Dickon was not worried. Such emotions were much too elaborate for his clearcut, highly simplified mind. Even his frequent self-pity was matter-of-fact. But he knew that his fresh blood was running low, and waste blood piling up, even under the slight demands of his ribbonlike muscles. He had gorged himself at the Breeding Place, but it wouldn't last forever. Eventually he would have to stop moving.
But before that happened he would be able to explore a few more branches of the huge inside- out tree which was Dickon's mental diagram of the ventilation system of the crypts.
It was very windy in the tunnels. He had to buck a constant gale. If he ever let go all four suctorial paws at once, he would be whisked like a bit of waste for an indeterminate distance before he managed to bring himself to a stop with his claws—if he could. For Dickon, as he often told himself, was a mere diagram of a man. His bones were lighter than a monkey's, his body had not a genuine fat cell in it, and his internal organs were reduced to a single compartmentalized cavity which served both as blood pump and blood-storage chamber. All physiological substances for the production or conditioning of which other organs were necessary, he sucked in along with the blood he drew from his symbiotic partner through his wizened little mouth. He neither digested nor eliminated. He did not breathe, although he could make feeble sounds and even talk sketchily by drawing air into his mouth cavity and expelling it between taut lips. His bones were hollow, since he needed no marrow for producing blood corpuscles. He was without ductless glands and had no sex. His fine, short fur insulated him against loss of body heat.
Just a skeleton, muscles, tendons, skin, fur, heart, simplified circulatory system, nervous system, twitching ears, peering eyes—and a personality as queerly simple as his physiology.
One of the aims of the original makers of his artificial species had been to devise an extremely swift and nimble organism by eliminating as much weight and as many functions as possible. This aim they had achieved, but at the inescapable cost of making the creature absolutely dependent on its symbiotic partner or some other blood supply, and strictly limiting the extent of its activity before return to such blood supply became imperative.
