Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  They arrived. Orn waited, standing just behind the narrowest section of the isthmus so that they would have to approach singly. Perhaps they were egg stealers after all, depending on brute strength rather than stealth. He twitched the claws of one foot in the turf, ready to lift and slash ferociously. The eggs must not be imperiled!

  'He's there.' It was the male, making some kind of hissing growl that still did not quite resemble a challenge to battle.

  'Veg, he thinks you're after the eggs. Don't go near him.' That was the female, her growl more sustained and variegated. It was as though she were cautioning her mate about the coming encounter.

  The male halted in bright moonlight about four wing-spans from Orn. He held a length of tree in his paws - the same object that had surprised Orn before. It was in fact a substitute beak or claw, for the mam had no effective armament of its own. Orn visualized it as the latter, for it attached to the limbs. He would have to strike around it, diving for the open throat or gut.

  But the mam did not make an overture for combat. He stood for an interminable period, while the female stroked a twig against a flat object. Orn comprehended neither the action of the female nor the inaction of the male.

  'I've painted his portrait. We'd better leave him alone.' Noises from the female again, as she concealed her twig and tucked the flat thing under one forelimb.

  As though that senseless series of female squawks were a signal, the male dropped his length of barkless tree and took a step forward.

  'Veg!'

  There was no mistaking that cry of alarm. She understood, at least, that the male was on the verge of an encounter likely to end in disembowelment. Orn would not permit it near the nest.

  Still the creature approached, taking great slow steps, pausing between each. Now it had its fleshy forelimbs behind it, exposing his entire torso. It was only two wingspans distant, entirely unarmed and vulnerable; Orn could leap across that space and stab the large mam heart he sensed, then retreat to the superior position on the isthmus. But he held back, leery of attacking when he did not comprehend the meaning of the mam's actions and could not interpret them in terms of any similar creature. It could easily be a death trap for himself.

  Another step, and now he was aware of the tension in the mam. It was afraid yet determined, not in a kill fury. Did it want to die? Certainly it did not want to fight! It had made itself entirely vulnerable to Orn's beak or talon, while its mate whimpered behind.

  Then everything fell into place. These huge, awkward, bumbling things - they didn't know how to fight. They could strike out with pieces of tree, but were unable to follow up any advantage gained. Both would soon become prey to a predator rep unless they found sanctuary somewhere. So they had come to this isolated island, and, still afraid, had sought Orn's protection.

  He would ordinarily have killed it anyway, or at least wounded it sufficiently to drive it off, this alien male. He was not hungry for the meat. But the very nest that made him stand his ground against an unremembered antagonist also made him disinclined to kill unnecessarily. His being was suffused with the juices of cohabitation and protectiveness; he had his own mate to comfort and eggs to warm, and bloodshed made a poor nesting mood.

  The mam kept coming. Orn had either to kill him or let him pass, thereby extending his protection to the strange pair.

  He heard Ornette pant with the first laying pangs.

  Orn stood aside.

  The female crossed then, and the two mams joined appendages and skirted the opposite shore of the peninsula. Orn stepped backward toward the nest, anxious to be with Ornette in her time of pain, but compelled to watch the mams lest they make some hostile move. He was profoundly uncertain, more so than he had been when he spared the ptera, but at least he had avoided battle and killing.

  He came at last to the nest, and stood beside it for some time, listening to the mams while one wing touched Ornette's back. The creatures were behind the clustered pines, scraping the ground with their soft digits and uttering their ugly, drawn-out cries, but never coming toward him. They seemed to know that they lived on sufferance, and that the vicinity of the

  nest was forbidden. He would have to kill them if they came near Ornette or the eggs, particularly tonight.

  Finally they settled down, and only their vocal noises persisted. That was their oddest trait: the perpetual and irrelevant sounds they made in their throats and mouths.

  'I wish there were some other solution.' The female making tones of disturbance. 'I hate to leave him alone like that.'

  'He's got a lot of know-how.' Now the male was replying with assurance. Their moods were not so different from those Orn shared with Ornette; only their vocalizing differed substantially. They employed drawn-out, modulated chains of sound in lieu of simple pitched honks. Apart from the clumsiness of the mode, it served. Everything about these ungainly mams was like that, however. Even their fur was matted and creased as though it had been baked in mud until it hung in chafing sheets. Nets of hair had fallen over their heads as well, obscuring their vision and smell perceptions and surely interfering with feeding.

  'He'll know better than to try to go anywhere.' The female was uttering modulations of self-reassurance now. 'The mantas will protect him.'

  'Yeah.'

  One thing about their continuing utterances: it enabled him to keep track of them without leaving the nest or straining his perceptions. He settled down beside Ornette, who was relaxing for the moment, and listened.

  'I wish we could get dry.' Female. 'I know it isn't really cold, but with this soaking and the sea breeze - I'm shivering.'

  'I brought a tarp in my pack.' Male. 'Make a passal blanket, if that helps. It's watertight.'

  'You're thoughtful, Veg. But the wet clothing is right to my skin, and the tarpaulin would prevent it from evaporating. I'll have to take my things off.'

  'I'll set up shop in the next gully.'

  'But you're cold too, Veg. You're just as wet as I am, and there's only one tarpaulin.'

  'I've roughed it before, 'Quilon. Don't worry about me.'

  They were doing something. Orn heard the rustle of something he could not identify. Not leaves, not bark, not tangled fur. Concerned, he stood up quietly and moved to where he could oversee the mam camp.

  The male was drawing flexible material from a rock-shaped object. It was as though a giant clamshell contained matted ferns. He spread it out, a single sheet, so that it settled over the female.

  It was all right. They were merely spreading bedding.

  'Veg-'

  ''s okay. The tarp's dry. I had it sealed in. Got a dry T-shirt for you, too. Wrap it tight to keep the bugs out though.'

  'Veg, you're not very bright sometimes.'

  'I know. I should've thought of dry clothing before diving in. In the morning I'll go back and pick up some. Now you fix yourself up, and I'll go down a ways and -'

  'Veg, if we sleep apart we'll both be cold.'

  'I know, but no sense getting everything wet again with my sopping rags. You're better off by yourself.'

  Orn realized that they were disagreeing with each other in some awkward mam way. The female wanted something but the male didn't understand.

  'Veg, remember when I spoke about making a choice?'

  'Yeah, 'Quilon. Back when we broke it up on Earth. I never forget things like that.'

  T made it.'

  The mams were silent for a moment, but Orn, watching and listening and sniffing, was aware of a continuing tension between them. Some kind of understanding was incipient. He flexed his claws, ready to move if the creatures attempted to make a night raid on the nest.

  'Yeah, I'm not very bright.' Male sound again: comprehension and triumph.

  Then the male put his soft mam digits to his own fur and ripped it apart. It fell from his body in wet lumps, leaving him plucked. The female stood up and did the same. Orn was amazed; he could never have moved his own feathers like that, or have endured the pain.

  The ma
ms got down together and wrapped the big sheet around them, as though they were two hairless worms in a single cocoon.

  Orn listened for a while longer. Then he realized die significance of their actions. They were nesting! What had passed before was their odd man courtship, and now they were ready to copulate.

  Relieved, he returned to his own nest. At last he understood the complete motive of this pair of intruders. They had sought a safe place to reside during their mating and confinement, and so had chosen to make common cause with his own family.

  The big mams were not as stupid as he had supposed, merely strange.

  That night, while the mams embraced cumbersomely and made sounds reflecting labors of universal significance, and while the three ptera hung in cold silence from their branches, Ornette gave birth to the final egg.

  Peace and joy were upon the peninsula.

  The mams woke in the morning but remained in their bundle for a time, waiting for the sun to strike away the chill. As the ptera began to stir, the mams unwound, attended to their special toilettes, and climbed back into their ugly fur. They ate from a cake of scorched, impacted plant stuff and drank copious quantities of water from a strange container. Like all mams, they imbibed and ejected an appalling amount of liquid.

  'Look at the pteranodons!' The female was making her excited noises again. Orn, initially irritated by this constant and useless chatter, was becoming used to it. He accepted every creature for what it was, and it seemed the giant mams were noisemakers.

  Then a trach crossed the water from the mainland and sported about the peninsula, browsing for shore herbage. This rep fed mainly on pine needles and cones, grinding them up with its flat bill full of little teeth. Though it was large, standing four times Orn's height and possessing a flat, sleek muscular tail, it was harmless unless provoked. It needed its full height to reach the succulent (to it) needles growing from the lower branches of the tall trees. It was related to the para Orn had first seen dead beyond the mountain range, but lacked the elaborate bonework on the head. A para could thus outrun a trach, because it ran cooler; but the trach was of sturdier construction.

  Orn stood by the nest and let the rep gaze as it would, leaving its webbed prints in the muck. That was why the island location was so good: most large reps that were able to reach it and climb on land were those that ate neither flesh nor eggs, and so were reasonably safe. Like this good-natured trach.

  The mams also watched, but with greater caution. Their exclamations suggested that they were not accustomed to such proximity to the trach. Soon they relaxed, however, watching the rep's easy motions.

  'I better check on Cal.' And with that utterance the male was off, charging through the brush like a small tricer. The female remained to watch the trach play and feed.

  Ornette rose from the nest, and Orn covered the three living eggs while she exercised her legs and wings and cleaned herself off at the edge of the water. She had had a hard night, and was not entirely easy about the presence of the mams or the trach, but deferred to his judgment.

  Orn watched the female mam speculatively. Most mams did not lay eggs, of course; they gave live birth, like the ichthy rep of the sea. After the authority of the mating ritual of the night just passed, this process was surely commencing within this female. Would the two mams remain on the island for the denouement? Perhaps the mam litter would grow up with Orn's own in compatible proximity. This would be a curious phenomenon, but not objectionable, so long as there was no strife between them concerning tasty grubs and such. His ancestors had nested upon occasion in harmony beside troos and even ankys, though the parent reps never went near their eggs once they had been deposited. Rep nests were far more transient than those of aves, so it didn't matter. But his species had never shared territory with struths or tyranns or crocs of any age; indeed, Orn would smash and consume any eggs he found of these creatures. It depended on the type of rep.

  It depended on the type of mam, too. He would just have to be alert.

  It was during this contemplative interlude that the first tremor struck.

  XIV - CAL

  It hurt Cal, this schism; he could not deny it. The group had come upon it almost incidentally, yet he had known it was brewing, and it had bothered him increasingly. They had been fortunate that it had not occurred on Nacre. Veg believed in life, however naively; Cal believed in death. Aquilon fell between, vacillating, but tended toward life. This was not so simple a concept as good and evil; both qualities were represented on either side of this issue. It was primarily a question of what was necessary.

  The four mantas understood that much, as they had demonstrated by their action at the orbiting station. Their view of man's endeavors was dispassionate, as was their view of the entire animal kingdom, since they were not of it. They remained with him because they knew that his approach to the problem of Paleo was realistic rather than emotional. Had it been otherwise -

  He sighed. Had it been otherwise, he would have relegated all Earth to limbo, for the mere love of Aquilon. He acted as he had to, but this did not alter his love for her. Nor did her figurative elopement with Veg affect this; he was aware that the simmering chemistry of heterosexual existence had to boil over at some point. They loved life, and this was the essence of life; the fact that Cal had increasing yearnings of his of that nature could not change his overall orientation. They were his friends, and he had more pressing responsibilities; he could not begrudge them their joy.

  Meanwhile, he had a job to do. Paleo was suitable for colonization by Earth, and no report he could make could conceal that. In fact, it was vital that he make the matter entirely clear, though this would sacrifice this beautiful world, for there were larger concerns. If the rape of Paleo diverted mankind long enough to allow information to circulate to those who could and would be stimulated to ensure proper protection for the other worlds of the alternate framework - the positive backlash - the end did in this case justify the means. Whatever Aquilon might think. This would necessarily entail the retirement of certain native fauna, and was certainly regrettable; but nature's way, properly guided, was best. No species could prevail by holding back. That was the way of self-extinction. The philosophy that saw virtue in the preservation of species and systems unfit to survive competitively - that philosophy was quaint but futile. Nature had no such sentiments.

  Cal studied the raft in the morning light. He would have to arrange to sail it back across the bay by himself, then make the trek overland to Camp Two for supplies. Then a longer

  sea voyage back to their Paleocene camp, where the one remaining functional radio was located. After that it would be merely a matter of waiting. Earth would decide.

  It was not an easy journey he contemplated. Veg could have done it, but Cal was a far cry from that! Still, his philosophy accounted for this. He would make the attempt. If he failed, the report would not be made, and perhaps Veg and Aquilon would have their way. If he failed, he deserved to fail.

  His strength was not great, but it was more than it had been. He could rig the sail, tie it in place, and handle the rudder provided the winds were moderate and favorable. He would have to be alert for large reptiles and stormy weather, assuming that either could be avoided. How he would navigate the barrier reefs he did not know; possibly he could map a channel through them at low tide, then follow that course at high tide. He judged that the odds were against his completing the trip, but with proper application and caution he hoped to make a worthy run for it.

  'Ahoy!'

  It was Veg hailing him from the island. Cal waved.

  'How're you doing?' Veg called. Then, not waiting for an answer, the big man dived into the water and stroked for the raft.

  'I'm going back to the Paleocene camp,' Cal said as Veg clambered aboard. 'The radio is there, and I believe the winds are shifting enough to make it feasible.'

  'Feasible, hell. You can't make it by yourself. Why don't you talk to 'Quilon again? We shouldn't split like this.'

&nbs
p; Three, as the saying goes, is a crowd.'

  Veg covered up his embarrassment by going to the tied mound of supplies. Most of their equipment remained at Camp Two, but they had come prepared for several days. 'She needs some dry clothing, okay?'

  'She is welcome. Take some bread, too. She made it, after all. I'll be moving the Nacre out soon.' There had not been any official division of spoils, but it was tacit: Veg had the woman, Cal the raft. And the mantas.

  'You'll kill yourself.'

  Cal shrugged. 'Death is no specter to me.'

  'Here.' Veg busied himself with the sail, hauling it into position and tying it securely. 'If you get in trouble, send a manta.'