Nigel gingerly unhooked himself from the machine. He sealed the cap on his leg vein input. The memories surfaced often now. He had regained a good deal of his old mental equilibrium, enough to permit the old hurts and joys to resurface. Whatever in him had learned to repress was now itself in retreat.

Nikka moved to help him up but he waved her away. “I’m feeling a lot better. Stronger.”

“I’d still like you to rest more. You’ve been working in the gardens too much.”

“No, just barely enough. I’m beginning to think this whole blood imbalance thing, the buildup of ruddy rogue cells and that rot—quite literally, rot—it’s all been due to something from that injury in the damned fluxlife-cleaning job.” He stretched, enjoying the delicious pop of his joints.

Nikka smiled tolerantly. As she opened her mouth to speak he saw in an instant her fatigue, pushed back beyond notice, silted up inside her by the currents of despair she must have suffered in these years of watching him slowly go dull and listless. The fretwork of lines near her eyes had deepened and turned downward. Her laugh was blunted now, seldom heard, weighted.

“Things are going to be better now,” he said impulsively. “I’m sure I’ve beaten it.”

“Yes,” she said, and put her arms around him. “Yes.”

He saw that she did not believe. She thought his words meant no more than the compulsive optimism of a man who knew deeply that he would die. “No, I want you to see it … see better. I am getting—”

A knock at the door. They went into the living room, closing the bedroom door to hide the medical machines. Nigel opened the door. He kept his face blank when he saw it was Carlos and Ted Landon. Carlos had been coming by regularly, but Nigel had decided it was best for the moment to be neither friendly nor hostile. Simple distance might be the best.

Carlos was nervous, sweating. He said abruptly, “Nigel, I told you it wouldn’t last, that medmon dodge. While I was in the Slots a systems inventory turned up a glitch, where I’d covered for you. They just now unraveled it and—”

“I thought it was a good idea to bring along Carlos, so he could explain,” Ted broke in smoothly. “He didn’t rat on you.”

Nigel shrugged.

“I don’t blame Carlos for this at all,” Ted said with heavy seriousness. “He’s been under pressure, as we all know. I do blame you, though.” He tapped Nigel’s chest. “You’re going in for a full check. Now.”

Nigel shrugged again. “Fair enough.” He glanced at Nikka and saw she was thinking the same: With his blood newly filtered, he might pass.

Carlos said, “I’m sorry, but it had to …”

Nigel felt a surge of sympathy for the man. He patted Carlos tentatively on the shoulder. “Never mind. Forget all this old stuff, from before you went to the Slots.” He wanted to suggest that it would be best to make a whole new life, forgetting himself and Nikka, but he saw that would be the wrong note to sound so soon.

He was naked, so Ted saw nothing unusual about his retiring to pull on some clothes, in the bathroom he drank a solution of antioxidants and other control agents, to mask the clear signature effects of the blood processing. When he returned Carlos was out of his mood and was explaining to Nikka that he had successfully applied for a job on the ground team on Pocks.

“Grunt work, sure, but it’ll get me down on a planet again.” He shifted heavily, still unused to the feel of the bulk of muscle, but eager to use it. Nikka seemed pleased. Nigel marveled at how she covered her anxiety so well. If they treated this all very matter-of-factly, and the tests weren’t too probing, they might just bring it off.

“Come on,” he said mildly, “I’ve got work to do. Bring on your needles.”

Ted walked with him to the medical center. There was going to be a shipwide meeting later that day, over the net. Ted was distracted. He grudgingly gave up the information that the latest transmission from Earth was full of news. The gravitational telescope had surveyed two more planetary systems. Each had a terrestrial-type world, and around each a Watcher orbited. That brought the count to nineteen terrestrial-type worlds discovered, fourteen with Watchers, out of thirty-seven star systems.

“Life turns up everywhere, I guess,” Ted said. “But it commits suicide just as fast.”

“Ummmm.”

“They’ve got their hands full back there, with the ocean thing. Everything happens at once. They’re not processing the planetary data fast, ’cause this Swarmer stuff is—”

“What stuff?”

“I’ll announce it today. They’re coming ashore. Killing people, somehow.”

Nigel nodded, silent.

They put him into a kind of fuzzy sleepstate for the tests. He ignored them and focused on Ted’s news. It was important to understand this event, there was a clue buried somewhere. But the sleep dragged him down.

Seven

When he woke up he was dead.

Utter blackness, total silence. Nothing.

No smells. There should be the clean, efficient scent of a medical center.

No background rustle of steps. No drone of air conditioning, no distant murmur of conversations, no jangle of a telephone.

He could not feel any press of his own weight. No cold table or starched sheets rubbed his skin.

They had disconnected all his external nerves.

He felt a rush of fear. Loss of senses. To do that required finding the major nerves as they wound up through the spine. Then a medical tech had to splice them out of the tangled knot at the back of the neck. Delicate work.

They were preparing him for the Sleepslots. Shutting him down this far meant he was going into semipermanent storage. Which meant he had failed the medmon exam, and badly.

But they never slotted you without telling you. Even critically ill people got to say good-bye, finish up details, prepare themselves if at all possible.

Which meant Ted had lied. The smooth casual manner, bringing Carlos along to deflect Nigel’s attention onto the other man—yes, that was his style. Avoid confrontation, then act decisively. With Walmsley’s Rule disproved, his medical deception uncovered … a good time to swat Nigel’s gadfly, bothersome buzzing.

The medmon had probably turned up some incriminating information, but that was certainly not enough to slot him without warning. No, it had to be a pretext— one he could contest only years later, Earthside.

He fought the rising confusion in his mind. He had to explore this, think.

Was he fully dead? He waited, letting his fear wash away.

Concentrate. Think of quietness, stillness …

Yes. There.

He felt a weak, regular thump that might be his heart.

Behind that, as though far away, came a slow, faint fluttering of lungs.

That was all. The body’s internal nerves were thinly spread, he knew. They gave only vague, blunt senses. But there was enough to tell him that the basic functions were still plodding on.

There was a dim pressure that might be his bladder. He could pick up nothing specific from legs or arms.

He tried to move his head. Nothing. No feedback.

Open an eye? Only blackness.

Legs—he tried both, hoping that only the sensations were gone. He might be able to detect a leg moving by the change in pressure somewhere in his body.

No response. But if he could sense his bladder, he should have gotten something back from the shifting weight of a leg.

That meant his lower motor control was shut off.

Panic rose in him. It was a cold, brittle sensation. Normally this strong an emotion would bring deeper breathing, a heavier heartbeat, flexing muscles, a tingling urgency. He felt none of that. There was only a swirl of conflicting thoughts, a jittery forking in his mind like summer lightning. This was what it was like to be an analytical thing, a machine, a moving matrix of calculation, without chemical or glandular ties.