Manta's Gift (36 page)

"He thought he heard some predators moving around before light," she said, rolling over and doing some flip-stretches. "He went to take a quick look around."

Manta grimaced. Predators? Or Pranlo? "So where exactly are we going?"

"What do you mean?" Wirkani asked, rolling back over to face him.

"You told me the Counselors wanted me to see more of our world," Manta reminded her. "But we seem to be heading pretty much straight south."

"Where else should we be going?" she asked. "You already know what life is like along Centerline."

"North and south are where things are different," Gryntaro said gruffly from behind him.

Manta twitched violently; he hadn't heard the Protector's approach. "You sure are the jumpy one," Gryntaro commented, swimming around Manta to Wirkani's side. "We ready to go?"

"Sure," Manta said, looking around. There was no sign of anyone else nearby, either Pranlo or predators.

What there was, though, was a whole new group of colors floating along in the winds. "What's that?" he asked, flipping his tails toward them.

"Which one?" Wirkani asked. "The green-speckled-brown, or the purple-and-yellow?"

"Both," Manta said. "I've never seen either of them before."

"The green-and-brown one is
fomprur,"
Wirkani told him. "The other is
preester."

"The
preester's
better eating," Gryntaro added, flipping his fins and starting toward the flow of colors. "Let's do it and get out of here. We've still got a long way to go."

"Okay," Manta murmured, falling into the flow behind him. So there it was: the first appearance of Brolka yesterday coinciding with the equally sudden appearance of new varieties of foodstuffs. He'd gotten the feeling during his northern journey that that was how it worked, but back then he hadn't been paying close enough attention to be sure. This time, he was.

So what did that mean? He remembered speculating that it would only make sense for Breeders to have combined litters of Qanska and Brolka if there was enough food to go around. Did this mean that guess had been correct?

He snorted under his breath. Probably not. This was an ecology problem, after all, not a business one. He could try to think of it in terms of supply and demand if he wanted to, but that couldn't possibly be the entire story.

But then, why should he care about any deeper meanings anyway? As long as he had the system figured out well enough to survive, esoteric questions like this could go to the Deep.

They reached the floating food and dug in. The
preester
was indeed the better tasting of the two, he quickly decided, though the
fomprur
wasn't all that far behind. Not that it would have mattered how the stuff tasted. The previous sundark's abbreviated meal had caught up with his stomach, and he sloshed into the two runs with a will and an appetite.

Gryntaro and Wirkani were both waiting with varying degrees of patience by the time he'd finally eaten his fill. "About time," Gryntaro grumbled. "I thought you were going to be at it all day."

"What's the hurry?" Manta asked as he scooped up one last mouthful.

"The hurry is that we don't get to go back to civilization until—"

"Which one did you like best?" Wirkani interrupted smoothly. "The
preester
or the
fomprur?"

"Oh, the
preester,
definitely," Manta said, frowning at her. "You can't go back to civilization until what?"

"Until we finish your tour, of course," she said cheerfully. "I trust you're paying attention to everything we've been showing you?"

"Of course," Manta said.

"Good," Wirkani said. "It's important that you learn everything about our world."

"So can we go?" Gryntaro said. Flipping his tails, he turned to the south and swam off.

"Sure," Manta murmured. Only they hadn't really been showing him anything, he thought with a frown as he and Wirkani headed off in the Protector's wake. They'd been willing to answer his questions, but neither of them had taken any kind of initiative as far as instruction was concerned.

So what had Gryntaro
really
been about to say?

He had no idea. But it was something Wirkani clearly hadn't wanted said.

He sighed. Something else to worry about. Like he didn't have enough of that already.

Gryntaro was really beating the air up there, starting to pull slowly away from the others. With a grimace, Manta hurried to catch up, keeping an eye out for predators, new foodstuffs, and anything else that might be new and unfamiliar.

And, of course, for Pranlo.

TWENTY-TWO

They continued on without serious incident for another six ninedays. Always they headed straight south, veering only occasionally for food or to avoid predators, keeping the prevailing westerly winds steady on their right.

At first Manta had found the restless roar in his right ear to be annoying. After that he'd wondered whether the wind pressure might permanently damage his hearing, leaving him more vulnerable to predators sneaking up from that side. Now, this far into the trip, he'd gotten to where he hardly even noticed it.

They stayed mostly on Level Four, far beneath the Qanskan herds Manta could sometimes hear floating above them in the upper levels. Once in a while they spotted some Protectors and Nurturers, or a pair or group of Counselors. As with food runs, those were occasions where Gryntaro would veer off their southward course, shifting direction to avoid all contact or communication with the other Qanska. Manta never did figure out whether Gryntaro was afraid of delaying his tour with idle chatter, or whether he simply didn't want to deal with the "uncivilized" beings who lived this far off Centerline.

The Brolka became more numerous as they continued south, too. And while their presence lowered the incidence of predator attacks, it didn't eliminate them entirely. At least four Vuuka took a close look at the three travelers along the way, though only one of them was rash enough to actually give it a try. And one day, right at sundark, they were jumped by a small herd of Sivra-sized predators of a type Manta had never seen before. On both occasions the presence of an experienced Protector made the difference between serious trouble and relatively minor nuisance, though in the latter case Manta did end up with two new lumps on his fins and body as souvenirs of the battle.

Again, there was no warning from the humans that either of the attacks were coming. Apparently, the humans had written him off entirely.

Along with the obvious differences in plant and animal life, he also noticed that the sunlight was showing subtle changes as they continued on. Though the light was always diffuse this deep beneath Jupiter's cloud layers, Manta began to notice the angle of the rays shifting northward and their intensity fading as the three of them traveled farther and farther south. He tried to remember whether Jupiter had the kind of rotational angle that would leave one of the poles in continual darkness for part of its solar revolution, but if that aspect had been included in his Earthside training it had slipped his mind completely.

Still, the south pole had to be a hundred million sizes from the equator, a good two dayherds' journey at the steady pace they were making. Surely Gryntaro wasn't planning on taking them
that
far.

But even as the sunlight diminished, Manta also noticed that, paradoxically, the air around them seemed to be getting warmer. He'd thought he'd noticed that same effect during his northward trip, but at the time had put it down to the presence of Beltrenini and her friends, who tended to crowd closer to him than those Qanska he'd grown up among. Later, after he'd left them and was heading back home to Centerline, he'd assumed his more rapid swimming was simply warming him up.

But neither of those was the case now. Yet it was still getting warmer.

More radiation from the planetary core, perhaps? That was certainly one possibility. He knew from his conversations with McCollum that Qanskan eyes and bodies were highly efficient at utilizing the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum to see with or be warmed by, gathering everything from high-frequency radio waves all the way to hard gamma radiation. He also remembered that Jupiter's rapid rotation gave it a serious equatorial bulge, which meant that as they traveled toward the poles they were at the same time moving gradually inward toward the center of the planet.

But it didn't seem like that should be enough to account for such a noticeable temperature rise. Could there be some other factor involved, then? Something artificial, perhaps, that was giving off either extra radiation or direct heat?

Like maybe a stardrive?

It was a startling thought. To even think that Latranesto and the other Counselors would casually send him off to see their most priceless secret seemed ludicrous.

But at the same time, he could also see it making perfect sense from their point of view. The Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise had presumably been told of the demand the humans had broadcast from their child trap. Even though this particular attack had been repulsed, they understood humans well enough to know that this wouldn't be the end of it. Maybe they had decided that the best course of action would be to quietly turn the device over to the humans for them to study, in the hope that they would keep their word to return it afterward.

And he couldn't forget that their last line of questioning at his trial had centered around whether he was still human. He had denied it, but it had been clear that Latranesto, at least, hadn't been convinced.

He lashed his tails in frustration. It was subtly insulting, actually, given that he'd already told them he wasn't working for the humans anymore. But more importantly, it was a bad way to do business. At the very least, Latranesto and the others should try to negotiate something for their stardrive instead of simply giving it away. Some kind of guarantee, though how that would work in practice Manta couldn't guess. And of course, giving in to extortion was never a good idea.

More than once he thought about trying to discuss the issue with Gryntaro and Wirkani. But each time he suppressed the urge to broach the subject. Clearly, Latranesto had taken pains to keep all this a secret from him, and they might not take kindly to the announcement that he'd figured it out.

Still, the very fact that he now knew what was going on sent a welcome breath of new life into the monotony of the journey. He began to pay attention to everything around him: observing the animals and plant life, studying each passing Qanska to see if it looked like it might be on guard duty, and generally watching for signs that they were getting close.

Which meant that, when the abrupt and violent end of the journey came, he was looking in exactly the wrong direction.

"How much farther are we going?" Manta asked as the three of them settled down to eat. The meal today was a new one on him: a rather spicy orange-colored plant Wirkani had identified as
cloftis.
"What, you mean today?" Gryntaro asked, glowering as he nibbled disdainfully at one corner of the run. He had proclaimed his distaste for
cloftis
at their first sighting of the orange flow and urged that they continue on until they found something more palatable. But Wirkani had been hungry, and had insisted, and here they were. "I suppose that depends on how long we spend with this waste of air space."

"It won't be much longer," Wirkani said soothingly. "Tell me, what do you think of the
cloftis?"

"It's not bad," Manta said, taking another bite. Wirkani seemed inordinately concerned lately with his opinion of the various new plants they were running into out here. Was she that obsessed with food, or was that simply her favorite way of changing the subject?

"It's one of my favorites," she said, taking another mouthful. "Though of course there's no accounting for taste," she added, flipping her tails in a slightly condescending way toward Gryntaro.

"So you've been out here often?" Manta asked, probing gently. "I mean, this stuff doesn't seem to grow in Centerline."

"We've done the trip a few times," Gryntaro said, his voice suddenly and strangely cautious.

"The Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise have sent us to both the northern and southern regions on several occasions," Wirkani added more casually. "I prefer the southern, myself. The food's better."

"And of course it's warmer?" Manta suggested.

Gryntaro sent him an odd look. "Warmer?"

"Yes, warmer," Manta repeated, looking back and forth between them. He'd been expecting the comment to spark some kind of reaction, but all he could see on either of them was puzzlement. "Isn't it warmer here than in the northern regions?"

"Not that I ever noticed," Wirkani said.

"Me, neither," Gryntaro seconded.

"But it
is
warmer than in Centerline," Manta persisted. He wasn't imagining it, was he? "Right?"

"If you say so," Gryntaro said impatiently. "Look, this is getting ridiculous. Wirkani?"

"I suppose so," she said, an odd note of reluctance in her voice. "Yes, I agree."

Manta grimaced. So much for that theory. Either the stardrive wasn't responsible for the extra warmth, or the two of them were terrific actors.

Or else he
was
imagining all of it.

"Good," Gryntaro said. "You finished eating yet, Breeder?"

"Sure," Manta told him. "Let's go."

"Now, don't say that just because Gryntaro's impatient," Wirkani cautioned. "If you haven't eaten your fill, say so right now."

"No, it's okay," Manta said.

"Because you may not be eating anything more for a while," she said. "I want to make sure you're all right."

"I'm fine," Manta assured her, frowning. First questions about his taste in food, and now questions about whether he was getting enough to eat. His own mother hadn't been this solicitous. "Really. I've had plenty."

"All right," she said, her voice sounding oddly tense. Flipping her fins, she swam up and over him. Manta took one last nibble of the
cloftis—