MacRoscope (23 page)

Except for Brad…

The epidermis — the outermost layer of the skin — dissolved. The reddish tones of the dermis intensified as subcutaneous fat departed, and out of the flowing protoplasm rose the intricate venous network, all over her body. Arms, legs, torso — it was a though she had donned a loosely knit blue leotard that was now falling apart.

Ivo looked at Afra’s face, but saw it relaxed. She was unconscious, and had probably been knocked out by the first impact of the radiation. He was glad of that.

The skin was melting from her head, too. Body hair had gone immediately, leaving her nude and bald. Now there was a great blue branching tube descending from her forehead. It hooked into the streaming eye, crossed the cheek, and finally disappeared under the jaw muscle on its way to the throat. Whitish nerves splayed across the side of her face from the region of the ear, weaving between and through brownish muscles, and almost under the ear-hole was a tapioca mass of something he couldn’t identify. Into his mind came the word “parotid,” but it meant nothing to him. Upon the dome of the skull bright arteries interwove with veins and nerves, making a tripartite river gathering toward the ear.

Already these superficial networks were eroding under the beam from space, merging with the runoff from the liquefying muscular structures. The cartilage of the nose was coming into sight and, gruesomely, the naked eyeballs. Ivo turned his gaze aside, afraid of being sick, and concentrated on the legs and feet.

These were hardly more comforting. Skin, surface nerves and veins had gone together with much of the avoirdupois, but tendons and arteries remained, and the bulk of the great limb muscles. Slowly these diminished, and in the front of the lower leg the bone appeared, a lighter-colored island rising from the runoff. Above it the patella — the kneecap — already floated free, and it fell with a slow splash into the burgeoning fluid in the trough. Below, the incredibly long, thin foot-bones showed, loosening as the connecting ligaments yielded.

Individually, the phalanges folded and toppled, toe-bones no more, and lay scattered in the rising sea of protoplasm. The original water Afra had lain in was no longer visible at all; the meltoff covered it. The little bones were slow to dissolve completely, and he wondered whether the process would ever finish. Perhaps the action would continue after the beam desisted, the liquid eating away at the pockets of resistance for hours and even days. That would be one compelling reason for the minimum time limit; the reconstitution could not safely proceed until all components had been processed and made available to the organism.

At last the skeletal outline lay bare, half-submerged in brown liquor.

Now Ivo half-understood Afra’s need for tactile confirmation. She had watched this process, had seen the complete demolition of physique. He had to agree: after such an experience, nothing less than extreme evidence would convince him that Afra had survived such demolition. It had become an emotional, rather than intellectual, matter.

Even if he manipulated every portion of her anatomy, he would retain the mind’s-eye image of — this.

Yet he would have to survive it himself, before he could verify it in anyone else. Would a pseudo-Ivo pass approval on a pseudo-Afra, both agreeing that all five red eyes were exactly as they had been before, and then the entire party settling down to a wholesome meal of astrology-on-rye?

He looked about, feeling as though an enormous period had elapsed but knowing it to have been a few minutes only. Groton and Beatryx were watching too, neither seeming particularly robust. They, like him, had become morbidly impressed with the significance of this process, and neither reacted to his movement.

This was like the destroyer, he thought. It was repulsive, yet the eye riveted to it.

Ivo followed the direction of Groton’s absorption and discovered that it was the head, or perhaps the throat or thorax. The progression here had continued alarmingly. The skull was bare of flesh and vein, the ears and nose were gone; eye-sockets were empty; teeth bulged loosely from bare jawbones, gaunt in the absence of cheek or gums. If the brain itself had been affected yet, this was not apparent behind the enclosure of the fissured skull.

But it was the neck that appalled. Here the dissolution had been more selective. It was the first evidence he had that this was not merely a melting of flesh as the conveniences of surface and hardness dictated. Fat and muscle and tendon were largely absent, but the internal jugular vein remained beside the large red carotid, servicing the brain. The small offshoots of both had been sealed over, so that they were now direct tubes. What modification of the alien program had dictated this astonishing precaution?

Either the distant civilization had anticipated human physique and function to an impossible extent, or the program was of such versatility and sophistication that it automatically adapted to
any
living system. Already it had reduced the solid portion of Afra’s bodily mass by half, without killing her. This was surgery beyond man’s capacity, performed without physical contact — yet it was only an incidental portion of galactic or intergalactic knowledge.

Ivo had not allowed himself to realize how complex an organism the human body was in detail. He had thought of it melting as an ingot of steel might melt in a blastfurnace; as ice cream might dissolve in sunlight; as a bar of soap might liquefy in a basin of warm water. Ridiculous! He understood now that long before the bones of the legs surrendered their calcium, the brain would die — unless precisely protected. The velocity and order of the process were critical, if life as it had been were to be preserved.

The great spiral-banded trachea also remained intact, and air continued to pass through it. The pipe terminated at what had been the larynx, now a funnel opening upward. His gaze followed it back down to the thoracic cavity, still enclosed by the circling ribs. Though Afra’s breasts were long since gone along with all other superficial processes, the important muscles of her chest were present and functioning, maintaining the circulation of air within. He could tell by the pulsing of the adjacent arteries that the heart continued its operations, too.

The melting seemed to have halted at this stage, in this region, and he did not see how it could resume safely. The hands, arms and shoulders were deteriorating bones, all flesh taken; the head and neck had been stripped of expendable appurtenances. If the chest muscle went, the lungs would stop and the brain would drown, deprived of its oxygen; if the brain went, the remainder of the body would cease to function and would suffer damage before the slow melting could complete the job. The system had to function as a unit until there was no unit to function — a paradox.

Beatryx was staring at the abdomen, her hand unconsciously clutching at her own. Ivo looked there — and regretted it.

The reproductive system, like the sensory organs, had been among the earliest to go. The abdominal cavity was open, pelvic musculature absent, the guts exposed. Ivo could not have told from what he saw to which sex the carcass belonged. Above the bleakly jutting hip-bones the action was well advanced: bladder and uterus melted, large and small intestine puddled along with the digestive refuse within them. Only the two large kidneys remained, and their arterial and venous connectors, their wastes evidently dissolving as they formed. Stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas, duodenum — all of it flowed away into the common sewer, leaving the vertebrae bare.

Had these remains ever been a person? This mass of eroding bones immersed in a deepening pond of sludge?

It was not over. Unsupported, the skull canted, causing all three observers to jump, and from its hollow earhole and empty lower eye-socket the gray-white fluid, trickled heavily. Ivo realized that the optic nerves had left their tunnels through the solid bone, and now the brain itself was dissolving. First the frontal lobes? Or one hemisphere only?

Simultaneously there was a breakthrough in the chest cavity. The membranes lining the ribcage on the right had let go and run off; the lung collapsed, so that there was air under the bones. The muscles on that side melted, showing those ribs, and underneath them the hollow section remaining. Within this beat the heart, centered rather than situated to the left as he had thought, still pumping the red blood up the huge aortic artery toward brain and kidneys, and the blue blood up the pulmonary artery to the lungs for oxygenation. Similarly massive veins brought it back from its travels, now considerably circumscribed. Lymph nodes dotted the area, and tiny vessels enclosed the heart itself, and the nerve trunk remained leading into the skull. That, apart from the bones and minimal tissue, was all.

Had this been the splendid body he had explored with his two quivering hands, so long ago? Was this the physical object whose makeup compelled his fascination?

The kidneys went; the second lung collapsed; the heart beat momentarily longer, then ceased. If death were the destined conclusion of this chain, it had come at last.

Yet the process continued. The last muscles fell, the heart sagged and opened, the blood ran out as protoplasm. The skeleton lay amidst its liquid flesh, defunct.

The beam from the projector shut off.

Ivo looked at the other two. They looked at him. No one spoke.

Again the common thought: had they conspired unwittingly to commit a gruesome murder, and had they now accomplished it?

Fifteen minutes passed, and the slow action did not halt. The ridged vertebrae hung loose within their settings; the ribs sagged. Wherever the dull fluid touched, it dissolved, though it would be long before the skull and hip-bones finally disappeared.

As the fluid became still, light from the chamber struck the surface and refracted through the forming layers, some of it reflecting back eerily. It was as though a ghost flickered where the girt had been.

Groton stood up unsteadily. He walked to the long basin, bent over, and placed its cover upon it, cutting off the reflection-spirit. Carefully he pulled it over to the side, set it beside the prior melt, and anchored it securely to the deck. He had removed it only a few feet, since the compartment was small, but it seemed to Ivo like a tremendous distance. It was amazing how far one could adapt to the space available, so that cubic yards became as great, subjectively, as cubic rods.

Groton drew the second — actually, third — basin into position. Silently he undressed, casting his clothing absently on the pile left by Afra. He lay down.

Beatryx turned away.

This time Ivo timed it by his watch: twenty-four minutes until the beam desisted. Another skeleton lay within its vat. Beatryx had not looked at all.

Again they waited. Two murders?

Ivo moved the remains, discovering that the container slid readily. He was irrationally fearful of slopping some of the juice over the side. He sighed in silent relief as he set the cover, though it was light and did not actually seal the basin. Air had to enter, or it would quickly become a coffin. He found the snaps Groton had fashioned to connect to the floor-plugs. This was the kind of detail an engineer would think of; Ivo certainly had not. Of course, free-fall or jerky acceleration would throw the protoplasm out to splatter over the equipment — but Afra and Groton would have anticipated this also, and accounted for it in the programming. Probably the engines would never cut off at all; Joseph would perform a turnabout under 10-G acceleration and commence 10-G deceleration without affecting its contents enough for any slopping.

Ivo positioned the next basin.

“No!” Beatryx cried, near hysteria. She had seemed calm, but obviously this type of experience had brought her to her breaking point. He could not blame her.

He waited, and after a few minutes she spoke again, still facing away. “I’m afraid.”

“So am I.” It was the total truth.

That seemed to encourage her. “I have to go next. I didn’t know it would be like this. I wouldn’t be able to do it myself. And I have to.”

“Yes.” What else could he say?

“He has his charts,” she said, meaning her husband. “When he gets bothered, he just settles down for a few hours with his diagrams and figures and houses and planets, and he works it all out and finally he’s satisfied. But I never understood all that. I don’t have anything.”

Now he did not dare even to agree with her.

“He told me,” she said quickly, “I don’t know what it means but I remember it — he told me that when I was thirty-seven my progressed midheaven would square with Neptune.”

“Neptune!”

“And he said my progressed ascendant would be opposite Neptune, and my progressed Mercury opposite Neptune. And he said Neptune was the planet of obligation — I think that’s what it was. And—”

“And we’re going to Neptune,” Ivo finished for her. “I don’t know what all those terms mean either, but it sounds as though you have to — progress to Neptune.”
Could
it mean anything, or was it sheer coincidence?

“I’m thirty-seven now,” she said.

Ivo had an inspiration. “It must mean you’ll get there safely!”

Still she didn’t move.

Finally Ivo, sensing what was needed, went and led her to the basin and carefully removed the clothing she had so carefully preserved until this moment, while she stood listlessly. He could never, prior to the past few hours, have conceived of himself performing such an action. Undressing an older woman! What secrets remained for her to hide?

He steadied her as she got down, then he stood up to move away.

“Hold my hand, Ivo.”

He knelt just beyond the field of the beam and took her hand, trusting that its melting could catch up later.

The beam came on. She relaxed, unconscious, but he stayed where he was. The skin melted away from her arm up to just beyond the elbow; forearm, wrist and the hand he held remained whole.

Suddenly it came to him that the hand could die, stripped of its supplying mechanisms. He had to return it to the field before he disrupted everything.

His own hand lost sensation as it entered the field, and hers slipped down. He withdrew hastily, alarmed. A film of slick moisture already covered the exposed portion, and feeling did not return. Stupid! Did he think he was playing a game of tag with the alien signal?