UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,50
Lev, giving him silent permission to speak. “This is all new to me,” Lev says. “I don’t think I would want an animal part . . . but sir, I think whatever lets you keep your dignity is the right thing to do.”
Wil’s frown is so severe, Lev tempers his answer just a bit. The old man is testing Lev, but Wil is too.
“But on the other hand, if the heart of a pig saves your life, you could take it for now, and then get a lion heart when they find one.”
The old man grins. “Why stop there?” he says. “Add the heart of a goat, and I can juggle them.” Then he begins to laugh-cough again.
Lev isn’t sure whether he passed or failed anyone’s test. “Uh . . . maybe I should wait outside.” Lev starts to get up, ready to make his escape, but Una stops him.
“You’ll do no such thing. It’s refreshing to hear an outsider’s view. Isn’t it, Wil?”
Wil considers it. “We can learn things from the outside, just as they can learn things from us. And if an old tradition ends your life before its time, then what good is it? Not many mountain lions on the rez anymore, but there are plenty of pigs, mustangs, and sheep. It makes no sense to insist on a part from his animal spirit guide. Choosing a different animal is simple logic. Shouldn’t a flush of logic beat a straight of tradition?”
“Neither,” Lev says. “In games of chance nobody wins but the house.”
A beat of silence, and Una throws her head back and laughs. “Definitely an owl,” she says.
Tocho locks his eyes on Wil. “I will hear you play tomorrow,” he says. “You will smooth the path of dying for me. You shame me by refusing. You shame yourself.”
“I will play for your healing only, Grandfather,” Wil says. “After you have a new heart.”
The old man stares stonily at his grandson, his earlier good humor gone. He turns toward the window, shutting them out. The visit is over.
• • •
“While your people focused on the business and science of unwinding, the tribal nations’ scientists worked on perfecting animal-to-human transplant technology,” Wil tells Lev on the way back to Wil’s cliffside home. Una left Wil with a halfhearted kiss on the cheek and returned to the luthier workshop. Wil waited until she was gone before he retrieved his guitar. “We overcame organ rejection and other problems caused by interspecies transplant. The only thing we can’t use is animal brain tissue. Animals don’t think the way we do, and it just doesn’t take.”
“How come you didn’t share with our scientists?” Lev asks.
Wil looks at him as if it’s a stupid question. Maybe it is.
“We did. They weren’t interested,” Wil tells him. “In fact, your people condemned it as unethical, immoral, and just plain sick.”
Lev has to admit that a part of him—the part that was indoctrinated into a world where tithing and unwinding were accepted—agrees. Funny how morality, which always seems so black-and-white, can be influenced so completely by what you were raised to believe.
“Anyway,” Wil continues, “our legal powerhouse crafted an intricate set of laws, based on traditional belief systems, for using this technology. When ChanceFolk come of age, they take a vision quest and discover their spirit guide, which can be anything from a bird to an insect to a larger animal. Of course, after the council transplant laws came down, it was amazing how many kids, coached by their parents, came up with pig guides.”
Lev doesn’t quite get it until Wil explains that, aside from primates, pigs are biologically closest to humans. “Mountain lion is a worst case,” Wil says. “Vastly different biology from humans, and on top of it, carnivores weren’t created to last as long as plant eaters, so the hearts give out quickly.”
“So what’s your spirit guide?” Lev asks.
Wil laughs. “I’m even more screwed if ever I need an organ. It was a crow that spoke to me.” And then he becomes silent for a moment. Pensive. The way he gets when he plays. “They call my music a gift but treat it like an obligation. I am shameful if I don’t use it the way they see fit.” He spits, leaving a dark spot on a boulder as they pass. “I would never accept a human part, Little Brother . . . but there are many things your world has to offer that I would take.”
“Like a cheering crowd?”
Wil considers it. “Like