Of Man And Manta - Ox Part 14

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

"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 a.n.a.lyze 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 s.e.x 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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. s.e.x 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 ch.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+fts 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 acc.u.mulated 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 diminis.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tuted 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-ent.i.ty 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 ident.i.ty 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.