Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  "I have been doing some thinking. I believe I understand the nature of our abductor, and how we can communicate with it."

  She lifted her hands, palms up. "Just like that!"

  "Oh, it was simple enough, once I had the key," he said modestly. "Pattern."

  "That's what you said before. I still don't follow it."

  "First we have to capture a suitable machine."

  "Capture a machine!" she exclaimed.

  "If we can immobilize it long enough for me to get at its control unit, I should be able to turn it to our purpose."

  She looked at him in perplexity. "Lure it under an ambush and knock it on the head with a sledgehammer?"

  Cal smiled. "No, that would destroy the delicate mechanism we need. We shall have to be more subtle."

  "Those machines aren't much for subtlety," she cautioned him. "If there are any of the whirling-blade variety around -- "

  "The menials will do," he said. "Preferably one with an optic-signal receiver."

  Aquilon shook her head. "Well, you know best. Tell me what to do."

  "Locate a flower or other device that will attract the right type of machine."

  "Something optical, you mean?"

  "Something that requires optical repair, yes." He faced away. "Hex! Circe!"

  Aquilon shrugged and went looking. Cal knew what she was thinking: He was far more the mystery man than he had been on Nacre or Paleo. Those had been comparatively simple, physical worlds; this was a complex intellectual-challenge situation. His area of strength! But he would soon explain himself.

  The two mantas arrived, sailing down to land beside him. "You have observed the tame machines?" he inquired.

  They did not need to snap their tails. His rapport with them had progressed beyond that stage. He could tell their answer by the attitude of their bodies, just as he had divined their disapproval of his directive regarding Tamme and her projector. YES. As he had already known.

  "Can you broadcast on their optical circuits?"

  Now they were dubious. There followed a difficult, somewhat technical dialogue involving wavelengths and intensities. Conclusion: They might be able to do what he wanted. They would try.

  Aquilon returned. "The light-loom seems best," she reported. "If something interfered with the original light-beam, the entire fabric would be spoiled. Seems a shame..."

  "We shall not damage it," Cal assured her. "We want only to attract the relevant machine." He glanced again at the little projector. "This we shall leave untouched, as I believe it has been set to bring them back at a particular moment. They have no chance to reach Earth; I hope they find equivalent satisfaction."

  Aquilon's eyes narrowed. "Are you implying -- "

  "As the agents experience more of reality away from their computer, they become more individual, more human. We stand in need of another human female if we are to maintain any human continuity away from Earth."

  Her lip curled. "Why not wish for a cobra to turn human while you're at it?"

  They went to the fountain. "Distort that light," Cal told the mantas. "Play your beams through it if you can keep it up without hurting your eyes."

  They dutifully concentrated on the rising light.

  "This may take a while," Cal said, "because it is subtle."

  "Too subtle for me," she murmured.

  "I will explain it." He dusted off the clear plastic panel covering the tapestry storage chamber. This was unnecessary, for there was no dust. He brought out a small marking pencil.

  "Where did you get that?" she asked.

  "The marker? I've had it all the time."

  She smiled ruefully. "He travels through Paleocene jungles, he battles dinosaurs, he tackles self-willed machines, he carries a cheap pencil."

  Cal put his hand on her arm, squeezing. "Life does go on."

  She turned her lovely blue eyes upon him. "Did you mean it, on Nacre?"

  Nacre, fungus planet: There was no mistaking her allusion. Now he regretted that he had made reference to it in front of Veg; that was not kind. He looked into the depths of those eyes and remembered it with absolute clarity.

  They had been climbing, forging up a narrow, tortuous trail between ballooning funguses and the encompassing mist. Aquilon, instead of resting, had painted -- not despite the fatigue, as she explained, but because of it. And though her subject had been ugly, the painting itself had been beautiful.

  "You match your painting," Cal had told her, sincerely.

  She had turned from him, overcome by an emotion neither of them understood, and he had apologized. "I did not mean to hurt you. You and your work are elegant. No man could look upon either and not respond."

  She had put away her painting and stared out into the mist. "Do you love me?" Perhaps a naïve question since they had only known each other three months, and that aboard a busy spaceship; they really had had little to do with each other until getting stranded on the pearl-mist planet.

  And he had answered: "I'm afraid I do." He had never before said that to a woman and never would again except to her.

  Then she had told him of her past: a childhood illness that destroyed her smile.

  Now she had her wish: She could smile again. That was the gift of the manta. But it had not brought her satisfaction.

  "Yes, I meant it," he said. And did not add: But Veg loved you, too. That had formed the triangle, and she had seemed better suited to healthy Veg, especially on Paleo. Unfortunately the two had proved not wholly compatible and were in the process of disengaging. Cal hoped he had done the right thing in exposing Veg to Tamme. He had tried to warn Veg first, but the whole thing had a jealous smell to it as though he were throwing a rival to the wolves. Wolf, cobra -- by any metaphor, an agent was trouble. Unless, as with Subble, there was some redeeming human quality that transcended the mercilessly efficient and ruthless program. A long, long shot -- but what else was there?

  "Look -- the pattern is changing! Aquilon exclaimed, looking through the plastic at the slowly moving material.

  "Excellent -- the mantas have mastered the trick. Now we'll see how long it takes for a repair-machine to come."

  "You were about to explain what you're doing."

  "So I was! I am becoming absent-minded."

  "Becoming?"

  Such a superficial, obvious gesture, this bit of teasing. Yet how it stirred him! To Cal, love was absolute; he had always been ready to die for her. Somehow he had not been ready to banter with her. It was a thing he would gladly learn. At the moment, he did not know the appropriate response and would not have felt free to make it, anyway. So he drew three dots on the surface: "What do you see?"

  "A triangle."

  "How about three corners of a square?"

  "That, too. It would help if you completed the square, if that's really what you want to indicate."

  "By all means." He drew in the fourth dot: And waited.

  She looked at it, then up at him. "That's all?"

  "That's the essence."

  "Cal, I'm just a little slower than you. I don't quite see how this relates to comprehension of the so-called 'pattern entities' and travel between alternate worlds."

  He raised an eyebrow. "You don't?"

  "You're teasing me!" she complained, making a moue.

  So he was learning already! "There's pleasure in it."

  "You've changed. You used to be so serious."

  "I am stronger -- thanks to you." On Nacre he had been almost too weak to stand, contemplating death intellectually and emotionally. He still had a morbid respect for death -- but Veg and Aquilon had helped him in more than the physical sense.

  "Let's take your square another step," she suggested. "I know there's more. There always is with you."

  He looked at the square. "We have merely to formulate the rule. Three dots are incomplete; they must generate the fourth. Three adjacent dots do it -- no more, no less. Otherwise the resultant figure is not a -- "

  "All right. Three dots make a fourth."
She took his marker and made a line of three: "What about this?"

  "Double feature. There are two locations covered by three adjacent dots. So -- " He added two dots above and below the line:

  "So now we have a cross of a sort." She shook her head. "I remain unenlightened."

  "Another rule, since any society must have rules if it is to be stable. Any dot with three neighbor-dots is stable. Or even with two neighbors. But anything else -- more than three or less than two -- is unstable. So our figure is not a cross."

  "No. The center dot has four neighbors. What happens to it?"

  "Were this the starting figure, it would disappear. Cruel but necessary. However, the five-dot figure does not form from the three-dot figure because the ends of the original one are unstable. Each end-dot has only a single neighbor." He drew a new set: Then he erased the ends, leaving one:

  "But what of the new dots we already formed?"

  "Creation and destruction are simultaneous. Thus our figure flexes so." He numbered the stages:

  1 2 3 4 "We call this the 'blinker.' "

  She looked at him suspiciously. "You mean this has been done before?"

  "This is a once-popular game invented by a mathematician, John Conway, back in 1970. He called it 'Life.' I have often whiled away dull hours working out atypical configurations."

  "I haven't seen you."

  He patted her hand. "In my head, my dear."

  "That would sound so much better without the 'my.' "

  " 'In head?' "

  She waggled a forefinger at him. " 'Dear.' "

  "You are becoming positively flirtatious." Perhaps she was rebounding from Veg.

  "Was Taler right on the ship?"

  The ship. Again he looked into her eyes, remembering. The Earth government had not waited for the trio's report; it had sent four agents to Paleo to wrap it up, which agents had duly taken the normals prisoner and destroyed the dinosaur enclave. "Interesting," Taler had remarked while Tamme watched, amused. "Dr. Potter is even more enamored of Miss Hunt than is Mr. Smith. But Dr. Potter refuses to be influenced thereby."

  "I suppose he was," Cal said.

  She sighed as though she had anticipated more of an answer. "There must be more to life than this."

  He glanced at her again, uncertain which way she meant it. He elected to interpret it innocuously. "There is indeed. There are any number of game figures, each with its own history. Some patterns die out; others become stable like the square. Still others do tricks."

  Now she was intrigued. "Let me try one!"

  "By all means. Try this one." He made a tetromino, four dots:

  Aquilon pounced on it. "There's an imaginary grid, right? The dots are really filling in squares and don't mesh the same on the bias?"

  "That's right." She was quick, now that she had the idea; he liked that.

  "If this is position one, then for position two we have to add one, two, three spots, and take away -- none." She made the new figure:

  "Correct. How far can you follow it?"

  She concentrated, tongue between her lips. At length, she had the full series. "It evolves into four blinkers. Here's the series." She marked off the numbers of the steps in elegant brackets so as the avoid the use of confusing periods.

  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]

  "Very good. That's 'Traffic Lights.' "

  "Fascinating! They really work, too! But still, I don't see the relevance to -- "

  "Try this one," he suggested, setting down a new pattern: "That's the 'R Pentomino.' "

  "That's similar to the one I just did. You've just tilted it sideways, which makes no topological difference, and added one dot."

  "Try it," he repeated.

  She tried it, humoring him. But soon it was obvious that the solution was not a simple one. Her numbered patterns grew and changed, taking up more and more of the working area. The problem ceased to be merely intriguing; it became compulsive. Cal well understood this; he had been through it himself. She was oblivious to him now, her hair falling across her face in attractive disarray, teeth biting lips. "What a difference a dot makes!" she muttered.

  Cal heard something. It was the hum of a traveling machine. The bait had finally been taken!

  He moved quietly away from Aquilon, who did not miss him. He took his position near the light fountain. The next step was up to the mantas.

  The machine hove into sight. It was exactly what Cal had hoped for: a multilensed optical specialist -- the kind fitted out to analyze a marginally defective light-pattern. One of the screens on it resembled an oscilloscope, and there seemed to be a television camera.

  Excellent! This one must have been summoned from moth-balling, as light-surgery was no doubt necessary less frequently than mechanical repairs. This was an efficient city, which did not waste power and equipment.

  The two mantas turned to concentrate on the machine. Cal knew they were directing their eye-beams at its lenses, attempting to send it intelligible information and usurp its control system. If anything could do it, the mantas could -- but only if the machine were sufficiently sophisticated.

  It stopped, facing the mantas. Was the plan working?

  Suddenly the machine whirled, breaking contact. Its intake lens spied Cal. The snout of a small tube swung about with dismaying authority.

  Cal felt sudden apprehension. He had not expected physical danger to himself or Aquilon, and he was not prepared. His skin tightened; his eyes darted to the side to assess his best escape route or locate a suitable weapon. There was a nervous tremor in his legs.

  He had played hide-and-seek with Tyrannosaurus, the largest predator dinosaur of them all. Was he now to lose his nerve before a mere repair robot?

  Cal leaped aside as the beam of a laser scorched a pin-hole in the plastic wall behind the place he had just stood. He had seen the warm-up glow just in time. But now it was warmed up and would fire too fast for his reflexes. He scurried on as the laser projector reoriented.

  His plan had malfunctioned -- and now the machine was on the attack. They were in for it!

  The mantas tried to distract it, but the thing remained intent on Cal. Wherever he fled, it followed.

  Aquilon, jolted out of her concentration, stepped forward directly into the range of the laser, raising her hand. Her chin was elevated, her hair flung back, her body taut yet beautiful in its arrested dynamism. For an instant she was a peremptory queen. "Stop!" she said to the machine.

  It stopped.

  Startled, Cal turned back. Had the machine really responded to a human voice -- or was it merely orienting on a new object? Aquilon's life depended on that distinction!

  Aquilon herself was amazed. "I reacted automatically, foolishly," she said. "But now -- I wonder." She spoke to the machine again. "Follow me," she said, and began to walk down the path.

  The machine stayed where it was, unmoving. Not even the laser tube wavered, though now it covered nothing.

  "Wait," Cal murmured to her. "It begins to come clear. You gave that machine a pre-emptive directive."

  "I told it to stop," she agreed. "I was alarmed. But if it understood and obeyed me then, why not now?"

  "You changed the language," he said.

  "I what?"

  "The first time you addressed it, you used body language. Everything about you contributed to the message. You faced it without apparent fear, you raised your hand, you gave a brief, peremptory command."

  "But I spoke English!"

  "Irrelevant. No one could have mistaken your meaning." He put his hand under her arm, pulling her gently toward him. "Body language -- the way we move, touch, look -- the tension of our muscles, the rate of our pulse, our respiration -- the autonomic processes. The agents virtually read our minds through those involuntary signals."

  "Yes," she said, seeing it. "Your hand on me -- that's speaking, too, more than your words."

  He let go quickly. "Sorry. I just wanted you to understand -- "

  "I did," she s
aid, smiling. "Why does that embarrass you?"

  "This city is, despite its weirdities, essentially human. It was made to serve human beings, perhaps women like you -- "

  "A matriarchy?"

  "Possibly. Now those people are gone, but the city remains, producing breathable air, growing edible fruit, supporting at least some omnivorous wildlife as though in anticipation of the needs of the mantas, manufacturing things for human use. Surely the machines remember their erstwhile masters!"