OX's disorientation was developing again. With another effort he modified his rationale-feedback to permit him to consider confusion and paradox without suffering in this fashion. The distress signals accompanying this modification were so strong that he would never have done it had he not faced the inevitable alternative of nonsurvival.

Now he concentrated on the observable phenomena. Possible or not, the spot moved in the manner it moved and was stable.

Another spot moved but did not alter its outline appreciably. It seemed to be circulating so as not to exhaust its elements, which made sense. But it traveled only in those two dimensions.

The third spot did not move. It only shifted its projections randomly. It had occupied the same bank of elements too long -- yet had not exhausted them. Another improbability: Elements had to be given slack time to recharge, or they became inoperative.

Of course, a pattern that damped down elements might not exhaust them in the same fashion.

Could OX himself achieve that state? If he were able to alternate pattern-activity with pattern damping, he might survive indefinitely.

Survival!

Such a prospect was worth the expenditure of his last reserves of energy.

OX did not know how such an inversion might be achieved. The spot patterns did know, for they had achieved it. He would have to learn from them.

It now became a problem of communication. With an ent.i.ty of his own type OX would have sent an exploratory vortex to meet the vortex of the other. But these spot-ent.i.ties were within his demesnes, not perceivable beyond them.

He tried an internal vortex, creating a subpattern within his own being, in the vicinity of the most mobile spot. There was no response.

He tried a self-damping offshoot -- another construction developed as the need manifested. The mobile spot ignored it. Was the spot nonsentient after all -- or merely unable to perceive the activation of the elements?

He tried other variants. The mobile spot took no notice.

OX was pragmatic. If one thing did not work, he would try another, and another, until he either found something that did work or exhausted the alternatives. His elements were slowly fading; if he did not discover a solution -- nonsurvival.

In the midst of the fifteenth variation of offshoot, OX noted a response. Not by the shape-changing spot at which the display was directed -- by the stable-shape mobile spot. It had been moving about, and abruptly it stopped.

Cessation of motion did not const.i.tute awareness necessarily; it could signify demise. But OX repeated the configuration, this time directing it at the second spot.

The spot moved toward the offshoot. Awareness -- or coincidence?

OX repeated the figure, somewhat to the side of the first one. The spot moved toward the new offshoot.

OX tried a similar configuration, this time one that moved in an arc before it damped out. The spot followed it and stopped when the figure was gone.

OX began to suffer the disorientation of something very like excitement despite a prior modification to alleviate this disruptive effect in himself. He tried another variant: one that moved in three dimensions. The spot did not follow it.

But a repeat of the two-dimensional one brought another response. This spot always had moved in two dimensions; it seemed to be unable to perceive in three. Yet it acted sentient within that limited framework.

OX tried a two-dimensional shoot that looped in a circle indefinitely. The spot followed it through one full circle, then stopped. Why?

Then the spot moved in a circle of its own beside the shoot. It was no longer following; it was duplicating!

OX damped out the shoot. The spot halted. There was no doubt now: The spot was aware of the shoot.

The spot moved in an oval. OX sent a new shoot to duplicate the figure.

The spot moved in a triangle. OX made a similar triangle subpattern.

The spot halted. OX tried a square. The spot duplicated it. So did the shape-changing spot.

OX controlled his threatening disorientation. Communication had been established -- not with one spot but with two!

Survival!

Chapter 5.

CITY.

It was like a city, and like a jungle, and like a factory, all run together for surrealistic effect. Veg shook his head, unable to make any coherent whole of it at first glance.

He stood on a metal ramp beside a vastly spreading mock-oak tree overlooking a channel of water that disappeared into a sieve over a mazelike ma.s.s of crisscrossing bars lighted from beneath.

"Another alternate, I presume," Tamme said beside him. "I suspect we'll find the others here. Why not have your mantas look?"

Now Veg saw her standing beside Hex and Circe. "Sure -- look," he said vaguely. He still had not quite adjusted to finding himself alive and well.

The mantas moved. Hex sailed up and over the purple dome of a mosquelike building whose interior consisted of revolving mirrors, while Circe angled under some wooden stalact.i.tes depending from an inverted giant toadstool whose roots were colored threads.

Veg squatted to investigate a gently flexing flower. It was about three inches across, on a metallic stem, and it swiveled to face him as he moved. He poked a finger at its center.

Sharp yellow petals closed instantly on his finger, cutting the skin. "Hey!" he yelled, yanking free. The skin was sc.r.a.ped where the sharp edges had touched and smarted as though acid had been squirted into the wounds.

He raised his foot high and stamped down hard with his heel. The flower dodged, but he caught the stem and crushed it against the hard ramp. Then he was sorry. "d.a.m.n!" he said as he surveyed the wreckage. "I shouldn't have done that; it was only trying to defend itself."

"Better not fool with what we don't understand," Tamme warned a bit late.

"I don't understand any of this, but I'm in it!" Veg retorted, sucking on his finger.

"I believe that was a radar device -- with a self-protective circuit," she said. "This place is functioning."

"Not a flower," he said, relieved. "I don't mind bashing a machine."

There was a humming sound behind him. Veg whirled. "Now that's a machine!" he cried.

"Climb!" Tamme directed. She showed the way by scrambling up a trellis of organ pipes to reach a suspended walkway. Veg followed her example with alacrity.

The machine moved swiftly along the original ramp. Its design was different from the one he had battled in the desert. It had wheels instead of treads and an a.s.sortment of spider-leg appendages in place of the spinning blade.

It stopped by the damaged flower. There was a writhing flurry of its legs. So quickly that Veg was unable to follow the detail, it had the plant uprooted, adjusted, and replaced -- repaired.

Then the machine hummed on down the ramp.

"What do you know!" Veg exclaimed. "A tame machine!"