Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  "I escaped Tyrannosaurus by hiding in a volcanic cave, the night of the day we had the second tremor. It was warm in there, for the water of the stream was hot. I was extraordinarily tired, yet keyed up: It had been the greatest adventure of my life. I had, in my fashion, conquered the dinosaur!

  "I found myself a comfortable ledge, sprawled out, and fell into a perspiring stupor. I thought of dinosaurs and conjectured that one of the duck-bills like Parasaurolophus, with the enormous nasal crest, might have been able to survive the heat of that cave. Its breath through the inside of that crest would have cooled its tissues, as the breath of a dog cools its tongue and thus its body. But if the creature stayed too long or strayed into the cave and got lost, it might have died and been washed out through the river-canyons of the far side of the mountain range. Idle speculation of the type that entertains me."

  "I know," she agreed softly. Who else but Cal would care whether the body of a duck-billed dinosaur washed out one side of the mountain or the other?

  "I must have slept off and on. It was not really comfortable in that heat. Toward morning that conjecture about the duck-bill roused me. Could it get out of the dinosaur enclave through the mountain? Could I? Driven by curiosity, I began to explore the cavern, going far back into the mountain. The heat was terrible; when it reached about one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit I turned back. I was naked; I was sweating so profusely that clothing would have been useless.

  "Then I saw something. It was nestled in a recess, invisible from the mouth of the cave. I would have missed it but for my acute night vision, sharpened by my night in the cave. It was a little machine. Its presence amazed me, for it suggested that man had been there before. I fiddled with it, trying to ascertain its condition and purpose. I lifted a kind of key from it.

  "A cone of pale light projected from the device and bathed me. I felt a strange wrenching. For an instant I feared I had been victimized by some type of booby trap, though why anything of that nature should be placed there I could not guess. Then the machine was gone, and I stood in the cave, the key in my hand.

  "Astonished, I set it down on a convenient ledge and looked about. Far down at the mouth of the cave I saw a glow; dawn was coming.

  "I went back to that entrance to check on Tyrann, my reptile nemesis. He was still there, sleeping, his great nose almost touching the cave. In fact, his bulk blocked the flow of water, making it form into a puddle. Beyond him was the snow of the mountain, covering the canyon rim where the heat of the river did not reach. An odd sight: dinosaur in snow!

  " 'Cal!' someone cried. 'I thought you were dead!' "

  "I turned, startled. You were there, 'Quilon, nude and lovely. Your yellow hair floated down your back like the glorious mane of a thoroughbred horse, and your blue eyes were bright. I doubt you can appreciate how lovely you were to me in that instant. I had come very near death, and you were an angel.

  " 'I escaped, thanks to this convenient cave,' I said, as though it were of no moment. I do not remember my exact words, of course, but it was something equivalently inane.

  " 'So did I,' " you said. 'Cal, I could have sworn I saw Tyrann get you! It was awful. Then he came after me, and I just made it here -- '

  " 'I told the mantas not to interfere. Why did you come?'

  " 'I love you,' you said.

  "You were not speaking intellectually or theoretically or platonically. Your voice trembled with the devotion of a woman for her lover. You were wild and forward, and I -- I was powerfully moved by it. You meant it.

  "Your vision of seeming death had charged you, first with grief, then with enormous passion. We were naked, and in love, and it seemed wholly natural that we resort to the natural culmination. All the suppressed urges I had entertained toward you were released in the bursting of that dam; it seemed I could never get my fill of your body. And you were eager for me; you were a creature of lust. It was as though we were two animals, copulating interminably, driven by an insatiable erotic imperative.

  "All day we remained in that cave. Once there was a terrible tremor. It bounced Tyrann half awake; it dislodged stalactites from the back of the cave. We were afraid the mountain would collapse in on us -- so we made love again, and slept, and woke, and did it yet again.

  "At night I woke, disgusted with myself for using you like that. Yet even as I looked at you in your divine sleep, the passion rose in me again, and I knew that I had to get out of the sight of you if I were not to succumb again. So I retreated to the back of the cave.

  "I remembered the key and searched for it in the dark. My hand found it on the ledge. I picked it up and shook it -- and suddenly there was a illumination about me, and I experienced that dizzy feeling -- and there was the machine in front of me again.

  "Alarmed, I returned to where you slept -- but you were gone. You could not have left by the cave mouth, for Tyrann was there, and there were no fresh tracks in the powdering of snow near him. I was sure you had not left by the rear passage, for I had been there. Yet there was absolutely no evidence of your presence; even the lichen on the ledge where we had made love was undisturbed, as though no one had ever been there.

  "Forgive me: My first thought was intense regret that I had not awakened you for one more act of love before you disappeared. Then I cursed my sordid nature, for I would love you as strongly were I a eunuch. I lay down and tried to piece it out, and finally I slept again. In the morning I knew it had been a dream -- an extravagant, far-fetched, ridiculous, wonderful, masculine wish fulfillment. And so I put it out of my mind, ashamed of the carnal nature underlying my love for you, and I have maintained a proper perspective since."

  Aquilon sat leaning over her diagrams, stunned. The episode Cal had so vividly described had never happened, and it was shocking to hear him speak so graphically, so uncharacteristically. Yet it mirrored the secret passion she had longed to express if only there were some way around her inhibitions and his. And it touched upon something hideous, something she herself had buried until this moment.

  "Cal -- " she faltered but had to force herself to go on, lest he think it was revulsion for the sexual description that balked her. Yet she could not say what she had intended, and something almost irrelevant came out instead. "Cal, the key -- what happened to it?"

  "What happens to any dream artifact when the sleeper wakes?" he asked in return, as though glad for the change of subject.

  "No -- did you keep it, or put it back? Did you check for that machine again? It should have -- "

  "I must have replaced the key automatically," he said. "I never returned to the rear of the cave. It was part of my disgust, and I refused to humor the passions of the dream by checking."

  "Oh!" It was a faint exclamation of emotional pain. He had never even checked! But that pang freed her inhibition somehow, and now she was able to approach her own hidden concern. "Cal, you said I thought you had died in your dream. What did I say?"

  He did not answer, and she knew he was suffering from acute embarrassment, realizing how frankly he had spoken.

  "Please, Cal -- this is important to me."

  His voice came back from the machine. "Not very much. We did talk about it some, but it was not a pleasant subject, and there obviously had been some error."

  Aquilon concentrated. "Tyrann galloped after you, those awful double-edged teeth snapping inches short of your frail body, the feet coming down on you like twin avalanches. Snap! and your rag-doll form was flung high in the air, striped grisly red, reflected in the malignant eyes of the carnosaur. Tyrann's giant claw-toes crushed your body into the ground; the jaws closed, ripping off an arm. Your head lolled from a broken neck, and your dead eyes stared at me not with accusation but with understanding, and I screamed."

  Now Cal's head jerked out of the machine. "Yes!" he exclaimed. "That's what you said in essence. How could you know?" Then he did a double take. "Unless you actually were there in that cave -- "

  "No," she said quickly. "No, Cal, I wasn't there. I was stranded
on an earthquake-torn island with Orn's egg. I swear it."

  Still he looked at her. "You desired my death?"

  "No!" she cried. "I dreamed it -- a nightmare. I told that dream to the birds, Orn and Ornette, that third day, before the last quake. That I had seen you die."

  "You dreamed it -- the same time I dreamed my -- "

  "Cal," she said, another shock of realization running through her. "In some alternate -- could it have happened?"

  He came to her. "No. How could I have made love to you if I were already dead?"

  She caught his hand, shaken, desperate. "Cal, Cal -- your dream was so much better than mine. Make it come true!"

  He shook his head. " 'Quilon, I did not mean to hurt you. It was only that if there were an unaccounted day for me, I would be compelled to believe that somehow -- but the whole thing is insane. I do love you -- that much has never been in doubt -- but I slept around the clock in that cave, recovering from the ravages of that chase, and it is hardly surprising that exaggerated fancies emerged, an ugly expression of -- "

  "I don't care!" she cried. "Your dream was not ugly; mine was. Yours was more accurate than your belief. I am like that -- or could be, would be, if I thought I'd lost you. You like to think I'm cold and chaste, but I'm not. I never was! I seduced Veg -- it's no platonic triangle. I made a mistake, but this is no mistake. I want to love you every way I can!"

  He studied her uncertainly. "You want the dream -- and all that it implies?"

  "Your dream, not mine. Then you'll know me as I am. Yes, I want it -- now!"

  He shook his head, and she was suddenly, intensely embarrassed, afraid she had repulsed him by her eagerness. Did he only love the ethereal image, not the reality?"

  "I take you at your word," he said. Relief and surprise flooded her, made her weak. "After we complete this project."

  "Communication with the pattern-entities? But that may take days!"

  "Or weeks or years. There will be time."

  "But the dreams, the cave -- "

  "We are not in the cave."

  She saw he was not going to re-enact the dream-orgy of lovemaking he had described. Had she really thought he would? This was Cal, civilized, controlled. The chaste, celestial personification -- it was not of her but of him.

  Yet he had acceded. Why?

  Because he wanted to give her time to reconsider. The impulse of the moment was too likely to lead to regret, as with her and Veg, or with Cal and his dream-girl in the cave. He would not grasp what he was not assured of holding.

  It was better this way.

  He kissed her. Then she was sure of it.

  So it was not the dream. It was love, shifted from the suppressed to the expressed -- gentle, controlled, and quiet. It was more meaningful than any wild erotic dream could have been, this simple affirmation of commitment.

  Glowing inside, she completed her charts while he worked on the machine, as though there had been no interruption. It was as though they had walked through a desert and suddenly been admitted to an exotic garden filled with intriguing oddities and fragrances that could be explored at leisure together. Yes -- there would be time!

  "I worked out 'ideal' rules for one, two and three dimensions," she said brightly. "One dimension would be a line. It takes one dot to make another, and any dot with two neighbors or no neighbors vanishes. It doesn't work very well because one dot makes a figure that expands at the speed of light indefinitely, and you can't even start a figure with less than one. For two dimensions, same as now: Three dots make a fourth, and a dot is unstable with less than two or more than three neighbors. Since up to eight neighbors are possible, it has far more variety than the one-dimensional game."

  "Of course," Cal agreed.

  "For three dimensions there are twenty-seven potential interactions, or up to twenty-six neighbors. We should require seven neighbors to make a new dot, and the figure is stable with six or seven. Less than six or more than seven will eliminate a given dot. So a cube of eight dots would be stable, each dot with seven neighbors -- like the four-dot square in the two-dimensional version."

  Cal nodded. "I believe it will do. Let's try some forms on our cubic grid, applying those rules."

  I believe it will do. And Aquilon was as pleased with that implied praise for her work as with anything that had happened.

  Chapter 14 - FORMS

  Cub had become minimally communicative during the tour, and OX did not understand this. Had he been injured during the battle with Mach?

  It is the mating urge, Ornet explained, delving again into his memory-experience of mams. Sight or smell of the mature female stimulates the male to interact with her.

  Why? OX inquired, finding the concept obscure.

  It is the way they reproduce their kind. My kind performs similarly; Dec's has a separate mechanism. The machines are distinct from us all.

  Why should any kind of being require reproduction?

  We originate, we age, we die, Ornet squawked. It is the way of physical species. If we do not reproduce ourselves, there will be nothing.

  Still OX could not grasp it. I do not reproduce myself. I exist as long as my elements are charged and numerous.

  You surely do reproduce yourself, Ornet squawked. I have not seen enough of your type to fathom the mechanism, but my memory indicates that it must be -- for all entities. In some way you were conceived by your forebears, and in some way you will transmit your heritage to your successors. Perhaps if you encountered a female of your species --

  There are no pattern-females, OX replied. I read that in my circuits. I have the potential to become anything that any pattern can be.

  Ornet drooped his tail feathers. He never engaged in speculation; the past was his primary interest.

  OX sent a shoot to question Dec. Why should spots die or reproduce themselves? it flashed.

  The two are synonymous, Dec replied. To die is to reproduce.

  This did not satisfy OX, either. A pattern needed neither to die nor to reproduce. Why should a spot?

  Dec was emitting a complex array of signals. OX adjusted his circuitry to pick up the full spectrum. Dec was capable of far greater communication than either of the others, for he used light, the fastest of radiations. OX could perceive it by the effect of his elements: minute but definite. He had long since intensified his perceptions of such variations so that observations that had once been beyond his means were now routine. Now he activated a really intricate perception network, more comprehensive and sensitive and responsive than ever before.

  Then Dec's whole mind was coming across on the transmission, as clearly as if it were a barrage of pattern-radiation shoots:

  [DEATH] [SPORES] [MERGING] [REPRODUCTION]

  * * * * [cessation] [carriers of] [two sources] [growth of cells]

  [animation] [genetic code] [crossover] *

  * * [chain of habitats]

  [philosophical] [female male]

  [ramifications]

  OX assimilated it and fed back his questions on the aspects of the concept. The dialogue was complex, with loops of subdefinitions and commentary opening out from the corners of the major topics, with both obvious and subtle feedbacks and interactions between concepts. It required maintenance of a circuit larger than the rest of his volume. OX stayed with it, devoting whatever attention was necessary. He refined his circuits, added to them, revised...

  And found himself within the mind of Dec.

  Now he felt the force of gravity, a vital component of Dec's motion; the pressure of atmosphere, another essential; the impact of physical light on his eye. He felt the musculature of the single foot, opposing the constant pull and unbalance.

  These things had been mere concepts to him before, described but not really understood. It was one thing to know that a physical body had weight that held it to the ground; it was quite another to experience that ubiquitous force on every cell of the body. A factor that was of no importance to OX in his natural state was a matter of life and dea
th to this physical being; a fall could actually terminate Dec's existence! Thus, gravity equated with survival. Yet gravity was only one of an entire complex of physical forces. No wonder the spots were different in their reactions from OX; their survival depended on it!

  And he understood the synonymity of death and reproduction, how the primed body dissolved into its component cells that became floating spores that met and merged with the spores of another deceased fungus entity and then grew into new entities. Without death there was no replication, and without replication there would be no more entities of this type. Yet this process was necessary to the evolution of the species, and without evolution it would also pass. Death equated with survival -- death of the individual, survival of the species -- because the demands of the physical environment were always shifting. OX now understood the essential nature of these things, and the lightness of them. Multiple physical imperatives set fantastic demands, requiring complex devices of survival unknown to pattern-entities.