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him to recover so they could continue on their way.
He rolled over and got to his feet, stretched, and looked down at Azure.
Or was it Azure?
The outline matched, but other things did not. Azure was primarily a deep blue. Evan didn't remember
those blobs of shifting red and green light that were now clinging to his friend's exterior. As he stared the
red light shifted to yellow in places, fluctuating in intensity even as he looked.
"Azure, what's happened to you?"
"I told them." His friend's tone was mildly mournful. "I told them you wouldn't know how to react."
"React to what?" Evan turned toward the forest-and recoiled. It was alive with minute crawling things,
tiny intensely colored shapes that hadn't been there the morn-ing before. Strange linear forms appeared
to grow from the edges of fractal surfaces, surfaces which had previ-ously been nothing more than a blur
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to him. Even the air was alive with unsuspected life.
The headache worried him. He put his right hand to his forehead. It failed to make contact with his
sunshades, the special glasses Azure had fashioned for him. And yet he found he could see clearly,
unaffected by the over-powering light of Prism's star or the blinding reflections of its flora. It was as if
there were no glare at all.
A particularly cloudy day, he told himself. But when he tilted his head back to survey the sky there
wasn't a cloud to be seen. By rights he ought to be rolling on the ground by now with the tears streaming
from his eyes. Instead, he found he was perfectly comfortable no matter where he looked.
He became aware he was the center of attention. The warriors, library, the physicians, even the newly
repaired gatherer were eying him intently. Their silence was more eloquent than anything that could have
been said.
He looked back down at Azure, spoke slowly. "What do you mean I wouldn't know how to react?"
When no reply was forthcoming from his friend he turned his gaze on the staring physicians. "You've
done something to me," he said tightly. "Whathave you done to me?" Like Azure, they did not reply.
He stalked past them, to the edge of the forest. Several small bushes grew in the shadow of larger
growths. From the center of their transparent shells several glassy stalks emerged. At the tip of each was
a plate-size organ that looked like a six-sided flect. Evan snapped one off and held the reflective side in
front of his face.
He was clad in his froporia armor, as he had been when he'd fallen asleep the previous day, but there
was no sign of his glasses. Excepting their absence everything looked normal. It was the face of Evan
Orgell that gazed anx-iously back at him, unaltered. Wasn't it? Something was wrong. Something was
different, but for the life of him he couldn't tell what it was. Subtle and yet obvious, he was overlooking it
while staring straight at it.
Of course. Evan Orgell had brown eyes. The face in the natural mirror had eyes of pale violet. That was
impos-sible, of course, unless he had been given contact lenses. He started to smile. Leave it to the
physicians never to be satisfied. They had replaced the crude shades forged by Azure with tiny contacts
that performed the same chores more efficiently. So precisely had they fitted them to his eyes that he
hadn't even felt their presence. He reached up carefully with a finger preparatory to removing one lens for
closer inspection.
He blinked when he touched his eye. No lens rested on its surface. The headache wouldn't go away. It
was joined by a gnawing suspicion. "What did you do to me?" he asked again, uneasier than ever. "You
put something in my eyes, didn't you? Some kind of drops or something. That's why I can see without my
sunshades. It changed the color of my eyes."
"Not exactly," the first physician said, movingnearer. "We just thought that as long as we were operating
on gatherer we might as well work on you too. For some time now, we've been thinking about a way to
free you from the ungainly apparatus you were forced to wear over your eyes."
Evan sat down, pulled his knees close to his chin and stared at the physician. "How did you do it?" He
rubbed his hands over his eyes. Still no suggestion of newly inserted contacts. Ithad to have been some
kind of drops, then. How long would they last before the effects wore off and he'd have to be redosed?
Helooked past his companions, found he could see farther into the forest than ever. Intense bursts of
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colored light erupted from previously dead-looking growths. There was twice as much life in the forest as
he'd suspected.
"Is this how you see? Into the ultraviolet and the infrared as well as throughout the normal spectrum?"
"I do not know what you mean by normal spectrum," the first physician replied, "but it was apparent
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