Manta's Gift

FIVE

A wispy strand of bright purple vine rolled swiftly past Raimey to his right, apparently caught in some particularly brisk breeze. Abandoning the more subtle blue-green leaves he'd been munching on, he flipped over onto his side, did a swooping turn, and gave chase.

Kachtis, he vaguely recalled the purple foodstuff's name. Or maybe it was chinster, and kachtis was the other, lighter purple one, the one with the leaves and cone-shaped berries. After eighty-three ninedays on Jupiter, he still didn't have all these floating plants and near-microscopic groups of sporelike things completely sorted out.

But he had sampled all of them, or at least all those that grew on Level One. And the purple ones were definitely the tastiest.

Which was why they usually didn't last long up here among all the hungry Qanskan children and mothers. This time, though, he was determined to beat out the competition.

He was just closing in on the trailing end of the purple when another Qanskan child dropped in from above and neatly scooped it into his mouth.

"Hey!" Raimey snapped. "That was mine."

"Oh?" the other asked, rolling over on his side to look back at Raimey. "This your private ocean or something?"

Great, Raimey groused to himself. Not only a blatant food poacher, but a smart-mouth on top of it.

"You saw me going after that tendril," he said. "You should have let me have it."

"Why?" the other said, rippling his fins in complete unconcern as he flipped his tails over to gesture behind Raimey. "Just because you've got your own personal Protector?"

Raimey rolled onto his side, too, and looked back. Tigrallo was treading air a couple of dozen meters away, standing his usual stoic guard. "What about it?" he growled, flipping back upright.

"So what did you do?" the poacher asked, dropping his voice conspiratorially. "Get someone's tails in a twist or something?"

"Maybe he just likes watching over me," Raimey said stiffly. "Or maybe I'm special."

"Yeah, right," the other child said with a sniff.

The other child. Raimey grimaced. The other child; and that thought still rankled. Raimey was an adult human being, with more knowledge and sheer life experience than anyone from here all the way to Jupiter's core could ever hope to have. Hell's bells—a Counselor had dragged his tails all the way up to Level One just to welcome him to the planet. That ought to count for something.

But he might as well forget about that, because the rest of the Qanska sure had. As far as everyone up here was concerned, he was just another normal, everyday child.

"Come on," the other persisted, lowering his voice still farther. "What did you do?"

"Pranlo?" a distant female voice called. "Pranlo? Where are you?"

"I'm over here, Mom," the child called back. "Here with—" He broke off. "What's your name?"

"Manta," Raimey said.

"I'm here with Manto," Pranlo called.

"Not Manto," Raimey corrected him irritably. "Manta."

"Manta?" Pranlo repeated. "What kind of name is that?"

"A special name," Raimey said. "You got a problem with that?"

"Well—" Pranlo floundered for a moment. "No, I guess not."

"Pranlo, come back over here with the rest of the children," the female called again, swimming toward them. "It's not safe way over there."

"Oh, crosswinds," Pranlo muttered. "Mothers never let you have any fun."

Suddenly, he flipped his fins. "Wait a second. Mom?" he called. "It's okay. There's a Protector right here. See?"

"He won't be there very long," the female warned. "The rest of the children are over here."

"Well, can I stay until the Protector comes back?" Pranlo cajoled. "I promise to come back when he does."

"It's all right, Cintusti," Tigrallo called. "I'll watch him."

"Well... all right," the female said reluctantly. "But you come straight back when he does, Pranlo.

Understand."

"Sure."

Reluctantly, Raimey thought, the female turned back to the herd. "Whee!" Pranlo said softly, doing an excited back flip. "This is great. Our own private Protector. Hey, let's get some other kids and play tagabuck, okay?"

"Well..." Raimey hesitated. He was an adult, damn it, even if he was trapped in a alien child's body.

To play some stupid children's game would be far beneath his dignity. Especially with all those people up there in the station undoubtedly watching his every move from one of their spy probes.

And yet, even as he opened his mouth to make some excuse, it suddenly occurred to him why he'd been so surly lately.

He was lonely.

The realization came like a slap in the teeth. Yes, he swam with the general herd of children, parents, Protectors, and Nurturers. And yes, he wasn't unpleasant or unfriendly toward any of them.

But at the same time, most of his conversations were brief and casual. And ninety-plus percent of the time he stayed at the edge of the herd, or even ranged beyond it like he was doing now.

Mostly, it was just him and Tigrallo. And Tigrallo wasn't very good company.

"It might be good for you," Tigrallo suggested, just loud enough for Raimey to hear. "Tagabuck's a useful game for learning how to run and dodge. Things you need to know."

Raimey blinked. Tigrallo had never offered a suggestion like that before. He'd hardly even spoken to Raimey, for that matter, except to offer brief tips about how to do something Raimey was struggling with. Mostly he'd just hung around in the background, chased away or killed the occasional small predator, and otherwise left Raimey to his own devices.

Was this just another tip to help Raimey learn how to become a Qanska? Or had he noticed Raimey's mood, understood the cause for it, and was giving him an excuse to get some badly needed socialization?

He'd heard a lot of speculation during his training as to what kind of intellectual and emotional makeup the Qanska had, and whether human beings would ever be able to understand them. The lectures had been one hundred percent bull-manufactured guesswork, because in twenty years of talking with the Qanska no one had a clue about what went on behind those dark eyes.

Yet, here was at least a hint that the Qanska had picked up a lot more understanding of human nature than they'd let slip about themselves. And it didn't take a marketing genius to realize what kind of potential bargaining advantage that put them in.

Was that what this whole project was ultimately about? Humanity's attempt to even those odds?

Maybe. In which case, who the hell cared how silly he might look back on Prime? He had a job to do.

"Why not?" he said. "Sure, Pranlo, let's get a group together. I don't know how to play, though."

"We'll teach you," Pranlo said, doing another excited flip. "Come on, let's go meet everyone."

The Contact Room was quiet as Faraday walked through the security door, its lights lowered to the same "nighttime" level as the rest of the station. The four people on evening duty were being quiet, too, lounging comfortably at their stations as they kept watch on Raimey and his Qanskan friends.

Faraday peered around the room, floundering a little as he tried to put names to the faces. He'd been introduced to all three shifts when he'd first come aboard the station, of course. But in the ten and a half months since then their paths had seldom crossed, and he'd never been good with names and faces anyway. Two of the faces were complete blanks; the third he had a vague recollection of.

The fourth, in contrast, was almost painfully familiar.

"Mr. Milligan," he greeted the young man, stepping over to the sensor tech's chair. "You're up late."

"Pandre called in sick this evening," Milligan said. "I volunteered to sit Beta Shift for him."

"Um," Faraday said, pulling his chair over from his usual place by the command board and sitting down beside him. "Did Mr. Hesse approve?"

Milligan shrugged slightly. "Mr. Hesse mostly watches things with an eye toward politics. How Earth and the Five Hundred are affected. I didn't think this qualified."

"Mr. Hesse has a good eye for detail," Faraday pointed out, casting around for some way to stick up for the man. Hesse was Milligan's boss, after all. He deserved at least a surface layer of respect.

"That's very valuable in a manager. He also brings a strong enthusiasm for the project."

"He brings a strong enthusiasm for you, you mean," Milligan countered. "The project I'm not so sure about."

Faraday grimaced. He'd hoped it wasn't quite that obvious to everyone else. "One and the same, really."

"It is now," Milligan countered. "But what happens to us when you leave? More to the point, what happens to Raimey?"

Faraday had wondered about that himself. Often. "So what's the big secret?" he asked, running an eye across the sensor displays. "Things seem quiet enough."

"They're in sleep cycle," Milligan said. "Things were hopping pretty good an hour ago."

Faraday nodded. The Qanskan pattern seemed to be just under seven hours of wakefulness followed by just under three hours of sleep as they drifted along with the winds. It all synched perfectly with Jupiter's nine-point-eight-hour rotation.

Though why anyone down there should care about the planet's rotation in the first place was a mystery. Below the clouds, where all the Qanska lived, they got more heat and radiation from Jupiter's core than they did from the distant sun.

Still, experiments with Raimey had demonstrated that Qanskan eyes could easily pick out the sun's location, even through all that muck above them. Perhaps it was built into all living creatures to match their rhythms to their local star, no matter how great or minor its influence on their environment. "More reindeer games?" he asked.

Milligan blinked. "More what?"

" 'They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games,' " Faraday quoted. "Didn't you ever watch the classics?"

"I liked taking TV sets apart more than I did watching them," Milligan said. "But, yeah, they were playing for a while. Raimey's definitely getting his act together, swimming-wise. Oh, and Tigrallo also had to chase away some more troublemakers."

"Vuuka?"

"No, those smaller ones. The whatcha-call-'em—"

"Sivra?" Faraday asked, frowning. Sivra usually weren't strong enough to swim their way up to Level One.

"No, the other ones," Milligan said. "Pakra. The scavengers who sometimes get delusions of predatorhood."

"Ah," Faraday said. "He didn't have any trouble with them, I presume?"

Milligan shook his head. "Not a bit."

"Good," Faraday said. "So I repeat: Why am I here?"

"I was playing around with the sensor data this afternoon," Milligan said, swiveling half around to tap some keys on his board. "Found something I wanted to show you."

One of the displays showing sleeping Qanska shifted to an overall view of the equatorial region of Jupiter the station was currently flying over. "Here's Raimey's herd, sitting smack dab on Jupiter's equator," Milligan said. "Here's the group of Protectors, running a little deeper but staying basically right below them. Here's the herd ahead of them; here's the herd behind them. Almost every Qanska we've ever seen has been running within a couple thousand kilometers of the equator."

"Right," Faraday said, cultivating his patience. They knew all this. "So?"

"So why?" Milligan asked. "They've got the whole creaking Jovian atmosphere to play around in.

Why do they all hug the equator that way?"

"Maybe they're just gregarious," Faraday said. "Or maybe it's more comfortable for them. They get more sunlight there than they would closer to the poles."

"Negligible," Milligan said flatly.

"Negligible to us," Faraday countered. "Maybe not to them."

"But a thousand kilometers?" Milligan said. "That's an incredibly narrow band, especially considering Jupiter's size. We sure went out and populated our whole world, and the sunlight makes a lot more difference to us than to them."

Faraday rubbed his eyes. "Mr. Milligan, why are we having this conversation right now?"

"Because I think this is something worth checking out," Milligan said. "I think we ought to send a couple of our deep probes into the higher latitudes to see what's out there."

Faraday glanced around the control board. None of the other three techs were looking at them, but they were obviously listening closely to the quiet conversation. "Why don't you bring this up tomorrow morning?" he suggested. "That way Mr. Hesse and I could hear it together."

Milligan's lips tightened. "Mr. Hesse has already made it clear that he wants to save as many probes as possible for when Raimey gets bigger and starts going deeper in the atmosphere."

Faraday nodded cynically. "In other words, you've already tried this pitch on him," he said. "And having struck out, you naturally came to me."

"Well, no, not really," Milligan hedged. "I haven't exactly suggested it. But from things he's said, its clear he's hell-bent on sticking to whatever grand scheme the Five Hundred have hatched. According to him, we're not in the pure-research business."

"He's right, we're not," Faraday murmured. "And those deep-probes cost nearly half a billion dollars each."

"Yeah, he's mentioned that, too," Milligan said sourly. "But this isn't just pure research, and it sure isn't just for the fun of it. We don't have any idea what's out there, except that the Qanska seem to be avoiding those areas. There could be masses of predators or other dangers, things that could directly impact the whole project."

"Nice speech," Faraday complimented him. "You've been practicing."

"It's something we need to know," Milligan insisted. He paused, just for a second—"Besides," he added, dropping his voice still lower, "it could be that the Qanska are hiding it out there."

Faraday looked up at the display. It. The Holy Grail, as Hesse liked to refer to it. The whole point of Project Changeling. "Or it could be that the Qanska simply cluster their young together for protection," he said. "Maybe once they're older and larger, they spread out more evenly over the planet."

"Maybe," Milligan said. "But we won't know until we take a look, will we?"

"Or until we let Raimey take a look," Faraday pointed out. "Let's give it a little longer, shall we?"

Milligan made a face. "In other words, no."

"In other words, not yet," Faraday corrected. "We can always take another look at our options after Raimey reaches adulthood and is out on his own."

"Which is at least two years away," Milligan muttered. "Longer if he gets picked for Protector duty."

"That's all right," Faraday soothed him. "We've got time. This is why Raimey's here, after all. Give him time, and he'll be able to do a far more efficient search than we ever can. Even with all this expensive hardware."

"Or at least he will once you tell him about it." Milligan looked sideways up at him. "When are you planning to tell him, by the way?"

"When the time is right," Faraday said. "And it'll be my problem, not yours. Was there anything else?"

Milligan glowered at his board. "No. Sir."

"I'll see you in the morning, then," Faraday said, standing up and returning his chair to its usual place. "And keep a sharp eye out for that Vuukan hunting pack Chang spotted last night. They may not have given up."

"I'll watch for them," Milligan promised. "After all, we can't risk losing our secret agent, can we?"

"Exactly," Faraday said, glancing around the room. "Good night, all."

And that was precisely the point, he thought darkly to himself as he walked down the dimly lit corridor toward his quarters. If Milligan was allowed to launch his probes—if by some miracle he was actually able to find Hesse's precious Holy Grail—then what use would the Five Hundred have anymore for Project Changeling?

The answer was as cold as an accountant's bottom line: none. And Faraday had had more than enough experience with government to know that when the interest dried up, so did the money. An hour after Raimey lost his value to Earth, Faraday and the rest of the Changeling team would be packed and on their way back to civilization.

And there was no way in hell he would do that to Raimey. Not after he'd been the one to talk the boy into this in the first place.

So Milligan wouldn't get his survey probes. Not yet. Not until Raimey was old enough to take care of himself.

They owed him that much.