Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  No, it made no sense, and this was Paleo, and she refused to be ruled by fears of paradox.

  But there were mundane problems. The insects were fierce, after they had zeroed in on the new arrivals, and all three of the humans, and for all she knew the mantas too, had welts from nocturnal bites. Someone had to keep watch part of the night, because they had agreed that it wasn't fair to make the mantas assume the whole task. That meant that one of the three was generally short of sleep and temper. It was surprising how quickly a nagging itch and insufficient rest could flare into personal unpleasantness. And the food -

  Her hands were raw and her nails cracked from scraping in the dirt for edible tubers. Veg ate no meat at all, and she had stopped doing it the past few months, but now the thought of roasted fish was tempting indeed. Coconut was fine, and so were the few small berries growing on the mountainside, and she had pounded nutlike fruits down into powder for something vaguely like bread, baking it laboriously over the kerosene burner. But the lush greenery of the waterside was tough and stringy and internally gritty even when thoroughly cooked, and tasted of creosote. It made her appreciate why Brach needed rocks in his belly to grind it up; he couldn't stand to keep it in his mouth long enough to chew it! The Tricers didn't bother; she had seen them biting off entire fem trees, and chewing up the trunks, their beaks and phenomenal back teeth like sawmills. Cal had explained that too: the Tricers had multiple rows of teeth set one on top of the other, the worn ones being replaced automatically with new. And the upper jaw did not meet the lower directly; the teeth slid past each other in a sheering action controlled by jaw muscles a yard long. To think that some researchers had theorized that the dinosaurs died out because they could not chew the flowering plants!

  For the supposedly superior dentition of the human beings, the softer tubers were better - but some made her sick, and she could not be sure, yet, which. The effect seemed to be delayed and inconsistent. Cal did eat fish, and also cooked fat lizards without compunction, and had no trouble. By unspoken agreement he did it alone; none of them were sure to what extent their dietary differences were ideological or physical, but no one criticized another in this one area, even when tempers were shortest.

  She saw it coming: in time she would change over again. On Earth she had been appalled at the way animals were raised in cruel captivity for slaughter, but here the animals were wild and free and able to look out for themselves, and it was the natural order that the weak or slow or stupid became food for the strong and swift and clever.

  But mainly she was hungry, and her tastes were falling into line. What held her back was the fear that the moment she reneged on vegetarianism, Veg would turn from her, and thus she would have made her choice of men involuntarily. Perhaps Cal, with his brilliant mind and strength of will, would be the one anyway - but she wanted to make the decision freely, not via her intestines.

  Meanwhile, too, there was considerable drudgery in paradise.

  She broke from her task - picking over a basket of objects resembling beechnuts Veg had gathered from somewhere, to eliminate the green or rotten or wormy ones (about half the total!) - and picked up her sketch pad. At least she still had that: her painting. She headed downriver, in the direction of chopping noises.

  Veg was hacking down selected hardwood saplings, comparatively rare in this valley, and skinning them. He had a row lying nude in the sun, each about six feet long and one to two inches in diameter, depending on the end. He was using his hefty scout knife, rather than attempting to harvest the slender trees by axe, and his large arm muscles bunched handsomely as he worked.

  Yes, she thought, he was a powerful man, if not really a handsome one. Hardly the kind she would have taken for a vegetarian, a hater of killing. A strong, strange man, for all his simplicity.

  'What are you making?' she inquired at last.

  'Quarterstaffs,' he grunted.

  'Quarterstaff? Isn't that a weapon?'

  'Yeah. We lost our steam rifle in the turnover, and there are animals here even that wouldn't faze. Got to have something. Staffs are defensive, but effective.'

  'But a weapon -'

  'Defensive, I said!' Last night had been his turn on watch, the human half, and he had whistled cheerfully. But now he was feeling it. She knew what four hours of sleep felt like, but still didn't appreciate his tone.

  She kept her voice level. 'You mean against a dinosaur?'

  'I figure you could jam it down his throat, or maybe stop his jaws from closing on you, or just bop him on the nose. Lot better'n bare hands.'

  She eyed the slender poles dubiously. 'I wouldn't care to try it on Triceratops. He'd bite it right -'

  'Nobody's making you!' he snapped.

  Affronted, she walked away. She was disgusted with herself for reacting emotionally, but she was angry at him too. He didn't have to yell.

  She found Cal farther downhill, north of camp, observing a small tame dinosaur. She had seen quite a number of these innocuous, almost friendly little reptiles about, for they usually grazed in herds of a dozen or more. This one was about five feet tall with a head of considerable volume compared to the average species of reptile. Brightly colored tissue surrounded its face, red and green and yellow; it circled all the way around its head and rose above in a spongy dome. Aquilon had no idea what such a display did for its possessor, but remembered that evolution always had realistic purpose.

  The creature was nibbling bracken, and though it looked up as she approached, it returned to its meal when she halted. Harmless, certainly; had it been a predator, it would have attacked or retreated Immediately. Aside from that she could tell by its tooth structure that it was herbivorous.

  She came to stand behind Cal, knowing the sound of her voice would spook the beast. She opened her sketch pad and painted the dinosaur's portrait, not one to miss the opportunity. Her paper, fortunately, had been salvaged from the raft wreck, though each page was discolored around the rim. Perhaps it was not as valuable materially as the radio equipment, but she was much happier to have it.

  She was intrigued by this reptile. It looked defenseless, and its head was so large and tali! Did it have a brain capacity rivaling that of man? Could it be intelligent, in human terms?

  Its actions suggested nothing of the kind, but-

  When she finished, Cal handed her a sheet of his notes. Usually he employed the voicetyper, but this time he had been doing it by hand, to preserve silence. She looked at the crude writing: 'TROODON, "bonehead" ornithischian. Solid bone skull, small brain.'

  Solid bone! That skull she had thought to contain a massive brain ... What a waste of space!

  There was more, but she looked up to see one of the mantas approaching. The little dinosaur took alarm and bounded away like a huge rabbit, keeping its head erect.

  'Why all bone?' she demanded, free to speak now. 'Doesn't it just slow it up, when there is danger?'

  That has bothered paleontologists for some time,' Cal admitted. 'I'd very much like to see Troodon in a situation of hazard, and make notes. At present I can only conjecture. A large carnosaur would ordinarily bite the head off one that size, as the best way to kill the creature rapidly. The body would still cast about a bit, but the predator would be able to hold it down and feed on the carcass at leisure. But if it sank its teeth into Troodon's soft-seeming skull...'

  Aquilon laughed. 'No teeth! It wouldn't try that again!'

  'Not exactly. There are several inches of fleshy padding around the bone, that would cushion the impact. And the carnosaur would soon learn to take in the entire head, not part of it, and so succeed. But this would still be a respectable mouthful, perhaps quite tasty - yet unchewable. I think that by the time the meat were off the bone, the others in the herd would long since have taken advantage of the carnivore's preoccupation to get away. So it would be an indirect measure protecting the herd more than the individual.'

  'That's a grisly mechanism!'

  'Yet it would seem to limit herd liability, and perh
aps discourage careless predators entirely. We do observe a thriving population of these species, at any rate.'

  The manta had arrived and settled into its lumplike posture. 'What is it, Circe?' she inquired, knowing that there would be valid reason for such an interruption. More and more, the mantas were keeping to themselves, associating only loosely with the human party. One always showed up for watch at night, and they certainly were not hiding; but they seemed to prefer their own company. Communications were adequate, she could understand Circe quite well now.

  STRANGE - IMPORTANT, the manta signaled with that combination of gesture and tail snaps they had gradually worked out as their code.

  'Dangerous?' She remembered how well Circe's warning had served the first time, when the tsunami came.

  NO. But the denial lacked full force, showing probability rather than certainty. THIS. And Circe snapped her tail in the dirt four times, leaving a mark like a footprint.

  'The bird!' Cal exclaimed. 'The bird that made those tremendous prints we saw at Camp One!'

  YES. TWO, Circe indicated.

  What's so distinctive about a large bird, here in the land of giants?' Aquilon asked Cal.

  'It may be our substantial evidence that this is a discrete world.'

  'Discreet? Oh, you mean "e-t-e" - discrete, separate?'

  'Alternate. A world parallel to our own in virtually every detail, but distinct. The concept is certainly more sensible than that of temporal displacement.'

  'Temporal - ? Time travel?, Changing the past? Paradox?' As though she hadn't worried about it too!

  'Something like that. The resemblance of Paleo to Earth is far too close to be coincidental. The size of it, the gravity, atmosphere, every matching species - but we've discussed this before. I've been assigning Earthly nomenclature because it fits, but I simply can not credit time travel. There has to be another explanation, and the alternate-worlds framework can be made to fit.

  'Back where we started from,' she murmured. 'But Earth didn't have dinosaurs during the Paleocene.'

  'We can't be sure of that, 'Quilon. This is an enclave, isolated, rather stringently from the rest of the continent. It could have happened on Earth, and have been entirely destroyed, so that no fossils remained as evidence - or merely be buried so deeply that we haven't discovered them yet. This location, particularly, would be subject to such an upheaval. I'll certainly check that out when ...' He paused, and she knew he was remembering their banishment. They could not return to Earth soon, if ever, even if they wanted to. 'It could have happened, and I rather think it did. The San Andreas Fault of our time is the landward extension of a Pacific ocean rift. The continent has overridden it, burying enormous amounts of undersea landscape. This valley could be part of that vanished structure, the mountains a reaction to the extreme turbulence of the area. There is nothing here inherently incompatible with what we know of our own world.'

  'I'm not sure I follow all that,' she said, wondering which of them he was straining to convince, and why the point was suddenly so important. 'But I gather that Paleo either is or is not Earth.'

  He smiled momentarily. 'That would seem to cover it. This could be Earth - except for that pair of birds Circe reports. Everything else fits, except the chronology of some of the

  reptiles, such as the pteranodons. They should have become extinct before -'

  'But a big bird doesn't fit? I'd think that two birds would be easier to explain than a whole enclave of anachronistic dinosaurs.'

  'Not so. The enclave is merely a remaining pocket, a brief, geologically speaking, carryover. The bird - one of this nature, this early - would have had to evolve over the course of millions of years, and it would have ranged widely. There it would have been fossils, other evidences of its presence.'

  'Cal, that sounds thin to me. There are so many giant gaps in the fossil record -'

  'Quilon, we are faced with drastic alternatives. If this is Earth, we are faced with paradox. Paradox can't exist in practice; nature will resolve it somehow, and we might not like the manner of that resolution. Not at all. Principle of the monkey's paw.'

  'The what?'

  He didn't seem to hear her. 'But if this is not Earth, the implications are equivalently awkward. It is necessary to know.'

  'But it's ridiculous to claim that one bird - I mean two birds - that we haven't even seen - ' She stopped. She had just left an argument with Veg, and now was provoking one with Cal. Whatever the geological, ecological, paleontological, philosophical implications, their discussion would not affect the truth, and it was silly to let it prejudice their personal relations. Cal obviously had something more than a mere bird on his mind; that was a pretext to cover what he refused to discuss. Otherwise he would surely have seen his own illogic,

  It was her place to smooth things over, not to aggravate them. 'Let's go see!' she said.

  Cal nodded.

  They rejoined Veg, who seemed to be in better spirit now that his self-appointed task was done. Aquilon didn't mention their prior exchange.

  'How far?' was all Veg asked.

  Circe explained: twenty miles across the water.

  They used the raft, rather than make the dangerous trip around and through the unexplored swamp. They backtracked to Camp One, rebound the Nacre, and poled as far as the remaining day permitted.

  It was good to be afloat again, Aquilon thought, as she lay wedged between the two men in the cabin. Somehow, aboard the raft at anchor, decisions were not so urgent, and she appreciated the fact that the security of their position allowed all three to sleep at once. It would otherwise have been her night to stand guard...

  They had merely to pull together as a team of three, while the mantas relaxed, wherever it was that the four were spending this night. Let the theoretical questions settle themselves. Here it was nice.

  'Oh!' She jumped as a cold wash of water slid over the cabin floor, soaking her derriere. She had forgotten about that hazard. Tomorrow she would set about recalking the Nacre...

  Next day they beached the Nacre on the south shore of the small island Circe indicated and proceeded forward overland. They were quiet and cautious, so as hot to frighten the anticipated birds. Each carried one of Veg's new quarterstaffs, just in case.

  There was no excitement. The island was nothing more than the long-eroded peak of an ancient volcano, covered with firs and pines and surrounded by deep water. No large reptiles were in evidence, though there were some duckbill footprints. The human party crossed without event to the north side and discovered a tiny peninsula-and-inlet complex.

  A bird five feet tall stood guard at the neck of the peninsula. Veg marched at it, poking with the end of his quarterstaff. 'Shoo!' he said.

  The bird did not squawk and flutter away in the manner Veg evidently expected. It spread its wings, which were quite small for its size, and struck at the pole with its great curved beak. As Veg drew back, surprised, the bird raised one powerful leg high in the air.

  'Careful, Veg,' Cal called in a low tone. 'That's the one we're looking for, and it's dangerous. It's a predator - a killer. Look at that beak, those talons, those muscles. It could disembowel a man with one stroke of that foot.'

  Veg had come to the same conclusion. He brought the quarterstaff around sharply, striking the bird midway down its long neck. The bird fell back a pace, hurt.

  'Oh,' Aquilon exclaimed, putting her hand to her own neck. She didn't want the bird to be injured, particularly if it were as rare and significant as Cal intimated. It wasn't, of course; it could not be. But it was a remarkable specimen in its own right.

  She looked beyond it and spied the second bird, perched on a rock near the water. Worse and worse - that would be the standing one's mate, sitting on her nest. She would have moved by this time, either to come to the aid of the male or to join him in flight, if she were free to do so. The fact that she stayed put meant that she had eggs to protect and warm.

  The humans were intruders on a nesting site, troublemakers.
/>
  But Veg had now seen this too. Embarrassed, he retreated. 'Sorry, pal,' he said. 'Didn't know it was your home. Thought you were just getting in the way. Sorry.'

  The bird watched him, standing unsteadily, neck crooked where it had been struck. The second bird watched also, from the nest.

  Veg, backing away, had forgotten where he was. He stepped off the narrow bank and toppled beautifully as his foot came down on water. The quarterstaff flew up as he, went over, flailing. There was a tremendous splash.

  Aquilon couldn't help laughing. The change from crisis to ignominy had been so sudden. Then, to cover up, she trotted to the bank to see what help she could offer.

  Circe stood a few yards away, watching but not participating. What had passed through the manta's mind as she watched this farce?