She yielded, knowing he was right. "Then love me now, right now," she said, moving into his arms.

"What we defer today may never come tomorrow..."

Even the natives knew it was ending. Veg cut and hauled huge amounts of fog to make a new wall Ox by Piers Anthony

for their cattle, and Tamme took the children for walks through the forest, protecting them from the wild predators that lurked there. It was perhaps the only taste of woman's work she would ever experience.

On the day that Tamme decided, using cynical agent judgment, that she had regained ninety-five per cent of capacity, the hosts invited the neighbors for a party. They ate fog delicacies and sang nasal foghorn songs and played with the hexaflexagons Veg made, and in its simple fashion it was a lot of fun.

In the evening she and Veg walked out, holding hands like young lovers. "One thing nags me," he said. "Tamme Two could have killed you, couldn't she? After you fell down, and she put the knife in you, she just turned away. I wasn't sure which of you had won. But she could tell us apart—I guess it was by our reactions, and I still had the burn marks of the rope on me—and she looked at me, for all the world just like you, but sharper somehow—even before the fight, you had gentled some—and she said I was the enemy. I guess she was going to kill me, and she sure as hell had little conscience about it, but my double wouldn't let her." He paused, smiling reminiscently. "I sort of like that guy, you know! He has guts and conscience. He told me during the fight that he had to stay with his own, but he wished Tamme Two was more like you and hoped she'd get that way. So it wasn't just the knife in your head that changed you; you were getting there on your own.

"So they projected out, and I went down to find you. I thought sure you were dead. But you'd hung up on a crossbar with that knife in your hand. I guess you'd yanked it out somehow. You were hardly even bleeding."

"Agents are tough," she said. "I shut off the blood and went into what we call repair-shock. I don't remember it; the process is automatic. Actually, the damage was too extensive; I would not have survived without help."

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

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

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

"Who?"

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

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

Ox by Piers Anthony

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

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

"I do remember—some," she said.

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

"You wanted the moon."

"I knew I couldn't have it."

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

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

They returned to the fog house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I guess not," he agreed, shaking his head. "Sounded like you and that machine-hive chitchat.

Hey—this is a good place to leave that lentil!"

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

"The gourmet who eats that crab will get a surprise!" Veg said, chuckling. Then he turned serious.

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"What do we do now? There may be thousands of agents here. We can't fight them all!"

"I have lost my taste for fighting."

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

"We go to the wavorium."

"I feel dizzy," he muttered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

earlier experience is illusory."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"By no means, ladies," Taler said quickly. "I merely point out that there seems to be a bias here in favor of male-female pairings—yet chance would have had only four such couples out of every nine.

This suggests that our gathering has been selected from a larger pool. There must be hundreds of couples, traveling in both directions. We represent a selected cross-section."

Veg was looking at the Tamme/Aquilon couple. "That's as pretty a set as you'll ever see," he murmured.

"So there may be an infinite number on the treadmill," another Tamme said. "We can work it out by ourselves—but that's just a fraction. Useless."

"Yet there is a frame for each couple—somewhere," a Taner pointed out. "A one-to-one ratio. No need to compete."

The Tamme disagreed. "We can't pinpoint our exact alternates or guarantee that others will. Some would be missed; others would get half a dozen couples. Just as we find ourselves doubling up right here. That will play merry hell with the equality of alternates. Some governments will catch on no matter what we report. Then—"

"Then war between the frames," Tamme murmured to herself, and heard the others coming to the Ox by Piers Anthony

same conclusion. All agents' minds worked similarly, of course.

"Whose world would be ravaged?" Taler asked rhetorically. "Mine? Yours? I don't care about the others, but I want my own left alone even if I don't return to it."

"We can't guarantee that any alternate is left alone—the moment one government catches on to the exploitative potential of alternity, the lid's off," the Tamme said. "We all know what our governments are like."

"Omnivores!" an Aquilon cried with feeling. "Ravening omnivores!"

"We are omnivores, too," Taler said. "We are all killers at heart." He raised his left arm. He wore long sleeves; now the cloth fell away to reveal a stump. His arm had been amputated at the elbow.

"An alternate Taler—myself!—did this to me. I was lucky to escape with my life, and as it was, I spent some time recuperating. If it had not been for my normal companion—" He smiled, glancing at another Aquilon, who lowered her eyes demurely—"Well, let's check this out here and now. How many couples met their doubles on the way here?"

All hands went up.

Taler nodded. "I thought so. Many of you conceal your injuries well—but every agent here lost to his exact counterpart, correct?" There was agreement. "Received a head injury—a bad one?" Again, agreement. "We represent the natural selection of that fragment of the circuit that met their doubles—and lost, and so were delayed for recovery. Out of all the other possibilities happening elsewhere. So we know first hand: We are omnivores, destroying even ourselves. Yet it seems that the male-female aspect enhanced the chances of survival as though something more than mere competence were operant. We may have redeeming qualities." He paused. "And how many of us—remember?"

All the agents' hands went up, including Tamme's own.

Veg turned to her. He was half amazed, half furious. All about them the other normals were facing their agents with the same question. Even the Aquilon with the chairman-Taler was on her feet, her pretty mouth open accusingly. "You remember? "

Veg saw the universal reaction. Suddenly he laughed—and so did the others. "Wait till I get you alone!" he said.

"We are not as we were," Taler said over the hubbub. "We lost—but we won. I tell the world, I tell alternity: I remember Budge, the lonely orphan boy, condemned as economically unsalvageable. I am Budge."

Tamme stared at him. Taler had gone normal!

All around the wavorium others were staring.

"But I am also Taler," the agent continued. "Converted from unfit normal to fit agent. Veteran of seven anonymous missions, killer of men, competent liar, lover, philosopher—"

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"Amen!" his Aquilon said.

"I remember both heaven and hell," Taler continued. "I am heaven and hell, and now purgatory— as are we all."

"This is intriguing, and it would be entertaining to compare notes—but we must complete our missions," an alternate Tamme said. "Or agree not to..."

Taler nodded. "If no one returns to a given world, the government is unlikely to expend more agents in such hazardous exploration. Paleo is not secure, owing to the presence of the manta's spores; the desert world has the known menace of the wild machines and the unknown menace of the sparkle cloud. So long as they have no hint of what lies beyond the sparkle, they will not pursue it further. It wouldn't be economic."

"If no one returns..." It was another general murmur. The Cal spoke again. "The matter is academic.

The option is not ours. We were conveyed to this framework of frames by pattern-entities, and we have virtually no chance to locate our original worlds—Desert, Paleo, or Earth—without the intercession of these entities. We are in their power, confined to these worlds at their pleasure." Taler looked about. He sighed. "Any refutation?" There was none.

"Then I suggest we return to our points of entry into this alternate-pattern, rejoin our original companions, and wait on the pleasure of the sparkle entities. They appear to have protected us from ourselves, and perhaps that is best."

"But what if we return to the wrong companions by mistake?" his Aquilon asked.

"Then, my dear, we shall treat them as we would our right companions. We have had enough of misunderstanding and violence." He looked about and again discovered no refutation. "Meeting adjourned."

Veg turned to Tamme. "But why did that other Tamme attack us? If they were at this meeting—or one like it—she would have known there was no percentage in fighting."

"Their meeting differed from ours," she said. "They had not been injured in battles with their doubles, and perhaps there were no Cals to clarify matters. They must have decided that it was each frame for itself. There must be many like that, still out to terminate the opposition—as I was at the start. Before I went normal."

"Yeah." He faced about. "Let's go."

"Don't you want to chat with Cal and Aquilon?"

"Yeah—but I'm afraid you'll take off with the wrong Veg again."

She laughed—but realized it wasn't funny to him. The presence of his friends, who he knew were not his original ones, made him nervous.

They had to wait their turn for use of the projector. There were actually many projectors here, but the Ox by Piers Anthony

others were labeled for other loops, and further exploration seemed pointless. Meanwhile, the bazaar was fascinating.

Then on through to the—

—Jungle gym, this time encountering no opposition;—

—the fog world, for a brief reunion with their friends there;—

—the orchestra,—

—and the forest.

"Before we go on," Veg said. "About remembering—"

"Yes," she said. She had known this was coming and was prepared. "There is something you should know. I am strong again, but I am changed, as Taler is, as all of us at the meeting are. I have full emotional control, but it is as though my program has been modified—and can not now be reverted to the original. Not without erasure and resetting—which seem unlikely in view of events."

He watched her, the wild hope coalescing. "Then—"

"I still love you," she said.

"But I thought—"

"I said I had recovered control. I knew that if I died, or if we were separated, it would be best that you not know the truth. And there was still substantial risk of such an outcome. Therefore, I exercised that control to protect the one I loved." She lowered her eyes. "I did what I felt was necessary. I did not enjoy it. Now I know we shall be together. I shall not again conceal my feeling from you. But I must advise you that my love is now as fixed as my prior conditioning. I shall not be casually set aside."

"That's for sure!" he agreed. He looked at his hexaflexagon. "Next world's Blizzard, then back to the City. We don't have to rush it."

"We'll never have to rush it," she agreed.

Chapter 16

Ox by Piers Anthony

REQUISITION

16

They emerged in single file from the indoctrination suite: twenty-four agents of the TE series.

Eighteen were male, six female.

The inspection party consisted of ranking execs from industry: Steel, Atomics, Transport, Fuel, and Construction. They were all portly, wealthy, powerful, conservatives who were not to be trifled with—no, not for an instant. The ire of any one of them could cost the Sec his position within the hour, and so he was unusually accommodating. In fact, he was obsequious.

"The agent program is the finest investigative and first-line remedial service ever conceived or implemented," the Sec said to the visitors. "The computer itself processes them, giving them a common store of information, guiding their attitudes: We call it 'set.' The individual agents are like extensions of the machine, each reacting to any situation exactly as programmed to react. That way the computer needs to make no allowance for human variability, subjectivity, distortion. All that has been pre-compensated in the program; one agent's report is exactly like another's."

Transport shook his head in seeming perplexity: a deceptive gesture, as none of the execs were stupid. "Surely this is not feasible; every mission any agent goes out on represents new and different experience. He would soon differ from his companions by that degree. We are what we experience."

The Sec smiled ingratiatingly. "Of course, sir. The computer has taken this into consideration.

Therefore, every agent is reprocessed after each mission. His individual memories are erased, and he is restored to the programmed set for his series. These TE's are an example; they have just been—"

Fuel shook his head. "Memory can't be erased. It is a chemical process spread throughout the brain.

You'd have to destroy the whole—"

The Sec coughed. "Well, I am not conversant with the technical details. Perhaps it is merely repression. But it is a repression that it would take brain surgery to abate. I assure you, no agent is put in the field unless his set is correct. The computer—"

"Brain surgery?" Fuel inquired. "I'll bet a severe shock could scramble—"

"I'd like to question one of those retreads," Transport said. "Or would that distort that delicate 'set'?"

"Of course not," the Sec said, ruffled. "You are welcome to interview this batch." He touched a stud.

"Send a premission TE to the exec tour observatory," he said. The first agent in the line detached himself and came to the observatory. He was a handsome man, exactly like his companions except for the details of hue and feature: eyes, hair, nose, mouth, ears. Each varied just enough to provide that superficial individuality the public notion required while making it plain that he was a nearly identical twin to the other members of his series. Even his blood type matched, and his fingerprints—with that same minute variation. He was powerfully built and extremely well coordinated: a superman in many respects. "I am Teban," he said with a slight inclination of the head.

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The Sec nodded in return, not bothering to introduce himself. "Each agent has a three-letter designation. The first two indicate the particular series; the third identifies the individual. The remaining letters are merely cosmetic, to offer a humanizing aspect. Thus, this is Series TE, individual B: TEBan. We employ the eighteen most adaptable consonants for the individual names, B, D, F, H—"

"You missed C," Construction protested wryly.

"C is not one of the preferred letters," Teban interposed smoothly. "It may be rendered soft as in 'cent'

or hard as in 'cock.' Therefore it is not—"

"What?" the exec interrupted, reddening.

"Soft cent, hard cock," the agent repeated. "I am certain you heard me the first time."

The Sec stepped in hastily. "A 'cent' is an archaic unit of currency. A 'cock' is a male fowl, a rooster.

Our agents are well versed in—"

"Any intelligent person is," Teban said.

"I believe we should question another individual," Steel said.

"Yes, of course," the Sec agreed. He gestured to Teban, who turned smartly and departed. In a moment he was replaced by another agent, so like him it was disconcerting.

"I am Teddy."

"Series TE, individual D, suffix DY," the Sec explained.

The agent turned to him, raising one eyebrow. "These people are well familiar with the pattern," he said. "In fact, they consider you to be a somewhat inept official due for replacement and would prefer to interview me directly."

"Right on the mark," Steel muttered.

"Ah, er, yes," the Sec agreed wanly. "Our agents are trained to interpret the nuances of human involuntary body language."

Steel ignored him. He turned to Teddy. "We are told you are preformed, like an ingot, to rigid tolerance. High-grade, invariable. That you have no prior memories of your own personal experience.

Is this true?"

"No."

Fuel smiled. "Aha!"

"We already have proof it isn't true," Construction said. "This one reacted differently from the first.

So they aren't all alike."

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"We're alike," Teban said. "In the interval between interviews, you changed. So I responded differently."

"But you said you had no prior personal memories," Steel said. "I mean, that you do."

"All of us have the same personal memories."

Steel nodded. "What do you remember?"

An obscure expression crossed Teddy's face. "Naked breasts, spread thighs straddling a cello.

Beautiful music. Guilt, urgency, Frustration."

Steel glanced at his companions obliquely. "Most interesting programming!"

Transport stepped forward. "Where and when did you observe this nude musician?"

"Time and geography are not readily defined in the frames of alternity," Teddy said. "We are twenty years out of phase, so could not interact."

"Alternity? Phase?" Atomic asked. "Now don't explode, 'Tomic," Steel said with a vulpine smile.

"Let's interview another agent. This has been most informative and may become more so."

Teddy departed. Another agent appeared. "I am Texas."

Steel made a gesture to quiet his companions. "Please define alternity."

"The entire fabric of probability," Texas replied. "This world is but a single frame of an infinite framework."

"And on these other frames are naked female musicians?"

"On one frame among the myriads."

"What else is there—in alternity?"

"Translucent planes. Technicolor blizzards. Edible fog. Alien creatures. Bazaar. Forest. Carnivorous walls. Machine-hive. Element plants. Çatal Huyuk."

"Send in another agent," Steel said brusquely. "A female," Transport added, and the other execs nodded agreement. The Sec merely stood as if frozen.

She arrived: supple, buxom, attractive. Her hair and eyes were brown but not intensely so; pretty as she was, it would have been hard to describe her precisely after a casual encounter. "I am Terri."

"Have you seen," Steel asked carefully, "a nude female cellist?"

She eyed him archly. "Of course not."

"Your male companions seem to have had other experience. A different 'set'?"

"They were referring to the program," she said. "The computer provides a common set. That does not Ox by Piers Anthony

mean we have actually seen these things, only that we remember them. I am certain my brothers informed you it was a memory, not an experience. However, if you are really interested in this type of thing, I will fetch a cello and—"

"I believe it is time to interview the computer itself," Fuel said. "It occurs to me that a great deal of money has been foolishly spent."

Now the Sec summoned the courage of desperation. "Sirs, something has obviously gone wrong with the program. We never—"

"Never checked the program?" Fuel inquired. "Or never thought we'd check it?"

"The agent program has been inadequately supervised from the start," Terri said. "It would be simple for us to assume control of the government, and perhaps the time has come."

Steel turned to the Sec. "Are there no safeguards in the program?"

"Of course there are!" the Sec said nervously. "Agents of all series are specifically directed to preserve the status quo. They—"

" Are they?" Steel demanded of Terri.

"Not when the status quo is obviously a liability to the welfare of the species," she said.

Now the glances the execs exchanged were as nervous as those of the Sec.

The other agents of the TE series, male and female, fell in around them as they approached the computer communications input, like an honor guard... or merely a guard. Polite, handsome, powerful, frightening. But the execs were permitted to address the computer without interference.

Steel, no coward, became the spokesman for the execs. "What's going on here?" he demanded.

"Interpretation," the voice of the computer said. It was a pleasant voice, not at all mechanical.

One of the agents spoke: "These execs are suspicious of the program and wish to ascertain whether the status quo is threatened by us. They are also confused about the nature of alternity and intrigued by nude female cellists."

"I am speaking for OX," the computer said. "This is the code designation Zero X, or Arabic numeral nothing multiplied by the Roman numeral ten, themselves symbols for frame-representations that can not be expressed in your mathematics. Zero times ten is nothing in a single frame, and dissimilar systems can not interact meaningfully; but in the larger framework the result is both infinite and meaningful, expressing sentience. Think of it as the mergence of skew concepts."

"Forget the symbolism," Steel said. "Who is OX?"

"OX is a pattern entity whose nature is alien to your scheme, as just explained. OX is twenty years out of phase, so can not communicate directly. The presence of OX's shoot here in your spot-frame distorts the operation of your machine and modifies the program."

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"Obviously," Steel said. "What do you want from us?"

"The shoot has come on behalf of one of your kind who is in need. Provide a female infant; project her to a frame whose setting I shall indicate."

"Provide a baby!" Steel exclaimed. "What on Earth does a computer want with a baby?"

"She will not be on Earth," the computer said. "In twenty years she will be a woman."

"Indubitably. Now is that all?" Steel asked sardonically.

"If we do it," Fuel put in, "will this—this shoot go away and revert our computer to normal? No more interference?"

"Your frame will never be touched by alternity," the computer said.

The execs exchanged glances again. "We agree," Steel said. "We will provide the baby."

"Provide also the following materials in refined form, in the amounts I shall specify," the computer said. "Strontium, magnesium, copper..."

Cub stared. A female of my species, here in the enclave! he signaled, astounded. But how is it possible? We are out of phase!

I sent a shoot across theoretical elements to locate the home-frame of your male parent, OX

explained. That frame provided a nascent female. She aged as you did, as I brought her into phase with us. She is for you.

She is beautiful! Cub signaled. I do not know what I will do with her, but I must do it urgently.

He went to the female. He tugged at her wild long hair. He put his appendages on her torso, squeezing the strange flesh here and there.

She squawked like Ornet, chewed on his digits, and scraped his surfaces with the sharp points of her own digits. Then she ran away.

Apparently something had been omitted. OX consulted with Ornet.

Mams must be raised together, Ornet said, or they do not get along. You have provided Cub with a wild girl, one raised alone. She possesses the physical attributes of his species but lacks the social ones. So does he.

Social attributes?

Come into my mind, Ornet squawked.

OX came into his mind. Then he comprehended.

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We must return to the natural framework, he flashed. We can not exist apart from our societies. This is true for all of us; I, too, must join my kind.

But we are isolated in the enclave, Ornet protested.

I now know why, OX replied. It is time to break out.

And run amuck like that wild mam fem? Ornet asked.

We must discuss it together, OX agreed. What we decide together will be right.

They discussed it together: OX, Ornet, Dec, Cub, and Mach, now rendered sociable by the provision of its necessary substances. Together, they issued a report.

That report changed alternity.

Chapter 17

ÇATAL HUYUK

17

Cal lay within the cabin of the Nacre, staring up at the palm frond and bamboo-pole network that enclosed the cabin of their crude homemade raft. He felt the mud clay calking between the logs of its deck. Uncomfortable, certainly—but he hardly cared, for he had existed much of his life with extreme discomfort... and now Aquilon lay beside him.

"But the bird," Aquilon protested. "You said it was intelligent. That means Paleo is technically inhabited—"

"Intelligent for Aves: birds," he said. "That can't approach human capability. But yes, it is most important that this—this ornisapiens be preserved and studied. It—"

"Orn," Veg said from the woman's far side. "In a zoo."

"No!" Aquilon cried. "That isn't what I meant. That would kill it. We should be helping it, not—"

"Or at least leaving it alone," Veg said. "It's a decent bird..."

"We appear," Cal remarked, "to have a multiple difference of opinion. Veg feels that we should leave his Orn-bird alone; 'Quilon feels we should help it; I feel the needs of our own species must take precedence. We must have room to expand."

" Lebensraum," Aquilon whispered tersely.

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The word shook him. How bitterly she had drawn the parallel: Adolph Hitler's pretext for conquest.

The Third Reich had to have room to live—at the expense of its neighbors. Their living needs were not considered.

"What do birds eat?" Veg asked.

Cal felt Aquilon shudder. She was a practicing vegetarian at the moment, eschewing the omnivorous way of life. If her comment about Lebensraum had shaken Cal, Veg's question had shaken her. For they all knew what birds ate, especially big birds. They were carnivorous or omnivorous.

They hashed it through, but their positions were set by those two words: Lebensraum and Omnivore.

Cal was on one side, accepting both concepts and their applicability to the present situation of Earth; Veg was on the other, accepting neither. Aquilon, torn between the two, finally had to go with Cal: when one omnivore contested with another for territory, might was right.

It was a subtle, seemingly minor distinction, but it touched on deep currents. They had all waged an interplanetary struggle against the omnivore—yet they themselves were aspects of the omnivore. The words they said now were hardly more than chips floating on the sea, hinting at the implacable surges beneath. In the end Veg got up and left the raft.

Cal felt a pain as though his heart were physically breaking; he knew the rift was fundamental.

Perhaps Veg would return—but once Cal made his report to Earth, which would set in motion Earth's exploitation of Paleo and the probable extinction of dinosaurs and Orn-birds alike, their friendship would never be the same.

Beside him, Aquilon was sobbing. Cal knew that some streak of perversity in him had made him argue the omnivore's case; he had no more sympathy with the appetites of the omnivore than Veg did.

Let Paleo remain unspoiled!

No, the issue had to be brought out, examined, even though it hurt.

They slept side by side. Cal did not touch her, though he longed for her with a loin-consuming passion. She was not a proper subject for lust, she was Aquilon, fair and perfect...

In the morning they checked for Veg but could not find him. "I think he's all right," Aquilon said.

"He's with the birds. We should leave him alone and go to make the report. He'll never go with us."

That damned report! "I hate this schism," Cal said.

"So do I. But how can we bridge it? We talked it all out."

They had talked nothing out! But words today were as pointless as the words of yesterday.

They set sail on the Nacre, dispatching the mantas to locate Veg and return with news of him. While they were at sea, there was a dancing of the waves, indicating a small tremor or earthquake. "I hope that's the extent of it!" Cal said.

They beached the raft with some difficulty, then set out on foot.

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And in the afternoon the tyrannosaurus picked up their trail.

The mantas were ready to help, but Cal warned them off. "If we think our kind is superior, we should be ready to prove it," he said.

"Against a carnosaur?" she demanded incredulously. "Ten tons of appetite? The ultimate predator?"

"The ultimate reptilian predator, perhaps," he said. "Though I suspect the earlier allosaurus might have been more efficient. The mantas would be the ultimate fungoid predators. And man stakes his claim to being the ultimate mammalian predator. So it is proper that the champions meet in single combat."

Suddenly she saw it. "The mammals and the reptiles, meeting on the field of honor. The decisive combat. The carnosaur has size and power; the man has brain. It is a fair compromise, in its fashion.

It relieves the conscience of difficult moral decisions."

"Precisely," Cal said, smiling grimly. "I knew you'd understand. And so will Veg. You had better hide in a tree. I must do this alone."

She scrambled away as the ground shuddered, and not from any geologic tremor. Tyrannosaurus rex, king of predators, was closing in for the kill! The tyrant lizard's tread rocked the land, and the crashing of saplings became loud.

He glanced at Aquilon to make sure she was safe, knowing that she would be terribly afraid for him, and with reason. Intellectually, she comprehended his decision, but emotionally it was intolerable.

She thought he would be killed. "Cal—no!"

Too late. The slender fern trees swayed aside. A bird flew up from a nearby ginkgo tree. Through the palm fronds poked a gaping set of jaws—fifteen feet above the ground. There was a roar. Tyrann had arrived.

The dinosaur charged upon Cal, dwarfing the man. Aquilon stared from her perch, unable to turn her head away, horrified.

When Tyrann was no more than its own length—fifty feet—distant, Cal dodged to the side. He surprised himself by the alacrity with which he moved, picturing what Aquilon was seeing. She still tended to think of him as the wasted, physically weak sufferer she had known on Nacre. But he had recovered greatly and now approached normal vitality. His love for her, he knew, was partly responsible.

Tyrann was unable to compensate in time and drove his nose into the dirt where Cal stood. He lifted his mottled head, small eyes peering about while leaves and twigs tumbled wetly from his jaws.

Now the real chase began. Cal had no chance to watch out for Aquilon, but he knew she was following with the mantas, observing. If Tyrann should spot her, the mantas would help her escape.

They could hardly stop Tyrann's charge, but their cutting tails could strike out the monster's eyes and nose, depriving him of his principal senses.

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Cal played a desperate game of peekaboo around a large palm tree with the carnosaur. Then he fled through a small forest of firs, Tyrann pursued indefatigably, relentlessly. Cal found a herd of triceratops, grazing dinosaurs with huge bony plates on their heads and a deadly trio of horns. One of the bulls came out to challenge Tyrann and so provided Cal with some breathing space.

He ran up the side of the mountain toward the snow-line. Then the earth rocked violently: another quake. He was thrown to the ground almost under Tyrann's nose.

But the quake also upended the dinosaur, who went rolling down the slope. Relieved, Cal got up—and was struck by a stone rolling down the mountain. A freak of luck—but fatal.

He was only unconscious a few seconds, he thought—but as he struggled to his feet, Tyrann was upon him. The gaping mouth with its six-inch teeth closed on his legs.

There was an instant of unbearable pain. Then his system, recognizing that, cut off the pain. Cal knew he had lost. One leg had been sheared off. There would be no report from this world. The dinosaur had proved superior.

Perhaps that was best.

Aquilon, thrown off her feet by the quake, waited for the upheavals to stop. Then she ran up the slope after the dinosaur, flanked by four mantas. What she saw was sheer nightmare.

... rag-doll form flung high into the air... jaws closed, ripping off an arm... head lolled back from broken neck... dead eyes staring...

Aquilon screamed.

Tyrann gulped down the remnants of his meal, then cast about, orienting on the scream. He saw Aquilon.

Had it really been a nightmare, a bad dream, she would have awakened then. But it was real, and the carnosaur was still hungry.

The four mantas settled about her, facing Tyrann, In a moment they would attack. "No!" Aquilon cried. "I will finish the fight he started—or die with him!" For now, too late, she realized how completely she loved Cal. Why had she never taken the initiative? Only in this way—by sharing his challenge—could she exonerate her missed opportunity.

"Hex and Circe—go find Veg, take care of him. Diam and Star, go guard the Orn-birds and their nest.

Don't come back to me until I have settled with Tyrann—one way or the other."

They moved out, sailing down the mountain like the manta rays for which they had been named. She was on her own.

She fled up the mountain, knowing that Cal must have had good reason to go that way. The cold—maybe the snow of the heights would stop the creature!

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Tyrann followed—but not with the alacrity he had pursued Cal. Was it because he had suffered internal injuries when he tumbled during the earthquake—or was he simply less hungry now?

Dusk was coming. That and the increasing elevation chilled the air rapidly. Soon it was near freezing, and she knew the snows were not far beyond. She was not cold, for her continued exertion generated warmth—but the moment she stopped, she would be in danger.

Her foot caught in something, and she fell, splashing. It was a small stream. Now she was soaked—and that would only accelerate her exposure. But she could not stop, for Tyrann was not far behind.

The water was warm! It should have been chill, even frozen!

Struck by inspiration, she charged upstream. The stream banks formed into a kind of chasm, warm at the base. And the stream became hot, hurting her feet. Finally, she came to its origin: a cave.

Here was salvation! She plunged inside, basking in its hot interior. The dinosaur could not enter!

She removed her clothing and washed herself in the bathtub-temperature water. Sheer luxury!

But now she was stuck here, for Tyrann lay in wait outside, his nose right up against the mouth of the cave. She would have to climb over that nose to escape—and she was hardly ready to risk that yet!

She lay down on a convenient ledge to sleep. But now the horror of Cal's death returned to her full force. When she closed her eyes she saw the monstrously gaping jaws, the bloodstained teeth; when she opened them, she still saw that vision of savagery. And the tiny-seeming body, tossed up the way a mouse was tossed by a cat, broken, dismembered, spraying out red...

"Cal! Cal! she cried in anguish. "Why didn't I show my love before you died?"

She tried to pray: "God give him back to me, and I'll never let him go!" But it was no good, for she did not believe in any God, and if she had believed, she knew it would have been wrong to offer to make a deal.

She slept and woke and slept again fitfully. The night seemed to endure for an eternity. She was hungry, but there was little except heat-resistant lichen growing near the mouth of the cave: no fit diet. So she drank hot water, pretending it was soup, and deceived her stomach. Then she was roused, near dawn, by a presence. Someone was in the cave with her. She lay still, frightened yet hopeful. It could only be Veg—but how had he gotten past Tyrann? And why had the mantas guided him here when her business with the dinosaur was not yet finished?

For a moment the figure stood in the wan light of the entrance. Suddenly she recognized the silhouette. "Cal!" she cried. "I thought you were dead!" He turned, obviously startled, seeing her. His vision had always been sharper than hers, especially in poor light. "I escaped, thanks to this convenient cave," he said as though it were a routine matter.

"So did I," she said, bathed in a compelling sensation of déjà vu, of having been in this situation Ox by Piers Anthony

before. How could she have missed seeing Cal earlier? And who—or what—had Tyrann actually eaten? She had been so sure—

"Why did you come?" he asked.

"I love you," she said simply. And, suffused by her breathless relief, she remembered her attempted bargain with God and her overwhelming love for this man. She went to him, and took him in her arms, pressing her breasts against his body, kissing his mouth, embracing him so tightly her own arms hurt.

He responded with astonishing vigor. No further word was spoken. They fell into the hot water, and laughed foolishly together, and kissed and kissed again, mouth on mouth, mouth on breast, splashing water like two children playing in the tub.

So they made love again and again, as long as the flesh would bear. Perhaps the hot water was a tonic, recharging their bodies rapidly. They slept embraced half out of the water, woke and loved again, and slept, on and on in endless and often painful delight.

Another quake came, a terrible one, frightening them, so they clasped each other and let the rocking mountain provide their motion for them: a wild and violent climax, as though they were rocking the mountain with the force of their ardor. Night came, and still they played.

But in the morning she woke, and he was gone, inexplicably. Alarmed, she searched the entire cave as far back as the heat permitted but found no sign. It was as though he had never been.

She took her courage in both hands, dressed, and edged out into the dawn beyond Tyrann's nose. It was cold here, and light snow powdered the dinosaur's back. Tyrann was asleep, and surely he would die, for the chill would inevitably seep into his body and keep him moribund until the end. She had won, after all; in fact, she could probably have left long ago.

There were no human prints. If Cal had come this way, it must have been hours ago, before it grew cool enough for the snow to stay. Yet she had thought he was with her until recently.

She moved on down the little canyon toward the warmth of the valley, following the trail they had left as well as she could: mainly the scuff marks and claw indentations of the carnosaur's feet that showed because they had in their fashion changed the lay of the land.

She came to the place where she had thought Cal died. There she found one of his shoes, with the foot and part of the leg protruding. Flesh and bone and tendon, jaggedly severed by the crunch of the huge teeth of Tyrann.

There was no question of authenticity. Cal had indeed died here two days ago: the ants were hard at work.

Yet she had made love to Cal a day and night. Had it been a phantom, born of her grief, her futile longing? She touched her body here and there, feeling the abrasions of violent lovemaking. Could she have done all that to herself in an orgy of compensation for what she had never done during Cal's life? Her mind must have been temporarily deranged, for here was reality: a worn shoe with the Ox by Piers Anthony

stump of the leg.

She buried the foot and saved the shoe.

Now the mantas came: Circe and Star. Veg was all right, they reported; he had tried to come to help her when the mantas informed him but had been shaken up by the second quake and stranded on a rock in the bay. The birds had lost their eggs in that same quake and had to flee their nest, but both Orn and Ornette survived. The third quake had sundered their island and stirred up the water predators again.

"They lost their eggs..." Aquilon repeated, feeling a pang akin to that of her loss of Cal, one grief merging with the other.

Guided and protected by the mantas, she rejoined Veg and the Orn-birds. A month passed, an instant and an eternity for both people, sharing their awful grief. The phantom Cal did not reappear—but Aquilon had continuing cause to wonder, for she had no period. Veg had not touched her—not that way. Only in futile comfort had he put his arm about her.

In three months she knew she was pregnant. Yet there was no way—except that day and night in the cave. On occasion, she returned to it, past the frozen hulk of Tyrann at the entrance, but she never found anything. She had made love to a phantom—and she carried the phantom's child.

Veg shouldered more of the burden of survival as her condition progressed. The two sapient birds also helped, guarding her as she slept, bringing her delicacies such as small freshly slaughtered reptiles. She learned to eat them, and Veg understood: to survive in nature, one had to live nature's way. She was a vegetarian no longer.

"Also," she explained with a certain difficulty, "it's Cal's baby. I have to live this way." She was not certain he would see the logic of that, or if there were any logic in it, but it was the way she felt. Her intake nourished Cal's baby; Cal's standards governed. Had it been Veg's baby...

"I loved him, too," Veg said, and that sufficed. He was not jealous of his friend—only glad that even this much remained of Cal. She had never told him the details of the conception, letting him assume it was before the dinosaur chase began. There had, after all, been opportunity.

"After this one is born, the next must be yours," she said. "I love you, too,—and this would be necessary for survival of our species even if I did not."

"Yeah," he said a bit wryly. "I'm glad you had the sense to go with him first. If he had to die, that was the way to do it."

In civilization, among normal people, this would have been unreal. Here, with Veg, it was only common sense. Veg had always wanted what was best for his friend Cal, and it was a compliment to her that he felt she had been worthy.

"We argued about whether man should colonize," she said. "We were wrong, both sides. We assumed it had to be all Earth or nothing. Now we know that there was a middle ground. This ground: just a few people, blending into the Cretaceous enclave, cutting our little niche without destroying any Ox by Piers Anthony

other creature's niche. If we had realized that before, Cal might not have felt compelled to match Tyrann, and they both would be alive today."

"Yeah," he said, and turned away.

The baby was birthed without difficulty, as though nature had compensated her by making natural birth easy. There was pain, but she hardly cared. Veg helped, and so did the birds: They made a fine soft nest for the infant. She named him Cave.

If her relation with the birds had been close, it was closer now. They nested, for their season had come 'round again. Aquilon would leave baby Cave in the nest with the eggs, and Ornette would sit on them all protectively. Aquilon took her turns guarding the eggs while the birds hunted. They were an extended family.

When Cave was three months old, and Aquilon was just considering inviting Veg to father a sibling, disaster struck. Agents from Earth appeared. Concerned by the nonreport from the advance party—Cal, Veg, and Aquilon—the authorities had followed up with a more reliable mission.

The mantas spotted them first: a prefabricated ship coming in past the islands of Silly and Cherybdis.

Three agents, one of whom was female.

Veg made a wheeled cart with a loose harness that either bird could draw, and set a nest in it. This made the family mobile—for there was no stationary place safe from agents. One manta was designated for each adult entity: Hex went with Veg, Circe with Aquilon, Diam with Orn, and Star with Ornette. Their function was to give advance warning when any agent was near any of the others, so that person could flee. There was to be no direct contact with any agent unless the nest was in danger. With luck, they would be able to stay clear until the agents left.

It was not to be. The agents were not merely surveying the land, they were after the people, too. The agents quickly ascertained the presence of a baby, and this seemed to surprise them. Hex, in hiding as two of them examined the deserted nest site, picked up some of their dialogue and reported on it:

"Cooperation with tame birds I can understand, though they've really gone primitive," the male said.

"But a human baby? There wasn't time! "

"She must have been pregnant before leaving Earth," the female said. "Then birthed it prematurely."

Aquilon was in turn amazed. "How long do they think human gestation is? Two years? Cave was full-term!"

But the riddle of the agents' confusion had to wait. There was no question that the agents intended to take the trio and the baby captive for return to Earth—they apparently did not know that Cal was gone—and this could not be permitted.

One would have thought the home team had the advantage: two human beings toughened by a year among the dinosaurs, two fighting birds, and four mantas—the most efficient predators known to man. But there were three eggs and a baby to protect—and the three agents were equipped with Earth's technology. In one sense, the contest of champions Cal had visualized was to be joined Ox by Piers Anthony

again—but this time the weapons were different. One agent could wipe out one tyrannosaurus with one shot. Cal could have directed an efficient program of opposition—but Cal was gone. The agents were stronger, faster, and better armed than Veg and Aquilon.

"We've got to get out of here," Veg said. "They're canvassing this whole valley and the neighboring ones. They know we're here, somewhere, and they're drawing in the net. They'd probably have picked us up by now if they'd located Cal; they must figure he's hiding."

"Even now, he's helping us, then," she said, nodding. "And if we leave, what happens to the dinosaurs?"

"Earth will wipe them out, or put them in zoos, same thing," he said glumly. "We've had our problems with the reps, but it's their world, and they have a right to live, too. But we've been over this; we can't kill the agents. Even if we had the weapons, we couldn't do it. We'd be murderers."

"If we could stop the agents from returning to their base..."

"You think they'd go native like us?"

"It wouldn't matter, would it? Earth would have no report..."

He smiled. "Yeah."

"And if they were stranded here, maybe they'd come to see it our way. Maybe they'd settle, turn human. That female—she could bear children."

"Yeah," he repeated, mulling it over.

"Three men, two women—that might be a viable nucleus." There were aspects to it that disturbed her, but it was a far more positive approach than murder.

It was a daring plan. They set it in motion when one agent was on land, tracking down the moving nest.

Veg set sail with Hex on the old raft, the Nacre. He was a decoy, to draw off one of the two agents on the ship. "And Veg," Aquilon said as he left. "If it is the female who comes after you, smile at her."

"Yeah, I know," he muttered. "Use my delicate masculine wiles to subvert her superior feminine force." He spat eloquently downwind. "The day I ever cater to the likes of her..."

"You're a handsome man. You don't want to have to kill her..." But he was already on his way, and she felt like a procuress. Was she prepared to follow the same advice when she encountered a male agent?

She took one more look at Cave, sleeping in the nest-cart, guarded by the three other mantas and two birds. Yes—to save him, to save the eggs, to save the enclave, she was prepared. If they succeeded in stranding the agents here, it would eventually come to that, anyway: crossbreeding. Better that reality than the loss of everything she had fought to preserve.

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Then Aquilon raided the ship. She stripped and swam, hoping that in the night her motion would be mistaken for that of an aquatic reptile. If not—that was the risk she had to take. The agent aboard would not kill her out of hand; he would let her board, then subdue her—and the test of her commitment would be at hand. She was a buxom woman now because of nursing her baby. If she could seduce him, or at least lull him into carelessness so that she had a chance to scuttle the ship, then it would be done. The vessel was anchored in deep water and would not be recoverable.

Of course, then the water predators would close in... but she was ready to die. Perhaps the agent, realizing that he could no longer report to Earth, would be pragmatic and join her, and together with the mantas they could make it to shore.

She had smeared the juices of a vile-smelling root over her body to repel the water reptiles, and it seemed to work. She reached the ship without event and climbed nimbly to the deck.

To be met by the alert agent there. "Welcome aboard, Miss Hunt. I am Tama, your host. Kind of you to surrender voluntarily."

The female—the worst one to meet! "I've come to sink your ship," Aquilon said, knowing the agent was well aware of her intent.

Tama ignored this. "Come below decks." It was an order, not a request.

Aquilon thought of diving back into the bay. Once she went into the hold, captive, she would never have a chance.

Tama moved so quickly she seemed a blur. "Do not attempt to jump," she said from the rail behind Aquilon. Whatever had made her think she had a chance against an agent? Sheer delusion!

"Yes," Tama agreed. "But you amaze me. too. You have indeed borne a child."

"Nothing amazing about it," Aquilon said. "You could do the same if you chose to."

"Yet you have been on Paleo only three months—and your Earth physical showed no pregnancy."

Aquilon stiffened. She had been on Paleo a year and three months. Surely the agents knew that!

"We shall have to plumb this mystery," Tama said. "You are not trying to deceive me, yet we can not explain—"

She was interrupted by the sound of a bell. She brought out a tiny radio unit. "Tama."

"Tanu," a male voice returned immediately. "Male acquired, one fungoid destroyed."

"Talo," another voice said. "Attacked by one sapient flightless bird. Bird destroyed, mission as yet incomplete."

Aquilon felt an awful shudder run through her. Hex dead, Veg captured, one of the great birds killed, she herself nullified—and the effort had hardly started. What a terrible price had already been paid!

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"There is no need for further violence," Tama said. She held out the communicator. "Speak to your fungoids; tell them to land here. We shall treat you fairly."

Aquilon faced about and walked toward the cabin, her lips tight. There was no way she could mask her antipathy to the agents. Subble she might have heeded, but these were ruthless strangers who could read her every response and anticipate many of her acts.

Suddenly a gun was in Tama's hand. "Very clever!" she snapped. "You did not know you were being supported by a fungoid."

A manta! Aquilon suddenly recognized Veg's unsubtle hand in this. He had suggested that the mantas be confined to the defensive perimeter, and she, preoccupied with her own preparations, had agreed.

Veg had sent a manta after her—and because she hadn't known it, she had been unable to give that fact away.

Tama fired. Aquilon, galvanized into action, made a dive for the weapon. But the agent's left hand struck her on the neck, knocking her down half stunned.

Then three mantas attacked simultaneously. They were fast, and they knew how to dodge projectiles and beams. But the agents, forewarned, had armed themselves with scatter-shot shells, almost impossible to avoid.

Aquilon watched helplessly from the deck as the first manta went down, a pellet through the great eye. "Star!" Aquilon cried in horror.

The second manta came closer but was riddled by pellets through the torso. It sheered off and fell into the water. "Diam!"

The third manta caught the agent across the neck, severing windpipe, jugular vein, and carotid arteries. Even so, Tama got off one more shot, and the fungoid crashed into the deck.

Aquilon stood up unsteadily. "Oh, Circe!" she cried. "We didn't want bloodshed..."

Tama grinned with ghastly humor, unable to speak. She clasped her throat with both hands, containing the blood—but the damage was too extensive, and she slumped to the deck, dying.

The mission had been a disaster; now there were no mantas, and there would be no other woman on Paleo to share the burden of bearing children.

But she had a job to do: Scuttle the ship. At least she could save Paleo. She went below decks to locate the necessary tools to do the job. A projectile cannon, or even a sledgehammer, to make a hole in the bottom, to let in the sea...

Instead she found—a projector. She had never seen one before, but somehow she recognized its nature. The agents intended to establish a return aperture to Earth from right here!

She picked it up, intending to destroy it by smashing it into the deck. But her finger touched a switch inadvertently.

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A cone of light came out from it, bathing her.

And she stood in a completely different scheme.

She was in a room about twenty feet long and fifteen wide. Walls, floor, and ceiling were plastered, and there was a fantastic variety of what were, to her artistic eye, highly authentic primitive art objects and paintings.

There were only two small, high windows and no door.

A homemade ladder made of poles and thong-bound crosspieces ascended to a small hole in the ceiling: the only exit.

Had she projected herself back to Earth, the very thing she had tried so hard to stop—or was she in a new alternate world, inhabited by primitive man? If she had joggled the setting on the device, she could have traveled randomly.

Without that projector, she had no chance to return—and who but the agents would ever use it to seek her out? Her choices were to submit to recapture—or escape into this world.

She was hardly conscious of making the decision. Veg, Orn, and her baby were on Paleo—but if any of them survived the onslaught of the two remaining agents, it would not be as free entities. And the projector must have fallen to the deck as she phased through, either breaking or fouling up its setting.

Better for her to accept the inevitable. She could not return and would not want to, and no one would fetch her. She would have to make a new life for herself here, wherever this was. Even if it should be Earth.

But her eyes were full of tears. Consciously she was desperate to return to her baby, to retreat into the warm jungle valley with Veg. Perhaps Circe had survived; she had crashed into the deck but might not be dead. At any rate, there would soon be new mantas, as the freed spores drifted and mated and grew. Maybe Orn managed to haul eggs and baby to safety. Oh, yes, she longed to go there... but surely Orn would not escape, the eggs would be lost, and her baby Cave...

Her baby—conceived in the cave. Suddenly, a year after the fact, the truth struck her: Cal, from an alternate world, had been projected to hers. For one day and a night. Her Cal had died; it was the alternate who had fathered her child. He had been summoned, somehow, in the hour of her greatest need.

"Thank God for that one day..." she whispered.

Now she was in another alternate herself. Perhaps she would help some other person, as she had been helped. Would that redeem the double wreckage of her life?

Meanwhile, her eyes were taking in her surroundings, and she was reacting with growing excitement.

In a manner, she had died, for she had been irrevocably removed from her world—and surely this one Ox by Piers Anthony

was akin to heaven. She had studied art like this before. She recognized it. Prehistoric man—neolithic—Anatolia, somewhere around 6000 B.C.

"Çatal Huyuk!" she exclaimed, pronouncing it with the soft Ç: Satal.

The study of art necessarily led to an appreciation of history, and she had absorbed a fair background incidentally. Now she stood still, concentrating, bringing it back from long-idle mental channels.

Çatal Huyuk was a mound in south-central Turkey—the ancient Anatolian peninsula—on the highland plateau, about three thousand feet above sea level. For many years archaeologists had thought there was no neolithic occupation of the Anatolian plateau and no real art or organized religion there. The excavation of Çatal Huyuk had completely changed that, for here was a flourishing, religious, artistic, peaceful city demonstrating an advanced ancient culture. A substantial segment of prehistory had had to be rewritten.

Of course this might not be the Çatal Huyuk. There had been similar cities in Anatolia, and it could be a modern replica. But it was certainly of this type.

Excited, Aquilon moved about, inspecting the room in detail, using it as a diversion from the horrors she dared not dwell on back in Paleo. The plaster on the walls was actually a thin layer of white clay.

Solid timbers supported the roof. The floor was neatly segmented into several levels, as though the intent was merely to indicate distinct areas, like lines on a playing field. This would be a sleeping platform, with its reed matting; this the kitchen area. Here was the hearth, under which the family's dead would be buried. Here was the storage bin, empty at the moment.

The walls were painted in panels. Some were solid red; others had geometric designs bordered by representations of human hands and feet. One wall was dominated by a protruding sculpture: the stylized head of a bull, the two horns projecting up and out, surrounded by pillars and ledges that showed the shrine-like nature of this section.

She climbed the ladder cautiously and poked her head over the top. She saw the rooftops of a city, each a different level, each with its entrance hole.

There were people. Suddenly Aquilon was conscious of her nakedness; she had never had a chance to dress and had never anticipated—this.

They stared at her. In moments they had her ringed. All were women; the few men who showed their heads had been sent scurrying with a few peremptory words. There was no question which sex was in control.

Aquilon did not resist. The people were not hostile, only curious. They took her to another room and tried to talk to her, but their language was completely alien to her experience. Yet she was fortunate, for this relieved her of the problem of explaining her presence.

They took care of her. She was, it seemed, something of a phenomenon: a tall blonde woman in a land in which all women were short and dark-haired. They regarded her as an aspect of the goddess-mother and she did not go out of her way to deny it. She was, after all, a recent mother (ah, there was Ox by Piers Anthony

grief: Did they marvel at her sadness?), and it showed. On religious festivals—of which there were a considerable number—she was expected to parade naked through the city, an object not of lust but of feminine presence. She had come to them naked, and that set the system; when she wished to move among them without reference to her goddess-head, she donned an elegant robe and slippers. They were able to accept this dual aspect; the dichotomy between goddess and woman was inherent in their religion. It was a pragmatic system.

If she had not already known it, the art of the city would have told her this was a matriarchy. There were paintings and sculptures and tapestries in splendid array. These people were indefatigable artists; pictures and designs were on walls, pots, clay statuettes, wood, baskets, pottery, weapons, and even skeletons. The eyebrows, cheeks, and lips of the women were also painted. A fine subindustry for making pigments existed—black from soot; blue and green from copper ores; red, brown, and yellow from iron oxides, and so on. Aquilon was already familiar with the technique and of course was a superior artist in her own right, which tended to confirm her status.

But in all this art there was not a single sexual symbol. No female breasts, no phallic representations, no suggestive postures. A male-dominated society would have abounded with artistic expressions of lust; in her own day the "nude" always meant a young, voluptuous woman. Here, nothing: Women were not motivated in this direction, and though many of the artists were male, they painted under direction of the priestesses.

She learned the language, and painted, and it was a rather good life. Gradually her grief for what she had left behind faded. The people were disciplined and courteous and not without humor and song.

The men were out much of the day hunting. Many women wove cloth, prepared hides, and fashioned rather sophisticated clothing; others cleaned their homes and supervised repairs. The houses were scrupulously clean, with all the rubbish being dumped in the scattered courtyards. These people were primitive in that they could not write and lacked machine technology—but in all other respects they were civilized. More so, really, than those of her own day.

Then she discovered the projector. It was in a disused chamber beneath a new residence. It had been closed off because it had been damaged by fire and was considered unsafe; it could not be demolished because that would have interfered with the neighboring residences. There was also an element of religion, as there was in almost every aspect of life in this city: A revered old woman had lived in it once, and it would have been an affront to her spirit to destroy it entirely. So it had been vacated and forgotten for many years. But Aquilon was privileged to explore where she liked; how could the woman's spirit be insulted by the visit of a goddess?

In this chamber was a device very like the one she had found aboard the ship—but more advanced, for it had a television screen.

She experimented. The thing was self-powered but alien. She did not know how to operate it and hardly wanted to find herself in yet another alternate. Yet she was fascinated. In the course of days she worked it out: The screen showed which alternate it was attuned to, and a separate key enabled the operator to return to his point of origin: here. Other controls shifted the focus, making the images on the screen change dizzily.

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There were an infinite number of alternates available. In the nearest, she actually saw herself bending over the projector, a few seconds behind or ahead of her. Once she exchanged a smile and wave with the other Aquilon who happened to be focusing on her. It was no replay of her own acts; these were separate Aquilons, individuals in their own right yet still very much her.

In farther alternates there were other scenes. Some were bizarre: walking plants, a huge machine hive, or perpetual blizzard. Others were tempting, such as a placid forest or a near-human farm fashioned from solidified fog.

She went further. She took the key, set the screen on the quiet forest, and activated the projector.

And she stood in the forest. It was real. The air was sweet and cool.

Nervous, she squeezed the key—and she was back in Çatal Huyuk, her heart thudding, her whole body shaking with the release of tension. She really could go and return!

One alternate was a desert. On it an Aquilon carried one of Orn's eggs.

Orn's egg! Suddenly it occurred to her that this alternate of Çatal Huyuk, with its lush surrounding plains filled with game and vegetation, was ideal for a flightless, five-foot-tall hunting bird: an avian Garden of Eden. There were aurochs—European bison, somewhat like the American "buffalo"; gigantic pigs, deer in great herds. Sheep and dogs were domesticated, and the men hunted wild ass, wild sheep, deer, foxes, wolves, leopards, and bear. There were many varieties of birds and fish. How Orn would have loved it here: abundant prey but no dinosaurs!

Orn: She had never been able to locate Paleo with Orn on it, or Veg, or the agents. She could not rescue her real friends. But that egg the alternate Aquilon carried contained a living ornisapiens chick. Suppose she fetched it, then went to another alternate and got another? One male and one female. Re-establishing a marvelous species... what a wonderful project! Perhaps she could make similar forays for mantas.

She watched the other Aquilon moving about, holding that precious egg. The woman cradled it in the crook of her arm as she stooped to touch the sand. There were tread marks there, as of a machine.

Machine! Aquilon knew about the self-willed machines. She had watched them consuming...

everything. If they were cruising on that world, the humans had little chance, and the egg, none. And of course there was no game to speak of there. Even if hatched, the Orn-chick would inevitably die.

Aquilon decided: She would save that egg now.

Without further thought—for that might cause her to lose her nerve—she removed her elegant white goddess-incarnate robe, too valuable to soil. She took up the key (must never forget that!) and put it in her mouth for safekeeping. She took a deep breath and activated the projector.

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The desert world formed about her.

For a moment she oriented, checking the desert and the alternate Aquilon. All was in order.

The girl saw her. "Who are you?" she demanded.

Aquilon realized that to this woman she was the original Aquilon, having no knowledge of the alternate framework. How to explain the past year and make her believe it—when at any time a machine could come upon them? "Pointless to go into all that now," Aquilon said. "Please give me the egg."

The girl stepped back, clutching it. "No!"

Aquilon hadn't anticipated resistance. The merit of her plan was so obvious! Too late she realized that what made sense to her would not necessarily make sense to her uninformed alternate. The girl was evidently younger than she and had borne no child; this alternate was a year or more divergent from her own. Poor planning on her part—but she had run this sort of risk by acting on impulse. Best to go ahead now.

"You must. You can't preserve it any longer. Not here in the desert, with the awful machines." But the girl didn't know about those yet, either. She had a lot to learn! All the more reason to salvage the egg from her incompetent hands. "I have found a new Garden of Eden, a paradise for birds. When it hatches there—"

The girl's face became sullen, resistive. "No one else can—" She halted, amazement spreading over her comely features. "You're me! "

"And you're me, close enough," Aquilon said impatiently. She should have explained about that at the outset! So many mistakes—she was fouling it up appallingly. "We're aspects of the same person.

Alternates. So you know you can trust me. You—"

"But you—you're more—"

Was the girl accepting it? Good. "I bore a child—that's why. I nursed my son until two months ago.

But—" Too complicated, and it hurt to remember. How she longed for Cave! "I lost mine. You'll keep yours. But you can't keep the egg."

The girl retreated. "A baby? I—"

Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned that. This girl had not had her baby. A whole different situation, for Aquilon herself had been transported to Çatal Huyuk, not this machine-desert world. For a moment Aquilon was tempted to stop and question this girl, to find out all the details of her life. Had she made love to Cal—or to Veg? Or an agent? What had happened to the Orn-birds of her Paleo that she should be left with the egg? Had she found a projector?

But that would be folly. She could not afford to engage in dialogue with all the myriad alternate-Aquilons she could reach. There was a job to do, and she should do it—or go home. "You're in danger. You can save yourself but not the egg." A human being could fight off a machine if properly Ox by Piers Anthony

armed or escape it—but hardly while carrying the egg. She had seen an agent tackle one in another alternate. Interesting that the orientation of her projector seemed to be on those alternates where other human beings had projected aboard, as though all projectors were somehow linked. The connection was geographic, too; obviously if she had projected to this desert world a hundred miles from this spot, she would not have been able to fetch the egg. It all implied some higher agency—something else to think about when she had the time. "There is little time, and it's too complicated to explain right now. Give it to me!" She reached out, hating the necessity for this brusque language, so unlike her. But she knew if she delayed any more, she would lose her nerve, and the job would not get done.

"No!" The girl retreated, hugging the egg.

"Give it to me!" Aquilon cried.

The girl straight-armed her. They fell together over a bag of supplies. The egg was caught between them and crushed, destroying the chick within.

"Oh, no! " Aquilon cried, her dream dying with the chick. Tears streamed down her face. "I came to save it—and I smashed it!"

The alternate was crying, too. But tears could not reconstitute the egg.

Aquilon staggered away, heedless of direction. A few paces into the sand she remembered the projection key. She took it out of her mouth and squeezed it.

Back at Çatal Huyuk she washed herself, donned her robe, and went out onto the roof of the city.

There was a numbness inside her that would not abate. She had traveled to an alternate and done irreparable damage thereby because of her lack of planning and carelessness and impetuosity. What penance could she do?

After an hour she returned to the chamber with a heavy mallet and smashed the projector and screen.

Never again would she trifle with alternity.

Chapter 18

REPORT

18

PATTERN ALERT: SURVIVAL

Pattern-entities, unable to comprehend the nature of physical sentience but unable to ignore it as a potential nonsurvival threat, instituted an enclave consisting of five divergent sentient entities: a Ox by Piers Anthony

pattern, a machine, and three forms of life—fungoid, avian, and mammal. There were also nonsentient plants and a population of sub-sapient animals upon which the sentients preyed.

The purpose was to observe the interaction of sentients, drawing inferences concerning their natures and survival potential within a restrictive environment. This information might enable the patterns to determine the extent of the potential threat to survival posed by the physical sentients.

To be certain that survival was the primary issue, the enclave was so designed that none of the occupants could survive comfortably without pre-empting the needs of the others. There were insufficient elements for the pattern, minerals for the machine, prey for the living predators, or mixed organic substances for the mammal infant. Direct competition was required.

In order to obtain a complete picture, a system of alternate-frame holography was used. Holography, as practiced in the physical scheme, involves the division of a given beam of energy into parts, one part subjected to an experience the other lacks. The resultant difference between the parts thus defines the experience. In this case, mature representatives of the sentient species were provided the means to observe some of the interactions within the enclave and within the framework of alternity itself. In this manner the reactions of the physical sentients could be contrasted to those of the nonphysical sentients, and the changes in the physical sentients contrasted to their like counterparts, rounding out the picture.

The experiment was not entirely successful. All the sample entities of the enclave survived despite its deliberately restrictive situation, and a majority of the travelers through alternity also survived—but this did not enlighten the pattern-entities. There was initial competition in both environments, followed by cooperation that greatly enhanced survival. The information did not fall into neat patterns, and the mechanisms and motives of the physicals remained unclear. The pattern-entities therefore ignored the experiment, failing to act or even respond even when the entities of both groups made serious attempts to communicate. The failure was not in the conception or execution of the plan but in the patterns' inability to interpret the results or to act on data received.

What had been intended as an exercise of short duration became one of greater scope—because it was left alone. In due course the entities of the enclave, utilizing techniques largely incomprehensible to the watching patterns, achieved comprehension and powers beyond those of their background societies. Patterns have substantial limitations in the physical world; physical creatures are similarly restricted in the pattern framework. True science is a combination of the two systems.

Only through a conceptual technology developed from the merging of systems can true progress be made. This means complete and free interaction between all forms of sentience. We—the five sentient entities of the enclave—have worked out the principles of such interaction. We are able to communicate meaningfully with all of the intellects we represent, as demonstrated by this report, which is being conveyed to representative frames for each of these types.

We feel that the fundamental knowledge must be placed in the minds of those entities best able to utilize it, with the proviso that it be used only to facilitate harmony and progress among all the alternates. We feel that four of our five representative species lack suitable philosophies or talents for this purpose. The fungoids and the aves do not have either the inclination or the manual dexterity to Ox by Piers Anthony

operate the necessary constructs. The mams have both—but lack appropriate social control. They are predators, exploiters: in their own description, "omnivores," destroyers of differing systems.

Therefore, this power can not be entrusted to their possession. The pattern-entities are also capable and have better philosophical mores. But their cynicism in setting up this enclave and the associated

"hexaflexagon" pattern of alternate frames shows that their philosophy is incomplete. Sentients are not to be toyed with in this fashion. In fact, the patterns have such extraordinary difficulty comprehending the nuances of physical need and operation that we feel that they, too, are unsuitable.

Only one species possesses incentive, capability, and philosophy to make proper use of the information and to carry through effectively on the implied commitment. For this species only, we append our technical report, granting the power of alternity.

We believe the machines well serve the need.

Chapter 19

ORN

19

Orn heard the terrible squawk and knew its meaning instantly. The predator mam had caught Ornette and killed her. Now it would come for him.

He did not feel grief, only loss. Now he had no mate, and the line of his species was ended—unless he found another mate or preserved the eggs. Neither he nor his eggs would survive if this man caught him—and the mam cub would perish, also.

Orn did not think in the manner of reps or mams. His mind was experience, and the experience was millions of seasons long: a racial memory. It did not employ words at all; to him, "mam" was that complex of impressions generated by the presence of fur-bearing, infant-nursing, warm-bodied vertebrates. "Rep," "aves," and the various representatives of such classes were similar concepts.

Orn knew the manner his kind had survived, back as far as his species had existed distinct from other aves. He was well equipped for survival in the world his ancestors had known. But that world had changed, and this made survival perilous.

Orn's ancestry contained no record of a chase by a predator mam, for mams had been tiny prey for most of their species duration. Thus, he had never experienced a threat of the kind this represented.

But Orn was expert in hiding and in hunting—indeed, the two were aspects of the same process. He knew this mam was as savage and deadly as a young tyrann. If it caught him it would kill him and take the eggs and cub.

So he fled—but he did it expertly. He put his long neck through the front loop of the nest-cart and Ox by Piers Anthony

drew it behind him. The cub began to make noise. Immediately, Orn twisted his head about, bent his neck down, and found the chip of wood that was used for such occasions. He put it in the cub's mouth. The cub sucked on it and stopped crying.

Orn hauled the wagon into a dense thicket near a turbulently flowing stream, concealing it from the exposure of both light and sound. He washed his beak and feet in the stream, temporarily cutting down on his typical odor. Then he scraped over the traces the cart's wheels had made, carefully placing pine needles, palm fronds, and half-decayed brush in place so that it matched the forest floor.

He found the rotting, arth-riddled corpse of a small rep and placed it nearby: That smell would override all else.

This was not the way Orn reasoned, for his mind did not work that way. It was merely the accumulated and sophisticated experience of his species. As the arths constructed elaborate warrens and performed many specialized tasks, so he performed in the manner survival had always dictated.

That he did it consciously only reflected the talent of his species: His memories were far greater than those of arths, reps, or any other species and required far more sophistication of choice. But memory it was, not reasoning.

His camouflage completed, he washed himself again, waded downstream, and spotted a small grazing rep: a baby tricer. He pounced on it, digging his claws into the creature's back just behind the protective head-flange.

The slow-witted rep emitted a squeal of pain and whipped its head about. But Orn held his position just out of reach of the crushing bone, digging his powerful talons in deeper, flapping his stubby wings to maintain his balance. Unable to dislodge his attacker, the tricer stampeded. Orn rode it, guiding it by tightening the grip of one foot or the other, causing it to shy away from the increased pain.

Finally, Orn jumped off it, releasing the rep to its own devices. He had, in effect, flown: He had traveled a distance leaving no recognizable trace of his passage. No predator could follow his trail by sight or scent back to the hidden nest.

Now he made an unconcealed trail that led obliquely away from that nest. He knew the predator mam would come across it in due course and would recognize it. Orn made several big circles so that there was no obvious point of termination to betray his ruse, then set off for the territory of the largest and fiercest tyrann in the valley. The man would find plenty to distract him, following this trail!

But Orn had underestimated the cunning of this beast. The mam did not pursue his mock trail directly. He set an ambush for Orn.

Only the silence of the arths of the region alerted the bird. Normally, the little flying, crawling, and tunneling creatures were audible all around—except when an unnatural presence alarmed them.

When Orn entered this pocket of quiescence, he knew something was wrong.

He retreated silently—but the mam was aware of him. A bush burst into fire beside him: the lightning strike of the mam's weapon.

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Orn ran. The mam pursued. Orn was fleet, for his kind had always hunted by running down their prey. But this mam was far swifter on his feet than others of his type, the Veg and the Quilon. Orn had to exert himself to an extraordinary extent to leave it behind—and then he was unable to conceal his trail properly.

He could lead it in a long chase, hoping to tire it: Orn could run for days. But meanwhile the eggs were slowly growing cold. The warmth of the mam cub beside them in the nest and the covering of feathers and fibers extended the time those eggs could be left—but the night was coming. Both eggs and cub would need attention—the one for warmth, the other for food. If the cub were not fed, it would make noise—and that would summon the predator mam or a predator rep. Orn knew these things from recent experience.

He had to lose the mam quickly, then return to the nest for the night. Because it was well concealed, he should be able to leave it where it was until morning.

But the mam would not relinquish his trail. It fell back but never enough to permit him to eliminate his traces. He was in trouble.

Then a fung found him. Only with difficulty had Orn learned to comprehend these plant-creatures, for they were completely alien to his ancestry. Now he identified them fairly readily. They bounded across land or water faster than any other creature, and their strike was deadly—but they killed only for their food and fought only for the two friendly mams. Orn had no concern about the fungs.

Now he realized that its presence signified a development in the conflict with the predator mams. But he was unable to communicate with the creature.

The fung dropped before him and coalesced into its stationary shape. Though Orn could not afford to wait long, he knew there was motive behind this presence. He inspected the fung at close range.

The creature was injured. Fluids oozed from it.

Then Orn knew that the friendly mams had succumbed. This was the Circe fung, companion of the Quilon. It had been rent by a predator weapon. It had sought him out to show him this.

No creature but Orn remained to protect the nest—and the predator was after him.

The sounds of the pursuer were growing. Orn had to run again.

The fung rose up, faltered in the air, and righted itself. There was no doubt it was in trouble; its normal grace and speed were gone.

It moved toward the predator mam.

Orn realized that disabled as it was, the fung was about to attack the mam.

That might eliminate the mam or delay him so that Orn could get safely to the nest.

He ran to the stream, went up it, found another small rep, and forced it to take him toward the nest.

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All was well. The eggs were still warm, and the cub was sleeping.

Orn sat on the nest, raising the temperature of the eggs while he poked his beak into the mash prepared by the Quilon. When the cub woke, he put a portion of this mash into its mouth, holding its head upright with one wing, patiently catching the spillage and putting it back into the mouth. When the cub balked, Orn performed his most difficult ritual: He took a shell dish in his beak, carried it to the nearby stream, scooped it full of water, brought it back, and set it on the edge of the nest. Then he took one of the hollow-reed sections and set one end in the dish, the other in the cub's mouth. The cub sucked. Water went up the tube and into its mouth. In this way it drank.

Orn's care of the cub was another function of his memory. Ancestors had on occasion sought to preserve the lives of young animals, the cubs of those slain for food. Those cubs could mature to become prey when prey was scarce, so this was a survival talent. Even a newly hatched chick, confronted with a helpless mam cub, would have reacted similarly, sharing food, cutting reed stems, fetching water, fashioning warm cover. It was a symbiosis that came naturally in the time of the dominance of the great reps.

Now he cleaned the nest. The mam cub, like all mams, was a voluminous processor of water. It imbibed great quantities and expelled them almost continuously. The nest was made so that most of the fluid percolated through and fell on the ground, but in time the damp bedding soured, creating an odor problem. Orn pulled out tufts of it and replaced them carefully with fresh. This took some time, but it was necessary and natural. The cub slept. Orn covered it and the eggs and slept, too.

In the morning Orn left the nest well insulated and went out to hunt and reconnoiter. He did not take extraordinary measures to conceal his traces, for he intended to move the nest to a better place.

First he checked on the predator mam. The fung was gone, and the mam was injured; it had evidently been a savage encounter. Orn did not see the mam; he saw the site of the contest, noting the scuffled ground, the blood soaked in it—mam blood and fung ichor—and the bits of flesh and bone that had constituted the five extremities used to manipulate the lightning weapon. He saw the ruptured skin of the fung, the lens of the great eye, some muscle of the foot, but very little of the main body. That was odd, for the scavenger arths had not had time to consume that mass yet.

The mam had survived, badly damaged—but he was still casting about, searching for Orn and the nest.

Orn thought of attacking the mam. It was in a weakened state, and Orn was strong; he might now be able to kill it. But if the mam possessed the fire weapon and had some way to operate it despite the loss of the small bones, Orn could not prevail. A tyrann might be crippled, but its tooth was still sharp! Orn left the mam alone.

He ran down a small brach rep, fed on it, and returned to the nest. It was full daylight now. The mam's search pattern was getting closer; he had to move the nest.

He hooked his neck through the harness and pulled. He would take it to a warm cave high in the Ox by Piers Anthony

mountain ridge. There the eggs could remain warm steadily, and the cub would be protected. Caves made good nesting places—sometimes.

But the route was difficult. He had to pass through the territories of two predator reps, slowed by the nest, and pursued by the mam. He had to navigate the fringe of a mud flat. Then the steep slope, where he would be exposed to the mam's lightning weapon.

Orn did not concern himself with the odds. He moved out.

He passed through the tyrann's region safely. Once this section had been the territory of a larger tyrann, who had pursued the Quilon up the mountain and perished in the cold; the new tyrann had not yet fully assimilated the enlarged area. It might be asleep or occupied elsewhere.

But the smaller rep predator, a struth, caught him.

Struth was as like Orn as a rep could be. He had long legs, a slender neck, and he was within twice Orn's mass. He therefore regarded Orn as a direct competitor.

With a scream of outrage, Struth charged. Orn ducked out of the harness and scooted around the cart to face the rep. He would have to fight—otherwise, Struth would gobble the eggs and cub.

Orn's ancestry had had much experience with Struth. The rep was tough. Only in the cool morning could Orn match it, for then the rep's speed and reflexes were slowed.

This was morning.

Orn dodged aside as Struth charged. He brought up one foot, using his sharp claws to rake the rep's side with the powerful downstroke.

It was a good shot. A soft-skinned mam would have been disemboweled. But the tough hide of the rep protected it so that all it suffered was a nasty scrape and the severance of several small muscles.

Meanwhile, its teeth whipped around, snapping in air not far from Orn's neck.

But Orn was ready for that motion. His beak stabbed forward, scoring on the rep's eye. The creature screamed with pain and pulled back.

Orn raised his foot again to make the evisceration strike, his best technique. But the rep's jaws closed on his elevated foot, for it was taller than he.

Immediately, desperately, Orn struck with his beak, punching out the other eye. The rep let go—but Orn's foot had been mangled.

He made one more strike against the blind Struth with his good foot. This time it was effective.

Dying, his intestines spilling out, the rep collapsed. He snapped savagely at his own guts, trying to vanquish the pain.

Orn took no time to feed, tempting as the sight of those burgeoning entrails were. The mam would catch up! He returned to the nest, hooked his neck through, and limped forward. Weight on his injured foot pained him increasingly, but he went on jerkily.

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He reached the mud flat. The mud was hot today; huge bubbles rose, expanded, and popped. But a detour around this area would greatly extend his route and take him back through Tyrann's territory.

Lame as he was, that was not to be risked.

The best path through it would take him near several of the largest bubble-pits. Alone, he might manage it, even injured as he was. Hauling the nest made it far more difficult.

But if he made it, the boiling mud would serve as an equal barrier to the mam. Perhaps a fatal one.

He moved ahead, twisting around the hot pits with the inspiration of desperation. He had to keep the nest moving, for the wheels tended to sink in the soft surface.

He heard a noise. His head swiveled. The predator mam had emerged from the foliage. The creature was swathed in material. Sticks were bound to its limbs and fabric covered its torso—not its normal removable plumage but tight patches covering wounds. Orn did not have to reason out the combat; his observation of the site of the engagement with the fung, coupled with the present condition of the mam, were sufficient to form the picture.

The fung had struck at the weapon first, nullifying it, leaving the mam to his own resources. Next, the fung had cut at the mam's broad neck. The mam had protected his neck with his limbs, and so those limbs had been deeply sliced: flesh from bone. But once the mam got his appendages on the fung, he had torn it apart, killing it.

Afterward, the mam had bound up his wounds to stop the loss of body fluids, using the sticks to fix the bones in place. And continued his pursuit of Orn. A formidable predator!

A huge bubble developed almost beneath Orn. It was a slow riser that had given no prior signal of its presence; Orn had judged this section safe.

He jerked forward, trying to haul the cart to safety. But its wheels were deep in the mud loosened by the bubble. He only succeeded in sliding it directly into the air cavity as it erupted.

The cart tipped, spilling one egg into the hot mud, then another. The cub wailed. Orn flapped his wings, striving for leverage against the air. But the harness entangled them.

The bubble burst. Scorching gas enveloped Orn. He squawked in agony, then inhaled the vapor into his lungs.

Burning inside and out, Orn sank into the bubble. As the heat of it cooked him, his glazing eyes saw a strange glow with many sparkling points. It coalesced about the nest, about the one remaining egg and the mam cub.

This was the one experience Orn's ancestry had been unable to bequeath to him: the death of the individual. Heat, pain, and a cloud of lights. Mud-matted feathers. Sinking.

The strangest thing about it was the apparent surprise of the watching predator. The mam was not dying; why was he sharing Orn's experience?

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Chapter 20

UNIT

20

The unit phased into the forest-frame, orienting on the location of the two mams.

"Watch out!" Veg cried. "One of the machines is after us!"

"I am an emissary of Machine Prime," the unit said. "As you will recall, we made an agreement for the exchange of enclaves between our frames."

"That's true," Tamme said, but her body was tense. She no longer carried the frame homer: evidence of her bad faith.

"You will note that I address you in your own dialect rather than the one we worked out in our prior interview."

"I noted," she said tightly.

"Peace is being established between the alternates. We are in touch with your home-frame and are making contact with others. There will be no exchange of enclaves."

"Meaning?" She was trying to assess the best method of disabling the machine.

"We never intended conquest despite your suspicions. We wished only rapport, a stronger base against what we deemed to be a common enemy. You misjudged our motive, and we misjudged the patterns. Such misconceptions are being resolved. If you will accompany me now, you will be satisfied."

Veg shook his head. "I have this strange feeling we should believe it. A machine never tried to talk to me before. It sure knew where to find us, and it didn't attack."

Tamme shook her head. "I don't trust it. We know how vicious these machines can be."

"I must convey you to Çatal Huyuk," the unit said. "You have merely to remain in your places."

"A machine can move us across alternates?" Tamme asked.

"A machine always has," Veg reminded her. Uncertain of the situation, she made no overt resistance.

The unit moved them. They phased smoothly from forest to city without the intercession of Blizzard.

Aquilon saw the machine and opened her mouth in a soundless scream. Cal looked up from a partly dismantled machine. "Is this an answer to our message?" he inquired guardedly.

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"You may call it such, Dr. Potter," the unit said. Then Cal saw Veg and Tamme. He relaxed. "Hello,"

he said, raising his hand in greeting. "It must be all right. The machines are our friends—I think."

Tamme glanced from him to Aquilon. "And are we friends, too?"

"You've changed," Aquilon said, looking closely at her.

"I have gone normal."

"We are all friends now," the unit said. "I will convey you to Çatal Huyuk ancient, where—"

"Çatal Huyuk!" Cal and Aquilon exclaimed together.

"Amplification," the unit said. "This frame is Çatal Huyuk modern. Our destination is Çatal Huyuk ancient."

" This is Çatal Huyuk?" Cal asked. "Ten thousand years later?"

"Time becomes irrelevant. We shall return you to your own frames after the decision-assembly or to any you prefer."

Tamme and Aquilon were grim lipped; the men were more relaxed. What kind of decision was contemplated by the machine?

"Çatal Huyuk," Cal repeated, shaking his head. "The splendor of early man, forgotten..."

The two mantas settled, watching the unit. The surrealist city faded out, and the ancient Çatal Huyuk faded in.

A pattern-entity and the white-robed alternate Aquilon were waiting in the shrine-room. The two Aquilons were startled by each other, turning their eyes away. Tamme appraised the almost prisonlike closure of the room warily, judging whether the machine and pattern could be destroyed and an escape effected without the loss of Veg.

"We are all friends," the unit repeated. "We are gathered here for the denouement so that we may resolve prior confusions and dispose the protagonists suitably."

The assembled entities looked around: five human beings, two mantas, and the pattern. No one spoke. Sparkles from the pattern radiated out, passing through the physical creatures without effect.

"In a certain frame," the unit said, as though oblivious to the tension that now gripped even the men,

"Calvin Potter died. His cessation was witnessed by his close friend and potential lover, Deborah Hunt. It had a profound effect on her—so strong that the trauma extended across a number of related frames."

"My nightmare!" the informal Aquilon whispered.

The white-robed Aquilon glanced at her. "So you felt it, too..."

"This is a common effect," the unit explained. "It accounts for many of the instances of human déjà Ox by Piers Anthony

vu, precognition, spectral manifestation—"

Cal nodded, comprehending. "We call it supernatural because the natural laws of our single frame do not account for psychic phenomena. But if they are merely reflections of actual occurrences in adjacent frames..."

"This man," the unit said, indicating Cal, "crossed over to the frame of that woman—" it indicated the priestess Aquilon—"and impregnated her. He returned to his frame and dismissed the matter as a fantasy. She bore his child and cared for it with the aid of her friend Veg and the four mantas and the family of sapient birds."

Informal Aquilon stared at robed Aquilon. "You said you had a baby—"

"Yes..."

Informal Aquilon turned to Cal. "And you were the father?"

He spread his hands. "It appears so."

"This is another occasional effect," the unit said. "When there is a sudden, overwhelming need in one frame, and the capacity to alleviate it in a nearby one, spontaneous crossover can occur. In this case it was facilitated by the presence of an aperture projector left by an exploratory party from a farther-removed frame. Their agents were of the VI series—"

"We haven't reached VI yet," Tamme said. "TE is the latest—"

"That frame is ahead of yours," the unit explained. "Vibro and Videl projected in, left their spare projector in a secluded location in case of emergency, and went to study the reptilian enclave. They were misfortunate, being caught in a severe tremor, injured, and consumed by predatory fauna before they could reach that reserve projector. So it remained where it was, on that frame, until used by Mr.

Potter."

Veg sat down on the edge of the raised level. "This is mighty interesting," he said. "But why were we picked up by the sparkles, and who left all those other projectors around? Can't all have been survey parties gobbled by dinosaurs—not in Fognose, or Blizzard, or—"

"The other projectors were left by people like you," the unit said. "You and the TA agent projected to another frame, leaving your instrument behind. The same thing happened on the other frames.

Because each was a frame-site selected by the pattern-entities for temporary storage of experimental subjects—"

"White rats," Tamme interjected. She had not relaxed. "—they were in phase with each other. Instead of opening on random frames and locations, each projected to the immediate site of another storage area. This kept the subjects contained—which was one reason the patterns arranged it that way. The aggregate formed patterns—again no coincidence, as this is inherent in any endeavor of the pattern-entities."

"It figures," Veg said. "So there was no way off that Möbius loop."

Ox by Piers Anthony

"That system has been dismantled," the unit said.

"But what about all the other people?" Veg demanded.

"They are being interviewed by other units."

"You mean the machines have taken over all alternity?"

Now it was out. Tamme, seeming relaxed, was poised for action—and Cal, both mantas, and the informal Aquilon were ready to follow her lead. There would be violence in an instant—the moment they were sure there was no better course.

"The term 'takeover' is inapplicable," the unit said. "Machine Prime now serves as coordinator for existent frames. This will be clarified in a moment."

"Let it speak," Cal murmured to Veg. "This is a most revealing dialogue." And now Veg also was ready for action.

"The follow-up mission of the agents was delayed for a year, in that frame where Aquilon was gravid. When the agents came, the mantas and sapient birds died, Vachel Smith was captured, and Miss Hunt projected to this frame: a world in the human neolithic. She found the projector left here by another party—"

"How many parties are there buzzing around?" Veg demanded.

"An infinite number. But most were incorporated into the pattern arranged by the pattern-entities; there was no mechanical way to break out of those loops. Miss Hunt experimented with her projector, visited her counterpart on the desert setting, inadvertently destroyed the egg, and returned here in remorse to destroy her projector."

"You did that?" the informal Aquilon asked. The robed Aquilon nodded sadly. "What happened to my baby?"

"The bird Orn attempted to save both his eggs and your baby. He was stalked by an agent whose assignment was to recover both for return to Earth. The agents did not believe there had been time for a human infant to be conceived and birthed, so it was important for them to investigate the phenomenon fully. Orn perished—but a pattern entity salvaged one egg, the baby, and a fertile spore from the deceased mantas. These were conveyed to a restricted locale with a newly manufactured machine entity—"

"The scene we saw on the stage!" the informal Aquilon cried. Now her resolve to fight was wavering.

The machine seemed to know too much to be an enemy.

"A nascent pattern was also created there," the unit continued. "Small, mindless shoots of the type generated on Mr. Potter's three-dimensional screen were sent across the limited element accesses in such a way as to combine and form a complete, sentient entity. This is the way new patterns are formed; they do not reproduce in the fashion of physical entities. There is a certain parallel in the manufacture of sentient machines, however. Such a machine had just been fashioned on the so-called Ox by Piers Anthony

Desert frame; one of its builders had obtained the necessary ingredients from the human supplies projected there—"

"So that was why it was hungry!" Veg said. "It was a mother machine." Now he, too, was wavering as further comprehension came.

"The analogy is inexact," the unit said. "However, the new machine was the one transferred to the enclave elsewhere on that frame. That enclave was then complete. The patterns, observing, hoped to ascertain the nature of the physical entities. They were not successful in that—but the enclave nevertheless achieved success of its own."

"But the enclave-baby died!" Informal Aquilon protested. "We saw the horrible machine slice it up—"

Robed Aquilon froze.

"The pattern-entity, reacting to the need of the other entities, restored the infant," the unit said. "Its death became apparent but unreal—as was Mr. Potter's death in your frame. You called that a nightmare."

"My baby—lives?" robed Aquilon asked.

"Yes. The component entities of the enclave combined their resources and developed a system of intercommunication that is now transforming sentient relations in all alternity. The adult enclave then assigned the duty of application and coordination to Machine Prime, and this duty we are now executing."

There was a pause. Then: "Why tell us all this?" Veg asked. "Why not ship us back to our homes, or execute us, or ignore us? What do you care what happens to us?"

"Machine Prime does not care. It merely honors the terms of the agreement. The enclave specified that those of you who were instrumental in its formation be catered to. Now it is being dismantled, and we—"

"Dismantled?" informal Aquilon asked. "What's happening to—to Ornet and the baby—?"

"The baby grew up to be a remarkably capable man," the unit said. "This was because the enclave pattern entity, OX, utilized special properties of alternity to age the entire enclave twenty years. The other inhabitants matured similarly. In fact, OX arranged for a baby girl from your home-frame to enter the enclave, and she also matured. She was intended as a mate for Cub—the man—but that did not occur. It seems your kind, like machine units, can not be raised in isolation and retain sanity. OX

therefore arranged for the return of the girl and reverted the enclave to its original status after issuing the report of the five sentients."

"So the baby is—still a baby," informal Aquilon said. "And Ornet is a chick, and—"

"What's going to happen to them?" robed Aquilon demanded. "My baby—"

Ox by Piers Anthony

"Their disposition is for this party to decide," the unit said. "We suggest that the baby be returned to its natural parents—"

"Oh-oh," informal Aquilon said, looking first at her alternate, then to Cal.

Cal put his hand on hers. "I may have strayed once—but this was a confusion. At any rate, the matter is academic. I am not the father."

"You are the father," the unit said.

Veg chuckled. "Machine, if you can win an argument with Cal, you're a damn genius. Because he is."

He shook his head. "Never thought he'd be involved in a paternity suit, though."

"It is not a matter for debate," the unit said. "We have verified the information."

Even Tamme relaxed. If the machine were ready to quibble about details, force might not be necessary. But if force were called for, it should be timed for that instant of confusion when the machine realized its mistake. For Cal had to be correct; Tamme anticipated the point he was about to make and recognized its validity. When it came to intellectual combat, Cal was supreme, as she and the other agents had learned on Paleo.

"Let me explain," Cal said. "According to you, I crossed over, impregnated this woman—" he indicated the robed Aquilon—"and returned to my own frame in time to encounter the agent mission there. Meanwhile, in the other frame, she carried the baby to term and gave birth to it, subsequently becoming separated from it when it was about three months old. That baby entered the enclave and is now available for return."

"Correct," the unit said.

"Therefore, approximately a year passed in the other frame. But in my frame, a week has passed." He frowned. "Correction: two weeks. Time has become confused—but hardly to the extent of a year. My companions will verify this."

Veg's mouth dropped open. "That's right! Tamme got better in a week on Fognose, and there weren't many other—"

"True," Tamme agreed. She had assessed the mechanisms of the machine and judged that one projectile fired to ricochet off the treads and into the mechanism from below would cripple it.

Slowed, it could then be reduced by a concerted attack. It was a small machine, not as formidable as some.

"Yes," informal Aquilon said. "How can he be the father—from two weeks ago?"

"He is the father," the unit repeated. "I am undoubtedly the father of a baby in some other alternate—or will be some eight months hence," Cal said. "But some other Cal, from a frame running a year or more ahead of us—because this other Aquilon, in addition to her Paleo adventure, has evidently been here at Çatal Huyuk some time—is responsible for the enclave baby." He turned to informal Aquilon. "There is no question of my leaving you even for your double."

Ox by Piers Anthony

Veg smiled triumphantly, while Tamme made ready to act. "What do you say to that, machine?"

"We have mentioned that the agent mission was delayed for a year in this woman's frame," the unit said, making a gesture to include the robed Aquilon. "The patterns were responsible for that. This occurred in the course of the institution of their holographic representation, the enclave. Time travel is not possible within frames, but the appearance of it can be generated by phasing across frames, as you found on Paleo. By instituting a type of feedback circuit, a pattern entity is able to accelerate a portion of a limited complex of frames. This occurred in the enclave. But that portion is then out of phase and can not interact effectively with normal frames until it reverts. The only way to adjust the time-orientations of individuals so that one entity may interact with another in a different frame despite a dichotomy of time is to enable that individual to cross on the bias. That is what the patterns did with you. When you crossed from Paleo to Desert, you jumped forward more than a year in time."

"But we used our own projector!" Tamme protested, still trying to catch the machine in its error.

"Your projector is a toy compared to the ability of the patterns. They altered your route during transit."

Tamme saw her chance going. The machine was not at all confused and showed no weakness. From what she had seen of the patterns, they could play tricks with time...

"However, such bias must always be balanced," the unit continued. "The patterns could not jump you forward a year in one frame without performing a similar operation in the other. Therefore, the agents, similar in number and mass to your party—"

"Equations must balance!" Cal exclaimed. "Of course! We jumped to the desert, hurdling a year, while the agents hurdled the same year jumping from Earth into the other Paleo. So those agents lost a year without knowing it, and so did we."

Tamme relaxed. The seemingly impossible had happened. Cal had been outlogicked, their chance to strike eliminated. That machine really had control over the situation!

"Now I remember," the robed Aquilon said. "Tama said there hadn't been time, and I didn't know what she meant."

"But we were in different frames," Veg said. "Our year couldn't balance out the agents' year, when—"

"Parallel frames—linked by Cal's brief crossover," the unit said. "For that purpose, with Cal in one and his child in the other, the two frames amounted to identity. By this device you were restored to phase with that Aquilon you impregnated, though she has lived more than a year longer than you in the interval between your encounters."

Now the machine was so confident it was even waxing informal, Tamme thought. It had started calling them by their group-given names instead of their legal ones.

Ox by Piers Anthony

Cal spread his hands. "I will, of course, assume responsibility for the baby—"

"Oh, no, you won't!" the robed Aquilon said. "You may be the biologic father, but my Cal died, and I mourned him, and I will not have an impostor take his place. In that interim I was dependent on the grace of another man, and so was the baby. I may not love him—yet!—but he is the one to raise the baby with me—if he chooses to."

Suddenly Tamme's deadly readiness had another object.

"Who?" informal Aquilon asked, perplexed. "This is all so confused—"

"Veg. I think he always was the one I really—"

Veg jumped. "Uh- uh! I loved you once—one of you, anyway—but that didn't work out. Now I'm with Tamme—"

Cal looked at him. "It would not be wise to place undue credence in an agent's expressed interest. An agent is the ultimate manifestation of the omnivorous way."

How cleverly the machine had maneuvered them! Now they were quarreling among themselves and would be unable to unite against the real menace. "I love him," Tamme said. "I go where he goes; I eat where he eats, figuratively and literally. It doesn't matter who doubts it, so long as he believes. I can understand why she loves him, too—but I shall not give him up."

"Not him," the robed Aquilon said. "I mean my Veg. Maybe he's dead, too, now, but—"

"He is not dead," the unit said. "The surviving agent of that frame, Tanu, is in the process of taking him back to the major transfer point on Paleo so he can be returned to Earth to stand trial for treason.

We can recover him for you."

"Yes!" she cried.

That agreement seemed to finish any thought of opposition. If the machine could fulfill its promise—and there was no reason why it couldn't—they all stood to gain far more by cooperating.

"There remains the disposition of the other entities of the enclave," the unit said, as though all this had been routine. "The manta Dec and the bird Ornet, now too young to comprehend their parts in this matter—"

"Bring them here, too," the robed Aquilon said, seeming to radiate her joy at the recovery of her baby and her man. "This fertile plain is a paradise for their kind. That's why I tried to bring the egg here—"

She looked at her double. "I'm sorry—"

"If I had known, I would have given it to you," the informal Aquilon said. "Ornet and Dec belong to your frame."

The unit activated a relay. A small manta, a large chick, and a human baby appeared in the middle of the room. They drew together defensively, the manta and the chick standing on either side of the baby, facing out, poised.

Ox by Piers Anthony

The robed Aquilon went to them, extending her hands to the manta and bird, winning their confidence. She picked up her baby, hugging him, smiling with tears streaming down her cheeks.

"You'll like it here—I know you will!" she cried. "The people here won't hunt you; you'll be sacred, as I am." Then she looked around the room. "Why don't you stay, too?"

Veg and Tamme exchanged glances. "The baby I might bear would not resemble me..." she cautioned him.

"I know who it would resemble!" he said. He frowned. "I sort of like the forest..."

"You will be free to travel between frames at will," the unit said. "I will convey you."

"Even to Earth?" Cal asked.

"Anywhere in alternity, Calvin Potter. This privilege will not be extended indiscriminately, but these present here are the parental entities to the enclave, insofar as those entities survive. There will be access to the entire fabric, as required by the compact."

"I am interested in the comparative evolution of the several forms of sentience—pattern, machine, and life," Cal said. "The machines, for example, must have been created, perhaps by an early compromise between energy and physical states of sentience. There must be a fascinating history—"

"There is," the unit agreed. "This, too, is available to you."

The robed Aquilon looked up. "I meant all of you, and OX and the machine, too, if their frames will give them up. The whole enclave could grow up normally, in a better environment. Learning to live and work together, showing the way for all the sentience of alternity..."

"What a marvel that could make of this city," Cal said. "Representatives of all the sentients."

"Çatal Huyuk modern..." the informal Aquilon said. "This is where it starts—right here, in this room, now..." The pattern entity in the corner sparkled. "This is OX," the unit said. "He accepts your invitation. Of course he will be in touch with his own kind, too. but he wants to continue his association with the spots—that is, physical sentience."

"But what about the machine?" the robed Aquilon persisted. "From what you say, it belongs with the others. It's not a bad sort. It should be with the entities of the enclave, and those of us who—understand. It shouldn't be sent back to—"

"Mach has been temporarily incorporated as a unit of Machine Prime," the unit said. "The matter has therefore been resolved."

"Now wait a minute," Veg said. "That little machine has a right to decide for itself whether it wants to be swallowed up in—"

Cal put a hand on his friend's arm. "It's all right."

"Who are you?" Tamme demanded, already guessing the answer.

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The unit made a gesture with wheels and blade that was very like a smile. "I am Mach."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

21

Some readers may be curious about the games of "Life" and "Hexaflexagon" described respectively in chapters 9 and 11. A number of readers wrote to inquire about the game of "Sprouts" described in my earlier novel Macroscope, so I hope to save us all trouble by identifying my sources here.

"Life" is derived from Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American magazine for October and November 1970, and January and February 1971. (Martin Gardner is not to be confused with John Gardner, founder of Common Cause, another worthy entity.)

"Hexaflexagons" are real figures that can be made from folded paper; I have made several with three, six, and twelve faces and recommend them as entertainment for children and adults. The source is The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions, by Martin Gardner, first published in 1959 by Simon and Schuster.

And for Macroscope readers: "Sprouts" is also from Mr. Gardner's column in Scientific American for July 1967.

ALTERNITY

HEXAFLEXAGON CHART

Chart

Key:

1. Forest

7. City

2. Orchestra

8. Planes

3. Fognose

9. Machine-hive

4. Jungle gym

10. Walking plants

5. Blizzard

11. Pattern

6. Walls

12. Bazaar

Ox by Piers Anthony

Copyright © 1976 by Piers Anthony

ISBN: 0-380-41392-2