Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  "We can't know yet. Did she say anything?"

  "Only that I could survive but not the egg. She wanted to take it to some Eden..."

  "She must have known your future. Perhaps she was from a slightly more advanced framework. In a year she could have had her baby and lost her egg, so she knew from experience -- "

  "No -- it was her baby she lost." Aquilon shook her head, unsettled. "She said I would keep mine. But I'm not pregnant!"

  "There are other alternates," he pointed out. "An infinite number of Aquilons will have had babies, and an infinite number more will be due. She could have mistaken you. She meant well."

  "And I fought her," Aquilon said. "I shouldn't have done that..."

  "How could you know? And you had a right to retain your egg no matter what she knew. You fought for it before to save it from dinosaurs."

  "But now neither of us have it. She was crying as she left..."

  "She wanted to save the egg -- and instead destroyed it," Cal said. "She felt as you would feel."

  Aquilon looked at him, her tear-streaked face still sandy -- and lovely. "Then she is desolate. I should have given it to her."

  "No. Each world must look out for its own. We fought to prevent Earth from despoiling Paleo; we must also fight to prevent other alternates from despoiling us. But we must understand that they are very much like us..."

  "Omnivores!" she said bitterly.

  "But there is a positive side. Orn's egg has been lost in this alternate -- but there must be many alternates where it was saved. In some you kept it; in others the other Aquilon took it. But the chick isn't dead, there."

  "Ornet," she said. "Offspring of Orn and Ornette..."

  He smiled. She was coming out of it. "By any other name... Now we must find out what happened to Veg."

  Her eyes followed the tracks across the sand. "Do you think he -- ?"

  "I sent the mantas after him. Somehow they know; they would not have gone if he were dead."

  "Yes, of course," she murmured.

  They cleaned up the supplies somewhat, making packs for each person, just in case. A blaster and a rifle were missing, and one of the long crowbars, suggesting that Veg had taken them. "But we already know that we face a strange situation," Cal warned her. "Conventional weapons may be useless."

  "Machine!" she said suddenly.

  Cal looked up inquiringly. "We have no machines here."

  "My double -- she said something about machines, here in the desert. 'Awful machines.' A danger -- "

  Cal looked once more at the tread-tracks. "A machine," he murmured thoughtfully. "Following Veg..."

  "Oh, let's hurry!" she cried. "And take weapons!"

  They started out warily, following Veg's tracks and those of the mystery vehicle. Cal was ill at ease; if a human being could appear from another alternate, so could heavy equipment. Suppose some kind of tank had been dispatched to hunt down the visitors to this world? They just might have walked into an interalternate war...

  Aquilon stopped abruptly, rubbing her eyes. "Cal!" she whispered.

  Cal looked. At first he saw nothing; then he became aware of a kind of sparkle in the air ahead. Faint lights were blinking on and off, changing their fairy patterns constantly.

  "A firefly swarm?" Aquilon asked. "Let me paint it." She was never without her brush and pad, and now, without the egg to hold, she could paint again.

  She hesitated. He knew why: Her sudden freedom made her feel guilty. How much better to have given the egg to her double! The woman would have taken care of it every bit as well as Aquilon herself because she was Aquilon -- wiser for her bitter experience. Or at least, so it would seem -- to this Aquilon at this moment. He had to divert her thoughts.

  "Fireflies? With no plants to feed the insects?" Cal asked, posing what he knew to be a fallacious question. "We have seen no indigenous life here."

  "There has to be life," she replied as she quickly sketched. "Otherwise there would be no breathable atmosphere. Plants give off oxygen."

  "Yes, of course..." he agreed, watching the swarm. "Still, there is something odd here."

  The sparkle-pattern intensified. Now it was like a small galaxy of twinkling stars, the individual lights changing so rapidly that the eye could not fix on them. But Aquilon's trained perception was catching the artistry of it. Color flowed from her automatic brush, brightening the picture. This was the marvelous, creative person he had known, expressing herself through her art.

  The flashes were not random; they moved in ripples, like the marquee of an old cinemahouse. These ripples twined and flexed like living things. But not like chains of fireflies.

  "Beautiful," Aquilon breathed. Yes, now her own beauty illumined her; she was what she perceived.

  Suddenly the swarm moved toward them. The lights became bright and sharp. The outline expanded enormously.

  "Fascinating," Cal said, seeing three-dimensional patterns within the cloud, geometric ratios building and rebuilding in dazzling array. This was no random collection of blinkers...

  Aquilon grabbed his arm. "It sees us!" she cried in abrupt alarm. "Run!"

  It was already too late. The glowing swarm was upon them.

  Chapter 2 - OX

  Survive!

  OX assimilated the directive, knowing nothing but the need. How, why, mode, were absent; there was no rationale. Only the imperative. It was inherent in his being; it made him what he was. It was what he was: the need to survive.

  He turned his attention to the external.

  Disorientation. Distress. Nonsurvival.

  OX retracted, halving his volume. What had happened?

  Survival dictated that he explore despite the pain of the external. OX realized that through DISTRESS related to NONSURVIVAL, certain forms of distress might be necessary to survival. Judgment was required. He modified his capabilities to accommodate this concept and thereby became more intelligent.

  Experiment and intelligence provided a working rationale: He had extended himself too precipitously and thereby thrown his basic organization out of balance.

  The lesson: Expansion had to be organized. Four dimensions became far more complex than three, requiring a different type of organization.

  OX extended a fleeting outer feedback shell to explore the limits of his locale. It was not large; he had room to move about but had to contain himself somewhat.

  Discomfort. Minor distress but growing. OX hovered in place, but the discomfort increased. He moved, and it abated. Why?

  The base on which he rested, the network of points, was fading. He was his environment; he occupied many small elements, drawing energy from them, making a sentient pattern of them. This energy was limited; he had to move off and allow it to regenerate periodically. Merely sitting in one spot would exhaust that set of elements: nonsurvival.

  The larger OX expanded, the more points he encompassed and the more energy he consumed. By contracting within optimum volume he conserved survival resources. But he could not become too small, for that limited his abilities and led to dysfunction.

  OX stabilized. But his minimum functional size was still too large for the territory to sustain indefinitely. He could exist at maximum size briefly or at minimum size longer -- but the end was nonsurvival, either way.

  Survive! He had to keep searching.

  He searched. Unsuccess wasted resources and led to discomfort. Yet even in his distress, there was a special irritant. Certain circuits were not functioning properly. He investigated. All was in order.

  He returned to the larger problem of survival -- and the interference resumed persistently.

  OX concentrated on the annoyance. Still there was no perceivable dysfunction. It did not manifest when he searched for it, only when he was otherwise occupied.

  He set up a spotter circuit, oriented on the troublesome section. He had not known how to do this before the need arose, but this was the way of survival: the necessary, as necessary.

  OX returned to his larger quest -- a
nd the irritation manifested. This time the spotter was on it. He concentrated, pouncing, as it were, on what he had trapped.

  Nothing.

  Paradox. The spotter oriented on any malfunction; it was a modified feedback, simple and certain. Yet there was a malfunction -- and the spotter had failed.

  OX suffered disorientation. Paradox was nonsurvival. It was also annoying as hell.

  He disciplined himself, simplifying his circuits. No paradox. If the spotter hadn't caught it, there was no malfunction. But there was something. What?

  OX concentrated. He refined his perceptions. Gradually he fathomed it. It was not his malfunction but an interruption from an external source. Thus the spotter had had no purchase.

  Something was obscuring some of his elements. Not obliterating them but damping them down so that he was aware of the loss of energy -- peripherally. When he investigated, he shifted off those particular elements, and the effect abated. He could only perceive it through that damping, while his circuits were functioning. Ghostly, it avoided his direct attention, for it was an effect, not a thing.

  Was it an ailment of the elements themselves? If so, his survival would be more limited than originally projected -- and he was already in a nonsurvival situation.

  OX cast a net of spotters to determine the precise configuration of the damping. Soon he had it: There were actually three centers set close together. A stable, persistent blight. No immediate threat to survival.

  Then one of the blight spots moved.

  OX fibrillated. Distress! How could a blight move, retaining form? Stable or recurring form with movement was an attribute of sentience, of pattern. Blight was the lack of pattern.

  Modification. Perhaps blight could slide somewhat, forced over by some unknown compulsion. Nonsentient. All blight spots would suffer the same effect.

  Another spot moved -- the opposite way. Then both moved together -- and apart.

  Disorientation.

  Chapter 3 - TAMME

  Tamme emerged from the aperture, alert and wary. She had not told the three explorers that she was coming along and did not expect them to be pleased. But after the disaster on the dinosaur world, Paleo, the agents were taking few chances. These people were not to be trusted; left alone, they were too apt to concoct some other way to betray the interests of Earth.

  The camp was deserted. Tamme saw at a glance that weapons and food had been removed: more than would normally have been used in the three hours since the first person had been sent through. They were up to something already!

  But it was strange. Too many footprints led away. Veg, Cal, Aquilon -- and a barefoot person? Plus something on a caterpillar tread. And the two mantas.

  Caterpillar? Hardly standard equipment. Where had they gotten it?

  Answer: There was nowhere they could have gotten it. Tamme herself had put through all the supplies in advance, checking and rechecking a detailed roster. This was the first human penetration to this new world. Sensors had reported breathable air, plant life, amphibious animals, fish -- all far removed from this desert where the aperture actually debouched but certainly part of this alternate. Also advanced machines. That was what made immediate exploration imperative.

  Machines did not evolve on their own. Something had to build them. Something more advanced than the machines themselves. Ergo, there was on this world something more than the sensors had indicated. Either an advanced human culture -- or an alien one. Either way, a potential threat to Earth.

  But windows to new worlds were hard to come by. The first such breakthrough had come only a few months ago, and Mother Earth naturally had not wanted to risk valuable personnel by sending them through a oneway aperture. So volunteers had been used -- three space explorers who had gotten in trouble with the authorities and had therefore been amenable to persuasion. Expendables.

  An unusual trio, actually. Vachel Smith: a huge vegetarian nicknamed Veg. Deborah Hunt, called Aquilon: named after the cold north wind because, it seemed, she seldom smiled. And Calvin Potter, a small, physically weak man with a fascinatingly complex mind. The three had been lost on a planet called Nacre -- theoretically it glowed in space like a pearl because of its perpetual cloud cover -- and had befriended the dominant life-form there: an animate fungus with extraordinary talents. The manta.

  It had been a mistake to loose this group on the world beyond the aperture, and soon the authorities had recognized that. But by that time the trio, instead of perishing as expected, had penetrated to the nearest continent and gotten involved with the local fauna -- they had a talent for that! -- which turned out to be reptilian. In fact, dinosaurian. Extraction had been awkward.

  Three agents of the TA series had accomplished it, however: Taner (now deceased), Taler, and Tamme herself. But when they made ready to return to Earth with the prisoners, another complication had developed. Their portable return-aperture generator had opened not on Earth but on a third world.

  They had known there was risk involved -- of exactly this kind. The apertures were experimental and erratic. Though Paleo was the only alternate to be reached so far from Earth, despite thousands of trials, one trial on Paleo had produced this unexpected and awkward payoff. Perhaps it was a better initiation point.

  The original Earth/Paleo aperture remained. It had been broadened so that massive supplies could be transferred, and the three agents had built their own prefabricated ship with which to pursue the fugitives. A fourth agent had remained to guard the original aperture, which happened to be under the ocean near a Pacific islet a thousand miles from the western coast of Paleocene America.

  It had seemed easier to transfer back directly from this spot -- on the continent -- rather than make a tedious trip back with the prisoners. Location seemed to make little difference to the apertures; they could start at any point and terminate anywhere -- usually in the vacuum of interplanetary space. They had radioed Taol for approval, and he had contacted the Earth authorities for approval. If the supplementary aperture were successful, it would greatly facilitate the exploitation of Paleo.

  Then, with the surprise development, new orders: check it out with sensors and explore it personally if necessary -- but HOLD THAT CONNECTION! There was no certainty they could ever locate that world again, given the freakish nature of apertures, so it had to be held open now. Earth, enormously overpopulated, its natural resources approaching exhaustion, needed a viable alternative to expensive commerce by space travel. This could be it. More personnel would be funneled through the main aperture in due course; meanwhile, use their present resources in case the connection became tenuous.

  Thus, reprieve for the prisoners. They were free -- to engage in another dangerous exploration. They had not, however, been told about the machines. This time an agent would accompany them. Just to keep them out of mischief.

  Agents had been developed to handle this sort of emergency. An agent was not a person; he was an android on a human chassis, molded to precise specifications. Tamme had no past beyond her briefing for this mission; all she knew was the material in the common pool of information shared by every agent of the TA type. And that overlapped considerably with the pool of SU before her series and TE after it. But it was a good pool, and all agents were superhuman both physically and mentally. She could handle this trio of humans.

  She paused in her reflection. Better qualify that. She could handle them physically because her strength, reflexes, and training were considerably superior to theirs. And emotionally, because though she had feelings, they were fully disciplined. But the woman Aquilon had her points, and the man Calvin had a freakish mind that had already demonstrated its ability to fence successfully with the mind and perception of an agent. Random variation in the "normal" population had produced an abnormal intelligence. Too bad the authorities hadn't recognized it in time.

  Tamme grimaced. The truth, known to every agent but never voiced, was that the authorities were not overly smart. If ever a class of agents were programmed to tackle the p
roblems of Earth directly, they would begin by putting the incompetents out of power. What a waste, to serve a stupid master!

  Meanwhile, the immediate: Was Cal behind this odd disappearance of the trio? Had he anticipated her presence or that of Taler -- she had matched Taler, scissors/paper/rock, for the honor and lost -- and arranged some kind of trap? Possible but improbable; there had been no hint of that in his mind before he was transferred. He could have done such a thing, but probably hadn't.

  All of which meant that the obvious surmise was the most likely one. She had forced herself to run through the alternatives first as a matter of caution. The three explorers must already have encountered one of the advanced machines of this world, and it had taken them -- somewhere.