Manta's Gift

by Timothy Zahn

  Besides, his ostensible reason for being on Jupiter was to study the Qanska, and it was abundantly clear that the culture here in the northern latitudes was sharply different from the one he'd grown up in at the equator. He might as well learn what he could about this area; and who better to learn it from than someone who lived here?

  Anyway, there was a comment she'd made that had piqued his curiosity. Five broods, she'd said she and her mate had had, and then had mentioned having six baby Qanska. The arithmetic implied she must have had twins somewhere along the line.

  Problem was, he'd never heard of such a thing among the Qanska. Every birth in his herd had been single babies, and none of the stories in the herd circle had ever even mentioned twins.

  Was that something else that was different out here? Or had Beltrenini simply gotten her memories crossed?

  Either way, it would be worth a nineday or two to check it out. And it wasn't like he had somewhere else he wanted to be, anyway.

  He let his fins go limp, letting the wind take him. The air out here seemed unusually warm, but pleasantly so. Maybe that was why Beltrenini could fall asleep so easily.

  Eventually, so did he.

  The tour Liadof had requested took over an hour. Faraday assumed it was at least somewhat enlightening for her, though she seemed to be quite familiar already with both Changeling's history and its current status.

  It was, unfortunately, far less than enlightening for him. Every time he tried to delicately probe into the reason for her unexpected arrival, she either deflected the question or changed the subject entirely. By the end of the tour, about all he'd been able to glean from her comments was that she and the Five Hundred were rapidly running out of patience. But what that actually meant in terms of changes in policy or operation, he couldn't guess.

  He'd also rather expected that when the tour was over Liadof would leave, either to return to her quarters or else to launch herself on an inspection of the rest of the station. Instead, she pulled a spare chair directly behind Beach and settled into it, listening silently to the computer give its slightly broken translation as Raimey told Beltrenini about his fiery breakup with Drusni.

  It was another two hours before Faraday was finally able to make his excuses and ease his way out of the Contact Room. There was only one man on the station, he had already decided, who might be able to give him a clue to this new mystery.

  He found Hesse on his first try. The younger man was sitting at a back table in the smaller of the station's two bars, fingering a half-empty glass of dark beer and staring broodingly into the cheery glow of the faux fireplace in the corner. "Mr. Hesse," Faraday said, sitting down beside him. "Welcome back."

  "Oh, thank you so very much," Hesse growled, throwing an almost furtive glance at Faraday and then shifting his gaze back to the fireplace. "It's so good to be back, too. Do you like the present I brought you?"

  "You mean Arbiter Liadof?" Faraday shrugged. "Certainly an interesting choice of gifts."

  Hesse snorted under his breath. "She's a barracuda with legs," he declared.

  "It's not considered polite to talk about your boss that way," Faraday warned, glancing around the mostly empty room. This was not the way one talked about a member of the Five Hundred. Particularly not in public.

  But Hesse merely gave another snort. "What do I care?" he countered. "She won't be my boss much longer."

  He took a sip from his drink. "If you're lucky, she won't be your boss much longer, either," he added.

  "You telling me you're quitting the project?" Faraday asked.

  "No need," Hesse said. "Give her a few weeks, and the whole project will die out from under me on its own."

  "Oh, come on," Faraday said, trying to ignore his own misgivings about Liadof. "She can't be that bad."

  "She can, and she is," Hesse insisted. "She and the people she's fronting for are worse than you could ever imagine."

  He shook his head. "I had such high hopes for Changeling, Colonel," he said quietly. "But she and her group are absolutely going to kill it."

  "How many drinks have you had, anyway?" Faraday asked, peering closely at him.

  "Just this one." Hesse smiled wanly. "Don't worry, Colonel, I'm not drunk. Unless you want to count self-pity and frustration. Those I might be drunk on."

  Faraday sighed. "Look. If this is about being replaced—"

  "This isn't about me at all," Hesse cut him off angrily. "Don't you understand?"

  "No, I don't understand," Faraday said. "I can see how the Five Hundred might be getting impatient about our lack of progress. But they've also invested huge sums of money in Changeling. No one's going to cancel it simply out of pique or spite. Not Liadof or anyone else."

  "I never said she was going to cancel it," Hesse said tartly. "I said she was going to kill it. Unintentionally, maybe, but it'll be just as dead." He pressed his lips tightly together. "And in the process, there's a fair chance they'll kill Raimey along with it."

  Faraday stared at him. "I think," he said quietly, "that you'd better tell me what's going on. Starting with what exactly happened back on Earth."

  THIRTEEN

  Raimey was startled awake by a thin, wailing cry of fear and pain. He snapped himself to full alertness, twisting around to see what the trouble was.

  That instinctive move probably saved his life. Even as he spun around, a sharp stab of pain scraped across his left fin; and suddenly he was face to face with a pair of unblinking black eyes.

  Vuuka!

  He rolled over in midtwist, angling away from the wide mouth already opening for another try. Again the chomping teeth snapped together, this time catching the very tip of his right tail and biting it off.

  He spun around again as a second jolt of pain shot through him, turning a tight circle as he tried to assess the situation. It was still mostly dark, with the sunlight glow just starting to appear in the east. But it was bright enough for him to see that three more Vuuka were dodging in among the suddenly awakened Qanska, snapping at them like wolves in a sheep pen.

  But even as he completed his circle, all three of the other Vuuka suddenly abandoned their pursuit of the fleeing Counselors and turned toward him.

  And as he twisted around to point himself upward, he caught a glimpse of his now ragged tailtip, and the trail of yellow blood droplets dribbling away into the wind.

  And he was now officially in big trouble.

  He drove upward toward Level Three, twisting like a leaf in a hurricane as he swam. These Vuuka were as big as he was, and in a straight head-to-head race he knew they would eventually run him down.

  But while their torpedo-shaped bodies might be faster in a straightaway, his was a lot more maneuverable. As long as he kept twisting and turning, he could hope to keep out of their reach.

  Unfortunately, at this point that looked to be a very temporary hope. The Qanskan healing process was quick but not instantaneous; and until his tail healed over, the trail of leaking blood was going to draw them like magnets.

  And at four-to-one odds, sooner or later he was going to run out of maneuvering space.

  He spun around some more, still heading upward as fast as he could. Vuuka of this size, he knew, were most comfortable on Level Four or even Level Five. The higher he got, the harder it would be for them to keep up with him, let alone match his maneuvering. If he could keep them off him until his tail healed, they might give up and go after easier prey.

  Easier prey. Like maybe one of the bigger but slower Counselors back behind him.

  Like maybe even Beltrenini.

  And somewhere deep inside him, a part of him that he'd thought was dead suddenly surged back to life.

  Evasion and playing herd odds were the standard Qanskan approach to survival. They were the techniques he'd been taught when he was just a Baby, and the ones he'd employed countless times in the hundreds of ninedays since then.

  But suddenly it wasn't good enough to just outdistance these predators and hope they picked on s
omeone else. Inside this multicolored carcass, he was still a human being. That made him a predator, too.

  More than that, he was a tool-using creature, even if no one this side of the Great Yellow Storm even knew what a tool was. There was a way to defeat a Vuuka; and he was sure as the Deep going to figure out what it was.

  Sharp teeth slashed across the back of his right fin, again just missing a solid hold. Raimey cut around in a three-quarter circle, shooting beneath the Vuuka's belly and heading off at right angles to him. The other three predators were coming up hard on the leader's flukes, one of them close enough to take a snap at Raimey as he passed practically in front of their snouts. Close; but now it would take a few seconds of frantic braking and turning for them to change direction after him.

  He had that long to come up with a plan.

  All right, he thought, forcing his mind back into the half-forgotten patterns of all those business logic classes he'd taken a lifetime ago. Profit, loss; inflow, outflow; pluses, minuses. What were a Vuuka's pluses? Sharp teeth, mainly, plus speed, strength, and stamina. What were its minuses? Lack of maneuverability and a densely packed body type that gave it less vertical range through the Jovian atmosphere than Raimey had. In his mind he laid out a spreadsheet of credits and debits, adding in everything he and that biologist McCollum up on Prime had been able to figure out about Vuukan physiology since his arrival here.

  Behind him, he heard a bull-like snort as the four Vuuka got themselves lined up on him again. Another ninepulse, and they would be up to speed and gaining.

  Speed, and stamina...

  Raimey smiled tightly to himself. Okay. He had a plan.

  Now to see if it worked.

  He kept going, wiggling and ducking to keep the Vuuka off-balance, until he felt the hot breath of the leader on his tailtips. Then, with a drop-and-flip maneuver he had to basically invent as he performed it, he did a half circle that brought him head-up beneath the Vuuka's lean body.

  And ducking his snout, he slammed his bony forehead squarely into the Vuuka's lungs.

  The predator's whole mouth seemed to explode outward with an agonized cough as the impact knocked all the wind out of him. A pulse later the other three shot past, snapping angrily at Raimey but going too fast for a quick stop. With lungs and buoyancy sacs both temporarily paralyzed, the winded Vuuka dropped like a rock; twisting around out of his way, Raimey continued his climb.

  His tail, he noticed as he rose upward, had stopped bleeding. Theoretically, the loss of the brain-deadening blood trail should now allow the remaining Vuuka to think straight again and possibly reevaluate their chances of actually snagging this particular meal.

  But either this group wasn't bright enough for such abstract thought, or else they figured they'd already put too much time and effort into the chase to abandon it now. Still snorting, possibly madder than ever, they charged up after him.

  But that was okay. Raimey was feeling pretty righteously indignant himself just now. He'd already taught one Vuuka to be a little more leery about attacking Qanska with impunity. With luck, maybe he could double the class size for that particular lesson.

  Again he dodged and ducked and maneuvered until he could feel the breath of the lead attacker on his tail. Then, cutting sharply into his new drop-and-flip maneuver, he swung around into a tight circle on course for the Vuuka's lungs.

  But this particular predator had seen Raimey pull this trick already. Instead of continuing on in a headlong charge as his hapless predecessor had done, he braked hard, quickly cutting his forward speed down to nearly nothing.

  So that as Raimey came out of his half circle, he was no longer on course for the Vuuka's lungs. Instead, his momentum was about to take him directly in front of the predator's gaping jaws.

  But that was okay. What the Vuuka had forgotten was that Raimey knew he'd seen the trick already. This time, Raimey was deliberately not going fast enough to deliver the same kind of stunning blow to the lungs. He was, in fact, only moving fast enough that a midair flip was enough to kill his momentum on the spot before he could get in range of those razor teeth.

  And in that position, poised directly above the Vuuka, he slapped his tails with all his strength across the predator's eyes.

  The Vuuka screamed in rage and pain, thrashing about madly in an attempt to nab his tormentor. But Raimey was already shooting away, a fresh throbbing of pain from his injured tailtip hardly dampening his grim satisfaction. Twice now he, the prey, had taken the battle back to the predator. It felt good. It felt really good.

  Of course, in the process he'd also used up both Option A and Option B. Unfortunately, at the moment, he had no Option C.

  Fortunately, an Option C turned out to be unnecessary. With two of their group out of action, the remaining Vuuka apparently decided they had had enough. Letting their massive flukes come to a halt, they let themselves coast to a stop behind Raimey. Then, rather sullenly, Raimey thought, they rolled over and slid back down toward the lower levels.

  Raimey cruised along on Level Three for a while, just to make sure. Then, feeling better about himself than he had in a long time, he dropped to Level Four and headed back.

  He found Beltrenini and the other Counselors still in the process of regrouping after their scattering by the Vuuka. "Raimilo!" Beltrenini gasped in surprise as he swam up to her. "Well, I'll be fin-bit. I thought for sure we'd seen the last of you. How did you get away from them?"

  "I didn't, really," Raimey said modestly as he came alongside her. "I knocked two of them out of the chase, and the rest decided I wasn't worth the trouble."

  "You did what?" one of the male Counselors demanded. "How in the Deep did you do that?"

  "Well, the first one I slammed into just over his lungs," Raimey told him. "He wasn't much use after that. As for the other one, I was able to slash my tails across his eyes. Easy as grazing, really."

  The male snorted. But it was an amazed, respectful sort of snort. "If you say so."

  "You're hurt," a blue-and-green-spotted female said, moving close to examine his mutilated tailtip. "Bleeding's stopped, anyway."

  "Yes, it only bled long enough for me to draw the Vuuka away," Raimey said. "It all worked out pretty well."

  "Amazing," Beltrenini said. "I always thought there was more to you than met the eyes."

  "And he's only a Breeder, too," Blue-green added, still examining his injured tail. "The clouds above only know what he'll be doing once he's a Protector."

  "I've never even seen a Protector get past four Vuuka before," the male declared. "Certainly not by himself. You sure you didn't have any help out there, Raimilo?"

  "None at all," Raimey assured him. "I will concede, though, that I did have more than my share of luck."

  "Luck is a gift that comes to those who don't depend on it," Beltrenini said. "Qanska like you make their own luck."

  "Thank you," Raimey said. "Does that mean you're not going to make me go back to Centerline?"

  "You were going to what?" another female asked before Beltrenini could answer.

  "I'd like to see you make him do anything he didn't want to do," the male rumbled.

  "Hold on," Beltrenini protested. "I was never going to make you go back, Raimilo. I only said it would be good for you to face Drusni sometime."

  She flipped her tails. "But there's certainly no reason you have to go right now."

  "Absolutely not," Blue-green said firmly. "If you wanted to stick around, we'd certainly love to have you. As a matter of fact, I know some very nice female Breeders who travel nearby on Level Three I could introduce you to."

  "Maybe later," Raimey said cautiously. "Right now, all I need is a little food."

  "All he needs is a little food," someone else said with a laugh. "He just took out four Vuuka; and all he needs is a little food."

  "That we can help with," Beltrenini said cheerfully. "Come on, I know where there's a nice little run of breekis."

  "Thanks," Raimey said, wondering what breekis was
. Yet another food plant he'd never even heard of, apparently.

  "As a matter of fact, why don't we all go?" Blue-green suggested.

  "You mean, in case there are more Vuuka around?" another female asked slyly.

  "Of course not," Blue-green said in a mock-hurt voice. "I just happen to like his company, that's all. My name's Nistreali, by the way. You can swim next to me."

  A chuckle ran through the group as they headed off together, Beltrenini leading the way.

  And as they swam, and as Raimey listened to the chatter of the Counselors around him, he wondered if he'd finally found what he'd been looking for ever since emerging from his Qanskan mother's womb in his brand-new body. Perhaps even since he'd accepted Faraday's offer to come here in the first place.

  Not a release from his Earthly paralysis. Not a herd of children and adults who patronized him or treated him like a disgusting half-breed. Not alleged friends like Pranlo, who simply used him to get what they wanted. Especially not someone like Drusni, who would casually break his heart without a second thought.

  No, what he'd finally found with Beltrenini and her more mature friends was something he hadn't had for a long time. Something he hadn't even realized he'd been missing.

  He had found a home.

  Faraday's quarters aboard Jupiter Prime were typical military issue: small and plain, with the minimum amount of space for a single human being to live in, plus the slight extra margin customarily granted to an officer of his rank.

  Normally, he found them reasonably comfortable. But then, normally he didn't have four extra people crammed inside along with him.

  "I appreciate you all coming here tonight," he said as he sealed the door behind the last of them. "I apologize for the inconvenience, but I didn't want to risk using one of the conference rooms. Too much chance we might be overheard."

  "Too late," Beach said as he sat down on the edge of Faraday's bed. "I listened to a couple of risque jokes about the Five Hundred today Liadof probably already has me wired for surveillance."

  "Funny," Milligan growled, finding a bare section of wall to prop up with his shoulder, crossing his arms over his chest. "This better be important, Colonel. I have to take Grant's shift in six hours, and I'm behind on my sleep as it is."