Even that small favor was to be denied him. The rising sun woke him in bane to discover that the enveloping yellow syrup had almost reached his chin. He was completely imprisoned now except for his head. Soon he was going to be able to try his teeth on the stuff. He thought of swallowing some. It might kill him a little quicker.
There was no response to his queries from Azure or any of his companions. Possibly the Integrator had begun to take control of their minds as well as their bodies. At least he could still see, thanks to the superb surgery of the physicians. He was facing toward the rising sun but was not blinded.
Unique discoveries which he had barely had time to enjoy. The Integrator heaved beneath him, a violent lurch that was as impressive as it was unexpected. Taking over another patch of ground, Evan told himself. He licked his lips, wondering what the yellow death would taste like.
An intense blast of rich red light that was brighter than the sun caused the Integrator to convulse a second time. The light struck the curving bulk several meters below Evan's location. The yellow silicate began to melt and flow like hot butter.
"STOP-NOW!"
The deafening warning had no effect on the persistence of the red beam, which continued to slice across the surface of the Integrator. Huge tentacles and massive groping hands thrust out of the earth lining the valley, straining to rend the source of the annihilating light. They had no more effect on it than had the mental shout.
Unable to move, Evan could only pray the light would miss him. If it touched him he'd go up like a wick in a candle.
Library managed a frighteningly weak response to his query. "I can't imagine what the source is, but it can do no more harm to us than we have done to ourselves already. What damages the Integrator helps us-unless we are unlucky enough to be torched by the light as well."
"It is like a barrean." Evan had to strain to identify the source, finally recognized it as belonging to one of the surviving trio of warriors. "Very much like a barrean, though more powerful still."
"What the hell is a barrean?"
"A solitary and infrequently encountered creature which defends itself against its enemies by striking them with intense beams of colored light." Evan could sense library's frustration. "I Wish I could see. As warrior observes, this is much like a barrean's work, except for its sense of purpose. There is a pattern to its destruction."
Evan had a much better view than any of them but could see little more. The source of the beam lay in the direction of the rising sun and despite his specially altered eyes, he could not see through the glare.
"Wait! I believe I can see something." Second physician, sounding tired and far away. "It is no larger than a barrean, but differently shaped. When the sun rises higher I may be able to make an identifica-“
The Integrator spasmed. A large section of the creature broke away from the main body and slid to the ground. It did not tumble, which was fortunate or Evan would have been crushed between the excised material and the unyielding gravel below.
The involuntary biopsy sent the Integrator into a frenzy. Tentacles and cilia lashed the ground in all directions. The earth shook as the entire enormous mass lifted and fell back against the valley floor.
Evan saw the red beam swing toward him. He closed his eyes. At least the end would be far quicker than if he'd been left to suffocate. But the deadly light did not touch him. Instead, it seemed to focus precisely on the hardened silica in which he was encased. The stuff liquefied and ran. The beam was hellishly hot and some of the heat was conducted to his body through the churning silica, but sooner than he dared hope he was free of his prison. Cramped from disuse, his leg muscles refused to function and he fell over on his side.
His companions suffered no such lingering dysfunction and hurried over to make certain he was all right. Two warriors gripped his arms and began to haul him away from the flailing Integrator. It ignored their flight, wholly absorbed in trying to destroy its unreachable tormentor.
He was halfway up the hill and trying to stand when he heard the voice. It came out of the rising sun, full of impatience and self-assurance. It was startlingly clear.
"Hurry up! This way. The Integrator's truly dangerous only when it has time to stop and think."
There were none of the shades of uncertainty which marked the voices of his friends. It was almost as though he was being addressed by-another human.
"Yes, I'm Ophemert. Now get a move on."
Somehow she'd escaped with a station weapon, a survey laser or better. It might even be a component of an undamaged survival suit. He struggled to his feet, forcing his agonized leg muscles to work, and staggered into the glare. Azure and the rest followed, their receptors straining thirstily toward the unscreened sunlight.
He half ran, half crawled, up the steep slope, shoving blindly through needlelike flora and ignoring the scratches they made on his face. His limbs were still protected by the remains of his froporia armor, and the transparent skin covering his torso did not bleed.
Finally they reached the top of the hill and were able to turn and gaze back down into the valley. The organosilicate ocean that was the Integrator was still thrashing about. No doubt it was roaring its defiance. Unlike Evan's companions, though, it could only communicate through tendrils. It had never learned how to communicate without intimate contact, just as it had not learned how to come to terms with its own insanity.
"Thanks." He squinted, trying to separate a mobile shape from the surrounding growths and the sunlight. "I thought my friends and I were dead. You saved our lives."
"The rest of you are welcome to your lives." What Evan hadn't had a moment to consider earlier struck him forcefully now: he was not hearing Martine Ophemert's speech. He was hearing her as he heard Azure and library and physician, through the device they had implanted in his brain. Somehow Martine Ophemert had also been given this gift. Another mystery to add to the top of a pile that Prism raised a little higher every day.
"You may leave, associatives. As for you, you must know that I am going to kill you." A stunned Evan realized immediately she must be talking about him. It was one comment he had no ready reply for. "You didn't think I'd let the Integrator have that pleasure, did you? I thought I'd watch you sweat for a while, though. But I couldn't see your face from here while you died. And I've been wanting to watch you die ever since"-Evan tasted of a mental sob- “what you did in camp. You rotten, sorry bastard, I'm so glad you came after me. Followed the beacon, didn't you? I hoped you would, oh, how I prayed you'd follow the beacon! You couldn't quit and leave any work undone, could you?"
Evan was stumbling backward, shielding his eyes and searching desperately for his unseen assassin-to-be. "But why do you want to kill me? I didn't do anything at the station! I'm here to rescue you." He tripped over a broken stump and fell backward onto the sand.
The red death was very close to his feet now. It had been tracking him ever since Ophemert had spoken. Now it moved away. The voice of Prism station's sole survivor suddenly sounded confused.
"You're not Humula. Where's Humula?"
Evan sat up and tried to see into the concealing forest. Even his newly modified eyes could not fight off every reflection, search out every possible hiding place. And what if they could? He had nothing to fight with.
"Hum-who? That name means nothing to me-no, wait a minute. Arin Humula, wasn't he a repair tech or something at the station?"
"Aram, not Arin," she corrected him. "That was his name, yes. I thought it was him, come to finish me off. Come to finish his work."
"Maybe we could have something like an intelligent conversation if you'd tell me what the hell you're talking about." He took a deep breath. "My name's Evan Orgell. I'm from company HQ on Samstead. I was put down here quietly to find out why there's been no report from the station for months."
"They put you down here by yourself-like that?" Her tone was disbelieving, understandably so. Evan didn't believe what had happened to him either.
"No. I had an MHW, the latest and best model available. Right out of the prototype lab. It wasn't good enough."
A light feminine chuckle. "Nothing is-for Prism."
"I decided to try and locate your beacon anyhow. I was fortunate enough to make some friends along the way"-he waved to where Azure and the others were cleaning yellow goo off themselves- “and when a choice specimen of local life tore me up, they fixed me up the best they knew how. I know it's a little hard to get used to, but-"
"Not at all." He felt he was being examined closely. "They seem to have done a fine job. Associative physicians are natural wonders. They're going to revolutionize the whole course of Commonwealth medicine."
"I followed your beacon. It led me to that." He nodded down into the valley. The Integrator already seemed but a distant nightmare, though if Ophemert was to be believed they weren't entirely out of danger.
"The Integrator tried to integrate me. I don't integrate easily."
"Well, you had a weapon. I'm unarmed."
"Yes, I have a weapon," she said strangely. "The Integrator sought to use me for its own purposes. I decided I could use it. I made it a gift of my beacon, knowing that in tracking me Humula would follow its signal. I'm sorry that you were almost sucked in instead of him. I couldn't imagine another single man coming after me. I was sure you were him, though I couldn't imagine why or how he'd come to have Associative members traveling with him. So you got down and came looking for me without panning into Humula? I find that hard to believe."
"Oh, I found him. Dead, like everyone else at the station. You didn't know that?"
"I know everyone else is dead. Everyone but me. I didn't know he was, obviously, or I wouldn't have thought you were him. How did he die?"
Evan shrugged. "I can't give you any details. Prism killed him."
She was silent for a long time before replying. "First time a planet ever deprived me of an anticipated pleasure. Somehow I don't feel cheated. I'm going to come out and join you now. Do you have a weak stomach, Evan Orgell?"
He frowned. What the devil was she talking about? "You think I'd have been given this assignment if I did?"
"I don't know. Here lately I don't have much confidence in the company's method of selecting offworld personnel."
A shape emerged from a stand of green crystalline growths and came toward Evan. He shaded his eyes with a hand just as it stopped and raised its right arm. Four fingers clustered together and from their tangent tips emerged that murderous shaft of red light.
Evan tried to dodge, falling to one side, while the two physicians who were resting behind him scattered. But the beam was not aimed at them. It thrust past him to slice into humping, twisting segments the two long tentacles which had crawled all the way up the slope from the valley below.
"I told you it was still dangerous here. The Integrator's persistent." The arm was lowered and the red light vanished. "I don't think it will try anything else for a while, but if we're going to talk there are safer places to do so." She half smiled at him.
It was only a half smile because she only had half a face.
Beautiful, she had been, in figure as well as face, and the sad dichotomy that was Martine Ophemert continued all the way down to her remaining foot. Only the left side was still fashioned of flesh and bone, and even it had been patched in several places. The color match of the patches was good, but the artificial skin was still painfully obvious.
The right side of her body was composed of an even deeper blue material than Azure's.
Something had rebuilt slightly more than half of Martine Ophemert. So deep was the royal blue that it was almost opaque. He could not see the artificial organs that lay inside. He did not have to see them to know they existed. Even the right half of the skull was of blue crystal, smooth and inflexible except for the lighter blue lens which substituted for the missing eye. It swiveled and rotated in tandem with its fleshy companion. He wondered how the brain correlated what must be two entirely different sets of visual messages. For that matter he wondered how much of the original brain was left.
Cosmetic detail had been attended to along with more practical concerns. From the right side of the head, long blue fibers trailed toward the ground. They were identical in length and diameter to Ophemert's natural black hair, except for their color--and the minute bit of light that danced at the tip of each fiber.
She stopped when she was barely a meter away and studied him as intently as he was studying her. What the physicians had done to him was wondrous, but Martine Ophemert was a miracle. A blue miracle.
His friends formed a curious circle around them both. "I see a couple of physicians. Did they do this work on you?" A hand of sapphire reached out to touch the transparent skin covering his abdomen.
"A necessary repair job." He was shaking his head in disbelief. "Nothing compared to what's been done to you. I wouldn't think that that much of human body could be rebuilt if I wasn't looking at the proof of it right now."
"Neither would I" Again that quirky yet charming half smile. The right side of her face- did not move. Whoever had saved her had managed to give her a new heart, half a new body, and more. But they had not been able to rebuild her smile.
"I went racing through the forest to escape what happened back at the station. Had on my survival suit so I thought I was safe enough." Maybe she could manage only a half smile, but she could still produce a hearty laugh. "A top-heavy condarite fell on me. My right side was crushed. Members of an Associative found me and, well, you know how they work. They're as curious as they are skillful. In order to ask me questions they had to keep me alive.
"I can't claim to begin to understand the medical engineering that made it possible for me to live. All I can do is marvel at it."
"The light you used to save us," said library, "we thought it was barrean."
"Oh, that. They told me about the barrean. I was fascinated. That's part of my work. So they offered to make another modification." She turned and raised her right arm again.
As soon as the tips of all four fingers were brought into alignment the shaft of coherent red light reappeared. It vanished as quickly when she spread the fingers apart.
"My very own laser. I've got artificial rubies in my fingers and hand-it's just corundum to them-and argon gas in my arm. Something in my back collects and stores enough energy to make the whole setup lase when I bring all the elements into proper alignment. They did it because I kept expressing concern for my personal safety. Humula, you know." She lowered the arm and flexed shining blue fingers. "I can vary the intensity by moving my fingers slightly. It's funny. I've always been an admirer of bioengineering. Just never thought I'd experience it firsthand."
"Same here," Evan told her.
She glanced down into the valley. "The Integrator hasn't forgotten you. Let's take a walk." They turned and followed her down the other side of the ridge, leaving the baffling, maddening thing that was the Integrator to rage at their escape.
"I was sure you were Humula," she told him as they picked their way down the slope. "The only thing that made me hesitate was the presence of Associative members. I couldn't imagine how someone like him could induce physicians and a library to travel with him."
"What's the story with this Humula, anyway? I'm pretty sure I've got the basics puzzled out, but I'm still sketchy on the hows and whys."
"You saw what happened at the station. I imagine when you got over the initial shock you started imagining alien monstrosities running amok." He nodded. "It wasn't, of course, though something the size of the Integrator could have done it. It wasn't Prism's fault, though. We're so clever, we humans, we bring our own monstrosities with us.
"Naturally you wondered how anything could have surprised the staff, much less wiped it out, what with all the screens and weapons provided. It isn't difficult if all your attention is directed outward. Humula did it. He had it all figured out, disconnected alarms, went to work at night when everyone except the night watch was sleeping. He timed it perfectly." She spoke matter-of-factly, without bitterness. The bitterness had faded some time ago.
"Not quite perfectly," Evan pointed out. "He missed you,"
"Saved by a whim. I couldn't sleep, so I went spargenox hunting." When he responded with a quizzical shake of his head, she explained. "From the old Latin; spargere for spark, nox for night. Night-sparks."
"I called them dancing jewels, I think."
She nodded. "I went collecting, didn't bother to tell anybody. The team leader, Jo Erlander, didn't approve of solo excursions beyond the perimeter, much less nocturnal ones. She's dead now too. Poor Mother Hen. We all loved her."
Evan waited quietly until the tears stopped. They fell only from one eye, of course.
"I saw Humula kill Eddie Chang myself. He had access to the armory and all I had were the defensive systems in my suit. I knew I didn't have a chance against him. So I ran. I ran like hell, because I knew he'd take a count and come after me when he found I wasn't anywhere in camp. I knew it would take him a while to go through every building and the grounds in detail, so I figured I'd have a pretty good head start. I did. I got away clean and then a tree falls on me."
"He killed everyone?" Evan said slowly.
"All of them. Eddie, Mother Hen, Rajanshar-everyone. My friends. My family away from home. He murdered them, carefully and efficiently. I'm sure you can guess why as easily as I. He was working for another outfit, a rival concern. It would have to be a big one, big enough to want Prism's resources all to itself. Just like our company does.
"Once he'd taken care of the staff, Humula would have the station to himself. First he'd pirate the information we'd gathered and ship it off to his employers: then wait for `rescue.' That would be you, Evan. He'd have a couple of options then. He could kill you and hope that would be enough to convince the company to abandon its interests here, or he could have dressed up a nice story about the invulnerable inimical lifeforms that would render any kind of colony here untenable, and how he'd barely managed to survive the attacks which had killed everyone else."
"And I probably would have believed him," Evan murmured softly.
"Why not? I would've believed him myself without anyone or anything to contradict him. That's why he had to come after me. I was the last witness, the last threat to his carefully thought out plan. But Prism got to him first." She shook her head. "If I'd known that I could've gone straight back and called in. I might-still be all me." She swallowed, sniffed once. "Hell with it. Half of me is history."
"This other Associative repaired you after the condarite fell on you?"
"Shock alone almost killed me. When I finally regained consciousness I was a long way from where the tree caught me. They'd carried me inside their wall and had gone to work. Gradually I got used to it-as used as anyone can to having half a new body, I guess. Just being alive makes all sorts of changes palatable.
"They'd saved the beacon, too. Naturally the falling condarite hadn't hurt it. That led to discussions of batteries and..."
"I did the same favor for my friends." Evan indicated the attentive circle of silicate faces surrounding them.
"So. There's nothing to stop us from going back to the station. That's not going to be easy for me."
"I'll help as much as I can. Getting a message out isn't going to be easy either, you know. I made a thorough tour of the station before I started following your beacon. The local scavengers have been pretty busy while you've been away."
"I can imagine. The native lifeforms treat rare earths, metals, and chemical compounds like candy." She sat down on the frozen skeleton of a yellow-pink tree. Evan marveled at her fluid movements. The master physicians who had repaired and replaced her crushed right side had done a remarkable job of duplicating human muscle and bone with entirely different materials.
"I don't know how to ask this," he said finally, "so I'll just ask it. Are you-comfortable, like that?"
"Like what? Oh." She laughed easily. "I've progressed beyond comfortable. Actually, I don't give it much thought. I'm not in pain, if that's what you mean. What matters is that I'm alive. In fact, I'm probably subject to less pain than before, since my doctors didn't try to duplicate the density of neural endings except where it really matters, like at the tips of my fingers. Talking is something else that's been hard for me to get used to. My half-new vocal cords don't mesh quite perfectly with what's left of the old ones, so I tend to whistle sometimes when I make s's. They were concentrating on saving the right side of my brain. Peripherals didn't receive as much attention.
"On the other hand, they made some improvements. My new right eye sees things the left never dreamed existed. I have a food storage system that lets me go without eating for quite a while. And then there's this little toy, courtesy of some intensive barrean study." She raised her right hand and brought her fingers halfway together, drew them over her left leg. The blue silicate skin picked up the light and dispersed it harmlessly.
She looked into his eyes."So I guess you could say I'm comfortable with the way I turned out. Now, are you comfortable with the way I am?"
Evan licked his lips. "Blue becomes you."
She laughed harder than ever. Now that it had been mentioned, Evan noticed the faint whistling overtones. It didn't detract from the beauty of her laugh at all.
"A diplomat. I like you, Evan Orgell."
"Just Evan."
"Then, just Martine. Even if you aren't entirely human anymore."
He glanced down at his transparent torso. "Just missing some meat, and who's to say its replacement isn't more durable? The problem now is, do we wash or polish?" They laughed together.
"Prism has refashioned us in its own image. Partly, anyway." She turned serious. "You know, this world is going to make some wondrous things possible if the people who come here to learn approach what it has to offer with open minds. These changes have been forced on you and me by necessity, but there's no reason why they couldn't be performed on volunteers. Imagine what the physicians of the Associatives could do for severely deformed or damaged people if they were given access to Commonwealth medical technology. Look what they've done without it." She waved toward the now safely distant ridge.
"Even the Integrator has potential. Maybe a use cars be found for it someday, if it can be contained and cured." Half her face was alive with excitement. "Evan, Prism's the most important discovery since mankind met up with the thranx!"
He shook his head slowly, wondering if he could have coped with such extensive changes as well as she had. "You're beautiful when you're half angry. All of you."
She grinned. "Maybe more than just a diplomat. You've either been away from women too long or else you're afflicted with a severe gemophilia fetish."
"Blue seems to be the predominant color here. I wonder why."
"Predominance of copper in the silicates. Preliminary research had time to confirm that much. Add minute amounts of chromium and you get bright red trees. Fascinating."
"It is nothing like that," Azure piped up. "It is just that the physicians who helped you clearly possessed a superior sense of design. You are blue because blue is by far the most attractive natural coloring."
That set off an argument between Azure and two of the black-sheened warriors. The warriors were outclassed but made up for it with sheer stubbornness. Gradually the rest of the party joined the discussion. Except for library, who remained aloof from such silliness.
"Tell me," Marline asked quietly during a lull in the sparring, "did you bury any of the staff?"
Evan shook his head. "I was too busy trying to find out if anyone was still alive to worry about the dead. We can bury them when we get back, if you want, and if we can get the remains away from the scavengers."
She nodded, sighed. The left side of her body heaved while the right gave a little twitch. She was all at once an alien, pitiable, and exotic figure.
"I've considered my own situation carefully. I've had plenty of time to think. I've been on my own here for some time now and I've gotten used to Prism. Comfortable, even. Once we contact the company and explain what's happened here I'm sure they'll want to stay and expand the station. The newcomers will need someone to explain things to them and keep them from making fools of themselves. For obvious reasons I don't think I'd be able to slip smoothly back into the everyday flow of life on Samstead-or anywhere else, for that matter. So I'm thinking of staying here if the company will let me continue with my work."
"Staying. I think you're wrong about being able to fit in back home. That's just where you would be able to fit in, on Samstead. Because you'd be in a suit all the tine. As for the right side of your face, there are ways to camouflage that."
"Word would leak out sooner or later. People, the media, would start seeking out the freak."
"You could be completely camouflaged. Syntheflesh everywhere and you'd look like everyone else. That's what I'm going to have done to me." He slapped his stomach.
"Maybe I could be fixed to look like everyone else, Evan, but I wouldn't be like everyone else. There's no way to fix that. And the media would still hunt me down. I couldn't cope with that. I'm a very private person, Evan. That's one reason why I chose the profession I did. I'm a loner, better at dealing with two people in a lab than two hundred at company offices. No, I made up my mind weeks ago, out in the forest. I'm staying here. I think the company will be delighted. Who else can work freely out in the wilds of this world without a suit? I'm adapted to this place, more so than any other human being."
She nearly left out the "other," Evan noticed.
"I'm not the girl down the street anymore. I never really was. Prism's made the condition permanent, that's all."
They were both silent for a long moment. Then that quirky smile returned. "As a loner I never dressed up much. I didn't care much for jewelry and now I can't leave it at home because it's become a part of me."
He smiled. "Once your friends armed you-pardon the pun-how come you never went looking for Humula?"
"Two reasons: I was afraid I'd never be able to surprise him if he stayed within the station's defensive perimeter, and I didn't know how to find my way back to the station without my suit."
"You couldn't judge from the position of the sun?"
"That may be part of your job. It wasn't part of mine. Who worried about such things inside a suit? Your survival suit took care of everything, including getting you home if you got lost. Hell, you couldn't get lost in a suit."
Evan nodded, remembering his own reliance on the MHW Maybe it was time a few of Samstead's enlightened citizens considered doing without suits for a while. Maybe there was some basis to the criticism its citizens heard from the other inhabitants of the Commonwealth. Could one rely too heavily on technology to get through everyday life? A disturbing thought-and a promising one.
"You talk of returning to your Associative," a new voice said, unable to keep silent any longer.
"Excuse me." Evan gestured with his left hand. "This is my friend Azure."
"A Surface of Fine Azure-Tinted Reflection With Pyroxine Dendritic Inclusions-if you don't mind." Impressions of a mental sigh. "But since you humans have this inexplicable aversion to proper names, you may refer to me by the same stunted identification my companion uses."
"I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, scout."
Evan looked startled. "You know, Azure's the only one whose name I've bothered to ask." He looked back at the rest of his friends, who had ceased their arguing to watch and listen. "Library, what are you called?"
"`Library' will do, since it would take you until evening to hear my entire name. When we wish to pass such information among ourselves we can do so far faster than you can comprehend."
"If you want to return to your camp we can do that anytime," Azure informed his friend.
"How? Without my suit I'm all turned around. We'll have to rely on my sun sightings and go slowly and carefully so I don't lose my way. Even so, that'll only get us back to where my suit died. From there back to the station will take some guesswork."
Azure made a disgusted sound. "For you, perhaps. I do not function according to `guesswork.' Why do you think I am called a scout?"
Evan smiled. "Do you remember every place you've ever been?"
"Certainly. It's my job."
"If you do not object the rest of us would like to accompany you." Evan turned to face library. "There is much to be learned from the continued study of human things."
"That's what the physicians who fixed me said," Martine commented, "but they were beginning a migratory and couldn't deviate from their planned course in any case."
"Of course you're welcome to join us," Evan told him. He shifted his attention back to Azure. "You think you can find your way from my suit back to the station?"
"You still do not fully comprehend the abilities of a scout. I will take you where we all wish to go."
"All right then. Let's go there."