Manta's Gift

TWENTY-SIX

Even taking into account the drift of the winds, Latranesto had ranged somewhat farther afield than Manta had expected him to go. Hunting for food, probably, or else avoiding predators.

Still, with three of them available to cover the likely search area, it only took a couple of days of false starts before they finally made the sundark rendezvous.

"You're back sooner than I'd expected," Latranesto commented as he and Drusni swam up to where Manta and Pranlo were waiting. "Have you come to hear the details of the vanishings?"

"That won't be necessary," Manta said. "I know what the problem is."

Even in the fading light, he could see the shocked reaction that rippled across the Counselor's fins.

"Already?" he asked incredulously.

"Already," Manta assured him, trying to sound more confident than he felt. All the way back to Centerline he'd been thinking over his theory; and while he was personally convinced he was right, it still was only a theory.

"Unbelievable," Latranesto declared, his fin tips rippling again with nervous excitement. "Well, don't hide the end of this story. Tell me."

"I will," Manta promised. "But there's another matter we need to discuss first. Tell me about your journey here, and the device you use to travel between worlds."

The undulating fin tips suddenly stopped dead in the air. "You ask for that which the humans also demanded of us," Latranesto said, his voice wary. "Why?"

"Because if I'm right about this, we'll need the humans' help in solving our problem," Manta explained, keeping his voice even and reasonable. "For that, I'll need something to bargain with."

"But you will not simply give it to them?" Latranesto asked, his voice dark with suspicion.

"Absolutely not," Manta promised. "Part of my human training was in the technique of bargaining with others in exactly this way. I intend to use all of that ability on behalf of the Qanska."

"And what if the humans take first, but then do not give?"

"Trust me," Manta said grimly. "I'll make sure we get what we need before they get what they want."

"Trust," Latranesto murmured. "To trust a human."

"No," Pranlo put in softly. "To trust Manta."

For a ninepulse there was only the whistling of the winds around them. Latranesto gazed into the gathering darkness, his tails lashing back and forth in indecision. Manta kept silent, uncomfortably aware that the whole thing could fall apart right here and now. If Latranesto wasn't even willing to tell him where the stardrive was hidden, he would certainly be unwilling to let the humans borrow it for examination.

And without such a commitment from the Qanska, there was no way Manta was going to persuade Faraday and the humans to help them out.

With a final flick of his tails, the Counselor exhaled in a rolling sigh. "Very well," he said. "The way to other worlds is in the air below Level Eight. Through what is called the Deep."

"I understand," Manta said. So the stardrive was buried deep in the atmosphere. That made sense.

"How do you get to it?"

"You swim, of course," Latranesto retorted. "What did you expect?"

"Sorry," Manta apologized. "I guess I just assumed that Level Eight was as deep as a Qanska could go. I thought you had to call the machine or something so that it would come up to meet you."

Latranesto frowned. "What machine?"

"Your stardrive, of course," Manta said, frowning back. "I thought that was what we were talking about."

"You asked how we travel between worlds," Latranesto said. "That's what I'm telling you. I said nothing about any machine."

"But—" Manta floundered, "That's what you have to use for this kind of traveling. Isn't it?"

"There is no machine, Manta," Latranesto said quietly. "That's why we can never give the humans what they demand. There is no machine, but only a place. A place within the darkness and pain and fear of the Deep."

Manta's skin was starting to crawl. What Latranesto was suggesting... "What sort of place is it?" he asked carefully. "I mean, where exactly is it? And how is it different from other places on Jupiter?"

"It is a place encompassing in and of itself," Latranesto said, his voice shifting into the sing-song pattern of Qanskan story-circle legends. One more story, Manta knew, that no doubt had been carefully deleted from his own herd's lessons. "There is pressure—great pressure—and an eerie light. There is a frightening confusion of twisting winds and multiple directions that defy the strong and overwhelm the weak. Only those of the Wise with the strength of will and the spirit of determination can reach it."

"I never heard anything about this," Drusni murmured quietly.

"They made sure our herd's storytellers kept quiet about it," Manta explained. "Though you'll notice they couldn't suppress it completely. Expressions like 'to the Deep with it,' for instance."

"I always thought that just meant 'let it die,' " Pranlo commented soberly.

"I thought it meant 'to hell with it,' " Manta said, tasting the irony. So in other words, what he'd always taken to be the Qanskan concept of hell was in actual fact their pathway into the heavens.

"But why hide it from us?" Drusni asked, sounding puzzled.

"Not from you," Manta told her. "From me. And of course from the humans they figured would be listening in."

He turned back to Latranesto. "Which means you knew right from the start that this was what they wanted."

"We didn't know," Latranesto hedged. "But we did suspect."

"But that's my point," Drusni persisted. "It wasn't something the humans could steal from us, so why not let them know the truth?"

"Because if the humans had found out they couldn't obtain a stardrive here, they'd have lost interest in the Qanska in a pulse," Manta said sourly.

He looked at Latranesto. "And if they did that, who would solve the problem of your dying world?"

"You are offended and insulted, Manta," Latranesto said. "I understand."

Manta smiled. "Actually, I'm neither," he assured the Counselor. "I mostly find it pleasantly ironic.

Both our races, playing the same game against each other without knowing it. It's really kind of amusing."

"Maybe to you," Latranesto growled. Apparently, he didn't like being considered amusing. "But amusement ends where the life of our world begins."

"As it also does with the humans," Manta conceded, thinking back to what Faraday had said about the social pressures building up within the System's population. "I apologize, to both of you."

"Anyway, please go on, Counselor Latranesto," Pranlo said. "What happens when one of the Wise gets to this place? What does he have to do then?"

"If he has the strength of mind to reach the Deep, there is nothing more he must do," Latranesto said.

"The Deep itself will carry him to another world."

"Which other world does he go to?" Manta asked. "Are there any choices or decisions?"

"No," Latranesto said. "As I said, there is nothing more he must do. Wherever he is going, the Deep chooses for him."

"I see," Manta murmured. So there it was. Some strange combination of pressure, radiation, and convoluted magnetic fields deep within the atmosphere was somehow able to create a portal between Jupiter and similar gas giant worlds.

Maybe between all of them, in fact. There could conceivably be a vast network of hyperspace portals buried deep within the atmospheres of every gas giant in the galaxy.

A network accessible only to beings who had never even seen the stars.

"Wait a pulse," Pranlo said slowly. "If only the Wise can go through the Deep like that, why are there Vuuka and Sivra here? Where did they come from?"

"The Wise brought them, of course," Latranesto said. "Along with all the seeds of the food plants which we eat."

"They brought the predators with them?" Drusni echoed. "Why in the world would they do that?"

"They had no choice," Latranesto said mildly. "Look at your companions. Look at yourself, for that matter. What do you see?"

Manta frowned at the others, and in the fading light saw them looking back at him with equal confusion. What was Latranesto getting at?

And then, suddenly, he had it. "The skin lumps," he breathed, flicking his tails at the bulges dotting Pranlo's fins and body. "All those predators that have tried to take a bite out of you and gotten covered up."

He looked at Latranesto in confusion. "But they're dead. Aren't they?"

"Are they?" Latranesto asked. "Are they truly dead, or are they merely in a very deep sleep?"

"Good point," Manta conceded. "I don't know."

Latranesto flipped his tails in a shrug. "Neither do I. Neither do any of the Qanska. All we know is that when the Wise reach the next world, their outer skin is torn away and all those buried within are revived."

"A remarkable capacity for regeneration," Manta murmured.

"What was that?" Drusni asked.

"I was just remembering one of the first things I ever heard about the Qanska," he told her. "That you have the ability to recover and rebuild your bodies after an attack. Maybe the Vuuka and Sivra have something of the same ability."

"Or perhaps it is a unique property of the journey itself," Latranesto suggested. "There are a great many things about the journey that we don't know."

He flicked his tails. "We're not a problem-solving race."

The light of the sun was gone now, Manta noticed, with only the diffuse glow coming from deep inside the planet still there for them to see by. "So now you know the truth," the Counselor said after a ninepulse. "What will you do next?"

"Well, the first thing to do is get some sleep," Manta said.

"Sleep?" Drusni asked. "I thought we were in a hurry to get this whole thing up and swimming."

"A reasonable hurry, yes," Manta agreed. "But it's hardly desperate. It's sundark, we're all tired, and I need some time to digest what Counselor Latranesto has told me. Besides, we have to go find the nearest human probe before we can talk to them."

"I thought you could speak with them at any time," Drusni said.

"I don't know if I can or not anymore," Manta said. "Besides, that method works in English. I'm not sure how well I know that language anymore. Simpler to find a probe."

"There's one near the herd where Druskani and Prantrulo's children swim," Latranesto said. "It's less than a nineday away."

"Sounds good," Manta said. "We'll leave at sunlight."

He gazed out into the swirling winds. "And on the way," he added, "I'll tell you what I think the problem is, and why we'll need the humans' help to solve it."

Latranesto sank downward toward the lower levels, where his natural buoyancy balance would let him sleep more comfortably. Drusni and Pranlo locked fins and drifted off to sleep together on the wind.

Leaving Manta alone in the darkness. Trying to figure out what in the Deep he was going to do.

Because as of right now, the bargaining plan he'd tentatively worked had gone straight down the Great Yellow Storm. How could he bargain in good faith with a stardrive that didn't exist?

Especially for a stardrive the humans could probably never even get to?

But one way or another they had to get the humans' help. The more he thought over his theory, the more he was convinced that the Qanska could never fix this by themselves. They needed the humans; and the humans wouldn't give that help without something in return.

Unless he conned them out of it.

The thought made his fins squirm. He could certainly argue that the humans had it coming to them.

They'd sent him here under false pretenses, lying to him and the Qanska both as to their intentions.

Not to mention that grand kidnapping/extortion attempt. That alone was a huge debt they owed the Qanska.

But at the same time, the Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise hadn't exactly been forthright about their goals for this project, either. How much did that take off the humans' debt? What was the right equation to use, or the proper credit/debit balance?

No. There was no equation to use here, no balancing of ethical scales. Whatever the humans had done to him and the other Qanska, lying to them would be wrong. He would not allow himself to sink to that level.

And with that decision made, the rest of it fell simply and quietly into line. He could still bargain with Faraday; but he would make it clear from the beginning that he would be bargaining only for the secret of the stardrive, not the stardrive itself. If the humans balked at that, then they would just remain forever in ignorance.

But they wouldn't. Manta had once been human, after all. He knew them better than that.

Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his fins and let the wind take him. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day. He'd better get some sleep.