Traitors
Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part;
Do thou but thine.
JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
The messenger sat on a couch in the corner of the Council Room, holding a blanket around his shoulders while he sipped from a steaming cup of soup. Now and then the young chen shivered, but mostly he looked exhausted. His damp hair still lay in tangled mats from the icy swim that had brought him on the last leg of his dangerous journey.
It’s a wonder he made it here at all, Megan Oneagle thought, watching him. All the spies and recon teams we sent ashore, carrying the finest equipment—none ever returned. But this little chim makes it to us, sailing a tiny raft made of cut trees, with homespun canvas sails.
Carrying a message from my son.’
Megan wiped her eyes again, remembering the courier’s first words to her after swimming the last stretch of underground caves to their deep island redoubt.
“Captain Oneagle sends his felic -- his felicitations, ma’am.”
He had drawn forth a packet—waterproofed in oli tree sap—and offered it to her, then collapsed into the arms of the medical techs.
A message from Robert, she thought in wonder. He is alive. He is free. He helps lead an army. She didn’t know whether to exult or shudder at the thought.
It was a thing to be proud of, for sure. Robert might be the sole adult human loose on the surface of Garth, right now. And if his “army” was little more than a ragged band of simian guerrillas, well, at least they had accomplished more than her own carefully hoarded remnants of the official planetary militia had.
If he had made her proud, Robert had also astonished her. Might there be more substance to the boy than she had thought before? Something brought out by adversity, perhaps?
There may be more of his father in him than I’d wanted to see.
Sam Tennace was a starship pilot who stopped at Garth every five years or so, one of Megan’s three spacer husbands. Each was home for only a few months at a stretch—almost never at the same time—then off again. Other ferns might not have been able to deal with such an arrangement, but what suited spacers also met her needs as a politician and career woman. Of the three, only Sam Tennace had given her a child.
And I never wanted my son to be a hero, she realized. As critical as I have been of him, I guess I never really wanted him to be like Sam at all.
For one thing, if Robert had not been so resourceful he might be safe now—interned on the islands with the rest of the human population, pursuing his playboy hobbies among his friends—instead of engaged in a desperate, useless struggle against an omnipotent enemy.
Well, she reassured herself. His letter probably exaggerates .
To her left, mutterings of amazement grew ever more pronounced as the government in exile pored over the message, printed on tree bark in homemade ink. “Son of a bitch!” she heard Colonel Millchamp curse. “So that’s how they always knew where we were, what we were up to, before we even got started!”
Megan moved closer to the table. “Please summarize, colonel.”
Millchamp looked up at her. The portly, red-faced militia officer shook several sheets until someone grabbed his arm and pried them out of his hand.
“Optical fibers!” he cried.
Megan shook her head. “I beg your pardon?”
“They doped them. Every string, telephone cable, communications pipe . . . almost every piece of electronics on the planet! They’re all tuned to resonate back on a probability band the damn birds can broadcast...” Colonel Millchamp’s voice choked on his anger. He swiveled and walked away.
Megan’s puzzlement must have shown.
“Perhaps I can explain, madam coordinator,” said John Kylie, a tall man with the sallow complexion of a lifetime spacer. Kylie’s peacetime profession was captain of an in-system civilian freighter. His merchant vessel had taken part in the mockery of a space battle, one of the few survivors—if that was the right term. Overpowered, battered, finally reduced to peppering Gubru fighting planetoids with its comm laser, the wreck of the Esperanza only made it back to Port Helenia because the enemy was leisurely in consolidating the Gimelhai system. Its skipper now served as Megan’s naval advisor.
Kylie’s expression was stricken. “Madam coordinator, do you remember that excellent deal we made, oh, twenty years ago, for a turnkey electronics and photonics factory? It was a state-of-the-art, midget-scale auto-fac—perfect for a small colony world such as ours.”
Megan nodded. “Your uncle was coordinator then. I believe your first merchant command was to finalize negotiations and bring the factory home to Garth.”
Kylie nodded. He looked crestfallen. “One of its main products is optical fibers. A few said the bargain we got from the Kwackoo was just too good to be true. But who could have imagined they might have something like this in mind? So far in the future? Just on the off chance that they might someday want to—“
Megan gasped. “The Kwackoo! They’re clients of—“
“Of the Gubru.” Kylie nodded. “The damn birds must have thought, even then, that something like this might someday happen.”
Megan recalled what Uthacalthing had tried to teach her, that the ways of the Galactics are long ways, and patient as the planets in their orbits.
Someone else cleared his throat. It was Major Pratha-chulthorn, the short, powerfully built Terragens Marines officer. He and his small detachment were the only professional soldiers left after the space battle and the hopeless gesture of defiance at the Port Helenia space-field. Millchamp and Kylie held reserve commissions.
“This is most grave, madam coordinator,” Prathachulthorn said. “Optical fibers made at that factory have been incorporated into almost every piece of military and civilian equipment manufactured on the planet. They are integrated into nearly every building. Can we have confidence in your son’sfindings?”
Megan nearly shrugged, but her politician’s instincts stopped her in time. How the hell would I know? she thought. The boy is a stranger to me. She glanced at the small chen who had nearly died bringing Robert’s message to her. She had never imagined Robert could inspire such dedication.
Megan wondered if she was jealous.
A woman Marine spoke next. “The report is co-signed by the Tymbrimi Athaclena,” Lieutenant Lydia McCue pointed out. The young officer pursed her lips. “That’s a second source of verification,” she suggested.
“With all respect, Lydia,” Major Prathachulthorn replied. “The tym is barely more than a child.”
“She’s Ambassador Uthacalthing’s daughter!” Kylie snapped. “And chim technicians helped perform the experiments as well.”
Prathachulthorn shook his head. “Then we have no truly qualified witnesses.”
Several councillors gasped. The sole neo-chimpanzee member, Dr. Suzinn Benirshke, blushed and looked down at the table. But Prathachulthorn didn’t even seem to realize he’d said anything insulting. The major wasn’t known to be strong on tact. Also, he’s a Marine, Megan reminded herself. The corps was the elite Terragens fighting service with the smallest number of dolphin and chim members. For that matter, the Marines recruited mostly males, a last bastion of oldtime sexism.
Commander Kylie sifted through the rough-cut pages of Robert Oneagle’s report. “Still you must agree, major, the scenario is plausible. It would explain our setbacks, and total failure to establish contact, either with the islands or the mainland.”
Major Prathachulthorn nodded after a moment. “Plausible, yes. Nevertheless, we should perform our own investigations before we commit ourselves to acting as if it is true.”
“What’s the matter, major?” Kylie asked. “You don’t like the idea of putting down your phase-burner rifle and picking up bows and arrows?”
Prathachulthorn’s reply was surprisingly mild. “Not at all, ser, so long as the enemy is similarly equipped. The problem lies in the fact that he is not.”
Silence reigned for long moments. No one seemed to have anything to say. The pause ended when Colonel Millchamp returned to the table. He slammed the flat of his hand down. “Either way, what’s the point in waiting?”
Megan frowned. “What do you mean, colonel?”
Millchamp growled. “I mean what good do our forces do down here?” he demanded. “We’re all going slowly stir-crazy. Meanwhile, at this very moment, Earth herself may be fighting for her life!”
“There’s no such thing as this very moment across interstellar space,” Commander Kylie commented. “Simultaneity is a myth. The concept is imbedded in Anglic and other Earth tongues, but—“
“Oh, revert the metaphysics!” Millchamp snapped. “What matters is that we can hurt Earth’s enemies!” He picked up the tree-bark leaves. “Thanks to the guerrillas, we know where the Gubru have placed many of their major planet-based yards. No matter what damned Library-spawned tricks the birds have got up their feathers, they can’t prevent us from launching our flicker-swivvers at them!”
“But—“
“We have three hidden away—there weren’t any used in the space battle, and the Gubru can’t know we have any of ‘em. If those missiles are supposed to be good against the Tandu, damn their seven-chambered hearts, they’ll surely suffice for Gubru ground targets!”
“And what good will that do?” Lieutenant McCue asked mildly.
“We can bend a few Gubru beaks! Ambassador Uthacal-thing told us that symbols are important in Galactic warfare. Right now they can pretend that we hardly put up a fight at all. But a symbolic strike, one that hurt them, would tell the whole Five Galaxies that we won’t be pushed around!”
Megan Oneagle pinched the bridge of her nose. She spoke with eyes closed. “I have always found it odd that my Amerindian ancestors’ concept of ‘counting coup’ should have a place in a hypertechnological galaxy.” She looked up. “It may, indeed, come to that, if we can find no other way to be effective.
“But you’ll recall that Uthacalthing also advised patience.” She shook her head. “Please sit down, Colonel Millchamp. Everybody. I’m determined not to throw our strength away in a gesture, not until I know it’s the only thing left to do against the enemy.
“Remember, nearly every human on the planet is hostage on the islands, their lives dependent on doses t>f Gubru antidote. And on the mainland there are the poor chims, for all intents abandoned, alone.”
Along the conference the officers sat downcast. They’re frustrated, Megan thought. And I can’t blame them.
When war had loomed, when they had begun planning ways to resist an invasion, nobody had ever suggested a contingency like this. Perhaps a people more experienced in the sophistications of the Great Library—in the arcane art of war that the aeons-old Galactics knew—might have been better prepared. But the Gubru’s tactics had made a shambles of their modest defense plans.
She had not added her final reason for refusing to sanction a gesture. Humans were notoriously unsophisticated at the game of Galactic punctilio. A blow struck for honor might be bungled, instead giving the enemy excuse for even greater horrors.
Oh, the irony. If Uthacalthing was right, it was a little Earthship, halfway across the Five Galaxies from here, that had precipitated the crisis!
Earthlings certainly did have a knack for making trouble for themselves. They’d always had that talent.
Megan looked up as the small chen from the mainland, Robert’s messenger, approached the table, still wearing his blanket. His dark brown eyes were troubled.
“Yes, Petri?” she asked.
The chim bowed.
“Ma’am, th’ doctor wants me to go to bed now.”
She nodded. “That’s fine, Petri. I’m sure we’ll want to debrief you some more, later . . . ask you some more questions. But right now you should rest.”
Petri nodded. “Yes’m. Thank you, ma’am. But there was somethin’ else. Somethin’ I’d better tell you while I remember.”
“Yes? What is it?”
The chen looked uncomfortable. He glanced at the watching humans and back at Megan. “It’s personal, ma’am. Somethin’ Captain Oneagle asked me to memorize an’ tell you.”
Megan smiled. “Oh, very well. Will you all excuse me , for a moment, please?”
She walked with Petri over to the far end of the room.
There she sat down to bring her eyes level with the little chim. “Tell me what Robert said.”
Petri nodded. His eyes went unfocused. “Captain Oneagle said to tell you that th’ Tymbrimi Athaclena is actually doin’ most of the organizing for th’ army.”
Megan nodded. She had suspected as much. Robert might have found new resources, new depths, but he was not and never would be a born leader.
Petri went on. “Cap’n Oneagle told me to tell you that it was important that th’ Tymbrimi Athaclena have honorary patron status to our chims, legally.”
Again, Megan nodded. “Smart. We can vote it and send word back.”
But the little chim shook his head. “Uh, ma’am. We couldn’t wait for that. So, uh, I’m supposed to tell you that Captain Oneagle an’ th’ Tymbrimi Athaclena have sealed a ... a consort bond ... I think that’s what it’s called. I . . .”
His voice trailed off, for Megan had stood up.
Slowly, she turned to the wall and rested her forehead against the cool stone. That damn fool of a boy! part of her cursed.
It was the only thing they could do, another part answered.
So, now I’m a mother-in-law, the most ironic voice added.
There would certainly be no grandchildren from this union. That was not what interspecies consort marriages were for. But there were other implications.
Behind her, the council debated. Again and again they turned over the options, coming up dry as they had for months now.
Oh, if only Uthacalthing had made it here, Megan thought. We need his experience, his wry wisdom and humor. We could talk, like we used to. And maybe, he could explain to me these things that make a mother feel so lost.
She confessed to herself that she missed the Tymbrimi Ambassador. She missed him more than any of her three husbands and more even, God help her, than she missed her own strange son.
It was fascinating to watch Kault play with a ne’ squirrel, one of the native animals of these southern plains. He coaxed the small creature closer by holding out ripe nuts in his great Thennanin hands. He had been at it for over an hour while they waited out the hot noonday sun under the cover of a thick cluster of thorny bramble.
Uthacalthing wondered at the sight. The universe never seemed about to cease surprising him. Even bluff, oblivious, obvious Kault was a perpetual source of amazement.
Quivering nervously, the ne’ squirrel gathered its courage. It took two more hops toward the huge Thennanin and stretched out its paws. It plucked up one of the nuts.
Astonishing. How did Kault do it?
Uthacalthing rested in the muggy shade. He did not recognize the vegetation here in the uplands overlooking the estuary where his pinnace had come down, but he felt he was growing familiar with the scents, the rhythms, the gently throbbing pain of daily life that surged and flowed through and all around the deceptively quiet glade.
His corona brought him touches from tiny predators, now waiting out the hot part of the day, but soon to resume stalking even smaller prey. There were no large animals, of course, but Uthacalthing kenned a swarm of ground-hugging insectoids grubbing through the detritus nearby, seeking tidbits for their queen.
The tense little ne’ squirrel hovered between caution and gluttony as it approached once more to feed from Kault’s outstretched hand.
He should not be able to do that. Uthacalthing wondered why the squirrel trusted the Thennanin, so huge, so intimidating and powerful. Life here on Garth was nervous, paranoid in the wake of the Bururalli catastrophe—whose deathly pall still hung over these steppes far east and south of the Mountains of Mulun.
Kault could not be soothing the creature as a Tymbrimi might—by glyph-singing to it in gentle tones of empathy. A Thennanin had all the psi sense of a stone.
But Kault spoke to the creature in his own highly inflected dialect of Galactic. Uthacalthing listened.
“Know you—sight-sound-image—an essence of destiny, yours? Little one? Carry you—genes-essence-destiny—the fate of star-treaders, your descendants?”
The ne’ squirrel quivered, cheeks full. The native animal seemed mesmerized as Kault’s crest puffed up and deflated, as his breathing slits sighed with every moist exhalation. The Thennanin could not commune with the creature, not as Uthacalthing might. And yet, the squirrel somehow appeared to sense Kault’s love.
How ironic, Uthacalthing thought. Tymbrimi lived their lives awash in the everflowing music of life, and yet he did not personally identify with this small animal. It was one of hundreds of millions, after all. Why should he care about this particular individual?
Yet Kault loved the creature. Without empathy sense, without any direct being-to-being link, he cherished it entirely in abstract. He loved what the little thing represented, its potential.
Many humans still claim that one can have empathy without psi, Uthacalthing pondered. To “put one’s self into another’s shoes,” went the ancient metaphor. He had always thought it to be one of their quaint pre-Contact ideas, but now he wasn’t so certain. Perhaps Earthlings were sort of midway between Thennanin and Tymbrimi in this matter of how one empathized with others.
Kault’s people passionately believed in Uplift, in the potential of diverse life forms eventually to achieve sapiency. The long-lost Progenitors of Galactic culture had commanded this, billions of years ago, and the Thennanin Clan took the injunction very seriously. Their uncompromising fanaticism on this issue went beyond being admirable. At times—as during the present Galactic turmoil—it made them terribly dangerous.
But now, ironically, Uthacalthing was counting on that fanaticism. He hoped to lure it into action of his own design.
The ne’ squirrel snatched one last nut from Kault’s open hand and then decided it had enough. With a swish of its fan-shaped tail it scooted off into the undergrowth. Kault turned to look at Uthacalthing, his throat slits flapping as he breathed.
“I have studied genome reports gathered by the Earth-ling ecologists,” the Thennanin Consul said. “This planet had impressive potential, only a few millennia ago. It should never have been ceded to the Bururalli. The loss of Garth’s higher life forms was a terrible tragedy.”
“The Nahalli were punished for what their clients did, weren’t they?” Uthacalthing asked, though he already knew the answer.
“Aye. They were reverted to client status and put under foster care to a responsible elder patron clan. My own, in fact. It is a most sad case.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the Nahalli are actually quite a mature and elegant people. They simply did not understand the nuances required in uplifting pure carnivores and so failed horribly with their Bururalli clients. But the error was not theirs alone. The Galactic Uplift Institute must take part in the blame.”
Uthacalthing suppressed a human-style smile. Instead his corona spiraled out a faint glyph, invisible to Kault. “Would good news here on Garth help the Nahalli?” he asked.
“Certainly.” Kauh expressed the equivalent of a shrug with his flapping crest. “We Thennanin were not in any way associated with the Nahalli when the catastrophe occurred, of course, but that changed when they were demoted and given under our guidance. Now, by adoption, my clan shares responsibility for this wounded place. It is why a consul was sent here, to make certain the Earthlings do not do even more harm to this sorry world.”
“And have they?”
Kault’s eyes closed and opened again. “Have they what?”
“Have the Earthlings done a bad job, here?”
Kault’s crest flapped again. “No. Our peoples may be at war, theirs and mine, but I have found no new grievances here to tally against them. Their ecological management program was exemplary.
“However, I do plan to file a report concerning the activities of the Gubru.”
Uthacalthing believed he could interpret bitterness in Kault’s voice inflection*. They had already seen signs of the collapse of the environmental recovery effort. Two days ago they had passed a reclamation station, now abandoned, its sampling traps and test cages rusting. The gene-storage bins had gone rancid after refrigeration failed.
An agonized note had been left behind, telling of the choice of a neo-chimpanzee ecology aide—who had decided to abandon his post in order to help a sick human colleague. It would be a long journey to the coast for an antidote to the coercion gas.
Uthacalthing wondered if they ever made it. Clearly the facility had been thoroughly dosed. The nearest outpost of civilization was very far from here, even by hover car.
Obviously, the Gubru were content to leave the station unmanned. “If this pattern holds, it must be documented,” Kault said. “I am glad you allowed me to persuade you to lead us back toward inhabited regions, so we can collect more data on these crimes.”
This time Uthacalthing did smile at Kault’s choice of words. “Perhaps we will find something of interest,” he agreed.
They resumed their journey when the sun, Gimelhai, had slipped down somewhat from its burning zenith.
The plains southeast of the Mulun range stretched like the undulating wavetops of a gently rolling sea, frozen in place by the solidity of earth. Unlike the Vale of Sind and the open lands on the other side of the mountains, here there were no signs of plant and animal life forms introduced by Earth’s ecologists, only native Garth creatures.
And empty niches.
Uthacalthing felt the sparseness of species types as a gaping emptiness in the aura of this land. The metaphor that came to mind was that of a musical instrument missing half its strings.
Yes. Apt. Poetically appropriate. He hoped Athaclena was taking his advice and studying this Earthling way of viewing the worM.
Deep, on. the level of nahakieri, he had dreamt of his daughter last night. Dream-picted her with her corona reaching, kenning the threatening, frightening beauty of a visitation by tutsunucann. Trembling, Uthacalthing had awakened against his will, as if instinct had driven him to flee that glyph.
Through anything other than tutstmucann he might have learned more of Athaclena, of how she fared and what she did. But tutsunucann only shimmered—the essence of dreadful expectation. From that glimmer he knew only that she still lived. Nothing more.
That will have to do, for now.
Kault carried most of their supplies. The big Thennanin walked at an even pace, not too difficult to follow. Uthacalthing suppressed body changes that would have made the trek easier for a short while but cost him in the long run. He settled for a loosening in his gait, a wide flaring of his nostrils -- making them flat but broad to let in more air yet keep out the ever-present dust.
Ahead, a series of small, tree-lined hummocks lay by a streambed, just off their path toward the distant ruddy mountains. Uthacalthing checked his compass and wondered if the hills should look familiar. He regretted the loss of his inertial guidance recorder in the crash. If only he could be sure . . .
There. He blinked. Had he imagined a faint blue flash?
“Kault.”
The Thennanin lumbered to a stop. “Mmm?” He turned around to face Uthacalthing. “Did you speak, colleague?”
“Kault, I think we should head that way. We can reach those hills in time to make camp and forage before dark.”
“Mmm. It is somewhat off our path.” Kault puffed for a moment. “Very well. I will defer to you in this.” Without delay he bent and began striding toward the three green-topped mounds.
It was about an hour before sunset when they arrived by the watercourse and began setting camp. While Kault erected their camouflaged shelter, Uthacalthing tested pulpy, reddish, oblong fruits plucked from the branches of nearby trees. His portable meter declared them nutritious. They had a sweet, tangy taste.
The seeds inside, though, were hard, obdurate, obviously evolved to withstand stomach acids, to pass through an animal’s digestive system and scatter on the ground with its feces. It was a common adaptation for fruit-bearing trees on many worlds.
Probably some large, omnivorous creature had once depended on the fruit as a food source and repaid the favor by spreading the seeds far and wide. If it climbed for its meals it probably had the rudiments of hands. Perhaps it even had Potential. The creatures might have someday become pre-sentient, entered into the cycle of Uplift, and eventually become a race of sophisticated people.
But all that ended with the Bururalli. And not only the large animals died. The tree’s fruit now fell too close to the parent. Few embryos could break out of tough seeds that had evolved to be etched away in the stomachs of the missing symbionts. Those saplings that did germinate languished in their parents’ shade.
There should have been a forest here instead of a tiny, scrabbling woody patch.
I wonder if this is the place, Uthacalthing thought. There were so few landmarks out on this rolling plain. He looked around, but there were no more tantalizing flashes of blue.
Kault sat in the entrance of their shelter and whistled low, atonal melodies through his breathing slits. Uthacalthing dropped an armload of fruit in front of the Thennanin and wandered down toward the gurgling water. The stream rolled over a bank of semi-clear stones, taking up the reddening hues of twilight.
That was where Uthacalthing found the artifact.
He bent and picked it up. Examined it.
Native chert, chipped and rubbed, flaked along sharp, glassy-edged lines, dull and round on one side where a hand could find a grip. ...
Uthacalthing’s corona waved. Lurrunanu took form again, wafting among his silvery tendrils. The glyph rotated slowly as Uthacalthing turned the little stone axe in his hand. He contemplated the primitive tool, and lurrunanu regarded Kault, still whistling to himself higher up the hillside.
The’ glyph tensed and launched itself toward the hulking Thennanin.
Stone tools—among the hallmarks of pre-sentience, Uthacalthing thought. He had asked Athaclena to watch out for signs, for there were rumors . . . tales that told of sight-ings in the wild back country of Garth . . .
“Uthacalthing!”
He swiveled, shifting to hide the artifact behind his back as he faced the big Thennanin. “Yes, Kault?”
“I ...” Kault appeared uncertain. “Metoh kanmi, b’twuil’ph ... I ...” Kault shook his head. His eyes closed and opened again. “I wonder if you have tested these fruits for my needs, as well as yours.”
Uthacalthing sighed. What does it take? Do Thennanin have any curiosity at all?
He let the crude artifact slip out of his hand, to drop into the river mud where he had found it. “Aye, my colleague. They are nutritious, so long as you remember to take your supplements.”
He walked back to join his companion for a fireless supper by the growing sparkle of the galaxies’ light.
Gorillas dropped over both sharp rims of the narrow canyon, lowering themselves on stripped forest vines. They slipped carefully past smoking crevices where recent explosions had torn the escarpment. Landslides were still a danger. Nevertheless, they hurried.
On their way down they passed through shimmering rainbows. The gorillas’ fur glistened under coatings of tiny water droplets.
A terrible growling accompanied their descent, echoing from the cliff faces and covering their labored breathing. It had hidden the noise of battle, smothering the bellow of death that had raged here only minutes before. Briefly, the dinsome waterfall had had competition but not for long.
Where its fremescent torrent had formerly fallen to crash upon glistening smooth stones, it now splattered and spumed against torn metal and polymers. Boulders’dislodged from the cliffsides had pounded the new debris at the foot of the falls. Now the water worked it flatter still.
Athaclena watched from atop the overlooking bluffs. “We do not want them to know how we managed this,” she said to Benjamin.
“The filament we bunched up under the falls was pretreated to decay. It’ll all wash away within a few hours, ser. When the enemy gets a relief party in here, they won’t know what ruse we used to trap this bunch.”
They watched the gorillas join a party of chim warriors poking through the wreckage of three Gubru hover tanks. Finally satisfied that all was clear, the chims slung their crossbows and began pulling out bits of salvage, directing the gorillas to lift this boulder or that shattered piece of armor plate out of the way.
The enemy patrol had come in fast, following the scent of hidden prey. Their instruments told them that someone had taken refuge behind the waterfall. And it was a perfectly logical place for such a hideaway—a barrier hard for their normal detectors to penetrate. Only their special resonance scanners had flared, betraying the Earthlings who had taken technology under there.
In order to take those hiding by surprise, the tanks had flown directly up the canyon, covered overhead by swarming battle drones of the highest quality, ready for combat.
Only they did not find much of a battle awaiting them. There were, in fact, no Earthlings at all behind the torrent. Only bundles of thin, spider-silk fiber.
And a trip wire.
And—planted all through the cliffsides—a few hundred kilos of homemade nitroglycerin.
Water spray had cleared away the dust, and swirling eddies had carried off myriad tiny pieces. Still the greater part of the Gubru strike force lay where it had been when explosions rocked the overhanging walls, filling the sky with a rain of dark volcanic stone. Athaclena watched a chim emerge from the wreckage. He hooted and held up a small, deadly Gubru missile. Soon a stream of alien munitions found its way into the packs of the waiting gorillas. The large pre-sentients began climbing out again through the multi-hued spray.
Athaclena scanned the narrow streaks of blue sky that could be seen through the forest canopy. In minutes the invader would have its fighters here. The colonial irregulars must be gone by then, or their fate would be the same as the poor chims who rose last week in the Vale of Sind.
A few refugees had made it to the mountains after that debacle. Fiben Bolger was not one of them. No messenger had come with Gailet Jones’s promised notes. For lack of information, Athaclena’s staff could only guess how long it would take for the Gubru to respond to this latest ambush.
“Pace, Benjamin.” Athaclena glanced meaningfully at her
timepiece.
Her aide nodded. “I’ll go hurry ‘em up, ser.” He sidled over next to their signaler. The young chimmie began waving flapping flags.
More gorillas and chims appeared at the cliff edge, scrambling up onto the wet, glistening grass. As the chim scavengers climbed out of the water-carved chasm, they grinned at Athaclena and hurried off, guiding their larger cousins toward secret paths through the forest.
Now she no longer needed to coax and persuade., For Athaclena had become an honorary Earthling. Even those who had earlier resented taking orders “from an Eatee” now obeyed her quickly, cheerfully.
It was ironic. In signing the articles that made them consorts, she and Robert had made it so that they now saw less of each other than ever. She no longer needed his authority as the sole free adult human, so he had set forth to raise havoc of his own elsewhere.
I wish I had studied such things better, she pondered. She was unsure just what was legally implied by signing such a document before witnesses. Interspecies “marriages” tended to be more for official convenience than anything else. Partners in a business enterprise might “marry,” even though they came from totally different genetic lines. A reptiloid Bi-Gle might enter into consort with a chitinous F’ruthian. One did not expect issue from such joinings. But it was generally expected that the partners appreciate each other’s
company.
She felt funny about the whole thing. In a special sense, she now had a “husband.” And he was not here. So it was for Mathicluanna, all those long, lonely years, Athaclena thought, fingering the locket that hung from a chain around her throat. Uthacalthing’s message thread had joined her mother’s in there. Perhaps their laylacllapt’n spirits wound together in there, close as their bond had been in life.
Perhaps I begin to comprehend something I never understood about them, she wondered.
“Ser? . . . Uh, ma’am?”
Athaclena blinked and looked up. Benjamin was motioning to her from the trailhead, where one of the ubiquitous vine clusters came together around a small pool of pinkish water. A chimmie technician squatted by an opening in the crowded vines, adjusting a delicate instrument.
Athaclena approached. “You have word from Robert?”
“Yesser,” the chimmie said. “I definitely am detecting one of th’ trace chemicals he took along with him.”
“Which is it?” she asked tensely.
The chimmie grinned. “Th’ one with th’ left-handed adenine spiral. It’s the one we’d agreed would mean victory.”
Athaclena breathed a little easier. So, Robert’s party, too, had met with success. His group had gone to attack a small enemy observation post, north of Lome Pass, and must have engaged the enemy yesterday. Two minor successes in as many days. At this rate they might wear the Gubru down in, say, a million years or so.
“Reply that we, also, have met our goals.”
Benjamin smiled as he handed the signaler a vial of clear fluid, which was poured into the pool. Within hours the tagged molecules would be detectable many miles away. Tomorrow, probably, Robert’s signaler would report her message.
The method was slow. But she imagined the Gubru would have absolutely no inkling of it—for a while, at least.
“They’re finished with the salvage, general. We’d better scoot.”
She nodded. “Yes. Scoot we shall, Benjamin.”
In a minute they were running together up the verdant trail toward the pass and home.
A little while later, the trees behind them rattled and thunder shook the sky. Clamorous booms pealed, and for a time the waterfall’s roar fell away under a raptor’s scream of frustrated vengeance.
Too late, she cast contemptuously at the enemy fighters.
This time.
The enemy had started using better drones. This time the added expense saved them from annihilation.
The battered Gubru patrol retreated through dense jungle, blasting a ruined path on all sides for two hundred meters. Trees blew apart, and sinuous vines whipped like tortured worms. The hover tanks kept this up until they arrived at an area open enough for heavy lifters to land. There the remaining vehicles circled, facing outward, and kept up nearly continuous fire in all directions.
Robert watched as one party of chims ventured too close with their hand catapults and chemical grenades. They were caught in the exploding trees, cut down in a hail of wooden splinters, torn to shreds in the indisciminate scything.
Robert used hand signals to send the withdraw-and-disperse order rippling from squad to squad. No more could be done to this convoy, not with the full force of the Gubru military no doubt already on its way here. His bodyguards cradled their captured saber rifles and darted into the shadows ahead of him and to the flanks.
Robert hated the way the chims kept this web of protection around him, forbidding him to approach a skirmish site until all was safe. There was just no helping it though. They were right, dammit.
Clients were expected to protect their patrons as individuals—and the patron race, in turn, protected the client race as a species.
Athaclena seemed better able to handle this sort of thing. She was from a culture that had come into existence from the start assuming that this was the way things were. Also, he admitted, she doesn’t worry about machismo. One of his problems was that he seldom got to see or touch the enemy. And he so wanted to touch the Gubru.
“The withdrawal was executed successfully before the sky filled with alien battlecraft. His company of Earthling irregulars split up into small groups, to make their separate ways to dispersed encampments until they received the call to arms again over the forest vine network. Only Robert’s squad headed back toward the heights wherein their cave headquarters lay.
That required taking a wide detour, for they were far east in the Mulun range, and the enemy had set up outposts on several mountain peaks, easily supplied by air and defended with space-based weaponry. One of these stood along their most direct path home, so the chim scouts led Robert’s group down a jungle crevice, just north of Lome Pass.
The ropelike transfer vines lay everywhere. They were wonders, certainly, but they made for slow going down here below the heights. Robert had had plenty of time to think. Mostly he wondered what the Gubru were doing coming up here into the mountains at all.
Oh, he was glad they came, for it gave the Resistance a chance to strike at them. Otherwise, the irregulars might as well spit at the enemy, with their vast, overpowering weaponry.
But why were the Gubru bothering at all with the tiny guerrilla movement up in the Mulun when they had a firm grip on the rest of the planet? Was there some symbolic reason—something encrusted in Galactic tradition—that required they reduce every isolated pocket of resistance?
But even that would not explain the large civilian presence at those mountaintop outposts. The Gubru were pouring scientists into the Mulun. They were looking for something.
Robert recognized this area. He signaled for a halt.
“Let’s stop and look in on the gorillas,” he said.
His lieutenant, a bespectacled, -middle-aged chimmie named Elsie, frowned and looked at him dubiously. “The enemy’s gasbots sometimes dose an area without cause, sir. Just randomly. We chims will only be able to rest easy after you’re safe underground again.”
Robert was definitely not looking forward to the caverns, especially since Athaclena wouldn’t be back from her next mission for several days. He checked his compass and map.
“Come on, the refuge is only a few miles off our path. Anyway, if I know you chims from the Howletts Center, you must be keeping your precious gorillas in a place that’s even safer than the caves.”
He had her there, and Elsie clearly knew it. She put her fingers to her mouth and trilled a quick whistle, sending the scouts hurrying off in a new direction, to the southwest, darting through the upper parts of the trees.
In spite of the broken terrain, Robert made his way mostly along the ground. He couldn’t dash pellmell along narrow branches, not for mile after mile like the chims. Humans just weren’t specialized for that sort of thing.
They climbed another side canyon that was hardly more than a split in the side of a mammoth bulwark of stone. Down the narrow defile floated soft wisps of fog, made opalescent by multiple refractions of daylight. There were rainbows, and once, when the sun came out behind and above him, Robert looked down at a bank of drifting moisture and saw his own shadow surrounded by a triply colored halo, like those given saints in ancient iconography.
It was the glory ... an unusually appropriate technical term for a perfect, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree reverse rainbow—much rarer than its more mundane cousins that would arch over any misty landscape, lifting the hearts of the blameless and the sinful alike.
If only I weren’t so damn rational, he thought. If I didn’t know exactly what it was, I might have taken it as a sign.
He sighed. The apparition faded even before he turned to move on.
There were times when Robert actually envied his ancestors, who had lived in dark ignorance before the twenty-first century and seemed to have spent most of their time making up weird, ornate explanations of the world to fill the yawning gap of their ignorance. Back then, one could believe in anything at all.
Simple, deliciously elegant explanations of human behavior—it apparently never mattered whether they were true or not, as long as they were incanted right. “Party lines” and wonderful conspiracy theories abounded. You could even believe in your own sainthood if you wanted. Nobody was there to show yo.u, with clear experimental proof, that there was no easy answer, no magic bullet, no philosopher’s stone, only simple, boring sanity.
How narrow the Golden Age looked in retrospect. No more than a century had intervened between the end of the Darkness and contact with Galactic society. For not quite a hundred years, war was unknown to Earth.
And now look at us, Robert thought. I wonder, does the Universe conspire against us? We finally grow up, make peace with ourselves . . . and emerge to find the stars already owned by crazies and monsters.
No, he corrected himself. Not all monsters. In fact, the majority of Galactic clans were quite decent folk. But moderate majorities were seldom allowed to live in peace by fanatics, either in Earth’s past or in the Five Galaxies today.
Perhaps golden ages simply aren’t meant to last.
Sound traveled oddly in these closed, rocky confines, amid the crisscross lacing of native vines. One moment it seemed as if he were climbing in a world gone entirely silent, as if the rolling wisps of shining haze were folds of cotton batting that enveloped and smothered all sound. The next instant, he might suddenly pick up a snatch of conversation -- just a few words—and know that some strange trick of acoustics had carried back to him a whispered remark between two of his scouts, possibly hundreds of meters away.
He watched them, the chims. They still looked nervous, these irregular soldiers who had until a few months ago been farmers, miners, and backwoods ecological workers. But they were growing more confident day by day. Tougher and more determined.
And more feral, Robert also realized, seeing them flit into and out of view among the untamed trees. There was something fierce and wild in the way they moved, in the way their eyes darted as they leaped from branch to branch. One seldom seemed to need words to know what the other was doing. A grunt, a quick gesture, a grimace, these were often more than enough.
Other than their bows and quivers and handspun weapons pouches, the chims mostly traveled naked. The softening trappings of civilization, the shoes and factory-made fabrics, were all gone. And with them had departed some illusions.
Robert glanced down at himself—bare-shanked, clad in breechcloth, moccasins, and cloth knapsack, bitten, scratched and hardening every day. His nails were dirty. His hair had been getting in the way so he’d cut it off in front and tied it in back. His beard had long ago stopped itching.
Some of the Eatees think that humans need more uplifting—that we are ourselves little more than animals. Robert leaped for a vine and swung over a dark patch of evil-looking thorns, coming to land in an agile crouch upon a fallen log. It’s a fairly common belief among the Galactics. And who am I to say they’re wrong?
There was a scurry of movement up ahead. Rapid hand signals crossed the gaps between the trees. His nearby guards, those directly responsible for his safety, motioned for him to detour along the westward, upwind side of the canyon. After climbing a few score meters higher he learned why. Even in the dampness he caught the musty, oversweet smell of old coercion dust, of corroding metal, and of death.
Soon he reached a point where he could look across the little vale to a narrow scar—already healing under layers of new growth—which ended in a crumpled mass of once-sleek machinery, now seared and ruined.
There were soft chim whispers and hand signals among the scouts. They nervously approached and began picking through the debris while others fingered their weapons and watched the sky; Robert thought he saw jutting white bones amid the wreckage, already picked clean by the ever-hungry jungle. If he had tried to approach any closer, of course, the chims would have physically restrained him, so he waited until Elsie returned with a report.
“They were overloaded,” she said, fingering the small, black flight recorder. Emotion obviously made it hard for her to bring forth words. “They were tryin’ to carry too many humans to Port Helenia, the day just after th’ hostage gas was first used. Some were already sick, and it was their only transport.
“The flitter didn’t clear th’ peak, up there.” She gestured at the fog-shrouded heights to the south. “Must’ve hit th’ rocks a dozen times, to fall this far.
“Shall . . . shall we leave a couple chims, sir? A ... a burial detail?”
Robert scuffed the ground. “No. Mark it. Map it. I’ll ask Athaclena if we should photograph it later, for evidence.
“Meanwhile, let Garth take what she needs from them. I . . .”
He turned away. The chims weren’t the only ones finding words hard right now. With a nod he set the party going again. As he clambered higher, Robert’s thoughts burned. There had to be a way to hurt the enemy worse than they had so far!
Days ago, on a dark, moonless night, he had watched while twelve selected chims sailed down onto a Gubru encampment, riding the winds on homemade, virtually invisible paper gliders. They had swooped in, dropped their nitro and gas bombs, and slipped away by starlight before the enemy even knew anything was happening.
There had been noise and smoke, uproar and squawking confusion, and no way at all to tell how effective the raid was. Nevertheless, he remembered how he had hated watching from the sidelines. He was a trained pilot, more qualified than any of these mountain chims for a mission like that!
But Athaclena had given firm instructions to which the neo-chimps all adhered. Robert’s ass was sacred.
It’s my own damn fault, he thought as he scrambled through a dense thicket. By making Athaclena his formal consort, he had given her that added status she had needed to run this small insurrection . . . and some degree of authority over him, as well. No longer could he do as he damn well pleased.
So, she was his wife now, in a fashion. Some marriage, he thought. While Athaclena kept adjusting her appearance to look more human, that only served to remind him of what she couldn’t do, frustrating Robert. No doubt that was one reason why interspecies consortions were rare!
I wonder what Megan thinks of the news ... 7 wonder if our messenger ever got through.
“Hssst!”
He looked quickly to his right. Elsie stood balanced on a tree branch. She pointed upslope, to where an opening in the fog exposed a view of high clouds skimming like glass-bottomed boats on invisible pressure layers in the deep blue sky. Underneath the clouds could be seen the tree-fringed slope of a mountain. Narrow curls of smoke spiraled upward from shrouded places on its flanks.
“Mount Fossey,” Elsie said, concisely. And Robert knew, at once, why the chims felt this might be a safe place . . . safe enough even for their precious gorillas.
Only a few semi-active volcanoes lay along the rim of the Sea of Cilmar. Still, all through the Mulun there were places where the ground occasionally trembled. And at rare intervals lava poured forth. The range was still growing.
Mount Fossey hissed. Vapor condensed in shaggy, serpentine shapes above geothermal vents, where pools of hot water steamed and intermittently burst forth in frothing geysers. The ubiquitous transfer vines came together here from all directions, twisting into great cables as they snaked up the flanks of the semi-dormant volcano. Here they held market in shady, smoky pools, where trace elements that had percolated through narrow trails of hot stone finally entered the forest economy.
“I should’ve guessed.” Robert laughed. Of course the Gubru would be unlikely to detect anything here. A few unclothed anthropoids on these slopes would be nothing amid all this heat, spume, and chemical potpourris. If the invaders ever did come to check, the gorillas and their guardians could just melt into the surrounding jungle and return after the interlopers left.
“Whose idea was this?” he asked as they approached under the shade of a high forest canopy. The smell of sulfur grew stronger.
“Th’ gen’ral thought of it,” Elsie answered.
Figures. Robert didn’t feel resentful. Athaclena was bright, even for a Tymbrimi, and he knew he himself wasn’t much above human average, if that. “Why wasn’t I told about it?”
Elsie looked uncomfortable. “Um, you never asked, ser. You were busy with your experiments, findin’ out about the optical fibers and the enemy’s detection trick. And ...”
Her voice trailed off.
“And?” he insisted.
She shrugged. “And we weren’t sure you wouldn’t ever get dosed with th’ gas, sooner or later. If that happened you’d have to report to town for antidote. You’d be asked questions -- and maybe psi-scanned.”
Robert closed his eyes. Opened them. Nodded. “Okay. For a moment there I wondered if you trusted me.”
“Ser!”
“Never mind.” He waved. Athaclena’s decision had been proper, logical—once again. He wanted to think about it as little as possible.
“Let’s go see the gorillas.”
* * *
They sat about in small family groups and were easily distinguished at a distance—much larger, darker, and hairier than their neo-chimpanzee cousins. Their big, peaked faces—as black as obsidian—bore expressions of peaceful concentration as they ate their meals, or groomed each other, or worked at the main task that had been assigned them, weaving cloth for the war.
Shuttles flew across broad wooden looms, carrying homespun weft over warped strands, snicking and clicking to a rhythm matched by the great apes’ rumbling song. The ratcheting and the low, atonal grunting followed Robert as he and his party moved toward the center of the refuge.
Now and then a weaver would stop work, putting her shuttle aside to wave her hands in a flurry of motion, making conversation with a neighbor. Robert knew sign-talk well enough to follow some of the gossip, but the gorillas seemed to speak with a dialect that was quite different from that used by infant chims. It was simple speech, yes, but also elegant in its own way, with a gentle style that was all their own.
Clearly, these were not just big chims but a completely different race, another path taken. A separate route to sentience.
The gorilla groups each seemed to consist of a number of adult females, their young, a few juveniles, and one hulking silver-backed adult male. The patriarch’s fur was always gray along his spine and ribs. The top of his head was peaked and imposing. Uplift engineering had altered the neo-gorilla’s stance, but the bigger males still had to use at least one knuckle when they walked. Their huge chests and shoulders made them too top-heavy still to move bipedally.
In contrast, the lithe gorilla children moved easily on two legs. Their foreheads were rounded, smooth, without the severe sloping and bony brow ridges that would later give them such deceptively fierce countenances. Robert found it interesting how much alike infants of all three races looked -- gorillas, chims, and humans. Only later in life did the dramatic’ differences of inheritance and destiny become fully apparent.
Neoteny, Robert thought. It was a classic, pre-Contact theory that had proven more valid than not—one proposing that part of the secret of sapiency was to remain as childlike as possible, for as long as possible. For instance, human beings retained the faces, the adaptability, and (when it was not snuffed out) the insatiable curiosity of young anthropoids, even well into adulthood.
Was this trait an accident? One which enabled pre-sentient Homo habilis to make the supposedly impossible leap—uplifting himself to starfaring intelligence by his own bootstraps? Or was it a gift from those mysterious beings some thought must have once meddled in human genes, the long-hypothesized missing patrons of humanity?
All that was conjecture, but one thing was clear. Other Earthly mammals largely lost all interest in learning and play after puberty. But humans, dolphins—and now, more and more with each generation, neo-chimpanzees—retained that fascination with the world with which they entered it.
Someday grown gorillas might also share this trait. Already these members of an altered tribe were brighter and remained curious longer than their fallow Earthly kin. Someday their descendants, too, might live out their life spans forever young.
If the Galactics ever allow it, that is.
Infant gorillas wandered about freely, poking their noses into everything. They were never slapped or chastised, only pushed gently aside when they got in the way, usually with a pat and a chuffed vocalization of affection. As he passed one group, Robert even caught a glimpse of a gray-flanked male mounting one of his females up in the bushes. Three youngsters crawled over the male’s broad back, prying at his massive arms. He ignored them, simply closing his eyes and hunkering down—doing his duty by his species.
More infants scurried through breaking foliage to tumble in front of Robert. From their mouths hung strips of some plastic material that they chewed into frayed tatters. Two of the children stared up at him in something like awe. But the last one, less shy than the others, waved its hands in eager, if sloppy signs. Robert smiled and picked the little fellow up.
Higher on the hillside, above the chain of fog-shrouded hot springs, Robert saw other brown shapes moving through the trees. “Younger males,” Elsie explained. “And bulls too old to hold a patriarchy. Back before the invasion, the planners at th’ Howletts Center were trying to decide whether to intervene in their family system. It’s their way, yes, but it’s so hard on the poor males—a couple years’ pleasure and glory, but at the cost of loneliness most of the rest of their lives.” She shook her head. “We hadn’t made up our minds before the Gubru came. Now maybe we’ll never get the chance.”
Robert refrained from commenting. He hated the restrictive treaties, but he still had trouble with what Elsie’s colleagues had been doing at the Howletts Center. It had been arrogance, to take the decision into their own hands. He could see no happy outcome to it.
As they approached the hot springs, he saw chims moving about seriously on various errands. Here one peered into the mouth of a huge gorilla easily six times her mass, probing with a dental tool. There another patiently taught sign language to a class of ten gorilla children.
“How many chims are here to take care of them?”
“Dr. de Shriver from the Center, about a dozen of the chim techs that used to work with her, plus about twenty guards and volunteers from nearby settlements. It depends on when we sometimes take Villas off to help in the war.”
“How do they feed them all?” Robert asked as they descended to the banks of one of the springs. Some of the chims from his party had arrived ahead of them and were already lounging by the humid bank, sipping at soup cups. A small nearby cave held a makeshift storage chamber where resident workers in aprons were ladling out more steaming mugs.
“It’s a problem.” Elsie nodded. “The gorillas have finicky digestions, and it’s hard to get them the right balance of foods. Even in th’ restored ranges in Africa, a big silver-back needs up to sixty pounds of vegetation, fruit, an’ insects a day. Natural gorillas have to move around a lot to get that kind of forage, an’ we can’t allow that.”
Robert lowered himself to the damp stones and released the gorilla infant, who scampered down to the poolside, still chewing his ragged strip of plastic. “It sounds like quite a quandary,” he said to Elsie.
“Yeah. Fortunately, Dr. Schultz solved the problem just last year. I’m glad he had that satisfaction before he died.”
Robert removed his moccasins. The water looked hot. He dipped a toe and pulled it back quickly. “Ouch! How did he do it?”
“Um, beg your pardon?”
“What was Schultz’s solution?”
“Microbiology, ser.” She looked up suddenly, her eyes bright. “Ah, here they come with soup for us, too!”
, Robert accepted a cup from a chimmie whose apron must have come from cloth woven on the gorillas’ looms. She walked with a limp. Robert wondered if she had been wounded in some of the fighting.
“Thank you,” he said, appreciating the aroma. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. “Elsie, what d’you mean, microbiology?”
She sipped delicately. “Intestinal bacteria. Symbionts. We all have ‘em. Tiny critters that live in our guts, an’ in our mouths. They’re harmless partners, mostly. Help us digest our food in exchange for a free ride.”
“Ah.” Of course Robert knew about bio-symbionts; any school kid did.
“Dr. Schultz managed to come up with a suite of bugs that helps the Villas eat—and enjoy—a whole lot of native Garth vegetation. They—“
She was interrupted by a high-pitched little cry, unlike anything an ape might produce. “Robert!” shrieked a piping voice.
He looked up. Robert grinned. “April. Little April Wu. How are you, Sunshine?”
The little girl was dressed like Sheena, the jungle girl. She rode on the left shoulder of an adolescent male gorilla whose black eyes were patiently gentle. April tipped forward and waved her hands in a quick series of signs. The gorilla let go of her legs and she climbed up to stand on his shoulder, holding his head for balance. Her guardian chuffed uncomplainingly.
“Catch me, Robert!”
Robert hurried to his feet. Before he could say anything to stop her, she sprang off, a sun-browned windmill that streamed blo>d hair. He caught her in a tangle of legs. For a moment, until he had a sure grip, his heart beat faster than it had in battle or in climbing mountains.
He had known the little girl was being kept with the gorillas for safety. To his chagrin he realized how busy he had been since recovering “from his injuries. Too busy to think of this child, the only other human free in the mountains. “Hi, Pumpkin,” he said to her. “How’re you doing these days? Are you taking good care of the Villas?”
She nodded seriously. “I’ve gotta take good care of th’Villas, Robert. We gotta be in charge, ‘cause there’s just us.
Robert gave her a close hug. At that moment he suddenly felt terribly lonely. He had not realized how badly he missed human company. “Yup. It’s just you and me up here,” he said softly.
“You an’ me an’ Tymbimmie Athaclena,” she reminded him.
He met her eyes. “Nevertheless, you’re doing what Dr. de Shriver asks, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Dr. de Shriver’s nice. She says maybe I might get to go see Mommy and Daddy, sometime soon.”
Robert winced. He would have to talk to de Shriver about deceiving the youngster. The chim in charge probably could not bear to tell the human child the truth, that she would be in their care for a long time to come. To send her to Port Helenia now would be to give away the secret of the gorillas, something even Athaclena was now determined to prevent.
“Take me down there, Robert.” April demanded with a sweet smile. She pointed to a flat rock where the infant gorilla now capered before some of Robert’s group. The chims laughed indulgently at the little male’s antics. The satisfied, slightly smug tone in their voices was one Robert found understandable. A very young client race would naturally feel this way toward one even younger. The chims were very proprietary and parental toward the gorillas.
Robert, in turn, felt a little like a father with an unpleasant task ahead of him, one who must somehow break it to his children that the puppy would not remain theirs for long.
He carried April across to the other bank and set her down. The water temperature was much more bearable here. No, it was wonderful. He kicked off his moccasins and wriggled his toes in the tingling warmth.
April and the baby gorilla flanked Robert, resting their elbows on his knees. Elsie sat by his side. It was a brief, peaceful scene. If a neo-dolphin were magically to appear in the water, spy-hopping into view with a wide grin, the tableau would have made a good family portrait.
“Hey, what’s that you’ve got in your mouth?” He moved his hand toward the little gorilla, who quickly shied back out of reach. It regarded him with wide, curious eyes.
“What’s he chewing on?” Robert asked Elsie.
“It looks like a strip of plastic. But . . . but what’s it doing here? There isn’t supposed to be anything here that was manufactured on Garth.”
“It’s not Garth-made,” someone said. They looked up. It was the chimmie who had served them their soup. She smiled and wiped her hands on her apron before bending over to pick up the gorilla infant. It gave up the material without fuss. “All the little ones chew these strips. They tested safe, and we’re absolutely positive nothing about it screams Terran!’ to Gubru detectors.”
Elsie and Robert exchanged a puzzled look. “How can you be so sure? What is the stuff?”
She teased the little ape, waving the strip before its face until it chirped and grabbed it, popping the well-masticated piece back into its mouth.
“Some of their parents brought shredded bits of it back from our first successful ambush, back at the Howletts Center. They said it ‘smelled good.’ Now the brats chew it all the time.”
She grinned down at Elsie and Robert. “It’s that super-plastic fiber from the Gubru fighting vehicles. You know, that material that stops bullets flat?”
Robert and Elsie stared.
“Hey, Kongie. How about that?” The chimmie cooed at the little gorilla. “You clever little thing, you. Say, if you like chewing armor plating, how about taking on something really tasty next? How about a city? Maybe something simple, like New York?”
The baby lowered the frayed, wet end long enough to yawn, a wide gaping of sharp, glistening teeth.
The chimmie smiled. “Yum! Y’know, I think little Kongie likes the idea.”
“Hold still now,” Fiben told Gailet as he combed his fingers through her fur.
He needn’t have said anything. For although Gailet was turned away, presenting her back to him, he knew her face bore a momentary expression of beatific joy as he groomed her. When she looked like that—calm, relaxed, happy with the delight of a simple, tactile pleasure—her normally stern countenance took on a glow, one that utterly transformed her somewhat ordinary features.
It was only for a minute, unfortunately. A tiny, scurrying movement caught Fiben’s eye, and he pounced after it on instinct before it could vanish into her fine hair.
“Ow!” she cried when his fingernails bit a corner of skin, as well as a small squirming louse. Her chains rattled as she slapped his foot. “What are you doing!”
“Eating,” he muttered as he cracked the wriggling thing between his teeth. Even then, it didn’t quite stop struggling.
“You’re lying,” she said, in an unconvincing tone of voice.
“Shall I show it to you?”
She shuddered. “Never mind. Just go on with what you were doing.”
He spat out the dead louse, though for all their captors had been feeding them, he probably could use the protein. In all the thousands of times he had engaged in mutual grooming with other chims—friends, classmates, the Throop Family back on Cilmar Island—he had never before been so clearly reminded ofj>ne of the ritual’s original purposes, inherited from the jungle of long ago—that of ridding another chim of parasites. He hoped Gailet wouldn’t be too squeamish about doing the same for him. After sleeping on straw ticks for more than two weeks, he was starting to itch something awful.
His arms hurt. He had to stretch to reach Gailet, since they were chained to different parts of the stone room and could barely get close enough to do this.
“Well,” he said. “I’m almost finished, at least with those places you’re willing to uncover. I can’t believe the chimmie who said pink to me, a couple of months ago, is such a prude about nudity.”
Gailet only sniffed, not even deigning to answer. She had seemed glad enough to see him yesterday, when the renegade chims had brought him here from his former place of confinement. So many days of separate carceral isolation had made them as happy to see each other as long-lost siblings.
Now, though, it seemed she was back to finding fault with everything Fiben did. “Just a little more,” she urged. “Over to the left.”
“Gripe, gripe, gripe,” Fiben muttered under his breath. But he complied. Chims needed to touch and be touched, perhaps quite a bit more than their human patrons, who sometimes held hands in public but seldom more. Fiben found it nice to have someone to groom after all this time. Almost as pleasurable as having it done to you was doing it for somebody else.
Back in college he had read that humans once restricted most of their person-to-person touching to their sexual partners. Some dark-age parents had even refrained from hugging their kids! Those primitives hardly ever engaged in anything that could be likened to mutual grooming -- completely nonsexual scratching, combing, massaging one another, just for the pleasure of contact, with no sex involved at all.
A brief Library search had verified this slanderous rumor, to his amazement. No historical anecdote had ever brought home to Fiben so well just how much agnosy and craziness poor human mels and ferns had endured. It made forgiveness a little easier when he also saw pictures of old-time zoos and circuses and trophies of “the hunt.”
Fiben was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of keys rattling. The old-style wooden door slid open. Someone knocked and then walked in.
It was the chimmie who brought them their evening meals. Since being moved here, Fiben had not learned her name, but her heart-shaped face was striking, and somehow familiar.
Her bright zipsuit was of the style worn by the band of Probationers that worked for the Gubru. The costume was bound by elastic bands at ankles and wrists, and a holo-projection armband picted outstretched birds’ talons a few centimeters into space.
“Someone’s comin’ to see both of you,” the female Probie said lowly, softly. “I thought you’d want to know. Have time to get ready.”
Gailet nodded coolly. “Thank you.” She hardly glanced at the chimmie. But Fiben, in spite of his situation, watched their jailer’s sway as she turned and walked away.
“Damn traitors!” Gailet muttered. She strained against her slender chain, rattling it. “Oh, there are times when I wish I were a chen. I’d ... I’d ...”
Fiben looked up at the ceiling and sighed.
Gailet strained to turn and look at him. “What! You’ve maybe got a comment?”
Fiben shrugged. “Sure. If you were a chen, you just might be able to bust out of that skinny little chain. But then, they wouldn’t have used something like that if you were a male chim, would they?”
He lifted his own arms as far as they would go, barely enough to bring them into her view. Heavy links rattled. The chafing hurt his bandaged right wrist, so he let his hands drop to the concrete floor.
“I’d guess there were other reasons she wishes she was male,” came a voice from the doorway. Fiben looked up and saw the Probationer called Irongrip, the leader of the renegades. The chirri smiled theatrically as he rolled one end of his waxed mustache, an affectation Fiben was getting quite sick of.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear that last part, folks.”
Gailet’s upper lip curled in contempt. “So you were listening. So what? All that means is you’re an eavesdropper, as well as a traitor.”
The powerfully built chim grinned. “Shall I go for voyeur, also? Why don’t I have you two chained together, hm? Ought to make for lots of amusement, you like each other so much.”
Gailet snorted. She pointedly moved away from Fiben, shuffling over to the far wall.
Fiben refused to give the fellow the pleasure of a response. He returned Irongrip’s gaze evenly.
“Actually,” the Probationer went on, in a musing tone, “it’s pretty understandable, a chimmie like you, wishing she was a chen. Especially with that white breeding card of yours. Why, a white card’s damn near wasted on a girl!
“What I find hard to figure,” Irongrip said to Fiben, “is why you two have been doin’ what you were doin’—running around playing soldier for the man. It’s hard to figure. You with a blue card, her with a white—jeez, you two could do it any time she’s pink—with no pills, no asking her guardian, no by-your-leave ‘from the Uplift Board. All th’ kids you ever want, whenever you want ‘em.”
Gailet offered the chim a chilled stare. “You are disgusting.”
Irongrip colored. It was especially pronounced with his pale, shaved cheeks. “Why? Because I’m fascinated by what’s been deprived me? With what I can’t have?”
Fiben growled. “More like with what you can’t do.”
The blush deepened. Irongrip knew his feelings were betraying him. He bent over to bring his face almost even with Fiben’s. “Keep it up, college boy. Who knows what you’ll be able to do, once we’ve decided your fate.” He grinned.
Fiben wrinkled his nose. “Y’know, the color of a chen’s card isn’t everything. F’rinstance, even you’d probably get more girls if you just used a mouthwash once in a whi—‘
He grunted and doubled over as a fist drove into his abdomen. You pay for your pleasures, Fiben reminded himself as his stomach convulsed and he fought for breath. Still, from the look on the traitor’s face he must have struck paydirt. Irongrip’s reaction spoke volumes.
Fiben looked up to see concern written in Gailet Jones’s eyes. The expression instantly turned to anger.
“Will you two stop it! You’re acting like children . . . like pre-sentient—“
Irongrip whirled and pointed at her. “What do you know about it? Hm? Are you some sort of expert? Are you a member of the goddam Uplift Board? Are you even a mother, yet?”
“I’m a student of Galactic Sociology,” Gailet said rather stiffly.
Irongrip laughed bittterly. “A title given to reward a clever monkey! You must have really done some beautiful tricks on the jungle gym to get a real-as-life, scale-model, sheepskin doctorate!”
He crouched near her. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, little miss? Let me spell it for you. We’re all goddam pre-sentients! Go ahead. Deny it. Tell me I’m wrong!”
It was Gailet’s turn to change color. She glanced at Fiben, and he knew she was remembering that afternoon at the college in Port Helenia, when they had climbed to the top of the bell tower and looked out over a campus empty of humans, filled only with chim students and chim faculty trying to act as if nothing had changed. She had to be remembering how bitter it had been, seeing that scene as a Galactic would.
“I’m a sapient being,” she muttered, obviously trying to put conviction into her voice.
“Yeah,” Irongrip sneered. “What you mean to say, though, is that you’re just a little closer than the rest of us . . . closer to what the Uplift Board defines as a target for us neo-chims. Closer to what they think we ought to be.
“Tell me, though. What if you took a space trip to Earth, and the captain took a wrong turn onto D-level hyperspace, and you arrived a couple hundred years from now? What do you think would happen to your precious white card then?”
Gailet locked away. “Sic transit gloria mundi.” Irongrip snapped his fingers. “You’d be a relic then, obsolete, a phase long bypassed in the relentless progress of Uplift.” He laughed, reaching oui and taking her chin in his hand to make her meet his eyes. “You’d be Probationer, honey.”
Fiben surged forward but was caught short by his chains. The jolting stop sent pain shooting up from his right wrist, but in his anger Fiben hardly noticed. He was too filled with wrath to be able to speak. Dimly, as he snarled at the other chen, he knew that the same held for Gailet. It was all the more infuriating because it was just one more proof that the bastard was right.
Irongrip met Fiben’s gaze for a long moment before letting go of Gailet. “A hundred years ago,” he went on, “I would’ve been somethin’ special. They would’ve forgiven, ignored, my own little ‘quirks and drawbacks.’ They’d have given me a white card, for my cunning and my strength.
“Time is what decides it, my good little chen and chimmie. It’s all what generation you’re born in.”
He stood up straight. “Or is it?” Irongrip smiled. “Maybe it also depends on who your patrons are, hm? If the standards change, if the target image of the ideal future Pans sapiens changes, well ...” He spread his hands, letting the implication sink in.
Gailet was the first to find her voice.
“You . . . actually . . . expect . . . th’ Gubru ...”
Irongrip shrugged. “Time’s are achangin’, my darlings. I may yet have more grandkids than either of you.”
Fiben found the key to drive out the incapacitating anger and unlock his own voice. He laughed. He guffawed. “Yeah?” he asked, grinning. “Well, first you’ll haveta fix your other problem, boyo. How’re you going to pass on your genes if you can’t even get it up to—“
This time it was Irongrip’s unshod foot that lashed out. Fiben was more prepared and rolled aside to take the kick at an angle. But more blows followed in a dull rain.
There were no more words, though, and a quick glance told Fiben that it was Irongrip’s turn to be tongue-tied. Low sounds emerged as his mouth opened and closed, flecked with foam. Finally, in frustration, the tall chim gave up kicking at Fiben. He swiveled and stomped out.
The chimmie with the keys watched him go. She stood by the door, looking uncertain what to do.
Fiben grunted as he rolled over onto his back.
“Uh.” He winced as he felt his ribs. None seemed to be broken. “At least Simon Legree wasn’t able to perform a proper exit line. I half expected him to say: ‘I’ll be back, just you wait!’ or somethin’ equally original.”
Gailet shook her head. “What do you gain by baiting him?”
He shrugged. “I got my reasons.”
Gingerly, he backed against the wall. The chimmie in the billowing zipsuit was watching him, but when their eyes met she quickly blinked and turned to leave, closing the door behind her.
Fiben lifted his head and inhaled deeply, through his nose, several times.
“Now what are you doing?” Gailet asked.
He shook his head. “Nothin”. Just passin’ the time.”
When he looked again, Gailet had turned her back to him again. She seemed to be crying.
Small surprise, Fiben thought. It probably wasn’t as much fun for her, being a prisoner, as it had been leading a rebellion. For all the two of them knew, the Resistance was washed up, finished, kaput. And there wasn’t any reason to believe things had gone any better in the mountains. Athaclena and Robert and Benjamin might be dead or captured by now. Port Helenia was still ruled by birds and quislings.
“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to cheer her up. “You know what they say about the truest test of sapiency? You mean you haven’t heard of it? Why it’s just comin’ through when the chimps are down!”
Gailet wiped her eyes and turned her head to look at him. “Oh, shut up,” she said.
Okay, so it’s an old joke, Fiben admitted to himself. But it was worth a try .
Still, she motioned for him to turn around. “Come on. It’s your turn. Maybe . . .” She smiled weakly, as if uncertain whether or not to try a joke of her own. “Maybe I can find something to snack on, too.”
Fiben grinned. He shuffled about and stretched his chains until his back was as close to her as possible, not minding how it strained his various hurts. He felt her hands working to unknot his tangled, furry thatch and rolled his eyes upward.
“Ah, aahh,” he sighed.
A different jailer brought them their noon meal, a thin soup accompanied by two slices of bread. This male Probie possessed none of Irongrip’s fluency. In fact, he seemed to have trouble with even the simplest phrases and snarled when Fiben tried to draw him out. His left cheek twitched intermittently in a nervous tic, and Gailet whispered to Fiben that the feral glint in the chim’s eyes made her nervous.
Fiben tried to distract her. “Tell me about Earth,” he asked. “What’s it like?”
Gailet used a bread crust to sop up the last of her soup. “What’s to tell? Everybody knows about Earth.”
“Yeah. From video and from GoThere cube books, sure. But not from personal experience. You went as a child with your parents, didn’t you? That’s where you got your doctorate?”
She nodded. “University of Djakarta. “
“And then what?”
Her gaze was distant. “Then I applied for a position at the Terragens Center for Galactic Studies, in La Paz.”
Fiben knew of the place. Many of Earth’s diplomats, emissaries, and agents took training there, learning how the ancient cultures of the Five Galaxies thought and acted. It was crucial if the leaders were to plan a way for the three races of Earth to make their way in a dangerous universe. Much of the fate of the wolfling clan depended on the graduates of the CGS.
“I’m impressed you even applied,” he said, meaning it. “Did they ... I mean, did you pass?”
She nodded. “I ... it was close. I qualified. Barely. If I’d scored just a little better, they said there’d have been no question.”
Obviously, the memory was painful. She seemed undecided, as if tempted to change the subject. Gailet shook her head. “Then I was told that they’d prefer it if I returned to Garth instead. I should take up a teaching position, they said. They made it plain I’d be more useful here.”
“They? Who’s this ‘they’ you’re talking about?”
Gailet nervously picked at the fur on the back of her arm. She noticed what she was doing and made both hands lay still on her lap. “The Uplift Board,” she said quietly.
“But . . . but what do they have to say about assigning teaching positions, or influencing career choices for that matter?”
She looked at him. “They have a lot to say, Fiben, if they think neo-chimp or neo-dolphin genetic progress is at stake. They can keep you from becoming a spacer, for instance, out of fear your precious plasm might get irradiated. Or they can prevent you from entering chemistry as a profession, out of fear of unpredicted mutations.”
She picked up a piece of straw and twirled it slowly. “Oh, we have a lot more rights than other young client races. I know that, I keep reminding myself.”
“But they decided your genes were needed on Garth,” Fiben guessed in low voice.
She nodded. “There’s a point system. If I’d really scored well on the CGS exam it would’ve been okay. A few chims do get in.
“But I was at the margin. Instead they presented me with that damned white card—like it was some sort of consolation prize, or maybe a wafer for some sacrament—and they sent me back to my native planet, back to poor old Garth.
“It seems my raison d’etre is the babies I’ll have. Everything else is incidental.”
She laughed, somewhat bitterly. “Hell, I’ve been breaking the law for months now, risking my life and womb in this rebellion. Even if we’d have won—fat chance—I could get a big fat medal from the TAASF, maybe even ticker tape parades, and it wouldn’t matter. When all the hooplah died down I’d still be thrown into prison by the Uplift Board!”
“Oh, Goodall,” Fiben sighed, sagging back against the cool stones. “But you haven’t, I mean you haven’t yet—“
“Haven t procreated yet? Good observation. One of the few advantages of being a female with a white card is that I can choose anyone blue or higher for the father, and pick my own timing, so long as I have three or more offspring before I’m thirty. I don’t even have to raise them myself!” Again came the sharp, bitter laugh. “Hell, half of the chim marriage groups on Garth would shave themselves bald for the right to adopt one of my kids.”
She makes her situation sound so awful, Fiben thought. And^yet there must be fewer than twenty other chims on the planet regarded as highly by the Board. To a member of a client race, it’s the highest honor.
Still, maybe he understood after all. She would have come home to Garth knowing one fact. That no matter how brilliant her career, how great her accomplishments, it would only make her ovaries all the more valuable ... only make more frequent the painful, invasive visits to the Plasm Bank, and only bring on more pressure to carry as many as possible to term in her own womb.
Invitations to join group marriages or pair bonds would be automatic, easy. Too easy. There would be no way to know if a group wanted her for herself. Lone male suitors would seek her for the status fathering her child would bring.
And then there would be the jealousy. He could empathize with that. Chims weren’t often very subtle at hiding their feelings, especially envy. Quite a few would be downright mean about it.
“Irongrip was right,” Gailet said. “It’s got to be different for a chen. A white card would be fun fora male chim, I can see that. But for a chimmie? One with ambition to be something for herself?”
She looked away.
“I ...” Fiben tried to think of something to say, but for a moment all he could do was sit there feeling thick-headed, stupid. Perhaps, someday, one of his great-to-the-nth grandchildren would be smart enough to know the right words, to know how to comfort someone too far gone into bitterness even to want comforting anymore.
That more fully uplifted neo-chim, a few score more generations down the chain of Uplift, might be bright enough. But Fiben knew he wasn’t. He was only an ape.
“Um.” He coughed. “I remember a time, back on Cilmar Island, it musta been before you returned to Garth. Let’s see, was it ten years ago? Ifni! I think I was just a freshman. ...” He sighed. “Anyway, the whole island got all excited, that year, when Igor Patterson came to lecture and perform at the University.”
Gailet’s head lifted a little. “Igor Patterson? The drummer?”
Fiben nodded. “So you’ve heard of him?”
She smirked sarcastically. “Who hasn’t? He’s—“ Gailet spread her hands and let them drop, palms up. “He’s wonderful.”
That summed it up all right. For Igor Patterson was the best.
The thunder dance was only one aspect of the neo-chimpanzee’s love affair with rhythm. Percussion was a favorite musical form, from the quaint farmlands of Hermes to the sophisticated towers of Earth. Even in the early days—back when chims had been forced to carry keyboard displays on their chests in order to speak at all—even then the new race had loved the beat.
And yet, all of the great drummers on Earth and in the colonies were humans. Everyone until Igor Patterson.
He was the first. The first chim with the fine finger coordination, the delicacy of timing, the sheer chutzpah, to make it alongside the best. Listening to Patterson play “Clash Ceramic Lighting” wasn’t only to experience pleasure; for a chim it was to burst with pride. To many, his mere existence meant that chims weren’t just approaching what the Uplift Board wanted them to be, but what they wanted to be, as well.
“The Carter Foundation sent him on a tour of th’ colonies,” Fiben went on. “Partly it was as a goodwill trip for all the outlying chim communities. And of course it was also to spread the good luck around a bit.”
Gailet snorted at the obviousness of it. Of course Patterson had a white card. The chim members of the Uplift Board would have insisted, even if he weren’t also as wonderfully charming, intelligent, and handsome a specimen of neo-chimpanzee as anyone could ask to meet.
And Fiben thought he knew what else Gailet was thinking. For a male having a white card wouldn’t be much of a problem at all—just one long party. “I’ll bet,” she said. And Fiben imagined he detected a clear tone of envy.
“Yeah, well, you should’ve been there, when he showed up to give his concert. I was one of the lucky ones. My seat was way up in back, out of the way, and it happened that I had a real bad cold that night. That was damn fortunate.”
“WhatB^-GaiTet’s eyebrows came together. “What does that have to do with . . . Oh.” She frowned at him and her jaw tightened. “Oh. I see.”
“I’ll bet you do. The air conditioning was set on high, but I’m told the aroma was still overpowering. I had to sit shivering under the blowers. Damn near caught my death—“
“Will you get to the point?” Gailet’s lips were a thin line.
“Well, as no doubt you’ve guessed, nearly every green-or blue-card chimmie on the island who happened to be in estrus seemed to have a ticket to the concert. None of ‘em used olfa-spray. They came, generally, with the complete okay of their group husbands, wearing flaming pink lipstick, just on the off chance—“
“I get the picture,” Gailett said. And for just an instant Fiben wondered if he saw her blink back a faint smile as she pictured the scene. If so, it was only a momentary flicker of her severe frown. “So what happened?”
Fiben stretched, yawning. “What would you expect to happen? A riot, of course.”
Her jaw dropped. “Really? At the University?”.
“Sure as I’m sitting here.”
“But—“
“Oh, the first few minutes went all right. Man, old Igor could play as good as his rep, I’ll tell you. The crowd kept getting more and more excited. Even the backup band was feelin’ it. Then things kinda got out of hand.”
“But—“
“Remember old Professor Olvfing, from the Terragens Traditions Department? You know, the elderly chim who sports a monocle? Used to spend his spare time lobbying to get a chim monogamy bill before the legislature?”
“Yes, I knew him.” She nodded, her eyes wide open.
Fiben made a gesture with two hands.
“No! In public? Professor Olvfing?”
“With th’ dean of th’ College of frigging Nutrition, no less.”
Gailet let out a sharp sound. She turned aside, hand to her breast. She seemed to suffer a sudden bout of hiccups.
“Of course, Olvfing’s pair-bond wife forgave him later. It was that or’lose him to a ten-group that said they liked his style.”
Gailet slapped her chest, coughing. She turned further away from Fiben, shaking her head vigorously.
“Poor Igor Patterson,” Fiben continued. “He had problems of his own, of course. Some of th’ guys from the football team had been drafted as bouncers. When it started getting out of hand, they tried using fire extinguishers. That made things slippery, but it didn’t slow ‘em down much.”
Gailet coughed louder. “Fiben ...”
“It was too bad, really,” he mused aloud. “Igor was getting into a great blues riff, really pounding those skins, packin’ in a backbeat you couldn’t believe. I was groovin’ on it ... until this forty-year-old chimmie, naked and slick as a dolphin, dropped straight onto him from th’ rafters.”
Gailet doubled over clutching her belly. She held up a hand, pleading for mercy. “Stop, please. ...” she whimpered, weakly.
“Thank heavens it was the snare drum she fell through. Took her long enough gettin’ untangled for poor Igor to escape out the back way, just barely ahead of the mob.”
She toppled over sideways. For a moment Fiben felt concern, her face was so flushed and red. She hooted, slapping the floor, and tears streamed from her eyes. Gailet rolled over onto her back, rocking with peals of laughter.
Fiben shrugged. “And all that was just from playin’ the first number—Patterson’s special version of the bloody national anthem! What a pity. I never did get to hear his variation on Tnagadda Da Vita.’ “
“Now that I think about it, though,” he sighed once more, “maybe it’s just as well.”
* * *
Power curfew came at 2000 hours, and no exception was made for prisons. A wind had risen before sunset and soon was rattling the shutters of their small window. It came in off the ocean, carrying a heavy salt smell. In the distance could be heard the faint rumblings of an early summer storm.
They slept curled in their blankets as close to each other as their chains allowed, head to head so they could hear each other breathing in the darkness. They slumbered inhaling the soft tang of stone and the mustiness of straw, and exhaled the soft mutterings of their dreams.
Gailet’s hands moved in tiny jerks, as if trying to follow the rhythms of some illusory escape. Her chains tinkled faintly.
Fiben lay motionless, but now and then he blinked, his eyes occasionally opening and closing without the light of consciousness in them. Sometimes a breath caught and held for a long moment before releasing, at last.
They did not notice the low humming sound that penetrated from the hallway outside, nor the light which speared into their cell through cracks in the wooden door. Feet shuffled and claws clicked on flagstones.
When keys rattled in the lock, Fiben jerked, rolled to one side, and sat up. He knuckled his eyes as the hinges creaked. Gailet lifted her head. She used her hand to block the sharp glare of two lamps, held high on poles.
Fiben sneezed, smelling lavender and feathers. When he and Gailet were hauled to their feet by several of the zipsuited chims, he recognized the gruff voice of their head captor, Irongrip.
“You two better behave yourselves. You’ve got important visitors.”
Fiben blinked, trying to adjust to the light. At last he made out a small crowd of feathered quadrupeds, large balls of white fluff bedecked in ribbons and sashes. Two of them held staffs from which the bright lanterns hung. The rest twittered around what looked like a short pole ending in a narrow platform. On that perch stood a most singular-looking bird.
It, too, was arrayed in bright ribbons. The large, bipedal Gubru shifted its weight from one leg to another, nervously. It might have been the way the light struck the alien’s plumage, but the coloration seemed richer, more luminous than the normal off-white shade. It reminded Fiben of something, as if he had seen this invader or one like it before, somewhere.
What the hell is the thing doing, moving around at night? Fiben wondered. I thought they hated to do that.
“Pay proper respect to honored elders, members of the high clan Gooksyu-Gubru!” Irongrip said, sharply, nudging Fiben.
“I’ll show th’ damn thing my respect.” Fiben made a rude sound in his throat and gathered phlegm.
“No!” Gailet cried. She grabbed his arm and whispered urgently. “Fiben, don’t! Please. Do this for me. Act exactly as I do!”
Her brown eyes were pleading. Fiben swallowed. “Aw hell, Gailet.” She turned back toward the Gubru and folded her arms across her chest. Fiben imitated her, even as she bowed low.
The Galactic peered at them, first with one large, unblinking eye, then another. It shuffled-te-one-end of the^ perch, forcing its holders to adjust their balance. Finally, it began chirping in a_series of sharp, clipped squawks.
From the quadrupeds there emerged a strange, swooping accompaniment, rising and falling, sounding something like “Zoooon.”
One of the Kwackoo servitors ambled forward. A bright, metallic disk hung from a chain around its neck. The vodor gave forth a low, jerky Anglic translation.
“It has been judged . . . judged in honor
judged in propriety . . .
That you two have not transgressed . . .
have not broken . . .
The rules of conduct . . . the rules of war.
Zooooon.
“We judge that it is right . . . proper . . .
meet to allow for infant status . . .
To charitably credit . . . believe . . .
that your struggles were on your patrons’ behalf.
Zoooooon.
“It comes to our attention . . . awareness ...
knowledge that your status is
As leaders of your gene-flux . . . race-flow . . .
species in this place and time.
Zooooooon.
“We therefore offer . . . present . . .
deign to honor you
With an invitation ... a blessing . . .
a chance to earn the boon of representation.
Zooooooon.
“It is an honor . . . beneficence . . .
glory to be chosenTo seek out . . . penetrate . . .
create the future of your race.
Zoon!”
There it finished as abruptly as it had begun.
“Bow again!” Gailet urged in a whisper. He bent over with arms crossed, as she demonstrated. When Fiben looked up again, the small crowd of alien avians had swiveled and moved toward the doorway. The perch was lowered, but still the tall Gubru had to duck down, feathered arms splayed apart for balance, in order to pass through. Irongrip followed behind. The Probationer’s parting glare at them was one of pure loathing.
Fiben’s head rang. He had given up trying to follow the bird’s queer, formal dialect of Galactic Three after the first phrase. Even the Anglic translation had been well nigh impossible to understand.
The sharp lighting faded as the procession moved away down the hallway in a babble of clucking gabble. In the remaining dimness, Fiben and Gailet turned and looked at each other.
“Now who th’ hell was that?” he asked.
Gailet frowned. “It was a Suzerain. One of their three leaders. If I’m not wrong—and I could easily be—it was the Suzerain of Propriety.”
“That tells me a whole lot. Just what on Ifni’s roulette wheel is a Suzerain of Propriety?”
Gailet waved away his question. Her forehead was knotted in deep concentration. “Why did it come to us, instead of having us brought to it?” she wondered aloud, though obviously she wasn’t soliciting his opinion. “And why meet us at night? Did you notice it didn’t even stay to hear if we accepted its offer? It probably felt compelled, by propriety, to make it in person. But its aides can get our answer later.”
“Answer to what? What offer? Gailet, I couldn’t even follow—“
But she made a nervous waving motion with both hands. “Not now. I’ve got to think, Fiben. Give me a few minutes.” She walked back to the wall and sat-down^on the straw facing the blank stone. Fiben had a suspicion it would be considerably longer than she’d estimated before she was done.
You sure can choose ‘em, he thought. You deserve what you get when you fall in love with a genius....
He blinked. Shook his head. Say what?
But movement in the hall distracted him from pursuing his own unexpected thought. A solitary chim entered, carrying an armload of straw and folded bolts of dark brown cloth. The load hid the short neochimp’s face. Only when she lowered it to the ground did Fiben see that it was the chimmie who had stared at him earlier, the one who seemed so strangely familiar.
“I brought you some fresh straw, and some more blankets. These nights are still pretty cool.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
She did not meet his eyes. She turned and walked back toward the door, moving with a lithe grace that was obvious, even under the billowing zipsuit. “Wait!” he said suddenly.
She stopped, still facing the door. Fiben walked toward her as far as the heavy chains would allow. “What’s your name?” he asked softly, not wanting to disturb Gailet in her corner.
Her shoulders were hunched. She still faced away from him. “I’m ...” Her voice was very low. “S-some people call me Sylvie. ...”
Even in swirling quickly through the doorway she moved like a dancer. There was a rattle of keys, and hurried footsteps could be heard receding down the hall outside.
Fiben stared at the blank door. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s grandson.”
He turned around and walked back to the wall where Gailet sat, muttering to herself, and leaned over to drape a blanket upon her shoulders. Then he returned to his own corner to collapse into a heap of sweet-smelling straw.
Scummy algae foamed in the shallows where a few small, stilt-legged native birds picked desultorily for insects. Bushy plants lay in clumps, outlining the surrounding steppes.
Footprints led from the banks of the small lake up into the nearby scrub-covered hillside. Just glancing at the muddy tracks, Uthacalthing could tell that the walker had stepped with a pigeon-toed gait. It seemed to use a three-legged stance.
He looked up quickly as a flash of blue caught the corner of his eye—the same glimmer that had led him to this place. He tried to focus on the faint twinkle, hut it was gone before he could track it.
He knelt to examine the impressions in the mud. A smile spread as he measured them with his hands. Such beautiful outlines! The third foot was off center from the other two and its print was much smaller than the others, almost as if some bipedal creature had crossed from lake to brush leaning on a blunt-headed staff.
Uthacalthing picked up a fallen branch, but he hesitated before brushing away the outlines.
Shall I leave them? he wondered. Is it really necessary to hide them?He shook his head.
No. As the humans say, do not change game plans in midstream.
The footprints disappeared as he swept the branch back and forth. Just as he was finishing, he heard heavy footsteps and the sound of breaking shrubs behind him. He turned as Kault rounded a bend in the narrow game trail to the small prairie lake. The glyph, lurrunanu, hovered and darted over the Thennanin’s big, crested head like some frustrated parasitic insect, buzzing about in search of a soft spot that never seemed to be there.
Uthacalthing’s corona ached like an overused muscle. He let lurrunanu bounce against Kault’s bluff stolidity for a minute longer before admitting defeat. He drew the defeated glyph back in and dropped the branch to the ground.
The Thennanin wasn’t looking at the terrain anyway. His concentration was on a small instrument resting in his broad palm. “I am growing suspicious, my friend,” Kault said as he drew even with the Tymbrimi.
Uthacalthing felt blood rush in the arteries at the back of his neck. At last? he wondered.
“Suspicious of what, my colleague?”
Kault folded an instrument and put it away in one of his many vest pouches. “There are signs ...” His crest flapped. “I have been listening to the uncoded transmissions of the Gubru, and something odd seems to be going on.”
Uthacalthing sighed. No, Kault’s one-track mind was concentrating on a completely different subject. There was no use trying to draw him away from it with subtle clues.
“What are the invaders up to now?” he asked.
“Well, first of all, I am picking up much less excited military traffic. Suddenly they appear to be engaged in fewer of those small-scale fights up in the mountains than they were days and weeks ago. You’ll recall we were both wondering why they were expending so much effort to suppress what had to be a rather tiny partisan resistance.”
Actually, Uthacalthing had been pretty certain he knew the reason for the frantic flurry of activity on the part of the Gubru. From what the two of them had been able to piece together, it seemed the invaders were very anxious to find something up in the Mountains of Mulun. They had thrown soldiers and scientists into the rough range with apparent reckless energy, and appeared to have paid a heavy cost for the effort.
“Can you think of a reason why the fighting has ebbed?” he asked Kault.
“I am uncertain from what I can decipher. One possibility is that the Gubru have found and captured the thing they were so desperately looking for—“
Doubtful, Uthacalthing thought with conviction. It is hard to cage a ghost.
“Or they may have given up searching for it—“
More likely, Uthacalthing agreed. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the avians should realize they had been made fools of, and cease chasing wild gooses.
“Or, perhaps,” Kault concluded, “the Gubru have simply finished suppressing all opposition and liquidated whoever was opposing them.”
Uthacalthing prayed the last answer was not the correct one. It was among the risks he had taken, of course, in arranging to tease the enemy into such a frenzy. He could only hope that his daughter and Megan Oneagle’s son had not paid the ultimate price to further his own convoluted hoax on the malign birds.
“Hmm,” he commented. “Did you say there was something else puzzling you?”
“This,” Kault went on. “That after five twelves of planetary days, during which they have done nothing at all for the benefit of this world, suddenly the Gubru are making announcements, offering amnesty and employment to former members of the Ecological Recovery Service.”
“Yes? Well, maybe it just means they’ve completed their consolidation and can now spare a little attention to their responsibilties.”
Kault snorted. “Perhaps. But the Gubru are accountants. Credit counters. Humorless, selfish worriers. They are fanatically prim about those aspects of Galactic tradition that interest them, yet they hardly seem to care at all about preserving planets as nursery worlds, only about the near-term status of their clan.”
Although Uthacalthing agreed with that assessment, he considered Kault less than an,impartial observer. And the Thennanin was hardly the one to accuse others of being humorless.
Anyway, one thing was obvious. So long as Kault was distracted like this, thinking about the Gubru, it would be useless to try to draw his attention to subtle clues and footprints in the ground.
He could sense movement in the prairie all around him. The little carnivores and their prey were all seeking cover, settling into small niches and burrows to wait out midday, when the fierce heat of summer would beat down and it would cost too much energy either to give chase or to flee. In that respect, tall Galactics were no exception. “Come,” Uthacalthing said. “The sun is high. We must find a shady place to rest. I see some trees over on the other side of the water.”
Kault followed without comment. He appeared to be indifferent about minor deviations in their path, so long as the distant mountains grew perceptibly closer each day. The white-topped peaks were now more than just a faint line against the horizon. It might take weeks to reach them, and indeterminably longer to find a way through unknown passes to the Sind. But Thennanin were patient when it suited their purposes.
There were no blue glimmerings as Uthacalthing found them shelter under a too-tight cluster of stunted trees, though he kept his eye “peeled” anyway. Still, with his corona he thought he kenned a touch of feral joy from some mind hiding out there on the steppe, something large, clever, and familiar.
“I am, indeed, considered to be something of an expert on Terrans,” Kault said a little later as they made conversation under the gnarled branches. Small insects buzzed near the Thennanin’s breathing slits, only to be blown away every time they approached. “That, plus my ecological expertise, won me my assignment to this planet.”
“Don’t forget your sense of humor,” Uthacalthing added, with a smile.
“Yes,” Kault’s crest puffed in the Thennanin equivalent of a nod. “At home I was thought quite the devil. Just the sort to deal with wolflings and Tymbrimi pixies.” He finished with a rapid, low set of raspy breaths. It was obviously a conscious affectation, for Thennanin did not have a laughter reflex as such. No matter, Uthacalthing thought. As Thennanin humor goes, it was pretty good.
“Have you had much first-hand experience with Earth-lings?”
“Oh, yes,” Kault said. “I have been to Earth. I have had the delight of walking her rain forests and seeing the strange, diverse lifeforms there. I have met neo-dolphins and whales. While my people believe humans themselves should never have been declared fully uplifted—they would profit much from a few more millennia of polishing under proper guidance—can admit that their world is beautiful and their clients promising.”
One reason the Thennanin were in this current war was in hopes of picking up all three Earthling species for their clan by forced adoption—“for the Terrans’ own good,” of course. Though, to be fair, it was also clear that there were disagreements over this among the Thennanin themselves. Kault’s party, for instance, preferred a ten-thousand-year campaign of persuasion, to try to win the Earthlings over to adoption voluntarily, with “love.”
Obviously, Kault’s party did not dominate the present government.
“And of course, I met a few Earthlings in the course of a term working for the Galactic Institute of Migration, during an expedition to negotiate with the Fah’fah’n*fah.”
Uthacalthing’s corona erupted in a whirl of silvery tendrils, an open show of surprise. He knew his stunned expression was readable even to Kault, and did not care. “You . . . you have been to meet the hydrogen breathers?” He did not even know the trick of pronouncing the hyper-alien name, not part of any sanctioned Galactic tongue.
Kault had surprised him once again!
“The Fah’fah’n*fah.” Again Kault’s breathing slits pulsed in mimicry of laughter. This time, it sounded much more realistic. “The negotiations were held in the Poul-Kren sub-quadrant, not far from what the Earthlings call the Orion sector.”
“That’s very close to Terra’s Canaan colonies.”
“Yes. That is one reason why they were invited to take part. Even though these infrequent meetings between the civilizations of oxygen breathers and hydrogen breathers are among the most critical and delicate in any era, it was thought appropriate to bring a few Terrans along, to show them some of the subtleties of high-level diplomacy.”
It must have been his state of confused surprise, but at that moment Uthacalthing thought he actually caught a kenning from Kault ... a trace of something deep and troubling to the Thennanin. He is not telling me all of it, Uthacalthing realized. There were other reasons Earthlings were involved.
For billions of years, uneasy peace had been maintained between two parallel, completely separate cultures. It was almost as if the Five Galaxies were actually Ten, for there were at least as many stable worlds with hydrogen atmospheres as planets like Garth and Earth and Tymbrim. The two strands of life, each supporting vast numbers of species and lifeforms, had almost nothing in common. The Fah’fah’n*fah wanted nothing of rock, and their worlds were too vast and cold and heavy for the Galactics ever to covet.
Also, they seemed even to operate on different levels or rates of time. The hydrogen breathers preferred the slow routes, through D-Level hyperspace and even normal space between the stars—the realm where relativity ruled—leaving the quicker lanes among the stars to the fast-living heirs of the fabled Progenitors. ^
Sometimes there were conflicts. Entire systems and clans died. There were no rules to such wars.
Sometimes there was trade, metals for gases, or machinery in exchange for strange things not found even in the records of the Great Library.
There were periods when whole spiral arms would be abandoned by one civilization or the other. The Galactic Institute of Migration organized these huge movements for the oxygen breathers, every hundred million years or so. The official reason was to allow great tracts of stars to “go fallow” for an era, to give their planets time to develop new pre-sentient life. Still, the other purpose was widely known . . . to put space between hydrogen and oxygen life where it seemed impossible to ignore each other any longer.
And now Kault was telling him that there had been a recent negotiation right in the Poul-Kren sector? And humans had been there?
Why have I never heard of this before? he wondered.
He wanted to follow this thread, but had no opportunity. Kault was obviously unwilling to pursue it, and returned to the earlier topic of conversation.
“I still believe there is something anomalous about the Gubru transmissions, Uthacalthing. From their broadcasts itis clear that they are combing both Port Helenia and theislands, seeking out the Earthlings’ ecology and uplift experts.”
Uthacalthing decided that his curiosity could wait—a hard decision for a Tymbrimi. “Well, as I suggested earlier, perhaps the Gubru have decided to do their duty by Garth, at last.”
Kault gurgled in a tone Uthacalthing knew denoted doubt. “Even if that were so, they would require ecologists, but why Uplift specialists? I intuit that something curious is still going on,” Kault concluded. “The Gubru have been extremely agitated for several megaseconds.”
Even without their small receiver, or any news over the airwaves at all, Uthacalthing would still have known that much. It was implicit in the intermittent blue light he had been following since weeks ago. The flickering glow meant that the Tymbrimi Diplomatic Cache had to have been breached. The bait he had left inside the cairn, along with numerous other hints and clues, could only lead a sapient being to one conclusion.
It was apparent his jest on the Gubru had proved very expensive for them.
Still, all good things come to an end. By now even the Gubru must have figured out that it was all just a Tymbrimi trick. The avians weren’t exactly stupid. They had to discover sooner or later that there really weren’t any such things as “Garthlings.”
The sages say that it can be a mistake to push a joke too far. Am I making that error trying to pull the same jest on Kault?
Ah, but in this case the procedure was so totally different! Fooling Kault was turning into a much slower, more difficult, more personal task.
Anyway, what else have I to do, to pass the time?
“Do tell me more about your suspicions,” Uthacalthing said aloud to his companion. “I am very, very interested.”
Against all expectation, the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution was actually scoring points. Its plumage had barely even begun to show the royal hues of candidacy, and it had started out far, far behind its peers in the competition. Nevertheless, when it danced the other Suzerains were forced to watch closely and pay heed to its well-parsed arguments.
“This effort was misguided, costly, unwise,” it chirpedand whirled in delicate rhythm. “We have spent treasure,time, and honor
seeking,
chasing,
hunting
achimera!”
The new chief bureaucrat did have a few advantages. It had been trained by its predecessor—the impressive deceased Suzerain of Cost and Caution. Also, to this conclave it had brought an equally impressive, indicting array of facts. Data cubes lay scattered across the floor. The presentation by the head civil servant had, in fact, been quite devastating.
“There is no way, no possibility, no chance that thisworld could have hidden upon it a presentient survivor ofthe Bururalli! It was a hoax, a ruse, a fiendish wolfling-and-Tymbrimi plot to get us to
waste,
squander,
throw away
our wealth!”
To the Suzerain of Propriety this was most humiliating. In fact, it was not much short of catastrophic.
During the hiatus, while a new bureaucratic candidate was being chosen, the priest and the admiral had reigned supreme, with no one to hold them in check. They had well known that it was not wise to act so, without the voice of a third peer to restrain them, but what being always acted wisely when opportunity beckoned seductively?
The admiral had gone on personal search and destroy missions in pursuit of the mountain partisans, seeking gloss to add to its personal honor. For its part, the priest had ordered expensive new works built and had rushed the delivery of a new planetary Branch Library.
It had been a lovely interregnum of two-way consensus. The Suzerain of Beam and Talon approved every purchase, and the Suzerain of Propriety blessed every foray of the Talon Soldiers. Expedition after expedition was sent into the mountains as closely guarded scientists eagerly sought out a prize beyond price.
Mistakes were made. The wolflings proved diabolical in their ambushes and animal elusiveness. And yet, there would never have been any carping about cost had they actually found what they were looking for. It all would have been worth it, if only . . .
But we were tricked, fooled, made fools of, the priest thought bitterly. The treasure had been a lie. And now the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution was rubbing it in for all it was worth. The bureaucrat danced a brilliant dance of chastisement of excess. Already it had dominated several points of consensus—for instance, that there would be no more useless chases into the mountains, not until a cheaper way was found to eliminate the resistance fighters.
The plumage of the Suzerain of Beam and Talon drooped miserably. The priest knew how much this must gall the admiral. But they were both held hypnotized by the righteous correctness of the Dance of Chastisement. Two could not outvote one when that one was so clearly in the right.
Now the bureaucrat had launched into a new cadence, leading into a new dance. It proposed that the new construction projects be abandoned. They had nothing to do with defending the Gubru hold upon this world. They had been begun on the assumption that these “Garthling” creatures would be found. Now it was simply pointless to continuebuilding a hyperspace shunt and a ceremonial mound!
The dance was powerful, convincing, backed up with charts and statistics and tables of figures. The Suzerain of Propriety realized that something would have to be done and done soon, or this upstart would end the day in the foremost position. It was unthinkable that such a sudden reverse of order should happen just as their bodies were starting to give them twinges preliminary to Molt!
Even leaving out the question of molt order, there was also the message from the Roost Masters to consider. The queens and princes back home were desperate in their queries. Had the Three on Garth come up with a bold new policy yet? Calculations showed that it would be important to have something original and imaginative soon, or else the initiative would pass forever to some other clan.
It was intimidating to have the fate of the race riding in one’s slipstream.
And for all of its obvious finesse and fine preening, one thing was readily apparent about the new chief bureaucrat. The new Suzerain of Cost and Caution lacked the depth, the clarity of vision of its dead predecessor. The Suzerain of Propriety knew that no grand policy was going to come out of picayune, short sighted credit-pinching.
Something had to be done, and done now! The priest took up a posture of presentiment, spreading its brightly feathered arms in display. Politely, perhaps even indulgently, the bureaucrat cut short its own dance and lowered its beak, yielding time.
The Suzerain of Propriety started slowly, shuffling in small steps upon its perch. Purposely, the priest adopted a cadence used earlier by its adversary.
“Although there may be no Garthlings, there remains achance, opportunity, opening, for us to use the ceremonialsite we have
planned,
built,
dedicated
at such cost.
“There is a plan, scheme, concept, which may still yet
win
glory,
honor,
propriety
for our clan.
“At the center, focus, essence of this plan, we shall
examine,
inspect,
investigate
the clients of wolflings.”
Across the chamber the Suzerain of Beam and Talon looked up. A hopeful light appeared in the dejected admiral’s eye, and the priest knew that it could win a temporary victory, or at least a delay.
Much, much would depend in the days ahead upon finding out whether this bold new idea would work.
“You see?” he called down to her. “It moved during the night!”
Athaclena had to shade her eyes as she looked up at her human friend—perched on a tree branch more than thirty feet above the forest floor. He pulled on a leafy green cable that stretched down to him at a forty-five-degree angle from its even higher anchor.
“Are you certain that is the same vine you snipped last night?” she called.
“It sure is! I climbed up and poured a liter of chromium-rich water—the very stuff this particular vine specializes in -- into the crotch of that branch, way up there above me. Now you can see this vine has reanchored itself to that exact spot!”
Athaclena nodded. She felt a fringe of truth around his words. “I see it, Robert. And now I believe it.”
She had to smile. Sometimes Robert acted so much like a young Tymbrimi male—so quick, impulsive, puckish. It was a little disconcerting, in a way. Aliens were supposed to behave in strange and inscrutable ways, not just like . . . well, boys.
But Robert is not an alien, she reminded herself. He is my consort. And anyway, she had been living among Terrans for so long, she wondered if she had started to think like one.
When—if- -- I ever get home, will I disconcert all around me, frightening and amazing them with metaphors? With bizarre wolfling attitudes? Does that prospect attract me?
A lull had settled over the war. The Gubru had stopped sending vulnerable expeditions into the mountains. Their outposts were quiescent. Even the ceaseless droning of gasbots had been absent from the high valleys for more than a week, te the great relief of the chim farmers and villagers.
With some time on their hands, she and Robert had decided to have themselves just one day off while they had a chance, to try to get to know each other better. After all, who knew when the fighting would resume? Would there ever be another opportunity?
They both needed distraction anyway. There had still been no reply from Robert’s mother, and the fate of Ambassador Uthacalthing remained unclear, in spite of the glimpse she had been given of her father’s design. All she could do was try to perform her part as well as possible, and hope he was still alive and able to do his.
“All right,” she called up to Robert. “I accept it. The vines can be trained, after a fashion. Now come down! Your perch looks precarious.”
But Robert only smiled. “I’ll come down, in my own way. You know me, Clennie. I can’t resist an opportunity like this.”
Athaclena tensed. There it was again, that whimsy at the edges of his emotional aura. It wasn’t unlike syulff-kuonn, the coronal kenning surrounding a young Tymbrimi who was savoring an anticipated jest.
Robert gave the vine a hearty tug. He inhaled, expanding his ribcage to a degree no Tymbrimi could have equaled, then thumped his chest hollowly, rapidly, and gave out a long, ululating yodel. It echoed down the forest corridors.
Athaclena sighed. Oh, yes. He must pay respects to their wolfling deity, Tarzan With the vine clutched in both hands, Robert vaulted from the branch. He sailed, legs outstretched together, in a smooth arc down and across the forest meadow, barely clearing the low shrubs. He whooped aloud.
Of course it was just the sort of thing humans would have invented during those dark centuries between the advent of intelligence and their discovery of science. None of the Library-raised Galactic races, not even the Tymbrimi, would ever have thought up such a mode of transportation.
The pendulum swing carried Robert upward again, toward a thick mass of leaves and branchlets halfway up the side of a forest giant. Robert’s warbling cry cut off suddenly as he crashed through the foliage with a splintering sound and disappeared.
The silence was punctuated only by a faint, steady rain of minor debris. Athaclena hesitated, then called out. “Robert?”
There was neither reply nor movement up there in that high thicket. “Robert! Are you all right? Answer me!” The Anglic words felt thick in her mouth.
She tried to locate him with her corona, the little strands above her ears strained forward. He was in there, all right . . . and in some degree of pain, she could tell.
She ran across the meadow, leaping over low obstacles as the gheer transforrriation set in—her nostrils automatically widening to accept more air as her heart rate tripled. By the time she reached the tree, her finger- and toenails had already begun to harden. She kicked off her soft shoes and began climbing at once, quickly finding holds in the rough bark as she shimmied up the giant bole to the first branch.
The ubiquitous vines clustered here, snaking at an angle toward the leafy morass that had swallowed Robert. She tested one of the ropy cables, then used it to shimmy up to the next level.
Athaclena knew she should pace herself. For all of her Tymbrimi speed and adaptability, her musculature wasn’t as strong as a human’s, and coronal-radiation didn’t dissipate heat as well as Terran sweat glands. Still, she could not taper off from full, emergency speed.
It felt dim and close within the leafy blind where Robert had crashed. Athaclena blinked and sniffed as she entered the darkness. The odors reminded her that this was a wild world, and she was no wolfling to be at home in a ferine jungle. Athaclena had to retract her tendrils so they wouldn’t get tangled in the thicket. That was why she was taken by surprise when something reached out from the shadows to grab her tightly.
Hormones rushed. She gasped and coiled around to strike out at her assailant. Just in time she recognized Robert’s aura, his human male odor very near, and his strong arms holding her close. Athaclena experienced a momentary wave of dizziness as the gheer reaction braked hard.
It was in that stunned state, while still immobilized by change-rigor, that her surprise was redoubled. For that was when Robert began touching her mouth with his. At first his actions seemed meaningless, insane. But then, as her corona unwound, she started picking up feelings again. . . . and all at once she remembered scenes from human video dramas -- scenes involving mating and sexual play.
The storm of emotions that swept over Athaclena was so powerfully contradictory that she remained frozen for a while longer. Also, part of it might have been the relaxed power in his arms. Only when Robert finally let go of her did Athaclena back away from him quickly, wedging herself against the bole of the giant tree, gasping.
“An . . . An-thwillathbielna! Naha. . . . You . . . you blenchuql How dare you . . . Cleth-tnub. . . .” She ran out of breath and had to stop her polyglot cursing, panting slowly. It didn’t seem to be penetrating Robert’s mild expression of good cheer anyway.
“Uh, I didn’t catch all that, Athaclena. My GalSeven is still pretty bad, though I’ve been working on it. Tell me, what’s a ... a blenchuq?”
Athaclena made a gesture, a twist of the head that was the Tymbrimi equivalent to an irritated shrug. “Never mind that! Tell me at once. Are you badly hurt? And if not, why did you do what you just did?
“Third, tell me why I should not punish you for tricking and assaulting me like that!”
Robert’s eyes widened. “Oh, don’t take it all so seriously, Clennie. I appreciate the way you came charging to my rescue. I was still a bit dazed, I guess, and got carried away being happy to see you.”
Athaclena’s nostrils flared. Her tendrils waved, preparing she knew not what caustic glyph. Robert clearly sensed this. He held up a hand. “All right, all right. In order—I’m not badly hurt, only a bit scraped. Actually, it was fun.”
He erased his smile on seeing her expression. “’Uh, as for question number two—I greeted you that way because it’s a common human courtship ritual that I was strongly motivated to perform with you, even though I admit you might not have understood it.”
Now Athaclena frowned. Her tendrils curled in confusion.
“And finally,” Robert sighed. “I can’t think of a single reason why you shouldn’t punish me for my presumption. It’s your privilege, as it’d be the right of any human female to break my arm for handling her without permission. I don’t doubt you could do it, too.
“All I can say in my defense is that a broken arm is sometimes an occupational hazard to a young human mel. Half the time a courtship can hardly get started unless a fellow pulls something impulsive. If he’s read the signs right, the fem likes it and doesn’t give him a black eye. If he’s wrong, he pays.”
Athaclena watched Robert’s expression turn thoughtful. “You know,” he went on. “I’d never quite parsed it out that way before. It’s true, though. Maybe humans are crazy cleth th-tnubs, at that.”
Athaclena blinked. The tension had begun to leak away, dripping from the tips of her corona as her body returned to normal. The change nodes under her skin pulsed, reabsorb-ing the gheer flux.
Like little mice, she remembered, but she shuddered a little less this time.
In fact, she found herself smiling. Robert’s strange confession had put matters—almost laughably—on a logical plane. “Amazing,” she said. “As usual, there are parallels in Tymbrimi methodology. Our own males must take chances as well.”
She paused then, frowning. “But stylistically this technique of yours is so crude! The error rate must be tremendous, since you are without coronae to sense what the female is feeling. Beyond your crude empathy sense, you have only hints and coquetry and body cues to go on. I’m surprised you manage to reproduce at all without killing each other off well beforehand!”
Robert’s face darkened slightly, and she knew he was blushing. “Oh, I exaggerated a bit, I suppose.”
Athaclena couldn’t help but smile once more, not only a subtlety of the mouth, but an actual, full widening of the separation between her eyes.
“That much, Robert, I had already guessed.”
The human’s features reddened even more. He looked down at his hands and there was silence. Athaclena felt a stirring within her own deepself, and she kenned the simple sense-glyph kiniwullun . , . the parable-boy caught doing what boys inevitably do. Sitting there, his open aura of abashed sincerity seemed to cover over his fix-eyed, big-nosed alien-ness and make him more familiar to her than most of her peers had been back in school.
At last Athaclena slipped down from the dusty corner where she had wedged herself in self-defense.
“All right, Robert,” she sighed. “I will let you explain to me why you were ‘strongly motivated’ to attempt this classical human mating ritual with a member of another species—me. I suppose it is because we have signed an agreement to be consorts? Did you feel honor bound to consummate it, in order to satisfy human tradition?”
He shrugged, looking away. “No, I can’t use that as an excuse. I know interspecies marriages are for business. It’s just, well—I think it was just because you’re pretty and bright, and I’m lonely, and . . . and maybe I’m just a bit in love with you.”
Her heart beat faster. This time it was not the gheer chemicals responsible. Her tendrils lifted of their own accord, but no glyph emerged. Instead, she found they were reaching toward him along subtle, strong lines, like the fields of a dipole.
“I think, I think I understand, Robert. I want you to know that I ...”
It was hard to think of what to say. She wasn’t sure herself just what she was thinking at that moment. Athaclena shook her head. “Robert?” she said softly. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything, Clennie. Anything in the world.” His eyes were wide open.
“Good. Then, taking care not to get carried away, perhaps you might go on to explain and demonstrate what you were doing, when you touched me just then . . . the various physical aspects involved. Only this time, more slowly please?”
The next day they strolled slowly on their way back to the caves.
She and Robert dawdled, stopping to contemplate how the sunlight came down in little glades, or standing by small pools of colored liquid, wondering aloud which trace chemical was stockpiled here or there by the ubiquitous trade vines, and not really caring about the answer. Sometimes they just held hands while they listened to the quiet sounds of Garth Planet’s forest life.
At intervals they sat and experimented, gently, with the sensations brought on by touching.
Athaclena was surprised to find that most of the needed nerve pathways were already in place. No deep auto-suggestion was required—just a subtle shifting of a few capillaries and pressure receptors—in order to make the experiment feasible. Apparently, the Tymbrimi might have once engaged in a courtship ritual such as kissing. At least they had the capability.
When she resumed her old form she just might keep some of these adaptations to her lips, throat, and ears. The breeze felt good on them as she and Robert walked. It was like a rather nice empathy glyph tingling at the tips of her corona. And kissing, that warm pressure, stirred intense, if primitive feelings in her.
Of course none of it would have been possible if humans and Tymbrimi weren’t already so very similar. Many charming, stupid theories had circulated among unsophisticated people of both races to explain the coincidence—for instance, proposing that they might once have had a common ancestor.
The idea was ridiculous, of course. Still, she knew that her case was not the first. Close association over several centuries had led to quite a few cases of cross-species dalliance, some even openly avowed. Her discoveries must have been made many times before.
She just hadn’t been aware, having considered such tales rather seamy while growing up. Athaclena realized her friends back on Tymbrim must have thought her pretty much of a prude. And here she was, behaving in a way that would have shocked most of them!
She still wasn’t sure she wanted anyone back home -- assuming she ever made it there again—to think her consor-tion with Robert was anything but businesslike. Uthacalthing would probably laugh.
No matter, she told herself firmly. I must live for today. The experiment helped to pass the time. It did have its pleasant aspects. And Robert was an enthusiastic teacher.
Of course she was going to have to set limits. She was willing to adjust the distribution of fatty tissues in her breasts, for instance, and it was fun to play with the sensations made possible by new nerve endings. But where it came to fundamentals she would have to be adamant. She wasn’t about to : go changing any really basic mechanisms . . . not for any human being!
On the return trip they stopped to inspect a few rebel ioutposts and talk with small bands of chim fighters. Moralewas high. The veterans of three months’ hard battles askedwhen their leaders would find a way to lure more Gubru upinto the mountains within reach. Athaclena and Robert laughed Iand promised to do what they could about the lack of targetpractice.
Still, they found themselves hard pressed for ideas. Afterall, how does one invite back a guest whose beak one hasrepeatedly bloodied? Perhaps it was time to try taking the war !to the enemy, instead.
The problem was lack of good intelligence about matters !down in the Sind and Port Helenia. A few survivors of theurban uprising had wandered in and reported that their orga- Inization was a shambles. Nobody had seen either GailetJones or Fiben Bolger since that ill-fated day. Contact with a ifew individuals in town was restored, but on a patchy, piece- meal basis.
They had considered sending in new spies. There seemed i to be an opportunity offered by the Gubru public announcements, offering lucrative employment to ecological and uplift experts. But by now the avians must certainly have tuned their interrogation apparatus and developed a fair chim lie detector. In any event, Robert and Athaclena decided against taking the risk. For now, at least.
They were walking homeward up a narrow, seldom-visited valley, when they encountered a slope with a southern exposure, covered with a low-lying expanse of peculiar vegetation. They stood quietly for a time, looking over the green field of flat, inverted bowls.
“I never did cook you a meal of baked plate ivy root,” Robert commented at last, dryly.
Athaclena sniffed, appreciating his irony. The place where the accident had occurred was far from here. And yet, this bumpy hillside brought back vivid memories of that horrible afternoon when their “adventures” all began.
“Are the plants sick? Is- there something wrong with them?” She gestured at the field of plates, overlapping closely like the scales of some slumbering dragon. The upper layers did not look glassy smooth and fat, like those she recalled. The topmost caps in this colony seemed much less thick and sturdy.
“Hm.” Robert bent to examine the Nearest. “Summer’s on its way out, soon. All this heat is already drying the uppermost plates. By mid-autumn, when the east winds come blowing down the Mulun range, the caps will be as thin and light as wafers. Did I ever tell you they were seed pod carriers? The wind will catch them, and they’ll blow away into the sky like a cloud of butterflies.”
“Oh, yes. I remember you did mention it.” Athaclena nodded thoughtfully. “But did not you also say that—“
She was interrupted by a sharp call.
“General! Captain Oneagle!”
A group of chims hurried into view, puffing along the narrow forest trail. Two were members of their escort squad, but the third was Benjamin! He looked exhausted. Obviously he had run all the way from the caves to meet them.
Athaclena felt Robert grow tense with sudden worry. But with the advantage of her corona, she already knew that Ben was not bringing dire news. There was no emergency, no enemy attack.
And yet, her chim aide clearly was confused and distraught. “What is it, Benjamin?” she asked.
He mopped his brow with a homespun handkerchief. Then he reached into another pocket and drew out a small black cube. “Sers, our courier, young Petri, has finally returned.”
Robert stepped forward. “Did he reach the refuge?”
Benjamin nodded. “He got there, all right, and he’s brought a message from th’ Council. This is it here.” He held out the cube.
, “A message from Megan?” Robert sounded breathless ashe looked down at the recording.
“Yesser. Petri says she’s well, and sends her best.”
“But—but that’s great!” Robert whooped. “We’re in contact again! We aren’t alone anymore!”
“Yesser. That’s true enough. In fact...” Athaclena watched Benjamin struggle to find the right words. “In fact, Petri brought more than a message. There are five people waitingfor you, back at the caves.”
Both Robert and Athaclena blinked. “Five humans?”
Benjamin nodded, but with a look that implied he wasn’t exactly sure that term was the most applicable. “Terragens Marines, ser.”
“Oh,” Robert said. Athaclena merely maintained her silence, kenning more closely than she was listening.
Benjamin nodded. “Professionals, ser. Five humans. I swear, it’s incredible how it feels after all this time without—I mean, with only th’ two of you until now. It’s made the chims pretty hyper right at the moment. I think it might be best if you both came on back as quick as possible.”
Robert and Athaclena spoke almost at once.
“Of course.”
“Yes, let’s go at once.”
Almost imperceptibly, the closeness between Athaclena and Robert altered. They had been holding hands when Benjamin ran up. Now they did not renew that grasp. It seemed inappropriate as they marched along the narrow trail. A new unknown factor had slipped in between them. They did not have to look at each other to know what the other was thinking.
For better or for worse, things had changed.