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"What‑what are you going to do to me?" Winona blubbered. Her earlier
bravado had vanished completely, "What did you do to my suit? Where did these
monsters come from?"
"Quiet," Evan ordered her. "And don't call them mon-sters. They're sensitive."
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He reached down and shut off her battery pack, eliminating power to her suit
commu-nicator. "Don't worry about your suit. You've lived on Samstead too
long.
The only suit that matters is the one you're wearing next to your bones." He
reached down again and unsnapped her hood.
"Please‑no," she moaned.
Pitiful, Evan thought to himself. He removed the hood, tossed it over the side
of the platform as the sounds of yells and curses began to reach them. All
hell was break-ing loose below.
He joined Martine at the railing. People were running out of buildings. Some
of them were only half‑dressed. Every now and then the brief crackle of
a needier could be heard.
Initial confusion slowly gave way to a semblance of organization as figures in
twos and threes began to gather on the west side of the administration
building.
Moving in a body and firing as they did so, they began to retreat in the
direction of the shuttle.
"Your friends are cutting their visit short," Martine informed her. The
guard's eyes went wide.
"No, please, let me go with them! Don't let them leave me here!" She was
staring in terror at the warrior who stood over her.
"Why should we let you go?" Martine's reply was cold. "You deceived us and
turned us over to Frazier. You'd have shot us without a thought if either of
us had tried to escape earlier."
"Please, I was just doing my job."
"I‑fell, Martine, let her go. Besides, if Frazier and his people still
have any doubts that Prism is home to a Class A population, she should be able
to help resolve them."
Martine considered, then turned and bent to grasp their former guard with a
sapphire‑blue crystalline hand.
"You see that these people, and they are people, are highly intelligent. We
told
Frazier that and he refused to believe us. Remind him." The woman nodded
frantically. "This world is off limits to commercial development."
"Sure it is." Her tone was bitter. "Your own company's just going to give up
its investment here and walk out, right?"
""That's right," Evan told her, startled at his own words. "We're going to
make sure the proper authorities are notified. There's not going to be any
unchecked exploitation of Prism. The native sentients are going to be allowed
to develop
at their own pace and in their own way until they've progressed far enough to
qualify themselves for Commonwealth membership." He blinked, gazed dazedly at
Martine. "Did I actually say what I think I just said?"
"You sure did," she told him proudly before turning to address the patient
warrior standing nearby. "Loosen her suit so she can walk."
"I am afraid there is no way to do that."
"'Then cut her out of it."
Its teeth a rotating blur, the warrior obediently stepped forward. The air was
filled with a high‑pitched whine as it went to work on the guard's
survival suit. She cringed, but need not have worried. No physician, the
warrior nevertheless displayed a touch delicate enough to cut the suit without
touching its occupant. In moments it was split neatly down the center.
Like a snake shedding an old skin, the guard kicked the useless garment aside.
Without leaving behind so much as a single thank‑you, she was out the
window and shin-nying down one of the supporting girders.
Leaning over the edge of the wind shield, Evan and Martine watched as their
former guard sprinted to catch up to her retreating companions. As they
stared, it struck Evan that not all the bursts of light that were spotted
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around the scene of battle were coming from human weap-ons. He asked the
warrior about it.
"The physicians have been very busy. Conduits can carry many things, and lects
can concentrate much energy. The physicians conferred with library. As a
result, we have a new type of individual in the Associative, one that is part
Elect, part conduit, part gatherer, and part war-rior‑and part something
else.
Something new." Multiple hands gestured at Martine. "Something akin to what
you carry within right upper limb." It moved to the railing and raised itself
up enough to peer over the rim. Flat lenses scanned the grounds below. "See,
there is one of our new relations at work."
Evan and Martine looked. The warrior was pointing at a shape. It was bright
red beneath and silver on top, sliced with grooves of deeper, embedded silver
silicate. This new citizen of the Associative resembled a crystalline
millipede.
It straightened its tubular body and bent its head. From the back of its neck
a thin beam of coherent light emerged to strike at the cluster of retreating
humans. The light lasted for several seconds before the head raised. The
millipede ducked out of sight as Frazier's panicked troops tried to return the
fire.
"I'll be damned." Martine stared wonderingly at this latest product of the
physicians' collaborative genius. "A laser with legs."
"So are you, sort of."
"Not quite. I am an intelligence in possession of a weapon, not an
intelligence possessed by a weapon."
"Look, there's another one." Evan pointed to where a second millipede was
harrying Frazier's staff from the cover of the water purification plant.
There was a great deal of noise and light, but not much death, since it
appeared that the humans' survival suits were just able to deflect the
attacks, or were
the mil-lipedes capable of generating far more powerful effects but holding
back under orders from library? The warriors who'd rescued them confirmed that
this was the case.
"Library orders that there be as little killing as possi-ble." The warrior
sniffed. Such directives were distressing to its karma.
Frazier's people were stumbling into the shuttle now, their panic and
confusion evident even at a distance. "They're being herded aboard." Martins
was grinning.
"Probably don't even realize what's being done to them."
The shuttle's engines coughed, then roared. The com-ical collection of
half‑clad humans must be packed in like fish, Evan knew. They'd be
forced to suffer one another's stink all the way up to their base ship.
The rumble of the shuttle's engines intensified, rose to a howl. An unexpected
pang of homesickness shot through Evan as the craft roared down the landing
strip and nosed sharply upward, heading for the ionosphere. He kept staring
long after it had disappeared into the clouds, leav-ing behind only the echo
of its departure. That, and some difficult questions. "You think they'll
return to try and retake the station?"
Marline looked dubious. "With what? If they'd brought any heavy weapons with
them they'd have used them already. I doubt they have any. They came in
expecting to find their man Humula in charge or, at worst, trying to deal with
a few stubborn holdouts. An intelligent native lifeform capable of defending
itself against modern tech-nology is something out of their worst nightmares.
They're going to have to completely reassess their intentions here. Frazier's
going to have a hard enough time just getting his superiors to believe him."
She chuckled softly.
"Oh, they may be having thoughts about returning home to assemble a
better‑equipped landing party, but by that time we'll have gotten the
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