“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
“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:
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
“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
