Benjamin whispered to one of his companions. The smaller chimp turned and hurried down the trail the way they had come, toward the mysterious Howletts Center. Athaclena caught a tremor of anxiety. Once again she wondered what was going on in this valley that Robert had tried to steer her away from, even at risk to his own health.
“The courier will carry back word of Mr. Oneagle’s condition and arrange transport,” Benjamin told her. “Meanwhile, we’ll hurry to give him first aid. If you would only lead the way …”
He motioned her ahead, and Athaclena had to put away her curiosity for now. Robert clearly came first. “All right,” she said. “Let us go.”
As they passed under the standing stone where she had had her encounter with the strange, pre-sentient alien, Athaclena looked up. Had it really been a “Garthling”? Perhaps the chims knew something about it. Before she could begin to ask, however, Athaclena stumbled, clutching at her temples. The chims stared at the sudden waving of her corona and the startled, narrow set of her eyes.
It was part sound—a keening that crested high, almost beyond hearing—and partly a sharp itch that crawled up her spine.
“Ma’am?” Benjamin looked up at her, concerned. “What is it?”
Athaclena shook her head. “It’s … It is …”
She did not finish. For at that moment there was a flash of gray over the western horizon—something hurtling through the sky toward them—too fast! Before Athaclena could flinch it had grown from distant dot to behemoth size. Just that suddenly a giant ship appeared, stock-still, hovering directly over the valley.
Athaclena barely had enough time to cry out, “Cover your ears!” Then thunder broke, a crash and roar that knocked all of them to the ground. The boom reverberated through the maze of stones and echoed off the surrounding hillsides. Trees swayed—some of them cracking and toppling over—and leaves were ripped away in sudden, fluttering cyclones.
Finally the pealing died away, diffracting and diminishing into the forest. Only after that, and blinking away tremors of shock, did they at last hear the low, loud growl of the ship itself. The gray monster cast shadows over the valley, a huge, gleaming cylinder. As they stared the great machine slowly settled lower until it dropped below the spine-stones and out of sight. The hum of its engines fell to a deep rumble, uncovering the sound of rockfalls on the nearby slopes.
The chims slowly stood up and held each others’ hands nervously, whispering to each other in hoarse, low voices. Benjamin helped Athaclena to stand. The ship’s gravity fields had struck her fully extended corona unprepared. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
“That was a warship, wasn’t it?” Benjamin asked her. “These other chims here haven’t ever been to space, but I went up to see the old Vesarius when it visited, a couple years back, and even she wasn’t as big as that thing!”
Athaclena sighed. “It was, indeed, a warship. Of Soro design, I think. The Gubru are using that fashion now.” She looked down at the Earthling. “I would say that Garth is no longer simply interdicted, Chim Benjamin. An invasion has begun.”
Benjamin’s hands came together. He pulled nervously at one opposable thumb, then the other. “They’re hovering over the valley. I can hear ’em! What are they up to?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t we go look?”
Benjamin hesitated, then nodded. He led the group back to a point where the spine-stones opened up and they could gaze out over the valley.
The warship hovered about four kilometers east of their position and a few hundred meters above the ground, draping its immense shadow over a small cluster of off-white buildings on the valley floor. Athaclena shaded her eyes against the bright sunshine reflected from its gunmetal gray flanks.
The deep-throated groan of the giant cruiser was ominous. “It’s just hoverin’ there! What are they doing?” one of the chims asked nervously.
Athaclena shook her head in Anglic. “I do not know.” She sensed fear from humans and neo-chimps in the settlement below. And there were other sources of emotion as well.
The invaders, she realized. Their psi shields were down, an arrogant dismissal of any possibility of defense. She caught a gestalt of thin-boned, feathered creatures, descendants of some flightless, pseudo-avian species. A rare real-view came to her briefly, vividly, as seen through the eyes of one of the cruiser’s officers. Though contact only lasted milliseconds, her corona reeled back in revulsion.
Gubru, she realized numbly. Suddenly, it was made all too real.
Benjamin gasped. “Look!”
Brown fog spilled forth from vents in the ship’s broad underbelly. Slowly, almost languidly, the dark, heavy vapor began to fall toward the valley floor.
The fear below shifted over to panic. Athaclena quailed back against one of the spine-stones and wrapped her arms over her head, trying to shut out the almost palpable aura of dread.
Too much! Athaclena tried to form a glyph of peace in the space before her, to hold back the pain and horror. But every pattern was blown away like spun snow before the hot wind of a flame.
“They’re killing th’ humans and ’rillas!” one of the chims on the hillside cried, running forward. Benjamin shouted after him. “Petrie! Come back here! Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m goin’ to help!” the younger chim yelled back. “And you would too, if you cared! You can hear ’em screamin’ down there!” Ignoring the winding path, he started scrambling down the scree slope itself—the most direct route toward the roiling fog and the dim sounds of despair.
The other two chims looked at Benjamin rebelliously, obviously sharing the same thought. “I’m goin’ too,” one said.
Athaclena’s fear-narrowed eyes throbbed. What were these silly creatures doing now?
“I’m with you,” the last one agreed. In spite of Benjamin’s shouted curses, both of them started down the steep slope.
“Stop this, right now!”
They turned and stared at Athaclena. Even Petrie halted suddenly, hanging one-handed from a boulder, blinking up at her. She had used the Tone of Peremptory Command, for only the third time in her life.
“Stop this foolishness and come back here immediately!” she snapped. Athaclena’s corona billowed out over her ears. Her carefully cultured human accent was gone. She enunciated Anglic in the Tymbrimi lilt the neo-chimpanzees must have heard on video countless times. She might look rather human, but no human voice could make exactly the same sounds.
The Terran clients blinked, open-mouthed.
“Return at once,” she hissed.
The chims scrambled back up the slope to stand before her. One by one, glancing nervously at Benjamin and following his example, they bowed with arms crossed in front of them.
Athaclena fought down her own shaking in order to appear outwardly calm. “Do not make me raise my voice again,” she said lowly. “We must work together, think coolly, and make appropriate plans.”
Small wonder the chims shivered and looked up at her, wide-eyed. Humans seldom spoke to chims so peremptorily. The species might be indentured to man, but by Earth’s own law neo-chimps were nearly equal citizens.
We Tymbrimi, though, are another matter. Duty, simple duty had drawn Athaclena out of her totanoo—her fear-induced withdrawal. Somebody had to take responsibility to save these creatures’ lives.
The ugly brown fog had stopped spilling from the Gubru vessel. The vapor spread across the narrow valley like a dark, foamy lake, barely covering the buildings at the bottom.
Vents closed. The ship began to rise.
“Take cover,” she told them, and led the chims around the nearest of the rock monoliths. The low hum of the Gubru ship climbed more than an octave. Soon they saw it rise over the spine-stones.
“Protect yourselves.”
The chims huddled close, pressing their hands against their ears.
One moment the giant invader was there, a thousand meters over the valley floor. Then, quicker than the eye could follow, i
t was gone. Displaced air clapped inward like a giant’s hand and thunder batted them again, returning in rolling waves that brought up dust and leaves from the forest below.
The stunned neo-chimps stared at each other for long moments as the echoes finally ebbed. Finally the eldest chim, Benjamin, shook himself. He dusted his hands and grabbed the young chen named Petrie by the back of his neck, marching the startled chim over to face Athaclena.
Petrie looked down shamefaced. “I … I’m sorry, ma’am,” he muttered gruffly. “It’s just that there are humans down there and … and my mates.…”
Athaclena nodded. One should try not to be too hard on a well-intended client. “Your motives were admirable. Now that we are calm though, and can plan, we’ll go about helping your patrons and friends more effectively.”
She offered her hand. It was a less patronizing gesture than the pat on the head he seemed to have expected from a Galactic. They shook, and he grinned shyly.
When they hurried around the stones to look out over the valley again, several of the Terrans gasped. The brown cloud had spread over the lowlands like a thick, filthy sea that flowed almost to the forest slopes at their feet. The heavy vapor seemed to have a sharply defined upper boundary barely licking at the roots of nearby trees.
They had no way of knowing what was going on below, or even if anybody still lived down there.
“We will split into two groups,” Athaclena told them. “Robert Oneagle still requires attention. Someone must go to him.”
The thought of Robert lying semi-conscious back there where she had left him was an unrelenting anxiety in her mind. She had to know he was being cared for. Anyway, she suspected most of these chims would be better off going to Robert’s aid than hanging around this deadly valley. The creatures were too shaken and volatile up here in full view of the disaster. “Benjamin, can your companions find Robert by themselves, using the directions I have given?”
“You mean without leading them there yourself?” Benjamin frowned and shook his head. “Uh, I dunno, ma’am. I … I really think you ought to go along.”
Athaclena had left Robert under a clear landmark, a giant quail-nut tree close to the main trail. Any party sent from here should have no trouble finding the injured human.
She could read the chim’s emotions. Part of Benjamin anxiously wished to have one of the renowned Tymbrimi here to help, if possible, the people in the valley. And yet he had chosen to try to send her away!
The oily smoke churned and rolled below. She could distantly sense many minds down there, turbulent with fear.
“I will remain,” she said firmly. “You have said these others are a qualified rescue team. They can certainly find Robert and help him. Someone must stay and see if anything can be done for those below.”
With a human there might have been argument. But the chimps did not even consider contradicting a Galactic with a made up mind. Client-class sophonts simply did not do such things.
In Benjamin she sensed a partial relief … and a counterpoint of dread.
The three younger chims shouldered their packs. Solemnly they headed westward through the spine-stones, glancing back nervously until they passed out of sight.
Athaclena let herself feel relieved for Robert’s sake. But underneath it all remained a nagging fear for her father. The enemy must certainly have struck Port Helenia first.
“Come, Benjamin. Let’s see what can be done for those poor people down there.”
For all of their unusual and rapid successes in Uplift, Terran geneticists still had a way to go with neo-dolphins and neo-chimpanzees. Truly original thinkers were still rare in both species. By Galactic standards they had made great strides, but Earthmen wanted even more rapid progress. It was almost as if they suspected their clients might have to grow up very quickly, very soon.
When a good mind appeared in Tursiops or Pongo stock, it was carefully nurtured. Athaclena could tell that Benjamin was one of those superior specimens. No doubt this chim had at least a blue card procreation right and had already sired many children.
“Maybe I’d better scout ahead, ma’am,” Benjamin suggested. “I can climb these trees and stay above the level of the gas. I’ll go in and find out how things lie, and then come back for you.”
Athaclena felt the chim’s turmoil as they looked out on the lake of mysterious gas. Here it was about ankle deep, but farther into the valley it swirled several man-heights into the trees.
“No. We’ll stay together,” Athaclena said firmly. “I can climb trees too, you know.”
Benjamin looked her up and down, apparently recalling stories of the fabled Tymbrimi adaptability. “Hmmm, your folk might have once been arboreal at that. No respect intended.” He gave her a wry, unhinged grin. “All right then, miss, let’s go.”
He took a running start, leaped into the branches of a near-oak, scampered around the trunk and darted down another limb. Then Benjamin jumped across a narrow gap to the next tree. He held onto the bouncing branch and looked back at her with curious brown eyes.
Athaclena recognized a challenge. She breathed deeply several times, concentrating. Changes began with a tingling in her hardening fingertips, a loosening in her chest. She exhaled, crouched, and took off, launching herself into the near-oak. With some difficulty she imitated the chim, move by move.
Benjamin nodded in approval as she landed next to him. Then he was off again.
They made slow progress, leaping from tree to tree and creeping around vine-entangled trunks. Several times they were forced to backtrack around clearings choked with the slowly settling fumes. They tried not to breathe when stepping over thicker wisps of the heavy gas, but Athaclena could not help picking up a whiff of pungent, oily stuff. She told herself that her growing itch was probably psychosomatic.
Benjamin kept glancing at her surreptitiously. The chim certainly noticed some of the changes she underwent as the minutes passed—a limbering of the arms, a rolling of the shoulders and loosening and opening of the hands. He clearly had never expected to have a Galactic keep up with him this way, swinging through the trees.
He almost certainly did not know the price the gheer transformation was going to cost her. The hurt had already begun, and Athaclena knew this was only the beginning.
The forest was full of sounds. Small animals scurried past them, fleeing the alien smoke and stench. Athaclena picked up quick, hot pulses of their fear. As they reached the top of a knoll overlooking the settlement, they could hear faint cries—frightened Terrans groping about in a soot-dark forest.
Benjamins’ brown eyes told her that those were his friends down there. “See how the stuff clings to the ground?” he said. “It hardly rises a few meters over the tops of our buildings. If only we’d built one tall structure!”
“They would have blasted that building first,” Athaclena pointed out. “And then released their gas.”
“Hmmph.” Benjamin nodded. “Well, let’s go see if any of my mates made it into the trees. Maybe they managed to help a few of the humans get high enough as well.”
She did not question Benjamin about his hidden fear—the thing he could not bring himself to mention. But there was something added to his worry about the humans and chims below, as if that were not already enough.
The deeper they went into the valley, the higher among the branches they had to travel. More and more often they were forced to drop down, stirring the smoky, unraveling wisps with their feet as they hurried along their arboreal highway. Fortunately, the oily gas seemed to be dissipating at last, growing heavier and precipitating in a fine rain of gray dust.
Benjamin’s pace quickened as they caught glimpses of the off-white buildings of the Center beyond the trees. Athaclena followed as well as she could, but it was getting harder and harder to keep up with the chim. Enzyme exhaustion took its toll, and her corona was ablaze as her body tried to eliminate heat buildup.
Concentrate, she thought as she crouched on one waving branch. Athaclena
flexed her legs and tried to sight on the blur of dusty leaves and twigs opposite her.
Go.
She uncoiled, but by now the spring was gone from her leap. She barely made it across the two-meter gap. Athaclena hugged the bucking, swaying branch. Her corona pulsed like fire.
She clutched the alien wood, breathing open-mouthed, unable to move, the world a blur. Maybe it’s more than just gheer pain, she thought. Maybe the gas isn’t just designed for Terrans. It could be killing me.
It took a couple of moments for her eyes to focus again, and then she saw little more than a black-bottomed foot covered with brown fur … Benjamin, clutching the tree branch nimbly and standing over her.
His hand softly touched the waving, hot tendrils of her corona. “You just wait here and rest, miss. I’ll scout ahead an’ be right back.”
The branch shuddered once more, and he was gone.
Athaclena lay still. She could do little else except listen to faint sounds coming from the direction of the Howletts Center. Nearly an hour after the departure of the Gubru cruiser she could still hear panicky chimp shrieks and strange, low cries from some animal she couldn’t recognize.
The gas was dissipating but it still stank, even up here. Athaclena kept her nostrils closed, breathing through her mouth.
Pity the poor Earthlings, whose noses and ears must remain open all the time, for all the world to assault at will. The irony did not escape her. For at least the creatures did not have to listen with their minds.
As her corona cooled, Athaclena felt awash in a babble of emotions … human, chimpanzee, and that other variety that flickered in and out, the “stranger” that had by now become almost familiar. Minutes passed, and Athaclena felt a little better … enough to crawl along the limb to where branch met trunk. She sat back against the rough bark with a sigh, the flow of noise and emotion surrounding her.
Maybe I’m not dying after all, at least not right away.
Only after a little while longer did it dawn on her that something was happening quite nearby. She could sense that she was being watched—and from very close! She turned and drew her breath sharply. From the branches of a tree only six meters away, four sets of eyes stared back at her—three pairs deep brown and a fourth bright blue.