Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  This was likely to be the mission of her life -- and the fight of Earth's survival.

  She had an immediate choice: Return to the surrealist city and commence her survey of alternates, hoping to discover in the process the route home. Or take a more chancy initiative by going after the competing agent and attempting to kill him before he could make his report to his world.

  Each alternative was rife with bewildering complexities. She was trained to make quick decisions -- but never had the fate of Earth depended on her snap judgment, even potentially. So she sought an advisory opinion. "Veg -- if you came across the spoor of a hungry tiger, and you knew it was going to be him or you -- what would you do? Follow the trail, or go home for help?"

  Veg squinted at her. "Depends how close home is, and how I am armed. But probably I'd go home. I don't like killing."

  She had posed the wrong question -- another indication of her need for caution. An agent should not make elementary mistakes! Naturally the vegetarian would avoid a quarrel with an animal. "Suppose it was the track of a man as strong and as smart as you -- but an enemy who would kill you if you didn't kill him first?"

  "Then I'd sure go home! I'm not going out looking for any death match!"

  She ran her tongue over her lips. "Any sensible person would do the same. It's a fairly safe assumption."

  "Yeah."

  "But the secret of victory is to do the unexpected."

  "Yeah."

  "All right. The aperture we used will come on again in two hours and eleven minutes. Check your watch; you'll only have fifteen seconds."

  "I don't have a watch."

  There it was again. She was missing the obvious at a calamitous rate in her preoccupation with larger concerns. She needed computer reorientation -- but could not get it. There was no choice but to continue more carefully.

  She removed her watch and handed it to him. "All you have to do is stand exactly where we landed. In fact, your best bet is to go there now, camp out on that spot. Then you'll be transported back automatically even if you're asleep. Tell your friends where I went, then wait at the city. Cal will understand."

  He was confused. "Where are you going? I thought -- "

  She knelt by the generator. "After the tiger. This will not be pretty, and I may not return. It's not fair to involve you further."

  "You're going to fight that other agent?"

  "I have to. For our world, Earth."

  "You're not taking me along?"

  "Veg, I was using you. I'm sorry; I felt it was a necessary safeguard. My purposes are not yours, and this is not your quarrel. Go back to your friends." She was checking over the projector as she talked, making sure it was in working order, memorizing the setting.

  "That was the note you left," he said wisely. "Telling Cal and 'Quilon not to try anything if they didn't want anything to happen to me."

  She nodded acquiescence. "The projector is vulnerable. If they moved it or changed the setting, even accidentally..." Of course she could do the same thing to this one and return to the city, but that was no sure way to solve the problem. The other agent might have another projector, so her act would only alert him -- and an agent needed no more than a warning! No, she had to go after him and catch him before he was aware, and kill him -- if she could.

  "Now you're letting me go." His mixture of emotions was too complex for her to analyze at the moment. The projector was more important.

  "There was nothing personal, Veg. We do what we must. We're agents, not normal people." All was in order; the projector had not been used in several days, so it was fresh and ready to operate safely. "We will lie, cheat, and kill when we have to -- but we don't do these things from preference. I suppose it won't hurt for you to know now: I was extremely sorry to see those dinosaurs destroyed on Paleo. Had I been in charge, we would have left you and them alone. But I follow my orders literally, using my judgment only in the application of my instructions when judgment is required." She glanced up, smiling briefly. "Take it from a trained liar and killer: Honesty and peace are normally the best policies."

  "Yeah. I knew you were using me. That's why I lost interest, once I thought it through. I'm slow, but I do get there in time. Trees don't use people."

  She took an instant to verify that in him. He was serious; deceptive behavior turned him off even when he didn't recognize it consciously. She had misread him before, and that was bad. She had overrated the impact of her sex appeal; the preoccupation had become more hers than his. She was slipping.

  Veg had loved Aquilon -- still loved her -- in part because of her basic integrity. He had lost interest in Tamme when her agent nature was verified. He was a decent man. Now his interest was increasing again as she played it straight.

  "I made you a kind of promise," she said. "Since I may not be seeing you again, it behooves me to keep that promise now." She ran her finger along the seam of her low-fashioned blouse, opening it.

  Veg was strongly tempted; she read the signals all over his body. No mistake this time! But something in him would not let go. "No -- that's paid love. Not the kind I crave."

  "Not a difficult payment. Sex is nothing more than a technique to us. And -- you are quite a man, Veg."

  "Thanks, anyway," he said. "Better get on with your mission." There was a turbulent decision in him, a multi-faceted, pain/pleasure metamorphosis. But he did not intend to betray her. "Time can make a difference -- maybe even half an hour."

  "I tried to deceive you before," she said. "That discouraged you. Now I am dealing only in truth. I never deceived you in what I was offering, only in my motive, and that's changed now. I would prefer to part with you amicably."

  "I appreciate that. It's amicable. But I meant it, about time making a difference. You should go, quickly."

  She read him yet again. The complicated knot of motives remained unresolved: He wanted her but would not take her. She did not have time to untangle all the threads of the situation -- threads that extended well back into his relation with Aquilon. "Right." She put her blouse back together.

  She had not been lying. Veg was a better man than she had judged, with a certain quality under his superficial simplicity. It would have been no chore to indulge him, merely an inconvenience.

  She turned on the projector. The spherical field formed. "Bye, Veg," she said, kissing him quickly. Then she stepped into the field.

  And he stepped into it with her.

  Chapter 8 - ENCLAVE

  The episode of the machine attack had brought them together, with new understandings. The spots were interdependent -- and OX interdependent with them. Dec, the moving shape changer. Ornet, the stable mover. Cub, helpless. OX, variable and mobile.

  The three spots required gaseous, liquid, and solid materials to process for energy. The concepts were fibrillatingly strange despite OX's comprehensive new clarification circuits. They needed differing amounts of these aspects of matter in differing forms and combinations. But it was in the end comprehensible, for their ultimate requirement was energy, and OX needed energy, too. They drew it from matter; he drew it from elements. Energy was the common requirement for survival.

  Could the spots' method of processing it be adapted to OX's need? YES. For when OX acted to promote the welfare of the spots, his elements became stronger. He had ascertained that before the machine attacked. When he provided the spots with their needs, they helped the plants, which in turn strengthened their elements. Yet the specific mechanism was not evident.

  OX concentrated, experimenting with minute shifts in the alternate framework. Gradually, the concepts clarified. The fundaments of the plants were rooted in certain alternates but flowered their elements in others. The roots required liquids and certain solids; the flowers required pattern-occupation, or they accumulated too much energy and become unstable. Their energy would begin spilling, making chaos. The reduction of that energy by the patterns kept the plants controlled, so that they prospered. The plants had both material and energy needs, and the
spots served the first, the patterns the second.

  The spots served another purpose. One of them, Ornet, had knowledge -- a fund of alien information that compelled OX's attention, once he established adequate circuitry to hold detailed dialogue with this particular spot. For this information offered hints relating to survival.

  Ornet had a memory circuit quite unlike that of OX. Yet OX had become wary of ignoring difficult concepts; survival kept him broadening. Ornet's memory said that his kind had evolved a very long time ago, gradually changing, aspects of itself continually degenerating and renewing like a chain of self-damping shoots. That much was comprehensible.

  But Ornet's memory also said that there were many other creatures, unlike Ornet or the two other spots or the machine, and that they, too, expanded, divided, and degenerated. This was significant: a host of other spots. Yet only the three were here. What had happened to the others?

  Ornet did not know. There were a few in the enclave, mobile nonsentients, but those were only a tiny fraction of those described. OX was not satisfied that all were gone. They seemed to have existed in another framework and might exist there still. Where was that framework?

  Further, Ornet's perception said that the machines had evolved in somewhat similar fashion. He knew this from his observation of the one that attacked. And he also said that OX himself had evolved somehow from some different pattern.

  Alien nonsense! But OX modified his circuits, creating the supposition that all of this could be true, and followed the logic to certain strange conclusions.

  Yet something was missing. OX realized, in the moment this special circuit functioned, that he could not have evolved here as the first pattern; he had come into existence only recently, whereas the plants had been here for a long time. And what about the spots? All were of recent origin, too, like OX. Even his special circuits could not accept this as the only reality.

  Because the spots enhanced the elements, OX's immediate problem of survival had been abated. He could afford to consider longer-range survival. In fact, he had to -- for survival was not complete until all aspects were secure. Control of his immediate scene was not enough. Was there some threat or potential threat beyond?

  OX explored as far as he was able. His region was bounded on all sides by the near absence of elements; he could not cross out. There were only diminishing threads of elements that tapered down to thicknesses of only a few elements in diameter. It was impossible for OX to maintain his being on those; he had to have a certain minimum for his pattern to function.

  He sent his shoots across these threads regularly; this was part of the way he functioned. Most were self-damping processes resulting from more complex circuits; some were simple self-sustaining radiations. A few were so constituted that they would have returned had they encountered a dead end. None did return, which showed OX that the threads continue on into some larger reservoir beyond his perception.

  Radiations were inherent in the pattern scheme. Had another pattern-entity existed within OX's limited frame, OX would have been made aware of its presence by its own radiations. It was essential that patterns not merge; that was inevitable chaos and loss of identity for both. Because of the natural radiations of shoots, patterns were able to judge each other's whereabouts and maintain functional distances. This OX knew because it was inherent in his system; it would be nonsurvival for it to be otherwise. Once he had reacted to the seeming presence of another pattern because he had intercepted alien shoots, both self-sustaining and damping... but upon investigation it had turned out to be merely the reflection of his own projections, distorted by the irregular edge of his confine.

  He knew there were other patterns... somewhere. There had to be. He had not come equipped with shoot-interpretation circuits by coincidence!

  Perhaps beyond the barrier-threads? OX could not trace them -- but the spots could. OX held dialogue with the communicative spot, Ornet. He made known his need to explore beyond the confines of this region.

  Ornet in turn communicated with Dec, the most mobile spot. Dec moved rapidly out of OX's perception. When he returned, his optic generator signaled his news: This frame, one of the limited myriads of alternates that comprised the fabric of OX's reality, did indeed have other structures of elements. Dec had located them by following the element-threads that OX could not. Dec perceived these elements only with difficulty but had improved with practice. At varying physical distances, he reported, a number of them re-expanded into viable reservoirs. And in one of these Dec had spied a pattern.

  The news threw OX into a swirl of disorientation. Hastily he modified his circuits; he had now confirmed, by observation of his own nature and indirect observation of the external environment, that he was not the only entity of his kind.

  The other patterns had to know of him. His radiations, traveling the length of the element-threads, had to notify them of his presence. Yet never had a return-impulse come. That had to mean the others were damping out their external signs. Their only reason would be to abate a threat, as of a shoot-detecting machine or a pattern-consuming nonsentient pattern, or to conceal their presence for more devious internal reasons. On occasion, OX damped out his own radiation when he did not wish to be disturbed; his circuits did this automatically, and analysis of them showed this to be the reason. Actually, such damping was pointless here, there were no intrusive patterns, and the spots were not affected: additional evidence that OX was equipped by nature to exist in a society of patterns, not alone.

  Why would other patterns, aware of him, deliberately conceal themselves from him? In what way was he a threat to them? He was a fully functioning pattern; it was not his nature to intrude upon another of his kind. The other patterns surely knew this; it was inherent, it was survival.

  Something very like anger suffused OX. Since his nature responded only to survival-nonsurvival choices, it was not emotion as a living creature would know it. But it was an acute, if subtle, crisis of survival.

  A compatible pattern would not have acted in the fashion these outside patterns did. Therefore, their presence was a strong potential threat to his survival.

  OX sent Dec out to observe again more thoroughly, and he sent Ornet out to the same physical spot in an adjacent frame. The two observers could not perceive each other, for they could not cross over alternates, and OX could observe neither since they were beyond his element-pool. But this difficult cooperative maneuver was critical.

  Their report confirmed what OX had suspected.

  Dec had observed a pattern fade, leaving the points unoccupied. Then it, or another like it, had returned. But Ornet's location had remained vacant.

  OX understood this, though the spots did not. The pattern was traveling through the frames. Because of the configuration of the pool as OX had mapped it, he knew that the foreign pattern had to move either toward Ornet or away from him. It had moved away. And that meant that the other pool of elements extended beyond OX's own pool, for his did not go farther in that direction.

  The other pools, in fact, were probably not pools. They were aspects of the larger framework. The other patterns were not restricted as OX was.

  They were keeping him isolated, restricted, confined to an enclave, while they roamed free. This, by the inherent definition of his circuitry, was inimical behavior.

  OX sank into a long and violent disorientation. Only by strenuous internal measures was he able to restore equilibrium. Then it was only by making a major decision that forced a complete revamping of his nature. He was in peril of nonsurvival through the action of others of his own kind. He had either to allow himself to be disrupted at their convenience or to prepare himself to disrupt the other patterns at his convenience. He chose the latter.

  OX was ready to fight.

  Chapter 9 - LIFE

  The two mantas, Hex and Circe, showed them the place, then disappeared again on their own pursuits. They seemed to like the city and to enjoy exploring it.

  Cal and Aquilon stood on either sid
e of the projector, not touching it. "So she had a way back all the time -- and she took Veg with her," Aquilon said bitterly. "While we slept, blissfully ignorant." She crumpled the note and threw it away in disgust.

  "I knew she had some such device," Cal replied. "I told the mantas to let them go."

  She was aghast. "Why?"

  "We could not stop the agent from doing as she wished -- but Veg will keep an eye on her and perhaps ameliorate her omnivoristic tendencies. Meanwhile, it is pointless to remain idle here. I suspect we shall be able to make contact with the pattern-entities better on our own. They may or may not attempt to contact us again on the stage. If they do, I would prefer that Veg not break it up and that Tamme not receive their information. If they don't, it will be up to us to make a move."

  "You really have it figured out," she said, shaking her head. Then: "Pattern entities? What -- ?"