"That's what I said. But no trees like this. Those machines ate wood, too. They'd have sawed into this long ago—and they haven't."

He was right. Her perceptions showed a slightly differing chemical composition of this world's atmosphere. Though it would be foolish to judge an entire world by one view of a tiny fraction of it, it was a new alternate. The changes were minor but significant.

"I am not surprised," she admitted. "My aperture projector is set for Paleo—but we did not start from the desert world. That sparkle-cloud moved us to an unspecified alternate, so we're out of phase."

"Yeah—like taking the wrong bus."

That was hardly precise, and she was surprised he thought in terms of such an ancient vehicle, but it Ox by Piers Anthony

would do. "It may be a long, hard search for home."

" Your home, maybe. I'd settle for Paleo. Or Nacre."

"Nacre is part of the Earth-alternate. So you'd have to—"

"But we can get back to the city-world all right? We're not lost from there?"

"Yes—in just under three hours. We're in phase for that. But we shall have to be standing right on this spot, or we'll miss it."

"Well, let's not waste the time!" he exclaimed. "This is beautiful! Finest softwood forest I ever saw!"

She laughed. "By all means, look at the trees. But how can you be sure this isn't Paleo? Plenty of virgin softwood there!" She knew this wasn't Paleo, but was interested in his reasoning.

"Not the same. These are modern pines. See, the needles are different. Trees evolve, you know, same as animals do. This white pine, now—actually, it's different from Earth white pine, in little ways—"

She raised her hands in mock surrender. He was not pretending; at this moment, the forest really did interest him more than she did, and he knew more than she in this area of botany. Agents had an excellent general education, but they could not be experts in every field.

Meanwhile, the social environment had changed as well as the physical one. Just as sex was relatively attractive to this country man when he was confined to the city, this challenging new—rather, old—forest was more attractive yet.

Which was not quite what she had anticipated. There were always unexpected wrinkles appearing in normals! Agents, in pleasant contrast, were completely predictable—to other agents. They were designed to be that way.

Pleasant contrast? It actually made for a certain tedium, she realized, when the mission stretched out longer than a few hours or days. In some things, predictability was less than ideal.

Watch yourself, she thought then. She was beginning to suffer from an overload of experience, and she had no dream mechanism to restore her mind to its prior equilibrium. It was inevitably shaping her into more of an individual than the computer could readily tolerate. If this went too far, her report would be suspect, even useless. The general rule was that an agent's mission should not continue longer than ten days because of that deterioration of reliability. She had already been nineteen days, and the end was not in sight.

She shuddered. How good it would be to return to computer central to be reset—and how awful to remain out so long she lost her affinity with her series, TA!

Veg was moving among the trees, tapping the trunks, looking at needles. This was his element! He suffered no pangs of dawning identity!

There were, it seemed, plenty of untouched worlds available for man's expansion. Earth's population and resources problem would be solved—just as soon as she got back.

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She would have to return, try another setting, and begin a survey of alternate-worlds. It would be too cumbersome to step through every time. She would fashion a spot sensor that used very little power in projection because of its small mass. By bouncing it through and back like a tennis ball, she could check a dozen worlds in an hour, the only delay being the adjustment of the projector settings between uses.

She would not need Veg, after all. Not until she located familiar territory.

Three hours. She could sleep, for she had perfect timing and would wake when the return aperture was due. But first she would make a spot survey of this locale, for it might turn out to be the most suitable one yet discovered for exploitation. Earthlike, modern, no dinosaurs.

She lifted her hands, caught hold of a dead spoke on the huge pine, and hauled herself up. The trunk was a good six feet in diameter at the base, and the top was out of sight. She climbed rapidly, wriggling between the branches as they became smaller and more closely set. She was getting dirty, but that didn't matter. She really should have adjusted the seductive design of her outfit; trees were not much for that sort of thing, and her clothing inhibited progress. A few welts or scratches on the visible surfaces of her breasts would not bother her but could well turn off Veg—and she just might need him.

The trunk thinned alarmingly at the top and swayed in the stiffening wind. At an elevation of two hundred feet she halted, looking about. There were a number of tall trees, some reaching to two hundred and fifty feet. White pine, when allowed to grow, was one of the tallest trees, comparable to the Douglas fir and young redwood. Veg would know all about that! But now these tall trees interfered with her vision, so that all she could see was more forest. She had wasted her time. No doubt Veg could have told her that, too!

She descended, to find him waiting for her, looking up. How like a man! She hardly needed to make an effort to show off her wares; he knew how to find them for himself. Tree-climbing skirt!

"No good climbing," he remarked. "That's boy-scout lore—useless in a real forest. All you see is—"

"More trees," she finished for him.

"I had a better view from the ground."

"Thank you."

"Found something else."

Now she read the signs in him: He was excited, and not merely by his nether-view of her thighs as she came down the tree. He knew that what he had to tell her would affect her profoundly.

Tamme paused, trying to ascertain what it was before he told her. It was not a threat, not a joke. Not a human settlement. What, then?

"Can't tell, can you!" he said, pleased. "Come on, then."

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He showed the way to a small forest glade, a clearing made by a fallen giant tree and not yet grown in. The massive trunk, eight feet thick, lay rotting on the ground. And near its sundered stump—

"An aperture projector!" she exclaimed, amazed.

"Thought you'd be surprised. Guess we weren't the first here, after all."

Tamme's mind was racing. There was no way that such a device could be here—except as a relic of human visitation. Agent visitation, for this was an agent model, similar to hers. But not identical—not quite.

"Some alternate-world agent has passed this way," she said. "And not long ago. Within five days."

"Because the brush has not grown up around it," Veg said. "That's what I figured. Can't be yours, can it?"

"No." The implications were staggering. If an alternate-world agent had come here, then Earth was not alone. There could be millions of highly developed human societies possessing the secret of aperture travel, competing for unspoiled worlds. What would she do, if she encountered one of those foreign agents, as highly trained as she, as dedicated to his world as she was to Earth?

By blind luck she had learned of the other agent first. Before he learned of her.

This was likely to be the mission of her life—and the fight of Earth's survival.

She had an immediate choice: Return to the surrealist city and commence her survey of alternates, hoping to discover in the process the route home. Or take a more chancy initiative by going after the competing agent and attempting to kill him before he could make his report to his world.

Each alternative was rife with bewildering complexities. She was trained to make quick decisions—but never had the fate of Earth depended on her snap judgment, even potentially. So she sought an advisory opinion. "Veg—if you came across the spoor of a hungry tiger, and you knew it was going to be him or you—what would you do? Follow the trail, or go home for help?"

Veg squinted at her. "Depends how close home is, and how I am armed. But probably I'd go home. I don't like killing."

She had posed the wrong question—another indication of her need for caution. An agent should not make elementary mistakes! Naturally the vegetarian would avoid a quarrel with an animal. "Suppose it was the track of a man as strong and as smart as you—but an enemy who would kill you if you didn't kill him first?"

"Then I'd sure go home! I'm not going out looking for any death match!"

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

"Yeah."

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"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 analyze 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 Ox by Piers Anthony

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 sex 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-fashioned 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. Sex 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 chore 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.

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Chapter 8

ENCLAVE

8

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 shifts 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 accumulated 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?

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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 fashion. 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 diminishing 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 constituted 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-entity 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 identity 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 Ox by Piers Anthony

region.

Ornet in turn communicated with Dec, the most mobile spot. Dec moved rapidly out of OX's perception. When he returned, his optic generator signaled his news: This frame, one of the limited myriads of alternates that comprised the fabric of OX's reality, did indeed have other structures of elements. Dec had located them by following the element-threads that OX could not. Dec perceived these elements only with difficulty but had improved with practice. At varying physical distances, he reported, a number of them re-expanded into viable reservoirs. And in one of these Dec had spied a pattern.

The news threw OX into a swirl of disorientation. Hastily he modified his circuits; he had now confirmed, by observation of his own nature and indirect observation of the external environment, that he was not the only entity of his kind.

The other patterns had to know of him. His radiations, traveling the length of the element-threads, had to notify them of his presence. Yet never had a return-impulse come. That had to mean the others were damping out their external signs. Their only reason would be to abate a threat, as of a shoot-detecting machine or a pattern-consuming nonsentient pattern, or to conceal their presence for more devious internal reasons. On occasion, OX damped out his own radiation when he did not wish to be disturbed; his circuits did this automatically, and analysis of them showed this to be the reason.

Actually, such damping was pointless here, there were no intrusive patterns, and the spots were not affected: additional evidence that OX was equipped by nature to exist in a society of patterns, not alone.

Why would other patterns, aware of him, deliberately conceal themselves from him? In what way was he a threat to them? He was a fully functioning pattern; it was not his nature to intrude upon another of his kind. The other patterns surely knew this; it was inherent, it was survival.

Something very like anger suffused OX. Since his nature responded only to survival-nonsurvival choices, it was not emotion as a living creature would know it. But it was an acute, if subtle, crisis of survival.

A compatible pattern would not have acted in the fashion these outside patterns did. Therefore, their presence was a strong potential threat to his survival.

OX sent Dec out to observe again more thoroughly, and he sent Ornet out to the same physical spot in an adjacent frame. The two observers could not perceive each other, for they could not cross over alternates, and OX could observe neither since they were beyond his element-pool. But this difficult cooperative maneuver was critical.

Their report confirmed what OX had suspected.

Dec had observed a pattern fade, leaving the points unoccupied. Then it, or another like it, had returned. But Ornet's location had remained vacant.

OX understood this, though the spots did not. The pattern was traveling through the frames. Because of the configuration of the pool as OX had mapped it, he knew that the foreign pattern had to move Ox by Piers Anthony

either toward Ornet or away from him. It had moved away. And that meant that the other pool of elements extended beyond OX's own pool, for his did not go farther in that direction.

The other pools, in fact, were probably not pools. They were aspects of the larger framework. The other patterns were not restricted as OX was.

They were keeping him isolated, restricted, confined to an enclave, while they roamed free. This, by the inherent definition of his circuitry, was inimical behavior.

OX sank into a long and violent disorientation. Only by strenuous internal measures was he able to restore equilibrium. Then it was only by making a major decision that forced a complete revamping of his nature. He was in peril of nonsurvival through the action of others of his own kind. He had either to allow himself to be disrupted at their convenience or to prepare himself to disrupt the other patterns at his convenience. He chose the latter.

OX was ready to fight.

Chapter 9

LIFE

9

The two mantas, Hex and Circe, showed them the place, then disappeared again on their own pursuits. They seemed to like the city and to enjoy exploring it.

Cal and Aquilon stood on either side of the projector, not touching it. "So she had a way back all the time—and she took Veg with her," Aquilon said bitterly. "While we slept, blissfully ignorant." She crumpled the note and threw it away in disgust.

"I knew she had some such device," Cal replied. "I told the mantas to let them go."

She was aghast. "Why?"

"We could not stop the agent from doing as she wished—but Veg will keep an eye on her and perhaps ameliorate her omnivoristic tendencies. Meanwhile, it is pointless to remain idle here. I suspect we shall be able to make contact with the pattern-entities better on our own. They may or may not attempt to contact us again on the stage. If they do, I would prefer that Veg not break it up and that Tamme not receive their information. If they don't, it will be up to us to make a move."

"You really have it figured out," she said, shaking her head. Then: " Pattern entities? What—?"

"I have been doing some thinking. I believe I understand the nature of our abductor, and how we can communicate with it."

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She lifted her hands, palms up. "Just like that!"

"Oh, it was simple enough, once I had the key," he said modestly. "Pattern."

"That's what you said before. I still don't follow it."

"First we have to capture a suitable machine."

"Capture a machine!" she exclaimed.

"If we can immobilize it long enough for me to get at its control unit, I should be able to turn it to our purpose."

She looked at him in perplexity. "Lure it under an ambush and knock it on the head with a sledgehammer?"

Cal smiled. "No, that would destroy the delicate mechanism we need. We shall have to be more subtle."

"Those machines aren't much for subtlety," she cautioned him. "If there are any of the whirling-blade variety around—"

"The menials will do," he said. "Preferably one with an optic-signal receiver."

Aquilon shook her head. "Well, you know best. Tell me what to do."

"Locate a flower or other device that will attract the right type of machine."

"Something optical, you mean?"

"Something that requires optical repair, yes." He faced away. "Hex! Circe!"

Aquilon shrugged and went looking. Cal knew what she was thinking: He was far more the mystery man than he had been on Nacre or Paleo. Those had been comparatively simple, physical worlds; this was a complex intellectual-challenge situation. His area of strength! But he would soon explain himself.

The two mantas arrived, sailing down to land beside him. "You have observed the tame machines?"

he inquired.

They did not need to snap their tails. His rapport with them had progressed beyond that stage. He could tell their answer by the attitude of their bodies, just as he had divined their disapproval of his directive regarding Tamme and her projector. YES. As he had already known.

"Can you broadcast on their optical circuits?"

Now they were dubious. There followed a difficult, somewhat technical dialogue involving wavelengths and intensities. Conclusion: They might be able to do what he wanted. They would try.

Aquilon returned. "The light-loom seems best," she reported. "If something interfered with the Ox by Piers Anthony

original light-beam, the entire fabric would be spoiled. Seems a shame..."

"We shall not damage it," Cal assured her. "We want only to attract the relevant machine." He glanced again at the little projector. "This we shall leave untouched, as I believe it has been set to bring them back at a particular moment. They have no chance to reach Earth; I hope they find equivalent satisfaction."

Aquilon's eyes narrowed. "Are you implying—"

"As the agents experience more of reality away from their computer, they become more individual, more human. We stand in need of another human female if we are to maintain any human continuity away from Earth."

Her lip curled. "Why not wish for a cobra to turn human while you're at it?"

They went to the fountain. "Distort that light," Cal told the mantas. "Play your beams through it if you can keep it up without hurting your eyes."

They dutifully concentrated on the rising light.

"This may take a while," Cal said, "because it is subtle."

"Too subtle for me," she murmured.

"I will explain it." He dusted off the clear plastic panel covering the tapestry storage chamber. This was unnecessary, for there was no dust. He brought out a small marking pencil.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

"The marker? I've had it all the time."

She smiled ruefully. "He travels through Paleocene jungles, he battles dinosaurs, he tackles self-willed machines, he carries a cheap pencil."

Cal put his hand on her arm, squeezing. "Life does go on."

She turned her lovely blue eyes upon him. "Did you mean it, on Nacre?"

Nacre, fungus planet: There was no mistaking her allusion. Now he regretted that he had made reference to it in front of Veg; that was not kind. He looked into the depths of those eyes and remembered it with absolute clarity.

They had been climbing, forging up a narrow, tortuous trail between ballooning funguses and the encompassing mist. Aquilon, instead of resting, had painted—not despite the fatigue, as she explained, but because of it. And though her subject had been ugly, the painting itself had been beautiful.

"You match your painting," Cal had told her, sincerely.

She had turned from him, overcome by an emotion neither of them understood, and he had Ox by Piers Anthony

apologized. "I did not mean to hurt you. You and your work are elegant. No man could look upon either and not respond."

She had put away her painting and stared out into the mist. "Do you love me?" Perhaps a naïve question since they had only known each other three months, and that aboard a busy spaceship; they really had had little to do with each other until getting stranded on the pearl-mist planet.

And he had answered: "I'm afraid I do." He had never before said that to a woman and never would again except to her.

Then she had told him of her past: a childhood illness that destroyed her smile.

Now she had her wish: She could smile again. That was the gift of the manta. But it had not brought her satisfaction.

"Yes, I meant it," he said. And did not add: But Veg loved you, too. That had formed the triangle, and she had seemed better suited to healthy Veg, especially on Paleo. Unfortunately the two had proved not wholly compatible and were in the process of disengaging. Cal hoped he had done the right thing in exposing Veg to Tamme. He had tried to warn Veg first, but the whole thing had a jealous smell to it as though he were throwing a rival to the wolves. Wolf, cobra—by any metaphor, an agent was trouble. Unless, as with Subble, there was some redeeming human quality that transcended the mercilessly efficient and ruthless program. A long, long shot—but what else was there?

"Look—the pattern is changing! Aquilon exclaimed, looking through the plastic at the slowly moving material.

"Excellent—the mantas have mastered the trick. Now we'll see how long it takes for a repair-machine to come."

"You were about to explain what you're doing."

"So I was! I am becoming absent-minded."

" Becoming? "

Such a superficial, obvious gesture, this bit of teasing. Yet how it stirred him! To Cal, love was absolute; he had always been ready to die for her. Somehow he had not been ready to banter with her.

It was a thing he would gladly learn. At the moment, he did not know the appropriate response and would not have felt free to make it, anyway. So he drew three dots on the surface: a "What do you see?"

"A triangle."

"How about three corners of a square?"

"That, too. It would help if you completed the square, if that's really what you want to indicate."

"By all means." He drew in the fourth dot: b And waited.

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She looked at it, then up at him. "That's all?"

"That's the essence."

"Cal, I'm just a little slower than you. I don't quite see how this relates to comprehension of the so-called 'pattern entities' and travel between alternate worlds."

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't?"

"You're teasing me!" she complained, making a moue.

So he was learning already! "There's pleasure in it."

"You've changed. You used to be so serious."

"I am stronger—thanks to you." On Nacre he had been almost too weak to stand, contemplating death intellectually and emotionally. He still had a morbid respect for death—but Veg and Aquilon had helped him in more than the physical sense.

"Let's take your square another step," she suggested. "I know there's more. There always is with you."

He looked at the square. "We have merely to formulate the rule. Three dots are incomplete; they must generate the fourth. Three adjacent dots do it—no more, no less. Otherwise the resultant figure is not a—"

"All right. Three dots make a fourth." She took his marker and made a line of three: c "What about this?"

"Double feature. There are two locations covered by three adjacent dots. So—" He added two dots above and below the line: e

"So now we have a cross of a sort." She shook her head. "I remain unenlightened."

"Another rule, since any society must have rules if it is to be stable. Any dot with three neighbor-dots is stable. Or even with two neighbors. But anything else—more than three or less than two—is unstable. So our figure is not a cross."

"No. The center dot has four neighbors. What happens to it?"

"Were this the starting figure, it would disappear. Cruel but necessary. However, the five-dot figure does not form from the three-dot figure because the ends of the original one are unstable. Each end-dot has only a single neighbor." He drew a new set: c Then he erased the ends, leaving one: j

"But what of the new dots we already formed?"

"Creation and destruction are simultaneous. Thus our figure flexes so." He numbered the stages: 1 c 2 d 3 c 4 d "We call this the 'blinker.' "

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She looked at him suspiciously. "You mean this has been done before?"

"This is a once-popular game invented by a mathematician, John Conway, back in 1970. He called it

'Life.' I have often whiled away dull hours working out atypical configurations."

"I haven't seen you."

He patted her hand. "In my head, my dear."

"That would sound so much better without the 'my.' "

" 'In head?' "

She waggled a forefinger at him. " 'Dear.' "

"You are becoming positively flirtatious." Perhaps she was rebounding from Veg.

"Was Taler right on the ship?"

The ship. Again he looked into her eyes, remembering. The Earth government had not waited for the trio's report; it had sent four agents to Paleo to wrap it up, which agents had duly taken the normals prisoner and destroyed the dinosaur enclave. "Interesting," Taler had remarked while Tamme watched, amused. "Dr. Potter is even more enamored of Miss Hunt than is Mr. Smith. But Dr. Potter refuses to be influenced thereby."

"I suppose he was," Cal said.

She sighed as though she had anticipated more of an answer. "There must be more to life than this."

He glanced at her again, uncertain which way she meant it. He elected to interpret it innocuously.

"There is indeed. There are any number of game figures, each with its own history. Some patterns die out; others become stable like the square. Still others do tricks."

Now she was intrigued. "Let me try one!"

"By all means. Try this one." He made a tetromino, four dots: 1

Aquilon pounced on it. "There's an imaginary grid, right? The dots are really filling in squares and don't mesh the same on the bias?"

"That's right." She was quick, now that she had the idea; he liked that.

"If this is position one, then for position two we have to add one, two, three spots, and take away—none." She made the new figure: 2

"Correct. How far can you follow it?"

She concentrated, tongue between her lips. At length, she had the full series. "It evolves into four blinkers. Here's the series." She marked off the numbers of the steps in elegant brackets so as the avoid the use of confusing periods.

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[1] 1 [2] 2 [3] 3 [4] 4 [5] 5 [6] 6 [7] 7

[8] 8 [9] 9 [10] 10 [11] 11

"Very good. That's 'Traffic Lights.' "

"Fascinating! They really work, too! But still, I don't see the relevance to—"

"Try this one," he suggested, setting down a new pattern: alternate "That's the 'R Pentomino.' "

"That's similar to the one I just did. You've just tilted it sideways, which makes no topological difference, and added one dot."

"Try it," he repeated.

She tried it, humoring him. But soon it was obvious that the solution was not a simple one. Her numbered patterns grew and changed, taking up more and more of the working area. The problem ceased to be merely intriguing; it became compulsive. Cal well understood this; he had been through it himself. She was oblivious to him now, her hair falling across her face in attractive disarray, teeth biting lips. "What a difference a dot makes!" she muttered.

Cal heard something. It was the hum of a traveling machine. The bait had finally been taken!

He moved quietly away from Aquilon, who did not miss him. He took his position near the light fountain. The next step was up to the mantas.

The machine hove into sight. It was exactly what Cal had hoped for: a multilensed optical specialist—the kind fitted out to analyze a marginally defective light-pattern. One of the screens on it resembled an oscilloscope, and there seemed to be a television camera.

Excellent! This one must have been summoned from moth-balling, as light-surgery was no doubt necessary less frequently than mechanical repairs. This was an efficient city, which did not waste power and equipment.

The two mantas turned to concentrate on the machine. Cal knew they were directing their eye-beams at its lenses, attempting to send it intelligible information and usurp its control system. If anything could do it, the mantas could—but only if the machine were sufficiently sophisticated.

It stopped, facing the mantas. Was the plan working?

Suddenly the machine whirled, breaking contact. Its intake lens spied Cal. The snout of a small tube swung about with dismaying authority.

Cal felt sudden apprehension. He had not expected physical danger to himself or Aquilon, and he was not prepared. His skin tightened; his eyes darted to the side to assess his best escape route or locate a suitable weapon. There was a nervous tremor in his legs.

He had played hide-and-seek with Tyrannosaurus, the largest predator dinosaur of them all. Was he Ox by Piers Anthony

now to lose his nerve before a mere repair robot?

Cal leaped aside as the beam of a laser scorched a pin-hole in the plastic wall behind the place he had just stood. He had seen the warm-up glow just in time. But now it was warmed up and would fire too fast for his reflexes. He scurried on as the laser projector reoriented.

His plan had malfunctioned—and now the machine was on the attack. They were in for it!

The mantas tried to distract it, but the thing remained intent on Cal. Wherever he fled, it followed.

Aquilon, jolted out of her concentration, stepped forward directly into the range of the laser, raising her hand. Her chin was elevated, her hair flung back, her body taut yet beautiful in its arrested dynamism. For an instant she was a peremptory queen. "Stop!" she said to the machine.

It stopped.

Startled, Cal turned back. Had the machine really responded to a human voice—or was it merely orienting on a new object? Aquilon's life depended on that distinction!

Aquilon herself was amazed. "I reacted automatically, foolishly," she said. "But now—I wonder."

She spoke to the machine again. "Follow me," she said, and began to walk down the path.

The machine stayed where it was, unmoving. Not even the laser tube wavered, though now it covered nothing.

"Wait," Cal murmured to her. "It begins to come clear. You gave that machine a pre-emptive directive."

"I told it to stop," she agreed. "I was alarmed. But if it understood and obeyed me then, why not now?"

"You changed the language," he said.

"I what?"

"The first time you addressed it, you used body language. Everything about you contributed to the message. You faced it without apparent fear, you raised your hand, you gave a brief, peremptory command."

"But I spoke English!"

"Irrelevant. No one could have mistaken your meaning." He put his hand under her arm, pulling her gently toward him. "Body language—the way we move, touch, look—the tension of our muscles, the rate of our pulse, our respiration—the autonomic processes. The agents virtually read our minds through those involuntary signals."

"Yes," she said, seeing it. "Your hand on me—that's speaking, too, more than your words."

He let go quickly. "Sorry. I just wanted you to understand—"

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"I did," she said, smiling. "Why does that embarrass you?"

"This city is, despite its weirdities, essentially human. It was made to serve human beings, perhaps women like you—"

"A matriarchy?"

"Possibly. Now those people are gone, but the city remains, producing breathable air, growing edible fruit, supporting at least some omnivorous wildlife as though in anticipation of the needs of the mantas, manufacturing things for human use. Surely the machines remember their erstwhile masters!"

"Then why did it attack you?"

"I was acting in an unfriendly manner, associating with aliens who were interfering with the business of the city. I was giving the signals of an enemy or a vandal—as indeed I regarded myself. The machine reacted accordingly."

Aquilon nodded. "So we know the builders, though not their language."

"We are the builders—on another variant. Perhaps this city is an artifact of a human alternate many thousands of years in our future. With the alternate framework, it stands to reason that many worlds are ahead of us as well as many behind."

"Dinosaurs on one—super science on another," she agreed.

"But I do not think the sparkle-cloud is part of this human scheme—as I was explaining."

"You were? "

"The Life game."

She grimaced. "I haven't gotten through your R Pentomino yet."

"I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "It only achieves a 'steady state' after eleven hundred moves."

"Eleven hundred moves!" she exclaimed indignantly. "And you set me innocently to work with a pencil—"

"The point is, the entire game is determined by the opening configuration. But that hardly means that all openings are similar, or that a five-point figure does not have impressive complexities in its resolution. Most simple patterns quickly fade or become stable. A few are open-ended, especially when they interact with other figures. So larger opening patterns might conceivably—"

"Cal!" she cried. "Are you saying that this little dot-game—the sparkle-pattern—"

He nodded. " 'Life' is a simple two-dimensional process that nevertheless has certain resemblances to the molecular biology of our living life. Suppose this game were extended to three physical dimensions and given an indefinitely large grid?"

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She shook her head so that her hair flew out enticingly. Had she picked up that gesture from Tamme?

"It would still be predetermined."

"As we are predetermined, according to certain philosophies. But it becomes extremely difficult to chart that course before the fact. Suppose a number of forms were present on that grid, interacting?"

"If their patterns got too large, they'd mess each other up. There's no telling what would happen then." She paused, his words sinking in. "It would still be predetermined by the initial figures and their relation to each other on the grid—but too complicated to predict without a computer. Maybe there's no computer that could handle the job if the grid were big enough and the figures too involved. Anything could happen."

"And if it existed in four or five dimensions?"

She spread her hands. "I'm no mathematician. But I should think the possibilities would approach those of organic processes. After all, as you pointed out, enzymes in one sense are like little keys on the molecular level, yet they are indispensable to the life processes. Why not dot-pattern enzymes, building into—" She paused again. "Into animate sparkle-clouds!"

"So we could have what amounts to independent, free-willed entities," he finished. "Their courses may be predetermined by their initial configurations and framework—but so are ours. We had better think of them as potentially sentient and deal with them accordingly."

"Which means establishing communication with them," she said. "It was a giant mental step, but at last I am with you." She looked down at the complex mess of her R Pentomino and blew out her cheeks.

"That's good," he said. "Because we need that machine—and you seem to be able to control it. Bring it to the auditorium."

Aquilon struck a dramatic pose before the machine. "Come!" she commanded, gesturing imperatively. And it did.

"You know, I rather enjoy this," she confided as they walked.

Chapter 10

PHASE

10

OX was ready to fight. He now knew he was under observation by pattern-entities resembling himself who declined to communicate with him. Had they merely been there, unaware of him, they would not have cut off their normal radiation shoots—and since he had not cut off his, they had to Ox by Piers Anthony

know of him. So he was certain of his diagnosis.

His combat circuitry, laboriously developed in the process of restoring equilibrium, informed him that it would be nonsurvival to permit the outside patterns to learn of his change of condition. He therefore fashioned a pseudoplacid circuit whose purpose was to maintain normal radiation despite the internal changes. The observing patterns would thus receive no evidence of OX's real intent.

It was also probable that the outside patterns did not comprehend the significance of the spots. That was thus an asset, for the spots had already proved themselves as both element-stimulators and sources of exterior information. In fact, the spots represented OX's major potential weapon. He had ascertained that they, like he, were of recent origin; they, like he, possessed the powers of growth and increased facility. According to the Ornet-Spot memory, the stationary stable Cub was a member of a type that had greater potential than many others. But this needed a great deal of time and concentration to develop. OX decided to exploit this potential.

Each alternate was separated from its neighbors by its phase of duration. OX had verified this by study of the elements he activated: They gradually matured as the plants charged them, and this maturation represented a constant within the individual frame. Even an element that had been activated and recharged many times still reflected its ancestry and age. But the equivalent elements of adjacent alternates differed, one frame always being newer than the other.

Since OX was a pattern having no physical continuity, this differential of alternates did not affect him except as it affected the elements. Generally the older, more established elements were more comfortable; fresh ones were apt to release their energy unevenly, giving him vague notions of nonsurvival.

That differential could, however, affect the spots, who were almost wholly physical. OX could move them from one frame to another as they were, allowing them to change in relation to their environment because of the shift in that environment—as when he had moved them to a more favorable habitat. He could also, he discovered, modify the transfer so that the alternates remained fixed—and the spots changed. He had done that when Cub perished before the blade of the machine.

It was merely an aspect of crossover: A physical difference between creature and alternate always had to be manifest.

What it amounted to was a method for aging the spots. When OX moved them this way, they were forced to assume the duration they would have had, had they always existed there. Then he shifted them back, this time letting them be fixed while the frame seemed to change. It was an artificial process that cut the spots off from the untampered frames beyond the enclave—but he was barred from that, anyway.

In this manner he brought the spots from infancy to maturity in a tiny fraction of the time they would normally have required. Of course to them it seemed as though their full span had passed in normal fashion; only OX knew better. But he explained this to them and offered certain proofs for their observation, such as the apparent cessation of the growth of the fixed life around them, the immobile plants. Only those plants within the radius of the frame-travel advanced at the same rate. They discussed this with increasing awareness and finally believed.

Ox by Piers Anthony

The little machine, always hovering near, was also caught up in the progress. OX tried to leave it behind, but with inanimate cunning it moved in whenever it sensed his development of the complex necessary circuits, staying in phase. Originally it had been impervious to the spots' attacks; had they advanced without it, they would have been free of it one way or another, either by getting completely out of phase with it or by becoming large and strong enough to overcome it. Thus, they always had to be on guard against its viciousness.

OX also arranged education shoots that facilitated the expansion of awareness in the spots. Though this almost wholly occupied OX's available circuitry, it did not have a large effect on either Dec or Ornet. They seemed programmed to develop in their own fashions regardless of his influence. But for Cub it was most productive. Ornet's conjecture had been accurate: Cub had enormous potential, in certain respects rivaling OX's own. How this could be in a physical being OX could not quite grasp; he had to assume that Cub had a nonphysical component that actually made rationality feasible. At any rate, Cub's intellect was malleable, and OX's effort was well rewarded.

OX watched and guided according to his combat nature as Dec became large and swift, able to disable a semi-sentient animal with a few deadly snaps of his tail-appendage, able to receive and project complex information efficiently. He was the fastest-moving spot physically, useful for purely physical observations and communications.

Ornet served to protect and assist Cub—but Ornet's memory clarified as he grew and offered many extraordinary insights into the nature of spots and frames that influenced OX's own development.

Ornet, limited as he was physically, nevertheless had vested within him more sheer experience than any of the others, including OX himself. That was a tremendous asset, like a stabilizing circuit, guiding him through potential pitfalls of nonsurvival. OX always consulted with Ornet before he made any significant decision.

But Cub was his best investment. He grew from a non-mobile lump to a slowly mobile entity, then to a creature approaching Ornet in physical capability. His intellect became larger and larger. Soon he was grasping concepts that baffled both Dec and Ornet. Then, as he approached maturity, his reasoning ability interacted with OX's on something other than a teacher-pupil level. He began to pose questions that OX could not resolve—and that in turn forced OX to ever-greater capacities.

What about the killer machine? Cub inquired once after they had driven it off. Do you think it gets lonely as we do? Doesn't it have needs and feelings, too?

The very notion was preposterous! Yet OX had to make a new circuit and concede that yes, in machine-terms, it would have needs and feelings, too, and perhaps was lonely for its own land.

Or maybe for sapience of any kind—including ours? Cub persisted. Could it be that when it tries to consume us, it is really seeking intellectual dialogue, not aware that we do not integrate physically as it does?

OX had to allow that possibility, also. Still, he pointed out, it remains a deadly enemy to us all because we don't integrate as mechanical components. We can never afford to let down our guard.

Ox by Piers Anthony

But long after that dialogue, his circuits fibrillated with the intemperate concept. A machine, seeking intellectual dialogue. A machine!

Chapter 11

HEXAFLEXAGON

11

They emerged into a blinding blizzard. Snow blasted Veg's face, and the chill quickly began its penetration of his body. He was not adequately dressed.

Tamme turned to him, showing mild irritation. "Why did you come?" she demanded.

He tried to shrug, but it was lost in his fierce shivering. He did not really understand his own motive, but it had something to do with her last-minute display of decency. And with her beauty and his need to disengage irrevocably from Aquilon.

Tamme removed her skirt, did something to it, and put it about his shoulders. He was too cold to protest. "This is thermal," she said. "Squat down, hunch up tight. It will trap a mass of warm air, Eskimo-style. Face away from the wind. Duck your head down; I'll cover it." And she removed her halter, formerly her blouse, adjusted it, and fashioned it into a protective hood.

He obeyed but did finally get out a word, "You—"

"I'm equipped for extremes," she said. "You aren't. I can survive for an hour or more naked in this environment—longer with my undergarments. So can you—if you just sit tight under that cloak.

After that, we'll both exercise vigorously. We have to stretch it out three hours, until the projector brings us back. We'll make it—though for once I wish I'd set it for the minimum safe-return time."

He nodded miserably. "Sorry. I didn't know—"

"That you would only be in the way? I knew—but I also knew your motive, confused as it might be, was good. You have courage and ethics, not because you've been programmed for them, but because you are naturally that way. Perhaps agents should be more like that." She paused, peering around.

Snowflakes were hung up on her eyebrows, making little visors. "I'll make a shelter. Maybe we won't have to go back."

He watched her move about, seemingly at ease in the tempest... in her bra and slip. He was chagrined to be so suddenly, so completely dependent on a woman, especially in what he had thought of as a man's natural element: wilderness. But she was quite a woman!

Tamme made the shelter. She cleared the loose snow away, baring a nether layer of packed snow and ice, a crust from some prior melting and refreezing. She used one of her weapons, a small flame Ox by Piers Anthony

thrower, to cut blocks of this out. Soon she had a sturdy ice wall.

"Here," she directed.

He obeyed, moving jerkily into the shelter of the hole behind the wall. The wind cut off. Suddenly he felt much better. The cloak was warm; once the wind stopped wrestling with it, stealing the heated air from the edges, he was almost comfortable. He held it close about his neck, trapping that pocket of heat. But his feet were turning numb.

Tamme built the wall around him, curving it inward until she formed a dome. It was an igloo!

"I think you'll manage now," she said. "Let me have my clothing; I want to look about."

She crawled into the igloo beside him while he fumbled with cloak and hood. And she stripped off her underclothing.

Veg stared. She was an excellent specimen of womanhood, of course; not lush but perfectly proportioned, with no fat where it didn't belong. Every part of her was lithe and firm and feminine.

But that was not what amazed him.

Strapped to her body was an assortment of paraphernalia. Veg recognized the holster for the flame thrower she had just used: It attached to her hip where a bikini would have tied—a place always covered without seeming to be, filling a hollow to round out the hip slightly. There was another holster, perhaps for the laser, on the other hip. An ordinary woman would have padded that region with a little extra avoirdupois; Tamme's leanness only served to delineate her muscular structure without at all detracting from her allure. There was similar structures near her waist, which was in fact more slender than it had seemed. And at the undercurves of her breasts.

How artfully she had hidden her weaponry while seeming to reveal all! Her thighs had seemed completely innocent under her skirt as she came down the pine tree. And who would have thought that the cleavage of her bosom had been fashioned by the push of steel weapons so close below! Had she been ready to make love to him that way, armed to the...?

"No, I'd have set aside the weapons," she said. "Can't ever tell where a man's hands may go."

She tore the bra, slip, and panties apart, then put them back together a different way. Evidently she could instantly remake all her clothing for any purpose—functional, seductive, or other. He had no doubt it could be fashioned into a rope to bind a captive or to scale a cliff. And of course her blouse had become first a revealing halter, then a hood for his head.

The female agent was every bit as impressive as the male agent! It was an excellent design.

"Thanks," Tamme said.

She donned her revised underthings, once more covering the artillery. Veg now understood about her weight: She probably weighed a hundred and fifteen stripped but carried forty pounds of hardware.

She held out her hand unself-consciously. Hastily he passed the cloak and hood across and watched Ox by Piers Anthony

her convert them back into skirt and blouse. But not the same design as before; the skirt was now longer for protection against the storm, and the blouse closed in about her neck, showing no breast.

Quite a trick!

She scrambled out the igloo door and disappeared into the buzzard. While she was gone, Veg chafed his limbs and torso to warm them and marveled at the situation in which he found himself. He had gone from Earth to Paleo, the first alternate; then to Desertworld, the second alternate. And on to Cityworld, Forestworld, and now to Blizzard—the third, fourth, and fifth, respectively. Now he was huddled here, shivering, dependent on a woman—while all alternity beckoned beyond!

How had they come here, really? Who had left the aperture projector so conveniently? It smelled of a trap. As did the blizzard. But for Tamme's strength and resourcefulness, it could have been a death trap.

Yet death would have been more certain if the aperture had opened over the brink of a cliff or before the mouth of an automatically triggering cannon.

No—that would have been too obvious. The best murder was the one that seemed accidental. And of course their immediate peril might well be accidental. Surely this storm was not eternal; this world must have a summer as well as a winter and be calm between altercations of weather. Tamme had said the projector could have been left five days ago. This storm was fresh. So maybe another agent had passed this way, leaving his projector behind as Tamme had left hers at Cityworld.

That meant the other agent was still around here somewhere. And that could be trouble. Suppose the agent overcame Tamme and stranded Veg here alone? She was tough and smart—and mighty pretty!—but another agent would have the same powers. Unless—

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!"

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"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."

Ox by Piers Anthony

"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 Ox by Piers Anthony

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 alternates—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.

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"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, Ox by Piers Anthony

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 Ox by Piers Anthony

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?

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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.

The next flex brought up 3 again. Then 2. And 1.

"Back to where we started," he said. And changed diagonals. A blank face appeared, which he marked 5. Then on through 2, 1, 3, and finally to the last blank one, 6.

"Those loops are only closed if you let them," he said with satisfaction. "I'd forgotten how much fun these hexes were! You can tell where you are because the faces change orientation."

Then the realization hit him.

"Hey, Tam!" he breathed.

He had spoken no louder than before, and the volume of the ambient music had not abated, but she opened her eyes immediately. "Yes?"

"Maybe this is a bum lead—but I think I know why we're repeating worlds. And maybe how to snap out of the loop in controlled fashion."

She sat effortlessly, the muscles in her stomach tightening. "Speak."

He showed her his plastic construct, opaque because of its many layers. "You know what this is?"

"A doodle from plane-frame material."

"A hexa-hexaflexagon. See, I flex it like this and turn up new faces."

She took it and flexed it. "Clever. But to what point?"

"Well, they don't come up in order—not exactly. Look at the face numbers as you go—and at the composition of the repeats."

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"One," she called off. She flexed. "Three... Two... One... Five... Two, inverted." She looked up. "It's a double triad. Intriguing, not remarkable."

"Suppose we numbered the worlds we've been going through—and found a repeat that was backwards? I mean, the same, but like a mirror image?"

For the first time, he saw an agent do a double take. "The second blizzard was backwards!" she exclaimed. "Or rather, twisted sixty degrees. The igloo—the irregularities in it and pattern of our prior tracks, what was left of them, the projector—all rotated by a third!"

"Yeah. That's what I figured. Didn't make sense at first."

"Flexing alternates! Could be." Rapidly she flexed through the entire sequence, fixing the pattern in her mind. "It fits. We could be in a six-face scheme on this framework. In that case our next world will be—the forest." She certainly caught on rapidly! "But we can't go home from there."

"No. The face will be twisted, part of a subtriad. But we would know our route."

"Yeah," he agreed, pleased.

She pondered momentarily. "There's no reason the alternates should match the hex faces. But there is a clear parallelism, and it may be a useful intellectual tool, in much the way mathematics is a tool for comprehending physical relations. Our problem is to determine the validity of our interpretation without subjecting ourselves to undue risk."

"You sound like Cal now!"

"No shame in that," she muttered. "Your friend has a freakishly advanced intellect. We could travel the loop again just to make sure—but that would mean a delay of several hours, waiting for the projectors to recharge. In that time our competition could gain the advantage."

"So we just go ahead fast," Veg finished. "We can follow the flex route and see if it works. If it does, we've got our map of alternity."

"In your bumbling male-normal fashion, you may have helped me," Tamme said. "Come here." Veg knelt down beside her.

She put both hands to his head, pulled him to her, and kissed him. It was like the moment in free fall when a spaceship halted acceleration in order to change orientation. His whole body seemed to float, while his own pulse pounded in his ears.

She let him go. It took him a moment to regain composure. "That isn't the way you kissed me before."

"That was demonstration. This was feeling."

"You do feel? I thought—"

"We do feel. But our emotions are seldom aroused by normals other than amusement or distaste."

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Veg realized that he had been paid an extraordinary compliment. But that was all it was. He had helped her, and she was appreciative. She had repaid him with a professionally executed gesture.

Case dismissed.

"We should have a choice here," she said. "Repeat the triad indefinitely—or break out of it. Only way to break out is to project elsewhere than to the plane world. But how can we do that—without interfering with the settings on the projector?"

Veg appreciated the problem. Touch those settings, and they could be thrown right out of this hex framework and be totally lost—or dead. That would accomplish nothing worthwhile. They wanted to follow the existing paths wherever they led, and catch up to—whom?

"These settings are built into the hexaflexagon," he said. "All you have to do is find them."

"Yes. Too bad alternity isn't made of folded plastic."

They remained in silence for a time, while the music swelled around them. And Veg had a second revelation. "The music!"

Again she caught on almost as fast as he thought of it and quickly outdistanced his own reasoning.

"In phase with the music! Of course. Catch it during one type of passage, go on to Plane. Catch it during another—"

"Now's the time!" Veg cried.

They ran to the projector. Tamme had it on instantly.

And they were in the forest.

"Victory!" Veg exclaimed happily. Then he looked about uncertainly. "But is it—?"

"Yes, it is rotated," Tamme said. "So it is part of a different triad. There'll be another odd-handed projector here."

They located it, and it was. "Hypothesis confirmed," she said. "Now if our interpretation is correct, we won't have to worry about being sent back to Blizzard because this inverted version is part of a different loop. The next one should be new. Brace yourself." She reached for the switch.

"Sure thing," Veg said. "I'm braced for one new world."

It was new, all right. Veg's first impression was of mist. They stood in a tangibly thick fog. He coughed as the stuff clogged his lungs. It wasn't foul, just too solid to breathe.

"Get down," Tamme said.

He dropped to the ground. There was a thin layer of clear atmosphere there, below the fog bank, like Ox by Piers Anthony

air trapped beneath river ice. He put his pursed lips to it and sucked it in.

"Crawl," she said, her voice muffled by the fog.

They crawled, shoving aside the fog with their shoulders. Suddenly the ground dipped—but the bottom of the fog remained constant. It was too stiff to match the exact contour of the land. Now there was squatting clearance beneath, then standing room.

"That's some cloud!" Veg remarked, peering up. The stuff loomed impenetrably, a pall that blacked out all the sky. Wan light diffused through it. "Stuff's damn near solid!"

"You liked it better under the pine tree?" Tamme inquired. She was already looking for the next projector.

"Sure did!" He had the nagging feeling the fog bank could fall at any moment, crushingly.

A valley opened out before them. Tamme stared.

Veg followed her gaze. "A fog house?" he asked, amazed.

It was. Blocks of solidified fog had been assembled into something very like a cabin, complete with slanting, overlapping fog tiles on the roof. Beyond it was a fog wall or fence.

"This we have to look into," Tamme said. She moved toward the house.

A curtain of fog parted, showing a doorway and a figure in it. "Inhabited yet," Tamme murmured.

Her hands did not move to her weapons, but Veg knew she was ready to use them instantly.

"Let's go ask directions," he suggested facetiously.

"Yes." And she moved forward.

"Hey, I didn't mean—" But he knew that she had known what he meant since she could read his emotions. Awkwardly, he followed her.

Up close, there was another shock. The inhabitant of the house was a human female of middle age but well preserved—with a prehensile nose.

Veg tried not to stare. The woman was so utterly typical of what he thought of as a frontier housewife—except for that proboscis. It twined before her face like a baby elephant trunk. It made her more utterly alien than a battery of other nonhuman features might have—because it occupied the very center of attention. It was repulsively fascinating.

Tamme seemed not to notice. "Do you understand my speech? she inquired sociably.

The woman's nose curled up in a living question mark.

Tamme tried a number of other languages, amazing Veg by her proficiency. Then she went into signs. Now the woman responded. "Hhungh!" she snorted, her nose pointing straight out for a moment.

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"Projector," Tamme said. "Alternates." She shaped the projector with her hands.

The woman's nose scratched her forehead meditatively. "Hwemph?"

"Flex," Veg put in, holding out the hexaflexagon.

The woman's eyes lighted with comprehension. "Hflehx!" she repeated. And her nose pointed to the fog bank from which they had emerged, a little to the side.

"Hthankhs," Veg said, smiling.

The woman smiled back. "Hshugh."

Veg and Tamme turned back toward the fog. "Nice people," Veg remarked, not sure himself how he intended it.

"There have been others before us," Tamme said. "The woman had been instructed to play dumb, volunteering nothing. But we impressed her more favorably than did our predecessors, so she exceeded her authority and answered, after all."

"How do you know all that?" But as he spoke, he remembered. "You can read aliens, too! Because they have emotions, same as us."

"Yes. I was about to initiate hostile-witness procedures, but you obviated the need."

"Me and my flexagon!"

"You and your direct, naïve, country-boy manner, lucking out again." She shook her head. "I must admit: Simplicity has its place. You are proving to be a surprising asset."

"Shucks, 'taint nothin'," Veg said with an exaggerated drawl.

"Of course, our predecessors were the same: Tamme and Veg. That's why they obtained her cooperation."

"I noticed she wasn't surprised to see us. I guess our noses look amputated."

"Truncated. Yes."

He laughed. "Now she's punning. Truncated trunks!"

They were at the fog bank. "Stand here. I need another orientation point. The projector will be within a radius of twenty meters, or about sixty feet."

"You sure can read a lot from one nose-point!"

She plunged into the bank. The stuff was so thick that her passage left a jagged hole, as if she had gone through a wall of foam. It bled into the air from the edges, gradually filling in behind her.

"Talk," Tamme said from the interior. "The sound will help me orient on it, by the echo."

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It figured. She didn't ask him to talk because of any interest in what he might have to say! "This place reminds me of Nacre in a way. That was all fog, too. But that was thinner, and it was everywhere, made by falling particles. The real plant life was high in the sky, the only place the sun shone; down below was nothing but fungus, and even the animals were really fungus, like the mantas. So it wasn't the same."

There was no response from the bank, so he continued. "You know, I read a story about a fog like this once. It was in an old science-fiction book, the kind they had in midcentury; I saw a replica printed on paper pages and everything. This thick fog came in wherever the sun didn't shine—they spelled it 'phog'—and inside it was some kind of predator you never saw that ate people. It never left the fog—but nobody dared go in the fog, either. All they heard was the scream when it caught somebody—"

"YAAAGH!"

Veg's mouth gaped. "Oh, no!" He plunged into the fog, knife in hand.

A hand caught his wrist and hauled him back out. "Next time don't try to tease an agent," Tamme said, setting him down. "I found the projector."

"Sure thing," he said, chagrined. Still, it was the first clear evidence of humor he had seen in her.

"Crawl under," Tamme said.

They crawled under the fog, snatching lungfuls of clear air from the thin layer on the ground. The projector was there.

"Not far from where we landed," Tamme said. "But the pattern is not consistent enough to be of much aid. We still have to search out the projector on each new world and figure out the mechanism for breaking out of loops. I don't like that."

Veg shrugged noncommittally. Except for Blizzard, he hadn't minded the searches. But of course if there were danger, they would not be able to afford much delay. "With the hexaflexagon, you can run through every face just by flexing the same diagonal as long as it will go. When it balks, you switch to the next. So maybe if we just keep going straight ahead, we'll get there, anyway."

Tamme sat up. She did not seem to be bothered by fog in her lungs. "We'll play it that way. If we get caught in a repeating loop, we'll look for something to change. Meanwhile, I want a concurring opinion."

"Another man-versus-tiger choice?"

She brought out a slip of paper. "Call off the order of your hexaflexagon faces."

Veg, hunched nose down to the ground to avoid the fog, was surprised at this request. Tamme knew the order that the faces appeared; she had flexed through them, and agents had eidetic recall. He could only confirm the obvious! But he brought out his toy and went through the whole pattern, calling off the numbers. "One. Five. Two. One. Three. Six. One. Three. Two. Four. Three. Two.

Ox by Piers Anthony

One."

Tamme made a diagram of lines and numbers and little directional arrows. "This is triangular," she said. "A three-faced hexaflexagon would simply go around the central triangle. Your six-faced one adds on to the angles. Would you agree to the accuracy of this diagram?"

She showed him what she had drawn.

Diagram

Veg traced around it, starting from the northwest face 1. "One, five, two, one, three—yeah, that's the order. Makes sense of it finally!"

Tamme nodded. He could barely make out her gesture since her head was almost concealed by the fog. "As I make it, we actually started on Five, the City. That would make Two the Forest, One the Blizzard, Three the Orchestra, Six the Planes, and back to our first repeat, One/Blizzard. Then repeat Three/Orchestra. And repeat Two/Forest And now face Four/Fog."

"I guess so," Veg said, having trouble keeping up. "We're here now."

"Our next stop should be repeat Three/Orchestra—this time twisted because it is on a separate loop.

Then on to Two/Forest, One/Blizzard, and home to Five/City."

"It figures," he said. "We've used up all the faces."

"In which case we'll be back where we started—closed loop, and nobody but ourselves."

"I guess so, right now. The others must have gotten off. Is that bad?"

"I can't buy it. Who set up all these other projectors?"

Veg shook his head. "Got me there! If they'd gotten off, they'd have taken back their projectors—so they must be still on. And there can't be six Vegs and six Tammes." He sobered. "Or can there?"

"Suppose your hexaflexagon had twelve faces?"

"Sure. There can be any number of faces if you start with a long enough strip of triangles and fold it right."

"A twelve-face construction would merely add one new face to each of the six exterior angles," she said.

Veg shrugged. "I'll take your word. I'd have to make a live hexaflexagon to check it out myself."

" Don't take my word. Make your construction."

"Here? Now? Why not get to a better alternate to—"

"No."

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"I don't have anything to—"

She took apart the six-faced hexaflexagon, straightened out the long folded strip of plastic, pried at the edge with a small knife that appeared in her hand, and peeled it into two layers lengthwise. She produced a little vial of clear fluid, applied it to the edges, and glued the strips together endwise. The result was a double-length strip.

Veg sighed. He took it and folded it carefully. He made a flat spiral so that the double length became the size of the original but with two layers instead of one. Then he fashioned a normal hexaflexagon.

"Run through it and number your faces," Tamme said.

"Okay." This was a more complicated process, involving thirty flexes, but in due course he had it.

Meanwhile, Tamme had been making a new diagram.

"Now start at face One and flex," she said. "I will call off your numbers in advance. Five."

He flexed. "Five it is."

"Seven."

He flexed again. "Right."

"One."

"Right again. Hey, let me see that diagram!"

She showed it to him. It was an elaborated version of the prior one, with new triangles projecting from each of the six outer points. One angle of each of the outermost triangles carried the number of a new face, bringing the total to twelve.

They flexed through the rest of the construct. It matched the diagram.

"As I make it," Tamme said, "We could be on this one instead of the six-faced one. In that case our starting point would be Seven, followed by One, Five, Two, Eight, Five, Two, One, and now Three.

If so, both our next two stops may be new worlds, Six and Nine."

"Instead of repeats!" Veg said. "That's the proof right there. All we need to do is try it. If we don't like the new ones, we just skip on to Three, there in the loop—that's here. Our map is still good."

"Unless this is actually a mere subsection of an infinitely large configuration," she cautioned. "In that case, it is only a hint of a route through it. But we could probably find our way back, though there is no longer any way to travel back the way we came." She paused, peering at him through the mist. "If something should happen to me, you use this diagram to return to your friends in the City."

"Not without you," he said.

"Touching sentiment. Forget it. Your philosophy is not mine. I will leave you instantly if the need arises."

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"Maybe so," Veg said uncomfortably. "So far there hasn't been any real trouble. Maybe there won't be."

"I rate the odds at four to one there will be," she said. " Someone set up these projectors, and in at least one case it was another agent just like me. Of course I'm used to dealing with agents just like me—but they have been Tara, Tania, and Taphe, not alternate Tamme's. I mean to find that other agent and kill her. That will be difficult."

"Yeah. Different philosophies," Veg said. He knew she read the disapproval in him. Maybe it would be better to leave her if it came to that.

"Precisely," Tamme said. And activated the projector.

They were in a curving hall. Checkerboard tiles were on the floor and a similar but finer pattern on the flat ceiling. The walls were off-white. Light shone down from regularly spaced squares in the ceiling pattern. It was comfortably warm, and the air was breathable.

"So you were right," Veg said. "A new alternate, a larger pattern. No telling how many agents in the woodwork."

"It is also possible that these are all settings on the same world," Tamme said. "That would account for the constancy of gravity, climate, and atmosphere."

"That blizzard wasn't constant!"

"Still within the normal temperature range."

"If they're all variations of Earth, that explains the gravity and climate. You said yourself they were different alternates. Trace distinctions in the air, or something."

"Yes. But perhaps I was premature. It could be as easy to regulate the air of a particular locale as to arrange for travel between alternates. Matter transmission from one point on the globe to another would cover it. I merely say that I am not sure we are actually—" She stopped. "Oh-oh."

Veg looked where she was looking but didn't see anything special. "What's up?"

"The walls are moving. Closing in."

He didn't see any difference but trusted her perception. He was not claustrophobic, but the notion made him nervous. "A mousetrap?"

"Maybe. We'd better locate that projector."

"There's only two ways to go. Why don't I go down here, and you go there? One of us is bound to find it."

"Yes," she said. There was a slight edge to her voice, as if she were nervous. That was odd because agents had excellent control. They were seldom if ever nervous, and if they were, they didn't show it.

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"Okay." He walked one way, and she went the other. But it nagged him: What was bothering her so much that even he could notice it?"

"Nothing," he muttered to himself. "If I pick it up, it's because she wants me to." But what was she trying to tell him?

He turned about to look back toward her. And stood transfixed.

The walls were moving—not slowly now but rapidly. They bowed out from either side between him and Tamme, compressing the hall alarmingly. "Hey!" he yelled, starting back.

Tamme had been facing away. Now she turned like an unwinding spring and ran toward him, so fast he was astonished. Her hair flew out in a straight line behind her. She approached at a good thirty miles an hour: faster than he had thought it possible for a human being on foot.

The walls accelerated. Tamme dived, angling through just as the gap closed. She landed on her hands, did a forward roll, and flipped to her feet. She came up to him, not even out of breath.

"Thanks."

"That mousetrap!" he said, shaken. "It almost got you!" Then: "Thanks for what?"

"For reacting in normal human fashion. The trap was obviously geared to your capacities, not mine.

That was what I needed to ascertain."

"But what was the point?"

"The object is to separate us, then deal with us at leisure. No doubt it feeds on animal flesh that it traps in this manner."

"A carnivorous world?" Veg felt an ugly gut alarm.

"Perhaps, or merely a prison, like the City. We see very little of the alternates we are visiting."

"I'm with you. Let's find the projector and get out!"

"It will have to be in a secure place—one that the walls can not impinge on."

"Yeah. Let's stay together, huh?"

"I never intended to separate," she said. "But I wasn't sure who might be listening."

Hence the edgy tone. He'd have to be more alert next time! "You figure it's intelligent?"

"No. Mindless, perhaps purely mechanical. But dangerous—in the fashion of a genuine mousetrap."

"Yeah—if you happen to be the mouse."

They moved on, together. The walls were animate now, shifting like the torso of a living python.

They pushed in—but the air in the passage compressed, preventing complete closure. There was always an exit for the air, and Veg and Tamme were able to follow it on out.

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"But watch out when you see any air vent or duct," Tamme warned. "There the walls could close in all the way quite suddenly because there would be an escape for the air."

Veg became extremely interested in air vents.

Sometimes they encountered a fork in the way and had to judge quickly which branch would lead to a broader hall. But now that they understood this region's nature, they were able to stay out of trouble.

"Hey—there it is!" he exclaimed. "The projector."

The walls were rolling back ahead of them, while closing in behind, as though herding them forward.

A projector had now been revealed. It was on wheels, and a metallic ring surrounded it.

"Clever," Tamme said. "Wheels and a circular guard so that it always moves ahead of the wall and can't be trapped or crushed. So long as the walls do not close precisely parallel—and that does not seem to be their nature—it will squirt out. See the bearings on the ring-guard." She moved toward it.

Veg put out his hand to stop her. "Cheese," he said.

She paused. "You have a certain native cunning. I compliment you."

"Another kiss will do."

"No. I am beginning to respect you."

Veg suffered a flush of confused emotion. She did not kiss those she respected? Because a kiss decreased it—or increased it? Or because her kisses were calculated sexual attractants, not to be used on friends? Was she becoming emotionally involved? This was more the way Aquilon reacted. The notion was exciting.

"The notion is dangerous," Tamme said, reading his sentiment. "You and I are not for each other on any but the purely physical level, strictly temporary. My memory of you will be erased when I am reassigned, but yours of me will remain. When emotion enters the picture, it corrupts us both. Love would destroy us."

"I'd risk it."

"You're a normal," she said with a hint of contempt. She turned to the projector. "Let's spring the mousetrap."

She brought a thread from somewhere in her uniform, then made a lasso. She dropped this over the switch, jerked it snug, then walked away. The thread stretched behind her, five paces, ten, fifteen.

"Hide your eyes," she said.

Veg put his arms up to cover both ears and eyes. He felt the movement as she tugged at the thread, turning on the projector.

Then he was on the floor. Tamme was picking him up. "Sorry," she said. "I miscalculated. That was Ox by Piers Anthony

an agent's trap."

"What?" He stared back down the hall, his memory coming back. There had been a terrific explosion, knocking him down—

"Directional charge. We were at the fringe of its effect. You bashed your head against the walls."

"Yeah." He felt the bump now. "Good thing that wall has some give. You people play rough."

"Yes. Unfortunately, I have been overlong on this mission. My orientation is suffering. I am making errors. A fresh agent would have anticipated both the trap and its precise application. I regret that my degradation imperiled your well-being."

"Mistakes are only human," he said, rubbing his head.

"Precisely." She set him on his feet. "I believe the blast stunned the walls temporarily. You should be safe here while I make a quick search."

"I like you better, human."

"Misery loves company. Stay."

"Okay." He felt dizzy and somewhat nauseous. He sat down and let his head hang.

"I'm back." He had hardly been aware of her absence!

She took him to a "constant" spot she had located: six metal rods imbedded in floor and ceiling, preventing encroachment. On a pedestal within that enclosure was another projector.

"This one is safe," Tamme said.

Veg didn't ask her how she knew. Probably it was possible to booby trap a projector to explode some time after use so that a real one could be dangerous, but that would be risky if the alternate-pattern brought the same person back again. Best not to mess with the real projectors at all! Like the way the desert Arabs never poisoned the water no matter how vicious the local politics got. Never could be sure who would need to drink next.

"I hope the next world is nicer," he said.

"Bound to be." She activated the device.

Chapter 12

CUB

Ox by Piers Anthony

12

Cub finished his meal of fruit, roots, and flesh. He had gorged himself in case it were long before he ate again. Beside him Ornet preened himself, similarly ready.

Dec sailed in from his last survey. By minute adjustments of his mantle he made the indication: All is well.

Cub raised his wing-limb, flexing the five featherless digits in the signal to OX: We are ready.

OX expanded. His sparkling presence surrounded them as it had so many times before. But this time it was special. The field intensified, lifted—and they were moving. Not through space; through time.

At first there was little change. They could see the green vegetation of the oasis and the hutch they had built there for shelter and comfort. Farther out there were the trenches and barriers they had made to foil the predator machine.

The machine. Mach, they called it. The thing had grown right along with them because it was part of the enclave OX had aged. It was a constant menace—yet Cub respected it, too, as a resourceful and determined opponent. Had it been in his power to destroy it, he would not have done so because without it the group would be less alert, less fit, and bored.

Do we need adversity to prosper? he asked himself, linking his fingers so that he would not inadvertently signal his thoughts to the others. Apparently so. That ever-present threat to survival had forced them all to advance much faster and better than they would have otherwise. Perhaps, ironically, it was the machine more than anything else that was responsible for their success as a group. This was a concept he knew the others would not understand, and perhaps it was nonsensical.

But intriguing. He valued intrigue.

Then the hutch vanished. The trees changed. They expanded, aged, and disappeared. New ones grew up, matured, passed. Then only shifting brush remained, and finally the region was a barren depression.

Cub moved his digits, twisting them in the language that Ornet, Dec, and OX understood. Our oasis has died, he signaled. The water sank, the soil dried, the plants died. We knew this would happen if we were not there to cultivate the plants and conserve the water they need. But in other frames water remains, for OX's elements remain.

A shoot formed within OX's field. This is temporal, it said, using its blinker language that they all understood. All alternates extend forward and back from any point. All are distinct, yet from any point they seem to show past and future because of the separation in duration between frames.

Obvious, Cub snapped with an impolite twitch of his fingers.

Ornet made a muffled squawk to show partial comprehension. He was a potent historian but not much for original conjecture. His language, also, was universally understood: Cub could hear it, Dec could see it, and OX could field the slight variations it caused in his network of elements.

Ox by Piers Anthony

Dec twitched his tail in negation: The matter was not of substantial interest to him.

I would include a geographic drift, OX's shoot flashed. But I am unable, owing to the limit of the enclave.

Nonsense, Cub responded. We're all advanced twenty years. In terms of real framework, we exist only theoretically—or perhaps it is the other way around—so we can travel on theoretical elements.

Theoretical elements? the shoot inquired.

Your elements were cleared out by the external patterns, Cub signaled. Once they were there, and once they will be there, instead of mere threads. They still exist, in alternate phases of reality, serving as a gateway to all the universe. Use them.

Theoretical elements? The shoot repeated.

Cub had little patience with the slowness of his pattern-friend. Make a circuit, he signaled, much as he would have told Ornet to scratch for arths if he were hungry. Analyze it. Accept this as hypothesis: We can theoretically travel on theoretical elements. There has to be an aspect of alternity where this is possible, for somewhere in alternity all things are possible. To us, geography may be fixed, for we are restricted to the enclave. Theoretically, that geography can change elsewhere in relation to ours just as time does. We have merely to invoke the frames where this is so.

Uncomprehending, OX made the circuit. Then he was able to accept it. Such travel was possible.

And—it was.

The geography changed as they slid across the aging world. They saw other oases growing and flexing.

Cub was surprised. He had been teasing OX, at least in part. He had not really believed such motions would work; the enclave isolation had prevented any real breakout before. But when OX made a circuit, OX became that circuit, and his nature and ability were changed.

Perhaps OX had at last transcended the abilities of the outside patterns. If so, a genuine breakout was now feasible. But Cub decided not to mention that yet, lest the outside patterns act to remedy that potential breach. It was not wise to give away your abilities to the enemy.

That was how they had given Mach the slip. Always before, OX had made certain preparatory circuits, which the machine had sensed. This time Cub had had OX make spurious shoot-circuits, deceiving Mach. Thus, when they were ready to move, the machine had thought it was another bluff and had not appeared.

But soon Cub became bored with flexing oases. Let's cut across the alternates, he signaled. See some really different variations. We can go anywhere now...

Another test—but OX obliged. The oasis in sight stopped growing and started changing. The green leaves on the trees turned brown; the brown bark turned red. The bases thickened, became bulbous.

Creatures appeared, rather developed from the semisentients already present. Like Ornet but with Ox by Piers Anthony

different beaks: tubular, pointed, which they plunged into the spongy trunks of the trees, drawing out liquid.

This was more like it! Cub watched, fascinated by sights he had never seen before and hardly imagined. A feast of experience!