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.
"Babuvol?"
"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."
Travis scowled at her as she swung along blithely. He thought of a remark, but ignored it.
The caravan crept up to them, engulfed them. Travis stared rudely at the sleek horses, at the handsomely wrought designs on saddle and stirrup. He eyed the monstrous pack-sloths carefully, making sure that he was nowhere near the flat, gigantic paws when they tromped down on the road. He caught sudden glimpses of foodstuffs, of silver jars, of priceless tapestries.