Of Man And Manta - Ox Part 4

It came to rest before her, coalescing into a dark blob, the huge single eye glowing. The mantas, she knew, projected an all-purpose beam from that eye; they both saw and communicated by means of it. Was it trying to tell her something?

"Which one are you?" she inquired experimentally. They could actually see the compressions and rarefactions of the air that made sound; thus, they could in effect hear, though they had no auditory equipment. All their major senses were tied into one -- but what a sense that one was!

The thing jumped up, flattened into its traveling form, and cracked its tail like a whip. Six snaps.

"Hex," she said. "Veg's friend. Do you know where he is?"

One snap, meaning YES.

Communication was not difficult, after all. Soon she had ascertained that Veg was in good health and that the manta would conduct her to him.

Veg was resting as she came up. He was leaning against a boulder and chewing on a hunk of dark bread. "Where's the machine?" Tamme asked, as though this were routine.

"It finally got full and lost its appet.i.te," he said. "So it left. Lucky for me; I was almost out of food."

"You were feeding it?"

"It was bound to eat. Better to feed it what we could spare than let it take its own choice. Like vital supplies -- or people. The thing eats meat as well as metal! But when I started feeding it rocks and sand, it quit. Not too smart."

So the machine had been attacking him -- and he had foiled it at last by throwing what the desert offered. Veg might not be a genius, but he had good common sense!

Veg considered her more carefully. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

"We don't trust you."

"It figures." He wasn't even very surprised; she could read his honest minor responses in the slight tension of his muscles, the perspiration of his body, and the rate of breathing. In fact he was intrigued, for he found her s.e.xually appealing.

Tamme was used to that in normals. She was s.e.xually appealing; she had been designed to be that way. Usually she ignored her effect on men; sometimes she used it. It depended on the situation. If s.e.x could accomplish a mission more readily than another approach, why not?

But at the moment her only mission was to keep an eye on the activities of these people. Veg was the simplest of the lot; his motives were forthright, and it was not his nature to lie. She could relax.

"Have some bread," Veg said, offering her a torn chunk.

"Thank you." It was good bread; the agents' supplies were always nutritious because their bodies required proper maintenance for best efficiency. She bit down, severing the tough crust with teeth that could as easily cut through the flesh and bone of an antagonist.

"You know, I met one of you agents," Veg said. "Name of Subble. You know him?"

"Yes and no. I am familiar with the SU cla.s.s of agent but never met that particular unit."

"Unit?"

"All agents of a type are interchangeable. You would have had the same experience with any SU, and it would have been very similar with an SO, TA, or TE." His body tensed in quick anger. Amused, Tamme read the signs. Normals found the concept of human inter-changeability repulsive; they always wanted to believe that every person was unique, even those designed to be un-unique. If only they knew; the camaraderie of ident.i.ty was the major strength of all agents. Tamme never wanted to give up any of her programmed attributes -- unless every agent in her cla.s.s gave them up. She only felt at ease with her own kind, and even other series of agents made her feel slightly uncomfortable.

"Decent sort of a fellow, in his way. I guess he reported all about what we said."

"No. Subble died without making a report."

"Too bad," Veg said with mixed emotion. Again Tamme a.n.a.lyzed him: He was sorry Subble had died but relieved that the report had not been made. Evidently their dialogue had grown personal.

"Agents don't antagonize people unnecessarily," she said. "Our job is to ascertain the facts and to take necessary action. We're all alike so that the nature of our reactions can be predetermined and so that our reports need minimal correction for subjectivity or human bias. It is easier on the computer."

"That's what he said."

"Naturally. It's what we all say." Again that predictable annoyance. Veg looked at her. "But you aren't alike. He -- he understood."

"Try me sometime."

He looked at her again, more intently, reading an invitation. s.e.x appeal again. He had evidently been through a traumatic experience with the girl Aquilon and was on the rebound. Here he was with another comely blonde female, and though he knew intellectually that she was a dedicated and impersonal agent of the government, his emotion saw little more than the outward form. Which was why female agents were comely -- through they could turn it off at will. Normals had a marvelous capacity for willful self-delusion.

The other man, Calvin Potter, was far more intriguing as a challenge. But the expedient course was to enlist the cooperation of the most likely individual, and that was Veg. Cal would be deceived by no illusions; Veg was amenable, within limits, and more so at this time than he would be a month from now.

"We are alike," Tamme repeated, smiling in a fas.h.i.+on she knew was unlike any expression Subble would have used. "I can do anything your SU could do. Maybe a little more because I'm part of a later series."

"But you aren't a man!"

She raised a fair eyebrow. "So?"

"So if someone socked you -- "

"Go ahead," she said, raising her chin. She had to refrain from smiling at the unsubtlety of his approach. He moved suddenly, intending to stop his fist just shy of the mark. He was, indeed, a powerful man, fit to have been a pugilist in another age. Even sitting as he was, the force of a genuine blow like this could have knocked out an ordinary person.

She caught his arm and deflected it outward while she leaned forward. His fist pa.s.sed behind her head and momentum carried it around. Suddenly she was inside the crook of his arm, and their heads were close together.

She kissed him ever so lightly on the lips. "There will come a time, big man," she murmured. "But first we must find your lost friends."

That reminder electrified him. He had a triple shock: first, her demonstrated ability to foil him physically; second, the seeming incipience of an amorous liaison with a female agent -- intriguing as a suppressed fancy, upsetting as an actual prospect; third, the idea of dallying with a stranger while his two closest friends were unaccounted for.

Of course, Veg was not as culpable as he deemed himself to be in that moment. Tamme had scripted this encounter carefully, if extemporaneously. He had never supposed seriously that she would have anything to do with him -- and he had not known that Cal and Aquilon were missing. The appearance of the mantas had seemed to indicate that things were all right; he hadn't thought to query Hex or Circe closely, and the mantas, as was their custom, had not volunteered anything or intimated that something was wrong. He had supposed that Cal and Aquilon were back at the camp, their occupation made safe by his diversion of the vicious machine.

Tamme had shocked him with a kiss while informing him that this was not the case. In due course he would think all this out and realize that the agent had used him, or at least manipulated him. But by that time the significance of her remark "There will come a time" would have penetrated to a more fundamental level, and he wouldn't care.

Child's play, really. That was why Cal was so much more intriguing. She would of course make the attempt to impress Cal because he would then be less inclined to work against the interests of Earth -- the interests as the Earth-Authorities saw them. But she expected to fail. The girl, too, would be a difficult one because the weapon of s.e.x appeal would be valueless. Aquilon had s.e.x appeal of her own in good measure -- and it was natural rather than cultured. A rare quality! Also, Aquilon had already killed a male-agent, Taner; she would do the same with a female-agent if the occasion required it.

And there was a mystery: how had she killed Taner? She could not have caught the man off guard, and she could not have seduced him. Agents used s.e.x as they used anything necessary. They were not used by it.

It had to have been through the agency of the mantas. The fungoids were extremely swift, and the strike of their whiplike tails could kill. But they had to be airborne to attack and within striking range, and the reflexes of an alert agent were sufficient to shoot down a manta before it could complete its act. It was a matter of split-second coordination -- but the agent had the edge.

Taner had been careless, obviously. But that did not excuse the slaying of an agent. When the facts were known...

They were now both on their feet, ready to go. Veg's thoughts had run their channeled course. "They're not at the camp?"

"No. Their tracks follow yours, then disappear."

"That true, Hex?" he asked the manta. Distrust of agents was so ingrained that he wasn't even conscious of the implied affront. Why should he take her word?

Hex snapped his tail once. Vindication. Tamme wondered whether the creatures could read human lies as readily as the agents could. She would have to keep that in mind.

"Maybe Circe found them," Veg said.