The Uplift War

24 Fiben

Tall, gangling, storklike figures watched the road from atop the roof of a dark, low-slung bunker. Their silhouettes, outlined against the late afternoon sun, were in constant motion, shifting from one spindly leg to another in nervous energy as if the slightest sound would be enough to set them into flight.

Serious creatures, those birds. And dangerous as hell.

Not birds, Fiben reminded himself as he approached the checkpoint. Not in the Earthly sense, at least.

But the analogy would do. Their bodies were covered with fine down. Sharp, bright yellow beaks jutted from sleek, swept-back faces.

And although their ancient wings were now no more than slender, feathered arms, they could fly. Black, glistening gravitic backpacks more than compensated for what their avian ancestors had long ago lost.

Talon Soldiers. Fiben wiped his hands on his shorts, but his palms still felt damp. He kicked a pebble with one bare foot and patted his draft horse on the flank. The placid animal had begun to crop a patch of blue native grass by the side of the road.

“Come on, Tycho,” Fiben said, tugging on the reins. “We can’t hang back or they’ll get suspicious. Anyway, you know that stuff gives you gas.”

Tycho shook his massive gray head and farted loudly.

“I told you so.” Fiben waved at the air.

A cargo wagon floated just behind the horse. The dented, half-rusted bin of the farm truck was filled with rough burlap sacks of grain. Obviously the antigrav stator still worked, butthe propulsion engine was kaput.

“Come on. Let’s get on with it.” Fiben tugged again.

Tycho gamely nodded, as if the workhorse actually understood. The traces tightened, and the hover truck bobbed along after them as they approached the checkpoint.

Soon, however, a keening sound on the road ahead warned of oncoming traffic. Fiben hurriedly guided horse and wagon to one side. With a high-pitched whine and a rush of air, an armored hovercraft swept by. Vehicles like it had been cruising eastward intermittently, in ones and twos, all day.

He looked carefully to make sure nothing else was coming before leading Tycho back onto the road. Fiben’s shoulders hunched nervously. Tycho snorted at the growing, unfamiliar scent of the invaders.

“Halt!”

Fiben jumped involuntarily. The amplified voice was mechanical, toneless, and adamant. “Move, move to this side… this side for inspection!”

Fiben’s heart pounded. He was glad his role was to act frightened. It wouldn’t be hard.

“Hasten! Make haste and present yourself!”

Fiben led Tycho toward the inspection stand, ten meters to the right of the highway. He tied the horse’s tether to a railed post and hurried around to where a pair of Talon Soldiers waited.

Fiben’s nostrils flared at the aliens’ dusty, lavender aroma. I wonder what they’d taste like, he thought somewhat savagely. It would have made no difference at all to his great-to-the-tenth-grandfather that these were sentient beings. To his ancestors, a bird was a bird was a bird.

He bowed low, hands crossed in front of him, and got his first close look at the invaders.

They did not seem all that impressive up close. True, the sharp yellow beak and razorlike talons looked formidable. But the stick-legged creatures were hardly much taller than Fiben, and their bones looked hollow and thin.

No matter. These were starfarers — senior patrons-class beings whose Library-derived culture and technology were all but omnipotent long, long before humans rose -up out of Africa’s savannah, blinking with the dawnlight of fearful curiosity. By the time man’s lumbering slowships stumbled upon Galactic civilization, the Gubru and their clients had wrested aposition of some eminence among the powerful interstellar clans. Fierce conservatism and facile use of the Great Library had taken them far since their own patrons had found them on the Gubru homeworld and given them the gift of completed minds.

Fiben remembered huge, bellipotent battle cruisers, dark and invincible under their shimmering allochroous shields, with the lambent edge of the galaxy shining behind them…

Tycho nickered and shied aside as one of the Talon Soldiers — its saber-rifle loosely slung — stepped past him to approach the tethered truck. The alien climbed onto the floating farm-hover to inspect it. The other guard twittered into a microphone. Half buried in the soft down around the creature’s narrow, sharp breastbone, a silvery medallion emitted clipped Anglic words.

“State… state identity… identity and purpose!”

Fiben crouched, down and shivered, pantomiming fear. He was sure not many Gubru knew much about neo-chimps. In the few centuries since Contact, little information would have yet passed through the massive bureaucracy of the Library Institute and found its way into local branches. And of course, the Galactics relied on the Library for nearly everything.

Still, verisimilitude was important. Fiben’s ancestors had understood one answer to a threat when a counter-bluff was ruled out — submission. Fiben knew how to fake it. He crouched lower and moaned.

The Gubru whistled in apparent frustration, probably having gone through this before. It chirped again, more slowly this time.

“Do not be alarmed, you are safe,” the vodor medallion translated at a lower volume than before. “You are safe… safe… We are Gubru… Galactic patrons of high dan and family… You are safe… Young haltsentients are safe when they are cooperative… You are safe. …”

Half-sentients… Fiben rubbed his nose to cover a sniff of indignation. Of course that was what the Gubru were bound to think. And in truth, few four-hundred-year-old client races could be called fully uplifted.

Still, Fiben noted yet another score to settle.

He was able to pick out meaning here and there in the invader’s chirpings before the vodor translated them. But one short course in Galactic Three, back in school, was not much to go on, and the Gubru had their own accent and dialect.

“. . . You are safe …” the vodor soothed. “The humans do not deserve such fine clients… You are safe…” .

Gradually, Fiben backed away and looked up, still trembling. Don’t overact, he reminded himself. He gave the gangling avian creature an approximation of a correct bow of respect from a bipedal junior client to a senior patron. The alien would surely miss the slight embellishment — an extension of the middle fingers — that flavored the gesture.

“Now,” the vodor barked, perhaps with a note of relief. “State name and purposes.”

“Uh, I’m F-Fiben… uh, s-s-ser.” His hands fluttered in front of him. It was a bit of theater, but the Gubru might know that neo-chimpanzees under stress still spoke using parts of the brain originally devoted to hand control.

It certainly looked as if the Talon Soldier was frustrated. Its feathers ruffled, and it hopped a little dance. “. . . purpose… purpose… state your purpose in approaching the urban area!”

Fiben bowed again, quickly.

“Uh… th’ hover won’t work no more. Th’ humans are all gone… nobody to tell us what to do at th’ farm …”

He scratched his head. “I figured, well, they must need food in town… and maybe some- somebody can fix th’ cart in trade for grain… ?” His voice rose hopefully.

The second Gubru returned and chirped briefly to the one in charge. Fiben could follow its GalThree well enough to get the gist.

The hover was a real farm tool. It would not take a genius to tell that the rotors just needed to be unfrozen for it to run again. Only a helpless drudge would haul an antigravity truck all the way to town behind a beast of burden, unable to make such a simple repair on his own.

The first guard kept one taloned, splay-fingered hand over the vodor, but Fiben gathered their opinion of chims had started low and was rapidly dropping. The invaders hadn’t even bothered to issue identity cards to the neo-chimpanzee population.

For centuries Earthlings — humans, dolphins, and chims — : had known the galaxies were a dangerous place where it was often better to have more cleverness than one was credited for. Even before the invasion, word had gone out among the chim population of Garth that it might be necessary to put on the old “Yes, massa!” routine.

Yeah, Fiben reminded himself. But nobody ever counted on all the humans being taken away! Fiben felt a knot in his stomach when he imagined the humans — mels, ferns, and children — huddled behind barbed wire in crowded camps.

Oh yeah. The invaders would pay.

The Talon Soldiers consulted a map. The first Gubru uncovered its vodor and twittered again at Fiben.

“You may go,” the vodor barked. “Proceed to the Eastside Garage Complex… You may go … Eastside Garage… Do you know the Eastside Garage?”

Fiben nodded hurriedly. “Y-yessir.”

“Good… good creature… take your grain to the town storage area, then proceed to the garage … to the garage… good creature… Do you understand?”

“Y-yes!”

Fiben bowed as he backed away and then scuttled with an exaggeratedly bowlegged gait over to the post where Tycho’s reins were tied. He averted his gaze as he led the animal back onto the dirt embankment beside the road. The soldiers idly watched him pass, chirping contemptuous remarks they were certain he could not understand.

Stupid damned birds, he thought, while his disguised belt camera panned the fortification, the soldiers, a hover-tank that whined by a few minutes later, its crew sprawled upon its flat upper deck, taking in the late afternoon sun.

Fiben waved as they swept by, staring back at him.

I’ll bet you’d taste just fine in a nice orange glaze, he thought after the feathered creatures.

Fiben tugged the horse’s reins. “C’mon, Tycho,” he urged. “We gotta make Port Helenia by nightfall.”

Farms were still operating in the Valley of the Sind.

Traditionally, whenever a starfaring race was licensed to colonize a new world, the continents were left as much as possible in their natural state. On Garth as well, the major Earthling settlements had been established on an archipelago in the shallow Western Sea. Only those islands had been converted completely to suit Earth-type animals and vegetation.

But Garth was a special case. The BururalH had left a mess, and something had to be done quickly to help stabilize the planet’s rocky ecosystem. New forms had to be introduced from the outside to prevent a complete biosphere collapse. That meant tampering with the continents.

A narrow watershed had been converted in the shadow of the Mountains of Mulun. Terran plants and animals that thrived here were allowed to diffuse into the foothills under careful observation, slowly filling some of the ecological niches left empty by the Bururalli Holocaust. It was a delicate experiment in practical planetary ecology, but one considered worthwhile. On Garth and on other catastrophe worlds the three races of the Terragens were building reputations as biosphere wizards. Even Mankind’s worst critics would have to approve of work such as this.

And ye,t, something was jarringly wrong here. Fiben had passed three abandoned ecological management stations on his way, sampling traps and tracer bots stacked in disarray.

It was a sign of how bad the crisis must be. Holding the humans hostage was one thing — a marginally acceptable tactic by modern rules of war. But for the Gubru to be willing to disturb the resurrection of Garth, the uproar in the galaxy must be profound.

It didn’t bode well for the rebellion. What if the War Codes really had broken down? Would the Gubru be willing to use planet busters?

That’s the General’s problem, Fiben decided. I’m just a spy. She’s the Eatee expert.

At least the farms were working, after a fashion. Fiben passed one field cultivated with zygowheat and another with carrots. The robo-tillers went their rounds, weeding and irrigating. Here and there he saw a dispirited chim riding a spiderlike controller unit, supervising the machinery.

Sometimes they waved to him. More often they did not.

Once, he passed a pair of armed Gubru standing in a furrowed field beside their landed flitter. As he came closer, Fiben saw they were scolding a chim farmworker. The avians fluttered and hopped as they gestured at the drooping crop. The foreman nodded unhappily, wiping her palms on her faded dungarees. She glanced at Fiben as he passed by along the road, but the aliens went on with their rebuke, oblivious.

Apparently the Gubru were anxious for the crops to come in. Fiben hoped it meant they wanted it for their hostages. But maybe they had arrived with thin supplies and needed the food for themselves.

He was making good time when he drew Tycho off the road into a small grove of fruit trees. The animal rested, browsing on the Earth-stock grass while Fiben sauntered over behind a tree to relieve himself.

The orchard had not been sprayed or pest-balanced in some time, he observed. A type of stingless wasp was still swarming over the ping-oranges, although the secondary flowering had finished weeks before and they were no longer needed for pollination.

The air was filled with a fruity, almost-ripe pungency. The wasps climbed over the thin rinds, seeking access to the sweetness within.

Abruptly, without thinking, Fiben reached out and snatched a few of the insects. It was easy. He hesitated, then popped them into his mouth.

They were juicy and crunchy, a lot like termites. “Just doing my part to keep the pest population down,” he rationalized, and his brown hands darted out to grab more. The taste of the crunching wasps reminded him of how long it had been since he had last eaten.

“I’ll need sustenance if I’m to do good work in town tonight,” he thought half aloud. Fiben looked around. The horse grazed peacefully, and no one else was in sight.

He dropped his tool belt and took a step back. Then, favoring his still tender left ankle, he leaped onto the trunk and shimmied up to one of the fruit-heavy limbs. Ah, he thought as he plucked an almost ripe reddish globe. He ate it like an apple, skin and all. The taste was tart and astringent, unlike the bland human-style food so many chims claimed to like these days.

He grabbed two more oranges and popped a few leaves into his mouth for good measure. Then he stretched back and closed his eyes.

Up here, with only the buzz of the wasps for company, Fiben could almost pretend he didn’t have a care, in this world or any other. He could put out of his mind wars and all the other silly preoccupations of sapient beings.

Fiben pouted, his expressive lips drooping low. He scratched himself under his arm.

“Ook, ook.”

He snorted — almost silent laughter — and imagined he was back in an Africa even his great-grandfathers had never seen, in forested hills never touched by his people’s too-smooth, big-nosed cousins.

What would the universe have been like without men? Without Eatees? Without anyone at all but chimps?

Sooner or later we would’ve invented starships, and the universe might have been ours.

The clouds rolled by and Fiben lay back on the branch with narrowed eyes, enjoying his fantasy. The wasps buzzed in futile indignation over his presence. He forgave them their insolence as he plucked a few from the air as added morsels.

Try as he might, though, .he could not maintain the illusion of solitude. For there arrived another sound, an added drone from high above. And try as he might, he couldn’t pretend he did not hear alien transports cruising uninvited across the sky.

A glistening fence more than three meters high undulated over the rolling ground surrounding Port Helenia. It was an imposing barrier, put up quickly by special robot machines right after the invasion. There were several gates, through which the city’s chim population seemed to come and go without much notice or impediment. But they could not help being intimidated by the sudden new wall. Perhaps that was its basic purpose.

Fiben wondered how the Gubru would have managed the trick if the capital had been a real city and not just a small town on a rustic colony world.

He wondered where the humans were being kept.

It was dusk as he passed a wide belt of knee-high tree stumps, a hundred meters before the alien fence. The area had been planned as a park, but now only splintered fragments lay on the ground all the way to the dark watchtower and open gate.

Fiben steeled himself to go through the same scrutiny as earlier at the checkpoint, but to his surprise no one challenged him. A narrow pool of light spilled onto the highway from a pair of pillar spots. Beyond, he saw dark, angular buildings, the dimly lit streets apparently deserted.

The silence was spooky. Fiben’s shoulders hunched as he spoke softly. “Come on, Tycho. Quietly.” The horse blew and pulled the floating wagon slowly past the steel-gray bunker.

Fiben chanced a quick glance inside the structure as he passed. A pair of guards stood within, each perched on one knotted, stick-thin leg, its sharp, avian bill buried in the soft down under its left arm. Two saber-rifles lay on the counter beside them, near a stack of standard Galactic faxboards.

The two Talon Soldiers appeared to be fast asleep!

Fiben sniffed, his flat nose wrinkling once more at the over-sweet alien aroma. This was not the first time he had seen signs of weaknesses in the reputedly invincible grip of the Gubru fanatics. They had had it easy until now — too easy. With the humans nearly all gathered and neutralized, the invaders apparently thought the only possible threat was from space. That, undoubtedly, was why all the fortifications he had seen had faced upward, with little or no provision against attack from the ground.

Fiben stroked his sheathed belt knife. He was tempted to creep into the guard post, slipping under the obvious alarm beams, and teach the Gubru a lesson for their complacency.

The urge passed and he shook his head. Later, he thought. When it will hurt them more.

Patting Tycho’s neck, he led the horse through the lighted area by the guard post and beyond the gate into the industrial part of town. The streets between the warehouses and factories were quiet — a few chims here and there hurrying about on errands beneath the scrutiny of the occasional passing Gubru patrol skimmer.

Taking pains not to be observed, Fiben slipped into a side alley and found a windowless storage building not far from the colony’s sole iron foundry. Under his whispered urging, Tycho pulled the floating hover over to the shadows by the back door of the warehouse. A layer of dust showed that the padlock had not been touched in weeks. He examined it closely. “Hmmm.”

Fiben took a rag from his belt apron and wrapped it around the hasp. Taking it firmly in both hands, he closed his eyes and counted to three before yanking down hard.

The lock was strong, but, as he’d suspected, the ring bolt in the dpor was corroded. It snapped with a muffled “crack!” Quickly, Fiben slipped the sheaf and pushed the door along its tracks. Tycho placidly followed him into the gloomy interior, the truck trailing behind. Fiben looked around to memorize the layout of hulking presses and metalworking machinery before hurrying back to close the- door again.

“You’ll be all right,” he said softly as he unhitched the animal. He hauled a sack of oats out of the hover and split it open on the ground. Then he filled a tub with water from a nearby tap. “I’ll be back if I can,” he added. “If not, you just enjoy the oats for a couple of days, then whinny. I’m sure someone will be by.”

Tycho switched his tail and looked up from the grain. He gave Fiben a baleful look in the dim light and let out another smelly, gassy commentary.

“Hmph.” Fiber! nodded, waving away the smell, “You’re probably right, old friend. Still, I’ll wager your descendants will worry too much too, if and when somebody ever gives them the dubious gift of so-called intelligence.”

He patted the horse in farewell and loped over to the door to peer outside. It looked clear out there. Quieter than even the gene-poor forests of Garth. The navigation beacon atop the Terragens Building still flashed — no doubt used now to guide the invaders in their night operations. Somewhere in the distance a faint electric hum could be heard.

It wasn’t far from here to the place where he was supposed to meet his contact. This would be the riskiest part of his foray into town.

Many frantic ideas had been proposed during the two days between the initial Gubru gas attacks and the invaders’ complete seizure of all forms of communication. Hurried, frenzied telephone calls and radio messages had surged from Port Helenia to the Archipelago and to the continental out-lands. During that time the human population had been thoroughly-distracted and what remained of government communications were coded. So it was mainly chims, acting privately, who filled the airwaves with panicked conjectures and wild schemes — most of them horrifically dumb.

Fiben figured that was just as well, for no doubt the enemy had been listening in even then. Their opinion of neo-chimps must have been reinforced by the hysteria.

Still, here and there had been voices that sounded rational. Wheat hidden amid the chaff. Before she died, the human anthropologist Dr. Taka had identified one message as having come from one of her former postdoctoral students — one Gailet Jones, a resident of Port Helenia. It was this chim the General had decided to send Fiben to contact.

Unfortunately, there had been so much confusion. No one but Dr. Taka could say what this Jones person looked like, and by the time someone thought to ask her, Dr. Taka wag dead.

Fiben’s confidence in the rendezvous site and password was slim, at best. Prob’ly we haven’t even got the night right, he grumbled to himself.

He slipped outside and closed the door again, replacing the shattered bolt so the lock hung back in place. The ring tilted at a slight angle. But it could fool someone who wasn’t looking very carefully.

The larger moon would be up in an hour or so. He had to move if he was going to make his appointment in time.

Closer to the center of Port Helenia, but still on the “wrong” side of town, he stopped in a small plaza to watch light pour from the narrow basement window of a working chim’s bar. Bass-heavy music caused the panes to shake in their wooden frames. Fiben could feel the vibration all the way across the street, through the soles of his feet. It was the only sign of life for blocks in all directions, if one did not count quiet apartments where dim lights shone dimly through tightly drawn curtains.

He faded back into the shadows as a whirring patroller robot cruised by, floating a meter above the roadway. The squat machine’s turret swiveled to fix on his position as it passed. Its sensors must have picked him out, an infrared glow in the misty trees. But the machine went on, probably having identified him as a mere neo-chimpanzee.

Fiben had seen other dark-furred forms like himself hurrying hunch-shouldered through the streets. Apparently, the curfew was more psychological than martial. The occupation forces weren’t being strict because there didn’t seem to be any need.

Many of those not in their homes had been heading for places like this — the Ape’s Grape. Fiben forced himself to stop scratching a persistent itch under his chin. This was the sort of establishment favored by grunt laborers and probationers, chims whose reproductive privileges were restricted by the Edicts of Uplift.

There were laws requiring even humans to seek genetic counseling when they bred. But for their clients, neo-dolphins and neo-chimpanzees, the codes were far more severe. In this one area normally liberal Terran law adhered closely to Galactic standards. It was that or lose chims and ’fins forever to some more senior clan. Earth was far too weak to defy the most honored of Galactic traditions.

About a third of the chim population carried green reproduction cards, allowing them to control their own fertility, subject only to guidance from the Uplift Board and possible penalties if they weren’t careful. Those chims with gray or yellow cards were more restricted. They could apply, after they joined a marriage group, to reclaim and use the sperm or ova they stored with the Board during adolescence, before routine sterilization. Permission might be granted if they achieved meritorious accomplishments in life. More often, a yellow-card chimmie would carry to term and adopt an embryo engineered with the next generation .of “improvements” inserted by the Board’s technicians.

Those with red cards weren’t even allowed near chim children.

By pre-Contact standards, the system might have sounded cruel. But Fiben had lived with it all his life. On the fast track of Uplift a client race’s gene pool was always being meddled with. At least chims, were consulted as part of the process. Not many client species were so lucky.

The social upshot, though, was that there were classes among chims. And “blue-carders” like Fiben weren’t exactly welcome in places like the Ape’s Grape.

Still, this was the site chosen by his contact. There had been no further messages, so he had no choice but to see if the rendezvous would be kept. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the street and walked toward the growling, crashing music.

As his hand touched the door handle a voice whispered from the shadows to his left.

“Pink?”

At first he thought he had imagined it. But the words repeated, a little louder.

“Pink? Looking for a party?”

Fiben stared. The light from the window had spoiled his night vision, but he caught a glimpse of a small simian face, somewhat childlike. There was a flash of white as the chim smiled.

“Pink Party?”

He let go of the handle, hardly able to believe his ears. “I beg your pardon?”

Fiben took a step forward. But at that moment the door opened, spilling light and noise out into the street. Several dark shapes, hooting with laughter and stinking of beer-soaked fur, pushed him aside as they stumbled past. By the time the revelers were gone and the door had closed again, the blurry, dark alley was empty once more. The small, shadowy figure had slipped away.

Fiben felt tempted to follow, if only to verify that he had been offered what he thought he had. And why was the proposition, once tendered, so suddenly withdrawn?

Obviously, things had changed in Port Helenia. True, he hadn’t been to a place like the Ape’s Grape since his college days. But pimps pandering out of dark alleys were not common even in this part of town. On Earth maybe, or in old threevee films, but here on Garth?

He shook his head in mystification and pulled open the door to go inside.

Fiben’s nostrils flared at the thick aromas of beer and sniff-hi and wet fur. The descent into the club was made unnerving by the sharp, sudden glare of a strobe light, flashing starkly and intermittently over the dance floor. There, several dark shapes cavorted, waving what looked like small saplings over their heads. A heavy, sole-penetrating beat pounded from amplifiers set over a group of squatting musicians.

Customers lay on reed mats and cushions, smoking, drinking from paper bottles, and muttering coarse observations on the dancers’ performances.

Fiben wended his way between the close-packed, low wicker tables toward the smoke-shrouded bar, where he ordered a pint of bitters. Fortunately, colonial currency still seemed to be good. He lounged against the rail and began a slow scan of the clientele, wishing the message from their contact had been less vague.

Fiben was looking for someone dressed as a fisherman, even though this place was halfway across town from the docks on Aspinal Bay. Of course the radio operator who had taken down the message from Dr. Taka’s former student might have gotten it all wrong on that awful evening while the Howletts Center burned and ambulances whined overhead. The chen had thought he recalled Gailet Jones saying something about “a fisherman with a bad complexion.”

“Great,” Fiben had muttered when given his instructions. “Real spy stuff. Magnificent.” Deep down he was positive the clerk had simply copied the entire thing down wrong.

It wasn’t exactly an auspicious way to start an insurrection. But that was no surprise, really. Except to a few chims who had undergone Terragens Service training, secret codes, disguises, and passwords were the contents of oldtime thrillers.

Presumably, those militia officers were all dead or interned now. Except for me. And my specialty wasn’t intelligence or subterfuge. Hett, I could barely jockey poor old TAASF Proconsul.

The Resistance would have to learn as it went now, stumbling in the dark.

At least the beer tasted good, especially after that long trek on the dusty road. Fiben sipped from his paper bottle and tried to relax. He nodded with the thunder music and grinned at the antics of the dancers.

They were all males, of course, out there capering under the flashing strobes. Among the grunts and probationers, feeling about this was so strong that it might even be called religious. The humans, who tended to frown over most types of sexual discrimination, did not interfere in this case. Client races had the right to develop their own traditions, so long as they didn’t interfere with their duties or Uplift.

And according to this generation at least, Chimmies had no place in the thunder dance, and that was that.

Fiben watched one big, naked male leap to the top of a jumbled pile of carpeted “rocks” brandishing a shaker twig. The dancer — by day perhaps a mechanic or a factory laborer — waved the noisemaker over his head while drums pealed and strobes lanced artificial lightning overhead, turning him momentarily half stark white and half pitch black.

The shaker twig rattled and boomed as he huffed and hopped to the music, hooting as if to defy the gods of the sky.

Fiben had often wondered how much of the popularity of the thunder dance came from innate, inherited feelings of brontophilia and how much from the well-known fact that fallow, unmodified chimps in the jungles of Earth were observed to “dance” in some crude fashion during lightning storms. He suspected that a lot of neo-chimpanzee “tradition” came from elaborating on the publicized behavior of their unmodified cousins.

Like many college-trained chims, Fiben liked to think he was too sophisticated for such simple-minded ancestor worship. And generally he did prefer Bach or whale songs to simulated thunder.

And yet there were times, alone in his apartment, when he would pull a tape by the Fulminates out of a drawer, put on the headphones, and try to see how much pounding his skull could take without splitting open. Here, under the driving amplifiers, he couldn’t help feeling a thrill” run up his spine as “lightning” bolted across the room and the beating drums rocked patrons, furniture, and fixtures alike.

Another naked dancer climbed the mound, shaking his own branch and chuffing loudly in challenge. He crouched on one knuckle as he ascended, a stylish touch frowned upon by orthopedists but meeting with approval from the cheering audience. The fellow might pay for the verisimilitude with a morning backache, but what was that next to the glory of the dance?

The ape at the top of the hill hooted at his challenger. He leapt and whirled in a finely timed maneuver, shaking his branch just as another bolt of strobe lightning whitened the room. It was a savage and powerful image, a reminder that no more than four centuries ago his wild ancestors had challenged storms in a like fashion from forest hilltops — needing neither man nor his tutling scalpels to tell them that Heaven’s fury required a reply.

The chims at the tables shouted and applauded as the king of the hill jumped from the summit, grinning. He tumbled down the mound, giving his challenger a solid whack as he passed.

This was another reason females seldom joined the thunder dance. A full-grown male neo-chim had most of the strength of his natural cousins on Earth. Chimmies who wanted to participate generally played in the band.

Fiben had always found it curious that it was so different among humans. Their males seemed more often obsessed with the sound making and the females with, dance, rather than vice versa. Of course humans were strange in other ways as well, such as in their odd sexual practices.

He scanned the club. Males usually outnumbered females in bars like this one, but tonight the number of chimmies seemed particularly small. They mostly sat in large groups of friends, with big males at the periphery. Of course there were the barmaids, circulating among the low tables carrying drinks and smokes, dressed in simulated leopard skins.

Fiben was beginning to worry. How was his contact to know him in this blaring, flashing madhouse? He didn’t see anyone who looked like a scar-faced fisherman.

A balcony lined the three walls facing the dance mound. Patrons leaned over, banging on the slats and encouraging the dancers. Fiben turned and backed up to get a better look… and almost stumbled over a low wicker table as he blinked in amazement.

There — in an area set aside by rope barrier, guarded by four floating battle-robots — sat one of the invaders. There was the narrow, white mass of feathers, the sharp breastbone, and that curved beak… but this Gubru wore what looked like a woolen cap over the top of its head, where its comblike hearing organ lay. A set of dark goggles covered its eyes.

Fiben made himself look away. It wouldn’t do to seem too surprised. Apparently the customers here had had the last few weeks to get used to an alien in their midst. Now, though, Fiben did notice occasional glances nervously cast up toward the box above the bar. Perhaps the added tension helped explain the frantic mood of the revelers, for the Grape seemed unusually rowdy, even for a working chim’s bar.

Sipping his pint bottle casually, Fiben glanced up again. The Gubru doubtless wore the caplike muff and goggles as protection from the noise and lights. The guard-bots had only sealed off a square area near the alien, but that entire wing of the balcony was almost unpopulated.

Almost. Two chims, in fact, sat within the protected area, near the sharp-beaked Gubru.

Quislings? Fiben wondered. Are there traitors among us already?

He shook his head in mystification. Why was the Gubru here? What could one of the invaders possibly find of worth to notice?

Fiben reclaimed his place at the bar.

Obviously, they’re interested in chims, and for reasons other than our value as hostages.

But what were those reasons? Why should Galactics care about a bunch of hairy clients that some hardly credited with being intelligent at all?

The thunder dance climaxed in an abrupt crescendo and one final crash, its last rumblings diminishing as if into a cloudy, stormy distance. The echoes took seconds longer to die away inside Fiben’s head.

Dancers tumbled back to their tables grinning and sweating, wrapping loose robes around their nakedness. The laughter sounded hearty — perhaps too much so.

Now that Fiben understood the tension in this place he wondered why anyone came at all Boycotting an establfsh-ment patronized by the invader would seem such a simple, obvious form of ahisma, of passive resistance. Surely the average chim on the street resented these enemies of all Terragens!

What drew such crowds here on a weeknight?

Fiben ordered another beer for appearances, though already he was thinking about leaving. The Gubru made him nervous. If his contact wasn’t going to show, he had better get out of here and begin his own investigations. Somehow, he had to find out what was going on here in Port Helenia and discover a way to make contact with those willing to organize.

Across the room a crowd of recumbent revelers began pounding the floor and chanting. Soon the shout spread through the hall.

“Sylvie! Sylvie!”

The musicians climbed back onto their platform and the audience applauded as they started up again, this time to a much gentler beat. A pair of chimmies crooned seductively on saxophones as the house lights dimmed.

A spotlight speared down to illuminate the pinnacle of the dancers’ mound, and a new figure swept out of a beaded curtain to stand’under the dazzling beam. Fiben blinked in surprise. What was a chimmie doing up there?

The upper half of her face was covered by a beaked mask crested with white feathers. The fem-chim’s bare nipples were flecked with sparkles to stand out in the light. Her skirt of silvery strips began to sway with the slow rhythm.

The pelvises of female neo-chimpanzees were wider than their ancestors’, in order to pass bigger-brained progeny. Nevertheless, swinging hips had never become an ingrained erotic stimulus — a male turn-on — as it was among humans.

And yet Fiben’s heart beat faster as he watched her allicient movements. In spite of the mask his first impression had been of a young girl, but soon he realized that the dancer was a mature female, with faint marks of having nursed. It made her look all the more alluring.

As she moved the swaying strips of her skirt flapped slightly and Fiben soon saw that the fabric was silvery only on the outside. On the inner face each stripe of fabric tinted gradually upward toward a bright, rosy color.

He flushed and turned away. The thunder dance was one thing — he had participated in a few himself. But this was altogether different! First the little panderer in the alley, and now this? Had the chims of Port Helenia gone sex-crazed?

An abrupt, meaty pressure came down upon his shoulder. Fiben looked to see a large, fur-backed hand resting there, leading up a hairy arm to one of the biggest chims he had ever seen. He was nearly as tall as a small man, and obviously much stronger. The male neo-chimp wore faded blue work dungarees, and his upper lip curled back to expose substantial, almost atavistic canines.

“S’matter? You don’t like Sylvie?” the giant asked.

Although the dance was still in its languid opening phase, the mostly male audience was already hooting encouragement. Fiben realized he must have been wearing his disapproval on his face, like an idiot. A true spy would have feigned enjoyment in order to fit in.

“Headache.” He pointed to his right temple. “Rough day. I guess I’d better go.”

The big neo-chimp grinned, his huge paw not leaving Fiben’s shoulder. “Headache? Or maybe it’s too bold for ya? Maybe you ain’t had your first sharin’ yet, hm?”

Out of the corner of his eye Fiben saw a swaying, teasing display, still demure but growing more sensual by the moment. He could feel the seething sexual tension beginning to fill the room and couldn’t guess where it might lead. There were important reasons why this sort of display was illegal… one of the few activities humans proscribed their clients.

“Of course I’ve been in sharings!” he snapped back. “It’s just that here, in public, it — it could cause a riot.”

The big stranger laughed and poked him amiably. “When!”

“I beg your par-… uh, what d’you mean?”

“I mean when did you first share, hm? From the way you talk, I’ll bet it was one of those college parties. Right? Am I right, Mr. Bluecard?”

Fiben glanced quickly right and left. First impressions notwithstanding, the big fellow seemed more curious and drunk than hostile. But Fiben wished he’d go away. His size was intimidating, and they might be attracting attention.

“Yeah,” he muttered, uncomfortable with the recollection. “It was a fraternity initiation—”

The chimmie students back at college might be good friends with, the chens in their classes, but they were never invited to sharings. It was just too dangerous to think of green-card females sexually. And anyway, they tended to be paranoid about pregnancy before marriage and genetic counseling. The possible costs were just too great.

So when chens at the University threw a party, they tended to invite girl chims from the far side of the tracks, yellow- and gray-card chimmies whose flame-colored estrus was only an exciting sham.

It was a mistake to judge such behavior by human standards. We have fundamentally different patterns, Fiben had reminded himself back then, and many times since. Still, he had never found those sharings very satisfying or joyful. Maybe someday, when he found the right marriage group…

“Sure, my sis used to go to those college parties. Sounded like fun.” The scarred chim turned to the bartender and slapped the polished surface. “Two pints! One for me an’ one for my college chum!” Fiben winced at the loud voice. Several others nearby had turned to look their way.

“So tell me,” his unwelcome acquaintance said, thrusting a paper bottle into Fiben’s hand. “Ya have any kids yet? Maybe some that are registered, but you never met?” He did not sound unfriendly, rather envious.

Fiben took a long swallow of the warm, bitter brew. He shook his head, keeping his voice low. “It doesn’t really work that way. An open birthright isn’t the same as an unlimited — a white card. If the planners have used any of my plasm I wouldn’t know it.”

“Well why the hell not! I mean its bad enough for you bluesies, having to screw test tubes on orders from the Uplift Board, but to not even know if they’ve used the gunk… Hell, my senior group-wife had a planned kid a year ago… you might even be my son’s gene-dad!” The big chim laughed and clapped Fiben again heavily on the shoulder.

This would never do. More heads were turning his way. All this talk about blue cards was not going to win him friends here. Anyway, he did not want to attract attention with a Gubru sitting less than thirty feet away. “I really have to be going,” he said, and started to edge backward. “Thanks for the beer. …”

Somebody blocked his way. “Excuse me,” Fiben said. He turned and came face to face with four chims clothed in bright zipsuits, all staring at him with arms crossed. One, a little taller than the others, pushed Fiben back toward the bar.

“Of course this one’s got offspringl” the newcomer growled. He had trimmed his facial hair, and the remaining mustache was waxed and pointed.

“Just look at those paws of his. I’ll bet he’s never done a day of honest chim’s work. Probably he’s a tech, or a scientist.” He made it sound as if the very idea of a neo-chimp wearing such a title was like a privileged child being allowed to play a complicated game of pretend.

The irony of it was that while Fiben’s hands might be less callused than many here, under his shirt were burn-scars from crash landing on a hillside at Mach five. But it wouldn’t do to speak of that here.

“Look, fellas, why don’t I buy a round. …”

His money flew across the bar as the tallest zipsuiter slapped his hand. “Worthless crap. They’ll be collectin’ it soon, like they’ll be collecting you ape aristocrats.”

“Shut up!” somebody yelled from the crowd, a brown mass of hunched shoulders. Fiben glimpsed Sylvie, rocking up on the mound. The separate strips of her skirt rippled, and Fiben caught a glimpse that made him start with amazement. She really was pink… her briefly exposed genitals in full estrus.

The zipsuiter prodded Fiben again. “Well, Mr. College-man? What good is your blue card gonna do you when the Gubru start collecting and sterilizing all you freebreeders? Hah?”

One of the newcomers, a slope-shouldered chim with a barbelate, receding forehead, had a hand in a pocket of his bright garment, gripping a pointed object. His sharp eyes seemed carnivorously intent, and he left the talking to his mustachioed friend.

Fiben had just come to realize that these guys had nothing to do with the big chim in the dungarees. In fact, that fellow had already edged away into the shadows. “I — I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t? They’ve been goin’ through the colonial records, bub, and picking up a lot of college chims like you for questioning. So far they’ve just been taking samples, but I’ve got friends who say they’re planning a full-tilt purge. Now what d’you think of that?”

“Shut th’ fkup!” someone yelled. This time several faces turned. Fiben saw glazed eyes, flecks of saliva, and bared fangs.

He felt torn. He wanted desperately to get out of here, but what if there were some truth in what the zipsuits were saying? If so, this was important information.

Fiben decided to listen a little while longer. “That’s pretty surprising,” he said, putting an elbow on the bar. “The Gubru are fanatical conservatives. Whatever they do to other patron-level races, I’d bet they’d never interfere with the process of Uplift. It’s against their own religion.”

Mustache only smiled. “Is that what your college education tells you, blue boy? Well it’s what the Galactics are saying that counts now.”

They were crowding Fiben, this bunch who seemed more interested in him than in Sylvie’s provocative gyrations. The crowd was hooting louder, the music beating harder. Fiben’s head felt as if it might crack under the noise.

”…too cool to enjoy a working man’s show. Never done any real labor. But snap his fingers, an’ our own chimmies come running!”

Fiben could tell something was false here. The one with the mustache was overly calm, his barratrous taunts too deliberate. In an environment like this, with all the noise and sexual tension — a true grunt shouldn’t be able to focus so well.

Probationers! he realized suddenly. Now he saw the signs. Two of the zipsuited chims’ faces bore the stigmata of failed genetic meddling — mottled, cacophrenic features or the blinking, forever-puzzled look of a cross-wired brain — embarrassing reminders that Uplift was an awkward process, not without its price.

He had read in a local magazine, not long before the invasion, how the trendy crowd in the Probie community had taken to wearing garishly colored zipsuits. Fiben knew, suddenly, that he had attracted the very worst kind of attention. Without humans around, or any sign of normal civil authority, there was no telling what these red-cards were up to.

Obviously, he had to get out of here. But how? The zipsuits were crowding him closer every moment.

“Look, fellas, I just came here to see what’s happenin’. Thanks for your opinion. Now I really gotta go.”

“I got a better idea,” the leader sneered. “How about we introduce you to a Gubru who’ll tell you for himself what’s goin’ on? And what they’re plannin’ to do with college chims. Hah?”

Fiben blinked. Could these chens actually be cooperating with the invader?

He had studied Old Earth History — the long, dark centuries before Contract, when lonely and ignorant humanity had experimented horribly in everything from mysticism to tyranny and war. He had seen and read countless portrayals of those ancient times — especially tales of solitary men and women who had taken brave, often hopeless stands against evil. Fiben had joined the colonial militia partly in a romantic wish to emulate the brave fighters of the Maquis, the Palmach, and the Power Satellite League.

But history told of traitors, also: those who sought advantage wherever it could be found, even over the backs of their comrades.

“Come on, college chum. There’s a bird I want you to meet.”

The grip on his arm was like a tightening vice. Fiben’s look of pained surprise made the mustachioed chim grin. “They put some extra strength genes into my mix,” he sneered. “That part of their meddling worked, but not some of the others. They call me Irongrip, and I got no blue card, or even a yellow.

“Now let’s go. We’ll ask Bright Talon Squadron Lieutenant to explain what the Gubru’s plans are for chim bright boys.”

In spite of the painful pressure on his arm, Fiben affected nonchalance. “Sure. Why not? Are you willing to put a wager on it, though?” His upper lip curled back in disdain. “If I remember my sophomore xenology right, the Gubru are pretty sharply clocked into a diurnal cycle. I’ll bet behind those dark goggles of his you’ll find that bloody bird is fast asleep. Think he’ll like being awakened just to discuss the niceties of Uplift with the likes of you?”

For all his bravado, Irongrip was obviously sensitive about his level of education. Fiben’s put-on assurance momentarily set him back, and he blinked at the suggestion that anyone could possibly sleep through all the cacophony around them.

Finally he growled angrily. “We’ll just see about that. Come on.”

The other zipsuits crowded close. Fiben knew he wouldn’t stand a chance taking on all six of them. And there would be no calling on the law for help, either. Authority wore feathers these days.

His escorts prodded him through the maze of low tables. Lounging customers chuffed in irritation as Irongrip nudged them aside, but their eyes, glazed in barely restrained passion, were all on Sylvie’s dance as the tempo of the music built.

A glance over his shoulder at the performer’s contortions made Fiben’s face feel hot. He backed away without looking and stumbled into a^soft mass of fur and muscle.

“Ow!” a seated customer howled, spilling his drink.

“Sorry,” Fiben muttered, stepping away quickly. His sandals crunched upon another brown hand, producing yet another shout. The complaint turned into an outraged scream as Fiben ground the knuckle down then twisted away to apologize once again.

“Siddown!” a voice shouted from the back of the club. Another squeaked, “Yeah! Beat it! Yer inna way!”

Irongrip glared suspiciously at Fiben and tugged on his arm. Fiben resisted briefly, then released, coming forward suddenly and shoving his captor back into one of the wicker tables. Drinks and sniff stands toppled, sending the seated chims scrambling to their feet, huffing indignantly.

“Hey!”

“Watch it, ye bastid Probie!”

Their eyes, already aflame from both intoxicants and Sylvie’s dance, appeared to contain little reason anymore.

Irongrip’s shaven face was pale with anger. His grasp tightened, and he began to motion to his comrades, but Fiben only smiled conspiratorially and nudged him with his elbow. In feigned drunken confidence, he spoke loudly.

“See what you did? I told you not to bump these guys on purpose, just to see if they’re too stoned to talk…”

From the nearby chims there came a hiss of intaken breath, audible even over the music.

“Who says I can’t talk!” one of the drinkers slurred, barely able to form the words. The tipsy Borachio advanced a step, trying to focus on the source of this insult. “Was it you?”

Fiben’s captor eyed him threateningly and yanked him closer, tightening the vicelike grip. Still, Fiben managed to maintain his stage grin, and winked.

“Maybe they can talk, sorta. But you’re right about them bein’ a bunch o’ knuckle-walkers…”

“What!”

The nearest chim roared and grabbed at Irongrip. The sneering mutant adroitly stepped aside and chopped with the edge of his free hand. The drunk howled, doubled up, and collided with Fiben.

But then the inebriate’s friends dove in, shrieking. The hold on Fiben’s arm tore loose as they were all swamped under a tide of angry brown fur.

Fiben ducked as a snarling ape in a leather work harness swung on him. The fist sailed past and connected with the jaw of one of the zipsuited toughs. Fiben kicked another Probie in the knee as the chim grabbed for him, eliciting a satisfactory howl, but then all was a chaos of flying wicker-work and dark bodies. Cheap straw tables blew apart as they crashed down upon heads. The air filled with flying beer and hair.

The band increased its tempo, but it was barely to be heard over shrieks of outrage or combative glee. There was a wild moment as Fiben felt himself lifted bodily by strong simian arms. They weren’t gentle.

“Whoa-aoh!”

He sailed over the riot and landed in a crash amidst a group of previously uninvolved revelers. The customers stared at him in momentarily stunned puzzlement. Before they could react, Fiben picked himself up from the rubble, groaning. He rolled out into the aisle, stumbling as a sharp pain seemed to lance through his still-tender left ankle.

The fight was spreading, and two of the bright zipsuits were headed his way, canines gleaming. To make matters worse, the customers whose party he had so rudely interrupted were on their feet now, chuffing in anger. Hands reached for him.

“Some other time, perhaps,” Fiben said politely. He hopped out of the debris away from -his pursuers, hurriedly threading between the low tables. When there was no other way forward, he didn’t hesitate, but stepped up onto a pair of broad, hunched shoulders and launched off, leaving his erstwhile springboard grunting in yet another pile of splintered wicker.

Fiben somersaulted over a last row of customers and tumbled to one knee in a broad, open area — the dance floor. Only a few meters away towered the thunder mound, where the alluring Sylvie was bearing down for her final grind, apparently oblivious to the growing commotion below.

Fiben moved quickly across the floor, intending to dash past the bar and out one of the exits beyond. But the moment he stepped out into the open area a sudden blaze of light lanced down from above, dazzling him! From all sides there erupted a tremendous cheer.

Something had obviously pleased the crowd. But what? Peering up against the glare, Fiben couldn’t see that the ecdysiast had done anything new and spectacular — at least no more so than before. Then he realized that Sylvie was looking straight at him! Behind the birdlike mask he could see her eyes watching him in amusement.

He whirled. So were most of those not yet enveloped by the spreading brawl. The audience was cheering him. Even the Gubru in the balcony appeared to be tilting its goggle-shielded head his way.

There wasn’t time to sort out the meaning of this. Fiben saw that several more of his tormentors had broken free of the melee. They were distinctive in their bright clothes as they gestured to each other, moving to cut him off from the exits.

Fiben quashed a sense of panic. They had him cornered. There has to be another way out, he thought furiously.

And then he realized where it would be. The performer’s door, above and behind the padded dance mound! The beaded portal through which Sylvie had made her entrance. A quick scramble and he’d be up and past her — and gone!

He ran across the dance floor and leaped onto the mound, landing upon one of the carpeted ledges.

The crowd roared again! Fiben froze in his crouch. The glaring spotlights had followed him.

He blinked up at Sylvie. The dancer licked her lips and rocked her pelvis at him.

Fiben felt simultaneously repelled and powerfully drawn. He wanted to clamber up and grab her. He wanted to find some dark niche in a tree branch, somewhere, and hide.

Down below the fight was still going strong, but had stopped spreading. With only paper bottles and wicker furniture to use, the combatants seemed to have settled down to an amiable tumult of mutual mayhem, the original cause quite forgotten.

But on the edges of the dance floor stood four chims in bright zipsuits, watching him as they fingered objects in their pockets. There still looked to be only one way. Fiben clambered up onto another carpeted, “rocky” cleft. Again, the crowd cheered in intensifying excitement. The noise, smells, confusion… Fiben blinked at the sea of fervent faces, all staring up at him in expectation. What was happening?

A flash of motion caught Fiben’s attention. From the balcony over the bar, someone was waving at him. It was a small chim dressed in a dark, hooded cloak, standing out in this frenzied crowd, more than anything else, by a facial expression that was calm, icy sharp.

Fiben suddenly recognized the little pimp, the one who had accosted him briefly by the door to the Ape’s Grape. The chim’s voice didn’t carry over the cacophony, but somehow Fiben picked out the mouthed words.

“Hey, dummy, look up!”

The boyish face grimaced. The panderer pointed overhead.

Fiben glanced upward… just in time to see a sparkling mesh start to fall from the rafters overhead! He leaped aside purely on instinct, fetching hard against another “rock” as the fringe of the falling net grazed his left foot. Electric agony stroked his leg.

“Baboon shit! What in Goodall’s name’…?” He cursed soundly. It took a moment for him to realize that part of the roaring in his ears was more applause. This turned into shouted cheers as he rolled over holding his leg, and thereby happened to escape yet another snare. A dozen loops of sticky mesh flopped out of a simulated rock to tauten over the area he had just occupied.

Fiben kept as still as possible while he rubbed his foot and glared about angrily, suspiciously. Twice he had almost been noosed like some dumb animal. To the crowd it might all be great fun, but he personally had no desire to be trussed up on some bizarre, lunatic obstacle course.

Below on the dance floor he saw bright zipsuits, left, right, and center. The Gubru on the balcony seemed interested, but showed no sign of intervening.

Fiben sighed. His predicament was still the same. The only direction he could go was up.

Looking carefully, he scrambled over another padded ridge. The snares appeared to be intended to be humiliating and incapacitating — and painful — but not deadly. Except in his case, of course. If he were caught, his unwanted enemies would be on him in a trice.

He stepped up onto the next “boulder,” cautiously. Fiben felt a tickling falseness under his right foot and pulled back just as a trap door popped open. The crowd gasped as he teetered on the edge of the revealed pit. Fiben’s arms windmilled as he fought for balance. From an uncertain crouch he leaped, and barely caught a grip on the next higher terrace.

His feet hung over nothingness. Fiben’s breath came in heavy gasps. Desperately he wished humans hadn’t edited some of his ancestors’ “unnecessary” instinctive climbing skills just to make room for trivialities such as speech and reason.

He grunted and slowly scrambled up out of the pit. The audience clamored for more.

As he panted on the edge of the next level, trying to see in all directions at once, Fiben slowly became aware that a public address system was muttering over the noise of the crowd, repeating over and over again, in clipped, mechanical tones.

… more enlightened approach to Uplift… appropriate to the background of the client race… offering opportunity to all… unbiased by warped human standards…

Up in its box, the invader chirped into a small microphone. Its machine-translated words boomed out over the music and the excited jabber of the crowd. Fiben doubted one in ten of the chims below were even aware of the E.T.’s monologue in the state they were in. But that probably didn’t matter.

They were being conditioned!

No wonder he had never heard of Sylvie’s dance-mound striptease before, nor this crazy obstacle course. It was an innovation of the invaders!

But what was its purpose?

They couldn’t have managed all this without help, Fiben thought angrily. Sure enough, the two well-dressed chims sitting near the invader whispered to each other and scribbled on clipboards. They were obviously recording the crowd’s reactions for their new master.

Fiben scanned the balcony and noted that the little pimp in the cowled robe stood not far outside the Gubru’s ring of robot guards. He spared a whole second to memorize the chim’s boyish features. Traitor!

Sylvie was only a few terraces above him now. The dancer twitched her pink bottom at him, grinning as sweat beaded on his face. Human males had their own “instant” visual triggers: rounded female breasts and pelvises and smooth fern skin. None of them could compare with the electric shiver a little color in the right place could send through a male chim.

Fiben shook his head vigorously. “Out. Not in. You want out!”

Concentrating on keeping his balance, favoring his tender left ankle, he scrambled edgewise until he was around the pit, then crawled forward on his hands and knees.

Sylvie leaned over him, two levels up. Her scent carried even over the pungent aromas of the hall, making Fiben’s nostrils flare.

He shook his head suddenly. There was another sharp odor, a cloying stink that seemed to be quite local.

With the little finger of his left hand he probed the terrace he had been about to climb upon. Four inches in he encountered a burning stickiness. He cried out and pulled back hard, leaving behind a small patch of skin.

Alas for instinct! His seared finger automatically popped into his mouth. Fiben almost gagged on the nastiness.

This was a fine fix. If he tried to move up or forward the sticky stuff would get him. If he retreated he would more than likely wind up in the pit!

This maze of traps did explain one thing that he had puzzled about, earlier. No wonder the chens below hadn’t gone nuts and simply charged the hill the moment Sylvie showed pink! They knew only the cocky or foolhardy would dare attempt the climb. The others were content to observe and fantasize. Sylvie’s dance was only the first half of the show.

And if some lucky bastard made it? Well, then, everybody would have the added treat of watching that, too!

The idea repelled Fiben. Private sharings were natural, of course. But this public lewdness was disgusting!

At the same time, he noted that he had already made it most of the way. He felt an old quickening in his blood. Sylvie swayed down a little toward him, and he imagined he could already touch her. The musicians increased their tempo, and strobes began flickering again, approaching like lightning. Artificial thunder echoed. Fiben felt a few stinging droplets, like the beginnings of a rainstorm.

Sylvie danced under the spots, inciting the crowd. He licked his lips and felt himself drawn.

Then, in the flicker of a single lightning flash, Fiben saw something equally enticing, more than attractive enough to pull him out of Sylvie’s hypnotic sway. It was a small, green-lit sign, prim and legalistic, that shone beyond Sylvie’s shoulder.

“EXIT,” it read.

Suddenly the pain and exhaustion and tension caused something to release inside Fiben. He felt somehow lifted above the noise and tumult and recalled with instant clarity something that Athaclena said to him shortly before he left the encampment in the mountains to begin his trek to town. The silvery threads of her Tymbrimi corona had waved gently as if in a breeze of pure thought.

“There is a telling which my father once gave me, Fiben. It’s a ‘haiku poem,’ in an Earthling dialect called Japanese. I want you to take it with you.”

“Japanese,” he had protested. “It’s spoken on Earth and on Calafia, but there aren’t a hundred chims or men on Garth who know it!”

But Athaclena only shook her head. “Neither do I. But I shall pass the telling on to you, the way it was given to me.”

What came when she opened her mouth then was less sound than a crystallization, a brief substrate of meaning which left an imprint even as it faded.

Certain moments qualify,

In winter’s darkest storm,When stars call, and you fly!

Fiben blinked and the sudden relived moment passed. The letters still glowed,

shining like a green haven.

It all swept back, the noise, the odors, the sharp stinging of the tiny rainlike droplets. But Fiben now felt as if his chest had expanded twofold. Lightness spread down his arms and into his legs. They seemed to weigh next to nothing.

With a deep flexing of his knees he gathered himself and then launched off from his precarious perch to land on the edge of the next terrace, toes grasping inches from the burning, camouflaged glue. The crowd roared and Sylvie stepped back, clapping her hands.

Fiben laughed. He slapped his chest rapidly, as he had seen the gorillas do, beating countertime to the rolling thunder. The audience loved it.

Grinning, he stepped along the edge of the sticky patch, tracing its outline more by instinct than the faint difference in coloration. Arms spread wide for balance, he made it look harder than it actually felt.

The ledge ended where a tall “tree” — simulated out of fiberglass and green, plastic tassels — towered out of the slope of the mound.

Of course the thing was boobytrapped. Fiben wasted no time inspecting it. He leapt up to tap the nearest branch lightly and teetered precariously as he landed, drawing gasps from those below.

The branch reacted a delayed instant after he touched it… just time enough for him to have gotten a solid grip on it, had he tried. The entire tree seemed to writhe. Twigs turned into curling ropes which would have shared an arm, if he were still holding on.

With a yip of exhilaration, Fiben leaped again, this time grabbing a dangling rope as the branch swayed down again. He rode it up like a pole vaulter, sailing over the last two terraces — and the surprised dancer — and flew on into the junglelike mass of girders and wiring overhead.

Fiben let go at the last moment and managed to land in a crouch upon a catwalk. For a moment he had to fight for balance on the tricky footing. A maze of spotlights and unsprung traps lay all around him. Laughing, he hopped about tripping releases, sending wires, nets, and tangle-ropes spilling over onto the mound. There were tubs of some hot, oatmeallike substance which he kicked over. Splatters on the orchestra sent the musicians diving for cover.

Now Fiben could easily see the outlines of the obstacle course. Clearly there was no real solution to the puzzle except the one he had used, bypassing the last few terraces altogether.

In other words, one had to cheat.

The mound was not a fair test, then. A chen couldn’t hope to win by being more clever, only by letting others take the risks first, suffering pain and humiliation in the traps and deadfalls. The lesson the Gubru were teaching here was insidiously simple.

“Those bastards,” he muttered.

The exalted feeling was beginning to fade, and with it some of Fiben’s temporary sense of borrowed invulnerability. Obviously Athaclena had given him a parting gift, a post-hypnotic charm of sorts, to help him if he found himself in a jam. Whatever it was, he knew it wouldn’t do to push his luck.

It’s time to get out of here, he thought.

The music had died when the musicians fled the sticky oatmeal stuff. But now the the public address system was squawking again, issuing clipped exhortations that were beginning to sound a bit frantic.

… unacceptable behavior for proper, clients… Cease expressions of approval for one who has broken rules… One who must be chastised…

The Gubru’s pompous urgings fell flat, for the crowd seemed to have gone completely ape. When Fiben hopped over to the mammoth speakers and yanked out wires, the alien’s tirade cut off and there rose a roar of hilarity and approval from the audience below.

Fiben leaned into one of the spotlights, swiveling it so that it swept across the hall. When the beam passed over them chims picked up their wicker tables and tore them apart over their heads. Then the spot struck the E.T. in the balcony box, still shaking its microphone in apparent outrage. The birdlike creature wailed and cringed under the sharp glare.

The two chimps sharing the VIP box dove for cover as the battle-robots rotated and fired at once. Fiben leaped from the rafters just before the spotlight exploded in a shower of metal and glass.

He landed in a roll and came to his feet at the peak of the dance mound… King of the Mountain. He concealed his limp as he waved to the crowd. The hall shook with their cheers.

They abruptly quieted as he turned and took a step toward Sylvie.

This was the payoff. Natural male chimpanzees in the wild weren’t shy about mating in front of others, and even uplifted neo-chimps “shared” when the time and place was right. They had few of the jealousy or privacy taboos which made male humans so strange.

The evening’s climax had come much sooner than the Gubru planned, and in a fashion it probably did not like, but the basic lesson could still be the same. Those below were looking for a vicarious sharing, with all the lessons psychologically tailored.

Sylvie’s bird-mask was part of tke conditioning. Her bared teeth shone as she wriggled her bottom at him. The many-slitted skirt whirled in a rippling flash of provocative color. Even fhe zipsuiters were staring now, licking their lips in anticipation, their quarrel with him forgotten. At that moment he was their hero, he was each of them.

Fiben quashed a wave of shame. We’re not so bad… not when you figure we’re only three hundred years old. The Gubru want us to feel we’re barely more than animals, so we’ll be harmless. But I hear even humans used to sometimes revert like this, back in the olden days.

Sylvie chuffed at him as he approached. Fiben felt a powerful tightening in his loins as she crouched to await him. He reached for her. He gripped her shoulder.

Then Fiben swung her about to face him. He exerted strength to make her stand up straight.

The cheering crowd fell into confused muttering. Sylvie blinked up at him in hormone-drenched surprise. It was apparent to Fiben that she must have taken some sort of drug to get into this condition.

“F-frontwards?” she asked, struggling with the words. “But Big-Beak s-said he wanted it to look natural. …”

Fiben took her face in his hands. The mask had a complex set of buckles, so he bent around the jutting beak to kiss her once, gently, without removing it.

“Go home to your mates,” he told her. “Don’t let our enemies shame you.”

Sylvie rocked back as if he had struck her a blow.

Fiben faced the crowd and raised his arms. “Upspring of the wolflings of Terra!” he shouted. “All of you. Go home to your mates! Together with our patrons we’ll guide our own Uplift. We don’t need Eatee outsiders to tell us how to do it!”

From the crowd there came a low rumbling of consternation. Fiben saw that the alien in the balcony was chirping into a small box, probably calling for assistance, he realized.

“Go home!” he repeated. “And don’t let outsiders make spectacles of us again!”

The muttering below intensified. Here and there Fiben saw faces wearing sudden frowns — chims looking about the room in what he hoped was dawning embarrassment. Brows wrinkled with uncomfortable thoughts.

But then, out of the babble below, someone shouted up at him.

“Whassamatta? Can’t ya’ get it up?”

About half of the crowd laughed uproariously. There were follow-up jeers and whistles, especially from the front rows.

Fiben really had to get going. The Gubru probably didn’t dare shoot him down outright, not in front of the crowd. But the avian had doubtless sent for reinforcements.

Still, Fiben couldn’t pass up a good straight line. He stepped to the edge of the plateau and glanced back at Sylvie. He dropped his pants.

The jeers stopped abruptly, then the brief silence was broken by whistles and wild applause.

Cretins, Fiben thought. But he did grin and wave before rebuttoning his fly.

By now the Gubru was flapping its arms and squawking, pushing at the well-dressed neo-chimps who shared its box. They, in turn, leaned over to shout at the bartenders. There were faint noises that sounded like sirens in the distance.

Fiben grabbed Sylvie for one more kiss. She answered this time, swaying as he released her. He paused for one last gesture up at the alien, making the crowd roar with laughter. Then he turned and ran for the exit.

Inside his head a little voice was cursing him for an extroverted idiot. This wasn’t what the General sent you to town to do, fool!

He swept through the beaded curtain but then stopped abruptly, face to face with a frowning neo-chimp in a cowled robe. Fiben recognized the small chim he had briefly seen twice this evening — first outside the door to the Ape’s Grape and later standing just outside the Gubru’s balcony box.

“You!” he accused.

“Yeah, me.” the panderer answered, “Sorry I can’t make the same offer as before. But I guess you’ve had other things on your mind tonight.”

Fiben frowned. “Get out of my way.” He moved to push the other aside.

“Max!” the smaller chim called. A large form emerged from the shadows. It was the huge, scar-faced fellow he had met at the bar, just before the zipsuited probationers showed up, the one so interested in his blue card. There was a stun gun in his meaty grasp. He smiled apologetically. “Sorry, chum.”

Fiben tensed, but it was already too late. A rolling tingle washed over his body, and all he managed to do was stumble and fall into the smaller chim’s arms.

He encountered softness and an unexpected aroma. By Ifni, he thought in a stunned instant.

“Help me, Max,” the nearby voice said. “We’ve got to move fast.”

Strong arms lifted him% and Fiben almost welcomed the collapse of consciousness after this last surprise — that the young-faced little “pimp” was actually a chimmie,-a girl!

25 Galactics

The Suzerain of Cost and Caution left the Command Conclave in a state of agitation. Dealing with its fellow Suzerains was always physically exhausting. Three adversaries, dancing and circling, forming temporary alliances, separating and then reforming again, shaping an ever-changing synthesis. So it would have to be as long as the situation in the outer world was indeterminate, in a state of flux.

Eventually, of course, matters here on Garth would stabilize. One of the three leaders would prove to have been most correct, the best leader. Much rested upon that outcome, not least what color each of them would wear at the end, and what gender.

But there was no hurry to begin the Molt. Not yet. There would be many more conclaves before that day arrived, and much plumage to be shed.

Caution’s first debate had been with the Suzerain of Propriety over using Talon Soldiers to subdue the Terragens Marines at the planetary spaceport. In fact, that initial argument had been little more than a minor squabble, and when the Suzerain of Beam and Talon finally tipped the scales, intervening in favor of Propriety, Caution surrendered with good grace. The subsequent ground battle had been expensive in good soldiery. But other purposes were served by the exercise.

The Suzerain of Cost and Caution had known that the vote would go that way. Actually, it had had no intention of winning their first argument. It knew how much better it was to begin the race in last place, with the priest and the admiral in temporary contention. As a result both of them would tend to ignore the Civil Service for a while. Setting up a proper bureaucracy of occupation and administration would take a lot of effort, and the Suzerain of Cost and Caution did not want to waste energy on preliminary squabbles.

Such as this most recent one. As the chief bureaucrat stepped away from the meeting pavilion and was joined by its aides and escorts, the other two expedition leaders could still be heard crooning at each other in the background. The conclave was over, yet they were still arguing over what had already been decided.

For the time being the military would continue the gas attacks, seeking out any humans who might have escaped the initial dosings. The order had been issued minutes ago.

The high priest — the Suzerain of Propriety — was worried that too many human civilians had been injured or killed by the gas. A few neo-chimpanzees had also suffered. This wasn’t catastrophic from a legal or religious point of view, but it would complicate matters eventually. Compensation might have to be paid, and it could weaken the Gubru case if the matter ever came before interstellar adjudication.

The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had argued that adjudication was very unlikely. After all, with the Five Galaxies in an uproar, who was going to care about a few mistakes made on a tiny backwater dirtspeck such as this?

“We care!” the Suzerain of Propriety had declared. And it made its feelings clear by continuing to refuse to step off its perch onto the soil of Garth. To do so prematurely would make the invasion official, it stated. And that would have to wait. The small but fierce space battle, and the defiance of the spaceport, had seen to that. By resisting effectively, however briefly, the legal leaseholders had made it necessary to put off making any formal seizures for a while. Any further mistakes could not only harm Gubru claims here but prove terribly expensive as well.

The priest had fluttered its allochroous plumage after making that point, smugly certain of victory. After all, expense was an issue that would certainly win it an ally. Propriety felt it would surely be joined by Cost and Caution here!

How foolish, to think that the Molt will be decided by early bickerings such as these, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution had thought, and proceeded to side with the soldiery.

“Let the gassings go on, continue and seek out all those still in hiding,” it had said to the priest’s dismay and the admiral’s crowing delight.

The space battle and landings had proved extraordinarily costly. But not as expensive as it all would likely have been without the Coercion Program. The gas attacks had achieved the objective of concentrating nearly the entire human population onto a few islands where they might be simply controlled. It was easy to understand why the Suzerain of Beam and Talon wanted it that way. The bureaucrat, also, had experience dealing with wolflings. It, too, would feel much more comfortable with all of the dangerous humans gathered where it could see them.

Soon, of course, something would have to be done to curtail the high costs of this expedition. Already the Roost Masters had recalled elements of the fleet. Matters were critical on other fronts. It was vital to keep a tight perch-grip on expenses here. That was a matter for another conclave, however.

Today, the military suzerain was riding high. Tomorrow? Well, the alliances would shift and shift again, until at Jast a new policy emerged. And a queen.

The Suzerain of Cost and Caution turned and spoke to one of its Kwackoo aides.

“Have me driven, taken, conveyed to my headquarters.”

The official hover-barge lifted off and headed toward the buildings the Civil Service had appropriated, on headlands overlooking the nearby sea. As the vehicle hissed through the small Earthling town, guarded by a swarm of battle robots, it was watched by small crowds of the dark, hairy beasts the human wolflings prized as their eldest clients.

The Suzerain spoke again to its aide. “When we arrive at the chancery, gather the staff together. We shall consider, contemplate, evaluate the new proposal the high priest sent over this morning concerning how to manage these creatures, these neo-chimpanzees.”

Some of the ideas suggested by the Propriety Department were daring to an extreme. There were brilliant features that made the bureaucrat feel proud of its future mate. What a Threesome we shall make.

There were other aspects, of course, that would have to be altered if the plan was not to lead to disaster. Only one of the Triumvirate had the sureness of grasp to see such a scheme to its final, victorious conclusion. That had been known in advance when the Roost Masters chose their Three.

The Suzerain of Cost and Caution let out a treble sigh and contemplated how it would have to manipulate the next leadership conclave. Tomorrow, the next day, in a week. That forthcoming squabble was not far off. Each debate would grow more urgent, more important as both consensus and Molt approached.

The prospect was one to look upon with a mixture of trepidation, confidence, and utter pleasure.

26 Robert

The denizens of the deep caverns were unaccustomed to the bright lights and loud noises the newcomers had brought with them. Hordes of batlike creatures fled before the interlopers, leaving behind a flat, thick flooring of many centuries’ accumulated dung. Under limestone walls glistening with slow seepage, alkaline rivulets were now crossed by makeshift plank bridges. In drier corners, under the pale illumination of glow bulbs, the surface beings moved nervously, as if loathe to disturb the stygian quiet.

It was a forbidding place to wake up to. Shadows were stark, acherontic, and surprising. A crag of rock might look innocuous and then, from a slightly different perspective, leap out in familiarity as the silhouette of some monster met a hundred times in nightmares.

It wasn’t hard to have bad dreams in a place like this.

Shuffling in robe and slippers, Robert felt positive relief when at last he found the place he’d been looking for, the rebel “operations center.” It was a fairly large chamber, lit by more than the usual sparse ration of bulbs. But furniture was negligible. Some ragged card tables and cabinets had been supplemented by benches fashioned from chopped and leveled stalagmites, plus a few partitions knocked together out of raw timber from the forest high above. The effect only made the towering vault seem all the more mighty, and the refugees’ works all the more pitiful.

Robert rubbed his eyes. A few chims could be seen clustered around one partition arguing and sticking pins in a large map, speaking softly as they sifted through papers.

When one of them raised his voice too loud, echoes reverberated down the surrounding passages making the others look up in alarm. Obviously, the chims were still intimidated by their new quarters.

Robert shuffled into the light. “All right,” he said, his larynx still scratchy from lack of use. “What’s going on here? Where is she and what is she up to now?”

They stared at him. Robert knew he must look a sight in rumpled pajamas and slippers, his hair uncombed and his arm in a cast to the shoulder.

“Captain Oneagle,” one of the chims said. “You really should still be in bed. Your fever—”

“Oh, shove it … Micah.” Robert had to think to remember the fellow’s name. The last few weeks were still a fog in his mind. “My fever broke two days ago. I can read my own chart. So tell me what’s happening! Where is everybody? Where’s Athaclena?”

They looked at each other. Finally one chimmie took a cluster of colored map pins out of her mouth. “Th” General… uh, Mizz Athaclena, is away. She’s leading a raid.”

“A raid. …” Robert blinked. “On the Gubru?” He brought a hand to his eyes as the room seemed to waver. “Oh, Ifni.”

There was a rush of activity as three chims got in each other’s way hauling over a wooden folding chair. Robert sat down heavily. He saw that these chims were all either very young or old. Athaclena must have taken most of the able-bodied with her.

“Tell me about it,” he said to them.

A senior-looking chimmie, bespectacled and serious, motioned the others back to work and introduced herself. “I am Dr. Soo,” she said. “At the Center I worked on gorilla genetic histories.”

Robert nodded. “Dr. Soo, yes. I recall you helped treat my injuries.” He remembered her face peering over him through a fog while the infection raged hot through his lymphatic system.

“You were very sick, Captain Oneagle. It wasn’t just your badly fractured arm, or those fungal toxins you absorbed during your accident. We are now fairly” certain you also inhaled traces of the Gubru coercion gas, back when they dosed the Mendoza Freehold.”

Robert blinked. The memory was a blur. He had been on the mend, up in the Mendoza’s mountain ranch, where he and Fiben had spent a couple of days talking, making plans. Somehow they would find others and try to get something started. Maybe make contact with his mother’s government in exile, if it still existed. Reports from Athaclena told of a set of caves that seemed ideal as a headquarters of sorts. Maybe these mountains could be a base of operations against the enemy.

Then, one afternoon, there were suddenly frantic chims running everywhere! Before Robert could speak, before he could even stand they had plucked him up and carried him bodily out of the farmhouse and up into the hills.

There were sonic booms… terse images of something immense in the sky.

“But… but I thought the gas was fatal if…” His voice trailed off.

“If there’s no antidote. Yes. But your dose was so small.” Dr. Soo shrugged. “As it is, we nearly lost you.”

Robert shivered. “What about the little girl?”

“She is with the gorillas.” The chim nutritionist smiled. “She’s as safe as anyone can be, these days.”

He sighed and sat back a little. “That’s good at least.”

The chims carrying little April Wu must have got up to the heights in plenty of time. Apparently Robert barely made it. The Mendozas had been slower still and were caught in the stinking cloud that spilled from the belly of the alien ship.

Dr. Soo went on. “The Villas don’t like the caves, so most of them are up in the high valleys, foraging in small groups under loose supervision, away from any buildings. Structures are still being gassed regularly, you know, whether they contain humans or not.”

Robert nodded. “The Gubru are being thorough.”

He looked at the wall-board stuck with multicolored pins. The map covered the entire region from the mountains north across the Vale of Sind and west to the sea. There the islands of the Archipelago made a necklace of civilization. Only one city lay onshore, Port Helenia on the northern verge of Aspinal Bay. South and east of the Mulun Mountains lay the wilds of the main continent, but the most important feature was depicted along the top edge of the map. Patient, perhaps unstoppable, the great gray sheets of ice encroached lower every year. The final bane of Garth.

The map pins, however, dealt with a much closer, nearer-term calamity. It was easy to read the array of pink and redmarkers. “They’ve really got a grip on things, haven’t they?”

The elderly chim named Micah brought Robert a glass of water. He frowned at the map also. “Yessir. The fighting seems to all be over. The Gubru have been concentrating their energies around the Port and the Archipelago, so far. There’s been little activity here in the mountains, except this perpetual harassment by robots dropping coercion gas. But the enemy has established a firm presence every place that was colonized.”

“Where do you get your information?”

“Mostly from invader broadcasts and censored commercial stations in Port Helenia. Th’ General also sent runners and observers off in all directions. Some of them have reported back, already.”

“Who’s got runners… ?”

“The Gen—… um.” Micah looked a bit embarrassed. “Ah, some of the chims find it hard to pronounce Miss Athac—… Miss Athaclena’s name, sir. So, well…” His voice trailed off.

Robert sniffed. I’m going to have to have a talk with that girl, he thought.

He lifted his water glass and asked, “Who did she send to Port Helenia? That’s going to be a touchy place for a spy to get into.”

Dr. Soo answered without much enthusiasm. “Athaclena chose a chim named Fiben Bolger.”

Robert coughed, spraying water over his robe. Dr. Soo hurried on. “He is a militiaman, captain, and Miss Athaclena figured that spying around in town would require an … um… unconventional approach.”

That only made Robert cough harder. Unconventional. Yes, that described Fiben. If Athaclena had chosen old “Trog” Bolger for that mission, then it spoke well for her judgment. She might not be stumbling in the dark, after all.

Still, she’s hardly more than a kid. And an alien at that! Does she actually think she’s a general? Commanding what? He looked around the sparsely furnished cavern, the small heaps of scrounged and hand-carried supplies. It was, all told, a pitiful affair.

“That wall map arrangement is pretty crude,” Robert observed, picking out one thing in particular.

An elderly chen who hadn’t spoken yet rubbed the sparse hair on his chin. “We could organize much better than this,” he agreed. “We’ve got several mid-size computers. A few chims are working programs on batteries, but we don’t have the power to run them at full capacity.”

He looked at Robert archly. “Tymbrimi Athaclena insists we drill a geothermal tap first. But I figure if we were to set up a few solar collectors on the surface… very well hidden, of course…”

He let the thought hang. Robert could tell that one chim, at least, was less than thrilled at being commanded by a mere girl, and one who wasn’t even of Earthclan or Terragens citizenship.

“What’s your name?”

“Jobert, captain.”

Robert shook his head. “Well, Jobert, we can discuss that later. Right now, will someone please tell me about this ‘raid’? What is Athaclena up to?”

Micah and Soo looked at each other. The chimmie spoke first.

“They left before dawn. It’s already late afternoon outside. We should be getting a runner in any time now.”

Jobert grimaced again, his wrinkled, age-darkened face dour with pessimism. “They went out armed with pin-rifles and concussion grenades, hoping to ambush a Gubru patrol.

“Actually,” the elderly chim added dryly. “We were expecting news more than an hour ago. I’m afraid they are already very late getting back.”

27 Fiben

Fiben awoke in darkness, fetal-curled under a dusty blanket.

Awareness brought back the pain. Just pulling his right arm away from his eyes took a stoic effort of will, and the movement set off a wave of nausea. Unconsciousness beckoned him back seductively.

What made him resist was the filmy, lingering tracery of his dreams. They had driven him to seek consciousness… those weird, terrifying images and sensations. The last, vivid scene had been a cratered desert landscape. Lightning struck the stark sands all around him, pelting him with charged, sparking shrapnel whichever way he tried to duck or’hide.

He recalled trying to protest, as if there were words that might somehow placate a storm. But speech had been taken from him.

By effort of will, Fiben managed to roll over on the creaking cot. He had to knuckle-rub his eyes before they would open, and then all they made out was the dimness of a shabby little room. A thin line of light traced the overlap of heavy black curtains covering a small window.

His muscles trembled spasmodically. Fiben remembered the last time he had felt anywhere near this lousy, back on Cilmar Island. A band of neo-chimp circus entertainers from Earth had dropped in to do a show. The visiting “strongman” offered to wrestle the college champion, and like an idiot Fiben had accepted.

It had been weeks before he walked again without a limp.

Fiben groaned and sat up. His inner thighs burned like fire. “Oh, mama,” he moaned. “I’ll never scissors-hold again!”

His skin and body hair were moist. Fiben sniffed the pungent odor of Dalsebo, a strong muscle relaxant. So, at least his captors had taken efforts to spare him the worst aftereffects of stunning. Still, his brain felt like a misbehaving gyroscope when he tried to rise. Fiben grabbed the teetering bedside table for support as he stood up, and held his side while he shuffled over to the solitary window.

He grabbed rough fabric on both sides of the thin line of light and snapped the drapes apart. Immediately Fiben stumbled back, both arms raised to ward off the sudden brightness. Afterimages whirled.

“Ugh,” he commented succinctly. It was barely a croak.

What was this place? Some prison of the Gubru? Certainly he wasn’t aboard an invader battleship. He doubted the fastidious Galactics would use native wood furnishings, or decorate in Late Antediluvian Shabby.

He lowered his arms, blinking away tears. Through the window he saw an enclosed yard, an unkempt vegetable garden, a couple of climbing trees. It looked like a typical small commune-house, the sort a chim group marriage family might own.

Just visible over the nearby roofs, a line of hilltop eucalyptus trees told him he was still in Port Helenia, not far from Sea Bluff Park.

Perhaps the Gubru were leaving his interrogation to their quislings. Or his captors could be those hostile Probationers. They might have their own plans for him.

Fiben’s mouth felt as if dust weavers had been spinning traps in it. He saw a water pitcher on the room’s only table. One cup v?as already poured. He stumbled over and grabbed for it, but missed and knocked it crashing to the floor.

Focus! Fiben told himself. If you want to get out of this, try to think like a member of a starfaring race!

It was hard. The subvocalized words were painful just behind his forehead. He could feel his mind try to retreat … to abandon Anglic for a simpler, more natural way of thinking.

Fiben resisted an almost overpowering urge to simply grab up the pitcher and drink from it directly. Instead, in spite of his thirst, he concentrated on each step involved in pouring another cup.

His fingers trembled on the pitcher’s handle.

Focus!

Fiben recalled an ancient Zen adage. “Before enlightenment, chop wood, pour water. After enlightenment, chop wood, pour water.”

Slowing down in spite of his thirst, he turned the simple act of pouring into an exercise. Holding on with two shaking hands, Fiben managed to pour himself about half a cupful, slopping about as much onto the table and floor. No matter. He took up the tumbler and drank in deep, greedy, swallows.

The second cup poured easier. His hands were steadier.

That’s it. Focus… Choose the hard path, the one using thought. At least chims had it easier than neo-dolphins. The other Earthly client race was a hundred years younger and had to use three languages in order to think at all!

He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t notice when the door behind him opened.

“Well, for a boy who’s had such a busy night, you sure are chipper this morning.”

Fiben whirled. Water splattered the wall as he brought up the cup to throw it, but the sudden movement seemed to send his brain spinning in his head. The cup clattered to the floor and Fiben clutched at his temples, groaning under a wave of vertigo.

Blearily, he saw a chimmie in a blue sarong. She approached carrying a tray. Fiben fought to remain standing, but his legs folded and he sank to his knees.

“Bloody fool,” he heard her say. Bile in his mouth was only one reason he couldn’t answer.

She set her tray on the table and took hold of his arm. “Only an idiot would try to get up after taking a full stunner jolt at close range!”

Fiben snarled and tried to shake her hands off. Now he remembered! This was the little “pimp” from the Ape’s Grape. The one who had stood in the balcony not far from the Gubru and who had him stunned just as he was about to make his escape.

“Lemme “lone,” he said. “I don’ need any help from a damn traitor!”

At least that was what he had intended to say, but it came out more as a slurred mumble. “Right. Anything you say,” the chimmie answered evenly. She hauled him by one arm back to the bed. In spite of her slight size, she was quite strong.

Fiben groaned as he landed on the lumpy mattress. He kept trying to gather himself together, but rational thought seemed to swell and fade like ocean surf.

“I’m going to give you something. You’ll sleep for at least ten hours. Trjen, maybe, you’ll be ready to answer some questions.”

Fiben couldn’t spare the energy to curse her. All his attention was given over to finding a focus, something to center on. Anglic wasn’t good enough anymore. He tried Galactic Seven.

“Na … Ka … tcha… kresh…” he counted thickly.

“Yes, yes,” he heard her say. “By now we’re all quite aware how well educated you are.”

Fiben opened his eyes as the chimmie leaned over him, a capsule in her hand. With a finger snap she broke it, releasing a cloud of heavy vapor.

He tried to hold his breath against the anesthetic gas, knowing it was useless. At the same time, Fiben. couldn’t help noticing that she was actually fairly pretty — with a small, childlike jaw and smooth skin. Only her wry, bitter smile ruined the picture.

“My, you are an obstinate chen, aren’t you? Be a good boy now, breathe in and rest,” she commanded.

Unable to hold out any longer, Fiben had to inhale at last. A sweet odor filled his nostrils, like overripe forest fruit. Awareness began dissipating in a floating glow.

It was only then Fiben realized that she, too, had spoken in perfect, unaccented Galactic Seven.

28 Government in Hiding

Megan Oneagle blinked away tears. She wanted to turn away, not to look, but she forced herself to watch the carnage one more time.

The large holo-tank depicted a night scene, a rain-driven beach that shone dimly in shades of gray under faintly visible brooding cliffs. There were no moons, no stars, in fact hardly any light at all. The enhancement cameras had been at their very limits taking these pictures.

On the beach she could barely make out five black shapes that crawled ashore, dashed across the sand, and began climbing the low, crumbling bluffs.

“You can tell they followed procedures precisely,” Major Prathachulthorn of the Terragens Marines explained. “First the submarine released the advance divers, who went ahead to scout and set up surveillance. Then, when it seemed the coast was clear, the sabots were released.”

Megan watched as little boats bobbed to the surface — black globes rising amid small clouds of bubbles — which then headed quickly for shore. They landed, covers popped off, and more dark figures emerged.

“They carried the finest equipment available. Their training was the best. These were Terragens Marines.”

So? Megan shook her head. Does that mean they did not have mothers?

She understood what Prathachulthorn was saying, however. If calamity could befall these professionals, who could blame Garth’s colonial militia for the disasters of the last few months?

The black shapes moved toward the cliffs, stoop-shouldered under heavy burdens.

For weeks, now, the remnants still under Megan’s command had sat with her, deep in their underwater refuge, pondering the collapse of all their well-laid plans for an organized resistance. The agents and saboteurs had been ready, the arms caches and cells organized. Then came the cursed Gubru coercion gas, and all their careful schemes collapsed under those roiling clouds of deadly smoke.

What few humans remained on the mainland were certainly dead by now, or as good as dead. What was frustrating was that nobody, not even the enemy in their broadcasts, seemed to know who or how many had made it to the islands in time for antidote treatment and internment.

Megan avoided thinking about her son. With any luck he was now on Cilmar Island, brooding with his friends in some pub, or complaining to a crowd of sympathetic girls how his mother had kept him out of the war. She could only hope and pray that was the case, and that Uthacalthing’s daughter was safe as well.

More of a cause for perplexity was the fate of the Tymbrimi Ambassador himself. Uthacalthing had promised to follow the Planetary Council into hiding, but he had never appeared. There were reports that his ship had tried for deepspace instead, and was destroyed.

So many lives. Lost to what purpose?

Megan watched the display as the sabots began edging back into the water. The main force of men was already climbing the bluffs.

Without humans, of course, any hope of resistance was out of the question. A few of the cleverest chims might strike a blow, here or there, but what could really be expected of them without their patrons?

One purpose of this landing had been to start something going again, to adapt and adjust to new circumstances.

For the third time — even though she knew it was coming — Megan was caught by surprise as lightning suddenly burst upon the beach. In an instant everything was bathed in brilliant colors.

First to explode were the little boats, the sabots.

Next came the men.

“The sub pulled its camera in and dived just in time,” Major Prathachulthorn said.

The display went blank. The woman marine lieutenant who had operated the projector turned on the lights. The other members of the Council blinked, adjusting to the light. Several dabbed their eyes.

Major Prathachulthorn’s South Asian features were darkly serious as he spoke again. “It’s the same thing as during the space battle, and when they somehow knew to gas every secret base we’d set up on land. Somehow they always find out where we are.”

“Do you have any idea how they’re doing it?” one of the council members asked.

Vaguely, Megan recognized that it was the female Marine officer, Lieutenant Lydia McCue, who answered. The young woman shook her head. “We have all of our technicians working on the problem, of course. But until we have some idea how they’re doing it, we don’t want to waste any more men trying to sneak ashore.”

Megan Oneagle closed her eyes. “I think we are in no condition, now, to discuss matters any further. I declare this meeting adjourned.”

When she retired to her tiny room, Megan thought she would cry. Instead, though, she merely sat on the edge of her bed, in complete darkness, allowing her eyes to look in the direction she knew her hands lay.

After a while, she felt she could almost see them, fingerslike blobs resting tiredly on her knees. She imagined they,were stained — a deep, sanguinary red.

29 Robert

Deep underground there was no way to sense the natural passage of time. Still, when Robert jerked awake in his chair, he knew exactly when it was.

Late. Too damn late. Athaclena was due back hours ago.

If he weren’t still little more than an invalid he would have overcome the objections of Micah and Dr. Soo and gone topside himself, looking for the long overdue raiding party. As it was, the two chim scientists had nearly had to use force to stop him.

Traces of Robert’s fever still returned now and then. He wiped his forehead and suppressed some momentary shivers. No, he thought. I am in control!

He stood up and picked his way carefully toward the sounds of muttered argument, where he found a pair of chims working over the pearly light of a salvaged level-seventeen computer. Robert sat on a packing crate behind them and listened for a while. When he made a suggestion they tried it, and it worked. Soon he had almost managed to push aside his worries as he immersed himself in work, helping the chims sketch out military tactics programming for a machine that had never been designed for anything more hostile than chess.

Somebody came by with a pitcher of juice. He drank. Someone handed him a sandwich. He ate.

An indeterminate time later a shout echoed through the underground chamber. Feet thumped hurriedly over low wooden bridges. Robert’s eyes had grown accustomed to the bright screen, so it was out of a dark gloom that he saw chims hurrying past, seizing assorted, odd-lot weapons as they rushedup the passage leading to the surface.

He stood and grabbed at the nearest running brown form. “What’s happening?”

He might as well have tried to halt a bull. The chim tore free without even glancing his way and vanished up the ragged tunnel. The next one he waved down actually looked at him and halted restlessly. “It’s th’ expedition,” the nervous chen explained. “They’ve come back. … At least I hear some of ’em have.”

Robert let the fellow go. He began casting around the chamber for a weapon of his own. If the raiding party had been followed back here…

There wasn’t anything handy, of course. He realized bitterly that a rifle would hardly do him any good with his right arm immobilized. The chims probably wouldn’t let him fight anyway. They’d more likely carry him bodily out of harm’s way, deeper into the caves.

For a while there was silence. A few elderly chims waited with him for the sound of gunfire.

Instead, there came voices, gradually growing louder. The shouts sounded more excited than fearful.

Something seemed to stroke him, just above the ears. He hadn’t had much practice since the accident, but now Robert’s simple empathy sense felt a familiar trace blow into the chamber. He began to hope.

A babbling crowd of figures turned the bend — ragged, filthy neo-chimpanzees carrying slung weapons, some sporting bandages. The instant he saw Athaclena, a knot seemed to let go inside of Robert.

Just as quickly, though, another worry took its place. The Tymbrimi girl had been using the gheer transformation, clearly. He felt the rough edges of her exhaustion, and her face was gaunt.

Moreover, Robert could tell that she was still hard at work. Her corona stood puffed out, sparkling without light. The chims hardly seemed to notice as stay-at-homes eagerly pumped the jubilant raiders for news. But Robert realized that Athaclena was concentrating hard to craft that mood. It was too tenuous, too tentative to sustain itself without her.

“Robert!” Her eyes widened. “Should you be out of bed? Your fever only broke yesterday.”

“I’m fine. But—”

“Good. I am happy to see you ambulatory, at last.”

Robert watched as two heavily bandaged forms were rushed past on stretchers toward their makeshift hospital. He sensed Athaclena’s effort to divert attention away from the bleeding, perhaps dying, soldiers until they were out of sight. Only the presence of the chims made Robert keep his voice low and even. “I want to talk with you, Athaclena.”

She met his eyes, and for a brief instant Robert thought he kenned a faint form, turning and whirling above the floating tendrils of her corona. It was a harried glyph.

The returning warriors were busy with food and drink, bragging to their eager peers. Only Benjamin, a hand-sewn lieutenant’s patch on his arm, stood soberly beside Athaclena. She nodded. “Very well, Robert. Let us go someplace private.”

“Let me guess,” he said, levelly. “You got your asses kicked.”

Chim Benjamin winced, but he did not disagree. He tapped a spot on an outstretched map.

“We hit them here, in Yenching Gap,” he said. “It was our fourth raid, so we thought we knew what to expect.”

“Your fourth.” Robert turned to Athaclena. “How long has this been going on?”

She had been picking daintily at a pocket pastry filled with something pungently aromatic. She wrinkled her nose. “We have been practicing for about a week, Robert. But this was the first time we tried to do any real harm.”

“And?”

Benjamin seemed immune to Athaclena’s mood-tailoring. Perhaps it was intentional, for she would need at least one aide whose judgment was unaffected. Or maybe he was just too bright. He rolled his eyes. “We’re the ones who got hurt.” He went on to explain. “We split into five groups. Mizz Athaclena insisted. It’s what saved us.”

“What was your target?”

“A small patrol. Two light hover-tanks and a couple of open landcars.”

Robert pondered the site on the map, where one of the few roads entered the first rank of mountains. From what others had told him, the enemy were seldom seen above the Sind. They seemed content to control space, the Archipelago, and the narrow strip of settlement along the coast around Port Helenia.

“Good. I am happy to see you ambulatory, at last.”

Robert watched as two heavily bandaged forms were rushed past on stretchers toward their makeshift hospital. He sensed Athaclena’s effort to divert attention away from the bleeding, perhaps dying, soldiers until they were out of sight. Only the presence of the chims made Robert keep his voice low and even. “I want to talk with you, Athaclena.”

She met his eyes, and for a brief instant Robert thought he kenned a faint form, turning and whirling above the floating tendrils of her corona. It was a harried glyph.

The returning warriors were busy with food and drink, bragging to their eager peers. Only Benjamin, a hand-sewn lieutenant’s patch on his arm, stood soberly beside Athaclena. She nodded. “Very well, Robert. Let us go someplace private.”

“Let me guess,” he said, levelly. “You got your asses kicked.”

Chim Benjamin winced, but he did not disagree. He tapped a spot on an outstretched map.

“We hit them here, in Yenching Gap,” he said. “It was our fourth raid, so we thought we knew what to expect.”

“Your fourth.” Robert turned to Athaclena. “How long has this been going on?”

She had been picking daintily at a pocket pastry filled with something pungently aromatic. She wrinkled her nose. “We have been practicing for about a week, Robert. But this was the first time we tried to do any real harm.”

“And?”

Benjamin seemed immune to Athaclena’s mood-tailoring. Perhaps it was intentional, for she would need at least one aide whose judgment was unaffected. Or maybe he was just too bright. He rolled his eyes. “We’re the ones who got hurt.” He went on to explain. “We split into five groups. Mizz Athaclena insisted. It’s what saved us.”

“What was your target?”

“A small patrol. Two light hover-tanks and a couple of open landcars.”

Robert pondered the site on the map, where one of the few roads entered the first rank of mountains. From what others had told him, the enemy were seldom seen above the Sind. They seemed content to control space, the Archipelago, and the narrow strip of settlement along the coast around Port Helenia Tymbrimi shrug. “I did not think we should approach too closely, on our first encounter.”

Robert nodded. Indeed, if closer, “better” ambush sites had been chosen, few if any of the chims would have made it back alive.

The plan was good.

No, not good. Inspired. It hadn’t been intended to hurt the enemy but to build confidence. The troops had been dispersed so everyone would get to fire at the patrol with minimum risk. The raiders could return home swaggering, but most important, they would make it home.

Even so, they had been hurt. Robert could sense how exhausted Athaclena was, partly from the effort of maintaining everyone’s mood of “victory.”

He felt a touch on his knee and took Athaclena’s hand in his own. Her long, delicate fingers closed tightly, and he felt her triple-beat pulse.

Their eyes met.

“We turned a possible disaster into a minor success today,” Benjamin said. “But so long as the enemy always knows where we are, I don’t see how we can ever do more than play tag with them. And even that game’ll certainly cost more than we can afford to pay.”

30 Fiben

Fiben rubbed the back of his neck and stared irritably across the table. So this was the person he had been sent to contact, Dr. Taka’s brilliant student, their would-be leader of an urban underground.

“What kind of idiocy was that?” he accused. “You let me walk into that club blind, ignorant. There were a dozen times I nearly got caught last night. Or even killed!”

“It was two nights ago,” Gailet Jones corrected him. She sat in a straight-backed chair and smoothed the blue demisilk of her sarong. “Anyway, I was there, at the Ape’s Grape, waiting outside to make contact. I saw that you were a stranger, arriving alone, wearing a plaid work shirt, so I approached you with the password.”

“Pink?” Fiben blinked at her. “You come up to me and whisper pink at me, and that’s supposed to be a bloody, reverted password?”

Normally he would never use such rough language with a young lady. Right now Gailet Jones looked more like the sort of person he had expected in the first place, a chimmie of obvious education and breeding. But he had seen her under other circumstances, and he wasn’t ever likely to forget.

“You call that a password? They told me to look for a fisherman]”

Shouting made him wince. Fiben’s head still felt as though it were leaking brains in five or six places. His muscles had stopped cramping capriciously some time ago, but he still ached all over and his temper was short.

“A fisherman? In that part of town?” Gailet Jones frowned, her face clouding momentarily. “Listen, everything was chaos when I rang up the Center to leave word with Dr. Taka. I figured her group was used to keeping secrets and would make an ideal core out in the countryside. I only had a few moments to think up a way to make a later contact before the Gubru took over the telephone lines. I figured they were already tapping and recording everything, so it had to be something colloquial, you know, that their language computers would have trouble interpreting.”

She stopped suddenly, bringing her hand to her mouth. “Oh no!”

“What?” Fiben edged forward.

She blinked for a moment, then motioned in the air. “I told that fool operator at the Center how their emissary should dress, and where to meet me, then I said I’d pass myself off as a hooker—”

“As a what? I don’t get it.” Fiben shook his head.

“It’s an archaic term. Pre-Contact human slang for one who offers cheap, illicit sex for cash.”

Fiben snapped. “Of all the damn fool, Ifni-cursed, loony ideas!”

Gailet Jones answered back hotly. “All right, smartie, what should I have done? The militia was falling to pieces. Nobody had even considered what to do if every human on the planet was suddenly removed from the chain of command! I had this wild notion of helping to start a resistance movement from scratch. So I tried to arrange a meeting—”

“Uh huh, posing as someone advertising illicit favors, right outside a place where the Gubru were inciting a sexual frenzy.”

“How was 7 to know what they were going to do, or that they’d choose that sleepy little club as the place to do it in? I conjectured that social restraints would relax enough to let me pull the pose and so be able to approach strangers. It never occurred to me they’d relax that much! My guess was that anyone I came up to by mistake would be so surprised he’d act as you did and I could pull a fade.”

“But it didn’t work out that way.”

“No it did not! Before you appeared, several solitary chens showed up dressed likely enough to make me put on my act. Poor Max had to stun half a dozen of them, and the alley was starting to get full! But it was already too late to change the rendezvous, or the password—”

“Which nobody understood! Hooker? You should have realized something like that would get garbled!”

“I knew Dr. Taka would understand. We used to watch and discuss old movies together. We’d study the archaic words they used. I can’t understand why she …” Her voice trailed off when she saw the expression on Fiben’s face. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m sorry. I just realized that you couldn’t know.” He shook his head. “You see, Dr. Taka died just about the time they got your message, of an allergic reaction to the coercion gas.”

Her breath caught. Gailet seemed to sink into herself. “I … I feared as much when she didn’t show up in town for internment. It’s … a great loss.” She closed her eyes and turned away, obviously feeling more than her words told.

At least she had been spared witnessing the flaming end of the Howletts Center as the soot-covered ambulances came and went, and the glazed, dying face of her mentor as the ecdemic gas took its cruel, statistical toll. Fiben had seen recordings of that fear-palled evening. The images lay in dark layers still, at the back of his mind.

Gailet gathered herself, visibly putting off her mourning for later. She dabbed her eyes and faced Fiben, jaw outthrust defiantly. “I had to come up with something a chim would understand but the Eatees’ language computers wouldn’t. It won’t be the last time we have to improvise. Anyway, what matters is that you are here. Our two groups are in contact now.”

“I was almost killed,” he pointed out, though this time he felt a bit churlish for mentioning it.

“But you weren’t killed. In fact, there may be ways to turn your little misadventure into an advantage. Out on the streets they’re still talking about what you did that night, you know.”

Was that a faint, tentative note of respect in her voice? A peace offering, perhaps?

Suddenly, it was all too much. Much too much for him. Fiben knew it was exactly the wrong thing to do, at exactly the wrong time, but he just couldn’t help himself. He broke up—

“A hook… ?” He giggled, though every shake seemed to rattle his brain in his skull. “A hooker?” He threw back his head and hooted, pounding on the arms of the chair. Fiben slumped. He guffawed, kicking his feet in the air. “Oh, Goodall. That was all I needed to be looking for!”

Gailet Jones glared at him as he gasped for breath. He didn’t even care, right now, if she called in that big chim, Max, to use the stunner on him again.

It was all just too much.

If the look in her eyes right then counted for anything, Fiben knew this alliance was already off to a rocky start.

31 Galactics

The Suzerain of Beam and Talon stepped aboard its personal barge and accepted the salutes of its Talon Soldier escort. They were carefully chosen troops, feathers perfectly preened, crests neatly dyed with colors noting rank and unit. The admiral’s Kwackoo aide hurried forth and took its ceremonial robe. When all had settled onto their perches the pilot took off on gravities, heading toward the defense works under construction in the low hills east of Port Helenia. The Suzerain of Beam and Talon watched in silence as the new city fence fell behind them and the farms of this small Earthling settlement rushed by underneath.

The seniormost stoop-colonel, military second in command, saluted with a sharp beak-clap. “The conclave went well? Suitably? Satisfactorily?” the stoop-colonel asked.

The Suzerain of Beam and Talon chose to overlook the impudence of the question. It was more useful to have a second who could think than one whose plumage was always perfectly preened. Surrounding itself with a few such creatures was one of the things that had won the Suzerain its candidacy. The admiral gave its inferior a haughty eyeblink of assent. “Our consensus is presently adequate, sufficient, it will do.”

The stoop-colonel bowed and returned to its station. Of course it would know that consensus was never perfect at this early stage in a Molt. Anyone could tell that from the Suzerain’s ruffled down and haggard eyes.

This most recent Command Conclave had been particularly indecisive, and several aspects had irritated the admiral deeply.

For one thing, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution was pressing to release much of their support fleet to go assist other Gubru operations, far from here. And as if that weren’t enough, the third leader, the Suzerain of Propriety, still insisted on being carried everywhere on its perch, refusing to set foot on the soil of Garth until all punctilio had been satisfied. The priest was all fluffed and agitated over a number of issues — excessive human deaths from coercion gas, the threatened breakdown of the Garth Reclamation Project, the pitiful size of the Planetary Branch Library, the Uplift status of the benighted, pre-sentient neo-chimpanzees.

On every issue, it seemed, there must be still another realignment, another tense negotiation. Another struggle for consensus.

And yet, there were deeper issues than these ephemera. The Three had also begun to argue over fundamentals, and there the process was actually starting to become enjoyable, somehow. The pleasurable aspects of Triumviracy were emerging, especially when they danced and crooned and argued over deeper matters.

Until now it had seemed that the flight to queenhood would be straight and easy for the admiral, for it had been in command from the start. Now it had begun to dawn on the Suzerain of Beam and Talon that all would not be easy. This was not going to be any trivial Molt after all.

Of course the best ones never were. Very diverse factions had been involved in choosing the three leaders of the Expeditionary Force, for the Roost Masters of home had hopes for a new unified policy to emerge from this particular Threesome. In order for that to happen, all of them had to be very good minds, and very different from each other.

Just how good and how different was beginning to become clear. A few of the ideas the others had presented recently were clever, and quite unnerving.

They are right about one thing, the admiral had to admit. We must not simply conquer, defeat, overrun the wolflings. We must discredit them!

The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had been concentrating so hard on military matters that it had got in the habit of seeing its mates as impediments, little more.

That was wrong, impertinent, disloyal of me, the admiral thought.

In fact, it was devoutly to be hoped that the bureaucrat and the priest were as bright in their own areas as the admiral was in soldiery. If Propriety and Accountancy handled their ends as brilliantly as the invasion had been, then they would be a trio to be remembered!

Some things were foreordained, the Suzerain of Beam and Talon knew. They had been set since the days of the Progenitors, long, long ago. Long before there were heretics and unworthy clans polluting the starlances — horrible, wretched wolflings, and Tymbrimi, and Thennanin, and Soro. … It was vital that the clan of Gooksyu-Gubru prevail in this era’s troubles! The clan must achieve greatness!

The admiral contemplated the way the eggs of the Earth-lings’ defeat had been laid so many years before. How the Gubru force had been able to detect and counteract their every move. And how the coercion gas had left all their plans in complete disarray. These had been the Suzerain’s own ideas — along with members of its personal staff, of course. They had been years coming to fruition.

The Suzerain of Beam and Talon stretched its arms, feeling tension in the flexors that had, ages before its species’ own uplifting, carried his ancestors aloft in warm, dry currents on the Gubru homeworld.

fes! Let my peers’ ideas also be bold, imaginative, brilliant…

Let them be almost, nearly, close to — but not quite — as brilliant as my own.

The Suzerain began preening its feathers as the cruiser leveled off and headed east under a cloud-decked sky.

32 Athaclena

“I am going crazy down here. I feel like I’m being kept prisoner!”

Robert paced, accompanied by twin shadows cast by the cave’s only two glow bulbs. Their stark light glistened in the sheets of moisture that seeped slowly down the walls of the underground chamber.

Robert’s left arm clenched, tendons standing out from fist to elbow to well-muscled shoulder. He punched a nearby cabinet, sending banging echoes down the subterranean passageways. “I warn you, Clennie, I’m not going to be able to wait much longer. When are you going to let me out of here?”

Athaclena winced as Robert slammed the cabinet again, giving vent to his frustration. At least twice he had seemed about to use his still-splinted right arm instead of the undamaged left. “Robert,” she urged. “You have been making wonderful progress. Soon your cast can come off. Please do not jeopardize that by injuring yourself—”

“You’re evading the issue!” he interrupted. “Even wearing a cast I could be out there, helping train the troops and scouting Gubru positions. But you have me trapped down here in these caves, programming minicomps and sticking pins in maps! It’s driving me nuts!”

Robert positively radiated his frustration. Athaclena had asked him before to try to damp it down. To keep a lid on it, as the metaphor went. For some reason she seemed particularly susceptible to his emotional tides — as stormy and wild as any Tymbrimi adolescent’s.

“Robert, you know why we cannot risk sending you out to the surface. The Gubru gasbots have already swept over our surface encampments several times, unleashing their deadly vapors. Had you been above on any of those occasions you would even now be on your way to Cilmar Island, lost to us. And that is at best! I shudder to think of the worst.”

Athaclena’s ruff bristled at the thought; the silvery tendrils of her corona waved in agitation.

It was mere luck that Robert had been rescued from the Mendoza Freehold just before the persistent Gubru searcher robots swooped down upon the tiny mountain homestead. Camouflage and removal of all electronic items had apparently riot been enough to hide the cabin.

Meline Mendoza and the children immediately left for Port Helenia and presumably arrived in time for treatment. Juan Mendoza had been less fortunate. Remaining behind to close down several ecological survey traps, he had been stricken with a delayed allergic reaction to the coercion gas and died within five convulsive minutes, foaming and jerking ^nder the horrified gaze of his helpless chim partners.

“You were not there to see Juan die, Robert, but surely you must have heard reports. Do you want to risk such a death? Are you aware of how close we already came to losing you?”

Their eyes met, brown encountering gold-flecked gray. She could sense Robert’s determination, and also his effort to control his stubborn anger. Slowly, Robert’s left arm unclenched. He breathed a deep sigh and sank into a canvas-backed chair.

“I’m aware, Clennie. I know how you feel. But you’ve got to understand, I’m part of all this.” He leaned forward, his expression no longer wrathful, but still intense. “I agreed to my mother’s request, to guide you into the bush instead of joining my militia unit, because Megan said it was important. But now you’re no longer my guest in the forest. You’re organizing an army! And I feel like a fifth wheel.”

Athaclena sighed. “We both know that it will not be much of an army … a gesture at best. Something to give the chims hope. Anyway, as a Terragens officer you have the right to take over from me any time you wish.”

Robert shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not conceited enough to think I could have done any better. I’m no leader type, and I know it. Most of the chims worship you, and believe in your Tymbrimi mystique.

“Still, I probably am the only human with any military training left in these mountains … an asset you have to use if we’re to have any chance to—”

Robert stopped abruptly, lifting his eyes to look over Athaclena’s shoulder. Athaclena turned as a small chimmie in shorts and bandoleer entered the underground room and saluted.

“Excuse me, general, Captain Oneagle, but Lieutenant Benjamin has just gotten in. Um, he reports that things aren’t any better over in Spring Valley. There aren’t any humans there anymore. But outposts all up and down every canyon are still being buzzed by the damn gasbots at least once a day. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of it lettin’ up anywhere where our runners have been able to get to.”

“How about the chims in Spring Valley?” Athaclena asked. “Is the gas making them sick?” She recalled Dr. Schultz and the effect the coercion gas had had on some of the chims back at the Center.

The courier shook her head. “No, ma’am. Not anymore. It seems to be the same story all over. All the sus-susceptible chims have already been flushed out and gone to Port Helenia. Every person left in the mountains must be immune by now.”

Athaclena glanced at Robert and they must have shared the same thought.

Every person but one.

“Damn them!” he cursed. “Won’t they ever let up? They have ninety-nine point nine percent of the humans captive. Do they need to keep gassing every hut and hovel, just in order to get every last one?”

“Apparently they are afraid of Homo sapiens, Robert.” Athaclena smiled. “After all, you are allies of the Tymbrimi. And we do not choose harmless species as partners.”

Robert shook his head, glowering. But Athaclena reached out with her aura to touch him, nudging his personality, forcing him to look up and see the humor in her eyes. Against his will, a slow smile spread. At last Robert laughed. “Oh, I guess the damned birds aren’t so dumb after all. Better safe than sorry, hmm?”

Athaclena shook her head, her corona forming a glyph of appreciation, a simple one which he might kenn. “No, Robert. They aren’t so dumb. But they have missed at least onehuman, so their worries aren’t over yet.”

The little neo-chimp messenger glanced from Tymbrimi to human and sighed. It all sounded scary to her, not funny. She didn’t understand why they smiled.

Probably, it was something subtle and convoluted. Patron-class humor… dry and intellectual. Some chims batted in that league, strange ones who differed from other neo-chimpanzees not so much in intelligence as in something else, something much less definable.

She did not envy those chims. Responsibility was an awesome thing, more daunting than the prospect of fighting a powerful enemy, or even dying.

It was the possibility of being left alone that terrified her. She might not understand it, when these two laughed. But it felt good just to hear it.

The messenger stood a little straighter as Athaclena turned back to speak to her.

“I will want to hear Lieutenant Benjamin’s report personally. Would you please also give my compliments to Dr. Soo and ask her to join us in the operations chamber?”

“Yesser!” The chimmie saluted and took off at a run.

“Robert?” Athaclena asked. “Your opinion will be welcome.”

He looked up, a distant expression on his face. “In a minute, Clennie. I’ll check in at operations. There’s just something I want to think through first.”

“All right.” Athaclena nodded. “I’ll see you soon.” She turned away and followed the messenger down a water-carved corridor lit at long intervals by dim glow bulbs and wet reflections on the dripping stalactites.

Robert watched her until she was out of sight. He thought in the near-total quiet.

Why are the Gubru persisting in gassing the mountains, after nearly every human has already been driven out? It must be a terrific expense, even if their gasbots only swoop down on places where they detect an Earthling presence.

And how are they able to detect buildings, vehicles, even isolated chims, no matter how well hidden?

Right now it doesn’t matter that they’ve been dosing our Surface encampments. The gasbots are simple machines and don’t know we’re training an army in this valley. They just sense “Earthlings!” — then dive in to do their work and leave again.

But what happens when we start operations and attract attention from the Gubru themselves? We can’t afford to be detectable then.

There was another very basic reason to find an answer to these questions.

As long as this is going on, I’m trapped down here!

Robert listened to the faint plink of water droplets seeping from the nearest wall. He thought about the enemy.

The trouble. on Garth was clearly little more than a skirmish among the greater battles tearing up the Five Galaxies. The Gubru couldn’t just gas the entire planet. That would cost far too much for this backwater theater of operations.

So a swarm of cheap, stupid, but efficient seeker robots had been unleashed to home in on anything not natural to Garth… anything that had the scent of Earth about it. By now nearly every attack dosed only irritated, resentful chims — immune to the coercion gas — and empty buildings all over the planet.

It was a nuisance, and it was effective. A way had to be found to stop it.

Robert pulled a sheet of paper from a folder at the end of the table. He wrote down the principal ways the gasbots might be using to detect Earthlings on an alien planet.

Robert regretted having taken so many courses in public administration, and so few on Galactic technologies. He was certain the Great Library’s gigayear-old archives contained many methods of detection beyond just these five. For instance, what if the gasbots actually did “sniff out” a Terran odor, tracing anything Earthly by sense of smell?

No. He shook his head. There came a point where one had to cut a list short, putting aside things that were obviously ridiculous. Leaving them as a last resort, at least.

The rebels did have a Library pico-branch he could try, salvaged from the wreckage of the Howletts Center. The chances of it having any entries of military use were quite slim. It was a tiny branch, holding no more information than all the books written by pre-Contact Mankind, and it was specialized in the areas of Uplift and genetic engineering.

Maybe we can apply to the District Central Library on Tanith for a literature search. Robert smiled at the ironic thought. Even a people imprisoned by an invader supposedly had the right to query the Galactic Library whenever they wished. That was part of the Code of the Progenitors.

Right! He chuckled at the image. We’ll just walk up to Gubru occupation headquarters and demand that they transmit our appeal to Tanith, … a request for information on the invader’s own military technology!

They might even do it. After all, with the galaxies in turmoil the Library must be inundated with queries. They would get around to our request eventually, maybe sometime in the next century.

He looked over his list. At least these were means he had heard of or knew something about.

Possibility one: There might be a satellite overhead with sophisticated optical scanning capabilities, inspecting Garth acre by acre, seeking out regular shapes that would indicate buildings or vehicles. Such a device could be dispatching the gasbots to their targets.

Feasible, but why were the same sites raided over and over again? Wouldn’t such a satellite remember? And how could a satellite know to send robot bombers plunging down on even isolated groups of chims, traveling under the heavy forest canopy?

The reverse logic held for infrared direction. The machines couldn’t be homing in on the target’s body heat. The Gubru drones still swooped down on empty buildings, for instance, cold and abandoned for weeks now.

Robert did not have the expertise to eliminate all the possibilities on his list. Certainly he knew next to nothing about psi and its weird cousin, reality physics. The weeks with Athaclena had begun to open doors to him, but he was far from being more than a rank novice in an area that still caused many humans and chims to shudder in superstitious dread.

Well, as long as I’m stuck here underground I might as well expand my education.

He started to get up, intending to join Athaclena and Benjamin. Then he stopped suddenly. Looking at his list of possibilities he realized that there was one more that he had left out.

… A way for the Gubru to penetrate our defenses so easily when they invaded. … A way for them to find tts again and again, wherever we hide. A way for them to foil our every move.

He did not want to, but honesty forced him to pick up the stylus one more time.

He wrote a single word.

33 Fiben

That afternoon Gailet took Fiben on a tour of Port Helenia — or as much of it as the invader had not placed off limits to the neo-chimp population.

Fishing trawlers still came and went from the docks at the southern end of town. But now they were crewed solely by chim sailors. And less than half the usual number set forth, taking wide detours past the Gubru fortress ship that filled half the outlet of Aspinal Bay.

In’ the markets they saw some items in plentiful supply. Elsewhere there were sparse shelves, stripped nearly bare by scarcity and hoarding. Colonial money was still good for some things, like beer and fish. But only Galactic pellet-scrip would buy meat or fresh fruit. Irritated shoppers had already begun to learn what that archaic term, “inflation,” meant.

Half the population, it seemed, worked for the invader.

There were battlements being built, off to the south of the bay, near the spaceport. Excavations told of more massive structures yet to be.

Placards everywhere in town depicted grinning neo-chimpanzees and promised plenty once again, as soon as enough “proper” money entered circulation. Good work would bring that day closer, they were promised.

“Well? Have you seen enough?” his guide asked.

Fiben smiled. “Not at all. In fact, we’ve barely scratched the surface.”

Gailet shrugged and let him lead the way.

Well, he thought as he looked at the scant market shelves, the nutritionists keep telling us neo-chimps we eat more meat than is good for us … much more than we could get in the wild old days. Maybe this’ll do us some good.

At last their wanderings brought them to the bell tower overlooking Port Helenia College. It was a smaller campus than the University, on Cilmar Island, but Fiben had attended ecological conferences here not so very long ago, so he knew his way around.

As he looked over the school, something struck him as very strange.

It wasn’t just the Gubru hover-tank, dug in at the top of the hill, nor the ugly new wall that grazed the northern fringe of the college grounds on its way around town. Rather, it was something about the students and faculty themselves.

Frankly, he was surprised to see them here at all!

They were all chims, of course. Fiben had come to Port Helenia expecting to find ghettos or concentration camps, crowded with the human population of the mainland. But the last mels and ferns had been moved out to the islands some days ago. Taking their place had been thousands of chims pouring in from outlying areas, including those susceptible to the coercion gas in spite of the invaders’ assurances that it was impossible.

All of these had been given the antidote, paid a small, token reparation, and put to work in town.

But here at the college all seemed peaceful and amazingly close to normal. Fiben and Gailet looked down from the top of the bell tower. Below them, chens and chimmies moved about between classes. They carried books, spoke to one another in low voices, and only occasionally cast furtive glances at the alien cruisers that growled overhead every hour or so.

Fiben shook his head in wonder that they persevered at all.

Sure, humans were notoriously liberal in their Uplift policy, treating their clients as near equals in the face of a Galactic tradition that was far less generous. Elder Galactic clans might glower in disapproval, but chim and dolphin members deliberated next to their patrons on Terragens Councils. The client races had even been entrusted with a few starships of their own.

But a college without men?

Fiben had wondered why the invader held such a loose rein over the chim population, meddling only in a few crass ways like at the Ape’s Grape.

Now he thought he knew why.

“Mimicry! They must think we’re playing pretend!” he muttered half aloud.

“What did you say?” Gailet looked at him. They had made a truce in order to get the job done, but clearly she did not savor spending all day as his tour guide.

Fiben pointed at the students. “Tell me what you see down there.”

She glowered, then sighed and bent forward to look. “I see Professor Jimmie Sung leaving lecture hall, explaining something to some students.” She smiled faintly. “It’s probably intermediate Galactic history. … I used to TA for him, and I well recall that expression of confusion on the students’ faces.”

“Good. That’s what you see. Now loojc at it through a Gubru’s eyes.”

Gailet frowned. “What do you mean?”

Fiben gestured again. “Remember, according to Galactic tradition we neo-chimps aren’t much over three hundred years old as a sapient client race, barely older than dolphins — only just beginning our hundred-thousand-year period of probation and indenture to Man.

“Remember, also, that many of the Eatee fanatics resent humans terribly. Yet humans had to be granted patron status and all the privileges that go along with it. Why? Because they already had uplifted chims and dolphins before Contact! That’s how you get status in the Five Galaxies, by having clients and heading up a clan.”

Gailet shook her head. “I don’t get what you’re driving at. Why are you explaining the obvious?” Clearly, she did not like being lectured by a backwoods chim, one without even a postgraduate degree.

“Think! How did humans win their status? Remember how it happened, back in the twenty-second century? The fanatics were outvoted when it came to accepting neo-chimps and neo-dolphins as sapient.” Fiben waved his arm. “It was a diplomatic coup pulled off by the Kanten and Tymbrimi and other moderates before humans even knew what the issues were!”

Gailet’s expression was sardonic, and he recalled that her area of expertise was Galactic sociology. “Of course, but—”

“It became a. fait accompli. But the Gubru and the Soro and the other fanatics didn’t have to like it. They still think we’re little better than animals. They have to believe that, otherwise humans have earned a place in Galactic society equal to most, and better than many!”

“I still don’t see what you’re—”

“Look down there.” Fiben pointed. “Look with Gubru eyes, and tell me what you see!”

Gailet Jones glared at Fiben narrowly. At last, she sighed. “Oh, if you insist,” and she swiveled to gaze down into the courtyard again.

She was silent for a long time.

“I don’t like it,” she said at last. Fiben could barely hear her. He moved to stand closer.

“Tell me what you see.”

She looked away, so he put it into words for her. “What you see are bright, well-trained animals, creatures mimicking the behavior of their masters. Isn’t that it? Through the eyes of a Galactic, you see clever imitations of human professors and human students… replicas of better times, reenacted superstitiously by loyal—”

“Stop it!” Gailet shouted, covering her ears. She whirled on Fiben, eyes ablaze. “I hate you!”

Fiben wondered. This was hard on her. Was he simply getting even for the hurt and humiliation he had suffered over the last three days, partly at her hands?

But no. She had to be shown how her people were looked on by the enemy! How else would she ever learn how to fight them?

Oh, he was justified, all right. Still, Fiben thought. It’s never pleasant being loathed by a pretty girl.

Gailet Jones sagged against one of the pillars supporting the roof of the bell tower. “Oh Ifni and Goodall,” she cried into her hands. “What if they are right! What if it’s true?”

34 Athaclena

The glyph paraphrenll hovered above the sleeping girl, a floating cloud of uncertainty that quivered in the darkened chamber.

It was one of the Glyphs of Doom. Better than any living creature could predict its own fate, paraphrenll knew what the future held for it — what was unavoidable.

And yet it tried to escape. It could do nothing else. Such was the simple, pure, ineluctable nature of paraphrenll.

The glyph wafted upward in the dream smoke of Athaclena’s fitful slumber, rising until its nervous fringe barely touched the rocky ceiling. That instant the glyph quailed from the burning reality of the damp stone, dropping quickly back toward where it had been born.

Athaclena’s head shook slightly on the pillow, and her breathing quickened. Paraphrenll flickered in suppressed panic just above.

The shapeless dream glyph began to resolve itself, its amorphous shimmering starting to assume the symmetrical outlines of a face.

Paraphrenll was an essence — a distillation. Resistance to inevitability was its theme. It writhed and shuddered to hold off the change, and the face vanished for a time.

Here, above the Source, its danger was greatest. Paraphrenll darted away toward the curtained exit, only to be drawn short suddenly, as if held in leash by taut threads.

The glyph stretched thin, straining for release. Above the sleeping girl, slender tendrils waved after the desperate capsule of psychic energy, drawing it back, back.

Athaclena sighed tremulously. Her pale, almost translucent skin throbbed as her body perceived an emergency of some sort and prepared to make adjustments. But no orders came. There was no plan. The hormones and enzymes had no theme to build around.

Tendrils reached out, pulling paraphrenll, hauling it in. They gathered around the struggling symbol, like fingers caressing clay, fashioning decisiveness out of uncertainty, form out of raw terror.

At last they dropped away, revealing what paraphrenll had become … A face, grinning with mirth. Its cat’s eyes glittered. Its smile was not sympathetic.

Athaclena moaned.

A crack appeared. The face divided down the middle, and the halves separated. Then there were two of them!

Her breath came in rapid strokes.

The two figures split longitudinally, and there were four. It happened again, eight… and again… sixteen. Faces multiplied, laughing soundlessly but uproariously.

“Ah-ah!” Athaclena’s eyes opened. They shone with an opalescent, chemical fear-light. Panting, clutching the blankets, she sat up and stared in the small subterranean chamber, desperate for the sight of real things — her desk, the faint light of the hall bulb filtering through the entrance curtain. She could still feel the thing that paraphrenll had hatched. It was dissipating, now that she was awake, but slowly, too slowly! Its laughter seemed to rock with the beating of her heart, and Athaclena knew there would be no good in covering her ears.

What was it humans called their sleep-terror? Nightmare. But Athaclena had heard that they were pale things, dreamed events and warped scenes taken from daily life, generally forgotten simply by awakening.

The sights and sensations of the room slowly took on solidity. But the laughter did not merely vanish, defeated. It faded into the walls, embedding there, she knew. Waiting to return.

“Tutsunacann,” she sighed aloud. Tymbrim-dialect sounded queer and nasal after weeks speaking solely Anglic.

The laughing man glyph, Tutsunacann, would not go away. Not until something altered, or some hidden idea became a resolve which, in turn, must become a jest.

And to a Tymbrimi, jokes were not always funny.

Athaclena sat still while rippling motions under her skin settled down — the unasked-for gheer activity dissipating gradually. You are not needed, she told the enzymes. There is no emergency. Go and leave me alone.

Ever since she had been little, the tiny change-nodes had been a part of her life — occasionally inconveniences, often indispensable. Only since coming to Garth had she begun to picture the little fluid organs as tiny, mouselike creatures, or busy little gnomes, which hurried abou’t making sudden alterations within her body whenever the need arose.

What a bizarre way of looking at a natural, organic function! Many of the animals of Tymbrim shared the ability. It had evolved in the forests of homeworld long before the starfaring Caltmour had arrived to give her ancestors speech and law.

That was it, of course… the reason why she had never likened the nodes to busy little creatures before coming to Garth. Prior to Uplift, her pre-sentient ancestors would have been incapable of making baroque comparisons. And after Uplift, they knew the scientific truth.

Ah, but humans… the Terran wolflings… had come into intelligence without guidance. They were not handed answers, as a child is given knowledge by its parents and teachers. They had emerged ignorant into awareness and spent long millennia groping in darkness.

Needing explanations and having none available, they got into the habit of inventing their own! Athaclena remembered when she had been amused… amused reading about some of them.

Disease was caused by “vapors,” or excess bile, or an enemy’s curse… The Sun rode across the sky in a great chariot… The course of history was determined by economics…

And inside the body, there resided animus…

Athaclena touched a throbbing knot behind her jaw and started as the small bulge seemed to skitter away, like some small, shy creature. It was a terrifying image, that metaphor, more frightening than tutsunacann, for it invaded her body — her very sense of self!

Athaclena moaned and buried her face in her hands. Crazy Earthlings! What have they done to me?

She recalled how her father had bid her to learn more about human ways, to overcome her odd misgivings about the denizens of Sol III. But what had happened? She had found her destiny entwined with theirs, and it was no longer within her power to control it.

“Father,” she spoke aloud in Galactic Seven. “I fear.”

All she had of him was memory. Even the nahakieri glimmer she had felt back at the burning Howletts Center was unavailable, perhaps gone. She could not go down to seek his roots with hers, for tutsunacann lurked there, like some subterranean beast, waiting to get her.

More metaphors, she realized. My thoughts are filling with them, while my own glyphs terrify me!

Movement in the hall outside made her look up. A narrow trapezoid of light spilled into the room as the curtain was drawn aside. The slightly bowlegged outline of a chim stood silhouetted against the dim glow.

“Excuse me, Mizz Athaclena, ser. I’m sorry to bother you during your rest period, but we thought you’d want to know.”

“Ye …” Athaclena swallowed, chasing more mice from her throat. She shivered and concentrated on Anglic. “Yes? What is it?”

The chim stepped forward, partly cutting off the light. “It’s Captain Oneagle, ser. I’m,. . . I’m afraid we can’t locate him anywhere.”

Athaclena blinked. “Robert?”

The chim nodded. “He’s gone, ser. He’s just plain disappeared!”

35 Robert

The forest animals stopped and listened, all senses aquiver. A growing rustle and rumble of footfalls made them nervous. Without exception they scuttled for cover and watched from hiding as a tall beast ran past them, leaping from boulder to log to soft forest loam.

They had begun to get used to the smaller two-legged variety, and to the much larger kind that chuffed and shambled along on three limbs as often as two. Those, at least, were hairy and smelled like animals. This one, though, was different. It ran but did not hunt. It was chased, yet it did not try to lose its pursuers. It was warm-blooded, yet when it rested it lay in the open noon sunshine, where only animals stricken with madness normally ventured.

The little native creatures did not connect the running thing with the kind that flew about in tangy-smelling metal and plastic, for that type had always made such noise, and reeked of those things.

This one, though… this one ran unclothed.

“Captain, stop!”

Robert hopped one rock farther up the tumbled boulder scree. He leaned against another to catch his breath and looked back down at his pursuer.

“Getting tired, Benjamin?”

The chim officer panted, stooping over with both hands on his knees. Farther downslope the rest of the search party lay strung out, some flat on their backs, barely able to move.

Robert smiled. They must have thought it would be easy to catch him. After all, chims were at home in a forest. And just one of them, even a female, would be strong enough to grab him and keep him immobile for the rest to bundle home.

But Robert had planned this. He had kept to open ground and played the chase to take advantage of his long stride.

“Captain Oneagle …” Benjamin tried again, catching his breath. He looked up and took a step forward. “Captain, please, you’re not well.”

“I feel fine,” Robert announced, lying just a little. Actually, his legs shivered with the beginnings of a cramp, his lungs burned, and his right arm itched all over from where he had chipped and peeled his cast away.

And then there were his bare feet…

“Parse it logically, Benjamin,” he said. “Demonstrate to me that I am ill, and just maybe I’ll accompany you back to those smelly caves.”

Benjamin blinked up at him. Then he shrugged, obviously willing to clutch at any straw. Robert had proven they could not run him down. Perhaps Jogic might work.

“Well, ser.” Benjamin licked his lips. “First off, there’s the fact that you aren’t wearing any clothes.”

Robert nodded. “Good, go for the direct. I’ll even posit, for now, that the simplest, most parsimonious explanation for my nudity is that I’ve gone bonkers. I reserve the right to offer an alternative theory, though.”

The chim shivered as he saw Robert’s smile. Robert could not help sympathizing with Benjamin. From the chim’s point of view this was a tragedy in progress, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

“Continue, please,’ Robert urged.

“Very well.” Benjamin sighed. “Second, you are running away from chims under your own command. A patron afraid of his own loyal clients cannot be in complete control of himself.”

Robert nodded. “Clients who would throw this patron into a straitjacket and dope him full of happy juice first chance they got? No good, Ben. If you accept my premise, that I have reasons for what I’m doing, then it only follows that I’d try to keep you guys from dragging me back.”

“Um …” Benjamin took a step closer. Robert casually retreated one boulder higher. “Your reason could be a false one,” Benjamin ventured. “A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior. The sick person actually believes—”

“Good point,” Robert agreed, cheerfully. “I’ll accept, for later discussion, the possibility that my ‘reasons’ are actually rationalizations by an unbalanced mind. Will you, in exchange, entertain the possibility that they might be valid?”

Benjamin’s lip curled back. “You’re violating orders being out here!”

Robert sighed. “Orders from an E.T, civilian to a Terragens officer? Chim Benjamin, you surprise me. I agree that Athaclena should organize the ad hoc resistance. She seems to have a flair for it, and most of the chims idolize her. But I choose to operate independently. You know I have the right.”

Benjamin’s frustration was evident. The chim seemed on the verge of tears. “But you’re in danger out here!”

At last. Robert had wondered how long Ben could maintain this game of logic while every fiber must be quivering over the safety of the last free human. Under similar circumstances, Robert doubted many men would have done better.

He was about to say something to that effect when Benjamin’s head jerked up suddenly. The chim put a hand to his ear, listening to a small receiver. A look of alarm spread across his face.

The other chims must have heard the same report, for they stumbled to their feet, staring up at Robert in growing panic.

“Captain Oneagle, Central reports acoustic signatures to the northeast. Gasbots!”

“Estimated time of arrival?”

“Four minutes! Please, captain, will you come now?”

“Come where?” Robert shrugged. “We can’t possibly make the caves in time.”

“We can hide you.” But from the tone of dread in his voice, Benjamin clearly knew it was useless.

Robert shook his head. “I’ve got a better idea. But it means we have to cut our little debate short. You must accept that I’m out here for a valid reason, Chim Benjamin. At once!”

— The chim stared at him, then nodded tentatively. “I — Idon’t have any choice.”

“Good,” Robert said. “Now take off your clothes.”

“S-serr…”

“Your clothes! And that sonic receiver of yours! Have everybody in your party strip. Remove everything! As you love your patrons, leave on nothing but skin and hair, then come join me up in those trees at the top of the scree!”

Robert did not wait for the blinking chim to acknowledge the strange command. He turned and took off upslope, favoring the foot most cut up by pebbles and twigs since his early morning foray had begun.

How much time remained? he wondered. Even if he was correct — and Robert knew he was taking a terrible gamble — he would still need to get as much altitude as possible.

He could not help scanning the sky for the expected robot bombers. The preoccupation caused him to stumble and fall to his knees as he reached the crest. He skinned them further crawling the last two meters to the shade under the nearest of the dwarf trees. According to his theory it wouldn’t matter much whether or not he concealed himself. Still, Robert sought heavy cover. The Gubru machines might have simple optical scanners to supplement their primary homing mechanism.

He heard shouting below, sounds of chims in fierce argument. Then, from somewhere to the north, there came a faint, whining sound.

Robert backed further into the bushes, though sharp twigs scratched his tender skin. His heart beat faster and his mouth was dry. If he was wrong, or if the chims decided to ignore his command…

If he had missed a single bet he would soon be on his way to internment at Port Helenia,’ or dead. In any event, he would have left Athaclena all alone, the sole patron remaining in the mountains, and spent the remaining minutes or years of his life cursing himself for a bloody fool.

Maybe Mother was right about me. Maybe I am nothing but a useless playboy. We’ll soon see.

There was a rattling sound — rocks sliding down the boulder scree. Five brown shapes tumbled into the foliage just as the approaching whine reached its crescendo. Dust rose from the dry soil as the chims turned quickly and stared, wide-eyed. An alien machine had come to the little valley.

From his hiding place Robert cleared his throat. The chims, obviously uncomfortable without their clothes, started in tense surprise. “You guys had better have thrown everything away, including your mikes, or I’m getting out of here now and leaving you behind.”

Benjamin snorted. “We’re stripped.” He nodded down into the valley. “Harry an’ Frank wouldn’t do it. I told ’em to climb the other slope and stay away from us.”

Robert nodded. With his companions he watched the gasbot begin its run. The others had witnessed this phenomenon, but he had not been in much shape to observe during the one opportunity he’d had before. Robert looked on with more than a passing interest.

It measured about fifty meters in length, teardrop-shaped, with scanners spinning slowly at the pointed, trailing end. The gasbot cruised the valley from their right to their left, disturbed foliage rustling beneath its throbbing gravities.

It seemed to be sniffing as it zigzagged up the canyon — and vanished momentarily behind a curve in the bordering hills.

The whine faded, but not for long. Soon the sound returned, and the machine reappeared shortly after. This time a dark, noxious cloud trailed behind, turbulent in its wake. The gasbot passed back down the narrow vale and laid its thickest layer of oily vapor where the chims had left their clothes and equipment.

“Coulda sworn those mini-corns couldn’t have been detected,” one of the naked chims muttered.

“We’ll have to go completely without electronics on the outside,” another added unhappily, watching as the device passed out of sight again. The valley bottom was already obscured.

Benjamin looked at Robert. They both knew it wasn’t over yet.

The high-pitched moan returned as the Gubru mechanism cruised back their way, this time at a higher altitude. Its scanners worked the hills on both sides.

The,machine stopped opposite them. The chims froze, as if staring into the eyes of a rather large tiger. The tableau held for a moment. Then the bomber began moving at right angles to its former path.

Away from them.

In moments the opposite hill was swathed in a cloud of black fog. From the other side they could hear coughing and loud imprecations as the chims who had climbed that way cursed this Gubru notion of better living through chemistry.

The robot began to spiral out and higher. Clearly the search pattern would soon bring it above the Earthlings on this side.

“Anybody got anything they didn’t declare at customs?” Robert asked, dryly.

Benjamin turned to one of the other neo-chimps. Snapping his fingers, he held out his hand. The younger chim glowered and opened his hand. Metal glittered.

Benjamin seized the little chain and medallion and stood up briefly to throw it. The links sparkled for just a moment, then disappeared into the murky haze downslope.

“That may not have been necessary,” Robert said. “We’ll have to experiment, lay out different objects at various sites and see which get bombed. …” He was talking as much for morale as for content. As much for his morale as for theirs. “I suspect it’s something simple, quite common, but imported to Garth, so its resonance will be a sure sign of Earthly presence.”

Benjamin and Robert shared a long look. No words were needed. Reason or rationalization. The next ten seconds would tell whether Robert was right or disastrously wrong.

It might be us it detects, Robert knew. Ifni. What if they can tune in on human DNA?

The robot cruised overhead. They covered their ears and blinked as the repulsor fields tickled their nerve endings. Robert felt a wave of déjà vu, as if this were something he and the others had done many times, through countless prior lives. Three of the chims buried their heads in their arms and whimpered.

Did the machine pause? Robert felt suddenly that it had, that it was about to …

Then it was past them, shaking the tops of trees ten meters away… twenty… forty. The search spiral widened and the gasbot’s whining engine sounds faded slowly with distance. The machine moved on, seeking other targets.

Robert met Benjamin’s eyes again and winked.

The chim snorted. Obviously he felt that Robert should not be smug over being right. That was, after all, only a patron’s job.

Style counted, too. And Benjamin clearly thought Robert might have chosen a more dignified way to make his point.

Robert would go home by a different route, avoiding any contact with the still-fresh coercion chemicals. The chims tarried long enough to gather their things and shake out the sooty black powder. They bundled up their gear but did not put the clothes back on.

It wasn’t only dislike of the alien stink. For the first time the items themselves were suspect. Tools and clothing, the very symbols of sentience, had become betrayers, things not to be trusted.

They walked home naked.

It took a while, afterward, for life to return to the little valley. The nervous creatures of Garth had never been harmed by the new, noxious fog that had lately come at intervals from a growling sky. But they did not like it any more than they liked the noisy two-legged beings.

Nervously, timorously, the native animals crept back to their feeding or hunting grounds.

Such caution was especially strong in the survivors of the Bururalli terror. Near the northern end of the valley the creatures stopped their return migration and listened, sniffing the air suspiciously.

Many backed out then. Something else had entered the area. Until it left, there would be no going home.

A dark form moved down the rocky slope, picking its way among the boulders where the sooty residue lay thickest. As twilight gathered it clambered boldly about the rocks, making no move to conceal itself, for nothing here could harm it. It paused briefly, casting about as if looking for something.

A small glint shone in the late afternoon sunshine. The creature shuffled over to the glittering thing, a small chain and pendant half hidden in the dusty rocks, and picked it up.

It sat looking at the lost keepsake for a time, sighing softly in contemplation. Then it dropped the shiny bauble where it had lain and moved on.

Only after it had shambled away at last did the creatures of the forest finish their homeward odyssey, scurrying for secret niches and hiding places. In minutes the disturbances were forgotten, dross from a used-up day.

Memory was a useless encumbrance, anyway. The animals had more important things to do than contemplate what had gone on an hour ago. Night was coming, and that was serious business. Hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, living and dying.

36 Fiben

“We’ve got to hurt them in ways that they can’t trace to us.

Gailet Jones sat cross-legged on the carpet, her back to the embers in the fireplace. She faced the ad hoc resistance committee and held up a single finger.

“The humans on Cilmar and the other islands are completely helpless to reprisals. So, for that matter, are all the urban chims here in town. So we have to begin carefully and concentrate on intelligence gathering before trying to really harm the enemy. If the Gubru come to realize they’re facing an organized resistance, there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

Fiben watched from the shadowed end of the room as one of the new cell leaders, a professor from the college, raised his hand. “But how could they threaten the hostages under the Galactic Codes of War? I think I remember reading somewhere that—”

One of the older chimmies interrupted. “Dr. Wald, we can’t count’ on the Galactic Codes. We just don’t know the subtleties involved and don’t have time to learn them!”

“We could look them up,” the elderly chen suggested weakly. “The city Library is open for business.”

“Yeah,” Gailet sniffed. “With a Gubru Librarian in charge now, I can just imagine asking one of them for a scan-dump on resistance warfare!”

“Well, supposedly…”

The discussion had been going on this way for quite a while. Fiben coughed behind his fist. Everyone looked up. It was the first time he had spoken since the long meeting began.

“The point is moot,” he said quietly. “Even if we knew the hostages would be safe. Gailet’s right for yet another reason.”

She darted a look at him, half suspicious and perhaps a little resentful of his support. She’s bright, he thought. But we’re going to have trouble, she and I.

He continued. “We have to make our first strikes seem less than they are because right now the invader is relaxed, unsuspecting, and completely contemptuous of us. It’s a condition we’ll find him in only once. We mustn’t squander that until the resistance is coordinated and ready.

“That means we keep things low key until we hear from the general.”

He smiled at Gailet and leaned against the wall. She frowned back, but said nothing. They had had their differences over placing the Port Helenia resistance under the command of a young alien. That had not changed.

She needed him though, for now. Fiben’s stunt at the Ape’s Grape had brought dozens of new recruits out of the woodwork, galvanizing a part of the community that had had its fill of heavy-handed Gubru propaganda.

“All right, then,” Gailet said. “Let’s start with something simple. Something you can tell your general about.” Their eyes met briefly. Fiben just smiled, and held her gaze while other voices rose.

“What if we were to…”

“How about if we blow up…”

“Maybe a general strike…”

Fiben listened to the surge of ideas — ways to sting and fool an ancient, experienced, arrogant, and vastly powerful Galactic race — and felt he knew exactly what Gailet was thinking, what she had to be thinking after that unnerving, revealing trip to Port Helenia College.

Are we really sapient beings, without our patrons? Do we dare try even our brightest schemes against powers we can barely perceive?

Fiben nodded in agreement with Gailet Jones. Yes, indeed. We had better keep it simple.

37 Galactics

It was all getting pretty expensive, but that was not the only thing bothering the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. All the new antispace fortifications, the perpetual assaults by coercion gas on any and every suspected or detected Earth-ling site — these were things insisted upon by the Suzerain of Beam and Talon, and this early in the occupation it was hard to refuse the military commander anything it thought needed.

But accounting was not the only job of the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. Its other task was protection of the Gubru race from the repercussions of error.

So many starfaring species had come into existence since the great chain of Uplift was begun by the Progenitors, three billion years ago. Many had flowered, risen to great heights, only to be brought crashing down by some stupid, avoidable mistake.

That was yet another reason for the way authority was divided among the Gubru. There was the aggressive spirit of the Talon Soldier, to dare and seek out opportunities for the Roost. There was the exacting taskmaster of Propriety, to make certain they adhered to the True Path. In addition, though, there must be Caution, the squawk of warning, forever warning, that daring can step too far, and propriety too rigid can also make roosts fall.

The Suzerain of Cost and Caution paced its office. Beyond the surrounding gardens lay th« small city the humans called Port Helenia. Throughout the building, Gubru and Kwackoo bureaucrats went over details, calculated odds, made plans.

Soon there would be another Command Conclave with its peers, the other Suzerains. The Suzerain of Cost and Caution knew there would be more demands made.

Talon would ask why most of the battle fleet was being called away. And it would have to be shown that the Gubru Nest Masters had need of the great battleships elsewhere, now that Garth appeared secure.

Propriety would complain again that this world’s Planetary Library was woefully inadequate and appeared to have been damaged, somehow, by the fleeing Earthling government. Or perhaps it had been sabotaged by the Tymbrimi trickster Uthacalthing? In any event, there would be urgent insistence that a larger branch be brought in, at horrible expense.

The Suzerain of Cost and Caution fluffed its down. This time it felt filled with confidence. It had let the other two have their way for a time, but things were peaceful now, well in hand.

The other two were younger, less experienced — brilliant, but far too* rash. It was time to begin showing them how things were going to be, how they must be, if a sane, sound policy was to emerge. This colloquy, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution assured itself, it would prevail!

The Suzerain brushed its beak and looked out onto the peaceful afternoon. These were lovely gardens, with pleasant open lawns and trees imported from dozens of worlds. The former owner of these structures was no longer here, but his taste could be sensed in the surroundings.

How sad it was that there were so few Gubru who understood or even cared about the esthetics of other races! There was a word for this appreciation of otherness. In Anglic it was called empathy. Some sophonts carried the business too far, of course. The Thennanin and the Tymbrimi, each in their own way, had made absurdities of themselves, ruining all clarity of their uniqueness. Still, there were factions among the Roost Masters who believed that a small dose of this other-appreciation might prove very useful in the years ahead.

More than useful, caution seemed now to demand it.

The Suzerain had made its plans. The clever schemes of its peers would unite under its leadership. The outlines of a new policy were already becoming clear.

Life was such a serious business, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution contemplated. And yet, every now and then, it actually seemed quite pleasant!

For a time it crooned to itself contentedly.

38 Fiben

“Everything’s all set.”

The tall chim wiped his hands on his coveralls. Max wore long sleeves to keep the grease out of his fur, but the measure hadn’t been entirely successful. He put aside his tool kit, squatted next to Fiben, and used a stick to draw a rude sketch in the sand.

“Here’s where th’ town-gas hydrogen pipes enter the embassy grounds, an’ here’s where they pass under the chancery. My partner an’ I have put in a splice over beyond those cottonwoods. When Dr. Jones gives the word, we’ll pour in fifty kilos of D-17. That ought to do the trick.”

Fiben nodded as the other chim brushed away the drawing. “Sounds excellent, Max.”

It was a good plan, simple and, more important, extremely difficult to trace, whether it succeeded or not. At least that’s what they all were counting on.

He wondered what Athaclena would think of this scheme. Like most chims, Fiben’s idea of Tymbrimi personality had come mostly out of vid dramas and speeches by the ambassador. From those impressions it seemed Earth’s chief allies certainly loved irony.

I hope so, he mused. She’ll need a sense of humor to appreciate what we’re about to do to the Tymbrimi Embassy.

He felt weird sitting out here in the open, not more than a hundred meters from the Embassy grounds, where the rolling hills of Sea Bluff Park overlooked the Sea of Cilmar. In oldtime war movies, men always seemed to set off on missions like this at night, with blackened faces.

But that was in the dark ages, before the days of high tech and infrared spotters. Activity after dark would only draw attention from the invaders. So the saboteurs moved about in daylight, disguising their activities amid the normal routine of park maintenance.

Max pulled a sandwich out of his capacious coveralls and took out large bites while they waited. The big chim was no less impressive here, seated cross-legged, than when they had met, that night at the Ape’s Grape. With his broad shoulders and pronounced canines, one might have thought he’d be a revert, a genetic reject. In truth, the Uplift Board cared less about such cosmetic features than the fellow’s calm, totally unflappable nature. He had already been granted one fatherhood, and another of his group wives was expecting his second child.

Max had been an employee of Gailet’s family ever since she was a little girl and had taken care of her after her return from schooling on Earth. His devotion to her was obvious.

Too few yellow-card chims like Max were members of the urban underground. Gailet’s insistence on recruiting almost solely blue and green cards had made Fiben uncomfortable. And yet he had seen her point. With it known that some chims were collaborating with the enemy, it would be best to start creating their network of cells out of those who had the most to lose under the Gubru. „

That still didn’t make the discrimination smell good to Fiben.

“Feelin” any better?”

“Hmm?” Fiben looked up.

“Your muscles.” Max gestured. “Feelin’ less sore now?”

Fiben had to grin. Max had apologized all too often, first fordoing nothing when the Probationers began harassing him back at the Ape’s Grape, and later shooting him with the stunner on Gailet’s orders. Of course both actions were understandable in retrospect. Neither he nor Gailet had known what to make of Fiben, at first, and had decided to err on the side of Caution. %

“Yeah, lots better. Just a twinge now and then. Thanks.”

“Mmm, good. Glad.” Max nodded, satisfied. Privately, Fiben noted that he had never heard Gailet express any regret over what he’d gone through.

Fiben tightened another bolt on the sand-lawn groomer he had been repairing. It was a real breakdown, of course, just in case a Gubru patrol stopped by. But luck had been with them so far. Anyway, most of the invaders seemed to be down at the south side of Aspinal Bay, supervising another of their mysterious construction projects.

He slipped a monocular out of his belt and focused on the Embassy. A low plastic fence topped with glittering wire surrounded the compound, punctuated at intervals by tiny whirling watch buoys. The little spinning disks looked decorative, but Fiben knew better. The protection devices made any direct assault by irregular forces impossible.

Inside the compound there were five buildings. The largest, the chancery, had come equipped with a full suite of modern radio, psi, and quantum wave antennae — an obvious reason why the Gubru moved in after the former tenants cleared out.

Before the invasion, the Embassy staff had been mostly hired humans and chims. The only Tymbrimi actually assigned to this tiny outpost were the ambassador, his assistant/pilot, and his daughter.

The invaders weren’t following that example. The place swarmed with avian forms. Only one small building — at the top of the far hill across from Fiben, overlooking the ocean — did not show a full complement of Gubru and Kwackoo constantly coming and going. That pyramidal, windowless structure looked more like a cairn than a house, and none of the aliens approached within two hundred meters of it.

Fiben remembered something the general had told him before he left the mountains.

“If you get an opportunity, Fiben, please inspect the Diplomatic Cache at the Embassy. If, by some chance, the Gubru have left the grounds intact, there might be a message from my father there.”

Athaclena’s ruff had flared momentarily.

“And if the Gubru have violated the Cache, I must know of that, too. It is information we can use.”

It looked unlikely he’d have had a chance to do as she asked, whether the aliens respected the Codes or not. The general would have to settle for a visual report from far away.

“What d’you see?” Max asked. He calmly munched his sandwich as if one started a guerrilla uprising every day.

“Just a minute.” Fiben increased magnification and wished he had a better glass. As far as he could tell, the cairn at the top of the hill looked unmolested. A tiny blue light winked from the top of the little structure. Had the Gubru put it there? he wondered.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think—”

His belt phone beeped — another bit of normal life that might end once fighting began. The commercial network was still in operation, though certainly monitored by Gubru language computers.

He picked up the phone. “That you, honey? I’ve been getting hungry. I hope you brought my lunch.”

There was a pause. When Gailet Jones spoke there was an edge in her voice. “Yes, dear.” She stuck to their agreed-upon code, but obviously did not relish it. “Pele’s marriage group is on holiday today, so I invited them to join us for a picnic.”

Fiben couldn’t help digging a little — just for verisimilitude, of course. “That’s fine, darling. Maybe you an’ I can find time to slip into the woods for some, y’know, ook ook.”

Before she could do more than gasp, he signed off. “See you in a little while, sweetie.” Putting down the phone, he saw Max looking at him, a wad of food in one cheek. Fiben raised an eyebrow and Max shrugged, as if to say, “None of my business.”

“I better go see that Dwayne ain’t screwed up,” Max said. He stood and dusted sand from his coveralls. “Scopes up, Fiben.”

“Filters up, Max.”

The big chim nodded and moved off down the hill, sauntering as if life were completely normal.

Fiben slapped the cover back on the engine and started the groomer. Its motor whistled with the soft whine of hydrogen catalysis. He hopped aboard and took off slowly down the hill.

The park was fairly crowded for a weekday afternoon. That was part of the plan, to get the birds used to chims behaving in unusual ways. Chims had been frequenting the area more and more during the last week.

That had been Athaclena’s idea. Fiben wasn’t sure he liked it, but oddly enough, it was one Tymbrimi suggestion Gailet had taken up wholeheartedly. An anthropologist’s gambit. Fiben sniffed.

He rode over to a copse of willows by a stream not far from the Embassy grounds, near the fence and the small, whirling watchers. He stopped the engine and got off. Walking to the edge of the stream, he took several long strides and leapt up onto the trunk of a tree. Fiben clambered to a convenient branch, where he could look out onto the compound. He took out a bag of peanuts and began to crack them one at a time.

The nearest watcher disk seemed to pause briefly. No doubt it had already scanned him with everything from X-rays to radar. Of course it found him unarmed and harmless. Every day for the last week a different chim had taken his lunch break here at about this time of day.

Fiben recalled the evening at the Ape’s Grape. Perhaps Athaclena and Gailet had a point, he thought. If the birds try to condition us, why can’t we turn the tables and do it to the birds?

His phone rang again.

“Yeah?”

“Uh, I’m afraid Donal’s suffering from a little flatulence. He may not be able to make it to the picnic.”

“Aw, too bad,” he muttered, and put the phone away. So far, so good. He cracked another peanut. The D-17 had been put into the pipes delivering hydrogen to the Embassy. It would still be several minutes before anything could be expected to happen.

It was a simple idea, even if he had his doubts. The sabotage was supposed to look like an accident, and it had to be timed so that Gailet’s unarmed contingent was in position. This raid was meant not so much to do harm as to create a disturbance. Both Gailet and Athaclena wanted information on Gubru emergency procedures.

Fiben was to be the general’s eyes and ears.

Over on the grounds he saw avians come and go from the chancery and other buildings. The little blue light atop the Diplomatic Cache winked against the bright sea clouds. A Gubru floater hummed overhead and began to settle toward the broad Embassy lawn. Fiben watched with interest, waiting for the excitement to begin.

D-17 was a powerful corrosive when left in contact with town-gas hydrogen for long. It would soon eat through the pipes. Then, when exposed to air, it would have yet another effect.

It would stink to high heaven.

He didn’t have long to wait.

Fiben smiled as the first squawks of consternation began to emanate from the chancery. Within moments the doors and windows burst forth with feathered explosions as aliens boiled out of the building, chirping in panic or disgust. Fiben wasn’t sure which and he didn’t really care. He was too busy laughing.

This part had been his idea. He broke a peanut and tossed it up to catch in his mouth. This was better than baseball!

Gubru scattered in all directions, leaping from upper balconies even without antigravity gear. Several writhed on broken limbs.

So much the better. Of course this wasn’t going to be much of an inconvenience to the enemy, and it could only be done once. The real purpose was to watch how the Gubru dealt with an emergency.

Sirens began to wail. Fiben glanced at his watch. A full two minutes had passed since the first signs of commotion. That meant the alarm was given manually. The vaunted Galactic defense computers weren’t omniscient then. They weren’t equipped to respond to a bad smell.

The watch buoys rose from the fence together, giving off a threatening whine, whirling faster than before. Fiben brushed peanut shells from his lap and sat up slowly, watching the deadly things warily. If they were programmed to extend the defense perimeter automatically, whatever the emergency, he could be in trouble.

But they merely spun, shining with increased vigilance. It took three more minutes, by Fiben’s watch, for a triple sonic boom to announce the arrival of fighter craft, sleek arrows resembling sparrow hawks, which streaked in to pass low over the now empty chancery building. The Gubru on the lawn seemed too nervous to take much cheer in their arrival. They leapt and squawked as sonic booms shook trees and feathers alike.

A Gubru official strutted about the grounds, chirping soothingly, calming its subordinates. Fiben didn’t dare lift his monocular with the protector-drones at such high alert, but he peered to try to get a better view of the avian in charge. Several features seemed odd about this Gubru. Its white plumage, for instance, looked more luminous, more lustrous than the others’. It also wore a band of black fabric around its throat.

A few minutes later a utility craft arrived and hovered until enough chattering avians had stepped aside to give it room to land. From the grounded floater a pair of invaders emerged wearing ornate, crested breathing masks. They bowed to the official, then strode up the steps and into the building.

Obviously the Gubru in charge realized that the stench from the corroded gas pipes posed no threat. All the noise and commotion was doing much more harm to his command of clerks and planners than the bad smell. No doubt he was upset because the work day was ruined.

More minutes passed. Fiben watched a convoy of ground vehicles arrive, sirens wailing, sending the agitated civil servants into a tizzy again. The senior Gubru flapped its arms until the racket finally cut off. Then the aristocrat waved a curt gesture at the supersonic fighters hovering overhead.

The warcraft swiveled about at once and departed as swiftly as they had come. Shock waves again rattled windows and sent the chancery staff shrieking.

“Excitable lot, aren’t they?” Fiben observed. No doubt Gubru soldiery were better conditioned for this sort of thing.

Fiben stood up on his branch and looked over toward other areas of the park. Elsewhere the fence was lined with chims, and more streamed in from the city. They kept a respectful distance back from the barrier guardians, but still they came, babbling to each other in excitement.

Here and there among them were Gailet Jones’s observers, timing and jotting down every alien response.

“Almost the first thing the Gubru will read about, when they study Library tapes on your species,” Athaclena had told him, “will be the so-called ‘monkey reflex’… the tendency of you anthropoids to scurry toward commotion, out of curiosity.

“Conservative species find it strange, and this tendency of humans and chims will seem particularly bizarre to avian beings, which tend to lack even a semblance of a sense of humor.”

She had smiled.

“We will get them used to this type of behavior, until they grow to expect those strange Earthling clients always running toward trouble… just to watch.

“They will learn not to fear you, but they should… speaking as one monkey to another.”

Fiben had known what she meant, that Tymbrimi were like humans and chims in this way. Her confidence had filled him, as well — until he saw her frown suddenly -and speak to herself, quickly and softly, apparently forgetting that he understood Galactic Seven.

“Monkeys… one monkey to another… Sumbaturalli! Must I constantly think in metaphors?”

It had perplexed Fiben. Fortunately, he did not have to understand Athaclena, only know that she could ask anything she wanted of him and he would jump.

After a while more maintenance workers arrived in ground vehicles, this time including a number of chims wearing uniforms of the City Gas Department. By the time they entered the chancery, the Gubru bureaucrats on the lawn had settled into the shade just outside, chirping irritably at the still potent stench.

Fiben didn’t blame them. The wind had shifted his way. His nose wrinkled in disgust.

Well, that’s that. We cost them an afternoon’s work, and maybe we learned something. Time to go home and assess the results.

He didn’t look forward to the meeting with Gailet Jones. For a pretty and bright chimmie, she had a tendency to get awfully officious. And she obviously bore some grudge against him — as if he had gunned her down with a stunner and carried her off in a sack!

Ah well. Tonight he would be off, back into the mountains with Tycho, carrying a report for the general. Fiben had been born a city boy, but he had come to prefer the kind of birds they had out in the country to the sort infesting town of late.

He turned around, grabbed the tree trunk with both arms, and started lowering himself. That was when, suddenly, something that felt like a big flat hand slammed hard against his back, knocking all the breath out of him.

Fiben clawed at the trunk. His head rang and tears filled his eyes. He managed just barely to keep his grip on the rough bark as branches whipped and leaves blew away in a sudden wave of palpable sound. He held on while the entire tree rocked, as if it were trying to buck him off!

His ears popped as the overpressure wave passed. The rip of rushing air dropped to a mere roar. The tree swayed in slowly diminishing arcs. Finally — still gripping the bark tightly — he gathered the nerve to turn around and look.

A towering column of smoke filled the center of the Embassy lawn where the chancery used to be. Flames licked at shattered walls, and streaks of soot showed where superheated gas had blasted in all directions.

Fiben blinked.

“Hot chicken in a biscuit!” he muttered, not ashamed at all of the first thing to come to mind. There was enough fried bird out there to feed half of Port Helenia. Some of the meat was pretty rare, of course. Some of it still moved.

His mouth was bone dry, but he smacked his lips nonetheless.

“Barbecue sauce,” he sighed. “All this, an’ not a truck-load of barbecue sauce to be seen.”

He clambered back onto the branch amid the torn leaves. Fiben checked his watch. It took almost a minute for sirens to begin wailing again. Another for the floater to take off, wavering as it fought the surging convection of superheated air from the fire.

He looked to see what the chims at the perimeter fence had done. Through the spreading cloud of smoke, Fiben saw that the crowd had not fled. If anything, it had grown. Chims boiled out of nearby buildings to watch. There were hoots and shrieks, a sea of excited brown eyes.

He grunted in satisfaction. That was fine, so long as nobody made any threatening moves.

Then he noticed something else. With an electric thrill he saw that the watch disks were down! All along the barrier fence, the guardian buoys had fallen to the ground.

“Bugger all!” he murmured. “The dumb clucks are saving money on smart robotics. The defense mechs were all remotes!”

When the chancery blew up — for whatever ungodly reason it had chosen to do so — it must have taken out the central controller with it! If somebody just had the presence of mind to grab up some of those buoys…

He saw Max, a hundred meters to his left, scurry over to one of the toppled disks and prod it with a stick.

Good man, Fiben thought, and then dropped it from his mind. He stood up and leaned against the tree trunk while tossing off his sandals. He flexed his legs, testing the support. Here goes nothiri, he sighed.

Fiben took off at full tilt, running along the narrow branch. At the last moment he rode the bucking tip like a springboard and leaped off into the air.

The fence was set back a way from the stream. One of Fiben’s toes brushed the wire at the top as he sailed over. He landed in an awkward rollout on the lawn beyond.

“Oof,” he complained. Fortunately, he hadn’t banged his still-tender ankle. But his ribs hurt, and as he panted sucked in a lungful of smoke from the spreading fire. Coughing, he pulled a handkerchief from his coveralls and wrapped it over his nose as he ran toward the devastation.

Dead invaders lay strewn across the once pristine lawn. He leapt over a sprawled, Kwackoo corpse — four-legged and soot-covered — and ducked through a roiling finger of smoke. He barely evaded collision with a living Gubru. The creature fled squawking.

The invader bureaucrats were completely disorganized, flapping and running about in total chaos. Their noise was overwhelming.

Slamming sonic booms announced the return of soldiery, overhead. Fiben suppressed a fit of coughing and blessed the smoke. No one overhead would spot him, and the Gubru down here were in no condition to notice much. He hopped over singed avians. The stench from the fire kept even his most atavistic appetites at bay.

In fact, he was afraid he might be sick.

It was touch and go as he ran past the burning chancery. The building was completely in flames. The hair on his right arm curled from the heat.

He burst upon a knot of avians huddling in the shadow of a neighboring structure. They had been gathered in a moaning cluster around one particular corpse, a remnant whose once-bright plumage was now stained and ruined. When Fiben appeared so suddenly the Gubru scattered, chirping in dismay.

Am I lost? There was smoke everywhere. He swiveled about, casting for a sign of the right direction.

There! Fiben spied a tiny blue glow through the black haze. He set off at a run, though his lungs already felt afire. The worst of the noise and heat fell behind him as he dashed through the small copse of trees lining the top of the bluff.

Misjudging the distance, he almost stumbled, sliding to a sudden halt before the Tymbrimi Diplomatic Cache. Panting, he bent over to catch his breath.

In a moment he realized that it was just as well he’d stopped when he had. Suddenly the blue globe at the cairn’s peak seemed less friendly. It pulsed at him, throbbing volubly.

So far Fiben had acted in a series of flash decisions. The explosion had been an unexpected opportunity. It had to be taken advantage of.

All right, here I am. Now what? The blue globe might be original Tymbrimi equipment, but it also might have been set there by the invader.

Behind him sirens wailed and floaters began arriving in a continuous, fluttering whine. Smoke swirled about him, whipped by the chaotic comings and goings of great machines. Fiben hoped Gailet’s observers on the roofs of the buildings nearby were taking all this down. If he knew his own people, most of them would be staring slack-jawed or capering in excitement. Still, they might learn a lot from this afternoon’s serendipity.

He took a step forward toward the cairn. The blue globe pulsed at him. He lifted his left foot.

A beam of bright blue light lanced out and struck the ground where he had been about to step.

Fiben leaped at least a meter into the air. He had hardly landed before the beam shot forth again, missing his right foot by millimeters. Smoke curled up from smoldering twigs, joining the heavier pall from the burning chancery.

Fiben tried to back away quickly, but the damned globe wouldn’t let him! A blue bolt sizzled the ground behind him and he had to hop to one side. Then he found himself being herded the other way!

Leap, zap! Hop, curse, zap again!

The beam was too accurate for this to be an accident. The globe wasn’t trying to kill him. Nor was it, apparently, interested in letting him go!

Between bolts Fiben frantically tried to think how to get out of this trap… this infernal practical joke…

He snapped his fingers, even as he jumped from another smoldering spot. Of course!

The Gubru hadn’t messed with the Tymbrimi Cache. The blue globe wasn’t acting like a tool of the avians. But it was exactly the sort of thing Uthacalthing would leave behind!

Fiben cursed as a particularly near miss left one toe slightly singed. Damn bloody Eatees! Even the good ones were almost more than anybody could bear! He gritted histeeth and forced himself to take a single step forward.

The blue beam sliced through a small stone near his instep, cutting it precisely in half. Every instinct in Fiben screamed for him to jump again, but he concentrated on leaving the foot in place and taking one more leisurely step.

Normally, one would think that a defensive device like this would be programmed to give warnings at long range and to start frying in earnest when something came nearer. By such logic what he was doing was stupid as hell.

The blue globe throbbed menacingly and cast forth its lightning. Smoke curled from a spot between the lingers and tumb of his left foot.

He lifted the right.

First a warning, then the real thing. That was the way an Earthling defense drone would work. But how would a Tymbrimi program his? Fiben wasn’t sure he should wager so much on a wild guess. A client-class sophont wasn’t supposed to analyze in the middle of fire and smoke, and especially not when he was being shot at!

Call it a hunch, he thought.

His right foot came down and its toes curled around an oak twig. The blue globe seemed to. consider his persistence, then the blue bolt lanced out again, this time a meter in front of him. A trail of sizzling humus walked toward him in a slow zigzag, the crackle of burning grass popping louder as it came closer and closer.

Fiben tried to swallow.

It’s not designed to kill! he told himself over and over. Why should it be? The Gubru could have blasted that globe at long range long ago.

No, its purpose had to be to serve as a gesture, a declaration of rights under the intricate rules of Galactic Protocol, more ancient and ornate than Japanese imperial court ritual.

And it was designed to tweak the beaks of Gubru.

Fiben held his ground. Another chain of sonic booms rattled the trees, and the heat from the conflagration behind him seemed to be intensifying. All the noise pressed hard against his self-control.

The Gubru are mighty warriors, he reminded himself. But they are excitable…

The blue beam edged closer. Fiben’s nostrils flared. The only way he could take his gaze away from the deadly sightwas by closing his eyes.

If I’m right then this is just another damned Tymbrimi…

He opened them. The beam was approaching his right foot from the side. His toes curled from a deep will to leap away. Fiben tasted bile as the searing knife of light tore through a pebble two inches away and proceeded on to …

To hit and cross his foot!

Fiben choked and suppressed an urge to howl. Something was wrong! His head spun as he watched the beam cross his foot and then commence leaving a narrow trail of smoky ruin directly under his spread-legged stance.

He stared in disbelief at his foot. He had bet the beam would stop short at the last instant. It hadn’t.

Still… there his foot was, unharmed.

The beam ignited a dry twig then moved on to climb up his left foot.

There was a faint tickling he knew to be psychosomatic. While touching him, the beam was only a spot of light.

An inch beyond his foot, the burning resumed.

His heart still pounding, Fiben looked up at the blue globe and cursed with a mouth too dry to speak.

“Very funny,” he whispered.

There must have been a small psi-caster in the cairn, for Fiben actually felt something like a smile spread in the air before him … a small, wry, alien smirk, as if the joke had really been a minor thing, after all, not even worth a chuckle.

“Real cute, Uthacalthing,” Fiben grimaced as he forced his shaking legs to obey him, carrying him on a wobbling path toward the cairn. “Real cute. I’d hate to see what gives you a belly laugh.” It was hard to believe Athaclena came from the same stock as the author of this little bit of whoopee cushion humor.

At the same time, though, Fiben wished he could have been present when the first Gubru approached the Diplomacy Cache to check it out.

The blue globe still pulsed, but it stopped sending forth pencil beams of irritation. Fiben walked close to the cairn and looked it over. He paced the perimeter. Halfway around, where the cliff overlooked the sea only twenty meters away, there was a hatch. Fiben blinked when he saw the array of locks, hasps, bolts, combination slots, and keyholes.

Well, he told himself, it is a cache for diplomatic secrets and such.

But all those locks meant that he had no chance of getting in and finding a message from Uthacalthing. Athaclena had given him a few possible code words to try, if he got the chance, but this was another story altogether!

By now the fire brigade had arrived. Through the smoke Fiben could see chims from the city watch stumbling over stick-figure aliens and stretching out hoses. It wouldn’t be long before someone imposed order on this chaos. If his mission here really was futile, he ought to be getting out while the getting was still easy. He could probably take the trail along the bluff, where it overlooked the Sea of Cilmar. That would skirt most of the enemy and bring him out near a bus route.

Fiben bent forward and looked at the hatchway again. Pfeh! There were easily two dozen locks on the armored door! A small ribbon of red silk would be as useful in keeping out an invader. Either the conventions were being respected or they weren’t! What the hell good were all these padlocks and things?

Fiben grunted, realizing. It was another Tymbrimi joke, of course. One the Gubru would fail to get, no matter how intelligent they were. There were times when personality counted for more than intelligence.

Maybe that means…

On a hunch, Fiben ran around to the other side of the cairn. His eyes were watering from the smoke, and he wiped his nose on his handkerchief as he searched the wall opposite the hatch.

“Stupid bloody guesswork,” he grumbled as he clambered among the smooth stones. “It’d take a Tymbrimi to think up a stunt like this … or a stupid, lame-brained, half-evolved chim client like m—”

A loose stone slipped slightly under his right hand. Fiben pried at the facing, wishing he had a Tymbrimi’s slender, supple fingers. He cursed as he tore a fingernail.

At last the stone came free. He blinked.

He had been right, there was a secret hiding place here in back. Only the damn hole was empty!

This time, Fiben couldn’t help himself. He shrieked in frustration. It was too much. The covering stone went sailing into the brush, and he stood there on the steep, sloping face of the cairn, cursing in the fine, expressive, indignant tones his ancestors had used before Uplift when inveighing against the parentage and personal habits of baboons.

The red rage only lasted a few moments, but when it cleared Fiben felt better. He was hoarse and raw, and his palms hurt from slapping the hard stone, but at least some of his frustration had been vented.

Clearly it was time to get out of here. Just beyond a thick wisp of drifting smoke, Fiben saw a large floater set down. A ramp descended and a troop of armored Gubru soldiery hurried onto the singed lawn, each accompanied by a pair of tiny, floating globes. Yep, time to scoot.

Fiben was about to climb down when he glanced one more time into the little niche in the Tymbrimi cairn. At that moment the diffusing smoke dispersed briefly under the stiffening breeze. Sunlight burst onto the cliffside.

A tiny flash of silvery light caught his eye. He reached into the niche and pulled on a slender thread, thin and delicate as gossamer, that had lined a crack at the back of the little crevice.

At that moment there came an amplified squawk. Fiben swiveled and saw a squad of Gubru Talon Soldiers coming his way. An officer fumbled with the vodor at its throat, dialing among the auto-translation options.

“…Cathtoo-psh’v’chim’ph…

“…Kah-koo-kee, k’keee! EeeEeEE! K… “…Hisss-s-ss pop crackle!…

“…Puna bliv’t mannennering…”

“…what you are doing there! Good clients do not play with what they cannot understand!”

Then the officer caught sight of the opened niche — and Fiben’s hand stuffing something into a coverall pocket.

“Stop! Show us what…”

Fiben did not wait for the soldier to finish the command. He scrambled up the cairn. The blue globe throbbed as he passed, and in his mind terror was briefly pushed aside by a powerful, dry laughter as he dove over the top and slid down the other side. Laser bolts sizzled over his head, chipping fragments from the stone structure as he landed on the ground with a thump Damn Tymbrimi sense of humor, was his only thought as he scrambled to his feet and dashed in the only possible direction, down the protective shadow of the cairn, straight toward the sheer cliff.

39 Gailet

Max dumped a load of disabled Gubru guard disks onto the rooftop near Gailet Jones. “We yanked out their receivers,” he reported. “Still, we’ll have to be damn careful with’em.”

Nearby, Professor Oakes clicked his stopwatch. The elderly chen grunted in satisfaction. “Their air cover has been withdrawn, again. Apparently they’ve decided it was an accident after all.”

Reports kept coming in. Gailet paced nervously, occasionally looking out over the roof parapet at the conflagration and confusion in Sea Bluff Park. We didn’t plan anything like this! she thought. It could be great luck. We’ve learned so much.

Or it could be a disaster. Hard to tell yet.

If only the enemy doesn’t trace it to us.

A young chen, no more than twelve years old, put down his binoculars and turned to Gailet. “Semaphore reports all but one of our forward observers has come back in, ma’am. No word from that one, though.”

“Who is it?” Gailet asked.

“Uh, it’s that militia officer from th’ mountains. Fiben Bolger, ma’am.”

“I might have guessed!” Gailet sighed.

Max looked up from his pile of alien booty, his face a grimace of dismay. “I saw him. When the fence failed, he jumped over it and went running toward the fire. Um, I suppose I should’ve gone along, to keep an eye on him.”

“You should have done no such thing, Max. You were exactly right. Of all the foolish stunts!” She sighed. “I might have known he would do something like this. If he gets captured, and gives us away …” She stopped. There was no point in worrying the others more than necessary.

Anyway, she thought a little guiltily, the arrogant chen might only have been killed.

She bit her lip, though, and went to the parapet to look out in the direction of the afternoon sun.

40 Fiben

Behind Fiben came the familiar zip zip of the blue globe firing again. The Gubru squawked less than he might have expected; these were soldiers, after all. Still, they made quite a racket and their attention was diverted. Whether the cache defender was acting to cover his retreat or merely harassing the invaders on general principles, Fiben couldn’t speculate. In moments he was too busy even to think about it.

One look over the edge was enough to make him gulp. The cliff wasn’t a glassy face, but neither was it the sort of route a picnicker would choose to get down to the shining sands below.

The Gubru were shooting back at the blue globe now, but that couldn’t last long. Fiben contemplated the steep dropoff. All told, he would much rather have lived a long, quiet life as country ecologist, donated his sperm samples when required, maybe joined a real fun group family, taken up scrabble.

“Argh!” he commented in man dialect, and stepped off over the grassy verge.

It was a four-handed job, for sure. Gripping a knob with the tingers and tumb of his left foot, he swung way out to grab a second handhold and managed to lower himself to another ledge. A short stretch came easily, then it seemed he needed the grasping power of every extremity. Thank Goodall Uplift had left his people with this ability. If he’d had feet like a human’s, he surely would have fallen by now!

Fiben was sweating, feeling around for a foothold that had to be there, when suddenly the cliff face seemed to lash out, batting away at him. An explosion sent tremors through the rock. Fiben’s face ground into the gritty surface as he clutched for dear life, his feet kicking and dangling in midair.

Of all the damn… He coughed and spat as a plume of dust floated down from the cliff edge. In peripheral vision he glimpsed bright bits of incandescent stone flying out through the sky, spinning down to hissing graves in the sea below.

The root-grubbing, cairn must’ve blown!

Then something whizzed by his head. He ducked but still caught a flash of blueness and heard, within his head, a chuckling of alien laughter. The hilarity reached a crescendo as something seemed to brush the back of his head, then faded as the blue light zipped off again, dropping to skip away southward, just above the waves.

Fiben wheezed and sought frantically for a foothold. At last he found purchase, and he was able to lower himself to the next fairly safe resting place. He wedged himself into a narrow cleft, out of sight from the clifftop. Only then did he spare the extra energy to curse.

Some day, Uthacalthing. Some day.

Fiben wiped dust from his eyes and looked down.

He had made it about halfway to the beach. If he ever reached the bottom safely it should be an easy walk to the closed amusement park at the northwestern corner of Aspinal Bay. From that point it ought to be simple to disappear into back alleys and side streets.

The next few minutes would tell. The survivors of the Gubru patrol might assume he had been killed in the explosion, blown out to sea along with debris from the cache. Or perhaps they’d figure he would have fled by some other route. After all, only an idiot would try to climb down a bluff like this one without equipment.

Fiben hoped he had it thought out right, because if they came down here looking for him his goose was as surely cooked as those birds in the chancery fire.

Just ahead the sun was settling toward the western horizon. Smoke from this afternoon’s conflagration had spread far enough to contribute brilliant umber and crimson hues to the gathering sunset. Out on the water he saw a few boats, here and there. Two cargo barges steamed slowly toward the distant islands — low, brown shapes barely visible on the decks — no doubt carrying food for the hostage human population.

Too bad some of the salts in the seawater on Garth were toxic to dolphins. If the third race of Terragens had been able to establish itself here, it would have been a lot harder for the enemy to isolate the inhabitants of the archipelago so effectively. Besides, ’fins had their own way of thinking. Perhaps they’d have come up with an idea or two Fiben’s people had missed.

The southern headlands blocked Fiben’s view of the port. But he could see traces of gleaming silver, Gubru warships or tenders involved in the construction of space defenses.

Well, Fiben thought, nobody’s come for me yet. No hurry, then. Catch your breath before trying the rest of the trip.

This had been the easy part.

Fiben reached into his pocket and pulled out the shimmering thread he had found in the niche. It might easily be a spider web, or something similarly insignificant. But it was the only thing he had to show for his little adventure. He didn’t know how he would tell Athaclena that his efforts had come only to this. Well, not only this. There was also the destruction of the Tymbrimi Diplomatic Cache. That’d be another thing to have to explain.

He took out his monocular and unscrewed the lens cover. Fiben carefully wrapped the thread into the cap and replaced it. He put the magnifier away.

Yeah, it was going to be a real nice sunset. Embers from the fire sparkled, swept into whirling plumes by Gubru ambulances screaming back and forth from the top of the bluffs. Fiben considered reaching into a pocket for the rest of the peanuts while he watched, but right now his thirst was worse than his hunger. Most modern chims ate too much protein, anyway.

Life’s rough, he thought, trying to find a comfortable position in the narrow notch. But then, it’s never been easy for client-class beings, has it?

There you are, minding your own business in some rain forest, perfectly adequate in your ecological niche, then bam\ Some authoritarian guy with delusions of godhood is sitting on your chest, forcing the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge down your throat. From then on you’re inadequate, because you’re being measured against the “higher” standard of your patron; no freedom; you can’t even breed as you please, and you’ve got all those “responsibilities” — Who ever heard of responsibilities back in the jungle? — responsibilities to your patrons, to your descendants. …

Rough deal. But in the Five Galaxies there’s only one alternative, extermination. Witness the former tenants of Garth.

Fiben licked the sweat salt from his lips and knew that it was nervous reaction that had brought on the momentary wave of bitterness. There was no point to recriminations anyway. If he were a race representative — one of those few chims deputized to speak for all neo-chimpanzees before the Terragens and the great Galactic Institutes — the issues might be worth contemplating. As it was, Fiben realized he was just procrastinating.

I guess they forgot about me, after all, he thought, wondering at his luck.

Sunset reached its peak in a glory of color and texture, casting rich red and orange streamers across Garth’s shallow sea.

Hell, after a day like this, what was climbing down a steep cliff in the dark? Anticlimax, that was all.

“Where the devil have you been!” Gailet Jones faced Fiben when he slumped through the door. She approached glowering.

“Aw, teach.” He sighed. “Don’t scold me. I’ve had a rough day.” He pushed past her and shuffled through the house library, strewn with charts and papers. He stepped right across a large chart laid on the floor, oblivious as two of Gailet’s observers shouted indignantly. They ducked aside as he passed straight over them.

“We finished debriefing hours ago!” Gailet said as she followed him. “Max managed to steal quite a few of their watch disks …”

“I know. I saw,” he muttered as he stumbled into the tiny room he had been assigned. He began undressing right there. “Do you have anything to eat?” he asked.

“Eat?” Gailet sounded incredulous. “We have to get your input to fill in gaps on our Gubru operations chart. That explosion was a windfall, and we weren’t prepared with enough observers. Half of the ones we had just stood and stared when the excitement started.”

With a “clomp” Fiben’s coveralls fell to the floor. He stepped out of them. “Food can wait,” he mumbled. “I need a drink.”

Gailet Jones blushed and half turned away. “You might have the courtesy not to scratch,” she said.

Fiben turned from pouring himself a stiff shot of ping-orange brandy and looked at her curiously. Was this actually the same chimmie who had accosted him with “pink” a fortnight or so ago? He slapped his chest and waved away plumes of dust. Gailet looked disgusted.

“I was lookin’ forward to a bath, but now I think I’ll skip it,” he said. “Too sleepy now. Gotta rest. Coin’ home, tomorrow.”

Gailet blinked. “To the mountains?”

Fiben nodded. “Got to pick up Tycho and head back to report to th’ gen’ral.” He smiled tiredly. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell her you’re doin’ a good job here. Fine job.”

The chimmie sniffed disgustedly. “You’ve spent the afternoon and evening rolling in dirt and getting soused! Some militia officer! And I thought you were supposed to be a scientist!

“Well, next time your precious general wants to communicate with our movement here in town, you make sure she sends somebody else, do you hear me?”

She swiveled and slammed the door behind her.

What’d I say? Fiben stared after her. Dimly he knew he could have done better somehow. But he was so tired. His body ached, from his singed toes to his burning lungs. He hardly felt the bed as he collapsed into it.

In his dreams a blueness spun and pulsed. From it there emanated a faint something that could be likened to a distant smile.

Amusing, it seemed to say. Amusing, but not all that much of a laugh.

More an appetizer for things to come.

In his sleep Fiben moaned softly. Then another image came to him, of a small neo-chimpanzee, an obvious throw-back, with bony eyeridges and long arms which rested on a keyboard display strapped to its chest. The atavistic chim could not speak, but when it grinned, Fiben shivered.

Then a more restful phase of sleep set in, and at last he went on in relief to other dreams.

41 Galactics

The Suzerain of Propriety could not set foot on unsanc-tioned ground. Because of this it rode perched upon a gilded staff of reckoning, guided by a convoy of fluttering Kwackoo attendants. Their incessant cooing murmur was more soothing than the grave chirps of their Gubru patrons. Although the Uplift of the Kwackoo had brought them far toward the Gubru way of viewing the world, they nevertheless remained less solemn, less dignified by nature.

The Suzerain of Propriety tried to make allowances for such differences as the clucking swarm of fuzzy, rotund clients carried the antigravity perch from the site where the body had lain. It might be inelegant, but already they could be heard gossiping in low tones over who would be chosen as replacement. Who would become the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution?

It would have to be done soon. Messages had already been sent to the Roost Masters on the homeworld, but if need be a senior bureaucrat would be elevated on the spot. Continuity must be preserved.

Far from being offended, the Suzerain of Propriety found the Kwackoo calming. It needed their simple songs for the distraction they offered. The days and weeks to come would be stressful. Formal mourning was only one of the many tasks ahead. Somehow, momentum toward a new policy must be restored. And, of course, one had to consider the effects this tragedy would have on the Molt.

The investigators awaited the arrival of the perch amid a copse of toppled trees near the still smoldering chancery walls. When the Suzerain nodded for them to begin, they proceeded into a dance of presentment — part gesticulation and part audiovisual display — describing what they had determined about the cause of the explosion and fire. As the investigators chirped their findings in syncopated, a cappella song, the Suzerain made an effort to concentrate. This was a delicate matter, after all.

By the codes the Gubru might occupy an enemy embassy, yet they could still be held responsible for any damage done to it if the fault was theirs.

Yes, yes, it occurred, did occur, the investigators reported. The building is — has been made — a gutted ruin.

No, no, no purposeful activity has been traced, is believed to have caused these happenings, No sign that this event path was pre-chosen by our enemies and imposed without our will.

Even if the Tymbrimi Ambassador sabotaged his own buildings, what of it? If we are not the cause, we need not pay, need not reimburse!

The Suzerain chirped a brief chastisement. It was not up to the investigators to determine propriety, only evaluations of fact. And anyway, matters of expense were the domain of the officers of the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution, after they recovered from the catastrophe their bureaucracy had suffered here.

The investigators danced regretful apologies.

The Suzerain’s thoughts kept hovering in numb wonderment about what the consequences would be. This otherwise minor event had toppled the delicate balance of the Triumvirate just before another Command Conclave, and there would be repercussions even after a new third Suzerain was appointed.

In the short term, this would help both survivors. Beam and Talon would be free to pursue what few humans remained at large, whatever the cost. And Propriety could engage in research without constant carpings about how expensive it all would be.

And then there was the competition for primacy to consider. In recent days it had begun to grow clear just how impressive the old Suzerain of Cost and Caution had been. More and more, against all expectation, it had been the one organizing their debates, drawing their best ideas forth, pushing compromises, leading them toward consensus.

The Suzerain of Propriety was ambitious. The priest had not liked the direction things were heading. Nor was it pleasant seeing its cleverest plans tinkered with, modified, altered to suit a bureaucrat. Especially one with bizarre ideas about empathy with aliens!

No, this was not the worst thing to have happened. Not at all. A new Threesome would be much more acceptable. More workable. And in the new balance the replacement would start at a disadvantage.

Then why, for what reason, for what cause am I afraid? the high priest wondered.

Shivering, the Suzerain of Propriety fluffed its plumage and concentrated, bring its thoughts back to the present, to the investigators’ report. They seemed to be implying that the explosion and fire had fallen into that broad category of events that the Earthlings might call accidents.

At its erstwhile colleague’s urging, the Suzerain had of late been trying to learn Anglic, the wolflings’ strange, non-Galactic language. It was a difficult, frustrating effort, and of questionable utility when language computers were facile enough.

Yet the chief bureaucrat had insisted, and surprisingly the priest discovered there were things to be learned from even so beastly a collection of grunts and moans, things such as the hidden meanings underlying that term, accident.

The word obviously applied to what the investigators said had happened here, a number of unpredicated factors combined with considerable incompetence in the City Gas Department after the human supervisors had been removed. And yet the way Earthlings defined “accident” was wrong by definition! In Anglic the term actually had no precise meaning!

Even the humans had a truism, “There are no accidents.”

If so, why have a word for a nonexistent thing?

Accident … it served to cover anything from unper-ceived causality, to true randomness, to a full level seven probability storm! In every case the “results” were “accidental.”

How could a species be spacefaring, be classified at the high level of a patron of a clan with such a murky, undefined, context-dependent way of looking at the universe? Compared with these Earthlings, even the devil trickster Tymbrimi were transparent and clear as the very ether!

This sort of uncomfortable line of thought was the sort of thing the priest had most hated about the bureaucrat! It was one of the dead Suzerain’s most irritating attributes.

It was also one of the things most beloved and valuable. It would be missed.

Such were the confusions when a consensus was broken, when a mating was shattered, half begun.

Firmly, the Suzerain chirped a word-chain of definition. Introspection was taxing, and a decision had to made about what had happened here.

Under some potential futures the Gubru might have to pay damages to the Tymbrimi — and even to the Earthlings — for the destruction that occurred on this plateau. It was unpalatable to consider, and might be prevented altogether when the Gubru grand design was fulfilled.

Events elsewhere in the Five Galaxies would determine that. This planet was a minor, if important, nut to shell with a quick, efficient bill thrust. Anyway, it was the job of the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution to see that expenses were kept down.

To see that the Gubru Alliance — the true inheritors of the Ancient Ones — were not found failing in propriety when the Progenitors returned, that was the priest’s own task.

May the winds bring that day, it prayed.

“Judgment deferred, delayed, put off for now,” the Suzerain declared aloud. And the investigators at once closed their folders.

The business of the chancery fire being finished, the next stop would be the top of the hill, where there was yet another matter to be evaluated.

The cooing crowd of Kwackoo huddled close and moved as a mass, carrying the Perch of Reckoning with them, a flat ball of puffy clients surging placidly through a feathery crowd of their hopping, excitable patrons.

The Diplomatic Cache still smoked on top from the events of the day before. The Suzerain listened carefully as the investigators reported, sometimes one at a time, occasionally joining together to chirp in unison and then counterpoint. Out of the cacophony the Suzerain gathered a picture of the events that had led to this scene.

A local neo-chimpanzee had been found poking around the cache without first seeking formal passage by the occupying power, a clear violation of wartime protocol. Nobody knew why the silly half-animal had been present. Perhaps it was driven by the “monkey complex” — that irritating, incomprehensible need that drove Earthlings to seek out excitement instead of prudently avoiding it.

An armed detachment had come upon the curious neochimp while routinely moving to secure the disaster area. The commander had urgently spoken to the furry client-of-humans, insisting that the Earthling creature desist at once, and show proper obeisance.

Typical of the upspring of humans, the neo-chimp had been obdurate. Instead of behaving in a civilized manner it had run away. In the process of trying to stop it, some defense device of the cairn was set off. The cairn was damaged in the subsequent shooting.

This time the Suzerain decided that the outcome was most satisfactory. Subclient or no, the chimpanzee was officially an ally of the cursed Tymbrimi. By acting so, it had destroyed the immunity of the cache! The soldiers were within their rights to open fire upon either the chimp or the defender globe without restraint. There had been no violation of propriety, the Suzerain ruled.

The investigators danced a dance of relief. Of course, the more closely ancient procedures were adhered to, the more brilliant would be the plumage of the Gubru when the Progenitors returned.

May the winds hurry the day.

“Open, enter, proceed into the cache,” the priest commanded. “Enter and investigate the secrets within!”

Certainly the cache fail-safes would have destroyed most of the contents. Still, there might be some information of value left to be deciphered.

The simpler locks came off quickly, and special devices were brought to remove the massive door. This all took some time. The priest kept occupied holding a service for a company of Talon Soldiers, preaching to reinforce their faith in the ancient values. It was important not to let them lose their keen edge with things so peaceful, so the Suzerain reminded them that in the last two days several small parties of warriors had gone missing in the mountains southeast of this very town. Now would be a useful time for them to remember that their lives belonged to the Nest. The Nest and Honor — nothing else mattered.

At last the final puzzle bolt was solved. For famous tricksters the Tymbrimi did not seem so clever. Their wards were easy enough for Gubru lockpick robots to solve. The door lifted off in the arms of a carrier drone. Holding instruments before them, the investigators cautiously entered the cairn.

Moments later, with a chirp-chain of surprise, a feathered form burst forth holding a black crystalline object in its beak. This one was followed almost immediately by another. The investigators’ feet were a blur of dancing excitement as they laid the objects on the ground before the Suzerain’s floating perch.

Intact! they danced. Two data-stores were found intact, shielded from the self-destruct explosions by a premature rockfall!

Glee spread among the investigators and from there to the soldiers and the civilians waiting beyond. Even the Kwackoo crooned happily, for they, too, could see that this counted as a coup of at least the fourth order. An Earthling client had destroyed the immunity of the cache through obviously irreverent behavior — the mark of flawed Uplift. And the result had been fully sanctioned access to enemy secrets!

The Tymbrimi and humans would be shamed, and the clan of Gooksyu-Gubru would learn much!

The celebration was Gubru-frenetic. But the Suzerain itself danced only for a few seconds. In a race of worriers, it had a role of redoubled concern. There were too many things about the universe that were suspect. Too many things that would be much better dead, lest they by some chance someday threaten the Nest.

The Suzerain tilted its head first one way then another. It looked down at the data cubes, black and shiny on the scorched loam. A strange juxtaposition seemed to overlie the salvaged record crystals, a feeling that almost, but not quite, translated into a brooding sense of dread.

It was not a recognizable psi-sense, nor any other form of scientific premonition. If it had been, the Suzerain would have ordered the cubes converted to dust then and there.

And yet … It was very strange.

For only a brief moment, it shuddered under the illusion that the faceted crystals were eyes, the shining, space-black eyes of a large and very dangerous snake.

42 Robert

He ran holding in one hand a new wooden bow. A simple, homespun quiver containing twenty new arrows bounced gently against his back as he puffed up the forest trail. His straw hat had been woven from river rushes. His loincloth and the moccasins on his feet were made of native suede.

The young man favored his left leg slightly as he ran. The bandage on that thigh covered only a superficial wound. Even the pain from the burn was a pleasure of sorts, reminding him how much preferable a near miss was over the alternative.

Image of a tall bird, staring unbelievingly at the arrow that had split its breastbone, its laser rifle tumbling to the forest loam, released by death-numbed talons.

The ridge was quiet. Almost the only sound was his steady breathing and the soft rasp of moccasins against the pebbles. Prickles of perspiration dried quickly as the breeze laid tracks of goose bumps up his arms and legs.

The touch of wind freshened as he climbed. The slope of the trail tapered, and Robert at last found himself above the trees, among the towering hill-spines of the ridge crest.

The sudden warmth of the sun was welcome now that he had darkened nearly to the shade of a foon-nut tree. His skin had also toughened, making thorns and nettles less bothersome.

I’m probably starting to look like an oldtime Indian, he thought with some amusement. He leapt over a fallen log and slipped down along a lefthand fork in the trail.

As a child he had made much of his family name. Little Robert Oneagle had never had to take turns as a bad guy when the kids played Confederation Uprising. He always got to be a Cherokee or Mohawk warrior, whooping it up in make-believe spacesuit and warpaint, zapping the dictator’s soldiers during the Power Satellite War.

When this is all over I’ve got to find out more about the family gene-history, Robert thought. I wonder how much of it really is Amerindian stock.

White, fluffy stratus clouds slid along a pressure ridge to the north, appearing to keep pace with him as he jogged along the ridgetops, across the long hills leading toward home.

Toward home.

The phrase came easily now that he had a job to do out under the trees and open sky. Now he could think of those catachtonian caves as home. For they did represent sanctuary in uncertain times.

And Athaclena was there.

He had been away longer than expected. The trip had taken him high into the’ mountains as far away as Spring Valley, recruiting volunteers, establishing communications, and generally spreading the word.

And of course, he and his fellow partisans had also had a couple of skirmishes with the enemy. Robert knew they had been little things — a small Gubru patrol trapped here and there — and annihilated to the last alien. The Resistance only struck where total victory seemed likely. There could be no survivors to tell the Gubru high command that Earthlings had learned to become invisible.

However minor, the victories had done wonders for morale. Still, while they might make things a bit warm for the Gubru up in the mountains, but what was the use if the enemy stayed out of reach?

Most of his trip had been taken up doing things hardly related to the Resistance. Everywhere Robert had gone he found himself surrounded by chims who whooped and chattered at the sight of him — the sole remaining free human. To his frustration they seemed perfectly happy to make him unofficial judge, arbitrator, and godfather to newborn babies. Never before had he felt so heavily the burdens that Uplift demanded of the patron race.

Not that he blamed the chims, of course. Robert doubted that in their species’ brief history so many chims had ever been cut off from humans for so long.

Wherever he went, it became known that the last human in the mountains would not visit any pre-invasion building or, indeed, even see anyone wearing any clothing or artifact of non-Garth origin. As word spread how the alien gasbots found their targets, chims were soon moving whole communities. Cottage industries sprang up, resurrecting the lost arts of spinning and weaving, of tanning and cobbling.

Actually, the chims in the mountains were doing rather well. Food was plentiful and the young still attended school. Here and there a few responsible types had even begun to reorganize the Garth Ecological Reclamation Project, keeping the most urgent programs going, improvising to replace the lost human experts.

Perhaps they don’t really need us, he remembered thinking.

His own kind had come within a hair’s breadth of turning Earth-homeworld into an ecological Chelmno, in the years just before humanity awakened into sanity. A horrible calamity was averted by the narrowest of margins. Knowing that, it was humbling to see so many so-called clients behaving more rationally than men had only a century before Contact.

Do we really have any right to play god with these people? Maybe when this blows over we should just go away and let them work out their future for themselves.

A romantic idea. There was a rub, of course.

The Galactics would never let us.

So he let them crowd around him, ask his advice, name their babies after him. Then, when he had done all he could for the time being, he took off down the trail for home. Alone, since by now no chim could keep up with his pace.

The solitude of the last day or so had been welcome. It gave him time to think. He had begun learning a lot about himself these last few weeks and months, ever since that horrible afternoon when his mind had crumpled under pounding fists of agony and Athaclena had come into his mind to rescue him. Oddly, it had not turned out to be the beasts and monsters of his neuroses that mattered most. Those were easily dealt with once he faced them and knew them for what they were. Anyway, they were probably no worse than any other person’s burdens of unresolved business from the past.

No, what had been more important was coming to grips with what he was as a man. That was an exploration he had only just begun, but Robert liked the direction the journey seemed to be heading.

He jogged around a bend in the mountain trail and came out of the hill’s shadow with the sun on his back. Ahead, to the south, lay the craggy limestone formations concealing the Valley of Caves.

Robert stopped as a metallic glint caught his eye. Something sparkled over the prominences beyond the valley, perhaps ten miles away.

Gasbots, he thought. Over in that area Benjamin’s techs had begun laying out samples of everything from electronics to metals to clothing, in an effort to discover what it was the Gubru robots homed in on. Robert hoped they had made some progress while he was away.

And yet, in another sense he hardly cared anymore. The new longbow felt good in his hand. The chims in the mountains preferred powerful homemade crossbows and arbalests, requiring less coordination but greater simian strength to crank. The effect had been the same with all three weapons… dead birds. The use of ancient skills and archaic tools had turned into a galvanizing theme, resonating with the mythos of the Wolfling Clan.

There were disturbing consequences as well. Once, after, a successful ambush, he had noticed some of the local mountain chens drifting away from camp. He slipped into the shadows and followed them to what appeared to be a secret cook fire, in a side canyon.

Earlier, while they had stripped the vanquished Gubru of their weapons and carried off the bodies, he had noticed some of the chims glancing back at him furtively, perhaps guiltily. That night he watched from a dark hillside as long-armed silhouettes danced in the firelight under the windblown stars. Something roasted on a spit over the flames, and the wind carried a sweet, smoky aroma.

Robert had had a feeling there were a few things the chims did not want seen by their patrons. He faded back into the shadows and returned to the main camp, leaving them to their ritual.

The images still flickered in his mind like feral, savage fantasies. Robert never asked what had been done with the bodies of the dead Galactics, but since then he could not think of the enemy without remembering that aroma.

If only there were a way to get more of them to come into the mountains, he pondered. Only under the trees did it seem possible to hurt the invaders.

The afternoon was aging. Time to finish the long jog home. Robert turned and was about to start down into the valley when he stopped suddenly. He blinked. There was a blur in the air. Something seemed to flutter at the edge of his vision, as if a tricky moth were dancing just within his blind spot. It didn’t seem to be possible to look at the thing.

Oh, Robert thought.

He gave up trying to focus on it and looked away, letting the odd non-thing chase him instead. Its touch laid open the petals of his mind like a flower unfolding in the sun. The fluttering entity danced timidly and winked at him … a simple glyph of affection and mild amusement. . . easy enough for even a thick-thewed, hairy-armed, road-smelly, pinkish-brown human to understand.

“Very funny, Clennie.” Robert shook his head. But the flower opened still wider and he kenned warmth. Without having to be told, he knew which way to go. He turned off the main trail and leapt up a narrow game path.

Halfway to the ridgetop he came upon a brown figure lounging in the shade of a thornbush. The chen looked up from a paperpage book and waved lazily.

“Hi, Robert. You’re lookin’ a lot better’n when.I saw you last.”

“Fiben!” Robert grinned. “When did you get back?”

The chim suppressed a tired yawn. “Oh, ’bout an hour ago. The boys down in th’ caves sent me right up here to see her nibs. I picked up somethin’ for her in town. Sorry. Didn’t get anythin’ for you, though.”

“Did you get into any trouble in Port Helenia?”

“Hmmm, well, some. A little dancin’, a little scratchin’, a little hootin’.”

Robert smiled. Fiben’s “accent” was always thickest when he had big news to downplay, the better to draw out the story. If allowed to get away with it, he would surely keep them up all night.

“Uh, Fiben …”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s up there.” The chim gestured toward the top of the ridge. “And in a right fey mood, if you ask me. But don’t ask me, I’m just a chimpanzee. I’ll see you later, Robert.” He picked up his book again, not exactly the model of a reverent client. Robert grinned.

“Thanks, Fiben. I’ll see ya.” He hurried up the trail.

Athaclena did not bother to turn around as he approached, for they had already said hello. She stood at the hilltop looking westward, her face to the sun, holding her hands outstretched before her.

Robert at once sensed that another glyph floated over Athaclena now, supported by the waving tendrils of her corona. And it was an impressive thing. Comparing her little greeting, earlier, to this one would be like standing a dirty limerick next to “Xanadu.” He could not see it, neither could he even begin to kenn its complexity, but it was there, nearly palpable to his heightened empathy sense.

Robert also realized that she held something between her hands… like a slender thread of invisible fire — intuited more than seen — that arched across the gap from one hand to the other.

“Athaclena, what is—”

He stopped then, as he came around and saw her face.

Her features had changed. Most of the humaniform contours she had shaped during the weeks of their exile were still in place; but something they had displaced had returned, if only momentarily. There was an alien glitter in her gold-flecked eyes, and it seemed to dance in counterpoint to the throbbing of the half-seen glyph.

Robert’s senses had grown. He looked again at the thread in her hands and felt a thrill of recognition.

“Your father… ?”

Athaclena’s teeth flashed white. “W’ith-tanna Uthacalthing bellinarri-t’hoo, haoon’nda!…”

She breathed deeply through wide-open nostrils. Her eyes — set as wide apart as possible — seemed to flash.

“Robert, he lives!”

He blinked, his mind overflowing with questions. “That’s great! But… but where! Do you know anything about my mother? The government? What does he say?”

She did not reply at once. Athaclena held up the thread. Sunlight seemed to run up and down its taut length. Robert might have sworn that he heard sound, real sound, emitting from the thrumming fiber.

“W’ith-tanna Uthacalthing!” Athaclena seemed to look straight into the sun.

She laughed, no longer quite the sober girl he had known. She chortled, Tymbrimi fashion, and Robert was very glad that he was not the object of that hilarity. Tymbrimi humor quite often meant that someone else, sometime soon, would definitely not be amused.

He followed her gaze out over the Vale of Sind, where a flight of the ubiquitous Gubru transports moaned faintly as they cruised across the sky. Unable to trace more than the outlines of her glyph, Robert’s mind searched for and found something akin to it in the human fashion. In his mind he pictured a metaphor.

Suddenly, Athaclena’s smile was something feral, almost catlike. And those warships, reflected in her eyes, seemed to take on the aspect of complacent, rather unsuspecting mice.