01. Midnight At the Well of Souls (31 page)

"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.