Manta's Gift

Faraday nodded, wondering yet again how an arrangement like this could ever have gotten started.

Qanskan females about to give birth were often too heavy and weak to make their way up to the more rarefied regions of the upper atmosphere, the layer the Qanska called Level One. At the same time, though, newborn Qanska were too small and fragile for the denser atmosphere and pressure of Level Two, where those same expectant mothers tended to sink to just before the critical moment.

The solution was for one or two of the older females, called Nurturers, to stand by ready to help. If necessary, the Nurturer would swim beneath the mother and lift her up to Level One where she could have her baby.

The technique was clearly a common one among the Qanska. A variant of it had saved his and Chippawa's lives, in fact, back at that first momentous contact with the aliens. What Chippawa had taken to be remoras hanging onto the underside of a shark had actually been a group of younger Qanska lifting the older one up to meet and protect the Skydiver before it fell deep enough to be crushed.

It made sense, certainly. The question was how such an arrangement could have started in the first place, back before the Qanska developed this particular social structure. Was it pure instinct? That was the general consensus at human think tanks.

Except that the Qanska claimed not to have such things as instincts. Were they lying? Or were they just so naturally helpful to each other that the birth assistance could predate their social structure?

Or was the species so old that they'd simply forgotten what it was like before civilization?

There was a movement at the corner of his eye, and he turned to see Hesse step through the doorway. "You're just in time," Faraday greeted him. "Mr. Raimey's about to be born."

"We got him loaded just in time, I see," Hesse said. "I don't suppose anyone had a chance to run through his Qanska language lessons with him."

Faraday frowned at him. There was something edgy in the man's voice. "Hardly. He only woke up a few minutes ago. We barely had time to bring him up to date when the contractions started."

"That may be what finally woke him up, actually," McCollum commented, swiveling around to face them. "What's left of the pod sensors registered a couple of small contractions before he came around."

"Thank you, Ms. McCollum," Hesse said tartly. "I was watching the system monitors." He wiggled his fingers back over her shoulder. "As I believe you should be?"

The corner of McCollum's mouth twitched, and she turned back to her station without another word.

"Take it easy, Mr. Hesse," Faraday said quietly. "These people haven't gotten much sleep in the past couple of weeks."

"Then they should learn to pace themselves." Hesse waved a hand. "Sorry. I'm just... I'm a little worried about whether he's going to be able to talk to them. They're going to want to ask him all kinds of questions as soon as he's born."

"I think they'll be willing to cut him a little slack," Faraday soothed. "After all, they don't know what to expect any more than we do."

"Or maybe they do," Hesse countered. "They know a lot more than they're letting on. And we know hardly anything about them."

"That's why Raimey's there," Faraday reminded him. "Now, you want to tell me what's really bothering you?"

Hesse's lips compressed briefly. "I'm sorry. It's just..."

He sighed in resignation. "The Council has instructed me to reprimand you for your behavior during pre-insertion activities," he said, the words coming out in the monotone of direct quotation.

"Specifically, for suggesting to Mr. Raimey that he could still call everything off."

"I see," Faraday said, nodding. So that was why Hesse had come in here acting like he had a bad taste in his mouth.

A taste that was rapidly transferring itself to Faraday's own tongue. "Did they happen to notice that he didn't back out?"

"I'm just the messenger boy, Colonel," Hesse said. "I'm sure they noticed that. They notice everything."

"Do they also micromanage everything?" Faraday asked. "Because if that's what they're pla

Hesse grimaced. "Try to understand how they feel, Colonel. The Five Hundred have put a lot of time and money into Project Changeling. They're naturally a little nervous."

"And I've put my name and prestige into it," Faraday countered with precisely measured force. "And I didn't come out here to be a figurehead or puppet. You tell them that. Either I'm ru

Hesse sighed again. "Yes, sir. I'll tell them."

"Good," Faraday said, turning back to the monitors. Generally speaking, his Living Legend status was a pain in the neck, hanging around his shoulders like a set of ru

But occasionally, when wielded just right, those weights could become a reasonably effective weapon.

It wouldn't hold them for long, of course. Not politicians; certainly not politicians at the very upper level of System government. But it should hold them long enough for him to get this project up and ru

He looked up at the monitor, his throat feeling suddenly tight. Jupiter. Heat, and twisting magnetic fields, and pressure.

Lots of pressure. Tons and tons of impersonal, inexorable pressure. Pressure that had almost killed him once.

And Raimey was about to slide right out into it.

Surreptitiously, Faraday rubbed his myrtlewood ring, and with an effort shoved the memories back under the mental sod where he'd tried to bury them. He didn't consider himself particularly claustrophobic, but Jupiter was a special case. A hand that had been once burned, after all, was forever afterward sensitive to heat.

No, he wouldn't be here long. Not long at all. "Whoa," McCollum spoke up suddenly from her station. "Colonel; Mr. Hesse? I do believe we've started."

Raimey could remember, as a child, listening to his grandmother talk about the birth process, or the

"miracle of childbirth," as she'd called it. He couldn't speak for the human equivalent; but from his current point of view, at least, the Qanskan version of the miracle left a lot to be desired.

At first it was just the pressure waves, getting stronger and more frequent until Raimey began to feel like the last glob of toothpaste in a tube from which the owner was determined to get his full money's worth. But as the minutes ticked by, he noticed he was starting to feel hotter, as well. In fact, he was starting to feel uncomfortably warm....

"Mr. Raimey?"

Raimey tried to blink his eyes. Had he actually dozed off there? "I'm here," he said, trying to shift his shoulders around to help him wake up.

That was a mistake. Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, the movement sent a ripple of nausea flooding through him. He could feel his eyes bulging as the mists began to rise across his brain—

"Hold still, Mr. Raimey," Faraday said urgently. "Don't move at all. Just hold perfectly still."

"What is it?" Raimey demanded, relaxing his muscles and letting his body float.

"It's your umbilical cord," Faraday said. "It seems to be shutting down."

Involuntarily, Raimey's muscles tightened again. His reward was a fresh wave of nausea. "It can't be," he insisted. "I'm not out yet. I can't even see the outside."

"We know," Faraday said. "We don't know if this is something normal or whether we've got a problem. Your life-support system has a small oxygen reserve; we're feeding you a trickle from that to keep you from blacking out. But your best bet is to stay as still as you can, conserve your oxygen, and hang on."