Chapter Seven

 

The long day wended its way toward evening. Nothing plunged from the sky or the cascalarians and condarites to smash him flat. Nothing charged from the forest to crush him beneath massive silicate paws. The acid-spitters left him alone; the quartz-eaters ignored him as they browsed contentedly on fields of citrine and chalcedony.

His initial terror at moving about without the protection of a proper suit had almost vanished. He was more confident than ever. All you had to do to avoid harm on this world, he decided, was simply to exercise a little prudent judgment and work to stay out of trouble's way, and you would be left in peace to continue your journey. Traveling without the encumbrances of an MHW was not only possible; it could be educational and invigorating. He wasn't dead, had no prospects of immediately entering that state, and was making good progress toward the location of the beacon.

As he walked he tried to estimate the distance he'd covered since abandoning his suit. It was impressive, if he did say so himself. So pleased was he that he decided to treat himself to an early supper of real food.

Neither pool nor stream was close at hand, but he wasn't especially thirsty. A brief search for a place to relax turned up a shallow depression beneath an entirely new growth.

Instead of branches or leaves or the torus of the cascalarians, this new plant consisted of broad pink plates growing from the ends of short, thick stems. Each plate was about four centimeters thick and more than two meters in diameter. They grew one atop the other, competing for space and for access to sunlight. This particular growth had opted for several large photoreceptors instead of hundreds of smaller ones.

Evan scrunched down into the shade they provided and took his time with his food. When he'd finished he packed away the debris and lay down beneath the translucent pink plates. With the sun behind them, he found he could now make out the delicate tracery of individual substructures within each plate, the network that drew energy from the sun and delivered it to the thick stems rooted in the ground.

Rose-colored glasses, he thought, recalling an ancient rhyme. He was looking at the whole world through gigantic rose-colored glasses. The plates provided so much shade that he found he was able to remove his effective but uncomfortable sunshade. Thus screened, he was able to see around him so long as he was careful not to look directly at any of the highly reflective growths that ringed his resting place. It was a relief to get the knot of plastic off the back of his head.

He lay there, content and confident, while his food was digested. An hour's siesta didn't seem out of the question.

When the hour was up he prepared to resume his trek. The only trouble was that he couldn't. He twisted hard. His legs wouldn't budge. It was all he could do to sit up. He looked down at his suddenly immobile legs. What he saw made him want to vomit.

Something, or rather some things, were moving about beneath his pants legs. It was a sinuous, rippling motion, smooth and supple. As he stared, little dots of red began to stain the beige of his lower clothing. Blood.

His blood. It had to be, because he'd seen nothing to indicate that any of Prism's inhabitants possessed anything in their bodies like that rich red, unmistakable fluid. He felt no pain.

Reaching out and down, he slapped at his right leg. Several twisting, curling shapes burst through the thin material of his pants. None was thicker around than his little finger.

The worms were the same color as the sandy soil he was lying on. Indeed, they were composed of the same elements as that soil. Half a dozen of them were snaking up each leg of his pants, linked to one another head to tail by means of powerful little suckers. Two were finked head to side.

He leaned over and looked at his left side. More worms there, dozens more, fastened tightly to one another in a living net that was binding him with increasing strength to his place of rest. And more of them emerging to join their brethren every minute.

The soil all around and beneath him was alive, rippling with the movements of hundreds of anxious, hungry shapes.

Horror lent strength to his efforts. He gave a tremendous jerk with his legs and succeeded in wrenching the left one free. Linked worms flew in all directions. As soon as they struck the ground they began crawling back toward him, joining in lengths off twos and threes in expectation of re-forming the cocoon around him.

Yet Evan couldn't pull his right leg free of the ground. Twisting around onto his belly, he scrabbled at the earth, trying to reach the nearest stem of the plants shading him. His tranquil resting place had all the hallmarks of becoming his coffin, and a particularly revolting one at that, unless he could pull or push himself loose.

The stem was far out of reach. Sitting up again, he tried to grab one of the overhanging plates, just did manage to grasp the lowest. Hope turned to powder along with the plate, however, as it disintegrated in his hand. Like so much of Prism's flora it was far more fragile than it appeared. Frantic now, he started looking for a rock, wishing he'd kept one in his pack. Nothing was within reach but fine sand.

His silent attackers re-established their grip on his freed leg, and this time it didn't seem likely he'd be able to pull it free. From the knees down both of his legs were stained with blood. It suddenly occurred to him that the mineral salts in his blood were what the worms were after. He'd be willing enough to share it with them if they'd just let him go. But why should they have to share, he thought wildly, when they could have it all? They would pin him down until they'd drained him of the last drop and then abandon him to the scavengers. First his skin would be dissolved and digested, then the calcium-rich bones.

He found a small rock, began battering away at the living chains encircling his thighs. But the worms were -made of stronger stuff than their terrestrial cousins. They were neither soft and pulpy nor brittle like the growth beneath which he was being patiently devoured. They were flexible, rubbery, and tough as bundles of silicate fibers. When he finally did manage to kill one by smashing its head, two more appeared to take the dead worm's place.

Evan was leaning on his left arm, flailing away with the rock in his right hand, when three worms popped out of the ground, linked together, and encircled the thumb of his supporting hand. With a cry, he turned and pounded them back into the soil. More appeared in the wake of the initial trio. It dawned on him that he'd chosen to lie down in a hive or nest of the loathsome creatures. The commotion caused by his resistance was awakening more and more of them, excited by the activity and the taste of fresh food. If they managed to tie his hands down he'd be utterly helpless.

Though he was losing blood slowly, the worms had been at it long enough to have drained a pint or more out of him. He was weakening just when he needed strength. Evan, however, was not the type to concede any argument, least of all that acknowledging his own demise. He kept bashing away with his wholly inadequate weapon.

Somehow he had to free his legs before he passed out. But with his increasing weakness, his aim and the force with which he delivered his blows were failing him and he was hitting himself as often as his targets. He put his left hand down to balance himself again, raised the rock high over his head, and promptly fell backward as his left arm was yanked out from under him. Thirty or more worms had formed a double-thick cable to pull him down.

He twisted onto his left side and tried to knock them away. On the third blow the rock slipped out of his hands. Exhausted, he lay there breathing hard and contemplating the tiny lifeform which had defeated the finest mind humanity had to offer. Not for Evan Orgell false modesty even in the face of imminent death.

Strange how calm he suddenly was. Composed. His greatest disappointment was that he wouldn't live long enough to study the exact nature of his passing.

What a stupid, ridiculous way to die, he thought tiredly. After surviving a broken MHW suit and a host of dangerous alien lifeforms. Brought down by a colony of communal worms. Food for worms, true enough. But that wasn't supposed to be the case until after you'd been dead for a while. The worms weren't supposed to hurry the inevitable. Of course, these weren't terran worms. They hadn't been instructed in their proper place in the scheme of things.

They had him pinned to the ground the way the Lilliputians had tried to pin Gulliver, and they'd done a much better job of it. He passed out.

 

The sun was high in the sky but in the wrong place when he opened his eyes again. He was excruciatingly tired, more than he'd ever imagined being. It went beyond exhaustion. There was about and throughout his body a numbness that belonged to inorganic things like rocks and metal, not poor flesh and blood.

And blood. He raised his head and looked down at himself. From the knees down his pants were gone, torn away by some agency unknown. He could see the worm scars clearly, long and thin and caked with dried blood. He had no idea how much they'd sucked out of him, but evidently not enough to kill him.

The pink photoreceptors that had shaded him were gone. His unprotected eyes squeezed together to shut out the unbearably bright light, but he could still make out things in his immediate vicinity. He was lying beneath a growth that looked very much like a normal tree. Closer inspection revealed it to be plated with long strips of brown silica, but it had a green heart. He tried hard to tell himself it was made of wood.

On both sides of him clumps of bright yellow flower shapes that resembled blue-and-green striped ultrasound projectors moved lazily in the gentle breeze-but not so lazily that they didn't keep themselves oriented to the sun. They might very well be ultrasound projectors, he told himself, given the insane world on which they grew.

The flowers and tree were comforting, but where were the worms? How long had he lain unconscious? Minutes, hours, longer still? His stomach felt empty but he wasn't starving, so it couldn't have been too many days, if days it had been. A single day or so, then. Thirty hours or more of unconsciousness while his body recuperated from the assault. He felt oddly lightheaded, and not just from loss of blood.

Then he remembered what he'd seen just before he'd blacked out. Or what he thought he'd seen.

The blue caterpillar, coming down the slight slope, wading into the milling worms and scattering them with swings of its legs, crunching them in its mouth and spraying them with the mysterious fluid from the hypodermic organ beneath its jaws. A drop of that liquid caused the worms to break their links, to contort violently as their bodies cracked open and they died.

Undoubtedly the caterpillar had been partaking of an unexpected abundance of prey, feasting on the worms even as they had been feasting on Evan. Perhaps that was why the creature had been following him all along. But that didn't seem right, he thought. Surely the caterpillar was a photovore, with all those light-gathering cilia on its back?

Even so, it probably required minerals. So it would take them, when the opportunity presented itself, from the small worm bodies in which the minerals had been concentrated. Sure. The caterpillar was after the same substances as the worms.

Then why hadn't it attacked Evan that night in the cave?

It didn't matter now. What mattered was that the caterpillar's unexpected assault had killed so many of the worms that the rest had given up and retreated to their underground sanctuary. Weak and barely conscious, Evan then must have managed to crawl out of the lethal depression to this place of safe rest, where his wounded body had taken the opportunity to repair itself.

Operating on instinct, then, the caterpillar had inadvertently done him a good turn. He hoped to encounter it again. Maybe, somehow, he'd have a chance to repay the favor. If his memory of events was correct and if that was truly what had happened. Perhaps it would turn up to follow him again. If he could entice it to follow him back to the station he'd feed it the remnants of the chemical lab until it couldn't consume any more. It could ingest rare minerals to its heart's content-assuming it had a heart instead of a collection of silicate batteries.

The lightheadedness wouldn't go away. His body had done its best, but now it needed more than rest to continue the rejuvenating process. His stomach insisted on it. As he tried to sit up, he found himself listing to his left. Something was tugging at his left ear. Frowning, he reached up to scratch the itch, to remove whatever loose bits of matter had fallen on him while he'd slept.

His fingers contacted two extremely thin tendrils dangling from his head. They were not wrapped around his ear, entwined in his hair, or stuck to his sideburns. They hung from the ear itself. Out of it.

He looked sharply to his left. A pair of bright green glassy orbs stared back into his own from a distance of a few centimeters. It was the caterpillar.

It was sitting on his shoulders, curled around the back of his neck like a silicate stole. The legs gripped his clavicle and shoulder muscles, digging in lightly but firmly. Those jaws, which were capable of shredding rock, rested lightly against the flesh of his upper arm.

The two thin tendrils emerged from its head to enter Evan's ear, in their penetration bypassing the tympanum without damaging it and slipping deeper into the skull. Something tickled Evan's brain. It was as though he'd been given a slight shock.

What happened next was that he blacked out without losing consciousness. To put it another way, he went slightly mad for a while, jumping to his feet and running and twisting in circles, bouncing off the glassy growths around him, all the while trying to dislodge the creature on his shoulders and the tendrils it had inserted into his brain. He pulled and tugged and yanked at the thin filaments. They would not break, and even at full strength it's doubtful he could have broken that ten-legged grip.

Throughout it all, the caterpillar did not move, did not utter a sound. Only its black eyelids reacted, closing to protect the green lenses from Evan's desperately stabbing fingers. It was like jabbing a mirror. He did more harm to himself by banging into trees and rocks than he did to the caterpillar.

When he pulled at the filaments dangling from his ear he only succeeded in causing himself the most excruciating pain.

His throat gave out first, raw from nonstop screaming. During his wild dash through the forest he'd sloughed off the last vestiges of confidence that he'd succeeded in building up since he'd abandoned his suit, along with much of what would be called civilized behavior. First the worms, then seeming salvation, and now this. Only an unshakable confidence in his ability to survive, somehow, kept him from going completely insane. Others might have called it arrogance.

Eventually the exhaustion reached his legs and he dropped to his knees. He cupped his face in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably. Throughout, the caterpillar clung to his shoulders, glassy and imperturbable, as unaffected by his emotional breakdown as it had been by his hysterical attempts to dislodge it from its perch.

Evan collapsed on his right side. He lay there, shuddering, trying to shut out the thought of what had happened to him, of what might yet happen to him. Far better to have died painlessly from the attentions of the worms. Worst of all, he had no idea what the thing was doing to him. Feeding on him somehow? Preparing his brain as a repository for its young?

Since he could no longer run or scream, all he could do was lie still and contemplate. Contemplate and think. It was taking him apart from the inside out. Yes, dissolving his brain tissue and extracting it bit by bit through those two tendrils. He'd lose control slowly at first. There would be only the pain of knowing.

A fresh attempt to loosen the tendrils only produced a resurgence of the sharp pain that previous tries had generated. A dull throbbing had begun near the back of his skull. The first signs, he thought. He was too tired to yell anymore. It alleviated nothing anyway. His situation was utterly hopeless.

Yes, it was destroying him from within. He'd already seen what the creature could do with that hypodermic organ beneath its mouth. Was it injecting that or some similar fluid into his head even now? It seemed strange there should be no pain, but as long as he didn't pull on the tendrils, there was only the slight throbbing sensation, a throbbing which rose and fell,, went away without warning and returned without hurt. He was so tired of hurting.

The throbbing was like waves beating on a beach. Soft and pulsing, not painful at. all. Just as the words weren't painful.

"I am sorry, Soft Thing," went the throbbing, "that it took so long to mesh with you, but your plug was hard to find."

Evan rolled over and sat up, swayed for a moment before steadying himself to listen to the echo of the word throbs rattling around inside his brain. More was to come. "Are you understanding me? I feel that you must be receiving but you do not broadcast."

So this is what it's like to be mad, Evan thought quietly.

"You are not mentally unbalanced," the voice informed him confidently. "Confused and tired, yes, but I believe sane. Your impulses are properly organized. They were utterly alien to me at first but conceptually they translate very well."

"What translates very well?" Evan became aware that he only thought the question. He hadn't opened his mouth since he'd stopped screaming and was afraid to do so lest he start again. He didn't want to do that. Raving was counterproductive.

"The communication impulses your brain generates. Somewhat confusing, but that is to be expected. All communications impulses produced by soft-tissue minds are slightly disorganized."

"You don't say," Evan muttered, aloud this time. The sound of his nonshrieking voice was comforting. Crazed he might be, but still in control of himself.

He forced himself to turn to stare directly at the blue, and green and yellow apparition that had stepped out of the Looking Glass onto his shoulders.

"What are you doing to me?"

"I am conversing with you. Accept reality." By way of further proof the caterpillar winked at him.

Gingerly this time, Evan reached up to feel of the thin silvery tendrils running from the top of the creature's head into his left ear. Mesh? Plug?

"I don't have a plug inside my head," he mumbled.

"Of course you do." The caterpillar sounded absolutely sure of itself. "Every intelligent being has a plug. Yours was difficult for me to locate. Amazing as it seems, it has never been used before. As a result, it has atrophied and changed. To make a proper connection required some modifcations, which I performed while you recovered from the depredations of the syaruzi."

Evan took long, regular breaths. It kept him from shaking. "What are you talking about, `modification'? You did something inside my head? What have you done to me?"

"Merely cleaned up some overgrowth and allowed your natural organs to function properly so as to facilitate normal meshing." The caterpillar managed to sound puzzled. "I should think you would be grateful."

"I'm sure as hell grateful to you for pulling me away from those worm-things. Anything else I'm reserving judgment on. How come I can understand you so clearly?"

"Clarity is a consequence of meshing. It is only to be expected when two intelligent beings are plugged into each other. All communications impulses are similar."

Impulses. The caterpillar was deciphering the electrical impulses which together formed rational thoughts in Evan's mind. Just as he must be doing with the caterpillar's impulses. But how? Through "plugs"? Was this fantasy or physiology?

Whatever it was, it seemed to work.

"The sequence and intensity of impulses varies," the caterpillar told him helpfully, "but within specific limits. With care, all are eventually comprehensible. I did not think you were intelligent when I first encountered you in the cave. I was attracted by the astonishing amount of waste heat your body generates. In any event, you did not demonstrate the ability to communicate. I called out to you many times, without ever receiving a response."

"You mean, all those buzzes and chirps? That was just so much noise to me."

"As were your modulated sound waves to me. You are generating them now in conjunction with your thoughts, but I could not understand a single concept were we unmeshed.

"When you did not respond to my signals, I more or less decided there was nothing to communicate with. I did find your new form interesting, however, despite what I thought was your demonstrable stupidity."

Evan bristled slightly, but on reflection found himself agreeing with the caterpillar's assessment. Sprawling out atop a syaruzi community, after all, would not be perceived by a local intelligence as the action of a particularly bright individual.

"What made you change your mind?"

"The methodical way in which you attempted to free yourself from the syaruzi's clutches. I thought that an attempt at a more intimate means of communication was worth a try. So I made the effort, which was considerable, to locate and modify your plug so that it could be utilized for proper meshing. And how were my attempts rewarded? The first thing you tried to do was break the connection. Hardly the reaction of an intelligent creature."

Evan's pulse had dropped to something like normal. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what was happening to me. I vaguely recalled your attacking the syaruzi, though I didn't know it was on my behalf. I- my species, my kind aren't familiar with this method of communication you call meshing. My plug, as you call it, is something in my own brain that I'm not familiar with. I never heard of it before. And when you call this method of communication intimate, as far as my kind is concerned, that's one hell of an understatement. The thought of something inserting itself into our heads is, well, not pleasant." After a pause he added, "Listen, are you sure I have this plug organ or whatever it is inside my skull, or have you added something and you're not telling me the truth about it?"

"I only modified what already exists in your mind. When you panicked I thought of breaking the connection and leaving you alone. But your distress was so obvious and your ignorance so extreme that I did not see how you could survive for long without help. So I persisted until you calmed down long enough to permit another serious attempt at rational conversation."

"Again, I'm sorry. I'm not used to walking around like this. Ever since I had to abandon my suit-"

"Suit?"

Evan described the MHW and its functions, trying to make as clear a mental picture of it for the caterpillar as possible.

"Ah. So you do have a hard exoskeleton like so many other soft things, but you were forced to slough it off."

"No, no." Evan contained his impatience. "It's a suit. It's not natural, not a normal part of our bodies. It's a manufactured item, something fashioned out of raw metals and chemicals."

"So is an exoskeleton."

"But an exoskeleton is made by one's body. A suit is built up with tools, by machines."

"What are tools?"

Evan was taken aback. A highly intelligent alien completely ignorant of tools?

"We can discuss it later." He was searching the ground nearby anxiously. The caterpillar had thoughtfully recovered his pack, which lay nearby, apparently undamaged. Either the scavengers hadn't discovered its contents yet or else his alien rescuer had frightened them off.

Food packets lay scattered about where they had fallen out of the pack. He rose, doing his best to ignore the weight on his shoulders, walked over, and began restocking the pack.

"What are those things?"

"Food."

"Really? There is no brightness to them at all."

"They contain stored chemical energy. I'm not a photovore like you. My body produces energy by oxydizing certain chemical compounds and breaking them down into sugars and other substances which- well, we can go into organic chemistry later."

"I know that soft forms draw energy from consuming other soft forms, but I have never seen them reduced to such a state. I knew that you had to be a soft-form consumer because you sought shade when all other intelligent creatures instinctively seek the light."

"I don't need sunlight to live," Evan started to say, then corrected himself, "except for an occasional slight dose so my body can produce certain vitamins. I can't convert it to direct energy like you."

"And so, like other soft-form consumers, you must spend much of your time searching for chemical combinations to eat. What a terrible waste of precious life time."

"I agree. On the other hand, I can carry food with me into total darkness and live there for a long period of time."

"Who would want to?" The caterpillar gave a mental shudder at the thought.

The tendrils brushed lightly against Evan's neck as he bent to retrieve his belongings. "Listen, do you think we could maybe do without this meshing-plug business and learn to talk by means of modulated sound waves?"

"I tried that at first, as I said. I do not think it would ever be feasible. Your modulations are so much pure noise. Furthermore, much was generated at a frequency so low as to be almost indetectable. Is the meshing causing you pain?"

"No, no-not anymore. It's just that I'm not used to the idea yet, I guess."

"I still find it hard to believe you are in possession of a proper plug without being aware of its existence in your own body."

"Believe it. Yours is the first indication of its presence I've ever had. My kind communicate only by speaking."

"More and more extraordinary. How do you hold simultaneous group conversations?"

"We don't. One person talks and everyone else listens."

"That is sad. It must greatly slow your communications, your exchange of information. It must be difficult for you to work in harmonious groups."

"Sometimes," Evan admitted, thinking back to the endless arguments he'd had with fellow workers. "We're an argumentative lot, we humans."

Evan found himself beginning to relax despite the presence in his head of alien tendrils. Not only was his newfound friend curious and startlingly intelligent; it was also compassionate. And it had- rescued him from the bloodsuckers.

True, it had invaded his body without his permission, but it had only done so as a last resort to facilitate communication. Within its own ethical parameters it had acted properly. Evan knew full well that he never would have allowed the meshing to take place had he been conscious and aware of what was going on.

"Do you have an individuality or are you just part of a composite?"

"I beg your pardon? I mean, I don't understand."

"Among my kind each individual is identified by a descriptive term appropriate to the individual alone. I, for example, am A Surface of Fine Azure-Tinted Reflection With Pyroxin Dendritic Inclusions."

Evan mulled that over. "How about if I just call you Azure?"

The caterpillar sounded disappointed. "That is not properly descriptive."

"It's a lot better than mine. I'm called Evan."

"Ev-an. Is that descriptive of anything?"

"It's descriptive of me."

"You define yourself by yourself. Uninformative."

"It's an abstract."

"I'm not good with abstracts," Azure confessed. "They are the business of philosophers and teachers. I am only a scout."

"That's your profession?"

"Profession?" More confusion. "It is what I am. A teacher is a teacher. A warrior is a warrior. A scout is a scout. Everyone is what they are."

"That's not the case with us. We can switch between occupations whenever we want to."

"Now I am truly puzzled. For an intelligent being you are afflicted by the most bizarre notions."

"That's quite an assumption for a glass caterpillar to make," Evan shot back.

Azure was not offended. "A more descriptive image, though imprecise and based on an obscure alien reference."

Evan let his fingers trace the path taken by the tendrils. "You're positive you haven't done any permanent damage to my mind or ear or anything?"

"I proceeded only where I was confident," Azure assured him. "I did not attempt to proceed where there was no reaction."

"Reaction?"

"Impulse response. The output of your own brain guided me along the correct route to the plug. You can imagine my astonishment when I finally made contact, only to find the organ shrunken and unused. I had never before attempted to mesh with another mind possessing a previously unutilized plug, but the reactions of your mind and body were so smooth that I determined to proceed. Now that the necessary modifications have been made, it will be easy for you to mesh with anyone else in the future."

Except that it will never be needed again, Evan told himself. He was able to keep the thought private, not wishing to insult his friend's delicate handiwork. He was able to do so, because in order to communicate he had to think at the alien.

He wished for a mirror, though if he wanted to see himself badly enough, the forest was rich with reflective surfaces. He tugged gently on the tendrils, was rewarded with a brief stab of pain.

"Do you wish me to break the connection?" Azure asked quickly. "I can sense your discomfort."

"It's all right. I just can't keep my hands to myself. It's the kind of reality that requires constant reassurance for continued belief. There's no pain when I leave them alone. Resides, this is the biggest news in interpersonal communication in the last three centuries."

"You are a library, then?"

"A what?"

"A library. A repositor and collector of knowledge, fed by scouts." The little alien seemed unusually excited. "No wonder I had such an easy time making the connection. You were designed to accept it."

"Now wait a minute. I'm no library-librarian, I mean. I'm a research engineer specializing in macroconcepts who-but we're arguing descriptions again. Yes, it is part of my job to acquire and store knowledge, but that's not all I do."

"Of course it is not, but everyone is designed to carry out a primary function, and yours is that of library. Your plug design confirms it."

"I wish you'd quit talking about that." He was trying to keep from thinking about the particulars of the place where the pair of alien probes actually pierced his brain.

Were all humans like that? Was everyone walking around unknowingly in possession of a tiny, unused organ designed for intimate communication with individuals of other species? If so, what did that say about convergent evolution, not to mention the potential theological implications? Had all intelligent life, even the utterly alien silicon-based life of Prism, come from some primeval basic design? Did the thranx and the AAnn possess similar organs?

If so, it pointed toward revelations so immense as to barely be imagined. If confirmed it would be a discovery vast enough to overwhelm everything else that had been learned since man had taken his first tentative step outward from the home world.

He couldn't deal with it. He was too busy just trying to live through the day. If this caterpillar, this Azure, could facilitate survival by sticking a couple of glass fibers into his ear, then he would gladly accept the intrusion.

"What does a scout do?"

"Like anything else, it defines itself, but since you desire elaboration: a scout ranges far from the Associative on its behalf. My task is to gather knowledge of the world that surrounds the Associative, of good places to mine the minerals and the metals necessary to our health, and to keep watch out for and provide warning of potential dangers."

"This Associative, it's like a town, a community? So there are others like you?"

"There are a few other scouts, of course."

"No, I didn't mean that." Evan tried to think of another way to phrase the question. "I mean, there's a larger grouping of you, some of whom perform other functions on behalf of the community?"

"Certainly. What else would an Associative consist of? Are not your own Associatives comprised of individuals who specialize?"

"That's right. I'm a specialist myself. A specialist in generalities, if that's not too confusing. Though I'm not getting a clear picture of what you mean when you say specialize. It seems to mean something more than what I think of when I use the same term." He paused to rub his forehead.

"More pain?"

"Not really. It's just a dull throbbing when you talk at me, like a weak headache."

"That sounds like an affliction peculiar to soft forms."

"You don't experience mental stress to the point of discomfort?"

"Not physically. A soft-form conception." Azure was silent for a long moment before announcing brightly, "I have come up with a descriptive for you. I will call you Flexible Modular Argumentative Random-Motion Carbon Concentrate."

"Evan will do nicely."

"You have this preference for nondescriptive identification," the alien grumbled disappointedly.

"We have enough trouble making ourselves understood to one another. Look on it as a communications saver."

"If it will make you feel more comfortable." Azure still didn't sound convinced.

"It will. Let me ask you something." Evan turned to point back toward the distant but still identifiable depression where he'd nearly been bled to death. "The syaruzi, as you call them, were after the trace elements in my blood."

"The metals and minerals in the liquid part of your body, yes."

"They don't interest you? These fibers you've got stuck in my head, they're only there for communications purposes? You're not having this nice, polite conversation with me and simultaneously draining me of some vital trace substance like zinc, are you?"

Azure's shock was almost palpable. "Certainly not! Some creatures obtain what they need of important elements by stealing them from the bodies of others, but the majority extract them directly from the ground. I will unplug and show you."

"All right."

He braced himself, but there was no pain as the alien broke the connection. The two tendrils slipped cleanly and bloodlessly out his ear. Azure released his grasp on Evan's shoulders and jumped to the ground, absorbing the shock easily through his ten legs.

Finding a suitable patch of ground, he cleared away the bubble grass, lowered his head, and began sucking up the sandy soil beneath through a short, flexible snout. He kept at it for a couple of minutes, then looked back up at Evan and buzzed. Despite the warning, Evan flinched when the alien jumped back onto his shoulders. The alien. It had a name, didn't it? It was intelligent, wasn't it?

It was much harder and required a supreme effort of will for Evan to stand motionless with his hands at his sides while Azure reinserted the communications tendrils into his skull.