Meanwhile, she hoped Veg had sense enough to keep his mouth shut. A few words from him now could tip off the machine.
"Now -- gestons," she said.
"Esk."
"Furst geston: wheer or we?"
"Machina Prime, sender of ralofance."
Mentally she translated: Machine Prime, center of relevance. No modesty about this alternate!
"Wat wont with os?" Already the artificial speech pattern was becoming set so that she could think in it and use it automatically. So while Veg's brow furrowed in confusion, to her it was like an ordinary conversation: What do you want with us?
"Merely to identify you and to establish amicable relations between our frames."
Tamme was glad Veg could not follow the machine's dialect readily, for he would have laughed aloud. Amicable relations between the home-alternate of the killer machines and Earth? Unlikely!
Fortunately, she was an expert liar. "This is what we want, too. We shall be happy to cooperate."
"Excellent. We shall send an emissary to your frame and establish an enclave there."
Which enclave would be blasted out of existence -- if it came anywhere close to true-Earth. But it wouldn't. "We shall make a favorable report on our return," she said. "But at present we must continue on through our pattern of frames."
"By all means. We are conversant with your pattern. In fact, we have entertained many of your life-forms before. But we must advise you: There is danger."
Friendly advice from the machine? Beware I "Please explain."
"Your form of sentience is protoplasmic; ours mechanical. Yet we have many similarities, for we both require physical housings and must consume matter in order to produce functioning energy. The enemy is not physical, consumes no matter, and is inimical to rational existence. No physical being is secure on any frame, for the enemy is far more skilled in frame-shifting than either machine or life. But your pattern takes you through an enemy home-frame, and there the danger is magnified."
Oho! So the machines sought liaison against a common antagonist. This just might be worthwhile. "We do not understand the nature of this enemy.
"Its nature is not comprehensible by material beings. It resembles a cloud of energy-points, sustained on a framework of nodes."
The sparkle-pattern! This was an insight indeed! "We have encountered such entities but did not appreciate what they were. They moved us from one frame to another involuntarily. From that frame we escaped and are now attempting to find our way home."
"They do this to our units, also. We are able to resist to a certain extent, but they are sronger than we in this respect."
"Stronger than we, too," Tamme said. "We are very clumsy about frame travel." All too true -- which was one of the things that rang false about this proposition. If the machines had true alternate-travel, as this one implied, they had little need of human liaison. If they didn't, there was not much help Tamme's world could offer.
"Two frames are stronger than one."
"We agree. What next?"
"Will your world accede to a contract?"
Contract? What was this? Now she wished she could interpret the physical mannerisms of the computer the way she did with men! "That depends on its content."
"Agreement to interact for mutual benefit. Establishment of interaction enclaves. Transfer of beneficial resources."
Now she was catching on. "I believe my world would be interested. But once our government has ratified the contract -- "
"Government?"
"That select group of individuals that formulate the mechanisms and restrictions of our society so that there will not be chaos."
"Individuals?"
Oh-oh. "Your machines are not separate entities?"
"They are separate physically but part of the larger entity. Separated from the society, our units become wild, subsapient, without proper control. Only in unity is there civilization. This is why we are unable to travel far between frames; our units become separated from the hive and degenerate into free-willed agents."
"That is a difference between us. We are distinct sub-entities; we retain our sentience and civilization when isolated from our hive." But privately she wondered: did human beings really prosper in isolation. Agents certainly did not! For normals it might take a generation, but individuals cut off from their societies did degenerate. Apparently the effect was more intense with the machines. That would explain why this hive-computer was rational, while the machine Veg had met was vicious. Without its civilized control, it had reverted to primitive savagery.
"That is now apparent. It explains what had been a mystery about your kind -- though you behave more rationally than your predecessors."
So some had tried to fight "Perhaps you have made it easier for us to be rational by providing an avenue for communication. It would also help if you made available those substances we require for our energy conversions -- organic materials, water, clean air."
"This we shall do on your advice."
Very accommodating; she almost wished she could afford to trust the machine. Aspects of its society were fascinating. "How should we reach you again? Our meeting here is random; we would not be able to locate your frame again." Maybe she could turn the tables, identifying the machine-alternate without giving away Earth.
"We shall provide you with a frame-homer. This is a nonsentient unit that will broadcast a signal across the framework. We shall be able to locate it by that signal, once it is activated."
"Excellent. We shall activate it when the contract is ready."
A slot opened below the knobs. Inside a little drawer was a lentil-sized button. "No need. This will activate itself when the occasion is proper."
So they weren't gambling overmuch on the good faith of the other party, either! Tamme took it and filed it away in a pocket. "Good. Now we must proceed."
"We shall provide you with your material needs if you will explain them."
She hesitated, then decided to gamble. Why should the machine poison them when it already had them in its power? More likely it would do them every possible little service in the hope of getting them and its unit safely to Earth, thus making firm contact. So she described the type of vitamins, proteins, and minerals that life required.
After some experimentation, the machine produced edible, if unappetizing, food synthesized from its resources. Tamme and Veg were hungry, so they ate and enjoyed. She kept Veg silent while she gave advice for future cuisine. Though she did not regard any human beings that might follow as her friends, the common enemies were a greater threat; let the humans settle their differences in private. Also, let some other Earth be taken over if that was the way of it.
"You understand," she said at the conclusion of the meal, "we can not guarantee when we will reach our home-world, or if we will. Alternity is complex."
"We understand. We shall conduct you to your projector."
"Thank you."
A truck appeared. The bars lifted. Tamme gestured Veg inside, at the same time touching her finger to her lips. She did not want him blabbing anything while they remained within the hearing of any machine, which she now knew to be no more than a unit of the hive.
They rode out of the giant complex, and she felt a very human relief. Shortly they were deposited at a platform. Set on a pedestal was a projector.
Tamme wasted no time. She activated it. And they --
-- were standing in mist again.
"Okay -- now can I talk?" Veg demanded.
"Should be safe," she said. She had considered whether the lentil-signal could overhear them but decided not. If it were sentient, it would lose its orientation away from the hive-frame, and if it were not, it would probably be inactive until activated. Why should Machine Prime care about their dialogue when their world of Earth was so near its grasp? Calculated risk; she was not ready to throw it away yet but did not want to keep Veg silent forever.
She forged through the mist toward the next projector.
&
nbsp; Veg followed her with difficulty. He had to crawl on hands and knees, taking deep breaths from air pockets near the ground. "That pidgin English you were jabbering -- sounded as though you made some kind of deal -- "
"The machine culture wants permission to exploit Earth," she said. "Apparently they have very limited alternate-transfer capacity, hardly ahead of ours, and unless the whole hive goes, the machines become wild. So they want to place an identifying beacon on our alternate -- they call it a 'frame' -- so that they can zero in with a full self-sustaining enclave. That means a hive-brain. They say they need a contract between alternates, but I don't believe that. Who would enforce such a document?"
"Yeah, who?" he echoed.
She found the projector and activated it.
They stood within the closing walls.
"I don't think it's smart, showing them where Earth is," Veg said.
"Don't worry. If there's one thing I'm not going to do, it's take their button to Earth. I'll find a good place for it -- somewhere else in alternity."
"Yeah." He was right behind her as she moved toward the next projector, avoiding capture by the walls. "But what was this about a common enemy?"
"The sparkle-cloud. They can't handle it, either. It is the ultimate alternity traveler. But the fact that we have a mutual enemy does not necessarily make us allies. I played along with the hive-brain only to get us out of there. Which it probably knew."
"Then why did it -- ?"
"That beacon-button is probably indestructible short of atomic fusion. We're traveling through alternate frames. It's bound to key the machine boss in somewhere even if we throw it away -- and it could pay off big if we actually get it to an exploitable world."
"Like Paleo?" They skirted the burned-out decoy projector, mute evidence that this was the same frame they had visited before.
"Like our Earth. From what I observed, those machines with their physical power and hive-unity could probably devastate Earth. Our population would become an organic source of nutrition, and our terrain would represent expansion room for their excess units."
Veg scratched his head. "Are we sure they would do that? Maybe they really are trying to be -- "
"It is what we would do to them."
He nodded. "I guess so. The old omnivore syndrome. Do unto others before they do it unto you. You know you agents wanted to save the alternates for Earth to exploit. Now that we're running into tough civilizations, or whatever -- "
"Right. It may be better to close off the alternate frontier entirely. I shall make a complete report on my return. It may be that your dinosaur worlds will be saved after all."
"That's great!" he exclaimed, giving her arm a squeeze with his big hand. He was so strong that she felt discomfort, though no ordinary man could harm her. "Even though it's too late for the real Paleo."
"There will be countless alternate Paleos -- and it is not certain that we eliminated all the dinosaurs from that one. It was the manta spores we were after, you know."
He was silent. She knew the memory of the destruction of the Cretaceous enclave of Paleo still tormented him, and she had been one of the agents responsible.
They reached the projector. This one was charged, though it would not have been had they not spent that time interviewing the hive-computer. Sooner or later they would return to a frame too quickly and be unable to project out despite pressing need to do so. She would have to prepare for that, if possible. What would be the best way to survive for two hours under pressure? Educate Veg?
Meanwhile, they both needed some rest, and they could not be assured of getting it on an untried world. Veg had slept in the hive, but he was still tired, and she was not in top form. She activated the projector.
They stood in the forest again, as she had anticipated. "I believe this location is secure," she said. "We'll rest for six hours before continuing."
"Good enough!" Veg agreed. But he hesitated.
"You will not be able to relax here while I'm in sight," she told him. "Short of obliging you or knocking you out -- "
"Uh-uh! I'll take a snooze down beside the other projector. That way we can guard both spots."
She nodded acquiescence. His discipline in the face of his powerful passion for her body was remarkable, if somewhat pointless. He had indulged himself with the woman Aquilon and had been unsatisfied, so now he was doubly careful. He wanted more than the physical and was content to gamble against the odds in the hope of achieving it. Unfortunately for him, the odds were long -- perhaps a thousand to one, against. She was human, at the root, so theoretically could fall in love. But agents were thoroughly conditioned against irrelevant emotion, and they had virtually no subconscious with its attendant ghosts and passions.
It would be better for him to accept the reality and indulge the passing urge he felt for her, knowing that there was no deeper commitment. That would abate his tension and make this alternate tour easier. Yet she had learned just enough respect for him to let him do it his own way. His human capriciousness and curiosity had already opened several profitable avenues, such as the hexaflexagon parallel, and might do it again. They were a good team: disciplined agent, variable normal.
If his indecision became a threat to her mission, she would have to act to abate it. That could mean seducing him directly or stranding him on some safe alternate. Neither action would leave him satisfied, and that was unfortunate.
Perhaps she would have to deceive him, pretending to love him. She could do it if she really tried. But she did not care to. "Maybe I'm getting too choosy, like him," she muttered. "The real thing, or nothing..."
Now she needed rest. She slept.
They stepped from the forest into a forest. Flexible green plants stood on a gently sloping bank of black dirt. As trees they were small, but as vegetables, large. In either case, strange.
"No problem here," Veg said cheerfully. "Just vegetables, like me."
"Trouble enough," Tamme murmured.
"I know. You wish I'd lay you or forget you. Or both. And I guess it makes sense your way. But I don't have that kind of sense."
Good. He was coming to terms with the situation. "These plants are strange."
He walked to the nearest and squatted beside it. "I've seen strange plants before. They all -- oh-oh!"
She had seen it, too. "It moved."
"It's got thick leaves and tentacles. And what look like muscles."
Tamme surveyed the assemblage. "We had better find the projector rapidly. The plants are uprooting themselves."
They were. All about the two intruders, the plants were writhing and drawing their stems from the earth.
"I'm with you!" Veg cried. "Next thing, they'll be playing violins... over our bones."
Together they ran up the slope, casting about for the projector. This brought them out of the region where the plants were walking and into one where the foliage had not yet been alerted. But the new plants reacted to the alien presence the same way.
"They can't move rapidly, but there are many of them," Tamme said. "You'd better arm yourself with a stick or club if you can find it."
"Yeah." Veg ran over to a stem lying on the ground. He put his hands on it. "Yow!"
It was no dead stalk but a living root. The thing twisted like a snake in his hands, throwing him off.
Meanwhile, the other plants were accelerating. Now they were converging with creditable alacrity, their thick, round roots curling over the ground, digging in for holds.
"Here's a weapon," Tamme said, drawing a yard-long metal rod from her clothing.
Veg paused to stare. "Where'd you hide that? I've worn that outfit of yours! No club in it."
"It telescopes," she explained. "Be careful -- it's also a sword. It weighs only ounces, but it has a good point and edge. Don't cut yourself."
"Edge? Where?" He looked at the blunt-seeming side.
"There's an invisibly thin wire along the leading face, here. It will cut almost anything with almost no pressure. Trust me
; don't rub your thumb on it."
Veg took the blade and held it awkwardly in front of him. He had obviously never used such a weapon before, but she had no time to train him now. "Just do what comes naturally. Stab and hack. You'll get the feel of it."
He stepped out and chopped at a branch of the nearest plant. The sword sliced through easily, the broad part wedging open the cut made by the wire. "Hey -- it works!"
Tamme let him hold off the plants while she searched for the projector. She hoped there was one; they always ran the risk of a dead end, a frame in which the original projector had been destroyed or was inaccessible.
Of Man and Manta Omnibus Page 64
