“Here,” said Brand, smiling crookedly, “it’s done by two aliens in a straw hut, surrounded by dirt and garbage. And the brain actually crawls about.”
“That’s what gets me. Maybe it isn’t Wessel’s brain at all. Maybe the Chid are tricking us.”
“I think it’s Wessel all right. And I think we’ve got to accept the strangeness of it. The Chid don’t need a hospital or sterile conditions because they’ve solved all kinds of technical problems we haven’t. As for a brain that can move—a few simple muscles, an arrangement to keep it oxygenated—it’s probably not as hard as it sounds, once you’re crazy enough to want to do it.” He paused reflectively. “You know, I don’t think the Chid view the body as a unit the same way we do. That wood we went into—I got the idea there were brains, stomachs, digestive systems, all kinds of parts moving about on their own. It’s as if the Chid like giving bodily organs autonomy.”
“Part-animals,” Ruiger grunted. “Sick, isn’t it?”
“To us it is.”
There was a long silence between them. Finally Ruiger said: “Well, what do we do?”
“Our safest move would probably be to take off right away. But I think we ought to wait for a while to see if Wessel improves. He’s probably suffering from post-operative shock. What I’m hoping is that he wasn’t really conscious while he was out of his body. Try to imagine that.”
“I absolutely won’t hear of our taking off until he shows signs of recovery.”
“We shouldn’t leave it too late. It won’t be long before the Chid come to collect their side of the bargain. After all, they have saved his life. Our own people can probably deal with any future problems.”
“Oh, no.” Ruiger tapped his gun. “If the Chid have done us wrong, they’re going to be taken care of.”
“Let’s hope we can take off by sunset,” Brand said.
That afternoon, Wessel came out of his skull again.
It happened right in front of Brand, who had been sitting with Wessel to keep an eye on him. Wessel had spent most of his time staring placidly at the wall, and neither of them had spoken all afternoon.
Then his head opened, at the front end this time, and without any warning his face split down the front. Within, the brain was revealed like a lurking animal, eyes attached, still with its protective coating of gelatinous substance. Without delay its podium got a grip on Wessel’s chin, and it began to clamber out, dripping a pale pink fluid.
Ruiger came at a run as Brand yelled. As he entered the room the brain seemed to realise for the first time that it was being observed. Its eyes swivelled; it backtracked, retreating guiltily into its bone cave. The face closed up; the eyes disappeared momentarily, then joggled themselves into their sockets.
Wessel resumed staring woodenly at the wall, ignoring his two erstwhile friends. There was not the slightest trace of a join where his face had opened.
Brand stood stupefied. “Well?” Ruiger rasped, “you still think he’s all right?”
He went to the arms cupboard and got two dart rifles. “We’re paying a second visit,” he said curtly, handing a rifle to Brand. “This time we’ll stay and watch the operation. Let’s see how tricky those aliens are at the point of a gun.”
Brand followed blindly. Wessel, too, seemed to have no will to resist or argue. When ordered to do so he went with them out of the ship and walked across the grass to the Chid hut.
As soon as they reached it Ruiger kicked the door open, and barged in.
The smell of rottenness invaded their nostrils. The interior was exactly as they had first seen it: one Chid lay sprawled on the couch, while the other lolled in the double sling. Only the latter reacted to the intrusion, raising his head to peer at Ruiger.
“Our friends have returned!” he chortled. “They have arrived to give us our promised sport!”
The Chid on the couch replied with the slightest trace of an acid-sounding accent. “Yes,” he said, “but it was not polite of them to spurn our parts offering.”
Brand and Wessel entered behind Ruiger. Ruiger spoke thickly, holding his rifle at the ready.
“You have misused our friend terribly. His brain is not fixed in his body!”
The Chid turned his eyes to the roof. “Ah, to be able to leave one’s body! It is every Earthman’s desire—that is what I learn in Earth religion.”
“You don’t understand—”
Ruiger broke off as the Chid disengaged himself from his slings. The Chid’s big frame seemed awkward, yet somehow commanding, in the cramped, confined hut. He reached out to unhook what looked like a golfer’s carrying case, complete with shoulder-strap, from the wall. The case contained numerous metal tools, many of which bore gleaming blades.
With a snake-like motion the second Chid came off the couch and stretched himself. “Shall we take umbrage at the breach in their good manners?”
“No. We should make allowance for their alienness. That said, we must of course recompense ourselves for the insult. Shall we arrange a brain-race? It will do our guests no harm, and provide us with welcome sport. How will you wager?”
“I bet this one to win,” the second Chid said, pointing to Ruiger.
The other laughed. “I bet that neither of them will make it.”
An urgent feeling of danger seized Ruiger. He tried to speak, but could not. He tried to shoot the nearest Chid with his rifle, but could not. He was completely immobilised. The two Chid towered over him, inspecting him with their boiled-egg eyes. Their exchange continued, apparently with a discussion of stakes and odds. Then they reached for their surgical tools.
What happened next was of such a nature that Ruiger’s mind was unable to apply any appropriate feelings to it. At first it was like being a babe in the hands of ultimately powerful adults, and the strangeness of it made all his perceptions hazy. He felt no pain, not even when the Chid, using a simple scalpel, cut his skull and face down the middle, bisecting his nose in the process, and prised apart the two halves. The minute his brain was levered out of place, however, he immediately ceased to feel that he was a human being possessing arms, legs or a torso. Eyes still functioning, he emerged from the sawn-open skull as a different creature altogether. He was a rounded grey lump, a cleft down his back, a sort of armadillo’s tail at his rear.
After that there was a short period of unconsciousness. When Ruiger came round again, his transformation was complete.
It was a little like being a snail. He could move about on the podium on which he squatted. He was covered with a gelatinous layer which protected his vulnerable tissue. And he could see. But he could not, of course, hear, or feel, or smell. The podium did, however, support other small organs which comprised a partial life-support. He could breathe and, after a fashion, feed, though on somewhat specialised food.
He had been put down outside the Chid hut, amid the coarse broad-bladed grass. Not far from him he saw another part-animal like himself. He knew it was Brand. And ahead, already striding away towards the cliff’s edge by means of vestigial motor functions, were two human bodies. One was Brand’s. The other was his.
Ruiger experienced a terrible hunger for the body that went walking away from him. He knew that he could possess it again, but to do so he must catch up with it before it fell over the cliff, and so he set off, sliding over the uneven ground with all his puny strength.
This, he realised, was the Chid’s brain-race. The Chid had placed bets on whether he or Brand, who also was straining not far away, would recover his body first. Already Ruiger was gaining on his body. If it should fall but once, he told himself, he would be able to catch up with it.