Part 13 (1/2)

”Oh. That's right -- you agents do that. Got too much of that dense android muscle in your brains.” He grimaced. ”What I meant was that this forest has never been touched by man. So it's not Earth -- not our Earth. And it's a high rainfall district, so it's not the desert world -- not this place, not this millennium, anyway. Look at the size of that pine!”

”The aperture does not necessarily lead to the same geographic spot on the alternate,” she reminded him. ”Each alternate seems to differ in time from the others, so it could differ in s.p.a.ce, too, since the globe is moving. For instance, we're in day here instead of night, so we must be elsewhere on the globe. There was vegetation on other parts of what you call the desert world.”

”That's what I said. But no trees like this. Those machines ate wood, too. They'd have sawed into this long ago -- and they haven't.”

He was right. Her perceptions showed a slightly differing chemical composition of this world's atmosphere. Though it would be foolish to judge an entire world by one view of a tiny fraction of it, it was a new alternate. The changes were minor but significant.

”I am not surprised,” she admitted. ”My aperture projector is set for Paleo -- but we did not start from the desert world. That sparkle-cloud moved us to an unspecified alternate, so we're out of phase.”

”Yeah -- like taking the wrong bus.”

That was hardly precise, and she was surprised he thought in terms of such an ancient vehicle, but it would do. ”It may be a long, hard search for home.”

”Your home, maybe. I'd settle for Paleo. Or Nacre.”

”Nacre is part of the Earth-alternate. So you'd have to -- ”

”But we can get back to the city-world all right? We're not lost from there?”

”Yes -- in just under three hours. We're in phase for that. But we shall have to be standing right on this spot, or we'll miss it.”

”Well, let's not waste the time!” he exclaimed. ”This is beautiful! Finest softwood forest I ever saw!”

She laughed. ”By all means, look at the trees. But how can you be sure this isn't Paleo? Plenty of virgin softwood there!” She knew this wasn't Paleo, but was interested in his reasoning.

”Not the same. These are modern pines. See, the needles are different. Trees evolve, you know, same as animals do. This white pine, now -- actually, it's different from Earth white pine, in little ways -- ”

She raised her hands in mock surrender. He was not pretending; at this moment, the forest really did interest him more than she did, and he knew more than she in this area of botany. Agents had an excellent general education, but they could not be experts in every field.

Meanwhile, the social environment had changed as well as the physical one. Just as s.e.x was relatively attractive to this country man when he was confined to the city, this challenging new -- rather, old -- forest was more attractive yet.

Which was not quite what she had antic.i.p.ated. There were always unexpected wrinkles appearing in normals! Agents, in pleasant contrast, were completely predictable -- to other agents. They were designed to be that way.

Pleasant contrast? It actually made for a certain tedium, she realized, when the mission stretched out longer than a few hours or days. In some things, predictability was less than ideal.

Watch yourself, she thought then. She was beginning to suffer from an overload of experience, and she had no dream mechanism to restore her mind to its prior equilibrium. It was inevitably shaping her into more of an individual than the computer could readily tolerate. If this went too far, her report would be suspect, even useless. The general rule was that an agent's mission should not continue longer than ten days because of that deterioration of reliability. She had already been nineteen days, and the end was not in sight.

She shuddered. How good it would be to return to computer central to be reset -- and how awful to remain out so long she lost her affinity with her series, TA!

Veg was moving among the trees, tapping the trunks, looking at needles. This was his element! He suffered no pangs of dawning ident.i.ty!

There were, it seemed, plenty of untouched worlds available for man's expansion. Earth's population and resources problem would be solved -- just as soon as she got back.

She would have to return, try another setting, and begin a survey of alternate-worlds. It would be too c.u.mbersome to step through every time. She would fas.h.i.+on a spot sensor that used very little power in projection because of its small ma.s.s. By bouncing it through and back like a tennis ball, she could check a dozen worlds in an hour, the only delay being the adjustment of the projector settings between uses.

She would not need Veg, after all. Not until she located familiar territory.

Three hours. She could sleep, for she had perfect timing and would wake when the return aperture was due. But first she would make a spot survey of this locale, for it might turn out to be the most suitable one yet discovered for exploitation. Earthlike, modern, no dinosaurs.

She lifted her hands, caught hold of a dead spoke on the huge pine, and hauled herself up. The trunk was a good six feet in diameter at the base, and the top was out of sight. She climbed rapidly, wriggling between the branches as they became smaller and more closely set. She was getting dirty, but that didn't matter. She really should have adjusted the seductive design of her outfit; trees were not much for that sort of thing, and her clothing inhibited progress. A few welts or scratches on the visible surfaces of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s would not bother her but could well turn off Veg -- and she just might need him.