Of Man And Manta - Ox Part 21

"It figures," he muttered, hoisting himself up to perch on the thin edge. The worlds were fascinating in their variety, but he certainly wasn't being much of a help so far.

Soon she was partially hidden behind the translucency of angled planes; he could detect her motion, not her image. She was looking for the next projector, of course.

Suppose she didn't find it? There was no guarantee that a given world had a projector or that it would be within a thousand miles. There had to be an end to the line somewhere.

A chill of apprehension crawled over him. No guarantee the next world would have air to breathe, either! They were playing one h.e.l.l of a roulette game!

Maybe they would go on and on forever, meeting such a bewildering array of alternates that eventually they would forget which one they had started from, forget Earth itself.

Well, he had volunteered for the course!

Tamme was now invisible. Veg looked about, becoming bored with the local configurations. He wanted to explore some on his own, but he knew he had to remain as a reference point. This alternate was pretty in its fashion, but what was there to do?

He noticed that the plastic plane he perched on was not in ideal repair. Strips of it were flaking off. Maybe it was molting, shedding its skin as it grew. Ha-ha.

Idly, he peeled off a length of it, moved by the same mild compulsion that caused people to peel the plastic from new glossy book restorations. The stuff was almost colorless in this depth, flexible and a bit crackly. He folded it over, and it made a neat, straight crease without breaking.

That gave him a notion. He began folding off triangular sections. He was making a hexaflexagon!

"Let's go," Tamme said.

Veg looked up. "You found it, huh?" He tucked his creation into a pocket and followed her, leaping from plane to plane, stretching his legs at last.

It was hidden in the convergence of three planes, nestled securely. "Kilroy was here, all right," he murmured.

Tamme glanced at him sharply. "Who?"

"You don't know Kilroy? He's from way back."

"Oh -- a figure of speech." She bent over the projector.

So that was a gap in the agent education: They didn't know about Kilroy. He probably wasn't considered important enough to be included in their programming. Their loss!

The projector came on --

-- and they were back in the blizzard.

"A circuit!" Tamme cried in his ear, exasperated. "Well, I know where the projector is." She bundled him into her clothes and plunged forward.

"Maybe it's not the same one!" Veg cried.

"It is the same. There's our igloo." Sure enough, they were pa.s.sing it. But Veg noted that they had landed in a slightly different place this time, for the igloo had been built at their prior landing site. This time they had arrived about fifty feet to the side. Was that significant? He was too cold to think it out properly.

In minutes they found it. "There's been time to recharge it -- just," she said. Then: "That's funny."

"What?" he asked, shivering in the gale.

"This is a left-handed projector, more or less."

"Same one we used before," he said. "Let's get on with it."

"I must be slipping," she said. "I should have noticed that before."

"In this blizzard? Just finding it was enough!"

She shrugged and activated it.

They were now in the alien orchestra.

Veg shook the snow off his cloak and hood and looked about. This time they seemed to have landed in exactly the same place as before; he saw the stain of their prior water-shedding as the snow melted.

"We're stuck in a loop of alternates," Tamme said. "I don't like this."

"There's got to be a way out. There was a way in."

"That doesn't necessarily follow." She glanced about. "In any event, we ought to rest while the local projector is recharging."

"Sure," he agreed. "Want me to stand watch?"

"Yes," she said, surprising him. And she lay down on the floor and went to sleep.

Just like that! Veg's eyes ran over her body, for she was still in bra and panties. The hardware didn't show, and in repose Tamme looked very feminine. And why shouldn't she? he asked himself fiercely. Every woman in the world did not have to be stamped in the mold of Aquilon!

Of course Tamme wasn't a woman at all but an agent. She really was stamped from a mold -- the TA-distaff-series mold. All over the world there were more just like her, each every bit as pretty, competent, and self-reliant.

He shied away from that concept. Instead, he looked around the orchestra at the now-familiar creatures. They looked the same: octopi, gillbirds, drumstick drummers. But something had changed somehow. What was it?

He concentrated, and it came to him: This alternate was the same, but the blizzard-alternate had been different. The igloo, as he pa.s.sed it... no, he couldn't quite pin it down. Different, yet the same, indefinably.

Veg blew out his breath, removed Tamme's cloak, and discovered his plastic hexaflexagon. This was proof he had been to the plane world, at least! He completed the folds, bit on the ends to fasten them properly, and flexed the device idly.

This was a hexa-hexaflexagon. It was hexagonal in outline, and when flexed, it turned up a new face from the interior, concealing one of the prior ones. But not in regular order. Some faces were harder to open than others.

He fished in his pocket and brought out a stubby pencil. He marked the faces as he came to them: 1 for the top, 2 for the bottom. He flexed it, turning a new blank face to the top, and marked it 3. He flexed it again, and 2 came up.

"Closed loop," he muttered. "But I know how to fix that!" He shifted his grip to another diagonal and flexed from it. This time a new face appeared, and he marked this 4.

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

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

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

Then the realization hit him.

"Hey, Tam!" he breathed.

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