“Shut up, Fiben,” Gailet told him evenly. “That’s right, Sylvie. We have no agreement, group or monogamous. So what’s this all about? What is it you want from him?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Sylvie glanced over at Fiben. “Whatever his Uplift rating was before, he’s now effectively a white card. Look at his amazing war record, and the way he foiled the Eatees against all odds, not once but twice, in Port Helenia. Any of those’d be enough to advance him from blue status.
“And now the Suzerain’s invited him to be a race-representative. That kind of attention sticks. It’ll hold whoever wins the war, you know that, Dr. Jones.”
Sylvie summarized. “He’s a white card. I’m a green. I also happen to like his style. It’s that simple.”
Me? A Goodall-damned whitie? Fiben burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. It was just dawning on him what Sylvie was driving at.
“Whoever wins,” Sylvie went on, quietly ignoring him. “Whether it’s Earth or the Gubru, I want my child to ride the crest of Uplift and be protected by the Board. My child is going to have a destiny. I’ll have grandchildren, and a piece of tomorrow.”
Sylvie obviously felt passionately about this. But Fiben was in no mood to be sympathetic. Of all the metaphysical claptrap! he thought. And she wasn’t even telling this to him. Sylvie was talking to Gailet, appealing to her! “Hey, don’t I have anything to say about this?” he protested.
“Of course not, silly,” Gailet replied, shaking her head. “You’re a chen. A male chim will screw a goat, or a leaf, if nothing better is available.”
An exaggeration, but a stereotype based on enough truth to make Fiben blush. “But—”
“Sylvie’s attractive and approaching pink. What do you expect you’ll do once you get free, if all of us have agreed in advance that your duty and pleasure coincide?” Gailet shifted. “No, this is not your decision. Now for the last time be quiet, Fiben.”
Gailet turned back to ask Sylvie a new question, but at that moment Fiben could not even hear the words. The roaring in his ears drowned out every other sound. All he could think of at that moment was the drummer, poor Igor Patterson. No. Oh, Goodall, protect me!
“… males work that way.”
“Yes, of course. But I figure you have a bond with him, whether it’s formal or not. Theory is fine, but anyone can tell he’s got an honor-streak a mile thick. He might prove obstinate unless he knew it was all right with you.”
Is this how females think of us chens, down deep? Fiben pondered. He remembered secondary school “health” classes, when the young male chims would be taken off to attend lectures about procreative rights and see films about VD. Like the other boy-chims, he used to wonder what the chimmies were learning at those times. Do the schools teach them this cold-blooded type of logic? Or do they learn it the hard way? From us?
“I do not own him.” Gailet shrugged. “If you are right, nobody will ever have that sort of claim on him … nobody but the Uplift Board, poor fellow.” She frowned. “All I demand of you is that you get him to the mountains safely. He doesn’t touch you till then, understood? You get your fee when he’s safe with the guerrillas.”
A male human would not put up with this, Fiben pondered bitterly. But then, male humans weren’t unfinished, client-level creatures who would “screw a goat, or a leaf, if nothing better was available,” were they?
Sylvie nodded in agreement. She extended her hand. Gailet took it. They shared a long look, then separated.
Sylvie stood up. “I’ll knock before I come in. It’ll be about ten minutes. When she looked at Fiben her expression was satisfied, as if she had done very well in a business arrangement. “Be ready to leave by then,” she said, and turned to go.
When she had left, Fiben finally found his voice. “You assume too much with all your glib theories, Gailet. What the hell makes you so sure—”
“I’m not sure of anything!” she snapped back. And the confused, hurt look on her face stunned Fiben more than anything else that had happened that evening.
Gailet passed a hand in front of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Fiben. Just do as you think best. Only please don’t get offended. None of us can really afford pride right now. Anyway, Sylvie’s not asking all that much, on the scale of things, is she?”
Fiben read the suppressed tension in Gailet’s eyes, and his outrage leaked away. It was replaced by concern for her. “Are … are you sure you’ll be okay?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. The Suzerain’ll probably find me another partner. I’ll do my best to delay things as long as I can.”
Fiben bit his lip. “We’ll get word back to you from the humans, I promise.”
Her expression told him that she held out little hope. But she smiled. “You do that, Fiben.” She reached up and touched the side of his face gently. “You know,” she whispered. “I really will miss you.”
The moment passed. She withdrew her hand and her expression was serious once more. “Now you’d better gather whatever you want to take with you. Meanwhile, there are a few things I suggest you ought to tell your general. You’ll try to remember, Fiben?”
“Yeah, sure.” But for one instant he mourned, wondering if he would ever again see the gentleness that had shone so briefly in her eyes. All business once more, she followed him around the room as he gathered food and clothing. She was still talking a few minutes later when there came a knock on the door.
64
Gailet
In the darkness, after they had left, she sat on her mattress with a blanket over her head, hugging her knees and rocking slowly to the tempo of her loneliness.
Her darkness was not entirely solitary. Far better if it had been, in fact. Gailet sensed the sleeping chen near her, wrapped in Fiben’s bedclothes, softly exhaling faint fumes from the drug that had rendered him unconscious. The Probie guard would not awaken for many hours yet. Gailet figured this quiet time probably would not last as long as his slumber.
No, she was not quite alone. But Gailet Jones had never felt quite so cut off, so isolated.
Poor Fiben, she thought. Maybe Sylvie’s right about him. Certainly he is one of the best chens I’ll ever meet. And yet … She shook her head. And yet, he only saw part of the way through this plot. And I could not even tell him the rest. Not without revealing what I knew to hidden listeners.
She wasn’t sure whether Sylvie was sincere or not. Gailet never had been much good at judging people. But I’ll bet gametes to zygotes Sylvie never fooled the Gubru surveillance.
Gailet sniffed at the very idea—that one little chimmie could have bollixed the Eatees’ monitors in such a way that they would not have instantly noticed it. No, this was all far too easy. It was arranged.
By whom? Why?
Did it really matter?
We never had any choice, of course. Fiben had to accept the offer.
Gailet wondered if she would ever see him again. If this were just another sapiency test ordered by the Suzerain of Propriety, then Fiben might very well be back tomorrow, credited with one more “appropriate response” … appropriate for an especially advanced neo-chimpanzee, at the vanguard of his client-level race.
She shuddered. Until tonight she had never considered the implications, but Sylvie had made it all too clear. Even if they were brought together again, it would never be the same for her and Fiben. If her white card had been a barrier between them before, his would almost certainly be a yawning chasm.
Anyway, Gailet had begun to suspect that this wasn’t just another test, arranged by the Suzerain of Propriety. And if not, then some faction of the Gubru had to be responsible for tonight’s escapade. Perhaps one of the other Suzerains, or …
Gailet shook her head again. She did not know enough even to guess. There wasn’t sufficient data. Or maybe she was just too blind/stupid to see the pattern.
A play was unfolding all around them, and at every stage it seemed there was no choice which way to turn. Fiben had to go tonight, whether the offe
r of escape was a trap or not. She had to stay and wrestle with vagaries beyond her grasp. That was her written fate.
This sensation of being manipulated, with no real power over her own destiny, was a familiar one to Gailet, even if Fiben was only beginning to get used to it. For Gailet it had been a lifelong companion.
Some of the old-time religions of Earth had included the concept of predetermination—a belief that all events were foreordained since the very first act of creation, and that so-called free will was nothing more than an illusion.
Soon after Contact, two centuries ago, human philosophers had asked the first Galactics they met what they thought of this and many other ideas. Quite often the alien sages had responded patronizingly. “These are questions that can only be posed in an illogical wolfling language,” had been a typical response. “There are no paradoxes,” they had assured.
And no mysteries left to be solved … or at least none that could ever be approached by the likes of Earthlings.
Predestination was not all that hard for the Galactics to understand actually. Most thought the wolfling clan predestined for a sad, brief story.
And yet, Gailet found herself suddenly recalling a time, back when she was living on Earth, when she had met a certain neo-dolphin—an elderly, retired poet—who told her stories about occasions when he had swum in the slipstreams of great whales, listening for hours on end to their moaning songs of ancient cetacean gods. She had been flattered and fascinated when the aged ’fin composed a poem especially for her.
Where does a ball alight,
Falling through the bright midair?
Hit it with your snout!
Gailet figured the haiku had to be even more pungent in Trinary, the hybrid language neo-dolphins generally used for their poetry. She did not know Trinary, of course, but even in Anglic the little allegory had stuck with her.
Thinking about it, Gailet gradually came to realize that she was smiling.
Hit it with your snout, indeed!
The sleeping form next to her snored softly. Gailet tapped her tongue against her front teeth and pretended to be listening to the rhythm of drums.
She was still sitting there, thinking, some hours later when the door slid open with a loud bang and light spilled in from the hall. Several four-legged avian forms marched in. Kwackoo. At the head of the procession Gailet recognized the pastel-tinted down of the Servitor of the Suzerain of Propriety. She stood up, but her shallow bow received no answer.
The Kwackoo stared at her. Then it motioned down at the form under the blankets. “Your companion does not rise. This is unseemly.”
Obviously, with no Gubru around, the Servitor did not feel obligated to be courteous. Gailet looked up at the ceiling. “Perhaps he is indisposed.”
“Does he require medical assistance?”
“I imagine he’ll recover without it.”
The Kwackoo’s three-toed feet shuffled in irritation. “I shall be frank. We wish to inspect your companion, to ascertain his identity.”
She raised an eyebrow, even though she knew the gesture was wasted on this creature. “And who do you think he might be? Grandpa Bonzo? Don’t you Kwackoo keep track of your prisoners?”
The avian’s agitation increased. “This confinement area was placed under the authority of neo-chimpanzee auxiliaries. If there was a failure, it is due to their animal incompetence. Their unsapient negligence.”
Gailet laughed. “Bullshit.”
The Kwackoo stopped its dance of irritation and listened to its portable translator. When it only stared at her, Gailet shook her head. “You can’t palm this off on us, Kwackoo. You and I both know putting chim Probationers in charge here was just a sham. If there’s been a security breach, it was inside your own camp.”
The Servitor’s beak opened a few degrees. Its tongue flicked, a gesture Gailet by now knew signified pure hatred. The alien gestured, and two globuform robots whined forward. Gently but firmly they used gravitic fields to pick up the sleeping neo-chimp without even disturbing the blankets, and backed away with him toward the door. Since the Kwackoo had not bothered to look under the covers, obviously it already knew what it would find there.
“There will be an investigation,” it promised. Then it swiveled to depart. In minutes, Gailet knew, they would be reading Fiben’s “goodbye note,” which had been left attached to the snoring guard. Gailet tried to help Fiben with one more delay.
“Fine,” she said. “In the meantime, I have a request.… No, make that a demand, that I wish to make.”
The Servitor had been stepping toward the door, ahead of its entourage of fluttering Kwackoo. At Gailet’s words, however, it stopped, causing a mini traffic jam. There was a babble of angry cooing as its followers brushed against each other and flicked their tongues at Gailet. The pink-crested leader turned back and faced her.
“You are not able to make demands.”
“I make this one in the name of Galactic tradition,” Gailet insisted. “Do not force me to send my petition directly to its eminence, the Suzerain of Propriety.”
There was a long pause, during which the Kwackoo seemed to contemplate the risks involved. At last it asked. “What is your foolish demand?”
Now though, Gailet remained silent, waiting.
Finally, with obvious ill grace, the Servitor bowed, a bending so minuscule as to be barely detectable. Gailet returned the gesture, to the same degree.
“I want to go to the Library,” she said in perfect GalSeven. “In fact, under my rights as a Galactic citizen, I insist on it.”
65
Fiben
Exiting in the drugged guard’s clothes had turned out to be almost absurdly simple, once Sylvie taught him a simple code phrase to speak to the robots hovering over the gate. The sole chim on duty had been mumbling around a sandwich and waved the two of them through with barely a glance.
“Where are you taking me?” Fiben asked once the dark, vine-covered wall of the prison was behind them.
“To the docks,” Sylvie answered over her shoulder. She maintained a quick pace down the damp, leaf-blown sidewalks, leading him past blocks of dark, empty, human-style dwellings. Then, further on, they passed through a chim neighborhood, consisting mostly of large, rambling, group-marriage houses, brightly painted, with doorlike windows and sturdy trellises for kids to climb. Now and then, as they hurried by, Fiben caught glimpses of silhouettes cast against tightly drawn curtains.
“Why the docks?”
“Because that’s where the boats are!” Sylvie replied tersely. Her eyes darted to and fro. She twisted the chronometer ring on her left hand and kept looking back over her shoulder, as if worried they might be followed.
That she seemed nervous was natural. Still, Fiben had reached his limit. He grabbed her arm and made her stop. “Listen, Sylvie. I appreciate everything you’ve done so far. But now don’t you think it’s time for you to let me in on the plan?”
She sighed. “Yeah, I suppose so.” Her anxious grin reminded him of that night at the Ape’s Grape. What he had imagined then to be animal lust that evening must have been something like this instead, fear suppressed under a well-laid veneer of bravado.
“Except for the gates in the fence, the only way out of the city is by boat. My plan is for us to sneak aboard one of the fishing vessels. The night fishers generally put to sea at”—she glanced at her finger watch—“oh, in about an hour.”
Fiben nodded. “Then what?”
“Then we slip overboard as the boat passes out of Aspinal Bay. We’ll swim to North Point Park. From there it’ll be a hard march north, along the beach, but we should be able to make hilly country by daybreak.”
Fiben nodded. It sounded like a good plan. He liked the fact that there were several points along the way where they could change their minds if problems or opportunities presented themselves. For instance, they might try for the south point of the bay, instead. Certainly the enemy would not expect two fugitives to head straight toward th
eir new hypershunt installation! There would be a lot of construction equipment parked there. The idea of stealing one of the Gubru’s own ships appealed to Fiben. If he ever pulled something like that off, maybe he’d actually merit a white card after all!
He shook aside that thought quickly, for it made him think of Gailet. Damn it, he missed her already.
“Sounds pretty well thought out, Sylvie.”
She smiled guardedly. “Thanks, Fiben. Uh, can we go now?”
He gestured for her to lead on. Soon they were winding their way past shuttered shops and food stands. The clouds overhead were low and ominous, and the night smelled of the coming storm. A southwesterly wind blew in stiff but erratic gusts, pushing leaves and bits of paper around their ankles as they walked.
When it started to drizzle, Sylvie raised the hood of her parka, but Fiben left his own down. He did not mind wet hair half as much as having his sight and hearing obstructed now.
Off toward the sea he saw a flickering in the sky, accompanied by distant, gray growling. Hell, Fiben thought. What am I thinking! He grabbed his companion’s arm again. ‘ “Nobody’s going to go to sea in this kind of weather, Sylvie.”
“The captain of this boat will, Fiben.” She shook her head. “I really shouldn’t tell you this, but he’s … he’s a smuggler. Was even before the war. His craft has foul weather integrity and can partially submerge.”
Fiben blinked. “What’s he smuggling, nowadays?”
Sylvie looked left and right. “Chims, some of the times. To and from Cilmar Island.”
“Cilmar! Would he take us there?”
Sylvie frowned. “I promised Gailet I’d get you to the mountains, Fiben. And anyway, I’m not sure I’d trust this captain that far.”
But Fiben’s head was awhirl. Half the humans on the planet were interned on Cilmar Island! Why settle for Robert and Athaclena, who were, after all, barely more than children, when he might be able to bring Gailet’s questions before the experts at the University!
“Let’s play it by ear,” he said noncommittally. But he was already determined to evaluate this smuggler captain for himself. Perhaps under the cover of this storm it might turn out to be possible! Fiben thought about it as they resumed their journey.