Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  Which was one reason they had not been told in advance that Tamme was coming along. What they did not know, they could not betray. In case the machines turned out to be intelligent enough to make an interrogation. An agent had to consider every ramification.

  So the expendables had been expended. That accounted for everything except the extra set of prints. The bare feet walked into the sand and stopped as though the person had been lifted away at that point. But by what? A flying machine?

  She checked the origin of the bare prints. The same: They appeared in the sand from nowhere. Odd indeed. Unless someone had intentionally made those prints by walking backward, then forward in his/her own tracks to make them seem like the mystery they were...

  Tamme carried their spare aperture projector so that she could return to Taler on Paleo regardless of the firmness of the existing connection. Assuming hers did not open onto a fourth alternate-world! For a moment she was tempted to go back immediately. This situation was eerie. Which was ridiculous; she was not afraid of isolation or death.

  All right: She had a machine to deal with. A formidable one if it had so neatly managed to kill or capture all three humans and their mantas already. Best to tackle it promptly. And with extreme caution. Too bad she couldn't radio Taler across the aperture!

  First she made a survey of the general premises. She ran, loping over the sand at about twenty miles an hour, watching, listening. There was nothing lurking nearby. She completed her circle and set out after the massed trail of footprints, machine tread, and manta marks. Veg and Aquilon, apparently together. A curious parade!

  But soon the tracks diverged. Veg, tread, and mantas continued forward, but Cal and Aquilon turned aside -- and stopped. Their prints disappeared just as the bare ones had. Two more people were gone inexplicably.

  Another flying machine? Then why hadn't the others taken note? If they all were captive, why hadn't all of them walked all the way to wherever they were being taken? More mystery -- and she was not enchanted by it. Her working hypothesis was taking a beating.

  Tamme resumed the trail after making another scouting circle. She had good perceptions; she would have known if anything were hiding near. Nothing was.

  Several miles farther on, the mantas diverged. One went to the left, the other to the right. An encircling maneuver? Encircling what if they were already captive?

  Now she had to make a choice: Follow one of the mantas, or follow the main trail. Easy decision: Fast as she was, she could not face a manta. The fungoids could do a hundred miles an hour over sand or water. Veg she could overtake as long as he were afoot.

  But the machine was an unknown antagonist. She did not care to risk an ambush by such a device. So she followed the trail by eye, moving some distance to the side, alert for whatever she might find.

  Veg's tracks were not forthright. Now they turned right, now left, and now they faced backward -- but the scuffing of his heels showed he was walking backward, not changing the direction of his motion. Facing the machine evidently but staying clear of it. Why? Overall, the trail curved slowly left as though the two were traveling in a great circle back to the base camp. Not exactly the pattern of captivity.

  A manta appeared, moving swiftly over the sand. It was beautiful in its seeming flight; she had great admiration for its mechanical efficiency and artistry. Tamme was armed but held her fire; these creatures were phenomenally apt at dodging. So it was unlikely she could score on it from any distance, and she did not want to antagonize it unnecessarily.

  It came to rest before her, coalescing into a dark blob, the huge single eye glowing. The mantas, she knew, projected an all-purpose beam from that eye; they both saw and communicated by means of it. Was it trying to tell her something?

  "Which one are you?" she inquired experimentally. They could actually see the compressions and rarefactions of the air that made sound; thus, they could in effect hear, though they had no auditory equipment. All their major senses were tied into one -- but what a sense that one was!

  The thing jumped up, flattened into its traveling form, and cracked its tail like a whip. Six snaps.

  "Hex," she said. "Veg's friend. Do you know where he is?"

  One snap, meaning YES.

  Communication was not difficult, after all. Soon she had ascertained that Veg was in good health and that the manta would conduct her to him.

  Veg was resting as she came up. He was leaning against a boulder and chewing on a hunk of dark bread. "Where's the machine?" Tamme asked, as though this were routine.

  "It finally got full and lost its appetite," he said. "So it left. Lucky for me; I was almost out of food."

  "You were feeding it?"

  "It was bound to eat. Better to feed it what we could spare than let it take its own choice. Like vital supplies -- or people. The thing eats meat as well as metal! But when I started feeding it rocks and sand, it quit. Not too smart."

  So the machine had been attacking him -- and he had foiled it at last by throwing what the desert offered. Veg might not be a genius, but he had good common sense!

  Veg considered her more carefully. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "We don't trust you."

  "It figures." He wasn't even very surprised; she could read his honest minor responses in the slight tension of his muscles, the perspiration of his body, and the rate of breathing. In fact he was intrigued, for he found her sexually appealing.

  Tamme was used to that in normals. She was sexually appealing; she had been designed to be that way. Usually she ignored her effect on men; sometimes she used it. It depended on the situation. If sex could accomplish a mission more readily than another approach, why not?

  But at the moment her only mission was to keep an eye on the activities of these people. Veg was the simplest of the lot; his motives were forthright, and it was not his nature to lie. She could relax.

  "Have some bread," Veg said, offering her a torn chunk.

  "Thank you." It was good bread; the agents' supplies were always nutritious because their bodies required proper maintenance for best efficiency. She bit down, severing the tough crust with teeth that could as easily cut through the flesh and bone of an antagonist.

  "You know, I met one of you agents," Veg said. "Name of Subble. You know him?"

  "Yes and no. I am familiar with the SU class of agent but never met that particular unit."

  "Unit?"

  "All agents of a type are interchangeable. You would have had the same experience with any SU, and it would have been very similar with an SO, TA, or TE." His body tensed in quick anger. Amused, Tamme read the signs. Normals found the concept of human inter-changeability repulsive; they always wanted to believe that every person was unique, even those designed to be un-unique. If only they knew; the camaraderie of identity was the major strength of all agents. Tamme never wanted to give up any of her programmed attributes -- unless every agent in her class gave them up. She only felt at ease with her own kind, and even other series of agents made her feel slightly uncomfortable.

  "Decent sort of a fellow, in his way. I guess he reported all about what we said."

  "No. Subble died without making a report."

  "Too bad," Veg said with mixed emotion. Again Tamme analyzed him: He was sorry Subble had died but relieved that the report had not been made. Evidently their dialogue had grown personal.

  "Agents don't antagonize people unnecessarily," she said. "Our job is to ascertain the facts and to take necessary action. We're all alike so that the nature of our reactions can be predetermined and so that our reports need minimal correction for subjectivity or human bias. It is easier on the computer."

  "That's what he said."

  "Naturally. It's what we all say." Again that predictable annoyance. Veg looked at her. "But you aren't alike. He -- he understood."

  "Try me sometime."

  He looked at her again, more intently, reading an invitation. Sex appeal again. He had evidently been through a traumatic experien
ce with the girl Aquilon and was on the rebound. Here he was with another comely blonde female, and though he knew intellectually that she was a dedicated and impersonal agent of the government, his emotion saw little more than the outward form. Which was why female agents were comely -- through they could turn it off at will. Normals had a marvelous capacity for willful self-delusion.

  The other man, Calvin Potter, was far more intriguing as a challenge. But the expedient course was to enlist the cooperation of the most likely individual, and that was Veg. Cal would be deceived by no illusions; Veg was amenable, within limits, and more so at this time than he would be a month from now.

  "We are alike," Tamme repeated, smiling in a fashion she knew was unlike any expression Subble would have used. "I can do anything your SU could do. Maybe a little more because I'm part of a later series."

  "But you aren't a man!"

  She raised a fair eyebrow. "So?"

  "So if someone socked you -- "

  "Go ahead," she said, raising her chin. She had to refrain from smiling at the unsubtlety of his approach. He moved suddenly, intending to stop his fist just shy of the mark. He was, indeed, a powerful man, fit to have been a pugilist in another age. Even sitting as he was, the force of a genuine blow like this could have knocked out an ordinary person.

  She caught his arm and deflected it outward while she leaned forward. His fist passed behind her head and momentum carried it around. Suddenly she was inside the crook of his arm, and their heads were close together.

  She kissed him ever so lightly on the lips. "There will come a time, big man," she murmured. "But first we must find your lost friends."

  That reminder electrified him. He had a triple shock: first, her demonstrated ability to foil him physically; second, the seeming incipience of an amorous liaison with a female agent -- intriguing as a suppressed fancy, upsetting as an actual prospect; third, the idea of dallying with a stranger while his two closest friends were unaccounted for.

  Of course, Veg was not as culpable as he deemed himself to be in that moment. Tamme had scripted this encounter carefully, if extemporaneously. He had never supposed seriously that she would have anything to do with him -- and he had not known that Cal and Aquilon were missing. The appearance of the mantas had seemed to indicate that things were all right; he hadn't thought to query Hex or Circe closely, and the mantas, as was their custom, had not volunteered anything or intimated that something was wrong. He had supposed that Cal and Aquilon were back at the camp, their occupation made safe by his diversion of the vicious machine.

  Tamme had shocked him with a kiss while informing him that this was not the case. In due course he would think all this out and realize that the agent had used him, or at least manipulated him. But by that time the significance of her remark "There will come a time" would have penetrated to a more fundamental level, and he wouldn't care.

  Child's play, really. That was why Cal was so much more intriguing. She would of course make the attempt to impress Cal because he would then be less inclined to work against the interests of Earth -- the interests as the Earth-Authorities saw them. But she expected to fail. The girl, too, would be a difficult one because the weapon of sex appeal would be valueless. Aquilon had sex appeal of her own in good measure -- and it was natural rather than cultured. A rare quality! Also, Aquilon had already killed a male-agent, Taner; she would do the same with a female-agent if the occasion required it.

  And there was a mystery: how had she killed Taner? She could not have caught the man off guard, and she could not have seduced him. Agents used sex as they used anything necessary. They were not used by it.

  It had to have been through the agency of the mantas. The fungoids were extremely swift, and the strike of their whiplike tails could kill. But they had to be airborne to attack and within striking range, and the reflexes of an alert agent were sufficient to shoot down a manta before it could complete its act. It was a matter of split-second coordination -- but the agent had the edge.

  Taner had been careless, obviously. But that did not excuse the slaying of an agent. When the facts were known...

  They were now both on their feet, ready to go. Veg's thoughts had run their channeled course. "They're not at the camp?"

  "No. Their tracks follow yours, then disappear."

  "That true, Hex?" he asked the manta. Distrust of agents was so ingrained that he wasn't even conscious of the implied affront. Why should he take her word?

  Hex snapped his tail once. Vindication. Tamme wondered whether the creatures could read human lies as readily as the agents could. She would have to keep that in mind.

  "Maybe Circe found them," Veg said.

  Hex snapped twice.

  "I think you should look at the tracks," Tamme said. "Something strange is going on, and we may be in danger." Understatement of the day!

  "Wait," Veg said. "The mantas came across with Cal, right? They must know." But as he spoke, he saw that Hex was ignorant of the matter.

  Tamme shrugged. "I guess that Cal found you missing, so he sent them to find you. While they were gone, something got him." She perceived his new alarm and quickly amended her statement. "He's not dead so far as I know. He's just gone. The tracks walk out into the sand and stop. I suspect a machine lifted him away."

  "A flying machine?" He pondered. "Could be. I didn't see it -- but that ground machine sure was tough. But if -- "

  "I don't think it ate them," Tamme said, again picking up his specific concern. He had strong ties to his friends! "There's no blood in the sand, no sign of struggle. The prints show they were standing there but not running or fighting."

  "Maybe," he said, half relieved. "Hex -- any ideas?"

  Three snaps.

  "He doesn't know," Veg said. "Circe must be looking for them now. Maybe we'd better just go back to camp and wait -- "

  Tamme reached out, took his arm and hauled him to the side with a strength he had not suspected in her. They sprawled on the ground behind a boulder. Wordlessly, she pointed.

  Something hovered in the air a hundred feet ahead. A network of glimmering points, like bright dust motes in sunlight. But also like the night sky. It was as though tiny stars were being born right here in the planet's atmosphere. She had never heard of anything like this; nothing in her programming approached it.

  Hex jumped up, orienting on the swarm. He shot toward it.

  "Watch it, Hex!" Veg cried.

  But Tamme recognized a weakness in the manta. The creature had to be airborne to be combat-ready. Actually it stepped across the ground rapidly, one-footed, its cape bracing against the pressure of the atmosphere. It had to aim that big eye directly on the subject to see it at all. Thus, the manta had to head toward the swarm -- or ignore it. Probably the creature would veer off just shy of the sparkle.

  Hex did. But at that moment the pattern of lights expanded abruptly, doubling its size. The outer fringe extended beyond the manta's moving body. And Hex disappeared.

  So did the light-swarm. The desert was dull again.

  "What the hell was it?" Veg exclaimed.

  "Whatever took your friends," Tamme said tersely. "An energy consumer -- or a matter transmitter."

  "It got Hex..."

  "I think we'd better get out of here. In a hurry."

  "I'm with you!"

  They got up and ran back the way they had come.

  "Circe!" Veg cried. "There's something after us -- and don't you go near it! It got Hex!"

  "Oh-oh," Tamme said.

  Veg glanced back apprehensively. The pattern was there again, moving toward them rapidly. Circe came to rest beside them, facing it.

  "We can't outrun it," Tamme said. "We'll have to fight."

  She faced the swarm, trying to analyze it for weakness, though she did not know what she was looking for. The thing swirled and pulsed like a giant airborne amoeba, sending out fleeting pseudopods that vanished instead of retracting. Sparks that burned out when flung from the main mass?

  "God.
.." Veg said.

  "Or the devil," she said, firing one hip-blaster.

  The energy streamed through the center of the bright cloud. Points of light glowed all along the path of her shot, but the swarm did not collapse.

  "It's a ghost!" Veg said. "You can't burn a ghost!" He was amazed rather than afraid. Fear simply was not natural to him; he had run as one might from a falling tree, preserving himself without terror.

  Tamme drew another weapon. A jet of fluid shot out. "Fire extinguisher," she said.

  It had no effect, either. Now the swarm was upon them. Pinpoint lights surrounded them, making it seem as though they stood in the center of a starry nebula. Circe jumped up, her mantle spreading broadly, but there was nothing for her to strike at, and it was too late to escape.