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
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
“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.
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?”
