He was ready. Cal had said that the mantas would find him, once he made himself available - if they wanted to. They were half-grown now and knew their way about, preying on fish and rodents. They would come. After that-
Subble resigned himself to a long wait. If they did not seek him out tonight, he would look for them by day. It was pleasant enough here upon the spongy sand, contemplating the mosslike growths and ribbonlike weed - but the mission could not wait upon alien capriciousness.
There was no wait. They came over the beach, flying saucers kicking up gouts of wet sand, twenty feet apart. No evasion, no maneuvering; they came to rest in a wide circle around him, six one-eyed humps, now absolutely still, tails curled around their feet. The party was on.
He assessed each in turn, turning slowly in their cynosure. He had not seen any this close before, and had had only the descriptions of the three spacefarers to guide him, apart from the evanescent flash in Veg's woods and Aquilon's portrait. These were young individuals, smaller than the ones the trio had encountered; he judged their weight at forty-four pounds, plus or minus three percent. He was not yet certain of the specific gravity of manta flesh. The color was nongloss black. The six together would outmass him only moderately, and in this thin - for them - air their flight would suffer somewhat, requiring a greater spread for a given speed. Their eyes would suffer from increased signalloss, too, since there was not so much atmospheric opacity to bounce it back. It seemed unlikely that they represented the physical threat to him that Cal had suggested, though he had come without his most formidable armament. Their concerted attack could be severe, however.
Subble had not come to fight. He was trained to assess the physical potential of any man or animal or machine he met, and this was an automatic process that signified no aggressive imperative. It was intellectual contact he required, on whatever level available. He turned on the communicator.
One manta hopped forward. A single bound, a single yard, and the tableau was as before, the circle broken only at that spot. Subble aimed the projector at the proffered eye and adjusted the settings.
Was all this paraphernalia necessary, he wondered? Surely the creature could read the nuances of human countenance by now with a facility impossible to any man or Earth machine. Selected frequencies probably penetrated the subject in the manner of an X-ray to read internal configurations, perhaps the convolutions of the brain itself. The manta might not have olfactory apparatus, but could actually see the minute particles arising from all objects, that men interpreted as smell. Sight could replace several of the conventional senses. This was sight quintessential, more potent than man's diversified hearing, smell, touch, balance, tension and fragmented other bodily perceptions. Sight, bringing almost total information, geared directly to the brain and thus the most efficient communicatory instrument ever devised or evolved.
But as Cal had theorized, this did not guarantee intelligence as man defined it. For man, communication was an effort; but the manta could convey its entire world-view in the blink of an eye. Not literally: the eye did not blink. The external lens seemed to be crystalline, requiring no lubrication; he wondered what mechanism kept it clean. At any rate, it could represent a barrier to increasing intelligence by its very effectiveness. Ants and termites had evolved complex societies without intelligence; instinct was more than sufficient. Mantas could easily have done the same, using neither intelligence nor instinct, but simply their version of complete communication.
Cal had hoped that he had discovered an alien civilization, but now, after further study, he was not certain at all. Cal wanted complete understanding, but had become resigned to the fact that he could not achieve it on his own, for reasons that eluded him. He had helped Subble as much as he could, though desperately afraid of the consequence.
Cal was not a man to be frightened by phantoms.
'Say something, Brother,' Subble urged the manta.
The screen came to life. Meaningless patterns played across its surface, whorls and lines shifting in kaleidoscopic confusion. Meaningless to him, Subble reminded himself; the signals might be direct and plain if he could interpret them properly. Cal had succeeded in aligning the equipment to manta impulses, but the fine tuning still had to be done. This first step was equivalent to establishing radio contact while remaining ignorant of the language.
'Let's revert to sign language,' he said. He brought out the light-pencil and played it over the separate photoelectric screen. Scribbled lines appeared in its wake, as though he had run chalk over a blackboard randomly.
He hooked the screen into the main circuit and began to draw. He had, in effect, a two-way contact: his probe could initiate designs that were transmitted to the manta frequency, albeit crudely, and the screen would reflect impulses originated from the other end as well. Their minds could meet via this circumscribed channel - if the manta desired it.
'Observe.' Subble drew a line of light and waited. The screen could only be activated by a steady, controlled impulse, and this had been demonstrated to be within the capability of the manta - when it chose to employ the technique. The transitory flickerings of the screen faded, indicating that the creature was following him, but there was nothing more.
He drew a second line beside the first. 'Come on, whip-tail - make like an artist,' he suggested. Still no response - yet the manta would not remain before the equipment unless it understood its purpose.
He added a third and a fourth line, and finally it happened: a fifth appeared.
'Now we're in business!' The manta was participating at last.
Subble erased the screen and drew a circle - and suddenly it was filled with duplicate circles and wiped clean again, with no action on his part. It was as tangible an expression of impatience as he could imagine. There was at least minimal comprehension, and phenomenal manipulative ability. 'So you can make symbols,' the manta had remarked, in effect 'So what? Stop wasting my tune.'
Could it simply have been tedium that had interfered with Cal's efforts? The little man was a deliberate thinker, checking and rechecking before taking any new step. Quite possibly the volatile manta had given up in disgust while Cal deliberated.
'I doubt it,' he said aloud, finding it easy to maintain the one-sided verbal conversation while working out new lines of play on the board. That smacked of the same simplicity as the 'revenge' motif when one of the mantas of Nacre had struck Aquilon in the face. The truth appeared to be immensely more complicated. The simple answer's main asset was its convenience for simple minds. There had to be more to the present problem than impatience - and already he had had far more specific success than Cal had described, despite his lack of experience with the manta.
'So you just didn't want to talk to Cal,' he said, as his electronic pencil moved as swiftly as his heightened ability could control it. 'Why not? Why do you speak to the stranger and not to your friend? Isn't that a little fickle?'
He drew a man, simplified and stylized but recognizable, he hoped. The manta produced an identical figure, seemingly instantaneously. Subble drew a flying manta and this too was reproduced.
Was he achieving anything? Mere imitation proved only that the line was open. He needed intelligent application, and he hadn't found it yet.
He drew a slightly larger man, and opposite it a Nacre herbivore. 'You know Veg, right? And this is Aquilon, who brought you here, but didn't want to keep you all cooped up in her apartment. She's an omnivore - like this Nacre specimen, make of that what you will. And this smaller malesymbol is Cal, who is-' He left the opposite space blank, and waited. If Aquilon's technique had been soundly conceived-
The manta figure appeared in the appropriate space. Success! It understood the parallel.
A dotted X appeared, superimposed over the entire screen, but the picture remained. Then, rapidly, a standard man-symbol appeared beside the female, and the herbivore and the carnivore sets vanished. The manta was telling him that it knew that most men were omnivores; the screen quickly filled wit
h human figures, the straight men and the bosomed women. But why the X?
Was the manta saying 'I understand your point, but it isn't valid'?
Then the slate wiped clean again, to be renewed by a group of Nacre omnivores. Subble's estimate of manta intellect jumped abruptly as he watched what followed.
For the figures were animate, no longer stationary symbols. The omnivores quivered and pounced, horribly real, and now they took on color and a fungus background of the Nacre habitat. Their size expanded until the screen was a picture of a single living creature, leaping heavily and carelessly crushing the smaller mushrooms beneath its muscular foot.
A placid herbivore came into view, as though a television camera were centering on it - and the omnivore leaped upon it, tore away great juicy hunks of soft flesh with the toothed tail, and settled upon the spread remains to feed. Subble could even see the digestive acids flowing over the carcass, breaking the flesh down externally so that the predator's underside could absorb the jellied essence.
Then a single manta appeared, much smaller than the omnivore, but also much swifter. They fought, and the manta won and began feeding on omnivore meat.
The scene shifted to Earth: a recognizable tropical jungle. Subble now appreciated one of the reasons Cal had chosen to make his fungus commentary the way he had - in scenes. He must have suspected that the manta would employ this camera-mode.
A striped tiger prowled fretfully, the play of the great muscles beautifully pictured. A man appeared dressed as a hunter, with a heavy rifle in his hands. So accurate was the detail that Subble was able to identify the make of the weapon: one of the vintage gunpowder models. The tiger sprang; the man wheeled, brought up his rifle, and fired. The tiger fell and rolled on the ground, snapping and dying.
'Right,' Subble said. 'On Earth the omnivore prevails over the carnivore - and all other creatures. So long as he has his trusty technology at hand.'
Now the picture split: the victorious manta on one side, the man on the other. The backgrounds metamorphosed into sand and palm trees: the island upon which they stood. The line between them faded. Man and manta stepped toward each other.
And the screen went blank.
The manta hopped out of the circle, past its companions, and found a place in the center of the beach. It waited. None of the others moved to utilize the electronic setup.
'Oho!' Subble exclaimed. 'So that's the way the jet fires. You don't care to talk to me either.'
He turned off the set. There was no use running down the battery until they settled this matter. The manta had proved beyond question that it could communicate - when it chose. It had gone as far as it intended to, and the next gesture was up to him.
Why? Because it did not respect the omnivore? Subble could understand this. He would be unlikely to treat a pig with respect unless the creature first demonstrated qualities deserving such attention. Unless, in fact, it were in a position to command respect - by superior intellect or physical prowess. Swine in a muddy pen were one thing; a great boar hog in the wilderness another. Wild tusks were more effective arguments than tame pork.
What did man have to distinguish himself? A technology that was superfluous to the framework of the manta, and rather crude where intelligible. Man's weapons were little more than an extension of the innate savagery of the species. Not an impressive total.
But Aquilon's act of faith and courage on Nacre had brought a limited response. That had been the first solid example of omnivore compassion the manta had observed and understood, and it had replied in kind. The seed had been planted.
Perhaps if the hunter saw the wild boar spare a human child, he would be constrained to hold his fire - but not necessarily to adopt that pig into his family. Respect had to be earned step by step; it could not be given as a gift.
The manta, it would seem, had returned Aquilon's favor and gone one step farther. It had sent its representatives to Earth. Now it was up to a designate of Earth to prove himself - step by step.
And the foundation had to be laid in the field of arms. The root of respect was almost always physical, no matter how tempting it might be to consider it otherwise. Man and manta had won their respective places by becoming the most deadly fighters of their worlds. The order of precedence had to be established before higher negotiations could begin. This was the essence of natural selection; not pretty, but necessary.
'So you wouldn't fight handicapped men,' he said. 'You insisted on a really capable specimen, so that there could be no excuses.' That was why Cal had had no success.
The manta was waiting.
Subble looked at it. 'Well, you've got one.' Was he to pit his devastating physical attributes against a half-grown animal? Immediately he caught himself. He had just had formidable evidence that the creature was alert and sapient, yet he still thought of it as an animal. Acceptance was a twoway business!
Still it bothered him. Inherent in ritual combat was the concept of fair play, and this was evidently highly developed in the manta. They had not simply attacked him; they had explained first, and now awaited his acquiescence. Fine - but he was probably a match for several of the creatures facing him, while only one made the offer.
Subble's reflexes were keyed to speeds far beyond those of ordinary men, and his weapons were the finest Earth technology could provide. He was a superman; no creature on the planet could match his strength, speed, endurance and general command of combat technique - except another agent. These mantas, on the other hand, were adapted to another planet, used to a thicker atmosphere and a steadier clime. They should hesitate to commit their forces in unfavorable terrain, just as an agent like himself would consider it bad tactics to engage, barehanded, a killer whale in the water.
Perhaps they had not completely understood the situation. He would clarify it.
'If you will direct your attentions to the inland vegetation ...' he said, gesturing, but none changed position. One was already facing that way, however.
Subble's hands touched the band of his trunks. Two lances of fire appeared and disappeared. Two fronds on separate palm trees dropped to the ground, their blasted stems smoking.
Not a manta moved.
But distance weapons were not part of the manta's framework, though they evidently knew something about them. Subble stepped out of the armored trunks and dropped them beside the equipment. He removed his rather special watch, a potent ring, and certain portions of his bridgework. A naked man against a naked manta - that was closer to it.
'But it still isn't entirely sporting, Brother,' he said. 'You weigh in at forty-four pounds, no hands.'
Subble moved: five steps, turnabout and somersault, in the time it would have taken an ordinary man to focus his eyes - and he had swept up a sturdy length of driftwood and shattered it with one blow of one hand.
The single manta waited.
'You offer me no apparent choice,' he said regretfully. 'I'll have to kill you before the others will believe.' He knew there could be no mercy in such a confrontation, for mercy in elementary battle was weakness.
He was prepared to do what had to be done, efficiently and supposedly without regrets - but he regretted this. His mission required the exchange of information with the mantas, to complete the picture, and a subsequent report
That was all - but they refused to cooperate until mastered. It was such a waste, to destroy an intelligent creature so casually - but necessary.
He strode to the center of the beach, fifty feet from the selected manta. As he did so the others bounded outward, taking up positions several hundred feet distant at either end of the long strip: two and two, with the fifth beneath the blasted palm on the inland side.
Subble paused, assessing the slope of the beach and testing the footing offered by the sand. He would do best to stay clear of the dry area, since that would be powdery and contain prickly sandspurs; he needed good leverage more than the manta did. Then he marched toward his opponent.
He was uncertain how to kill it
cleanly. He could not expect to strangle it, since it did not breathe in an Earthly fashion, and the tail would be dangerous in close work. He could not expect to stun it with nerve blows because he did not know enough about its nervous system, which could be simplified and well protected. As a matter of fact, he realized belatedly, he knew much less about it than it knew about him. Perhaps the match was not so uneven after all.
The best choice, in the face of his ignorance, was a quick series of blows, crushing the head section. The eye was the obvious vulnerability, and he did not wish to torture it by a slow death or dismemberment. The slaughter had a bad taste, but at least suffering could be minimized.
The manta did not move as he walked up. At twenty feet it looked pitifully small, an innocuous black hump with a single eye, something like a negative shmoo. Had he made an error? Had he misread its intent, and seen combat to the death where some gentler dialogue had been proposed? What a terrible mistake, if-
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