"So there," Drusni said with a sniff.

"And if you want to know the truth, I'm surprised you'd even suggest such a thing," Manta added.

"Don't you want to grow up to be one of the Wise and get to go live on Level Eight?"

"Right," Drusni seconded, "I plan to live there someday. Aren't you coming with me?"

Pranlo flipped his fins. "Personally, I'm not going to worry about it," he said. "I figure some Vuuka's going to get me long before that."

"Pranlo!" Drusni scolded. "What a thing to say!"

"And speaking of Vuuka," Pranlo said casually, "that's another thing about Centerline. There are more predator attacks back there, Vuuka and Sivra both."

It took Manta a pulse to get his mind back on the original subject. "Maybe," he said. "Though that doesn't necessarily mean there are more predators. The Brolka in the outer regions draw off a lot of the attacks. But that leads us to something else we know: that the bulk of the Qanska live in Centerline. Anything else?"

"There's less interesting food there," Drusni commented, snagging a tendril of silvery-blue jeptris as it floated past her. "This stuff is a lot better."

"And that has to be the key, somehow," Manta said, eying the tendril. "The lack of plant variety in Centerline."

"So what do you think it means?" Drusni asked as she took a bite.

"I wish I knew," Manta said, still staring at the jeptris as it dangled from the corner of her mouth. It had been dayherds since he'd really looked at Jovian plants, he realized suddenly. Probably not since those first heady days as a Baby, in fact. Ever since then, he'd basically followed the usual Qanskan pattern of identifying the various food plants strictly by color and then gobbling up the ones they wanted.

Which meant that he'd never really looked at these outer-region plants at all...

Drusni must have seen something in his expression. "You have something?" she asked.

"I don't know," Manta said. "On Earth, I know, this kind of problem usually mean there's been overgrazing. People or animals have eaten some variety of plant down to almost nothing, which then upsets some other ecological balance."

"Well, if it was a matter of overeating, the chinster and prupsis would be long gone," Pranlo pointed out. "At least from Level One. I loved that stuff when I was a Midling."

"Me, too," Drusni agreed, taking another bite. "I sure wouldn't have passed them up for this stuff, at least back then. What did you call it again?"

"Jeptris," Manta told her. "And you're right; it is a little too spicy for most children to appreciate."

"Tastes change as you get older," Pranlo said. "So you're saying it must have been the adults who—what was that word again? Ate too much of it?"

"Overgrazed," Manta supplied.

"Right. Who overgrazed the jeptris?"

"I guess that makes sense," Manta said slowly. "Except then what happened to the jeptris on Level One? There aren't all that many adults allowed up there."

"Maybe it doesn't grow on Level One," Drusni said.

"Beltrenini said it did," Manta told her. "Hold on a pulse, will you? Don't eat that last bite."

"What, you want it?" Drusni asked as he maneuvered closer to her.

"No, I just want to look at it," he said, coming to a halt practically snout to snout with her. The jeptris was a delicate thing, he saw. Thin filaments of silver were twisted together with other filaments of light blue, the whole thing looking rather like a French braid with tiny leaves at the intersection points. Woven into the middle of the pattern, spaced at precise intervals between the leaves, were what looked like cone-shaped berries.

And that single look was all it took. "This is chinster," he told the others.

"What are you talking about?" Pranlo protested. "Chinster is light purple, all of it. This stuff is silvery blue."

"I know that," Manta said. "But it's chinster, all right. Or else a really good spinoff."

"A really good what?" Drusni asked.

"A spinoff," Manta said. "That's like a new product that's derived from a larger but mostly unrelated product—"

"Whoa, whoa," Pranlo cut him off. "Can you give that to us in tonals?"

"Sorry," Manta apologized. For a pulse there he'd drifted back into business school mode. "What I'm saying is that jeptris and chinster seem to be very much the same sort of plant. They've got the same form, same structure—even the shape of the berries is the same. The only differences I can see are in the color and taste. It's as if one of them is nothing more than a different version of the other."

"All right," Drusni said cautiously. "Maybe. But how does something like that happen? A plant is a plant, just like a Qanska is a Qanska and a Vuuka is a Vuuka. How does it change into something else?"

"I don't know," Manta admitted, his first rush of excitement fading away. It had to be a mutation of some kind. Didn't it?

But how could a mutation that was massive enough to change color and taste not also change the plant's appearance? Shouldn't it at least make it look a little different?

He was still floating snout to snout with Drusni. Silently, he backed away from her, turning his tails to his friends.

What was he doing here, anyway? He was just a humble business major, on a world that had never even heard of the concept. Spinoffs he understood; profit and loss he understood. Inflow and outflow, structure and management and takeovers and economics. Those he understood.

But not this scientific stuff. Not any of it.

Problem-solver. Like the Deep he was. Business problems, maybe. Spinoffs, profit and loss, inflow and outflow—

His wind of thought hit an abrupt calm. Spinoffs. Inflow and outflow...

And Level Eight. Inflow and outflow and Level Eight...

"Manta?" Drusni murmured tentatively.

And suddenly, there it was, staring him in the face. The answer to all of it.

Maybe.

He spun back around to face them, a sudden surge of energy flowing straight out to his fin tips. "I've got it," he said.

"What?" Pranlo and Drusni said in unison.

"I know what's going on," Manta said. "I don't know all the details; not yet. But I know what's happening. And I know why."

"Well, don't keep us in suspense," Pranlo said. "What is it?"

"I should have listened to myself from the beginning," Manta said. "Inflow and outflow. Basic business concepts."

He smiled tightly. "And Level Eight," he added. "Where all good little Qanska hope to go when they grow up to be the Wise. Come on."

He flipped over and headed north. "Wait a pulse," Pranlo called after him. "Where are we going?"

"Back to Centerline to see Latranesto," Manta called back. "If I'm right, we're going to need the humans' help to figure out what exactly to do to fix the problem."

"What does Latranesto have to do with the humans?" Drusni asked as she and Pranlo caught up and settled into a pacing swim beside him.

"He doesn't," Manta said. "But I know humans, and they don't ever give anything away for free. I'm going to need something I can trade with them."

"And you think they're going to want a lumpy Counselor?" Pranlo asked, sounding confused.

Manta flicked his tails. Latranesto, he suspected, was not going to like this. Not a single bit. "No," he said. "Not exactly."

"Well, it's confirmed," Hesse said, dropping with jerky awkwardness into Faraday's desk chair.

"Nemesis Six is definitely on the move, and it's definitely coming here."

"How long before it arrives?" Faraday asked. "We've still got two to three weeks, right?"

"Two weeks and four days," Hesse said, drumming his fingers silently on the edge of the desk.

"Assuming it stays with its current schedule."

"So we've still got time," Faraday concluded. "There's no need to panic just yet."

"Panic?" Hesse suddenly seemed to notice what his fingers were doing. "Right," he apologized, bringing them to an abrupt halt. "Sorry. I'm just... this whole thing's got me spinning three ways from clockwise. What in the System is she up to?"