Suddenly all three others tensed as though struck by a common vision. Veg knew now this was no joke; they could never have executed such a simultaneous reaction -- unless they really had a common stimulus. "What the h.e.l.l is it?" he demanded.

"A machine!" Aquilon exclaimed, "that whirling blade -- "

"Where?" Veg cried, looking around nervously. But there was no machine. Aquilon was still staring into the vortex.

"That must be what Veg fought!" Tamme said. "See the treads, the way it moves -- no wonder he had such a time with it! The thing's vicious!"

"Sure it was vicious," Veg agreed. "But this is only a picture -- or a ma.s.s hypnosis. I don't see it."

"You know, that's a small machine," Cal said. "A miniature, only a foot high."

"They're all babies!" Tamme said. "But the others are no match for that machine. That's a third-generation killer."

"Throw sand at it!" Veg said. For a moment he thought he saw the little machine buzzing through the depths of sparkle. But the whirling blade spun off into a pin-wheel, and he lost it. He just didn't have the eye for this show.

"They can't throw sand," Aquilon said breathlessly. "Ornet and the mantling don't have hands, and the baby can't even sit up yet."

"They would hardly know about that technique of defense yet," Cal added.

"Well, they can run, can't they?" Veg demanded. "Let them take turns leading it away."

"They're trying," Tamme said. "But it isn't -- "

Then all three tensed again. "No -- !" Cal cried.

Aquilon screamed. It was not a polite noise, such as one makes at a play. It was a full-throated scream of sheer horror.

Veg had had enough. He charged the stage, leaped to the platform, and plunged into the center of the glowing maelstrom, waving his arms and shouting. If nothing else, he could disrupt the hypnotic pictures that had captivated the minds of the others.

He felt a tingling, similar to his experience the last time. Then it faded. He was left gesticulating on the stage, alone. The sparkle-cloud was gone.

Chapter 6.

FRAMES.

Things progressed rapidly. The two blight spots were sentient; they responded to geometric sub-patterns readily and initiated their own. They had individual designations by which they could be identified, and these they made known by their responses. The shape-changing one was Dec, a ten-pointed symbol. The mobile-stable one was Ornet, indicative of a long line of evolving creatures or perhaps, more accurately, a series of shifting aspects of ident.i.ty. The third was not responsive in the same way, but Ornet identified it as Cub, or the young of another species. Each ent.i.ty was really quite distinct, once the group was understood.

The blights had a need, as did OX. He grasped the concept without identifying the specific. Ultimately, the mutual imperative to be SURVIVE. OX needed more volume; the spots needed something else.

When the spots were amenable, they made perfect geometric figures. When they were distressed, they made imperfect figures. OX did the same. Thus, they played a wide-ranging game of figures: I do this -- does it please/displease you? Is it nearer or farther from your mode of survival? You do that -- I am pleased/displeased as it reflects on some aspect of my survival.

Given enough time, they could have worked out an efficient means of communication. But there was no time; OX's elements were fading, and he had to have answers now. He had to know what the spots needed, and whether they had what he needed.

So he ran a frame-search. Instead of laboriously exchanging symbols, he surveyed the entire range of prospects available to him.

In a few, the spots were more active. They made excellent figures. In others, the elements were stronger, better for him. Guided by this knowledge, OX arranged his responses to direct developments toward the most favorable prospects.

But somehow these prospects faded as he approached them. The spots ceased cooperating.

OX surveyed the framework again, a.n.a.lyzing it in the context of this alteration. Somehow the act of orienting on his needs had made those needs unapproachable.

He tried orienting on the prospects most favorable to the spots -- and then his own improved.

Confusion. His survival and that of the spots were linked -- but the mechanism was unclear.

By experimentation and circuit modification, he clarified it. The spots needed a specific locale, both physical and frame -- that part of the framework where there were certain stationary spots. As they approached that region, they did something that enhanced the strength of his elements.

This was an alternate solution to his problem! He did not need greater volume if his existing elements recharged faster. The proximity of the spots, in some cases, enhanced that recharging. OX directed the responses to further enhance recharging while keeping the needs of the spots in mind.

Suddenly the spots responded. Amazingly, the elements flourished, recharging at such a rate that OX's entire survival problem abated.

In retrospect, comprehension came. The elements were not individual ent.i.ties; they were the energy termini of larger subpatterns. These systems were physical, like the ground. The spots were physical. The spots catered to the needs of the energy plants and thereby improved OX's situation.

Dialogue improved also. OX learned that one of the most important needs of spots and element-plants was fluid -- a certain kind of liquid matter. In the presence of this fluid, spots of many varieties flourished. Some were mobile spots of semi-sentient or nonsentient nature, distinct from the three he knew. Others were stationary and nonsentient -- and these also were of a number of subtypes. Some provided nourishment for the sentient spots, and so these were facilitated by the transfer of liquid and increased access to certain forms of ambient energy. Others, of no direct interest to the sentients, produced nodules of processed energy that projected into adjacent alternate-frames. These were the elements!

The physical sustenance that the spots provided for their own plants also aided the element plants. They became more vigorous, and so the elements were stronger. So, by this seemingly devious chain, when OX helped the spots, he helped himself. Not just any spots, for the semi-sentients had no care at all for the plants and would not cater to OX's preferences. But the sentient spots, grasping the interaction between them, now cared for the element plants as they cared for their own. It was largely through Ornet, the most sentient spot, that this understanding came about.

Survival seemed a.s.sured. Then the machine came.

OX recognized it instantly, though he had never experienced this type of interaction before. Alarm circuits were integral to his makeup, and the presence of the machine activated them. Here was Pattern's deadliest enemy!

In certain respects the machine was like a spot, for aspects of it were physical. But in other respects it was a kind of pattern, or antipattern. It possessed, in limited form, the ability to travel between frames, as OX did. Ordinarily, he would have noted only its pattern-aspect, but his necessary study of the spots had provided him with a wider perspective, and now he grasped much more of its nature. Suddenly the spots had enhanced his survival in quite another way, for when he viewed the machine as a double-level ent.i.ty, he found it both more comprehensible and more formidable.

It could not touch OX directly, but it was deadly. It destroyed his elements by shorting out their stores of energy and physically severing the element-plants from their moorings, leaving gaps in the network. Such gaps, encountered unawares, could destroy a pattern ent.i.ty.

The machine was also a direct physical threat to the spots and hence, in another respect, to OX's own survival. He could avoid it, moving his pattern to undamaged elements -- but the spots had no such retreat. They could not jump across the frames of probability.

The spots were aware of this. They were furiously mobile, interacting with the machine. Ornet was distracting it by moving erratically, while Dec swooped at it, striking with a sharp extremity. But the machine was invulnerable to such attack. In a moment it discovered less elusive prey. It turned on Cub.

Cub did not take evasive action. He merely lay where he was while the attack-instrument of the machine bore down.

The blades connected. Thinly sliced sections of the physical body flew out as the action continued. The solids and fluids were taken into the machine, and Cub was no more.

After that, the machine departed. It was a small one, and its immediate survival need -- its hunger -- had been sated by the matter in Cub. The crisis was over.

But Dec and Ornet had a different notion. They suffered negative reaction. They were distressed by the loss of their companion, as though he were related in some way to their own survival. It was a thing they were unable to convey directly to OX, but he understood their need, if not their rationale. They had expended much attention a.s.sisting Cub from the outset, and they required him to be undefunct.

Accordingly, OX surveyed the alternates. A number existed in which one of the other spots had been consumed by the machine, but OX concluded these were not appropriate. He located those in which all three spots survived intact.

Knowing an alternate frame and entering it were different things. OX had directed events toward favorable alternates before -- but now he had to travel through the fourth dimension of probability, isolate one from many, and take the spots with him -- when the options had been greatly reduced by the force of events. He could readily remove the spots to a frame in which they would not suffer immediate attack by the machine; it was much more difficult to do this after that event had actually occurred.

He tried. The consumption of energy was colossal, diminishing his elements at a ruinous rate. Once started, he had to succeed, for only in the proper alternate would the elements remain sufficiently charged for the maintenance of his pattern. Failure meant nonsurvival.

The spots could be moved so long as they remained within the boundaries of his animated form. He could not move them physically from place to place, but he could transfer them from one version of reality to another. It was in his fundamental circuits, just as knowledge of machines was in them; he knew what to do -- if he could handle himself properly. Moving blight spots was more difficult than merely moving himself.

The framework wrenched. OX fibrillated. The frame changed. OX let go, disoriented by the complex effort. For a time he could not discern whether he had succeeded or failed.