Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  "It happened at Çatal Huyuk in ancient Anatolia. That was a thriving neolithic city for a thousand years. Then the people left it and started Hacilar, two hundred miles to the west."

  "Why?"

  "We don't know. It happened almost eight thousand years ago. I suspect they ran out of game because of overhunting, and no doubt the climate had something to do with it."

  "I don't like that one," Veg said. "These builders didn't have to hunt for a living. If something happened to them, it sure could happen to us."

  "On the other hand, they could be here now, sleeping -- or watching us."

  "I don't like that, either," Veg said.

  "Or perhaps this is a prison city, made for the confinement of enemies or undesirables until sentence is pronounced."

  "You get worse as you go," Veg said, grimacing. "You try it, 'Quilon."

  Aquilon smiled. That still gave him a nervous thrill, for he remembered when she could not smile back on Planet Nacre. In certain ways things had been better then. "How about a vacation resort for honored guests?"

  "Stop there," he said. "I like it."

  "At any rate," Cal concluded, "whatever brought us can certainly remove us -- and will when it so chooses. We would do well to conduct ourselves decorously."

  "Segregation of the sexes?" Aquilon asked mischievously.

  "He means not to break anything," Veg said -- and realized too late that no one had needed any interpretation. Neither girl was stupid; Veg himself was the slow member of the group. It had never bothered him when they were three; now that they were four, it somehow did.

  "You understand that, mantas?" Aquilon asked. "We don't want trouble."

  The two fungoids agreed with token snaps of their tails. Aquilon had, in her way, taken the sting from his verbal blunder, for the mantas did need to have human dialogue clarified on occasion. Still the sweet girl, 'Quilon, and he loved her yet -- but not in the same way as before. Oh, if certain things could be unsaid, certain mistakes taken back... but what was the use in idle speculation? In time love would diminish into friendship, and that was best.

  "For now, let's rest," Tamme said.

  Rest! Veg knew Tamme didn't need it half as much as the others did. The agents were tough, awfully tough. And in their fashion, intriguing.

  Cal nodded agreement. He would be the most tired. He was much stronger than he had been when Veg met him back in space before Nacre, and now he could eat ordinary foods, but still his physical resources were small. "The mantas will stand guard," Cal said.

  Tamme gave no indication, but somehow Veg knew she was annoyed. She must have planned to scout around alone while the others slept; maybe she had some secret way to contact the agents back on Paleo. But she could not conceal it from the mantas!

  Then Tamme looked directly at him, and Veg knew she knew what he was thinking. Embarrassed, he curtailed his conjectures. And Tamme smiled faintly. Bitch! he thought, and her smile broadened.

  They found places around the chamber. The benches were surprisingly comfortable, as though cushioned, yet the material was hard. Another trick of the city's technology? But there was one awkward problem.

  "The john," Aquilon said. "There has to be one!"

  "Not necessarily," Cal replied, smiling in much the way Tamme had. "Their mores may differ from ours."

  "If they ate, they sat," Veg said firmly. "Or squatted. Sometime, somewhere, somehow. No one else could do it for them."

  "They could have designed machines to do it for them."

  Veg had a vision of a machine slicing a person open to remove refuse. "Uh-uh! I wouldn't tell even a machine to eat -- "

  "A variant of dialysis," Cal continued. "I have been dialyzed many times. It is simply a matter of piping the blood through a filtration network and returning it to the body. Painless, with modern procedures. It can be done while the subject sleeps."

  "I don't want my blood piped through a machine!" Veg protested. "Now I'll be afraid to sleep for fear a vampire machine will sneak up on me, ready to beat the oomph out of me!"

  "Dialysis would only account for a portion of it," Aquilon murmured.

  "Oh, the colon can be bypassed, too," Cal assured her.

  Veg did not enjoy this discussion. "What say we set aside a place, at least until we find a real privy? In fact, I can make a real privy."

  Cal spread his hands in mock defeat. "By all means, Veg!"

  "I will forage for building materials," Tamme offered.

  "I'll help," Aquilon said. "Circe?"

  "That is kind of you," Tamme said. Veg wondered whether she meant it. Foraging alone, the female agent could have explored the city widely and maybe made her report to Taler. Now she couldn't -- and even if she moved out too quickly for Aquilon to follow, the manta would keep her in sight. Smart girl, 'Quilon!

  Then he glanced at Tamme to see whether she were reading his reactions again. But she was not watching him this time, to his relief.

  His eyes followed as the two women departed. How alike they were, with their blonde hair and shapely bodies -- yet how unlike! Would they talk together? What would they say? Suddenly he was excruciatingly curious. Maybe he could find out from Circe later.

  "I think you need no warning," Cal said quietly as he poked about the suspended stage. "Just remember that girl is an agent, with all that implies."

  Veg remembered. Back on Earth the agents had moved in to destroy every vestige of manta penetration. They had burned Veg's northern forest region, gassed the rabbits and chickens of the cellar-farm in Aquilon's apartment complex, and bombed the beaches where Cal had lived. Then they had come to Paleo and brutally exterminated the dinosaurs. That memory was still raw -- but years would never completely erase the pain of it.

  They were agents of what Aquilon called the omnivore: man himself, the most ruthless and wasteful killer of them all. He knew, how well he knew!

  Yet -- Tamme was a mighty pretty girl.

  "Once we had a difference of opinion," Cal said. "I hope that does not occur again."

  Veg hoped so, too. He and Aquilon had argued against making any report on the alternate world of Paleo, to protect it from the savage exploitation of man. Cal had believed that their first loyalty had to be to their own world and species. Their difference had seemed irreconcilable, and so they had split: Cal on one side, Veg and Aquilon on the other. And it had been a mistake, for Cal had in the end changed his mind, while the other two had only learned that they were not for each other. Not that way, not as lovers, not against Cal.

  This time there was no question: They were all three against the omnivorous government of Earth. The agents were incorruptible representatives of that government, fully committed to their computer-controlled program. In any serious choice, Veg knew his interests lay with Cal and Aquilon, not with Tamme.

  Yet it had not worked out with Aquilon, and Tamme was a pretty girl...

  "It is possible to divorce the physical from the intellectual," Cal said.

  God, he was smart -- as bad in his way as Tamme was in hers. "I'll work on it," Veg agreed.

  They built the privy and also a little human shelter of light-cloth from the fountain-loom. It seemed ridiculous to pitch such a tent inside the doomed auditorium -- but the city was alien, while the shelter seemed human. It served a moral purpose rather than a physical one.

  The mantas found meat somewhere while the humans ate the fruits. Survival was no problem. Veg conjectured that there were either rats or their equivalent in the city: omnivores for the mantas to hunt. Maybe no coincidence.

  But as they ranged more widely through the city, they verified that there was no escape. The premises terminated in a yawning gulf whose bottom they could neither see nor plumb. This was, indeed, a prison. Or at least a detention site.

  "But we were not brought here for nothing," Cal insisted. "They are studying us, perhaps. As we might study a culture of bacteria."

  "So as to isolate the disease," Aquilon added.

  "We're not a dis
ease!" Veg said.

  Cal shrugged. "That may be a matter of opinion."

  Veg thought of the omnivore again, destroying everything from flies to dinosaurs, and wondered. "What happens to the culture -- after they know what it is?"

  "We'd rather not know," Aquilon said a bit tightly. Veg felt a surge of sympathy for her. She had salvaged nothing from Paleo but the egg -- and that was gone.

  Tamme didn't comment, but Veg knew her mind was working. She was not about to sit still for the extermination of a used culture.

  "That's for sure!" Tamme said, startling him, mocking his own speech mannerism. Once more he had forgotten to watch his thoughts. He knew she was not really a mind reader, but the effect was similar at times.

  "It is my suspicion that our captors did not construct this city," Cal said. "Otherwise they would not need to study us in this manner. More likely the city was here, and we were there, so it combined us, trusting that we were compatible."

  "That might be the test," Tamme said. "If we are compatible, we have affinities with the city, and so they know something about us. If we had died quickly, they would have known we had no affinities. Other samples, other environments, hit or miss."

  "Score one for it," Aquilon said. "I rather like it here. Or at least I would if only I were certain of the future."

  "If my conjecture is correct," Cal continued, "we have two mysteries. The origin of this city -- and the nature of the sparkle-cloud. And these mysteries may be mysteries to each other, too, if you see what I mean."

  "Yeah, I see," Veg said. "City, sparkle, and us -- and none of us really knows the other two.

  "With a three-way situation," Aquilon said thoughtfully, "we might have a fighting chance."

  "If only we knew how to fight!" Veg said.

  Night came again inside the auditorium as well as out. They ate and settled down.

  Then Veg saw something. "The sparkle-cloud!" he exclaimed. "It's back!"

  It shimmered on the stage, myriad ripples of lights, pattern on pattern. They had seen it in daylight; by night it was altogether different: phenomenal and beautiful.

  "A living galaxy!" Aquilon breathed. "Impossible to paint..."

  "Energy vortex," Cal said, studying it from a different view. "Controlled, complex..."

  "It's staying on the stage," Veg said. "Not coming after us!"

  "Yet," Tamme put in succinctly.

  "If only we could talk to it!" Aquilon said.

  "How do you communicate with an alternate-hopping energy vortex?" Tamme inquired. "Even if it had a brain, there's a problem in translation. More likely it is just a field of force generated by some distant machine."

  "Even so, communication might be possible," Cal said. "When we use radio or telephone or television, we are actually communicating with each other. What counts is who or what is controlling the machine or the force."

  "Translation -- that's the key!" Aquilon said, picking up from Tamme's remark. "Circe -- send it your signature."

  The manta beside her did not move. The eye glowed, facing the vortex.

  After a moment Aquilon shrugged, disappointed. "No connection," she said. "Their energy must be on different bands."

  "It is possible that we are seeing the mere periphery of some natural effect," Cal said. "A schism between alternates, a crack in the floor that let us fall through to another level -- no intelligence to it."

  Suddenly the vortex changed. Whorls of color spun off, while planes of growing points formed within the main mass. Lines of flickering color darted through those planes.

  "A picture!" Aquilon exclaimed.

  "Must be modern art," Veg snorted.

  "So called 'modern art' happens to be centuries old," Cal observed.

  "No, there really is a picture," Aquilon said. "You have to look at it the right way. The planes are like sections; the lines show the outlines. Each plane is a different view. Look at them all at once, integrate them..."

  "I see it!" Tamme cried. "A holograph!"

  Then Cal made it out. "A still life!"

  Veg shook his head, bewildered. "All I see is sheets and squiggles."

  "Try," Aquilon urged him. Oh, she was lovely in her earnestness! He needed no effort to appreciate that. "Let your mind go, look at the forms behind the forms. Once you catch it, you'll never lose it."

  But Veg couldn't catch it, any more than he had been able to catch her, back when he thought she was within his grasp. He strained but only became more frustrated. He saw the flats and curves of it but no comprehensible picture.

  "It's all in the way you look," Cal explained. "If you -- " He broke off, staring into the vortex. "Amazing!" Veg looked again, squinting, concentrating, but all he saw was a shifting of incomprehensibly geometric patterns with sparkles flying out like visual fireworks. "That's Orn!" Aquilon cried. "No, it's a chick -- "

  "The hatchling," Cal said. "Ornet. Yet how -- ?"

  "And a baby manta!" she continued. "Where are they?"

  "Back on Paleo, maybe," Veg said, annoyed. "What sort of a game are you folks playing?"

  "No game," Tamme assured him. "We see them."

  " 'Quilon!" Cal cried. "Look! Behind that obscuring sparkle. Can that be -- ?"

  "It is," she cried. "That's a human baby!" She shook her head, but her eyes remained riveted to the picture. "My God!"

  Veg strained anew but could make out nothing. He was getting angry.

  "Your God," Cal said. "I remember when you found that expression quaint."

  Aquilon drew her eyes momentarily from the stage to look at Cal, and Veg felt the intensity of it, though he was not a part of it. She was moving inexorably to Cal, and that was right; that Veg loved her did not mean he was jealous of his friend. Cal deserved the best.

  "I was painting," she said. "That first night on the mountain... and you said you loved me, and I cried." Her eyes returned to the stage. "Now I have picked up your mannerisms."

  Veg put his own eyes straight at the indecipherable image. The human relations of the trio were just as confused as that supposed picture, only coming clear too late to do any good. He had not known Cal and Aquilon were so close, even back at the beginning of Nacre. He had been an interloper from the start.

  Suddenly all three others tensed as though struck by a common vision. Veg knew now this was no joke; they could never have executed such a simultaneous reaction -- unless they really had a common stimulus. "What the hell is it?" he demanded.

  "A machine!" Aquilon exclaimed, "that whirling blade -- "

  "Where?" Veg cried, looking around nervously. But there was no machine. Aquilon was still staring into the vortex.

  "That must be what Veg fought!" Tamme said. "See the treads, the way it moves -- no wonder he had such a time with it! The thing's vicious!"

  "Sure it was vicious," Veg agreed. "But this is only a picture -- or a mass hypnosis. I don't see it."

  "You know, that's a small machine," Cal said. "A miniature, only a foot high."

  "They're all babies!" Tamme said. "But the others are no match for that machine. That's a third-generation killer."

  "Throw sand at it!" Veg said. For a moment he thought he saw the little machine buzzing through the depths of sparkle. But the whirling blade spun off into a pin-wheel, and he lost it. He just didn't have the eye for this show.

  "They can't throw sand," Aquilon said breathlessly. "Ornet and the mantling don't have hands, and the baby can't even sit up yet."

  "They would hardly know about that technique of defense yet," Cal added.

  "Well, they can run, can't they?" Veg demanded. "Let them take turns leading it away."

  "They're trying," Tamme said. "But it isn't -- "

  Then all three tensed again. "No -- !" Cal cried.

  Aquilon screamed. It was not a polite noise, such as one makes at a play. It was a full-throated scream of sheer horror.

  Veg had had enough. He charged the stage, leaped to the platform, and plunged into the center of the glowing maelstrom, waving
his arms and shouting. If nothing else, he could disrupt the hypnotic pictures that had captivated the minds of the others.

  He felt a tingling, similar to his experience the last time. Then it faded. He was left gesticulating on the stage, alone. The sparkle-cloud was gone.

  Chapter 6 - FRAMES

  Things progressed rapidly. The two blight spots were sentient; they responded to geometric sub-patterns readily and initiated their own. They had individual designations by which they could be identified, and these they made known by their responses. The shape-changing one was Dec, a ten-pointed symbol. The mobile-stable one was Ornet, indicative of a long line of evolving creatures or perhaps, more accurately, a series of shifting aspects of identity. The third was not responsive in the same way, but Ornet identified it as Cub, or the young of another species. Each entity was really quite distinct, once the group was understood.