Athaclena smiled, having the advantage of her corona. “Have no fear, Robert. He will remember.” And indeed, Benjamin folded his hands before him in the deeply respectful fashion of a junior client greeting a senior patron. The chims bowed low.
Only a flash of white betrayed the fact that Benjamin was grinning from ear to ear.
“Robert,” she said, nodding in satisfaction. “Your people have done very well by theirs, in only four hundred years.”
“Don’t give us the credit,” he answered. “It was all there in the raw from the start.”
The paroled avians departed toward the Valley of the Sind on foot. No doubt they would be picked up before long. Even if they were not, Athaclena had ordered that word go out. They were to reach home base unmolested. Any chim who touched one feather would be outlawed, his plasm dumped into sewers, his gene-line extinguished. The matter was that serious.
The procession disappeared down the mountain road. Then the hard work began.
Crews of chims hurried to strip the abandoned vehicles in the precious time remaining before retribution arrived. Gorillas chuffed impatiently, grooming and signing to one another as they awaited loads to carry off into the hills.
By then Athaclena had already moved her command post to a spine-covered ridge two miles farther into the mountains. She watched through binoculars as the last salvage was loaded and hauled away, leaving nearly empty hulks under the shadows of the ruined buildings.
Robert had left much earlier, at Athaclena’s insistence. He was departing again on another mission tomorrow and needed to get his rest.
Her corona waved, and she kenned Benjamin before his softly slapping feet could be heard padding up the trail. When he spoke his voice was somber.
“General, we’ve had word by semaphore that the attacks in the Sind failed. A few Eatee construction sites were blown up, but the rest of the assault was nearly a total disaster.”
Athaclena closed her eyes. She had expected as much. They had too many security problems down below, for one thing. Fiben had suspected the town-side resistance was compromised by traitors.
And yet Athaclena had not disallowed the attacks. They had served a valuable purpose by distracting the Gubru defense forces, keeping their quick-reaction fighters busy far from here. She only hoped that not too many chims had lost their lives drawing the invader’s ire.
“The day balances out,” she told her aide. Their victories would have to be symbolic, she knew. To try to expel the enemy with forces such as theirs would be futile. With her growing knack at metaphors she likened it to a caterpillar attempting to move a tree.
No, what we win, we will achieve through subtlety.
Benjamin cleared his throat. Athaclena looked down at him. “You still do not believe we should have let them leave alive,” she told him.
He nodded. “No, ser, I do not. I think I understand some of what you told me about symbolism and all that … and I’m proud you seem to think we handled the parole ceremony all right. But I still believe we should’ve burned them all.”
“Out of revenge?”
Benjamin shrugged. They both knew that was how the majority of the chims felt. They couldn’t care less about symbols. The races of Earth tended to look upon all the bowing and fine class distinctions of the Galactics as the mincing foolishness of a mired, decadent civilization.
“You know that’s not what I think,” Benjamin said. “I’d go along with your logic—about us scoring a real coup here today just by getting them to talk to us—if it weren’t for one thing.”
“What thing is that?”
“The birds had a chance to snoop around the center. They saw traces of Uplift. And I can’t rule out the possibility they caught a glimpse of the gorillas themselves, through the trees!” Benjamin shook his head. “I just don’t think we should’ve allowed them to walk out of here after that,” he said.
Athaclena put a hand on her aide’s shoulder. She did not speak because there did not seem to be anything to say.
How could she explain it to Benjamin?
Syulff-kuonn took form over her head, whirling with satisfaction at the progress of things, things her father had planned.
No, she could not explain to Benjamin that she had insisted on bringing the gorillas along, on making them part of the raid, as a step in a long, involved, and very practical joke.
48
Fiben and Gailet
“Keep your head down!” Fiben growled.
“Will you stop snapping at me?” Gailet answered hotly. She lifted her eyes just to the tops of the surrounding grass stems. “I just want to see if—”
The words cut off as Fiben swept her supporting arms out from under her. She landed with a grunt of expelled air and rolled over spitting dirt. “You pit-scratching, flea-bitten—”
Her eyes remained eloquent even with Fiben’s hand clamped firmly over her mouth. “I told you,” he whispered. “With their sensors, if you can see them it means they’ve got to see you. Our only chance is to crawl like worms until we can find a way to blend back into the civilian chim population.!”
From not far away came the hum of agricultural machinery. The sound had drawn them here. If they could only get close enough to mingle with the farmers, they might yet escape the invaders’ dragnet.
For all Fiben knew, he and Gailet might be the only survivors of the ill-fated uprising in the valley. It was hard to imagine how the mountain guerrillas under Athaclena’s command could have done any better. The insurrection seemed all washed up from where he lay.
He drew back his hand from Gailet’s mouth. If looks could kill, he thought, contemplating the expression in her eyes. With her hair matted and mud-splattered, she was hardly the picture of the serene chimmie intellectual.
“I … thought … you … said …” she whispered deliberately, emphasizing calmness, “that the enemy couldn’t detect us if we wear only native-made materials.”
“That’s if they’re being lazy and only counting on their secret weapon. But don’t forget they’ve also got infrared, radar, seismic sonar, psi—” He stopped suddenly. A low whine approached from his left. If it was the harvester they had heard before, there might be a chance to catch a ride.
“Wait here,” he whispered.
Gailet grabbed his wrist. “No! I’m coming with you!” She looked quickly left and right, then lowered her eyes. “Don’t … don’t leave me alone.”
Fiben bit his lip. “All right. But stay down low, right behind me.”
They moved single file, hugging the ground. Slowly the whine grew louder. Soon Fiben felt a faint tingling up the back of his neck.
Gravitics, he thought. It’s close.
How close he didn’t realize until the machine slipped over the grasstops, coming into view just two meters away.
He had been expecting a large vehicle. But this thing was about the size of a basketball and was covered with silvery and glassy knobs—sensors. It bobbed gently in the afternoon breeze, regarding them.
Aw hell. He sighed, sitting up on his haunches and letting his arms drop in resignation. Not far away he heard faint voices. No doubt this thing’s owners.
“It’s a battle drone, isn’t it?” Gailet asked tiredly.
He nodded. “A sniffer. Cheap model, I think. But good enough to find and hold us.”
“What do we do?”
He shrugged. “What can we do? We’d better surrender.”
Behind his back, however, he sifted through the dark soil. His fingers closed around a smooth stone.
The distant voices were coming this way. What th’ heck, he thought.
“Listen, Gailet. When I move, duck. Get outta here. Get your notes to Athaclena, if she’s still alive.”
Then, before she could ask any questions, he let out a shout and hurled the stone with all his might.
Several things happened all at once. Pain erupted in Fiben’s right wrist. There was a flash of light, so bright that it dazzled him. Then, during his leap forward, cou
ntless stinging pinpricks rained up and down his chest.
As he sailed toward the thing a sudden, strange feeling overcame Fiben, one that said that he had performed this act before—lived this particular moment of violence—not once or twice, but a hundred times, in a hundred prior lives. The wave of familiarity, hooked on the flickering edge of memory, washed over him as he dove through the drone’s pulsing gravitic field to wrap himself over the alien machine.
The world bucked and spun as the thing tried to throw him off. Its laser blasted at his shadow and grass fires broke out. Fiben held on for his life as the fields and the sky blended in a sickening blur.
The induced sense of déjà vu actually seemed to help! Fiben felt as if he had done this countless times! A small, rational corner of his mind knew that he hadn’t, but the memory misfunction said different and gave him a false confidence he badly needed right then as he dared to loosen the grip of his injured right hand and fumbled for the robot’s control box.
Ground and sky merged. Fiben torc a fingernail prying at the lid, breaking the lock. He reached in, grabbed wires.
The machine spun and careened, as if sensing his intention. Fiben’s legs lost their grip and whipped out. He was whirled around like a rag doll. When his left hand gave way he held on only by a weakening grip on the wires themselves—round and round and round.…
At that moment only one thing in the world was not a blur: the lens of the robot’s laser, directly in front of him.
Goodbye, he thought, and closed his eyes.
Then something torc loose. He flew away, still holding wires in his right hand. When crunching impact came, it was almost anticlimactic. He cried out and rolled up just short of one of the smoldering fires.
Oh, there was pain, all right. Fiben’s ribs felt as if one of the big female gorillas at the Howletts Center had been affectionate with him all night. He had been shot at least twice. Still, he had expected to die. No matter what came after this, it was good just to be alive.
He blinked away dust and soot. Five meters away the wreckage of the alien probe hissed and sputtered inside a ring of blackened, smoking grass. So much for the vaunted quality of Galactic hardware.
What Eatee shyster sold the Gubru that piece of shit? Fiben wondered. I don’t care, even if it was a Jophur made of ten smelly sap rings, I’d kiss him right now, I really would.
Excited voices. Running feet. Fiben felt a sudden hope.
He had expected Gubru to come after their downed probe. But these were chims! He winced and held his side as he managed to stand. He smiled.
The expression froze on his face when he saw who was approaching.
“Well, well, what do we have here? Mr. Bluecard himself! Looks like you’ve been running more obstacle courses, college boy. You just don’t seem to know when you’re beat.”
It was a tall chen with carefully shaved facial hair and a mustache, elegantly waxed and curled. Fiben recognized the leader of the Probationer gang at the Ape’s Grape. The one calling himself Irongrip.
Of all the chims in all the world, why did it have to be him?
Others arrived. The bright zipsuits bore an added feature, a sash and arm patch, each bearing the same sigil … a claw outstretched, three sharp talons glistening in holographic threat.
They gathered around him carrying modified saber rifles, obviously members of the new collaborators’ militia he and Gailet had heard rumors of.
“Remember me, college boy?” Irongrip asked, grinning. “Yes, I thought you would. I sure do remember you.”
Fiben sighed as he saw Gailet Jones brought forward, held firmly by two other Probationers. “Are you all right?” she asked softly. He could not read the expression in her eyes. Fiben nodded. There seemed to be little to say.
“Come on, my young genetic beauties.” Irongrip laughed as he took Fiben hard just above his wounded right wrist. “We’ve got some people we want you to meet. And this time, there won’t be any distractions.”
Fiben’s gaze was torn away from Gailet’s as a jerk on his arm sent him stumbling. He lacked the strength to put up a useless struggle.
As his captors dragged him ahead of Gailet, he had his first chance to look around and saw that they were only a few hundred meters from the edge of Port Helenia! A pair of wide-eyed chims in work dungarees watched from the running boards of a nearby cultivator.
Fiben and Gailet were being taken toward a small gate in the alien wall, the barrier that undulated complacently over the countryside like a net settled firmly over their lives.
49
Galactics
The Suzerain of Propriety displayed its agitation by huffing and dancing a brief series of hops on its Perch of Declamation. The half-formed squirms had actually delayed appearing before its judgment, withholding the news for more than a planetary rotation!
True, the survivors of the mountain ambush were still in shock. Their first thought had been to report to military command. And the military, busy cleaning up the last of the abortive insurrections in the nearby flatlands, had made them wait. What, after all, was a minor scuffle in the hills compared with a nearly effective assault on the deep-space defense battery?
The Suzerain could well understand how such mistakes were made. And yet it was frustrating. The affair in the mountains was actually far more significant than any of the other outbreaks of wild guerrilla warfare.
“You should have extinguished—caused an end—eliminated yourselves!”
The Suzerain chirped and danced out its chastisement before the Gubru scientists. The specialists still looked ruffled and unpreened from their long trek out of the hills. Now they slumped further in dejection.
“In accepting parole you have injured—caused harm—reduced our propriety and honor,” the Suzerain finished chiding.
If they had been military the high priest might have demanded reparations from these and their families. But most of their escorts had been killed, and scientists were often less concerned or knowledgeable in matters of propriety than soldiers.
The Suzerain decided to forgive them.
“Nevertheless, your decision is understood—is given sanction. We shall abide by your parole.”
The technicians danced in relief. They would not suffer humiliation or worse upon returning to their homes. Their solemn word would not be repudiated.
The parole would be costly however. These scientists had to depart from the Garth system at once and not be replaced for at least a year. Furthermore, an equal number of human beings had to be released from detention!
The Suzerain suddenly had an idea. This brought on a rare flutter of that strange emotion, amusement. It would order sixteen humans freed, all right, but the mountain chimpanzees would not be reunited with their dangerous masters. The released humans would be sent to Earth!
That would certainly satisfy the propriety of the parole. The solution would be expensive, true, but not nearly as much as letting such creatures loose again on the main continent of Garth!
It was stunning to contemplate that neo-chimpanzees might have achieved what these reported they had done in the mountains. How could it be? The proto-clients they had observed in town and in the valley hardly seemed capable of such finesse.
Might there, indeed, be humans out there still?
The thought was daunting, and the Suzerain did not see how it would be possible. According to census figures the number unaccounted for was too small to be significant anyway. Statistically, all of those should simply be dead.
Of course the gas bombings would have to be stepped up. The new Suzerain of Cost and Caution would complain, for the program had proved very expensive. But now the Suzerain of Propriety would side with the military completely.
There was a feint stirring. The Suzerain of Propriety felt a twinge inside. Was it an early sign of a change of sexual state? It should not begin yet, when things were still so unsettled, and dominance not yet decided among the three peers. The molting must wait until propriety had been
served, until consensus had been reached, so that it would be clear who was strongest!
The Suzerain chirped a prayer to the lost Progenitors, and the others immediately crooned in response.
If only there was some way to be sure which way the battles were going, out in the Galactic swirl! Had the dolphin ship been found yet? Were the fleets of some alliance even now approaching the returned Ancient Ones to call up the end of all things?
Had the time of Change already begun?
If the priest were certain that Galactic Law had indeed broken down irreparably, it would feel free to ignore this unpalatable parole and its implied recognition of neo-chimpanzee sapiency.
There were consolations, of course. Even with humans to guide them, the near-animals would never know the right ways to take advantage of that recognition. That was the way of wolfling-type species. Ignoring the subtleties of the ancient Galactic culture, they barged ahead using the direct approach, and nearly always died.
Consolation, it chirped. Yes, consolation and victory.
There was one more matter to take care of—potentially, the most important of all. The priest addressed the leader of the expedition again.
“Your final parole agreement was to avoid—to abjure—to forswear ever visiting that site again.”
The scientists danced agreement. One small place on the surface of Garth was forbidden the Gubru until the stars fell, or until the rules were changed.
“And yet, before the attack you found—did discover—did uncover traces of mysterious activity—of gene meddling—of secret Uplift?”
That too had been in their report. The Suzerain questioned them carefully about details. There had only been time for a cursory examination, but the hints were compelling. The implications staggering.
Up in those mountains the chimpanzees were hiding a pre-sentient race! Prior to the invasion, they and their human patrons had been engaging in Uplift of a new client species!
So! The Suzerain danced. The data recovered from the Tymbrimi cairn was no lie! Somehow, by some miracle, this catastrophe world has given birth to a treasure! And now, in spite of Gubru mastery of the surface and the sky, the Earthlings continued to hoard their discovery to themselves!