"Then why did it attack you?"
"I was acting in an unfriendly manner, associating with aliens who were interfering with the business of the city. I was giving the signals of an enemy or a vandal -- as indeed I regarded myself. The machine reacted accordingly."
Aquilon nodded. "So we know the builders, though not their language."
"We are the builders -- on another variant. Perhaps this city is an artifact of a human alternate many thousands of years in our future. With the alternate framework, it stands to reason that many worlds are ahead of us as well as many behind."
"Dinosaurs on one -- super science on another," she agreed.
"But I do not think the sparkle-cloud is part of this human scheme -- as I was explaining."
"You were?"
"The Life game."
She grimaced. "I haven't gotten through your R Pentomino yet."
"I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "It only achieves a 'steady state' after eleven hundred moves."
"Eleven hundred moves!" she exclaimed indignantly. "And you set me innocently to work with a pencil -- "
"The point is, the entire game is determined by the opening configuration. But that hardly means that all openings are similar, or that a five-point figure does not have impressive complexities in its resolution. Most simple patterns quickly fade or become stable. A few are open-ended, especially when they interact with other figures. So larger opening patterns might conceivably -- "
"Cal!" she cried. "Are you saying that this little dot-game -- the sparkle-pattern -- "
He nodded. " 'Life' is a simple two-dimensional process that nevertheless has certain resemblances to the molecular biology of our living life. Suppose this game were extended to three physical dimensions and given an indefinitely large grid?"
She shook her head so that her hair flew out enticingly. Had she picked up that gesture from Tamme? "It would still be predetermined."
"As we are predetermined, according to certain philosophies. But it becomes extremely difficult to chart that course before the fact. Suppose a number of forms were present on that grid, interacting?"
"If their patterns got too large, they'd mess each other up. There's no telling what would happen then." She paused, his words sinking in. "It would still be predetermined by the initial figures and their relation to each other on the grid -- but too complicated to predict without a computer. Maybe there's no computer that could handle the job if the grid were big enough and the figures too involved. Anything could happen."
"And if it existed in four or five dimensions?"
She spread her hands. "I'm no mathematician. But I should think the possibilities would approach those of organic processes. After all, as you pointed out, enzymes in one sense are like little keys on the molecular level, yet they are indispensable to the life processes. Why not dot-pattern enzymes, building into -- " She paused again. "Into animate sparkle-clouds!"
"So we could have what amounts to independent, free-willed entities," he finished. "Their courses may be predetermined by their initial configurations and framework -- but so are ours. We had better think of them as potentially sentient and deal with them accordingly."
"Which means establishing communication with them," she said. "It was a giant mental step, but at last I am with you." She looked down at the complex mess of her R Pentomino and blew out her cheeks.
"That's good," he said. "Because we need that machine -- and you seem to be able to control it. Bring it to the auditorium."
Aquilon struck a dramatic pose before the machine. "Come!" she commanded, gesturing imperatively. And it did.
"You know, I rather enjoy this," she confided as they walked.
Chapter 10 - PHASE
OX was ready to fight. He now knew he was under observation by pattern-entities resembling himself who declined to communicate with him. Had they merely been there, unaware of him, they would not have cut off their normal radiation shoots -- and since he had not cut off his, they had to know of him. So he was certain of his diagnosis.
His combat circuitry, laboriously developed in the process of restoring equilibrium, informed him that it would be nonsurvival to permit the outside patterns to learn of his change of condition. He therefore fashioned a pseudoplacid circuit whose purpose was to maintain normal radiation despite the internal changes. The observing patterns would thus receive no evidence of OX's real intent.
It was also probable that the outside patterns did not comprehend the significance of the spots. That was thus an asset, for the spots had already proved themselves as both element-stimulators and sources of exterior information. In fact, the spots represented OX's major potential weapon. He had ascertained that they, like he, were of recent origin; they, like he, possessed the powers of growth and increased facility. According to the Ornet-Spot memory, the stationary stable Cub was a member of a type that had greater potential than many others. But this needed a great deal of time and concentration to develop. OX decided to exploit this potential.
Each alternate was separated from its neighbors by its phase of duration. OX had verified this by study of the elements he activated: They gradually matured as the plants charged them, and this maturation represented a constant within the individual frame. Even an element that had been activated and recharged many times still reflected its ancestry and age. But the equivalent elements of adjacent alternates differed, one frame always being newer than the other.
Since OX was a pattern having no physical continuity, this differential of alternates did not affect him except as it affected the elements. Generally the older, more established elements were more comfortable; fresh ones were apt to release their energy unevenly, giving him vague notions of nonsurvival.
That differential could, however, affect the spots, who were almost wholly physical. OX could move them from one frame to another as they were, allowing them to change in relation to their environment because of the shift in that environment -- as when he had moved them to a more favorable habitat. He could also, he discovered, modify the transfer so that the alternates remained fixed -- and the spots changed. He had done that when Cub perished before the blade of the machine. It was merely an aspect of crossover: A physical difference between creature and alternate always had to be manifest.
What it amounted to was a method for aging the spots. When OX moved them this way, they were forced to assume the duration they would have had, had they always existed there. Then he shifted them back, this time letting them be fixed while the frame seemed to change. It was an artificial process that cut the spots off from the untampered frames beyond the enclave -- but he was barred from that, anyway.
In this manner he brought the spots from infancy to maturity in a tiny fraction of the time they would normally have required. Of course to them it seemed as though their full span had passed in normal fashion; only OX knew better. But he explained this to them and offered certain proofs for their observation, such as the apparent cessation of the growth of the fixed life around them, the immobile plants. Only those plants within the radius of the frame-travel advanced at the same rate. They discussed this with increasing awareness and finally believed.
The little machine, always hovering near, was also caught up in the progress. OX tried to leave it behind, but with inanimate cunning it moved in whenever it sensed his development of the complex necessary circuits, staying in phase. Originally it had been impervious to the spots' attacks; had they advanced without it, they would have been free of it one way or another, either by getting completely out of phase with it or by becoming large and strong enough to overcome it. Thus, they always had to be on guard against its viciousness.
OX also arranged education shoots that facilitated the expansion of awareness in the spots. Though this almost wholly occupied OX's available circuitry, it did not have a large effect on either Dec or Ornet. They seemed programmed to develop in their own fashions regardless of his influence. But for Cub it was most productive. Ornet's conjecture had been a
ccurate: Cub had enormous potential, in certain respects rivaling OX's own. How this could be in a physical being OX could not quite grasp; he had to assume that Cub had a nonphysical component that actually made rationality feasible. At any rate, Cub's intellect was malleable, and OX's effort was well rewarded.
OX watched and guided according to his combat nature as Dec became large and swift, able to disable a semi-sentient animal with a few deadly snaps of his tail-appendage, able to receive and project complex information efficiently. He was the fastest-moving spot physically, useful for purely physical observations and communications.
Ornet served to protect and assist Cub -- but Ornet's memory clarified as he grew and offered many extraordinary insights into the nature of spots and frames that influenced OX's own development. Ornet, limited as he was physically, nevertheless had vested within him more sheer experience than any of the others, including OX himself. That was a tremendous asset, like a stabilizing circuit, guiding him through potential pitfalls of nonsurvival. OX always consulted with Ornet before he made any significant decision.
But Cub was his best investment. He grew from a non-mobile lump to a slowly mobile entity, then to a creature approaching Ornet in physical capability. His intellect became larger and larger. Soon he was grasping concepts that baffled both Dec and Ornet. Then, as he approached maturity, his reasoning ability interacted with OX's on something other than a teacher-pupil level. He began to pose questions that OX could not resolve -- and that in turn forced OX to ever-greater capacities.
What about the killer machine? Cub inquired once after they had driven it off. Do you think it gets lonely as we do? Doesn't it have needs and feelings, too?
The very notion was preposterous! Yet OX had to make a new circuit and concede that yes, in machine-terms, it would have needs and feelings, too, and perhaps was lonely for its own land.
Or maybe for sapience of any kind -- including ours? Cub persisted. Could it be that when it tries to consume us, it is really seeking intellectual dialogue, not aware that we do not integrate physically as it does?
OX had to allow that possibility, also. Still, he pointed out, it remains a deadly enemy to us all because we don't integrate as mechanical components. We can never afford to let down our guard.
But long after that dialogue, his circuits fibrillated with the intemperate concept. A machine, seeking intellectual dialogue. A machine!
Chapter 11 - HEXAFLEXAGON
They emerged into a blinding blizzard. Snow blasted Veg's face, and the chill quickly began its penetration of his body. He was not adequately dressed.
Tamme turned to him, showing mild irritation. "Why did you come?" she demanded.
He tried to shrug, but it was lost in his fierce shivering. He did not really understand his own motive, but it had something to do with her last-minute display of decency. And with her beauty and his need to disengage irrevocably from Aquilon.
Tamme removed her skirt, did something to it, and put it about his shoulders. He was too cold to protest. "This is thermal," she said. "Squat down, hunch up tight. It will trap a mass of warm air, Eskimo-style. Face away from the wind. Duck your head down; I'll cover it." And she removed her halter, formerly her blouse, adjusted it, and fashioned it into a protective hood.
He obeyed but did finally get out a word, "You -- "
"I'm equipped for extremes," she said. "You aren't. I can survive for an hour or more naked in this environment -- longer with my undergarments. So can you -- if you just sit tight under that cloak. After that, we'll both exercise vigorously. We have to stretch it out three hours, until the projector brings us back. We'll make it -- though for once I wish I'd set it for the minimum safe-return time."
He nodded miserably. "Sorry. I didn't know -- "
"That you would only be in the way? I knew -- but I also knew your motive, confused as it might be, was good. You have courage and ethics, not because you've been programmed for them, but because you are naturally that way. Perhaps agents should be more like that." She paused, peering around. Snowflakes were hung up on her eyebrows, making little visors. "I'll make a shelter. Maybe we won't have to go back."
He watched her move about, seemingly at ease in the tempest... in her bra and slip. He was chagrined to be so suddenly, so completely dependent on a woman, especially in what he had thought of as a man's natural element: wilderness. But she was quite a woman!
Tamme made the shelter. She cleared the loose snow away, baring a nether layer of packed snow and ice, a crust from some prior melting and refreezing. She used one of her weapons, a small flame thrower, to cut blocks of this out. Soon she had a sturdy ice wall.
"Here," she directed.
He obeyed, moving jerkily into the shelter of the hole behind the wall. The wind cut off. Suddenly he felt much better. The cloak was warm; once the wind stopped wrestling with it, stealing the heated air from the edges, he was almost comfortable. He held it close about his neck, trapping that pocket of heat. But his feet were turning numb.
Tamme built the wall around him, curving it inward until she formed a dome. It was an igloo!
"I think you'll manage now," she said. "Let me have my clothing; I want to look about."
She crawled into the igloo beside him while he fumbled with cloak and hood. And she stripped off her underclothing.
Veg stared. She was an excellent specimen of womanhood, of course; not lush but perfectly proportioned, with no fat where it didn't belong. Every part of her was lithe and firm and feminine. But that was not what amazed him.
Strapped to her body was an assortment of paraphernalia. Veg recognized the holster for the flame thrower she had just used: It attached to her hip where a bikini would have tied -- a place always covered without seeming to be, filling a hollow to round out the hip slightly. There was another holster, perhaps for the laser, on the other hip. An ordinary woman would have padded that region with a little extra avoirdupois; Tamme's leanness only served to delineate her muscular structure without at all detracting from her allure. There was similar structures near her waist, which was in fact more slender than it had seemed. And at the undercurves of her breasts.
How artfully she had hidden her weaponry while seeming to reveal all! Her thighs had seemed completely innocent under her skirt as she came down the pine tree. And who would have thought that the cleavage of her bosom had been fashioned by the push of steel weapons so close below! Had she been ready to make love to him that way, armed to the...?
"No, I'd have set aside the weapons," she said. "Can't ever tell where a man's hands may go."
She tore the bra, slip, and panties apart, then put them back together a different way. Evidently she could instantly remake all her clothing for any purpose -- functional, seductive, or other. He had no doubt it could be fashioned into a rope to bind a captive or to scale a cliff. And of course her blouse had become first a revealing halter, then a hood for his head.
The female agent was every bit as impressive as the male agent! It was an excellent design.
"Thanks," Tamme said.
She donned her revised underthings, once more covering the artillery. Veg now understood about her weight: She probably weighed a hundred and fifteen stripped but carried forty pounds of hardware.
She held out her hand unself-consciously. Hastily he passed the cloak and hood across and watched her convert them back into skirt and blouse. But not the same design as before; the skirt was now longer for protection against the storm, and the blouse closed in about her neck, showing no breast. Quite a trick!
She scrambled out the igloo door and disappeared into the buzzard. While she was gone, Veg chafed his limbs and torso to warm them and marveled at the situation in which he found himself. He had gone from Earth to Paleo, the first alternate; then to Desertworld, the second alternate. And on to Cityworld, Forestworld, and now to Blizzard -- the third, fourth, and fifth, respectively. Now he was huddled here, shivering, dependent on a woman -- while all alternity beckoned beyond!
How had they come here, really? Who had left the aperture projector so conveniently? It smelled of a trap. As did the blizzard. But for Tamme's strength and resourcefulness, it could have been a death trap.
Yet death would have been more certain if the aperture had opened over the brink of a cliff or before the mouth of an automatically triggering cannon.
No -- that would have been too obvious. The best murder was the one that seemed accidental. And of course their immediate peril might well be accidental. Surely this storm was not eternal; this world must have a summer as well as a winter and be calm between altercations of weather. Tamme had said the projector could have been left five days ago. This storm was fresh. So maybe another agent had passed this way, leaving his projector behind as Tamme had left hers at Cityworld.
That meant the other agent was still around here somewhere. And that could be trouble. Suppose the agent overcame Tamme and stranded Veg here alone? She was tough and smart -- and mighty pretty! -- but another agent would have the same powers. Unless --
Of Man and Manta Omnibus Page 57
