in Czillian, anyway, which you can’t read.”

Brazil shook his head idly from side to side. “It’s all right. I see where we are now, and where they are. We’re about even—two hexes up on this side to the Ghlmon Hex at the northern tip of the ocean. They’ve gotten two up the eastern side of the same ocean to pretty much the same spot.”

“How can you possibly know that?” the Czillian blurted out, stunned. “Have you been here before? I thought—”

“No,” Brazil replied. “Not here.” He flipped a few more pages, studying a close-up map of a particular hex. Then he flipped again, studied another, then to yet another. All in all, he carefully examined five hexes. Suddenly he looked up at the confused Czillian.

“Can you get me in touch with some Umiau big shot?” he asked. “They owe us something for Skander. They’ve got Slelcron, which is a nontech hex and so is fine from our point of view, and Ekh’l, which could be anything at all these days. We’ve got Ivrom, which I don’t like at all, but there’s no way around it, and Alisstl, which will make Murithel look like a picnic. We can contend with Ivrom, I hope, but if we went through the Umiau hex, on a boat of some kind, we could avoid the nasty one and maybe even gain some time on the others. If they stick near the coast—and I think they will, because those are the best roads by far—we might just beat them there and intercept them here,” he pointed with his nose to the map, “at the northern tip of the bay here, in Ghlmon.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Bat said, “you said that the Umiau were warned the first time about a kidnap try on Skander. Now, you said you heard they were in The Nation. Who told you those things?”

“Why, we don’t know!” the Czillian answered. “They came as, well, tips, passed in common printer-machine type in our respective languages, to our ambassadors at Zone.”

“Yes,” Bat persisted, “but who sent them? Is there a third set of players in the race?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that,” Brazil said flatly.

Bat’s eyes widened. “Me? All right, I admit I knew who you were back in Dillia, and that I joined you on purpose. But I don’t represent anyone except myself and the interests of my people. We got word the same way the Czillians and Umiau did, at Zone. Said where you’d be, approximately when, and that you were going after Skander and Varnett. We couldn’t find who sent it, but it was decided that we had a stake in the outcome. I was elected, because I’ve done more traveling than most of my people. But—me? The third party? No, Brazil, I admit only to not being truthful with you. Surely by now you know that I’m on your side—all the way.”

“That’s too bad,” Brazil replied. “I would very much like to know our mysterious helper, and how he gets his information.”

“Well, he seems to be on our side,” Bat said optimistically.

“Nobody’s on any side but his own,” Brazil snapped back. “Not you, not me, not anybody. We’re going to have a tough enough time just dealing with the Skander party. I don’t want to reach the goal of this chase and have our helpful third party finish off the survivors.”

“Then you propose to give chase?” the Czillian asked stupidly.

“Of course! That’s what all this is about. One last question—can you tell me the last major problem Skander fed to the computer?”

“Why, yes, I think so,” the Czillian replied nervously. She rummaged through some papers, coming up with two. “He asked two, in fact. One was the number of Entries into hexes bordering the Equatorial Zone, both sides.”

“And the answer?”

“Why, none on record. Most curious. They’re not true hexes anyway, you know. Since the Equatorial Barrier splits them neatly in half, they are two adjoining half-hexes, each side—therefore, twice as wide as a normal hex and half the distance north and south, with flat equatorial borders.”

“What was the second question?” Brazil asked impatiently.

“Oh, ah, whether the number six had any special relation to the Equatorial Zone hexes in geography, biology, or the like.”

“And the answer?”

“Still in the computer when the unfortunate, ah, incident occurred. We did, of course, get the answer, even though it was on a printout which the kidnappers apparently took with them. The material was still in storage, and so we got another copy.”

“What did it say?” Brazil asked in an irritated tone.

“Oh, ah, that six of the double half-hexes, so to speak, were split by a very deep inlet all the way up to the zone barrier, evenly spaced around the planet so that, if you drew a line from zone to zone through each of the inlets, you’d split the planet into absolutely equal sixths.”

“Son of a bitch!” Brazil swore. “He’s got the whole answer! Nothing will ever surprise me again!”

At that moment another Czillian entered the room and looked at the bat and the stag confusedly. Finally she picked the bat and said, shyly, “Captain Brazil?”

“Not me,” Bat replied casually, and pointed a bony wing at the stag. “Him.”

She turned and looked at the creature that was so obviously an animal. “I don’t believe it!” she said the way everyone did. Finally she decided she might believe it and went over to the great Murithel antelope, and repeated, “Captain Brazil?”

“Yes?” he answered pleasantly, curious in the extreme. Captain Brazil?

“Oh,” she responded softly, “I—I realize I’ve changed a great deal, but nothing like you. Wow!”

“Well, who are—um, that is, who were you?” he asked, intrigued.

“Why, I’m Vardia, Captain,” she replied.

“But Vardia was kidnapped by the bugs!” Bat exclaimed.

“I know,” she replied. “That’s what’s really upset me.”