Of Man And Manta - Ox Part 7

"I wouldn't count on it. If we do any more damage, we may see a destroyer-machine. And if this is their world, we'll be in trouble."

"Yeah, no sand here." Veg nodded thoughtfully. "If that desert was the hinterland, this is the capital. Same world, maybe."

"No. What we went through felt like a projection -- and the atmospherics differ here. That's no certain indication, but I believe it is safer to a.s.sume this is another alternate."

"Anyway, we're jungle specimens, picked up and put down, remote control. In case we should bite." He bared his teeth. "And we just might."

"Yet it is strange they didn't cage us," Tamme said. "And it was no machine that brought us."

"Well, let's look about -- carefully." He walked along the higher path. It extended in a bridgelike arc over a forest of winking lights. These were bulbs, not the scintillating motes that had brought the party here. Which reminded him again: "What did bring us?"

Tamme shook her head in the pretty way she had. It bothered him to think that probably all female agents had the same mannerisms, carefully programmed for their effect on gullible males like him. "Some kind of force field, maybe. And I suspect there is no way out of this except the way we came. We're in the power of the machines."

He stopped at a fountain that seemed to start as a rising beam of light but phased into falling water and finally hardened into a moving belt of woven fabric. Very carefully because of his experience with the flower, he touched the belt. It was solid yet resilient, like a rug. "The thing is a loom!"

Tamme looked, startled. "No Earthly technology, that," she said. "Very neat. The light pa.s.ses through that prism, separates into its component colors, which then become liquid and fall -- to be channeled into a pattern of the fabric before they solidify. Some loom!"

"I didn't know light could be liquefied or solidified," Veg remarked. His eyes traced the belt farther down to where it was slowly taken up by a huge roll.

"Neither did I," she admitted. "It appears that we are dealing with a more sophisticated science than our own."

"I sort of like it," he said. "It reminds me of something 'Quilon might paint. In fact, this whole city isn't bad."

But it was evident that Tamme was not so pleased. No doubt she would have a bombsh.e.l.l of a report when she returned to Earth. Would the agents come and burn all this down, as they had the dinosaur valley of Paleo?

Hex returned. "Hey, friend," Veg said. "Did you find them?"

One snap: YES. "All in one piece?"

Three snaps: confusion. To a manta, fragmentation was the death of prey. The creatures were not sharp on human humor or hyperbole.

But Cal and Aquilon were already on their way. "Veg!" Aquilon called just as though nothing had changed between them. She was absolutely beautiful.

In a moment they all were grouped about the light-fountain-loom. "We've been here an hour," Cal said. "This place is phenomenal!" Then he looked at Tamme, and Veg remembered that Cal had not known about her crossover. "Where are your friends?"

"Two alternates away, I suspect," Tamme said.

"You drew straws, and you lost."

"Exactly."

"She's not bad when you get to know her," Veg said, aware of the tension between the two.

"When you get to know them..." Aquilon murmured, and he knew she was thinking of Subble.

"I realize that not all of you are thrilled at my presence," Tamme said. "But I think we have become involved in something that overrides our private differences. We may never see Earth again."

"Do you want to?" Cal inquired. He was not being facetious.

"Is there anything to eat around here?" Veg asked. "We're short on supplies now."

"There are fruiting plants," Aquilon said. "We don't know whether they're safe, though."

"I can probably tell," Tamme said.

"See -- lucky she's along!" Veg said. It fell flat. Neither Cal nor Aquilon responded, and he knew they were still against Tamme. They were not going to give her a chance. And perhaps they were right; the agents had destroyed the dinosaur enclave without a trace of conscience. He felt a certain guilt defending any agent... though Subble had indeed seemed different.

It didn't help any that he knew Tamme could read his emotions as they occurred.

"Any hint of the machines' purpose in bringing us here?" Tamme asked.

Cal shrugged. "I question whether any machine was responsible. We seem to be dealing with some more sophisticated ent.i.ties. Whoever built this city..."

"There's some kind of amphitheater," Aquilon said. "With a stage. That might be the place to make contact -- if they want to."

"Doesn't make much sense to s.n.a.t.c.h us up and then forget us!" Veg muttered.

"These ent.i.ties may not see things quite the way we do," Cal said, smiling.

They examined the fruit plants, and Tamme p.r.o.nounced them probably safe. Apparently she had finely developed senses and was able to detect poison before it could harm her system.

The amphitheater was beautiful. Translucent colonnades framed the elevated stage, which was suspended above a green fog. The fog seemed to have no substance yet evidently supported the weight of the platform, cus.h.i.+oning it. Veg rolled a fruit into the mist, and the fruit emerged from the other side without hindrance: no substance there!

"Magnetic, perhaps," Cal said. "I admit to being impressed."

"But where are the people who made all this?" Veg demanded.

"Why do you a.s.sume people made it?"

"It's set up for people. The walks are just right, the seats fit us, the stage is easy to see, and the fruit's good. It wouldn't be like this if it were meant for non-humans."

Cal nodded. "An excellent reply."

"What about the machines?" Aquilon asked. "They move all around, tending it."

"That's just it," Veg said. "They're tending it, not using it. They're servants, not masters."

"I can't improve on that reasoning," Cal said. That struck Veg as vaguely false; why should Cal try to b.u.t.ter him up? To stop him from siding with Tamme?

"But if human beings built it -- " Aquilon started.

"Then where are they?" Veg finished. "That's what I wanted to know the first time 'round."

"Several possibilities," Cal said thoughtfully. "This could have been constructed centuries or millennia ago, then deserted. The machines might have been designed to maintain it, and no one ever turned them off."

"Who ever deserted a healthy city?" Veg asked. "I mean, the whole population?"

"It happened at catal Huyuk in ancient Anatolia. That was a thriving neolithic city for a thousand years. Then the people left it and started Hacilar, two hundred miles to the west."