Timothy Zahn - Manta's Gift

"Never mind that," Raimey snarled, rolling back forward again. The last thing he cared about right now was someone else's tails. "Where the hell are the—" he searched for the word "—the Protectors? Aren't they supposed to be up here guarding the babies?"

"They're coming," Faraday assured him. "If you can just—What?"

He broke off. There was some low conversation in the background, but with the blood pounding through his brain Raimey couldn't make it out. "What's the trouble?" he shouted. "Faraday?"

"No trouble," Faraday said. "Cut to your left. The Qanska have arranged a surprise."

Swearing to himself, Raimey waddled his body into a leftward curve. He could see nothing there: no Protectors, no Breeders, nothing. He continued his curve a few more degrees—

And caught his breath. Rising ponderously through the swirling air beneath and beside him was another Qanska.

But not the ten-meter-long Protector he'd been hoping desperately to see. Not the young adult, strong and fast, that he needed to take on the Vuuka and get him out of this mess. This thing was more the size of a small neighborhood convenience store, its pectoral fins spanning at least twenty meters. Its colors were faded, like the paint on an old house, its entire surface distorted by lumps and bulges until it was almost unrecognizable as a Qanska.

"You wanted a Protector," Faraday said, his voice sounding relieved nearly to the point of smugness.

"How about a full-fledged Counselor instead?"

Terrific, Raimey thought bitterly. Yes, the newcomer was big, all right. Much bigger than the attacking Vuuka, and impressive as hell.

But size was hardly the important ledger entry here. The predator was young, fast, and aggressive; and there was something distinctly decrepit about the way the Counselor tentatively flapped its huge fins. Just terrific. I need a Wall Street wizard. So what do they send me? A Trade Commission bureaucrat.

Still, maybe he could at least hide behind it. Leaning into the thickening air, he pushed his fins for all they were worth. The big Qanska was coming up fast—

"Duck!" Faraday snapped.

Startled, Raimey momentarily faltered. But the result was basically the one desired. The sudden loss of motive power combined with the overly dense air around him sent him popping upward like a cork. Ducking, sort of, only in reverse.

And once again, the sudden change in direction was just in time. The Vuuka shot past beneath him, coming close enough for its fins to scratch briefly across his underside.

And continued on to slam full-tilt into the upper left fin of the rising Counselor.

The predator gave a sort of elephantine howl as it bounced off the Qanska, staggering in midair like a bird that had flown into a window. It started to sink, and for a moment Raimey thought it was simply going to disappear into the depths where it had come from. On the Qanska, at the point of the predator's impact, he could see bright yellow-orange blood beginning to seep out onto the faded color scheme.

But then the Vuuka's flukes twitched and began to beat the air again. The howl cut off, and the Vuuka drove back up toward the Counselor like a Doberman charging a rhino. It opened its mouth wide as it curved around, giving Raimey a glimpse of several rows of awesomely intimidating teeth.

And zeroing in on the yellow blood, it slammed teeth-first into the Counselor's fin.

Raimey winced in sympathetic pain. The initial trickle of blood became a wide mustard-colored stream running down the Qanska's side as the Vuuka began to chew its way into the skin. Some of the blood spattered into the air around the Vuuka's head in the fury of its attack, like a paint sprayer gone mad.

"Mr. Raimey?" Faraday called anxiously. "Are you all right?"

"I am, yeah," Raimey called back. The Counselor was still rising, and he could see now that it was being lifted on the backs of a half dozen smaller Qanska. Maybe that was why there hadn't been any Protectors around to defend him, he thought with a flash of bitterness. Maybe everyone in the area had been pressed into luggage-cart duty.

If so, the Counselor was certainly paying for that decision. The Vuuka was going at his prey like a boring machine, with no sign of slowing down. Already his head had nearly vanished from sight below the level of the skin. "This big lumpy help the Qanska sent is in big trouble, though," he added to Faraday. "The Vuuka's going at him like a worm into a rotten tomato...."

He paused, frowning. Something was wrong here. The Vuuka was still eating into the Counselor's side, but it was digging in far too fast. Even as Raimey had been speaking its head had disappeared entirely from sight, and it was moving almost visibly into its self-dug tunnel.

No. The Vuuka wasn't digging down. The Qanska's skin was moving up. Moving up along the predator's body like multicolored tar, oozing up as it enveloped the Vuuka's body.

What the hell?

And then he remembered. The dark and extremely muddy vid Chippawa and Faraday had taken from their Skydiver bathyscaph...

"You were saying?" Faraday asked.

"Never mind," Raimey murmured. "I think the Counselor's got it under control."

The punctuated thunder had come back. "They're talking to me again," he told Faraday.

"What are they saying?"

Raimey tried to shrug. The movement merely threatened to flip him over on his side again. "How should I know?"

"You've had the same language lessons I have," Faraday reminded him.

"Yeah, but I don't have a computer down here to help me," Raimey retorted. "Besides, nothing sounds the way it did in the lessons."

"Well, you'd better get used to it," Faraday said. "That's what you're going to be listening to the rest of your life."

You bastard, Raimey thought up at him, clenching his teeth. At least he still had teeth he could clench with.

But the Counselor was still rumbling; and for the moment, hating Faraday wasn't going to do him any good. Forcing back his anger, Raimey concentrated on the sounds.

It wasn't as bad as he'd first thought. As he'd already noted, the tonal pattern sounded more varied to Qanskan ears than to the human equivalent. But now that he could focus his full attention on them, he was able to hear the core sounds that he'd been taught. He still had no idea what all the extra harmonics and other stuff meant, but for now he should be able to get by.

Greetings to you, child of the humans, the Counselor was saying. I am Latranesto, Counselor of the Qanska. In the name of the Counselors, and the Leaders, and the Wise, I welcome you to our world.

Okay, Raimey thought to himself. Step one completed: He'd understood what they were saying. Now came the tricky part: trying to talk back. The words he was supposed to say had been pre-chosen by his instructors back on Earth. It was up to him, though, to hear the alien tonal words in his head and then try to recreate them. "I greet—"

He broke off, startled by the sounds that had emanated from somewhere in his throat and chest.

Yes? Latranesto said. Please continue.

Raimey took a deep breath, feeling the strange sensation of cool hydrogen gas whistling in along his new body's twin throats as he did so. Clearly, talking Qanskan was going to be a lot easier than anyone had expected, now that he had a set of genuine Qanskan vocal cords to work with. A hell of a lot easier, apparently, than relearning how to swim. "I greet you and your people, Counselor Latranesto," he started over. "I am honored in turn to be here."

There was a ripple of a new sound, something like fingernails scratching on a piece of flat slate. A

sound of respect or greeting? A ritual noise of greeting that they hadn't thought to mention to their human contacts up in Jupiter Prime?

Or were they just laughing at his accent?