"How do you feel?" Azure asked him.
"Ten kilos lighter, but then I suppose I probably am." He did some twisting and bending. There was no pain. He touched his fingertips to his toes, bringing his face flat up against his transparent torso. Except for that vague, all-over ache, he felt hale and hearty.
"It was fortunate that your reproductive organs were below the highest blow the shervan delivered," second physician said. "As with your brain, our skills would not have been equal to the task of replacement."
"You're not half as glad as I am." Evan fought to keep the inevitable bizarre images out of his mind. "The rest of it strikes me as impossible anyway. You just don't throw away hearts and lungs and so forth and fashion new ones with your hands, like pottery."
"The design is complex," first physician agreed, "but no more so than similar organic systems we have studied. The body, any body, is only a mobile device for shuttling the brain about. The scout actually dissuaded us from attempting further improvements while we worked."
Evan threw Azure a grateful glance, wondering if it would be understood. "What sort of improvements?"
"For one thing," the second physician informed him, "we would like for you to consider the possibility at some future time of allowing us to replace that entire absurd oxydizing system with one similar to our own."
"Thanks," Evan told it, "but if I spend too much time out in the sun I'm likely to break out in hives." He glanced downward again. "Everything seems to be working. The toughest thing to get used to is the idea of being able to see inside myself."
"We could replace the covering with something opaque, perhaps even color it to match the rest of your skin."
"No. No, not now. Another time, perhaps."
"Everything is fashioned of the strongest materials," first physician said. "Processor saw to that. Strong yet soft, so as not to damage your remaining natural organs."
"You saved my life. Thank you. Even if this new life is going to take some getting used to."
"You really ought to let us replace that entire energy production system." Second physician was persistent.
Azure stepped between it and Evan. "Leave him alone. He's suffered enough shocks for one day, mental and physical. Consider his point of reference. How would you react if you awoke one morning to discover that your eyes had been replaced with orbs of organic matter floating in a loosely liquid socket?"
"A ghastly image,"
The scout turned to look up at his newly repaired friend. "You came to study our home and it would seem you have become closer to your studies than you bargained for."
"Yeah. I had in mind a less intimate learning experience." He chuckled. The body ache was beginning to fade. "I'm going to be quite the center of attention when I return. Perhaps some of you would like to accompany me?" He could envision the physicians operating on a hopelessly injured human body, replacing damaged innards with smooth silicate replacements of their own manufacture and design.
"We must reach this beacon of yours first," Azure reminded him. "Or can it be that your priorities have changed along with your body?"
"No. I'm as human as I ever was." Only my perception has changed a little, he told himself confidently. Only the perception. There was nothing unusual about his new artificial heart or lungs. Different methods of installation and manufacture had been employed, that was all. A team of human surgeons trying to save his life would have dug into him with similar results in mind.
The lower portion of his froporia armor had survived and been recovered by the warriors, along with the arm pieces. Regretting the loss of the rest, he donned what was left. Perhaps they could locate another froporia pool and the missing sections could be regrown.
Somehow the process no longer struck him as threatening or repellent. He glanced down at his beacon. It was glowing very brightly indeed now. They didn't want to lose sight of where it was leading them.
Just as he would have to take pains not to lose sight of who he was.
"We must be very close." Azure looked excited in spite of himself. Looked rather than sounded. Evan had learned that when Azure or any of his kin became agitated, they tended to fluoresce slightly. "I can hear the signal myself now."
"So can I," library said, "though my hearing is not as acute as a scout's."
Apparently Evan wasn't the only one looking forward to the forthcoming reunion— assuming there was anything to reunion with.
Increasing their pace, they reached the crest of a steep hill, climbing through low flora fashioned from what looked like sheets of imperial topaz. From the ridge they could look down into a small valley. Martine Ophemert was nowhere in sight, but something else was.
"There lies your beacon," Azure said quietly, "but not your companion. I fear she has gone the way of all flesh."
"I have never seen anything like that in all my life." A profound confession, coming from library, who was after all the repository of every bit of knowledge the members of the Associative had ever accumulated. Not content to conclude with a single profundity, he added another.
"I think we'd better get away from this place."
Evan was gaping at the valley. It was completely bare of the normal profusion of silicate and organosilicate life. There wasn't any room for it because the valley was already occupied— by a single gargantuan, constantly shifting organism.
It was a crazy quilt of fractal shapes and projections, asymmetrical as a wild seashore. Even Evan's newly altered eyes failed to discern any unifying pattern. It was an uncontrolled explosion of life gone berserk, pulling and tearing at itself to form new combinations and shapes even as they watched. Antennae erupted from unpredictable sources, thrusting out of half-animal, half-inanimate bulges. Every type and kind of limb groped for a hold on the ground or the surviving valley flora which had not yet been overwhelmed: tentacles and hands, cilia and claw. Organic eyes competed with silicate lenses for viewing space.
Pink hemispheres hung in bloated bunches from the flanks of the abomination like bloody gas bags. One part decorated with delicate blue and green stripes ended abruptly where a massive red rhombohedral growth protruded from the monstrosity's back. The rhomboid was full of black inclusions and pulsed steadily in and out, like an enormous slab-sided lung. Limbs pushed and pulled without rhythm or pattern, with the result that the creature expended an enormous amount of energy in going nowhere.
"Chaos," muttered one of the physicians. "From what bud could such a horror spring? Randomness come to life. It is everything and yet it is nothing."
"What about the beacon?" Gazing down at the cancerous growth which filled the valley, Evan was afraid he already knew the answer.
Azure gestured toward the near end of the pulsating sea of life. "Down there."
"Your friend is dead, as you feared all along," said first physician. "Consumed along with dozens of other unlucky creatures."
"Yes. See there, the remains of several awarites." Library pointed to the back of the heaving mass, which rose a good thirty meters from the floor of the obliterated valley.
"Yes," physician agreed, "and over there the limbs of cotars and eviols, still moving, still attempting to perform their natural functions."
"It does more than absorb its prey," library commented cautiously. "It keeps all or parts of them alive and makes use of them. That, I think, is the answer to your earlier question. This is not one creature but hundreds, all thrown and joined together by some unifying force. But there is no rhyme or reason to it, no design, no architecture. Chaos it is and chaos is its plan."
"You mean some of the other creatures that thing has consumed are still alive?" Evan was straining to follow library's train of thought.
"Alive perhaps. Alive as individuals, no. Perhaps the hundreds have not been consumed so much as co-opted."
"Then where is the being that began it all, that controls it— insofar as it's being controlled."
"Who knows? It must be greatly transformed from what it was originally. It must
be buried deep within the anarchical self it has become." Library glanced up at Evan. "I say again we should leave this place. It is apparent that your friend is no longer alive. Her remains, by the location of the beacon that led us here, must lie somewhere within the mass. Look, the weight of it is so great the ground sags beneath it."
"Perhaps there is even more of it we cannot see," Azure suggested, "lying hidden beneath the surface."
Words too late to be dissected, alas, followed by proof all could have done without. Eight huge silicate tentacles broke the soil below them. Each ended in strong fingers of bright orange that clutched and grabbed.
Library and the physicians went up in coils of orange fibers, while the three warriors were pinned so tightly they couldn't bring their teeth to bear. Evan tried to run, was enveloped by a blast of sticky white fibers attached to the end of one tentacle. The soft, unbreakable fuzz tickled but he wasn't laughing. He felt himself being drawn down into the valley, kicking and shouting to his companions.
They were as helpless as ants in the hands of a giant, a giant that filled the entire valley.
"Co-opted!" library yelled at all of them as he fought against the entangling limbs. Did that mean dead or alive?
They were about to find out. A flap on the upper flank of the monster opened in expectation of their arrival. There were no visible teeth and it looked more like a door than a mouth. Meter-long cilia gripped him when the orange tentacle let go and withdrew. One by one, his friends joined him inside.
The outer flap closed and the roof began to descend. Evan fought hard. Suffocation was a particularly unpleasant form of death. The thin sheet of flesh pressed down tightly— and broke, to slide down around him and his friends. It halted near his waist, imprisoning him firmly. Like a bee floating in a bucket, a fist-size yellow-and-black eye popped out of the englobing ooze to stare briefly at him before moving on to inspect first physician.
Evan pressed against the material surrounding him. It was already hardening and held him tight. From below, a small wave of yellow slag was approaching, flowing upward in defiance of gravity. It reached him and began to crawl slowly up his sides, hardening as it advanced.
His friends were likewise imprisoned. If the rate of rise remained constant, all of them would be completely submerged before evening. By virtue of his greater height Evan might hold out for another day or so. Already he could feel the noisome stuff crawling over his chin, covering first his mouth, then plugging both nostrils, cutting off his air, his lungs bursting.
There was to be no placid period of extended contemplation, however. Thin waxy tendrils emerged from the fluid surface and tried to slither up his rib cage. He used his arms and hands to rip them away until something struck him from behind ...
Night had fallen by the time he regained consciousness. The light from Prism's multiple moons cast a silvery gloss over the heaving, never still surface of which he was now a part. Both of his arms were imprisoned close to his ribs and the yellow syrup had risen to his sternum.
He was acutely conscious of the single tendril which had snaked its way up his shoulder to enter through his left ear. Once more he was plugged in, only this time the connection was involuntary.
A few lumpy silhouettes were visible off to his right, all that remained of his entombed companions. By this time tomorrow he too would have vanished. He could see library and Azure clearly beneath the layer of semitransparent material. Since they did not breathe they must still be alive. He could not decide if he envied them.
No point in screaming. He'd done enough screaming already on this world. He even managed a wry, private grin. Here he'd come all this way to find Martine Ophemert and now that he'd found her, he wasn't going to be allowed to leave. They were to be joined, as hundreds of other inhabitants of Prism had been joined, in a noxious and unholy congress.
He had come dozens of light-years to perish as part of an organic soup, an alien ollapodrida. All to no purpose.
"That is untrue," said an entirely new voice inside his head.
So the tendril reaching into his brain was a communications link, and not merely some forgotten animate independence acting out irresistible instincts.
"Each new acquisition contributes to the success of the whole."
Yes, a new voice, different from library's, different from Azure's. A vibrant, powerful voice walking the edge of nervous hysteria. The voice of a wholly confident mad thing. As unsettled verbally as it was physically.
"You have already absorbed another of my kind." It was intended as a statement of fact, not as a question.
The response was disconcerting. "I have seen another soft thing like yourself, but could not induce it to join me."
"That's not true. You have within you a device which was a part of this other individual, a device which emits light and sound."
"The thing you speak of, a most curious and fascinating artifact, is indeed within me. But I was not also able to cojoin with its originator. Sadly, it avoided my blandishments."
Anyone but Evan Orgell would have laughed. Or cried. He did neither, luxuriating in the delicious irony of the situation while retaining complete control of his churning emotions. How utterly perfect! How exquisitely droll! It was true, then, what the philosophers said: the universe was the biggest joker of all. He had walked, stumbled, and crawled across the hostile surface of an alien world in hopes of effecting a gallant rescue, only to end up in need of rescue by the one he sought.
But that thought was premature as well as unlikely. How this monstrosity had come into possession of Ophemert's beacon he could only surmise, but that didn't change the fact that she was probably dead. Consumed by some other voracious citizen of Prism, no doubt.
No wonder he'd been able to track her beacon so easily. No wonder the signal had remained in approximately the same place. The irony of it was marvelous.
What a shame he'd never have the opportunity to share it with anyone else.
"Why are you so despondent?" the voice wondered. "I mean you no harm."
Evan found that he was still able to laugh. He hoped his mental reply sounded sufficiently incredulous. "You mean us no harm? You attack and carry us off and then imprison us in this mass, which I presume is part of yourself, and you still claim to mean us no harm?"
"I mean you no harm. You are to become contributors to a great experiment."
"What kind of 'experiment'?"
"The experiment that is I. Me. Myself. I am the Integrator. I am you and you are me. All will become me and I will become all."
The philosophy is not new, Evan told himself. That was a cry common to many would-be tyrants and dictators stretching far back into the depths of human history. But he doubted it had ever been previously stated on a purely biological level. His demise was to be truly unique: he was going to be murdered by a megalomaniacal melanoma.
"All contribute. I especially value intelligence. You and your companions are intelligent. They come from an Associative, but I am the greatest Associative that has ever been or ever will be. I am the only true Associative."
"You are not an Associative because you are not organized." Evan was certain he recognized the voice of library, bitter and accusatory— and disturbingly weak.
"Organization follows form. I am the Integrator and my purpose is to link together as many lifeforms as possible, until I have become all the world and all the world has become me! One single immense organism, the logical end of all Associatives."
Though weakened and helpless, library would not concede. "You are not organized. There is no design to your growth, no rhythm to your expansion. It is as chaotic as your intentions. You are not an Associative. You are not integrated. You are an anarchy."
"Organization requires only the proper integration of a sufficient diversity of lifeforms. That has not yet been achieved."
"You don't understand yourself. You can continue to grow in mass but not in mind. Organization does not occur on its own behalf."
"You are on
ly a fragment," the Integrator replied contemptuously. "What can you know of destiny?"
Superficial as well as insane, Evan mused.
"You will see. There are several libraries within the Associative, each contributing its own store of knowledge to the greater whole that is I, Us, Me. See."
Quiet reigned while the Integrator put library in touch with others of his kind who had preceded him to oblivion. "You have their knowledge, their talents, yes. You have information without the ability to apply it, though, because you have stripped them of their individuality. They can no longer discuss, argue, and compare. They can only comply. You have destroyed that which is most useful about them."
"There can be no individuality within a true Associative. You will not miss yours, I assure you. Instead you will find far greater fulfillment as a library as part of a proper whole. It is how it was meant to be. Each contributes a specialization to the whole. Multiplicity is versatility."
"Not without individuality," library argued. "Without individuality there can be no innovation, and without innovation there can be no development. You can grow but you cannot mature. You can repeat but you cannot create. You will not be capable of an original thought."
"Ah, but that is where you are most wrong, for am I not the most original thought of all? Where but in me have you ever seen such originality before?"
"Only in nightmares," Evan murmured.
"You are mentally and physically insane," library added, "though I don't expect you to recognize that. Individuals cannot forcibly be integrated."
"Wrong, wrong, you are so wrong! It can be done. It has been done. I have done it. I am it." Around Evan the surface of the Integrator flared with an intense green light, an outpouring of uncontrolled emotion, a visual shout.
"You're right," Evan said quietly. "It can be done." He could sense the shock among his companions. "It can be done, and you are not proof of it— I am. Look closely at me. I am warrior, library, physician and scout, gatherer and scanner, all in one. You cannot integrate two Integrators."
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