Manta's Gift (22 page)

"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."

"Don't blame the colonel for that," McCollum warned. Beach patted the bed beside him in invitation; pointedly, she stepped past him and sat down in Faraday's desk chair instead. "If you weren't always in engineering or the EVA ready room getting conned out of your paychit—"

"Hey, I work damn hard at my job," Milligan snapped back. "Poker's about the only way to unwind around here that doesn't involve rotting your brain, your teeth, or your liver."

"Come on, everyone, cool down," Sprenkle said tiredly, looking around the room and then sitting down on the bed beside Beach. "It's been a long day, and our nerves are all a little on edge."

"Nerves on edge," Beach echoed, shaking his head. "Man, I love psychiatric jargon."

"I'm sure you hear a lot of it, too," McCollum put in. "Can we knock it off and listen, so we can get out of here? No offense, Colonel," she added, looking at Faraday.

"None taken," Faraday assured her. "I'll try to make this quick. I had a long talk with Mr. Hesse this afternoon, and heard some things about Arbiter Liadof that I thought you should know."

"Like Hesse would be a good, unbiased source on that," Milligan growled. "She
is
his replacement, you know."

"Yes, I know," Faraday said. "And I took the possibility of bias into account. I don't think Mr. Hesse's feelings come into this at all, except in regards to how Project Changeling could be affected."

"In your
expert
psychiatric opinion, of course," Milligan muttered under his breath.

"I'd be happy to let Dr. Sprenkle talk to him later, if you'd like," Faraday offered, lifting his eyebrows at Sprenkle.

"If it seems useful or necessary," Sprenkle said. "What exactly did he have to say?"

"Let's start with Earth," Faraday said. "It seems there's been a coup inside the Five Hundred."

That one finally got their attention. Even Milligan, who had been glowering at the floor, turned narrowed eyes on Faraday. "A
coup?"
McCollum echoed disbelievingly. "But—"

"When?" Milligan demanded. "There wasn't a word on the newsnets."

"It happened a couple of weeks ago, before Hesse and Liadof headed out here," Faraday told him. "And there won't be any public news about it, at least not if they can help it. The whole thing was very quiet, very peaceful. Civilized, almost. They've kept the same Council, just to keep up appearances, but there's now an entirely different group in the background calling the shots."

"This isn't just because of the latest protests on Mars, is it?" McCollum asked, still sounding incredulous. "I mean, that would be like..." She waved her hands, groping for the word.

"Overreacting?" Milligan suggested.

"Try lunatic," Beach offered darkly.

"The protests may have been the trigger," Faraday told her. "But it sounds like this has been brewing for a long time."

"I heard this morning that Sol/Guard Marines have been moved in against the protesters," Milligan said. "Sounds like a serious policy change has been implemented."

"I heard that, too," Beach growled. "Most of the commentators are saying the lockdown's just the beginning."

"You've got family on Mars, don't you, Ev?" McCollum asked quietly.

Beach nodded. "Mother and two brothers."

"Things must have been pretty rough for them," Milligan said.

Beach shrugged, too casually. "No rougher than for anyone else in the Solar System," he said. "Everyone's feeling the budget cutbacks."

"Yeah, but at least on Earth they don't have to manufacture their own air and water," Milligan reminded him. "Everywhere else, you crank down the support funding and things can get critical pretty damn fast."

"If you ask me, the whole thing is crazy," McCollum declared. "We're not even close to running out of room—not even on Earth, let alone anywhere else."

"It's this whole frontier mentality they've gotten themselves locked into," Sprenkle said. "They're so afraid of not having any distant place to send malcontents that everything except the current cutting-edge developments gets shortchanged."

"Pop psychology at its best?" Milligan suggested, a note of challenge in his voice as he looked at Sprenkle.

But the psychologist merely shrugged. "No argument from me," he said.

"And so the only way people figure they can get Earth's attention is to stage a riot," McCollum murmured.

"Something like that," Beach agreed. "Used to work pretty well, too, as long as the riot was kept to just a very loud protest. The Five Hundred came in long enough to fix the most critical of the crises, and you went back to watching them spend the bulk of their money someplace else."

"Until this new bunch got in power, anyway," Milligan said. "Sounds like they don't want to hear any noise, from anyone."

"Trouble is, all a lockdown accomplishes is to bottle up the resentment," Sprenkle pointed out. "Sitting on them just makes it worse somewhere down the line."

"Why do I get the feeling that's where Changeling comes in?" McCollum asked, looking back at Faraday.

"Exactly," Faraday agreed soberly. "Apparently, the new leaders realize they're sitting on a tiger, and that the only long-term solution is to find a new source of meat to throw to it."

"In the form of new worlds to conquer," Sprenkle said.

"As you said, their frontier mentality," Faraday said, nodding to him. "They also seem to have concluded that the original Project Changeling plan is moving too slowly."

He looked around the small room at each of them. "Arbiter Liadof has apparently been sent to move up the timetable."

"And how exactly does she expect to do that?" Beach asked contemptuously. "Launch an extensive search of all one point four quadrillion cubic kilometers of the atmosphere?"

"Mr. Hesse doesn't know the new plan," Faraday said. "But whatever it is, I doubt it involves anything as straightforward and unimaginative as a search." He hesitated. "And from what I've heard of Arbiter Liadof, I don't expect the approach to be a polite request to the Qanskan Leaders, either."

The other four exchanged glances. "And how exactly would Raimey fit into this new approach?" McCollum asked carefully.

Faraday frowned at her. There had definitely been something under the surface of that question. "Again, I don't know," he said. "Why do you ask?"

Another round of glances. "We weren't supposed to tell you this," Beach said. "But after you left, there was a Vuukan attack on Raimey and that group of Counselors he's been hanging out with."

Faraday felt something catch in his chest. "What happened? Is he all right?"

"Oh, he's fine," Beach hastened to assure him. "Got the tip of one of his tails bitten off, but that'll grow back. The point is that Liadof wouldn't let me warn him they were coming."

Faraday felt his mouth drop open. "Why the hell not?"

Beach lifted his hands helplessly. "All she said was that she was curious to see how he did against four predators. She hadn't seen firsthand how Qanska managed—"

"Wait a second," Faraday cut him off, his emotional balance teetering back and forth between stunned disbelief and black-edged outrage. "There were
four
Vuuka?"

"Four, count 'em, four," Milligan confirmed. "All about Raimey's size, too."

"Four full-grown Vuuka," Faraday repeated, trying to convince himself he'd really heard it correctly. For the moment, the stunned disbelief was definitely winning. "He managed to outrun
four
full-grown Vuuka?"

"Oh, it's better than that," Milligan said. "He didn't just outrun them; he actually took two of them out of the fight, right on the fly. After that, the other two gave up and went away."

"He hit the first one right over the lung sack," McCollum added. "Knocked all the wind out of him. I always wondered if he was paying attention during those physiology discussions we had way back when. I guess he was."

"Or else he's picked up a few new tricks along the way," Beach said.

"If he did, they're tricks we've never seen," McCollum pointed out.

"And neither have the rest of the Qanska," Milligan agreed. "Beltrenini and her group about split their stripes when he showed up in one undigested piece. Impressed as hell. They practically rode him out to breakfast on their shoulders."

"Really," Faraday said, looking at Sprenkle as a sudden thought struck him. "Do you think...?"

Sprenkle shrugged. "Too soon to say," he said. "But it certainly looks promising."

"Yes," Faraday murmured. One of Raimey's biggest problems, Sprenkle had always said, was that in five years he still didn't really fit in with the rest of Qanskan society. Not even before his blowup with Drusni; certainly not afterward. Could this finally be the social breakthrough they'd been waiting for?

If it was, he would bet his pension that Liadof had missed the significance of the event entirely. She might know all of Changeling's facts and figures, but she had no feel for any of the more subtle stuff going on beneath the surface. "What did Liadof say afterward?" he asked. "Was she was suitably impressed?"

"Probably as impressed as her sort ever gets," Beach said sourly. "She basically just said 'interesting,' then made us promise not to tell anyone."

"Including me?"

"Especially you," Sprenkle said. "She said that if you weren't interested enough to stick around till the end of the shift, then you didn't deserve to know what was going on."

"Hmm," Faraday said, rubbing his chin. Insulting, but also revealing. So Liadof wasn't all that interested one way or the other in Raimey's survival. Less interested, apparently, than getting an entertaining live-nature show.

But at the same time, she didn't want to tip the cart over by letting Faraday get wind of it. Did that imply that Raimey was expendable, but that Faraday still had some influence on what went on here?

Or did she merely not want to bother with the kind of noise he could make with the Five Hundred? A Marine lockdown on Jupiter Prime, after all, would be rather counterproductive.

"So what's the next move?" McCollum asked.

Faraday shook his head. "I don't know," he said candidly. "Ideally, I'd like some idea what she's up to. Unfortunately, she's apparently the only one who knows."