Travis scooped handsful of _celluvalin_ from an earthern jar and went to work on his face before a mirror. With steady fingers he altered his nose, broadened and widened it, gave it a snoutish look. He modeled his mouth to brutish slackness. He lowered his forehead. When he was through he was a step above the ape.
Nuala was watching him with wide eyes. She whispered, "I do not like you--like that."
He stood over her, toweling his hands. He said, "I feel different, too. Almost like a--beast."
She was near him, blue eyes uplifted, red mouth quivering. He put his hands on her arms, lifted her against him. He bent and kissed her. For a single instant she yielded to him and her mouth was a honeyed fire. Then she thrust him away, stood panting. Her anger crackled in her eyes, in the rise of her pointed breasts.
Travis chuckled, "I just had to do it, honey. I wanted to see what it was like."
He scooped _celluvalin_ in a hand and slapped it down on her cheek. He worked swiftly, moulding and shaping the cell-jelly before it hardened and adhered to her skin. By the time he was finished, her rage was spent. He stepped back, eyed her calculatingly. He nodded. "You look just like the nurse, now. Not a bad job, if I do ring my own alarm-bell."
Nuala lifted the mirror and looked into it for a long moment. Once she lifted her eyes and stared enigmatically at Travis. Then she casually lifted a hand and undid the fastenings of her translucent gown. Calmly she stepped from it, ignoring Travis's sudden, "Hey!"
She lifted the white uniform from the prostrate nurse. Deftly she hooked it about her and stood back. "Now the resemblance is complete. I will be a nurse. You--my amorous Earth-thing--will be my patient. A mental deficient. You look the part perfectly."
Travis went, "Ouch!" and followed her out into the sunlight.
Toward noon they were overtaken on the broad highway by an advance guard of horsemen for another caravan. One of the horsemen shouted at them. Nuala screamed back. Not understanding their language--Nuala had always spoken spaceenglish to him--he said, "What'd they want to know?"
"If my _babuvol_ was too poor to buy me a horse," she snapped.
"Husband to you, Mate. I told them you weren't my husband." She added sweetly, "I said you were crazy, that you suffered from the delusion of having glass toes, among other things."