There was a whisper of air at Raimey's side. "You all right?" Drusni panted.
Raimey flipped an affirmative with his tail, still too winded to talk.
"That was really brave," Drusni said, her voice sounding awed as she gave his fin a quick stroke. "I hope she'll be okay. Come on, let's get out of here."
"Right," Raimey managed. Rolling themselves vertical, they headed downward.
Raimey had thought the previous day's conversation with Latranesto would be the last he would ever have with the big Counselor.
He was wrong.
"Breeder Manta, you have broken one of the most important laws of the Qanska," Latranesto rumbled, his fins churning at the Level Four air like he was trying to make butter out of it. The other two Counselors hovering at his sides were flapping even harder.
Most of that was the need to keep afloat, of course. But somehow, Raimey had the feeling that that wasn't the whole story. All three Counselors were furious, even if they were trying with varying degrees of success not to show it.
And the worst part was that Raimey didn't know why they were so mad. What was there about this particular law that made it so important?
"If you have an explanation for your actions, you will speak it now," Latranesto went on. "After that, judgment will be decided on and pronounced."
Think fast, kid, Raimey told himself, glancing to his right. Because this time it wasn't just him in the hot draft. Beating rhythmically at the air as she hovered beside him, Drusni was looking tense and tired and vulnerable, and more than a little scared. He needed to pull this out as much for her as for himself.
"I apologize deeply for my intrusion into Level One," he said, keeping his voice and demeanor as humble as he could manage while still flapping madly at the dense air. "I have no explanation to offer, for the simple reason that I don't understand myself how it happened. The traveling occurred while I was asleep, and I was completely surprised when I woke to find myself there."
"Then why did you not immediately leave?" one of the other Counselors demanded, the broad red stripes across his fins glinting as he flapped.
"I was communicating with the humans up above," Raimey told him. "They wished to talk, and it's easier to do so at the higher levels."
"Is your life to be made easier at the cost of Qanskan law?" the other Counselor challenged. His skin, in contrast to the other, was mostly a pattern of blue stripes with some shorter green and purple ones mixed in. "What other laws, may I ask, do you intend to break with that excuse?"
"I did not intend to break any laws," Raimey insisted, starting to feel annoyed despite himself. "And may I also point out that if I hadn't been there, that female and her baby would certainly have been killed."
"We have already discussed this principle, Breeder Manta," Latranesto said in a severe tone. "You are a Breeder. Your role in life is not yet the defense of others."
"I'm sorry," Raimey said. "I know that's the Qanskan way. But it's not the human way. We protect and defend each other, wherever and whenever we need to. Sometimes that instinct comes through, despite my efforts to suppress it."
He looked at Blue Stripes. "And I don't mean that as an excuse," he added, "but as an explanation."
"Our laws were not invented solely for your inconvenience," Blue Stripes shot back. "There are good and proper reasons why young Breeders are not allowed in the birthing grounds. Particularly male breeders."
"The mating urges are strong in Breeders your age," Latranesto said. "Sometimes to the point of violating females who are already bonded."
Ah-ha. So that was it. They were worried about young adults getting carried away by lust. "Even those females who are pregnant?" he asked.
"Especially those who are pregnant," Latranesto confirmed. "Those nearing birth often give off false aroma signals of receptiveness. But mating during that time will almost certainly kill the unborn young."
"We also don't want Breeders mating in view of Level One herds," Red Stripes put in. "It's upsetting to the children."
Raimey glanced sideways at Drusni. This line of conversation was definitely becoming uncomfortable. "I understand," he told the Counselor, "though I had not heard this explanation until now. But again, I didn't go to Level One with any such thought or intention in mind."
"No, you went to talk to your people," Red Stripes said darkly. "Tell me, what was so urgent that they needed to speak with you at that particular ninepulse?"
Raimey hesitated. What in the world could he tell them? Not the truth, obviously; but he needed to say something. What could he come up with that would satisfy them?
But even as he tried to think, Drusni slid smoothly into the gap. "The humans had seen the approaching Vuuka and the Sivra attached to him," she said. "They called to warn Manta of danger."
"I was not talking to you, Breeder Drusni," Red Stripes snapped. "The time for your hearing will come later."
"Why?" Raimey asked, jumping to her support. "She did nothing wrong except follow me to see if I was all right, and then to obey me when I sent her to call the Protectors. If she's to be judged and punished, it should be in connection with my hearing."
Red Stripes bristled. "You dare speak to a Counselor in that tone of voice?"
"Do you punish honest ignorance and bravery?" Raimey shot back.
"Enough," Latranesto said firmly. "All of you. Breeder Drusni, you heard Breeder Manta's conversation with his people?"
"I did," Drusni said. "But only his side of it. I couldn't hear the humans."
"Then how do you know what it was they told him?"
"I saw the result of their conversation," Drusni said, twitching her tails defiantly. "And Manta is right. The female and her baby would have died if he hadn't come to her defense."
"The law does not look at final results," Blue Stripes said. "To do so would move in the direction of whim and self-interested interpretation and chaos."
"Yet at the same time, Manta is by necessity a special case," Latranesto said reluctantly.
He looked at Drusni. "And by extension, those he deals with must be allowed extra space to swim," he continued. "There will therefore be no punishment. This time."
He fixed Raimey with a dark look. "But you are both on notice that this will not be permitted to occur again," he warned. "If either of you is found improperly on Level One again, there will be punishment."
"I understand, Counselor Latranesto," Raimey said, flipping his fins in respect.
"As do I," Drusni added. "Thank you for your understanding and compassion."
"Yes." Latranesto paused. "And despite the laws that were broken, we in turn also thank you for your assistance in saving two Qanskan lives. Farewell; and do not require us to hold such a hearing again."
With that, the three Counselors and their Protector escort sank downward. "Whew!" Drusni said under her breath, turning to face Raimey as the two of them started floating the opposite direction, upward toward Level Three. "Well, that was fun, wasn't it?"
"Oh, I could do this every day," Raimey said with a snort. "Sorry I dragged you into it. And thanks for the assist. I wasn't at all sure how I was going to get out of that one."
"No problem." She eyed him quizzically. "So what did you and they talk about?"
Raimey threw a furtive glance off to the side. Virtamco was floating up alongside them, away at the edge of his vision. Probably within eavesdropping range, unfortunately.
And his expression was not exactly a pleasant one. Had he been given a lecture of his own for losing track of his charge? Probably. Preoccupied with his own trouble, that thought hadn't even occurred to him.
"I can't tell you just now," he told Drusni. "Maybe later, okay?"
"Sure." Drusni flipped her tails. "Hey, we're friends, right? What's friendship if you can't trust each other?"
Raimey grimaced. Trust. If she'd worked long and hard, and spent a couple of ninedays at the task, she still couldn't have come up with a word that would have twisted harder into his belly
than that one.
Trust. The Qanska had trusted the motives of the Five Hundred in allowing Raimey to come here in the first place. They'd invested time and energy and more trust in nurturing him to adulthood. And now Latranesto had renewed that trust by not punishing him, as he surely would have done to any other young Breeder who had invaded forbidden territory that way.
And in repayment of that trust, all Faraday and Hesse wanted him to do was steal possibly the most valuable thing the Qanska possessed. Terrific.
Raimey frowned suddenly to himself. The most valuable thing... A stardrive was a thing, all right. A thing; an artifact; a mechanical device.
How could the Qanska possibly build something like that? For that matter, how could they build anything? They had no hands; no gripping appendages of any sort. Certainly nothing that would be suitable for delicate work. Besides, floating here in the middle of the Jovian atmosphere, what was there for them to build anything with?
Could it be the Qanska weren't the highest form of life on Jupiter? Could there be something farther down, some more intelligent and dexterous species that was actually in control? Could they be the ones with the stardrive, and the Qanska merely part of the ecology the masters had brought with them?
Certainly that was possible. But unless those tool-building beings lived right down at the mushy solid hydrogen core, that still left the question of what they were using to build their tools out of. Something biological, perhaps? Again, that was possible, though the thought of a stardrive knitted out of chinster and kachtis vines was about as lunatic an idea as he'd ever come up with.
He wondered if Hesse and Faraday had thought this part through before they'd dragged him out of Level Three in the middle of the sundark. If they hadn't, he was going to be very annoyed with them.
If they had, he would love to hear the answers they'd come up with.
"Hello?"
Raimey started out of his thoughts. "Yes?" he said, focusing on Drusni again.
"Nothing," she said, sounding rather amused. "You just looked like you were halfway around the planet, that's all. I didn't want you to miss Level Three and go floating up to Level One again."
"Thanks," Raimey said dryly.
"Sure you don't want to talk about it?" she asked, going serious again. "Sometimes sharing a problem with friends is the best way to solve it, you know."
"So I've heard," Raimey said. "But this isn't exactly a problem. At least, not yet."
"Okay," she said. "But if it gets to be one, you be sure and let me know."
"You'll be the first," he promised.
"I'll hold you to that," she warned, mock-threateningly. "Hey, there's Pranlo."
Sure enough, there he was, swimming toward them in the distance. "Hey, guys!" he called as he approached. "So what happened?"
"We've been exiled, of course," Raimey called back. "Just stopped by to pick up a snack."
"Not funny," Pranlo grunted as he braked to a halt beside them. "People do get exiled, you know."
"No, I didn't," Raimey said soberly, annoyed with himself. "Sorry. It was supposed to be a joke."
"Don't worry about it," Drusni soothed him. "But that snack idea sounded really good. Don't just float there, Pranlo—take us to the good stuff."
"As you command," Pranlo said, flipping over and heading off. "This way."
TEN
It took a few ninedays for them to settle into their new routine. They had considerably more freedom as Breeders than they had had as children, and Pranlo and Drusni in particular seemed to relish the opportunity to go wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted to. The Three Musketta, as Pranlo persisted in calling them, ranged far and wide, laughing and talking and eating their way through the Jovian skies. They flitted up and down between Level Two and the upper parts of Level Four, crisscrossed back and forth across the equator a dozen times, and sometimes even skipped part of their normal sleep cycle in their excitement.
Raimey, who had grown up in the shadow of a personal Protector, didn't notice nearly as much of a change in his freedom as the others did. But their spirit was both contagious and fun to watch, and he jumped into the new activities right alongside them. Besides, even he found a certain relief in not having to always know where the herd was so that he could get back to it before sundark.
Still, as always, there was also a debit side to the freedom ledger. None of them, including Raimey, had ever realized quite how much work their leaders had put into locating food sources and guiding the rest of the herd to them. Now, as the Three Musketta moved about on their own, they discovered that the delicate tendrils and swirls of tasty color weren't nearly as plentiful as they'd always thought. Some days they had to hunt for ninth-parts on end before they found anything at all to eat.
Especially as they were now competing for that food with all the other Breeders who had recently left their herds, not to mention all those who had graduated to adulthood before them. At first it had been fun to meet Qanska from other herds, to exchange names and stories and find out what life was like swimming in different winds. But the excitement began a distinctly downward curve the first time they tried to swim with a group of others, only to learn that they'd already cleaned out every bit of food in the vicinity.
And by the time a different group forcibly ordered them to go away, even the gregarious Drusni had had enough. From that point on, they swam alone.
There were other dangers besides hunger, too. Larger Vuuka prowled these lower levels than had generally been able to reach the nurseries on Level One, and from the lower parts of Level Two downward there were packs of Sivra to deal with, as well.
Again, the Three Musketta didn't have nearly as much trouble with predators as the typical Breeder, not with Virtamco plying his silently watchful path off to the side. Just the same, in those first few ninedays they had to beat off three Vuuka attacks and outrun a pack of Sivra. And it was always a darkly sobering experience to come upon the remains of a Vuukan or Sivran meal and wonder if the Qanska had been anyone they'd known.
So the thrill of new adulthood quickly and quietly faded away, winding down to a matter of survival. Survival with good friends and occasional laughter and enjoyment, certainly, but survival nonetheless.
And then, as if the universe were conspiring to complicate matters as much as possible, Raimey began feeling strange and discomfiting changes taking place inside him.
Latranesto had spoken of mating urges at that last hearing he and Drusni had gone through, warning of the possible uncontrolled consequences if those urges occurred in the wrong place. But as near as Raimey could remember, he hadn't felt anything of the sort when he'd been defending that pregnant female from the Sivra. There had been determination and anger, even fear, but nothing that could possibly qualify as an urge. For a long time afterward he had worried about that, wondering whether there was something wrong with him. Something in his human psychology, perhaps, that could override even the basic biochemistry of his Qanskan body.
But now, in a way that was somehow both sudden and subtle, the urges and feelings were beginning to come over him. He couldn't tell whether it was the new freedom that was triggering the changes, or the different and more varied diet they were being exposed to, or even simply the fact that he was getting older.
Or perhaps it was Drusni.
Drusni. Sweet, caring, vibrant, radiant Drusni. He found himself watching her every move, listening to her every word, hanging eagerly onto her every thought. He couldn't get enough of her. Her image danced through his mind, her voice sang in his dreams. Drusni.
And eventually, one sundark as the three of them were winding down toward sleep, he finally had to admit to himself that he was in love with her.
It was a startling discovery, all the more so coming from someone who could still remember what it was like to be human. There had been many women he'd known back then... but somehow, all of them paled in comparison to Drusni.
That was startling, too. Startling, and sobering.
Had he become so much a Qanska that even his memories of human friends and lovers paled against the Qanskan equivalents? Or was it simply that, in his shallow youthfulness, he'd chosen his lovers solely on the basis of superficial attractiveness of face and body?
Because Drusni was more that just that. Far more.
He lay awake for a long time after sundark, gazing into the darkness and trying to sort it all out in his mind. He and Drusni... but it wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded. Was it?
But even if it wasn't ridiculous, it wasn't going to be nearly as simple as it had been on Earth. He'd caught glimpses of other Breeder couples in the distance over the past few ninedays; had seen the complicated half-dance, half-synchronous swim ritual they'd done as they prepared for their bonding.
Trouble was, it was a ritual he had never learned. Either it had been taught back in the herd while he was off on one of his extended wanderings, or else it drew on some basic Qanskan instinct that his human mind simply didn't have.
But he couldn't approach her without it. Wouldn't approach her without it. When it was time to ask her, he wanted everything to be perfect.
And there was only one person to whom he could turn to for help and advice. Only one.
He suffered secretly through the long ninth-parts of the next day, striving for patience as he and Drusni and Pranlo swam and talked and ate together. But finally the gloom of sundark descended on them.
And as the other two fell silent and motionless, drifting to sleep on the winds, Raimey stole quietly off into the darkness.
Virtamco was also just settling down to sleep. "Yes?" he said, in that same gruffly neutral voice he always seemed to use when speaking to Raimey. "Do you want something?"
"I need a favor," Raimey said, trying to keep his voice steady. It was odd, he thought distantly, how little he'd truly appreciated Tigrallo when he was alive. He'd always thought of him as aloof and critical, more like a glorified nursemaid than anything else.