Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  The manta was airborne, leaping away from him. He would have to catch it first - and one thing he could not do was outrun it Even handicapped by Earth conditions, and under-age, it was probably capable of forty miles per hour over the sand. He would have to wear it down, or outmaneuver it, or mousetrap it as it assailed him. He was glad; it was too noble a creature to die ignominiously.

  'The recipe for rabbit stew ...' he reminded himself. Could he catch it, if it stayed clear?

  It angled into the air, a disk a dozen feet in diameter. The foot disappeared into the body in this attitude, streamlining it, and he could see the flux of the surface responding to air resistance. The thing was both kite and glider, as much at home in the air as on land, though technically it could not fly. Beautiful control.

  The manta swooped at the ground - and suddenly it was coming directly at him at double its prior velocity. Subble threw himself prone, clapping one hand over the back of his neck and the other over his spine while his face dug into the sand. It passed over him, the tail striking down as he squirmed to the side.

  He was on his feet again immediately, facing it, but the manta settled a hundred feet up the beach. He glanced at his hand, the one that had protected his neck, and saw a long shallow slash beginning just below the wrist and running eight inches down the forearm.

  Then he knew what he was up against. The wound was not dangerous, and in moments his physical control had sealed it off almost bloodlessly. But it was at the wrong angle. The manta's tail, moving forward in line with its body, should have cut crosswise over his wrist. Instead it had sliced at right angles to the creature's flight.

  The manta had not only had tune to select its target carefully, but had had the control to make a rather awkwardly positioned cut.

  There was a similar incision along his other arm.

  It had returned Subble's warning demonstration: this pass had been to alert him to its capability, not to incapacitate him. Now they both knew where they stood.

  It was probably the first time he had ever seriously underestimated his opposition, for he would not have been available for this mission otherwise. He had allowed for exaggeration in the Nacre episode, for the observers had had other concerns to distract them from really objective views, and he had allowed for his own surprise when the manta moved in Veg's forest. Now he knew that these reasonable allowances for human error were faulty. He was in a battle for his life, and it was not possible to anticipate the outcome.

  The tail was too fast for him. After appreciating what it could do in a controlled run, he knew that it could crack the sonic barrier when snapped with force, just as a whip could. He had no defense but interference and avoidance. He had to keep the manta out of range while in striking position or it would blind him or slit his throat or lay open some other part of his body on the next pass.

  The manta lifted, flattening as it gained speed, coming at him. Subble dived for the water's edge and scooped up a handful of pebbles. He whirled and began firing them as the disk approached, his throws rapid and accurate.

  It dodged easily, rippling to let the stones pass harmlessly, but it slowed; Subble was aiming for the great eye and knew that should the manta grow careless and allow a hit it would be in serious trouble. He began feeding his shots in pairs, forcing double dodging, and abruptly the creature gave up and swerved aside.

  The manta touched the sand and catapulted ferociously at him again. But this time Subble was not to be surprised; he leaped - high into the air, directly at the manta.

  Its velocity was too great to allow it to swerve in time, and his body was far too big for it to dodge like a pebble. A collision would favor him, because he massed over four times as much as it did, and his body was comparatively bony. He reached to enclose it, knowing that its delicate extensions would be highly vulnerable to the grasp of his hands. The striking tail would be ineffective in the face of such direct bodily contact.

  The manta flexed and passed under him, going out to sea, and Subble landed on hands and feet, his nose not far from a pretty two-inch corkscrew shell lying just beyond the water. He jumped sideways and whirled, rearmed with stones, but the creature had not turned. It sailed over the rounded waves, the beat of its pumping foot casting up thin sprays of water.

  Subble watched, startled, though he should not have been. Cal had remarked on this, and it was obvious that at the speed the foot struck, water was as good a medium for leverage as any. It was possible for a man to water-ski upon his two bare feet, if towed at sufficient speed, and the manta's foot-area at contact was far wider than man's. That was why they had chosen an island: the sea was a private highway.

  But only at speed, surely. Were a manta actually to fall into the ocean, it would not be able to get up sufficient velocity to become airborne again, and its pusher would be virtually useless for swimming. That was worth remembering.

  It was coming in again, flat and deadly as a flying knife. He could not hope to avoid it indefinitely; the manta was too fast, its tail too accurate. He could not run it down in his own time, either, since it could 'walk' on water. If it became fatigued, it could cross to another island and recover at leisure; if he tried to swim after it, he would be subject to immediate attack in the water, where the disparity in their maneuverability would be greatest.

  The manta gave him no tune to think. It rose to an altitude of nine feet above sea level and sailed over the choppy waves of the incoming tide, too high for him to block effectively but just right for its own striking range.

  Subble lurched to the side, and the manta shifted angles to head him off. But the mid-air maneuver cost it velocity that it could not regain without coming down. He ran along the beach, seeking the hard-packed wet sand at the very edge of the water and moving at thirty miles per hour: a feat impossible for any normal athlete.

  The manta altered its course to follow him, touching the ground. It gained momentum. Subble heard it approaching, closing the distance between them rapidly. He could maintain this pace for only a few seconds, yet it was easily outrunning him. In a moment it would draw abreast, and the tail would flick across to touch the throat, the eye, perhaps the hamstring tendon above the heel, and he would be pinned for the kill.

  It drew within ten feet. It was silent, except for the staccato beat of the great foot and a faint whistling of air. He positioned it by sound: two feet above the sand, six feet behind. It would have to get close, beside him or over him, to utilize the tail, unless it could whiplash over its own head....

  Four feet, three - and Subble stopped. He braked with all of his force, driving his feet into the sand and throwing back his body. His arms went up over his head, as stiff as ramrods, fists clenched.

  But the manta too had profited from experience. At forty miles per hour it could not stop within a yard; its foot was structured for forward drive, not braking. As old Ettore Bugatti had protested when cautioned on safety: 'I make my cars to go, not to stop!' Again Subble was using his less specialized physique to good effect; he could do more things than the manta could, even if he could not compete in its specialties.

  It could not swerve aside in tune, nor could it rise the six feet necessary to avoid him without totally disrupting its aerodynamics and looping out of control. It was made to go - but it had come prepared.

  It accepted the collision.

  The soft ball of it smacked into Subble's back - and bounced. He twisted around, grabbing for it again, but already it was bounding high into the air, ten feet, and opening into its traveling form, unhurt. One more trait had been revealed: the manta could protect its eye temporarily by englobing it in its own flesh, and its bonelessness prevented internal rupturing.

  Why had it not done so in the Nacre sun storm? Probably because the light burned its skin and never let up; there it could not rebound and recover.

  Subble scrambled beneath the spreading mantle, knowing that it lacked the proper leverage for a tail-strike when almost stationary. It was not the manta's own small mass tha
t anchored it, but the resistance of the air to its spread body. That same resistance provided the real forward impetus, too - the foot pushed primarily up, but the sail tacked against the stable air and sent the body shooting forward much faster than otherwise. The manta was a creature of motion, and could not even achieve its full umbrella without sufficient velocity. Now it was almost still, and had to descend for at least one push before getting away. To this extent it had miscalculated.

  And Subble was under it. 'Come to Papa,' he said as his hands reached up, enclosing the vainly fluttering shape. But he kept his face averted; it could blind him yet, as his grip on its body provided some of the vital leverage. He would have to fall upon it, crushing it into the sand, encumbering the tail-

  A sledgehammer struck his head.

  Subble fell, stunned by the blow. The shallow water came up to meet his face, and the bright shells under the surface, though the night was black. The manta had driven its foot at his head, perhaps instinctively, and almost broken bis neck! His brain had been severely jarred; unless he brought his bodily reactions under control immediately, he would lose consciousness - and life.

  And mission. The phosphorescent surface smacked against his face. It was sheer luck; the external shock stimulated adrenalin and gave him momentary control. He brought his knees up under him and pushed for deeper water.

  Or was it Enrico Ferrari who made his cars to go?

  The manta was coming again, ready this time for the kill. Its black shape passed a few feet to the side, visible only as a moving shadow. Subble placed it principally by ear, discovering that he had temporarily lost his infrared vision, more sensitive to damage than normal sight because it was artificially implanted. He was, in this situation, virtually blind.

  A searing blade slashed across his shoulders, laying the flesh open. Painful, but not crucial - but the end was near if he could not get away in seconds.

  Subble dived. The ocean was only four feet deep here, but it was enough. The dread tail could not strike at him through very much water. He was safe - so long as he could hold his breath.

  He could hear the foot pounding against the surface as the manta circled above, frustrated for the moment. It would slice away the top of his skull as soon as it appeared above the water - but he would drown if he did not come up within another minute. He had good resources here too, and could ordinarily stay under a long time, but he had entered the water disadvantageously. Unless he could deceive the manta in some way, gaining time for a breath-

  The shape passed directly over him as he continued to stroke out to sea. Subble lunged for the surface and gulped air before it could turn. The manta's liability here was that it could not remain stationary on the water; it had to keep moving, and that allowed a few seconds between passes. By the tune it could return, he was below again.

  But how long could he hold out? At best this represented a standoff, and at worst defeat for him, if the manta learned to time his rise for air and lash out then. He could not overcome his opponent by hiding from it. If he lasted this way until daylight - still many hours away - the creature would probably retreat to shade on another island. Then night would come again....

  The beat of the foot stopped. Subble listened, interpreting the cessation of the loud clear sounds conveyed by the water, and the strange substitution. The manta was coming at him - under the surface!

  But almost immediately it was out of the water again, resuming flight. Now he realized what had happened: the manta had cut below the waterline much as a flying fish cut above it; a shallow, temporary incursion dependent upon initial velocity. This was a dangerous maneuver. One second too long, and it would be trapped, lacking the speed to angle successfully back into the air.

  Why had it taken such a chance? Unless it could not locate him from the surfaceHe worked it out. The manta was dependent upon one perception: sight. It was a phenomenal perception, but still subject to the limitations of the medium. It was necessarily narrow-beam; an eye which provided its own radiation had to limit its energy output stringently or essential resources would be drained from the system. Even a simple flashlight soon exhausted its batteries. Human beings, who utilized external sources of illumination, used as much as twenty-five percent of their bodily energies in connection with their eyes alone. The ratio would be worse for the auto-illuminants of Nacre, unless they were considerably more efficient.

  But a narrow beam was virtually useless for locating a specific object in space. Even the wide-beam perception of Earthly eyes required special synapses to call motion to the attention, which solved most problems. A warty toad was lost amid the dry leaves of the forest floor, though in plain view - until it moved. Peripheral vision and sensitivity to motion: these were vital to a moving creature. The manta seemed to have neither; it played its fine beam over all objects and knew by its biologic radar what they were and how they moved.

  What would the refraction of water do to this power? For man, the apparent displacement of objects beneath liquid, and the reflective properties of the surface were merely oddities and occasional nuisances. Man had other ways to plumb the depths. For manta - it could be a complex problem indeed. It had no verifying senses except the touch of foot and tail and skin, and these were almost useless here. Yet it was experienced enough to realize that the medium did effect the impulse, as a man might see a mirage and hear a ringing in his ears while knowing that these things did not reflect the true situation. Indeed, as a man might perceive a complete framework of stimuli, and know them all to be false ... as he had done himself under the influence of the hallucinogen. As it was, that dialogue had disturbed him. Now he was uncertain about little things, such as exactly what a given racing-car pioneer had said. It must have been Bugatti!

  So the manta could not trust what he saw beneath the shifting waves. Still, it could wait for the telltale appearance of his head above water - except that its narrow-beam vision made this largely a matter of chance. How likely was a man with a small beam to spot a figure in a dark ocean - a head that appeared only a second or two every three minutes or less?

  The odds were with him after all! He could swim underwater and come up near the manta at any time - and duck when spotted. He could find a pole and jab it, spearlike, at the passing enemy, without emerging at all. No wonder the creature was desperate to locate him!

  Subble broke surface and looked about. He was in deep water now, and had the whole gulf to hide within. It was still dark to his gaze: apparently his infrared was done for the duration. He could compensate to a considerable extent, since that seemed to be the worst of his injury, apart from the slash across his back and a headache he was able to suppress. He could see the white beach and the tall stars; only the black on black of the manta evaded him visually. But he could hear it well enough, ranging at a distance, and smell its distinctive, funguslike aroma.

  He had lost some blood and his neck was stiff; he had gamed a major tactical advantage. He was, all in all, in good shape.

  'Over here, Brother!' he called.

  And the manta looped about and came toward him. It had heard!

  Subble submerged hastily and sought a new location. How could a creature without auditory apparatus respond to sound waves? Cal had shown him a copy of Aquilon's dissection pictures: the manta had no ears and its skin was not attuned to sonic vibrations. It had only the eye.

  Unless it could actually see sound waves....

  He could not chance it. Obviously it could locate him when he made a noise, and if it missed the tiny splashes of his lifting head in distant water, it would not overlook those noises near at hand, or the vapors of his breath. Impasse again.

  He came up, spotting it near his last emergence. But as he did, it changed course and zeroed in on him. Once again it had profited from experience, recognizing the noises characteristic of him and watching for the expanding atmospheric waves that were his sounds. He had thrown away his major advantage.

  Again, his choices were continuing retreat - or dea
th. This ocean episode had given him a limited reprieve and educated him somewhat, but it had not forwarded his mission particularly. Better to meet the foe on land, where, if defeat were more likely, so was victory. If only he understood the manta better!

  And suddenly he did. The thing that Cal had hinted at and had not been able to say; the thing that made the manta incredibly dangerous to civilized Earth; the obvious rendered obscure by a mind trained to expertness at conventionalities - the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place at last, and hinted at the devastating consequences of ignorance.

  He took a breath and stroked powerfully for the cache of equipment. He stayed under as far as the diminishing depth permitted, then emerged silently, holding his breath. The tide was at its height, the surges almost touching his basket, but it was undisturbed.

  Beside it sat a dark hump. The manta had anticipated him!