Manta's Gift

"Terrific," Raimey muttered. "I was better off paralyzed."

"Colonel?" the woman's voice he'd heard earlier came dimly from the background. "We've got something happening, big time. I think she's ready."

"Mr. Raimey?" Faraday called. "Get ready. We think this is it."

"I'm glad you think so," Raimey bit out. "I hate to break it to you—" He broke off as a fresh wave of pressure hit him.

But this wave wasn't like any of the previous ones. Instead of a rippling movement along his body, this one was all around him, squeezing down hard as if his surrogate mother was trying to crush him.

Not even a chance of muscle movement now. He could feel his eyes bug out further as the taste of claustrophobia bubbled in his throat—

And then, without warning, the pressure around his head and shoulders abruptly vanished.

And like a mustard-slick sausage being squeezed at one end of its wraparound, he slid forward through the birth canal and shot out into the open air.

The open air, and a virtual explosion of light and color.

It was dazzling. Far above him, the undersides of the Jovian clouds were a violent swirl of color, with hues stretching across a spectrum he'd never seen in any picture or video of Jupiter. Jupiter, hell—he couldn't recall seeing such a range and variety of colors even amid the lush landscape of Earth. The other Qanska gathered around him, far from being the drab brown-gray of the Skydiver's records, were patterned in brilliant stripes and spots of red, green, yellow, and blue that reminded him of exotic tropical fish. Even the wind flowing around him showed subtle colors, like the fluid sculptures he'd played with as a child.

It would have been impressive enough just dropping into it from a probe or shuttle. Coming out of the total darkness and isolation of a Qanskan womb, it literally took his breath away.

"Mr. Raimey? What's happening?"

Raimey took a cautious breath. Then another, and another. His alien lungs and artificial life-support system both seemed to be working just fine now. "I'm clear," he called back, stretching out with his arms and legs.

A stretch that instantly became an awkward flailing. His arms weren't arms at all, he remembered belatedly, but the pectoral, mantalike fins of a Qanska. What he'd been thinking of as his shoulders were the leading edges of those fins; and what he'd thought of as his legs were twitching around haphazardly as the long flukes of his split tail.

He'd known all this going in. He'd studied Qanskan physiology and Qanskan structure, and he'd endured endless and usually boring speculations on what it might be like to become a Qanska.

Not a single minute of it had prepared him for this.

"Hell in buckets," he growled under his breath, trying to bring his body under control. He'd done a lot of swimming as a kid, but none of those movements were of the least bit of use here. For a moment his flailing turned him sideways to the prevailing westerly wind, and he winced at the sudden roar and pressure in his left ear. His momentum continued him on through the turn, and the roaring dropped to acceptable levels as he ended up facing into the wind.

Spreading his fins wide, he tried to hold position, but succeeded only in overcompensating and spi

And suddenly, a brightly colored object came out of nowhere to slam hard into his left side, spi

"Hey!" he yelled, fighting hard to regain his balance. The momentum of the impact had rolled him partially over onto his side, and he twisted his whole body as he tried to get a look at whoever this idiot was who was playing games with him—

And as he did so, something big and dark and torpedo-shaped shot through the space he'd just vacated. There was another roll of punctuated thunder—

"Raimey, get out of there!" Faraday snapped. "You've got a Vuuka on your tail!

"Move it, or be lunch!"

FOUR

"A Vuuka?" Raimey gasped, twisting back around to look at the torpedo shape that had overshot him.

It was a Vuuka, all right. A relatively small one, a detached part of his brain pointed out, no more than five meters long.

Five meters' worth of predator, compared to about a meter's worth of Raimey. A single bite on the fly, like he'd been coming in for, and Raimey would have been ripped in half. Belatedly, he realized that the Qanska who had slammed into him so a

But that daring move wasn't going to be of any use whatsoever if Raimey didn't get his tail moving.

Already the Vuuka was kicking up a small whirlpool of colored air as he braked and circled around for another try.

Unfortunately, as Raimey had already noted, moving his tail was a hell of a lot easier said than done.

Frantically, he began flailing his arms and legs again, trying to visualize and duplicate the smooth and effortless movements he'd seen on the vids they'd shown him.

He was getting the hang of it—that much was clear. But he wasn't getting it fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. He didn't dare look around, but he could practically feel the Vuuka's eyes locking onto his back.

Getting ready to charge, with nothing but distance between him and his prey...

"Mr. Raimey, are you listening?" Faraday cut into his thoughts.

"Listening to what?" Raimey demanded.

"The other Qanska," Faraday said. "They're talking to you. Your Qanskan language lessons, remember?"

Raimey frowned. They were talking to him?

Then, suddenly, he got it. The punctuated thunder sounds he'd been hearing were Qanskan speech.

Only one small problem. Like his vision, his hearing was also all screwed up. The rolling thunder didn't sound the least bit like the tonal dictionary and grammar they'd drilled him on back on Earth.

It was richer and fuller, with nuances and shadings that either the human microphones or his own formerly human ears hadn't been able to pick up. All that memorization, all that sweat and toil, was going to be good for exactly nothing.

But that was more explanation than he had time for right now. "I can't swim and translate at the same time," he snapped instead. "What do they want?"

"They're telling you to dive," Faraday said. "As fast as you can, as deep as you can."

"And how the hell do they suggest I do that?" he bit back, trying to bend forward for the sort of surface dive he could have done in a swimming pool at home.

Here, it didn't work nearly so well. But even as he struggled with it, he accidentally rolled onto his side again; and this time he found himself slipping into a sharp downward angle.

"Never mind, I've got it," he said, putting some muscle into it. This, at least, was a familiar sensation from his childhood: the effort to push himself deeper than natural buoyancy would normally allow him to go. Pushing hard with fins and tails, he forced his way downward.

It was a good ten seconds before the utter stupidity of this maneuver suddenly struck him. A fivemeter- long Vuuka was considerably heavier than a Qanskan newborn. It had to be paddling like crazy just to stay up this high. Diving into deeper and denser atmosphere, into the levels where a predator that size would normally live, was playing straight into its hands.

Or rather, into its mouth.

"Faraday, this is nuts," he called.

"Just keep going," Faraday said tersely. "You're doing okay right now. Some of the Qanska are harassing him, trying to slow him down."