The sky opened near at hand and the terrible brilliance flamed down almost where they stood. Cal visualized the weight of the suspended plants becoming too great for atmospheric conditions, forcing an occasional massive inversion, just as sometimes happened in Earth storms. The overturning could become so violent, here where the lay of the land forced air currents up, as to create a rent from top to bottom and lay the ground open to the sun. But it could hardly last long; more ordered dust would soon fill in from the sides.
The mantas must have known it was coming. They had acted in foolhardy fashion, coming here for any reason at this time, unless the storm held some particular fascination for them. Now they leaped in masses over the edge of the fault, fleeing the blazing path of light.
'Look!' Aquilon cried, pointing. One manta had been trapped within the sunlit area. It cast about violently, unable to find shelter.
She started forward. 'The sun is killing it. It can't see to get away!'
'There is nothing we can do,' Cal cautioned her. 'We can't interfere-'
'We can't let it die!' she cried. Veg caught her arm, but she knocked his hand away without even looking. He reached for her again, trying to restrain her, but she was away, running fleetly across the plain. She plunged into the sunshine without hesitation, straight toward the blinded manta.
In moments she reached it. The thing was writhing on the ground, and Cal could see the dangerous tail snapping without direction. It was trying to get its eye into shadow, but there was none.
Aquilon stopped briefly, looking at it. Cal knew the reason for her hesitation: she had never actually touched a live manta with her hands. Then she ripped off her light blouse and threw it over the creature's tortured eye. It would offer scant protection, but the idea was good. She circled both arms around its globular, contracted body and picked it up. Burdened with its weight, she ran heavily out of the light. The tail dragged on the ground behind.
Veg ran forward to help her, but she was already out of the danger area, putting down the manta. It was of medium size, or about fifty pounds.
The sun storm was over, as though it saw no point in continuing now that its victim was gone. Singly and in groups the mantas returned. Aquilon stopped to unwind the blouse from her manta's head. 'I never knew they were cold-blooded,' she said, as though that were the most significant thing of all.
The circle reformed. The largest manta came forward, and Aquilon stepped out of its way. It contemplated the quivering creature on the ground; then without warning it was airborne. The body of the blinded one shook as the tremendous disk passed over and cut it to pieces with invisible slashes. Soon there was nothing but a pile of tattered flesh.
'No, no!' Aquilon cried. She strained, but this time Veg's grasp was firm. She struck at him ineffectively, then fell sobbing into his arms. 'I only tried to save it... did they think my touch contaminated-'
'Look out!' Veg shouted, throwing her to one side and lunging to the other. The great manta was coming, its fierce eye glittering. The disk seemed to expand enormously. Veg spread his arms as though to intercept and halt the creature by the mass of his own body, but it pleated in mid-air and funnelled by him.
Aquilon looked up - and screamed as the manta struck. Four times the tail knifed into her face before she could protect it with her hands. Then the vengeful shape was gone and she fell, knuckles to her cheeks, blood welling between the fingers.
Veg knelt at her side immediately, gripping both her wrists in his large hands and pulling her hands away by main force. Cal peered over Veg's shoulder, sick at heart. As Aquilon raised her face he saw her flowing tears mixed with the smeared blood. Cheek and jaw on both sides had been deeply slashed, but the blood was running, not gouting. Her eyes had not been touched, and no artery had been hit.
His gaze fell on her bare shoulders and back. The skin was red and beginning to blister from the brief exposure to the rays of Nacre's sun, the damage extending down to her bra strap.
Cal removed his own shirt, the need for cloth overcoming his extreme disinclination to expose his skeletal body. He handed it to Veg, who accepted it unceremoniously and wiped Aquilon's face as clean as he could. The cuts were sharp and well defined, not ragged, and the flow of blood diminished quickly.
'Need a clean one,' Veg snapped; then, realizing what it was: 'Hey!' He looked at Cal, embarrassed, then gripped the short sleeve of his own shirt and wrenched. Muscles bulged as the tearproof fabric tore. He moistened it with his tongue and carefully wiped away the remaining smears.
'I can do that,' Cal offered.
'Maybe you'd better,' Veg said grimly, remembering something. 'I have business with Brother Manta.' Rising, he strode to the rifle and picked it up, activating the flarechamber immediately.
'No, stop!' Cal called, seeing his intent. 'You can't judge the manta by our standards. We have no way to know its motives. It could have thought 'Quilon was responsible for torturing and blinding that young one. They must have no real conception of the sun ... perhaps they even worship it as the embodiment of evil. They might even believe that we brought the light....'
Veg paid no attention. He was stalking the large manta.
'They could even be right,' Cal went on desperately. 'Our ships go up and down, disrupting the atmosphere as we ferry supplies. Remember - man is an omnivore....'
Veg stood still, holding the rifle ready, chamber hot. Cal knew the weapon could do a lot of damage as its steam fired a rapid stream of projectiles at the standing mantas. Its chief advantages were silent operation, except for the hiss of the escaping gouts of steam, and safe ammunition, since the motive power came from the rifle and not from explosive bullets. But it would be disastrous to fire it now; the mantas would very quickly realize its purpose and wipe out the attacker. A good weapon in the hands of an angry man....
'If I can live with the omnivore,' Veg said, 'so can the manta. She saved one from the sun - and that big bastard killed it and went after her. It tried to blind her. You saw.'
'But she didn't save it from the sun!'
Aquilon looked up, startled.
'That manta had been blinded by the light,' Cal said, hoping he could hold Veg's attention until he cooled off enough to remember he didn't believe in killing. 'Remember, their eyes must be far more sensitive than ours, and the sun may be deadly to them. The first few seconds may have destroyed its vision utterly, as surely as though a glowing poker had been rammed into its eye. There would be no possibility of salvage, with such a delicate mechanism.'
'But it lived,' Veg said. 'She saved its life.'
Cal sat back and looked at him. 'Life,' he said. 'You worship life. You think everything is all right so long as you do not kill - except maybe for revenge. You are a fool.'
'I th-thought I was helping it,' Aquilon said, putting her hand to her face to feel the wounds. She had not been seriously hurt; that was now obvious to all of them. The manta's attack had not been to kill - or, perhaps, to blind, either.
Cal shook his head, meeting her gaze. 'You mean so well, 'Quilon - but you are thinking with your emotions, not your mind. Don't you understand - the manta has no other perception besides its sight. A man has eyes and ears and so many other senses that the loss of one doesn't really hurt him; he can function perfectly well with one or two impaired. You dissected the manta's brain two days ago; you know the eye is the only perceptory connection to speak of. Our own eyes are such feeble candles, ranged against that. But when it is destroyed-'
He took another breath. 'When it is destroyed, the manta's total contact with its environment is severed. In such a case, it is only mercy to terminate its life quickly. Believe me, I know.'
'Okay,' Veg said, softening. 'Now tell me why it went for 'Quilon. If it had so much mercy-'
'I'm afraid it is an animal,' Cal said sadly. 'Not capable of understanding that an omnivore is not necessarily an enemy. And yet - it could so easily have killed her. Those little cuts won't even mutilate her face permanently. They're neat and prec
ise, almost like surgery. A token punishment-'
'I don't think so,' Aquilon said, speaking with difficulty. Her words were blurred as though she had trouble controlling her facial muscles. The cuts began to bleed again, and he hastily dabbed some more.
'Look!' Veg cried, still facing the main group. 'Little mantas!'
The mass of moving bodies parted. It was true. There, herded by a grown one, were eight tiny mantas, the first babies they had seen. Their miniature leaps were uncertain, their landings awkward, and they had not yet learned to flatten their bodies properly for control in the air, but mantas they certainly were. They could not have been more than a few days old.
'They did understand,' Cal said.
By expert snaps of her whiplike tail the adult drove them in a course that led directly to Aquilon. Cal got up and moved away. As they came to rest in front of her, the adult left. Mantas and humans waited, intent upon that scene.
Astonished, Aquilon looked down, at the tiny group. From a six-inch elevation, eight sober little lenses looked back, flickering tentatively. Touched, she leaned over and spread out her arms, and the babies hopped into their circle trustingly.
'They are for me,' she said in wonder.
'Too young to be afraid of the omnivore,' Cal murmured. 'Could a human mother ever show such trust? These eight will come to understand our ways. We'll be able to colonize, now. And-' here he broke into a smile that set the years of agony aside - 'we shall come to understand them.'
'For me,' Aquilon repeated, holding the little bodies.
'Don't smile, 'Quilon,' Veg cautioned, then bit his lip. Cal saw the motion and began to see what had happened to make that joke unacceptable.
But Aquilon did smile. Gradually, in the reflex suppressed for so many years, the corners of her delicate lips upturned. Her face lighted, casting an emotional radiance that touched man and manta alike, reflecting from the watchfull extent of the manta's gift - the physical pretext and the psychological reality - she showed the beauty that was in her heart unfolding like a brilliant flower; warm and clean and fine, so full of rapture that the onlookers were stunned.
CHAPTER FOUR - WILDERNESS
But the loveliness of a blooming flower may be a fleeting thing, Subble thought as he stroked through the water. Nacre had not solved any problems, it had only graven their names on heavier chains. So long as home was a ruinously impacted Earth, the horrors would remain in one form or another.
He towed a basket by a cord looped around his waist. A mile ahead rose the offshore key - a semi-tropic island preserved as a wilderness park, inhabited only by birds, rodents, arthropods and elements of the second and third kingdoms. It was dusk, the island was outlined against the sunset, black palm against red cloud. A few gulls wheeled, and there were sundry movements in the shadowed tide beneath him. That was all.
He swam, enjoying the feel of the cool gulf water, the slap of salty spume against his shoulders and face. There was discovery and danger ahead, perhaps death - but death was an impersonal thing to him. He had a mission, and its completion was at hand - whatever that might mean.
The story of Nacre ran through his mind. What an adventure it had been, for the diverse trio! A vegetarian, a normal omnivore and a technical carnivore, solving the riddle of a world whose fauna mirrored their own habits. Yet the solution had not been complete, for now the deadly carnivores were on Earth, and there was danger no one quite comprehended yet all suspected. Not the human problems of the male-female triangle; that would be resolved quietly in its own fashion once the principals got together again. Not the risk of an alien scourge on Earth, for the mantas were highly ethical creatures; they could attack man, but would not. They had come to comprehend, he was sure, not to conquer.
What, then? There was danger, terrible peril. His trained perception was suffused with it. Veg, Aquilon, Cal - all carried the aura of fear, tied in with the manta. There was a potent mystery to the presence of the creature on Earth, and it was not a matter of diet or savagery or even intent. The future of Earth itself might hang upon the success of his mission - and he still could not grasp how.
Early night, and the isle loomed close before him. Subble turned on his back and looked up at the still trees, and beyond them to the cold stars. He had never been away from the planet himself, he was sure; agents had to be specially conditioned for extraterrestrial duty, and there would be no point in utilizing an Earth-trained unit for it. He understood that the average man felt a nameless emotion when viewing the stars, a kind of compulsive awe, a yearning to reach them and also a deep loneliness. Subble felt nothing except a mild intellectual curiosity. Probably he had been conditioned to cleave to Earth, and could not leave it without suffering from the same kind of emotional malady the normals suffered just existing upon it. Or perhaps it was because he needed no sense of continuity, of timelessness, since he had no past and no future. There was only the mission, and the stars were elsewhere.
There had been other missions before, but no trace of them remained with him. He might have had severe adventures in prior assignments, and could be fated for worse ones to come - but such speculations were hardly worth the effort it took to dwell upon them now. Death did not frighten him, and neither did the termination of his mission. Failure was the only spectre, and he was not a man to fail easily.
No, there was one realistic fear for him. Sometimes, he knew, an agent became stranded. For some reason it might be impossible to complete the assignment and check in promptly, and an agent caught in that situation was obliged to continue indefinitely, gradually growing old and losing the edge of his powers, missing the automatic updating provided by the reconditioning. It could be due to a continuing relationship - marriage in the line of duty, for example - in which a substitution would be inexpedient. Of course, if a female agent happened to be involved....
Occasionally there was an accident; the agent was reported lost in action and his file discontinued prematurely while actually he survived to strive futilely for termination. It could happen to him! The unit SUB could be incapacitated upon this island, unable to return or report, yet alive. It could be months or even years before a follow-up located him, during which period he would be without a mission.
The thought was horrible. His body was nothing, his life irrelevant; pain and pleasure were only commodities of existence. But the mission - that was paramount, and without it he was wasted. Waste was the only intolerable. Better a clean death in the line of duty; better by far.
His feet found the sand beneath the shallows, and he drew his basket to the beach. A score of tiny brownish fiddler crabs scuttled sideways away from him as he emerged. They disappeared into their peppered holes in the damp sand. He waited while one big-clawed giant, well over an inch long, tried vainly to get into two of the pencil-sized holes and finally squeezed into the third. He wondered whether the burrows were linked underneath, like Aquilon's residential section. Did they have air-conditioning and color television? Well, running salt water, perhaps.
The isle was quiet; no frogs or crickets chirrupped, and the birds held their peace. They were present, though; as he concentrated his faculties he perceived them all about, hearing their surreptitious motions and smelling their furtive animation behind the drifting odors of seaweed and rot. The animals would return to normal activities when assured he was not a menace. Already the fiddlers were peeking out.
It was a normal beach. The packed, even sand gave way to a line of tumbled larger shells just beyond the high-tide line: clam halves ranging from several inches across down to half-inch coquinas, broken red and white conches with the inner spirals exposed, bleached sand-dollars decorated with five-leaf clover designs. Farther back the weeds and creepers sprouted between occasional driftwood and desiccated palm fronds. Whitish morning-glory type flowers nestled upon beach-running vines, and toward the forest line the jointed, head-high sea-oats waved beside the great round sea-grape leaves.
He set up the electronic equipment and tested it. Cal's
notion had been good: duplicate the frequency and quality of the manta's eye-beam and emulate the patterns of communication with the guidance of the oscilloscope. Cal had had limited success; he thought he had the proper channel, as it were, but had trouble gaining the cooperation of the mantas. Subble believed that the groundwork was good; now it was up to the faster responses of a trained man: himself. He would try it first without the hallucinogen; he was not convinced that this aspect of Cal's regimen was either appropriate or safe. There was no guarantee that the fungus drug would bring him closer to the representatives of the fungus world. It was as likely to give him the illusion of liaison, which was hardly his mission, and if, like an addict, he lost his perspective and inhaled an overdoseIt was dark when he finished, but this was no disadvantage. Subble, as a fully equipped agent, was at home in the night. He knew the mantas were largely nocturnal on Earth; they, unlike man, were severely handicapped by bright daylight, and only in the gloom of the forest or closed buildings could they function well. An overcast day might allow them to go abroad, however. It was not so much the sensitivity of the single eye as of the body: sunlight would burn away the delicate skin and interfere with the pressure responses essential to precision control of movement. This would be a fact of life for any creature with the properties of the manta; specialization inevitably brought special liabilities.
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