know how to swim. The water he was in was thicker than water, so buoyant it was holding him up. His meagerest efforts to move were enough to spin him wildly, and several moments passed before he coordinated himself to move in one direction. By then, his eyes had adjusted to the slam of the strong light, and he could see the shore more clearly.
It wasn't a shore. It was a rim-a wall. The boulders were immense.
The bigger ones on either side of him were small islands wraithed with misty flowers. Ahead, the blue egrets landed on their reflections in the bright shallows.
'Before you reach my edge, I do have something more to tell you.' The sound of the voice was alarming. It seemed to come from all around. Carl whirled., After he had calmed himself and begun sliding toward the shallows again, the eld skyle's lucent voice continued:
'The Werld is vast, Carl. Its appearance will awe you, for you've never seen anything like it. Crags of treecrowded rock floating in space, glinting with waterfalls and rainbows, the purple sky around them swarming with their shadows and the tumbling clouds. It's beautiful beyond words. Hard, even for me, to believe that when the infinity virus first arrived here, there was nothing but infalling cosmic dust and light. The virus proliferated close to the inside of the event horizon in the high-energy light and collected the cosmic dust into exoskeletons.
That served as shields, allowing the organism to draw even closer to its power source. Like coral, only much faster, the exoskeletons accumulated along the fields of force laced throughout this gravity vacuole. Over millions of years, planetoids formed around the standing resonance patterns of those gravity waves. The gaseous emissions of the swiftly evolving viral descendants created a watery, oxygen-bright atmosphere which now is only slightly richer than the one you once breathed.'
The sky was so bright that Carl had to float facedown.
When he turned his head for air, he asked: 'Where are the people you said were around?'
'Many sentient lifeforms are present in the Werld at this time,' the eld skyle answered, its voice sounding as if it spoke from the core of his brain. 'Few are humanoid. In fact, the most technologically advanced planetoid, Galgul, is occupied by the predominate sentience of the Werld-the zotl. They're arachnoid creatures that exist as fused male-female units. The female is almost twice the size of a human and apparently featureless-a black, furry barrel to your eyes---but quite intelligent. The males are smaller, not as bright, . but very deft and fast. They're spidery, about the size of your hand, and red or black depending on their social status. They've adapted four of their eight appendages
into wings, and they can hover or soar. Their other four legs are actually arms with powerful and agile grippers. They see with remarkable acuity in infrared and your visible range. Most of their communications are hormonal, though they also have a click language several orders more complex than dolphin speech. The male.female components must unite regularly to survive; since each half alone completes only part of their metabolic cycle. They eat nitrogen, light, and the painproducts of other creatures. Here in the Werld, their favorite food is humans.'
'Great. You've eaten my strange, and they want to eat the rest.'
'I'm warning you about the zotl because once you go over my edge, you'll be beyond my reach. The zotl are as intelligent as humans, with a technology of their own. They herd humans and use them as they need. A zotl feast is ghastly. The male zotl piths the back of the skull, and a needle-fine tubule is inserted into the amygdala, the pain center of the brain. The human is paralyzed but quite aware of what is happening. The awareness is important to the zotl's digestion, so the captive brain is injected with a serum that heightens perceptions. Then the pain center is activated, and the human suffers. The torment is horrendous, a molten tearing, all the more terrible because the body is left intact and is nourished by the zotl's glucose wastes. The feeding can last for weeks.'
'I want to go home!' Carl cried and rolled to his back in the thick water. His white body gleamed in the hot light.
'Look at me I'm naked. How can I. defend myself naked?'
'The only defense against the zotl for you is to avoid them. There is .a tribe of humans at your level of development who live avoidance. They have no advanced technology, as that would attract zotl hunt
ers; however, their culture is rich. I've inscribed their .language in your brain, and you'll have no: trouble communicating with them. They call themselves Foke. I've arranged for a thornwing, a kind of bird-plant, to take you to Tarfeather, the Foke's present secret home. And to complete my birthing of you as a man, I've modified your sex hormone, alpha androstenol, to attract a woman I know of among the Foke. Her name is Evoe, and she knows the Werld. If you treat her wisely, she will be your best ally.'
Carl's backstroke picked up as a gigantic sense of future rose in him. 'I don't know what to say'
'Then listen. There are a few more things you should know about the Werld. The scattered foci of gravity nodes that give the Werld its unique contours also magnetize space in.such a way that the unwinding of your supercoiled DNA is inhibited. Which means you won't age. Genetic chipping by cosmic rays is limited at the Midwerld level of the Foke by the atmosphere and the planetoids between them and the horizon, where the radiation enters. And there are as yet no viral cancers, colds, or diseases. Death is an accident here. And there is bounteous, opportunity for accidents, for the gravity contours and the winds of the Werld are treacherous. Not to mention gumper hogs with maws like sharks, poison dagger lizards, and mansized blood beetles. Learn well what the Foke have to teach you, and you will live long.'
'Oh, God, eld skyle,' Carl moaned. 'I feel like fishfood floating in an aquarium. Can't you give me a gun or a knife or even some clothes?'
The eld skyle's voice was gone. Only the waterlammed sounds of the shore filled his hearing.
Carl's efforts had carried him over the slippery surface to the shore. Black sand dimpled under his hands as he pushed himself to his knees. The shallow
water unruffled, and he saw a red-bearded, brass-haired man with a square-boned face and thick shoulders. It was he. Those tentative hazel eyes were his own. He reached out and touched the blindness of the water. The reflection wobbled. Slow with disbelief, he lifted his arms and stared at the circuitry of veins and the straps of muscle straining for use. His chest was smoky with russet hair and his abdomen squared with strength. The blood- drum beat louder as his wavering fingertips followed the taut planes of his face to his mane of sleek, redgold hair.
Suddenly, the silence of the eld skyle was more real than its voice had been, and Carl sat back in the thick water as what it had said recurred to him.
'Adamized,' he mouthed, peering at his reflection, tugging at his -hair, and grinning like a lunatic. The numbness of the eld skyle s ecstasy was thinning, tingling with the implications of all Carl had just learned.
