Manta's Gift (11 page)

"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.

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 full-swimming 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.