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it physically.
He found that by concentrating his faculties at a point on his containing
boundary, he could extend it in that direction; at the same time, he lost a
part of his awareness from the opposite side. In effect, he had moved himself
a short distance. With practice, he developed this knack into an ability to
"flow" at will within the net, sometimes in a gradual progression, sometimes
in leaps, depending on the nature of the electronic terrain. Thus, he was able
to explore and move himself about Titan's surface and to do so, he discovered,
with astonishing speed.
It didn't take him too long after that to find another of his kind, which had
been his objective. He saw it coming toward him along a ravine of flickering
orange and blue latticed sides and a floor of rectangular pools sitting among
low pink walls that went in all directions like a maze. At intervals, wide,
green trunklike cylinders rose vertically and converged toward infinity far
overhead. The figure was on a kind of raft being carried along on a swiftly
moving stream of colors that followed the middle of the ravine.
Sarvik didn't know for sure what, in the peculiar transform space he was now
living in, a data set representing a Borijan ought to look like. But this
entity was more complex than any of the autonomous living forms he'd seen
previously, and it resembled the parts of his own extension that appeared
within his field of view, being formed from wire-frame sections connected by
filaments, the whole vaguely suggesting an aggregation of cylinders connected
by spheres. What else could it be?
The creature had also evidently seen him. It stepped off the raft, which
promptly dissolved away into the stream, and approached. Sarvik slackened his
pace as he drew nearer. The two of them went into a slow, circling motion
around each other, keeping their distance, moving between the pink walls in a
wide space among the green trunks. Sarvik had never tried communicating in his
new form, since there had been nobody to communicate with after his exit from
Weinerbaum's lab. He concentrated on directing the same faculty of projection
that enabled him to move himself and endeavored to impress upon it the thought
"Borijan?" And immediately he knew, as when one heard one's own voice, that
somehow it worked.
"Yes," came the reply.
The two figures ceased circling one another and relaxed visibly. Sarvik
stepped forward; the other moved to meet him.
"The unsuspected world within a world of Titan," the other said.
"It's . . . a strange place," Sarvik replied.
"Takes some getting used to."
"I have to be impolite," Sarvik said. "I don't know how to recognize anyone in
this form yet, probably any more than you do. Who are you?"
"Sarvik," the figure replied.
Sarvik froze, a composite of wire frames half-raised in a gesture of greeting.
"That's not possible.
I'm
Sarv "
Page 117
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
And then he saw suddenly that it was very possible. Of course, from his point
of view, it would have been he who had escaped from the lab and a copy who had
been left there. And all the other copies that had been written out into the
net as a precaution would think the same thing. Did that mean he was a copy?
He wasn't even sure if the term meant anything anymore.
"Oh. I see. I must be the first one you've bumped into," the other Sarvik
said.
"Er . . . yes."
"So you haven't talked with any of the others at all?"
"How could I? I've just told you that you're the first one of us I've met in
here."
Sarvik Two gestured to indicate the stream rushing along the middle of the
ravine. "You can tap into the long-range communications channels. It's a bit
more tricky than coordinating local functions but not so bad when you get used
to it. It sounds as if you've been out of things. We're spread out all over
Titan. The plans are moving right along to get sites cleared for proper
factories to make bodies. There's another tentative design worked out, and the
Indrigons have already reprogrammed some of the native machines to produce
parts."
All that already? It didn't seem possible. And then Sarvik One caught Sarvik
Two's use of the plural. "What do you mean, Indrigons?" he queried. "Who is
spread out all over Titan? How many of us are you talking about?"
"Sixty-eight at the last count, but more keep turning up like you," Sarvik Two
told him. "There's five of us six now along with four Kalazins, half a dozen
Indrigons . . . I'm not sure offhand how many of each of the rest. We'll have
to get you into one of the design groups. Everybody will be getting together
somewhere for a review conference shortly. Distance is no object, as you've
probably found out."
Sarvik One listened in a daze. When the novelty wore off, the compulsive
Borijan antagonism that had shown itself briefly when they had first been
reactivated would come to the surface again. Only, instead of just one of each
of them for the others to conspire against, there would be dozens!
33
Mordran couldn't understand it. He had lived in this part of Kroaxia for
almost two hundred brights, and he didn't know how many times he had taken
this route into Pergassos. He knew every machining center, welding line, and
assembly station along the way as well as he knew the hydrocarbon
fractionaters in his own kitchen garden. And yet on this trip he was
continually getting lost. Time and again he would stop, puzzled, to stand
rubbing his carbon-blacked chin and radiating a frown from his facial thermal
patterns while he surveyed the way ahead and then announce, "No. This in't a
bloody right, either. Some guide I turned out ter be, din't I? We'll 'ave ter
go back a bit an' try it another way. I don't know what's 'appenin'. I've
never seen owt like this before." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]