Veg straightened up, banging his head against the curving roof wall. Suddenly a complex new possibility had opened to his imagination -- but it was so fantastic he hardly trusted it. He didn't want to embarrass himself by mentioning it to Tamme. But he could not ignore it. He would have to check it out himself.
He wriggled out of the igloo. The wind struck him afresh, chilling him again, but he ducked his head, hunched his shoulders, and proceeded. This would not take long.
He counted paces as he slogged through the snow. At a distance of twenty steps -- roughly fifty feet since he could not take a full stride in two-foot-deep snow -- he halted. This was a tissue of guesswork, anyway, and here in the storm it seemed far-fetched indeed.
He tramped in a circle, backward into the wind where he had to, eyes alert despite being screwed up against the wind. His face grew stiff and cold, and his feet felt hot: a bad sign. But he kept on. Somewhere within this radius there might be --
There wasn't. He retreated to the igloo, half disappointed, half relieved. He didn't regret making the search.
Tamme returned. "What have you been doing?" she demanded. "Your tracks are all over the place!"
"I had a crazy notion," he confessed. "Didn't pan out."
"What crazy notion?"
"That there might be another projector here, part of a pattern."
She sighed. "I was hoping you wouldn't think of that."
"You mean that's what you were looking for?" he asked, chagrined.
She nodded. "I suspect we are involved in an alternate chain. We started from the city alternate -- but others may have started from other alternates, leaving their projectors behind them, as I did. One started from the forest. Another may have started from here. In which case there will be a projector in the area."
"That's what I figured -- only I didn't really believe it. Projectors scattered all through alternity."
"Alternity! Beautiful."
"Well, it's as good a name for it as any," he said defensively. "Anyway, if it's all happening like that -- what do you care? No one's trying to torpedo Earth."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Well, I can't prove anything, but what about the Golden Rule? We're not trying to do anything to them, so -- "
"Aren't we?"
He faltered. "You mean, we are?" He had thought she was just going after one agent, not the whole universe.
"Our government is paranoid about Earth-defense. We're out to destroy any possible competition before it destroys us. Remember Paleo?"
"Yeah..." he agreed, wishing she hadn't reminded him of that. She, like all agents, was a ruthless killer.
"So it behooves us to catch them before they catch us."
"But we're not paranoid! We don't have to -- "
"You aren't. As an agent of our government, I am."
He didn't like that, but he understood it. "You have to serve your master, I guess. But if you ran the government -- "
"Things would change. I don't like paranoia; it's inefficient. I don't like killing to maintain a defective system. But that is academic. Right now I have to trace this chain -- if that's what it is -- to its end. And deal with what I find there."
"Yeah..."
"You assumed the projector would be within fifty feet because the last one was. That does not necessarily follow."
"Hell of a better chance to find it than looking three miles out."
"Yes. I ranged three miles. The snow covers all traces."
"Maybe it's under cover -- in a hollow tree or under a rock or something. Because of its being winter."
"Good idea. I'll check for that." She moved out again.
She found it. The mound gave it away. Another aperture projector, very similar to the others.
"You can still go back," she told Veg.
"I'm getting curious," he said, "Let's go. It's cold here."
She shrugged and activated the device. They stepped through.
Veg braced himself for any extreme of climate or locale -- hot, cold, lush, barren, metropolis, wilderness. And stood amazed, caught unbraced for the reality.
It was an alien orchestra.
The instruments were conventional, even archaic: strings, woodwinds, percussion. The technique was flawless to his untrained ear. The melody was passionate, stirring mind, heart, and entrails. It was only the players who were alien.
Tamme looked about warily, as bemused as he. Veg knew she was searching for the next projector. There was no sign of it.
Meanwhile, the alien orchestra played on, oblivious of the intrusion. The players on the violins had at least twelve appendages, each terminating in a single finger or point. These fingers moved over the strings, pressing to change the pitch; half a dozen fingers bunched to control the bow. The creatures on the flutes were bird-like, with nozzle-like mouths with gill-like apertures around the neck that took in air alternately so that there was always pressure. Those on the drums had arms terminating in hard balls on flexible tendons; they did not need to hold any drumsticks.
Veg wondered whether the creatures had been designed for the instruments or the instruments for the creatures. If the latter, as seemed more reasonable, what did this signify about music on Earth? Human beings adapting to instruments that were designed for aliens? That would mean strong crossover between alternates... He tried to speak, but the music was loud, coming at them from every side, and he could not hear his own voice. Not surprising since the two of them had apparently landed right in the orchestra pit, huge as it was. They had to get out of it before they could communicate. He looked for the edge of it -- and only saw more musicians. They were really devoted to their art to ignore creatures as strange as he and Tamme must seem to them. He started to walk between the players, but a hand on his arm restrained him. It was Tamme, shaking her head "No."
He realized why: There was no distinguishing feature about this spot, and they could readily lose it. For that matter, they could lose each other if they stayed apart. There seemed to be no end to this orchestra!
Tamme pointed to a spot on the floor. "Stay!" she mouthed several times until he read her lips and understood. He would be the place marker, she the explorer. Ordinarily he would have insisted on reversing the roles, but he knew she was more capable. He squatted where she had indicated.
Tamme moved through the formations of musicians. They were not exactly in lines or groups, but they were not random. There was a certain alien order to it -- a larger pattern like that of the leaves on a tree or the stars in the sky.
Somewhere, here, was another projector -- maybe.
Where? It was not visible. Could the aliens -- actually they were not aliens but natives, as this was their alternate -- could they have moved it? Somehow he doubted it. The creatures had taken absolutely no notice of the human intrusion; why should they bother with a mechanical device that did not play music? Maybe it was inside one of their instruments. No -- when they left, it would be lost, and that was no decent alternative!
He contemplated the musicians. Where did they go during their breaks? Or were they anchored here forever? He had seen none move. Strange!
But back to the projector: Could it be in one of the boxlike seats? There seemed to be room. Which one? There were fifty or a hundred of them in sight. And how could he get at it?
Tamme was moving in widening spirals. He caught intermittent glimpses of her between the musicians. After a couple more circuits she would be invisible; the massed musicians blocked every line-of-sight pathway beyond a certain distance.
Well, that was one problem he would let Tamme handle. She didn't want him interfering, and maybe she was right. Still, it took some getting used to -- but Tamme was different from Aquilon.
Veg shook his head. He wasn't sure which type of girl he preferred. Of course it was over between him and Aquilon, and pointless with Tamme, even for the one-night stand she had offered; she was not his type. Still, no harm in speculating....
This shifting randomly through alter
nates -- or was it random? It reminded him of something. A children's game... puzzle... fold-a-game, flex-a-gone...
"Hexaflexagon!" he exclaimed. "Alternity hexaflexagon!"
Tamme was there so fast he jumped, startled. "What's the matter?" He could hear her now; the music had subsided to a delicate passage.
"Nothing," he said sheepishly. "I was just thinking."
She did not waste effort on the matter. "I have located the projector."
"Great!" he said, relieved. Now that they were on this rollercoaster, he preferred to continue forward. He had not relished the notion of staying here or of returning to the blizzard world. "How'd you figure which box?"
"Sound. The boxes are hollow; the projector changed the acoustics."
"Oh. So you used the music. Smart." Music and hexaflexagons, he thought. He followed her to the place.
It was the stool of a bass-strings player. The octopus-like creature almost enveloped the box, four of its tentacles reaching up to depress the ends of the four strings, four more manipulating the bow. The sounds it made were low and sweet: It really had the musical touch!
"You're pretty good," Veg told it. But the volume had swelled again, drowning him out. The creature made no acknowledgment.
Tamme squatted, touched the box, and lifted out a panel. Inside was one of the little aperture projectors. She didn't ask whether he was ready to go; she knew it. She reached in, her arm almost brushing the overlapping bulk of the octopus, and turned the machine on.
And they were on a steeply inclined plane. "Yo!" Veg cried, rolling helplessly.
Tamme caught his wrist and brought him up short. He had known she was strong, but this disconcerted him. Seemingly without effort, she supported the better part of his weight.
Veg's flailing free hand found purchase, and he righted himself. They were perched on a steeply tilted sheet of plastic. It was orange but transparent; through it he could see the jumbled edges of other sheets. He had caught hold of the slanting upper edge. Tamme had done the same farther up.
Below them were more sheets, some edge-on, some angled, some broadside. Above them were others. And more to the sides. All sizes and colors. What held them in place was a mystery; they seemed firm, as if embedded in clear glass, yet there was no support.
Veg peered down, searching for the ground. All he could see was an irregular network of planes. The jungle, like the orchestra they had just vacated, was everywhere, endless.
Tamme let go, slid down, and landed gracefully on a purple horizontal plane to the side. She signaled Veg to stay put.
"It figures," he muttered, hoisting himself up to perch on the thin edge. The worlds were fascinating in their variety, but he certainly wasn't being much of a help so far.
Soon she was partially hidden behind the translucency of angled planes; he could detect her motion, not her image. She was looking for the next projector, of course.
Suppose she didn't find it? There was no guarantee that a given world had a projector or that it would be within a thousand miles. There had to be an end to the line somewhere.
A chill of apprehension crawled over him. No guarantee the next world would have air to breathe, either! They were playing one hell of a roulette game!
Maybe they would go on and on forever, meeting such a bewildering array of alternates that eventually they would forget which one they had started from, forget Earth itself.
Well, he had volunteered for the course!
Tamme was now invisible. Veg looked about, becoming bored with the local configurations. He wanted to explore some on his own, but he knew he had to remain as a reference point. This alternate was pretty in its fashion, but what was there to do?
He noticed that the plastic plane he perched on was not in ideal repair. Strips of it were flaking off. Maybe it was molting, shedding its skin as it grew. Ha-ha.
Idly, he peeled off a length of it, moved by the same mild compulsion that caused people to peel the plastic from new glossy book restorations. The stuff was almost colorless in this depth, flexible and a bit crackly. He folded it over, and it made a neat, straight crease without breaking.
That gave him a notion. He began folding off triangular sections. He was making a hexaflexagon!
"Let's go," Tamme said.
Veg looked up. "You found it, huh?" He tucked his creation into a pocket and followed her, leaping from plane to plane, stretching his legs at last.
It was hidden in the convergence of three planes, nestled securely. "Kilroy was here, all right," he murmured.
Tamme glanced at him sharply. "Who?"
"You don't know Kilroy? He's from way back."
"Oh -- a figure of speech." She bent over the projector.
So that was a gap in the agent education: They didn't know about Kilroy. He probably wasn't considered important enough to be included in their programming. Their loss!
The projector came on --
-- and they were back in the blizzard.
"A circuit!" Tamme cried in his ear, exasperated. "Well, I know where the projector is." She bundled him into her clothes and plunged forward.
"Maybe it's not the same one!" Veg cried.
"It is the same. There's our igloo." Sure enough, they were passing it. But Veg noted that they had landed in a slightly different place this time, for the igloo had been built at their prior landing site. This time they had arrived about fifty feet to the side. Was that significant? He was too cold to think it out properly.
In minutes they found it. "There's been time to recharge it -- just," she said. Then: "That's funny."
"What?" he asked, shivering in the gale.
"This is a left-handed projector, more or less."
"Same one we used before," he said. "Let's get on with it."
"I must be slipping," she said. "I should have noticed that before."
"In this blizzard? Just finding it was enough!"
She shrugged and activated it.
They were now in the alien orchestra.
Veg shook the snow off his cloak and hood and looked about. This time they seemed to have landed in exactly the same place as before; he saw the stain of their prior water-shedding as the snow melted.
"We're stuck in a loop of alternates," Tamme said. "I don't like this."
"There's got to be a way out. There was a way in."
"That doesn't necessarily follow." She glanced about. "In any event, we ought to rest while the local projector is recharging."
"Sure," he agreed. "Want me to stand watch?"
"Yes," she said, surprising him. And she lay down on the floor and went to sleep.
Just like that! Veg's eyes ran over her body, for she was still in bra and panties. The hardware didn't show, and in repose Tamme looked very feminine. And why shouldn't she? he asked himself fiercely. Every woman in the world did not have to be stamped in the mold of Aquilon!
Of course Tamme wasn't a woman at all but an agent. She really was stamped from a mold -- the TA-distaff-series mold. All over the world there were more just like her, each every bit as pretty, competent, and self-reliant.
He shied away from that concept. Instead, he looked around the orchestra at the now-familiar creatures. They looked the same: octopi, gillbirds, drumstick drummers. But something had changed somehow. What was it?
He concentrated, and it came to him: This alternate was the same, but the blizzard-alternate had been different. The igloo, as he passed it... no, he couldn't quite pin it down. Different, yet the same, indefinably.
Veg blew out his breath, removed Tamme's cloak, and discovered his plastic hexaflexagon. This was proof he had been to the plane world, at least! He completed the folds, bit on the ends to fasten them properly, and flexed the device idly.
This was a hexa-hexaflexagon. It was hexagonal in outline, and when flexed, it turned up a new face from the interior, concealing one of the prior ones. But not in regular order. Some faces were harder to open than others.
He fished in his pocket and brought
out a stubby pencil. He marked the faces as he came to them: 1 for the top, 2 for the bottom. He flexed it, turning a new blank face to the top, and marked it 3. He flexed it again, and 2 came up.
"Closed loop," he muttered. "But I know how to fix that!" He shifted his grip to another diagonal and flexed from it. This time a new face appeared, and he marked this 4.
Of Man and Manta Omnibus Page 58