Of Man and Manta Omnibus

by Piers Anthony

  Still he hesitated - and Tyrann hesitated also, as though waiting for him to proceed. They had become accustomed to each other, the tiny man and the giant reptile. They had been over much territory together, shared many experiences - even an earthquake. There was a camaraderie of a sort in experience and fatigue.

  But he knew the dinosaur would gobble him up when that phase ended. Camaraderie did not presume amity. It was merely a kind of appreciation in adversity. He hesitated not from any sense of safety, but because something was trying impress itself on his cold-dulled sensitivities. Something warm.

  Warm. The ground was wet and the wetness was soaking through his footwear and in that moisture was heat, as though he had stepped in the drain chute of an outdoor bathtub. But the temperature of the air was near the freezing point of water. What was this - a hallucination brought about by his deteriorating condition? Was he about to imagine himself falling into a lush warm paradise, a tropical garden near the snowline where rapture abounded ... while in reality his feet froze and jaws of the carnosaur crushed out his life?

  Tyrann approached at last, and Cal moved - uphill, feet sloshed in the drainage and absorbed heat. The dinosaur feet also sloshed, and he paused to sniff the ground suspiciously No hallucination.

  A quarter mile higher it was warmer than ever, the air and earth as well as the trickling water. They were in a high valley, a kind of cleft in the mountain; not far away Cal could make out light snow, still bright in the fading day. But with this deepening hollow it was beginning to be comfortable. Ferns spread richly at the bottom, and toadstools and me and tiny salamanders scuttled out of his way.

  Cal recovered energy as his surroundings became conducive, but Tyrann remained slow. One advantage of smaller mass was a faster response to changed circumstances. Conditions were improving; he knew it, but Tyrann did not yet. But in this narrow chasm he would hardly be able to lose his pursuer, and there were no hiding places. It was risky comfort, this winding summer crevice.

  Unbidden, the explanation came to him. Volcanism! This was an overflow of a hot spring, the water emerging from conduits passing near the perpetual furnace of the volcanic mountain. The gully owed its warmth to the same force that heated this entire Cretaceous valley. No mystery at all, but something he should have anticipated. And that very realization, even so late, gave him the clue to victory!

  The vegetation diminished as the temperature continued to rise, and he knew he was approaching the outlet of the flowing water. If it were a bubbling spring, he was in trouble; but if -

  He came into the presence of the upper end of the cleft abruptly. This was a drainage ditch, formed by erosion, and bove the emergence of the water the normal contours of the fountain resumed. The outlet pipe was a cavern, as he had oped. Sweating now, Cal plunged in. The river here was too hot to touch for any length of time - perhaps 130° F. - but there was clearance at the brim. The opening was large: large enough for Tyrann. But still it meant mammalian victory.

  He moved ahead, unable to see anything inside. Tyrann's outline showed against the faint light of the entrance, but Cal knew the dinosaur would not follow.

  The key was this: while cold was inconvenient for the great reptiles, and slowly fatal in the regions of its intensity, heat was more critical. A reptile's peak efficiency was at a body temperature of from 95° to 100° F. - about the same as for mammals and birds. But above that, the reptile would succumb more quickly than a mammal, because it lacked any internal heat-control mechanisms other than inaction. Cal could survive for a reasonable period in an environment of 115° F. or more; and reptile in the same situation would cook, literally.

  If Tyrann were to enter this cave and remain for any length of time, he would die. Dinosaurs could not sweat.

  On the other hand, Tyrann would soon grow hungry waiting outside. Indeed, he must be ravenous already. There was no food nearby. Cal would suffer too, of course - but he could rest in warm comfort, and drink water to ease the pains.

  He heard a funny lapping sound and peeked out. Tyrann was hunched before the cave licking his wounds. There was blood on his body in many places besides the Tricer's gore wound. That earthquake had really battered him! No wonder he had settled for a relaxed pace at the end. The wounds that didn't show, the internal ones, must be even worse.

  Cal found himself a comfortable ledge, sprawled out, and fell into a perspiring stupor. It occurred to him that one of the duckbilled dinosaurs, such as Parasaurolophus, might have entered this cave safely. That creature's nasal passages traversed the entire length of its enormous crest. This would make for super-efficient smelling ability - but probably also provided efficient cooling of the blood by evaporation from those passages. Perhaps more than one duckbill had escaped Tyrann by entering such a cave. However, hunger and the rising heat inside the mountain would have killed any creature venturing too deep, too long. Perhaps there were mysteriously defunct bodies washed out in the lower subterranean rivers every so often.

  He slept.

  XVII - ORN

  'Tyrannosaurus rex was galloping after Cal, those awful double-edged half-foot teeth snapping inches short of his frail palpitating body, the feet coming down on him like twin avalanches. Snap! and the rag-doll form was flung high into the air, striped grisly red, and that color reflected in the malignant eyes of the carnivore. One giant claw toe came at that torn form where it landed, crushing it into the ground; the jaws closed, ripped off an arm. Cal's tiny head lolled back from a broken neck, the dead eyes staring at me not with accusation but with understanding, and I screamed and woke.' Orn saw that the mam female was troubled. She had slept restlessly and awakened noisily, and now was in a continuing state of agitation.

  'How close to reality was that dream? How great is my guilt? Cal wouldn't have gotten into that thing, if I hadn't forced the issue. If he's dead - I'm afraid to think of it - it's my fault.'

  Orn stood up and stretched his wings. There did not seem to be anything he could do for her. Her mate had deserted her.

  'And Veg - I dreamed of him too. It wasn't love, it was sex, and ugly. I tried to split their friendship, and now they're both - gone. I should never have come with them to Paleo.'

  Ornette still slept, fluffed out over the single egg. It was the youngest and fairest of the three, and now it was everything. Orn had picked the site for the nest, and he had erred; now two of his three chicks were gone. He could not mourn specifically, but he felt keenly that he should not have come to this island.

  'But it wouldn't make sense for me to chase after them. I couldn't do anything, even if it weren't already way too late. All I can do now is hope. Hope that the two men I love are still alive, and that this strange but beautiful world can live as well.'

  Orn intended to guard that last egg more carefully. The mating cycle was over. There would be no new eggs until next season. This egg had been shaken by the earth one day, and almost smashed the next; another siege could occur at any time. Could he protect the egg against that? He felt the need, but could not formulate a resolution.

  'I know what's bothering you, Orn. That egg's in a precarious spot. I'll move it for you, if we can find a better place. I might as well help someone. Maybe the worst is over. ...

  The sun was lifting, a bubble of light behind flashing mountain silhouettes. Soon it would touch the hanging pteras and animate them. Daybreak was such a struggle for that type!

  The mam got up and crossed to the main island. Orn knew she had to attend to her eliminations and did not wish to soil the nest area. Not all mams were that considerate.

  He looked about. Several of the pines had been overturned in the quake, and the configuration of the peninsula had changed. Now a second bridge of land joined it to the island. That was not good; it would be harder to safeguard now. Another shaking like the last and there might be no peninsula at all! He had seen what the ground could do on the island of his own hatching. The mam returned and began to forage for edible roots. She had what smelled like food in her nestl
ike container, but appeared to be storing that. She found nuts from two varieties of flat-leaved trees and seemed to have enough to sustain her, though Orn could tell she was not fully satisfied. He, meanwhile, had hooked some fat fish out of the inlet and gutted them with beak and talon, offering the delectible innards to Ornette first. He wasn't certain whether this mam ate fish also. He offered her one but received an indefinable response.

  'I think the main island is better for the eggs.' She had started with her noises again. 'It's less likely to sink under the wave.' She was trying to convey something to him, and he had an idea what. He could feel the continuing tension in the rocks, the distant motions increasing local stress. The earth would twitch its tail again, soon. His memory informed him that changes normally requiring millions of years could occur in an instant, when the ground got restless.

  'I'll scout for the best place, Orn.' For a moment something like the innocent levity of a hatchling chick lifted her. 'And you can call me 'Quilon, since we're on a first-name basis now. Short for Aquilon, the northwest wind. 'Quilon.'

  She tapped her own body as she repeated a certain sound, as though identifying her species. Of course such sounds were meaningless, but he would now think of her as the quilon giant mam.

  She departed again, questing for something. He watched her thoughtfully as she retreated. Yesterday he had extended his tolerance to this quilon whose mate had deserted her (no bird would do that!). Then the earth had moved and slaughtered two of his chicks and put the third in peril, and the quilon had helped him save the last. But for that, the problems of his own hatching might have been repeated here: one egg surviving, both parents dead fighting a crock. Now his egg would have a better chance, for there were three to guard it, counting the quilon. Perhaps it was her blunted nesting instinct: she guarded his egg because she had none of her own.

  Mams were not notably trustworthy around eggs, but the circumstance was special. This was a strange, huge, clumsy, yet brave and loyal mam, with surprising comprehension despite her annoying noisemaking. It was almost as though she had her own type of memory, so readily did she grasp things. And she had saved the egg. She deserved his companionship.

  The egg had to be moved. It was not safe here; a single tilt of the land could roll it into the sea, where the penetrating chill of the water would quickly extinguish it. But he could not move it; only the quilon could do that. Fortunately she was warm; that was the trait the mams had acquired even earlier than the aves. She could touch the egg without hurting it, and her digits, because they were soft, could lift it. He had no memory of any creature with this ability to turn seemingly useless appendages to such direct purpose. Limbs were generally adapted to running or foraging or fighting, while these unspecialized mam limbs turned out to be adapted for carrying a single egg!

  But all this thinking and reasoning was hard. His brain had not been evolved for this, and only his solitary life and the radical change of the world had prompted this quality in him. Ornette depended on her memories far more than he did. It was as though his mind had mutated into something else in a jump like that of the strained earth - something unique and unnatural.

  Then he felt it: the earth was beginning to break. He ran toward Ornette and the egg, but there was nothing he could do except settle down next to them and try to shield it with his body. If the ground jumped again, even this would not save it from cracking, for there was no proper padding beneath the egg.

  The quilon ran after him. She scooped up the egg as Ornette jumped nervously aside, and held it cushioned in those almost hairless fleshy forelimbs.

  Then the land broke apart. Orn was hurled into the water, to scramble back dripping; Ornette fell in the opposite direction, flapping her wings. Only the quilon remained upright, flexing her tremendous legs and leaning over the egg, protecting it.

  The motion changed. Orn felt it: somewhere deep below a support had snapped. The land on which they huddled was sliding down, away from the island, becoming an island of its own. The water surged around it. The shudders continued, rocking the diminishing perch farther. The pines were standing in water now, and falling as the land slowly tilted.

  There was nothing in his memory to account for this particular sequence, and he could tell that Ornette was as mystified as he. The quilon just stood with the egg, looking about. There was nothing any of them could do.

  It occurred to him that the reason he had no memory of such an event - a fragmenting, slowly sinking island - was that no potential ancestor had survived the experience.

  The last of the pines crashed down, tumbling over its fallen neighbors and splashing into the water. Orn thought of using it to float to safety, but realized that the quilon could not do this while carrying the egg. Without that egg, and within it the nascent memory and experience of all his ancestry and Ornette's, there was no point in escape.

  At last the motion stopped. Their new island was separated from the larger one by the length of a full-grown brach rep, and it was only slightly greater than the length of yesterday's croc in its diameter. They stood on its highest point: a terrace near the original site of the nest bounded by an escarpment leading into the water where the isthmus had been before; the land had actually risen slightly here. But on the opposite side the surface tilted down more gradually. Had the trees remained standing they would have been at an angle.

  Where would the ptera sleep now? They would perish in the night unless they found new roosting.

  The quilon settled down, supporting the egg on her thighs. She leaned over it, keeping it warm with her body and fore-limbs. Ornette looked, but did not challenge; it was safest where it was, and this entire sequence had left her confused. It was hard to accept, this control of the egg by the mam, but it seemed to be necessary.

  How were they going to get away from here? This was no longer a suitable nesting site, yet even the short distance to the larger section of the island was dangerous for the egg! Unless the new bay were shallow...

  'We might build another raft. Maybe the one Veg started is around, or pieces of it.' The quilon was beginning to make sounds again, which meant she was returning to normal.

  Orn stepped into the water, testing the depth. The footing was treacherous; he slipped and took a dunking. It was too deep, and far too chancy for the awkward mam. They would have to remain here at least until the chick hatched. They could forage on the island, swimming across individually. It would be an uncomfortable existence, but was feasible.

  He sniffed. Rep, gross. Trouble!

  As he scrambled back on land, he saw it: the towering head of an elas, the great shallow-water paddler. The quilon uttered a cry: 'A plesiosaur!'

  Orn had few direct memories of this creature, because its sphere of operations seldom overlapped that of his own species. He was aware of its gradual evolution from minor landbound forms struggling to come even with the large amphibs, finally returning entirely to the sea - and then a memory gap broken only by glimpses of the larger sizes, some with lengthening necks and others with shortening necks, until this line attained its present configuration: eight full wingspans from snout to tail, the neck making up half of that. It was primarily a fish-eater, but it would consume carrion or land life if available. Orn would not care to swim while an Elas was near, but had no particular awe of it while he stood on land.

  The rep came closer, its tiny head carried high. It smelled them, and it was hungry.

  'The quake shook it up. It's crazed. It's coming after us!'

  Orn would have preferred that the quilon not choose this moment to make her meaningless noises. Now the Elas was certain there was a meal here. The length of its neck was more than half the breadth of the island fragment. There was no section it could not reach from one side or the other, if it were determined. It could not leave the water, for that would destroy the mobility it required for balance - but they were vulnerable despite being on land.

  They would have to fight it off, if that were possible. The ground and sea motion m
ust have crazed the rep, so that it was not aware that it was fishing on land instead of in water. It was not particularly bright, but was dangerous.

  The head hovered above the island, twice Orn's height. The neck curved back from it, then forward, in the manner of a wind-twisted rush. The alert rep eye fixed on Orn.

  He leaped aside as the Elas struck. Like a plunging coconut the head came down, jaws gaping. The flat-flippered body lunged out of the water with the force of that thrust, and the jaws snapped within a beak-length of Orn's tail feathers.

  This much his memory had warned him of: the Elas fed by paddling behind a fish and flinging its head forward suddenly, to grasp the prey before it could escape. Had Orn not jumped when the motion began, he would have been lost. Too quick a jump would also have been fatal, for the Elas could crook its neck about in a double spiral, and small corrections were routine for it.