None of the chims looked their way. The distance was too great for Fiben to tell anything of their mood, or to hope that somebody might recognize him or Gailet.
“We won’t be riding the same car back,” whispered Gailet. And she motioned down a long parapet toward the landing ramp below. Sure enough, the tan military van that had brought them had been replaced by a large, roofless hover barge. An ornate pedestal stood in the open deck behind the pilot’s station. Kwackoo servitors adjusted a sunshade to keep the fierce light of Gimelhai off their master’s beak and crest.
The large Gubru was recognizable. Its thick, faintly luminous plumage looked shaggier than the last time they had seen it, in the furtive darkness of their suburban prison. The effect was to make it seem even more different than the run-of-the-mill Gubru functionaries they had seen. In some places the allochroous feathers had begun to appear frayed, tattered. The avian aristocrat wore a striped collar. It paced impatiently atop its perch.
“Well, well,” Fiben muttered. “If it ain’t our old friend, the Somethin’ of Good Housekeeping.”
Gailet snorted in something just short of a small laugh. “It’s called the Suzerain of Propriety,” she reminded him. “The striped torc means it’s the leader of the priestly caste. Now just you remember to behave yourself. Try not to scratch too much, and watch what I do.”
“I’ll imitate yer very steps precisely, mistress.”
Gailet ignored his sarcasm and followed the brown guidance hologram down the long ramp toward the brightly colored barge. Fiben kept pace just a little behind her.
The guide projection vanished as they reached the landing. A Kwackoo, with its feathery ruff tinted a garish shade of pink, offered them both a very shallow bow. “You are honored—honored … that our patron—noble patron does deign to show you—you half-formed ones … the favor of your destiny.”
The Kwackoo spoke without the assistance of a vodor. That in itself was no small miracle, given the creature’s highly specialized speech organs. In fact, it spoke the Anglic words fairly clearly, if with a breathless quality which made the alien sound nervous, expectant.
It wasn’t likely the Suzerain of Propriety was the easiest boss in the Universe to work for. Fiben imitated Gailet’s bow and kept silent as she replied. “We are honored by the attention that your master, the high patron of a great clan, condescends to offer us,” she said in slow, carefully enunciated Galactic Seven. “Nevertheless, we retain, in our own patrons’ names, the right to disapprove its actions.”
Even Fiben gasped. The assembled Kwackoo cooed in anger, fluffing up threateningly.
Three high, chirped notes cut their outrage off abruptly. The lead Kwackoo swiveled quickly and bowed to the Suzerain, who had scuttled to the end of its perch closest to the two chims. The Gubru’s beak gaped as it bent to regard Gailet, first with one eye, then the other. Fiben found himself sweating rivulets.
Finally, the alien straightened and squawked a pronouncement in its own highly clipped, inflected version of Galactic Three. Only Fiben saw the tremor of relief that passed down Gailet’s tense spine. He could not follow the Suzerain’s stilted prose, but a vodor nearby commenced translating promptly.
“Well said—said well … spoken well for captured, client-class soldiers of foe-clan Terra.… Come, then—come and see … come and see and hear a bargain you will certainly not disapprove—not even in your patrons’ names.”
Gailet and Fiben glanced at each other. Then, as one, they bowed.
The late morning air was clear, and the faint ozone smell probably did not foretell rain. Such ancient cues were useless in the presence of high technology anyway.
The barge cruised south past the closed pleasure piers of Port Helenia and out across the bay. It was Fiben’s first chance to see how the harbor had changed since the aliens had arrived.
The fishing fleet had been crippled for one thing. Only one in four trawlers did not lie beached or in dry dock. The main commercial port was almost dead as well. A clump of dispirited-looking seafaring vessels listed at their moorings, clearly untouched for months. Fiben watched one of the still working fishing trawlers heave into view around the point of the bay, probably returning early with a fortuitous catch—or with a mechanical failure the chim crew felt unable to deal with at sea. The tub-bottomed boat rose and fell as it rode the standing swell where sea met bay. The crew had to struggle since the passage was narrower than it had been in days of peace. Half of the strait was now blocked by a towering, curving cliff face—a great fortress of alien cerametal.
The Gubru battleship seemed to shimmer in a faint haze. Water droplets condensed at the fringes of its ward-screens, rainbows sparkled, and a mist fell over the struggling trawler as it forced its way past the northern tongue of land at last. Fiben could not make out the faces of the chim crew as the Suzerain’s barge swept overhead, but he saw several long-armed forms slump in relief as the boat reached calm waters at last.
From Point Borealis the upper arm of the bayshore swept several kilometers north and east toward Port Helenia itself. Except for a small navigation beacon, those rough heights were unoccupied. The branches of ridgetop pines riffled gently in the sea breezes.
Southward, however, across the narrow strait, things were quite different. Beyond the grounded battleship, the terrain had been transformed. Forest growth had been removed, the contours of the bluffs altered. Dust rose from a site just out of view beyond the headland. A swarm of hovers and heavy lifters could be seen buzzing to and fro in that direction.
Much farther to the south, toward the spaceport, new domes had been erected as part of the Gubru defensive network—the facilities the urban guerrillas had only mildly inconvenienced in their abortive insurrection. But the barge did not seem to be heading that way. Rather they turned toward the new construction on the narrow, hilly slopes between Aspinal Bay and the Sea of Cilmar.
Fiben knew it was hopeless asking their hosts what was going on. The Kwackoo technicians and servitors were polite, but it was a severe sort of courtesy, probably on orders. And they were not forthcoming with much information.
Gailet joined him at the railing and took his elbow. “Look,” she whispered in a hushed voice.
Together they stared as the barge rose over the bluffs.
A hilltop had been shorn flat near the ocean shoreline. Buildings Fiben recognized as proton power plants lay clustered around its base, feeding cables upward, along its flanks. At the top, a hemispherical structure lay face upward, glimmering and open like a marble bowl in the sunshine.
“What is it? A force field projector? Some kind of weapon?”
Fiben nodded, shook his head, and finally shrugged. “Beats me. It doesn’t look military. But whatever it does sure must take a lot of juice. Look at all those power plants. Goodall!”
A shadow slipped over them—not with the fluffy, ragged coolness of a cloud passing before the sun, but with the sudden, sharp chill of something solid and huge rumbling over their heads. Fiben shivered, only partly from the drop in temperature. He and Gailet couldn’t help crouching as they looked up at the giant lifter-carrier that cruised only a hundred meters higher. Their avian hosts, on the other hand, appeared unruffled. The Suzerain stood on its perch, placidly ignoring the thrumming fields that made the chims tremble.
They don’t like surprise, Fiben thought. But they are pretty tough when they know what’s happening.
Their transport began a long, slow, lazy circuit around the perimeter of the construction site. Fiben was pondering the white, upturned bowl below when the Kwackoo with the pink ruff approached and inclined its head ever so slightly.
“The Great One deigns—does offer favor … and will suggest commonality—complementarity … of goals and aims.”
Across the barge, the Suzerain of Propriety could be seen perched regally on its pedestal. Fiben wished he could read expressions on a Gubru face. What’s the old bird got in mind? ne wondered. Fiben wasn’t entirely sure he really wanted to
know.
Gailet returned the shallow bow of the Kwackoo. “Please tell your honored patron we will humbly attend his offer.”
The Suzerain’s Galactic Three was stilted and formal, embellished with mincing, courtly dance steps. The vodor translation did not help Fiben much. He found himself watching Gailet, rather than the alien, as he tried to follow what the hell they were talking about.
“ … allowable revision to Ritual of Choice of Uplift Advisor … modification made during time of stress, by foremost client representatives … if performed truly in best interests of their patron race …” Gailet seemed visibly shaken, looking up at the Gubru. Her lips pressed together in a tight line, and her intertwined fingers were white with tension. When the Suzerain stopped chirping, the vodor continued on for a moment, then silence closed in around them, leaving only the whistle of passing air and the faint droning of the hover’s engines.
Gailet swallowed. She bowed and seemed to have difficulty finding her voice.
You can do it, Fiben urged silently. Speechlock could strike any chim, especially under pressure like this, but he knew he dared not do anything to help her.
Gailet coughed, swallowed again, and managed to bring forth words.
“Hon-honored elder, we … we cannot speak for our patrons, or even for all the chims on Garth. What you ask is … is …”
The Suzerain spoke again, as if her reply had been complete. Or perhaps it simply was not considered impolite for a patron-class being to interrupt a client.
“You have no need—need not … to answer now,” the vodor pronounced as the Gubru chirped and bobbed on its perch. “Study—learn—consider … the materials you will be given. This opportunity will be to your advantage.”
The chirping ceased again, followed by the buzzing vodor. The Suzerian seemed to dismiss them then, simply by closing its eyes.
As if at some signal invisible to Fiben, the pilot of the hover barge banked away from the frenzied activity atop the ravaged hilltop and sent the craft streaking back across the bay, northward, toward Port Helenia. Soon the battleship in the harbor—gigantic and imperturbable—fell behind them in its wreath of mist and rainbows.
Fiben and Gailet followed a Kwackoo to seats at the back of the barge. “What was all that about?” Fiben whispered to her. “What was the damn thing sayin’ about some sort of ceremony? What does it want us to do?”
“Sh!” Gailet motioned for him to be silent. “I’ll explain later, Fiben. Right now, please, let me think.”
Gailet settled into a corner, wrapping her arms around her knees. Absently, she scratched the fur on her left leg. Her eyes were unfocused, and when Fiben made a gesture, as if to offer to groom her, she did not even respond. She only looked off toward the horizon, as if her mind were very far away.
Back in their cell they found that many changes had been made. “I guess we passed all those tests,” Fiben said, staring at their transformed quarters.
The chains had been taken away soon after the Suzerain’s first visit, that dark night weeks ago. After that occasion the straw on the floor had been replaced by mattresses, and they had been allowed books.
Now, though, that was made to seem Spartan, indeed. Plush carpeting had been laid down, and an expensive holo-tapestry covered most of one wall. There were such amenities as beds and chairs and a desk, and even a music deck.
“Bribes,” Fiben muttered as he sorted through some of the record cubes. “Hot damn, we’ve got something they want. Maybe the Resistance isn’t over. Maybe Athaclena and Robert are stinging them, and they want us to—”
“This hasn’t got anything to do with your general, Fiben,” Gailet said in a very low voice, barely above a whisper. “Or not much, at least. It’s a whole lot bigger than that.” Her expression was tense. All the way back, she had been silent and nervous. At times Fiben imagined he could hear wheels turning in her head.
Gailet motioned for him to follow her to the new holo-wall. At the moment it was set to depict a three-dimensional scene of abstract shapes and patterns—a seemingly endless vista of glossy cubes, spheres, and pyramids stretching into the infinite distance. She sat cross-legged and twiddled with the controls. “This is an expensive unit,” she said, a little louder than necessary. “Let’s have some fun and find out what it can do.”
As Fiben sat down beside her, the Euclidean shapes blurred and vanished. The controller clicked under Gailet’s hand, and a new scene suddenly leaped into place. The wall now seemed to open onto a vast, sandy beach. Clouds filled the sky out to a lowering, gray horizon, pregnant with storms. Breakers rolled less than twenty meters away, so realistic that Fiben’s nostrils flared as he tried to catch the salt scent.
Gailet concentrated on the controls. “This may be the ticket,” he heard her mumble. The almost perfect beachscape flickered, and in its place there suddenly loomed a wall of leafy green—a jungle scene, so near and real that Fiben almost felt he could leap through and escape into its green mists, as if this were one of those mythical “teleportation devices” one read of in romantic fiction, and not just a high-quality holo-tapestry.
He contemplated the scene Gailet had chosen. Fiben could tell at once that it wasn’t a jungle of Garth. The creeper-entwined rain forest was a vibrant, lively, noisy scene, filled with color and variety. Birds cawed and howler monkeys shrieked.
Earth, then, he thought, and wondered if the Galaxy would ever let him fulfill his dream of someday seeing the homeworld. Not bloody likely, the way things are.
His attention drew back as Gailet spoke. “Just let me adjust this here, to make it more realistic.” The sound level rose. Jungle noise burst forth to surround them. What is she trying to do? he wondered.
Suddenly he noticed something. As Gailet twiddled with the volume level, her left hand moved in a crude but eloquent gesture. Fiben blinked. It was a sign in baby talk, the hand language all infant chims used until the age of four, when speech finally became useful.
Grownups listening, she said.
Jungle sounds seemed to fill the room, reverberating from the other walls. “There,” she said in a low voice. “Now they can’t listen in on us. We can talk frankly.”
“But—” Fiben started to object, then he saw the gesture again. Grownups listening.…
Once more his respect for Gailet’s cleverness grew. Of course she knew this simple method would not stop snoopers from picking up their every word. But the Gubru and their agents might imagine the chims foolish enough to think it would! If the two of them acted as if they believed they were safe from eavesdropping …
Such a tangled web we weave, Fiben thought. This was real spy stuff. Fun, in a way.
It was also, he knew, dangerous as hell.
“The Suzerain of Propriety has a problem,” Gailet told him aloud. Her hands lay still on her lap.
“It told you that? But if the Gubru are in trouble, why—”
“I didn’t say the Gubru—although I think that’s true, as well. I was talking about the Suzerain of Propriety itself. It’s having troubles with its peers. The priest seriously overcommitted itself in a certain matter, some time back, and now it seems there’s hell to pay over it.”
Fiben just sat there, amazed that the lofty alien lord had deigned to tell an earthworm of a Terran client such things. He wasn’t comfortable with the idea. Such confidences were likely to be unhealthy. “What were these overcommitments?” he asked.
“Well, for one thing,” Gailet went on, scratching her kneecap, “some months ago it insisted that many parties of Talon Soldiers and scientists be sent up into the mountains.”
“What for?”
Gailet’s face took on an expression of severe control. “They were sent searching for … for Garthlings.”
“For what?” Fiben blinked. He started to laugh. Then he cut short when he saw the warning flicker in her eyes. The hand scratching her knee curled and turned in a motion that signified caution.
“For Garthlings,” she repeated.
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Of all the superstitious nonsense, Fiben thought. Ignorant, yellow-card chims use Garthling fables to frighten their children. It was rich to think of the sophisticated Gubru falling for such tall tales.
Gailet did not seem to find the idea amusing, though. “You can imagine why the Suzerain would be excited, Fiben, once it had reason to believe Garthlings might exist. Imagine what a fantastic coup it would be for any clan who claimed adoption rights on a pre-sentient race that had survived the Bururalli Holocaust. Immediate takeover of Earth’s tenancy rights here would be the very least of the consequences.”
Fiben saw her point. “But … but what in the world made it think in the first place, that—”
“It seems our Tymbrimi Ambassador, Uthacalthing, was largely responsible for the Suzerain’s fixation, Fiben. You remember that day of the chancery explosion, when you tried to break into the Tymbrimi Diplomatic Cache?”
Fiben opened his mouth. He closed it again. He tried to think. What kind of game was Gailet playing now?
The Suzerain of Propriety obviously knew that he, Fiben, was the chim who had been sighted ducking through the smoke and stench of fried Gubru clerical workers on the day of the explosion at the one-time Tymbrimi Embassy. It knew Fiben was the one who had played a frustrated game of tag with the cache guardian, and who later escaped over a cliff face under the very beaks of a squad of Talon Soldiers.
Did it know because Gailet had told it? If so, had she also told the Suzerain about the secret message Fiben had found in the back of the cache and delivered to Athaclena?
He could not ask her these things. The warning look in her eyes kept him silent. I hope she knows what she’s doing, he prayed fervently. Fiben felt clammy under his arms. He brushed a bead of sweat from his eyebrow. “Go on,” he said in a dry voice.
“Your visit invalidated diplomatic immunity and gave the Gubru the excuse they were looking for, to break into the cache. Then the Gubru had what they thought was a real stroke of luck. The cache autodestruct partially failed. There was evidence inside, Fiben, evidence pertaining to private investigations into the Garthling question by the Tymbrimi Ambassador.”