Manta's Gift

SIX

"Hey, Manta! Wait up, will you?"

Raimey rolled over onto his side and looked back. Pranlo was swimming rapidly up behind him, with that slightly wavering stroke that meant he was getting tired. "Vuuk-mook, but you're fast.

What's the hurry?"

"Hurry?" Raimey countered innocently. "What hurry? And by the way, what are you lazing around for?"

"Funny," Pranlo grunted. "What are we doing out here, anyway?"

"I want to show you something," Raimey said, doing a slow spin to look around them. No one was nearby, with the usual exception of Tigrallo treading air watchfully below them.

Always there. Except when it really mattered.

He shook the thoughts away. "Come on," he said, turning his back on Tigrallo.

"Where?" Pranlo asked.

"Straight down." Rolling over and flipping himself up to vertical, Raimey started down.

He had come a long way, he thought distantly, since his arrival on Jupiter and that first botched attempt at a swim. He could vividly remember his terrified awkwardness as he'd tried frantically to elude that Vuuka that had been zeroing in on him.

Now, in contrast, his movements were smooth and fluid. His fin muscles pushed effortlessly against the swirling wind, his stomach and buttock muscles contracted his internal buoyancy sacs instinctively, without need of conscious thought or effort.

How long had it been since then, anyway? He didn't know, exactly. Somewhere around two hundred ninedays, he guessed; just over two of the ninety-nineday groupings that the Qanska quaintly called dayherds. He could always ask if he were really curious about it; there were Qanska back in the herd whose job was to keep track of the days.

But time didn't matter that much to him here. Besides, he didn't interact with the rest of the herd very much any more. At least not with the adults. Not since that terrible day...

"Pranlo?" a girl's voice called faintly from above him. "Hey, Manta. Wait up, you guys."

"Manta?" Pranlo called. "Wait up, huh? It's Drusni."

"I know it's Drusni," Raimey called back, snapping out of his hovering depression into fullswimming annoyance. Of course it was Drusni. Every time he turned around, it seemed, there was Drusni. Floating around chattering about nothing, or pushing her way uninvited into the run of food he was going for, or bugging him with questions even a newborn should know the answers to. She was like his kid sister, plus all his kid sister's friends, all rolled into a single bubble-pack.

"Oh, come on, Manta," Pranlo cajoled. "She's okay."

"So are Pakra when they keep their mouths shut," Raimey muttered. Still, reluctantly, he eased back on his dive.

"Whew!" Drusni said as she caught up. "Where are you guys going?"

"It's a secret," Pranlo said. "Okay, Manta, we're ready. Let's go."

"And I mean secret," Raimey warned. "Really secret."

"Yeah, I know," Pranlo assured him.

"I wasn't talking to you," Raimey said, flipping sideways to pin Drusni with a glare.

"Oh, sure," she said with an annoying combination of innocence and earnestness. "You can count on me."

"Yeah," Raimey muttered, rolling over onto his back again. "Okay, come on."

They headed down together, Pranlo and Drusni chatting cheerfully together as they swam. A couple of kids, Raimey thought sourly, without a single care in the world.

But then, why shouldn't they be cheerful? Why shouldn't they both be cheerful?

After all, they still had mothers.

An extra-fast layer of wind brushed across his stomach. Almost there. "Okay, we're coming up on it," he told the others. "Get ready." The wind eased off...

And there it was, directly below them: a thick run of green prupsis and red-speckled morchay, with more of the deliciously purple kachtis mixed in with it than Raimey had ever seen before in his life.

Obviously more than Pranlo and Drusni had seen before, either. "Wow!" Pranlo gasped.

Drusni, for her part, let out an excited squeak. "How in the world did you find this?"

"Native talent, of course," Raimey said modestly. Which wasn't entirely true, of course. Faraday and his helpers far above had done some kind of emscan analysis through one of the probes and suggested he might find a concentration of food plants trapped between layers of extra-fast wind.

Raimey could remember one of the techs going on and on with very learned-sounding stuff about laminar flow and turbulence layers and such. But he hadn't paid much attention to that part. Faraday had said food, and he'd been right, and that was all that mattered.

And for right now, at least, it was all theirs. Enough kachtis, he guessed, to fill even Drusni's big mouth.

It was quickly clear that she intended to put that theory to the test. With another happy squeak, she dove in, scattering food around her like the water of a pool she was splashing in. Pranlo was right behind her.

Midlings, Raimey thought with a condescending sniff as he carefully maneuvered through the slipstream to one edge of the floating smorgasbord. No sense splashing any of this good stuff out into the winds and letting the herd ahead of them get it. Flicking out his tongue, he began to delicately pull the slender purple vines into range of his teeth.

There was a subtle change in the pattern of wind across his back, and he looked over to see Tigrallo sidle up beside him. "This is not wise, Manta," the big Protector warned. "Vuuka and Sivra know about these clusters, too. They often lurk nearby, waiting for unwary Qanska to appear." He flipped his tails emphatically. "And this one in particular is far too deep for Midlings of your age and size."

"We're hardly Midlings anymore," Raimey countered. "We're nearly Youths, you know. Anyway, isn't that why you Protectors are here? To keep us all nice and safe?"

For a moment Tigrallo was silent. "You blame me for Mirasni's death," he said at last.

"It doesn't matter," Raimey muttered, turning back to the food. "Anyway, pointing heads doesn't do anyone any good."

"It does matter," Tigrallo said. "It's been three ninedays now, and you still haven't spoken of it. Yet I know it's still a problem that lies undigested inside you."

"What good would talking do?" Raimey demanded. "She's dead because you were too busy chasing off a couple of incompetent Vuuka to go help her. End of story."

"Those incompetent Vuuka, as you call them, might have killed you," Tigrallo said.

"Oh, come on," Raimey growled. "I was swimming tail loops around them. They were biting air the whole time, and that's all they would have bitten. I wasn't in any danger, and you know it."

"No, I don't know it," Tigrallo said stiffly. "But whether you were or not doesn't matter. What matters is that you are the one the Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise have ordered me to protect. That's my responsibility, and I will fulfill it to the last of my ability."

"Great," Raimey said contemptuously. "Turn off your brain and concentrate on following orders.

You'd have made a terrific bureaucrat."

"I don't know that word."

Raimey flipped his tails. "Forget it."

He turned back to the floating food, trying to block the image of his mother's torn body out of his mind, awash in the sickening yellow of her own blood as the Nurturers tried futilely to save her life.

But he couldn't.

And even the kachtis had lost its taste.

"Hey, Manta," Pranlo called from somewhere below him. "Come here."

Taking a deep breath, Raimey flipped over and started down, spinning around as he did so to locate his friend. There he was, flapping against the slipstream wind at the bottom of the food clump.

"What is it?" he asked as he pulled out of his dive beside him.

"Grab yourself one of these things," Pranlo said. He flicked out his tongue and snagged an unfamiliar-looking blue-green cluster. "Come on, taste it."

Frowning, Raimey located one and took a cautious bite. It was better even than kachtis. "What are they?" he asked.

"Fin-bit if I know," Pranlo said. "Hey, Tigrallo. What are these things?"

"They are called drokmur," Tigrallo said, drifting down to join them. "They aren't usually found this high up."

"Oh, so this is the stuff you adults keep for yourselves," Pranlo said. "Can't say I blame you."

"It's not a matter of keeping anything for anyone," Tigrallo said, sounding annoyed. "Midlings your age are simply not heavy enough to reach the areas where it usually grows."

"Well, I suppose it's nice to have something to look forward to when we grow up," Pranlo said around a mouthful.

Tigrallo made a chuckling sound in the back of his throat. "Among other things, yes."

"Hey, guys," Drusni's voice wafted in from ahead of them. "You try these blue-green things yet?"

"Yes," Raimey and Pranlo called back in unison.

"Matter of fact, we saw them first," Pranlo added. "That means we've got first rights to them."

"You go right ahead and try," Drusni called back.

"Raimey?" a voice murmured in the back of Raimey's head.

Raimey started, nearly biting his own tongue. "What?" he asked.

It wasn't until the word was out of his mouth that he realized he'd answered in Qanskan tonals instead of English. He tried to switch languages—

And to his rather startled chagrin, he found he couldn't. His brain, immersed so deeply for so long in Qanskan, was simply refusing to wrap itself around the proper words.

For a moment he struggled, trying stubbornly to make his brain go there anyway. Then, abruptly, he changed his mind. Interrupting his meal had been their idea, not his. Why should he get his tails in a knot just to accommodate them?

To the Deep with it. If they wanted to talk to him, they could jolly well translate for themselves.

"Ask him how far down these drokmur usually grow," Faraday said.

Raimey flicked his tails in annoyance. What was he, anyway, their private messenger boy?

He grimaced. Actually, that was exactly what he was. Finding out about all these things was the reason he was here in the first place.

"You said these things don't usually get up here," he said to Tigrallo "Where do they usually grow?"

"They are usually found at Levels Three, Four, and Five," the Protector told him.

"Levels Three, Four, and Five," Raimey repeated for the benefit of the eavesdroppers upstairs. "So usually only Youths, Breeders, and Protectors get to eat them?"

"Yes," Tigrallo said. "Manta, I strongly urge you to leave this level and rejoin the rest of the herd.

The Vuuka could appear at any time."

"We'll go up when we're ready," Raimey said shortly, turning back to his meal. "You get that?" he added quietly.

"Yes," Faraday said. "Thank you."

"That's why I'm here," Raimey said with a touch of irony in his voice. Though whether Faraday and his buddies could even pick up such subtleties with their totally inadequate tonal recording equipment he didn't know. Probably not. Even full-blown sarcasm would probably be lost on them.

He was savoring another bite of drokmur when the rest of it suddenly caught up with him.

Faraday had asked what levels the drokmur grew on. But Raimey had never mentioned levels up till then.

For that matter, he hadn't even mentioned the word drokmur.

Which meant that Jupiter Prime wasn't just listening in on what he said right now. They were listening in on what everyone else around him was saying, too.

He did another slow spin, searching the area carefully. It was one of their probes, of course. It had to be. But if there was one lurking around, he couldn't spot it.

Which left only one other possibility.

Like the kachtis before it, the drokmur suddenly lost its taste. What had Faraday said about this subvocalizer gadget they'd built into him, anyway? Raimey couldn't remember, exactly, but he knew he'd gotten the distinct impression that they could only pick up what he himself was saying.

But had Faraday actually said that?

He couldn't remember. And if he couldn't remember a specific statement, chances were suspiciously high that Faraday hadn't made one.

So in other words, Raimey wasn't just their messenger boy. He was also their self-mobile espionage probe.

And if they had audio capability, what else did they have?

He slid his tongue across the rough insides of his teeth in frustration and annoyance. Still, he had to admit that it made sense. There were probably things their instruments could pick up and analyze that he himself couldn't.

Though what those things might be he didn't know. Certainly Qanskan sight and hearing were a lot sharper than any human had guessed. But of course, no one had known that when they'd designed this experiment.

Or had they?

"Manta?" a voice said softly from his right.

He rolled over and looked that direction. Drusni had come up beside him, and was gazing at him with an oddly anxious expression on her face. "It's okay," she said quietly. "I know it hurts. We've all lost family and friends. It's just the way things are."

She stroked her fin across his. "But we're your friends. We'll help you get through it."

Raimey took a deep breath. Clearly, she'd completely misinterpreted the reason for his sudden silence. Typical Drusni, really.

Still, even amidst his annoyance at her, he had to admit that the unexpected expression of sympathy felt kind of good against the rawness of his anger and pain. "Thank you," he said quietly.

"I'm—look, I know I pick on you a lot. But you and Pranlo—"

"I know," she said, some of her normal cheer peeking through her seriousness. "But friends do that."

She touched his fin again, only this time it was more like a playful slap than a stroke. "Come on," she said, flipping away from him. "Tigrallo's right—we've got to get out of here."

"Okay," Raimey said. "But not until I clear out this drokmur first."

"Not if I get there first," she called over her back. "Race you for it."

Raimey rolled over and headed after her. And wondered at the odd tingling in his skin where her fin had touched his.

"Well?" Faraday asked.

Beach lifted his hands helplessly. "Near as I can tell, everything's working just fine," he said. "If there's a glitch in the subvocalizer, it's not showing up on any of the diagnostics. Maybe there's some interference from the life-support equipment."

"Not a chance," McCollum insisted, peering closely at her own board. "Besides, it's geared down to barely a tenth its original output. What could it be doing now that it wouldn't have done before?"

At the other end of the board, Sprenkle cleared his throat. "You're all assuming there's a technical problem with the equipment," he said. "Maybe there isn't."

"Then why isn't he talking to us?" Beach demanded.

"He is talking to us," Sprenkle pointed out. "He's just talking in Qanskan, not English."

"That's right," Beach said in a tone of strained patience. Which means he's having trouble with his subvocalizer."

"Why does it mean that?" Sprenkle asked. "Maybe he's just more comfortable speaking in Qanskan now." He paused. "Or maybe he's forgotten how to speak English, even on a subvocalizer."

Beach threw an odd look over his shoulder at Faraday. "Am I the only one in here who doesn't like the sound of that?" he asked.

"Let's not panic just yet," Faraday advised. But he could feel the skin starting to crawl at the back of his neck, too. "Dr. Sprenkle, how could he forget how to speak English? I thought you said his memory and personality profile were holding steady through the cell replacement process."

"They are," Sprenkle said. "Or at least, they were at the last check six weeks ago. But things do change, you know. Sometimes without much warning."

There was a sound of footsteps from outside the door. Faraday turned to look—

"Good morning," Hesse said, striding into the Contact Room and glancing around at each of them.

"How are things going?"

"Raimey can't or won't talk English to us," Beach said. "Hans thinks he may be going native."

Hesse's jaw dropped a couple of millimeters. "Really," he said.

"And welcome back," Faraday added. "How was Earth?"

"Just fine, thank you," Hesse said absently, crossing over to stand behind Sprenkle. "What exactly does 'going native' mean here?"

"Everette is exaggerating a bit," Sprenkle said, sending a slightly vexed look across at Beach. "It could just be that Raimey didn't feel like changing verbal gears in the middle of a conversation. He's never been the type to go out of his way to be helpful to others, after all, and he knows we can translate Qanskan tonals."

"Or it could be the equipment," Hesse said, rubbing his cheek. "Where is he now?"

"Down at the bottom of Level Two," Milligan said, looking over at the image from one of the spy probes. "He's feeding on some stuff we haven't seen before."

"Interesting about that, too," McCollum added. "You'd think that as you move farther away from sunlight you'd get less variety in the vegetation, not more. But this is plant life that doesn't exist farther up."

"Maybe it doesn't need sunlight," Hesse suggested, leaving Sprenkle and walking over to look at her board. "Maybe it lives on the equivalent of those hot sulfur vents in Earth's deep oceans."

"Possibly," McCollum said. "The obvious candidate for that role being the radiation from Jupiter's core. Or the plants could have the kind of life cycle where their main growth occurs at the top of the atmosphere, after which they go dormant and sink farther down."

"Well, stay on it," Hesse said, turning to Milligan. "What about the McCarthy setup? That's still functional, I presume?"

Beach and McCollum exchanged a quick glance. "No way of knowing," Beach said. "There's no way to test it apart from a full activation."

"Which I'd advise against doing right now," Sprenkle put in quickly. "There's no indication he knows anything yet."

"I'm aware of that, thank you," Hesse said. "On the other hand, I also notice there's a lot more static than usual on the audio feed."

"That's just because of the depth he's at," McCollum said.

"Which is exactly my point," Hesse said tartly. "If we're starting to lose him before he's even at Level Three, there's a damn good chance he'll be out of reach well before he does know anything."

He turned a glare on Faraday. "And if in the process he 'goes native,' whatever that means, we could have a serious problem on our hands."

"So what are you suggesting?" Faraday asked calmly. "That we go ahead and tell him the real reason he's there?"

Hesse looked back at Sprenkle. "You're the psychologist," he said, making the sentence an accusation. "You think he's in danger of forgetting he's human?"

Sprenkle's lips puckered. "The problem is, of course, that he isn't human," he reminded Hesse. "At least, not physically."

"But he still has his human memories and personality, right?" Hesse persisted.

"So it appears," Sprenkle said. "But the physical body does affect mental and emotional states. How profound that effect is, or how profound it's going to become, there's simply no way of knowing."

"If you want my vote, I say we tell him," Beach offered. "And the sooner the better. This lie's gone on long enough."

"When Changeling becomes a democracy, I'll let you know," Hesse said icily. He hissed gently through his teeth, then shook his head. "No, we'll hold off a little longer. Let him get bigger, give him the kind of swimming range he'll need for the job. He'll still have access to Level One for quite a while—surely he'll bounce up there at least occasionally."

He made an attempt at a smile. "So. Thank you all for your input."

He turned and headed for the back corner where the coffee pot and tea samovar were simmering softly to themselves. Glancing at the techs to make sure their attention was back where it belonged, Faraday strolled over to join him.

Hesse got in the first word. "Sorry," he muttered as he drew a mug of coffee. "I shouldn't have snapped at them like that."

"No need to apologize," Faraday said. "At least, not to me. I take it things didn't go well on Earth?"

Hesse's cheek muscles tightened visibly. "The understatement of the decade," he said. "The Five Hundred are becoming impatient with Changeling, Colonel, particularly the faction that pushed through the scheme in the first place. And I get the impression that impatience extends to the two of us personally."

"It's been barely two years," Faraday pointed out, irritated in spite of himself. As far as he was concerned, the Five Hundred's veiled impatience had started midway through Day Two. It was pure political power-jockeying, and he for one was getting pretty tired of it. "Raimey's hardly past the Midling stage, for heaven's sake. If they couldn't figure out this was a long-term project, they shouldn't be allowed to cross the street by themselves."

Hesse sighed. "I think it's more a matter of overall political pressure," he said. "There've been a lot of minor crises of confidence over the past few months, and I get the feeling there's been serious slippage in the Five Hundred's support. And not only on Mars and Luna, either."

"And of course, the novelty of Changeling has long since worn off as far as the general public is concerned," Faraday pointed out.

"As the novelty of such things always does," Hesse agreed sourly. "Especially when you've got something as exciting as Martian riots going on a few channels over."

Faraday grimaced. "The whole station was following that one," he said. "Plenty of arguments going back and forth, too. I understand you were actually there?"

Hesse shrugged. "I rode part of the way back here with Councilor Yakamura and got to sit in on a couple of sessions with his mediation team. I didn't do any of the talking, of course."

"I was rather surprised that Yakamura didn't reveal Changeling's real purpose during the talks,"

Faraday said. "Or did he, and they simply suppressed it from the newsnets?"

"No, he didn't say a word," Hesse said. "No point to it, really."

"No point?" Faraday echoed, frowning.

"Changeling is a long shot," Hesse said grimly. "Long shots are risky things to hang negotiations on."

"Even so, I'd have thought it would help defuse the situation," Faraday insisted. "I mean, we are talking about the ultimate solution to the whole overcrowding problem. Presumably a lot cheaper than developing Titan and Janus, too."

Hesse shook his head. "You're thinking long-term," he said. "The Martians aren't. All they can see is the immediate issue of the Council wanting to pour a ton of money into grinding out a few foothold bases on Saturn's moons instead of upgrading facilities on the colonies we already have."

"I can't say as I entirely disagree with them, either," Faraday said. "Saturn's a mighty long way out."

"So was Jupiter a generation ago," Hesse reminded him. "I dare say that the idea of putting colonies and stations here wasn't all that popular when it was first proposed."

"It wasn't," Faraday had to concede. "I can remember when they first started building Jupiter Prime.

From the way Mars and Ceres howled, you'd have thought they were being left to wither on the vine.

Especially since all the surveys proved that no one with half a functioning brain would want to live this far from Earth."

"And now there are nearly half a million people living in the Jovian Sector," Hesse said wryly. "And in that same period Mars's population has more than tripled. So much for withering on the vine."

"The Martians still have a point," Faraday said. "The farther out we go, the more expensive the real estate is to develop. The Five Hundred might well do better to expand the facilities we already have instead of pushing for new ones. Certainly the Jovian Sector has lots of room for expansion."

"True," Hesse said. "But the living space itself is only part of the story. Human beings need frontiers, Colonel. We need places where the restless and ambitious can go."

"And where the troublemakers can be dumped?" Faraday suggested pointedly.

Under his brand-new Earth tan, Hesse reddened slightly. "There's some of that, too, I suppose," he conceded. "The bottom line, though, is that the Solar System stops at Pluto, and that's not all that far away anymore. If Raimey doesn't come through..." He shook his head.

"He'll come through," Faraday assured him. "If there's anyway to do it, he will."

"I hope you're right," Hesse said.

Faraday looked back at the fuzzy monitors. Yes, he added silently to himself. So do I.