Timothy Zahn - Manta's Gift

"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.