Of Man And Manta - Ox Part 40

"Yeah. I carried you up and projected us here, and the folks understood. They were great! But why didn't Tamme Two come down and finish you off for sure?"

"She should have. I think, at the end, it must have bothered her to kill herself -- even her alternate self. I know I had little stomach for it. So she pulled her shot, just a little, and left it to nature. Perhaps she is further along the way to becoming normal -- like me -- than we supposed. The odds were still against my survival."

"I guess they were! If the fog people hadn't taken us in and brought their doctor -- you should have seen him putting in st.i.tches with that nose, no human hand could match it -- well, I wouldn't have wished it on you, but I'm glad I got to meet Bunny."

"Who?"

He didn't answer. Her perceptions were back to norm; she could read the pa.s.sing trauma that shook him, the realization that Bunny -- and all that she implied -- had been suppressed.

"We can't stay here any longer," Tamme said.

"Right," he said heavily. "You have a mission. Got to get back to Earth and report."

She read the resignation in him. He knew he was giving her up -- yet his conscience forced it. But there was one thing he didn't know.

"I do remember -- some," she said.

"Don't play with me!" he snapped. "I don't want an act!"

"You wanted the moon."

"I knew I couldn't have it."

"You preserved my life. This will not be forgotten."

"Why not?" he muttered. "The computer will erase it, anyway."

They returned to the fog house.

She activated the projector, and they were at the bazaar.

Crowds milled everywhere, surging past the multi-leveled display stalls. Human, near-human, far-human, and alien mixed without concern, elbows jostling tentacles, shoes treading the marks of pincer-feet. Eyeb.a.l.l.s stared at antennae; mouths conversed with ventricles. Frog-eyed extraterrestrials bargained for humanoid dolls, while women bought centaur tails for brooms. Machines of different species mixed with the living creatures, and walking plants inspected exotic fertilizers: horse manure, bat guano, processed sewer sludge.

"Hey -- there's a manta!" Veg cried, waving.

But it was an alien manta, subtly different in proportion and reaction, and it ignored him.

They walked among the rest, looking for the projector. Then Tamme's eye caught that of a man: a terrestrial agent of a series closely akin to hers.

He came over immediately. "Oo gest stapped in? Mutings ot wavorium." He indicated the direction and moved on.

Veg stared after him. "Wasn't that Taler?"

"Possibly. SU, TA, or TE series, certainly -- but not from our frame."

"I guess not," he agreed, shaking his head. "Sounded like you and that machine-hive chitchat. Hey -- this is a good place to leave that lentil!"

"True," she agreed. She took it out and flipped it into a bag of dragonfly-crabs, one of which immediately swallowed it.

"The gourmet who eats that crab will get a surprise!" Veg said, chuckling. Then he turned serious. "What do we do now? There may be thousands of agents here. We can't fight them all!"

"I have lost my taste for fighting."

He glanced at her. "Then you're not all the way better yet. Still, we have to do something."

"We go to the wavorium."

"I feel dizzy," he muttered.

The wavorium was a monstrous frozen fountain whose falling waters, though fixed in one place, were neither cold nor rigid. Tamme parted them like curtains and stepped into a turbulent ocean whose waves had the texture of jellied plastic. The surface gave slightly beneath their weight but sprang back resiliently behind them.

Perched on the central whitecaps were a number of Tammes, Vegs, Talers, Aquilons, and Cals. From the outside, more were entering, just as she and Veg were.

"Very wall, les coll it tu urder," a Taler said. "Em eh c.u.mprohonsible?"

"Cloos nuif," another Taler responded. There was a general murmur of agreement.

"Need a translation?" Tamme asked Veg. "He called the meeting to order and asked if he were comprehensible. The other said -- "

"I heard," Veg growled. "I can make it out, close enough."

"That's what the other said." She concentrated on the speaker, once more adapting her auditory reflexes so that the speech became normal to her.

"We all know why we're here," the chairman-Taler said. "This happens to be a central crossover point for a number of alternate loops. Now we can't go wandering aimlessly forever; we have to come to some sort of decision. It is pointless to quarrel among ourselves -- we're all so nearly equal that chance would be the deciding factor. We need to unify, or at least agree on a common, noncompet.i.tive policy that will serve the best interests of the majority. Discussion?"

"Suppose we pool our resources?" a Tamme said. "If we represent different alternatives, we may be able to a.s.semble enough information on our real enemies to be of benefit."

"Not likely," Taler said. "We are so similar we had to have diverged from a common source at or about the time the three agents made captive the three normals on Paleo. Several of us have been comparing notes, and our experience seems to be identical prior to that point. After that, we evidently divide into three major channels: In each case the three normals are accompanied to the desert frame by one agent. Taler, Taner, or Tamme. Each of these subdivides into three channels, as that agent enters the alternate clover-pattern with one normal. Nine variations in all. However -- "

"That is a.s.suming reality is diverging," a Cal pointed out. "I suspect the framework is considerably more complex. All the alternates appear to exist through all time, separated from each other by a fraction of a second. Thus we are not precisely parallel with each other, and our seeming unity of earlier experience is illusory."

Taler paused. "You disconcert me," he said, and there was a general chuckle. "Let's call our unified origin a fictional reference point of convenience, much as the hexaflexagon is an imperfect but useful a.n.a.logy and guide. Obviously, our best course is to return each to his own alternate -- if we can find it. Can we agree on the nature of the report we should make to our home-worlds?"

"Stay out of alternity!" Veg bawled, startling Tamme, who had not been paying attention to her own Veg amidst this a.s.semblage of doubles.

There was a smattering of applause, especially from the normals. The Cal who had clarified the framework concept nodded at Veg as though they were old friends, and several Aquilons smiled warmly.

"I believe that sums up the sentiment of this group," Taler remarked with a smile of his own. He seemed more relaxed and human than he should be, as though he had diverged too far from his original conditioning. "Now how can we be certain that the right couples return to their worlds? Or does it make a difference?"

"We'll have to get off at the same frame we got on," an Aquilon said. "We have twelve couples here -- one from each starting point. It should match."

Taler shook his head. "Right there, it doesn't match. Twelve couples, nine combinations: Three are duplicates. The extras are all male-female, so we have seven male-female pairs, four male-male, and one female-female. Now -- "

The Tamme/Aquilon couple stood together. "Are you implying -- ?"

"By no means, ladies," Taler said quickly. "I merely point out that there seems to be a bias here in favor of male-female pairings -- yet chance would have had only four such couples out of every nine. This suggests that our gathering has been selected from a larger pool. There must be hundreds of couples, traveling in both directions. We represent a selected cross-section."