DAVID BRIN holds a doctorate in astrophysics, has worked as a consultant to NASA, and teaches graduate-level physics and writing. He is the author of five previous novels, including Startide Rising, which won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and The Postman, which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. A native of Southern California, he currently lives in London, England.
Prelude
How strange, that such an insignificant little world should come to matter so much.
Traffic roared amid the towers of Capital City, just beyond the sealed crystal dome of the official palanquin. But no sound penetrated to disturb the bureaucrat of Cost and Caution, who concentrated only on the holo-image of a small planet, turning slowly within reach of one down-covered arm. Blue seas and a jewel-bright spray of islands came into view as the bureaucrat watched, sparkling in the reflected glow of an out-of-view star.
If I were one of the gods spoken of in wolfling legends . . . the bureaucrat imagined. Its pinions flexed. There was the feeling one had only to reach out with a talon and seize . . .
But no. The absurd idea demonstrated that the bureaucrat had spent too much time studying the enemy. Crazy Terran concepts were infecting its mind.
Two downy aides fluttered quietly nearby, preening the bureaucrat’s feathers and bright tore for the appointment ahead. They were ignored. Aircars and floater barges darted aside and regimented lanes of traffic melted away before the bright beacon of the official vehicle. This was status normally accorded only royalty, but within the palanquin all went on unnoticed as the bureaucrat’s heavy beak lowered toward the holo-image.
Garth. So many times the victim.
The outlines of brown continents and shallow blue seas lay partly smeared under pinwheel stormclouds, as deceptively white and soft to the eye as a Gubru’s plumage. Along just one chain of islands—and at a single point at the edge of the largest continent—shone the lights of a few small cities. Everywhere else the world appeared untouched, perturbed only by occasional flickering strokes of stormbrewed lightning.
Strings of code symbols told a darker truth. Garth was a poor place, a bad risk. Why else had the wolfling humans and their clients been granted a colony leasehold there? The place had been written off by the Galactic Institutes long ago.
And now, unhappy little world, you have been chosen as a site for war.
For practice, the bureaucrat of Cost and Caution thought in Anglic, the beastly, unsanctioned language of the Earthling creatures. Most Gubru considered the study of alien things an unwholesome pastime, but now the bureaucrat’s obsession seemed about to pay off at last.
At last. Today.
The palanquin had threaded past the great towers of Capital City, and a mammoth edifice of opalescent stone now seemed to rise just ahead. The Conclave Arena, seat of government of all the Gubru race and clan.
Nervous, anticipatory shivers flowed down the bureaucrat’s head-crest all the way to its vestigial flight feathers, bringing forth chirps of complaint from the two Kwackoo aides. How could they finish preening the bureaucrat’s fine white feathers, they asked, or buff its long, hooked beak, if it didn’t sit still?
“I comprehend, understand, will comply!’ the bureaucrat answered indulgently in Standard Galactic Language Number Three. These Kwackoo were loyal creatures, to be allowed some minor impertinences. For distraction, the bureaucrat returned to thoughts of the small planet, Garth.
It is the most defenseless Earthling outpost . . . the one mast easily taken hostage. That is why the military pushed for this operation, even while we are hard-pressed elsewhere in space. This will strike deeply at the wolflings, and we may thereby coerce them to yield what we want.
After the armed forces, the priesthood had been next to agree to the plan. Recently the Guardians of Propriety had ruled that an invasion could be undertaken without any loss of honor.
That left the Civil Service—the third leg of the Perch of Command. And there consensus had broken. The bureaucrat’s superiors in the Department of Cost and Caution had demurred. The plan was too risky, they declared. Too expensive.
A perch cannot stand long on two legs. There must be consensus. There must be compromise.
There are times when a nest cannot avoid taking risks,
The mountainous Conclave Arena became a cliff of dressed stone, covering half the sky. A cavernous opening loomed, then swallowed the palanquin. With a quiet murmur the small vessel’s gravities shut down and the canopy lifted. A crowd of Gubru in the normal white plumage of adult neuters already waited at the foot of the landing apron.
They know, the bureaucrat thought, regarding them with its right eye. They know I am already no longer one of them.
In its other eye the bureaucrat caught a last glimpse of the white-swaddled blue globe. Garth.
Soon, the bureaucrat thought in Anglic. We shall meet soon.
The Conclave Arena was a riot of color. And such colors! Feathers shimmered everywhere in the royal hues, crimson, amber, and arsene blue.
Two four-footed Kwackoo servants opened a ceremonial portal for the bureaucrat of Cost and Caution, who momentarily had to stop and hiss in awe at the grandeur of the Arena. Hundreds of perches lined the terraced walls, crafted in delicate, ornate beauty out of costly woods imported from a hundred worlds. And all around, in regal splendor, stood the Roost Masters of the Gubru race.
No matter how well it had prepared for today, the bureaucrat could not help feeling deeply moved. Never had it seen so many queens and princes at one time!
To an alien, there might seem little to distinguish the bureaucrat from its lords. All were tall, slender descendants of flightless birds. To the eye, only the Roost Masters’ striking colored plumage set them apart from the majority of the race. More important differences lay underneath, however. These, after all, were queens and princes, possessed of gender and the proven right to command.
Nearby Roost Masters turned their sharp beaks aside in order to watch with one eye as the bureaucrat of Cost and Caution hurried through a quick, mincing dance of ritual abasement.
Such colors! Love rose within the bureaucrat’s downy breast, a hormonal surge triggered by those royal hues. It was an ancient, instinctive response, and no Gubru had ever proposed changing it. Not even after they had learned the art of gene-altering and become starfarers. Those of the race who achieved the ultimate—color and gender—had to be worshipped and obeyed by those who were still white and neuter.
It was the very heart of what it meant to be Gubru.
It was good. It was the way.
The bureaucrat noticed that two other white-plumed Gubru had also entered the Arena through neighboring doors. They joined the bureaucrat upon the central platform. Together the three of them took low perches facing the assembled Roost Masters.
The one on the right was draped in a silvery robe and bore around its narrow white throat the striped tore of priesthood.
The candidate on the left wore the sidearm and steel talon guards of a military officer. The tips of its crest feathers were dyed to show the rank of stoop-colonel.
Aloof, the other two white-plumed Gubru did not turn to acknowledge the bureaucrat. Nor did the bureaucrat offer any sign of recognizing them. Nevertheless, it felt a thrill. We are three!
The President of the Conclave—an aged queen whose once fiery plumage had now faded to a pale pinkish wash— fluffed her feathers and opened her beak. The Arena’s acoustics automatically amplified her voice as she chirped for attention. On all sides the other queens and princes- fell silent.
The Conclave President raised one slender, down-covered arm. Then she began to croon and sway. One by one, the other Roost Masters joined in, and soon the crowd of blue, amber, and crimson forms was rocking with her. From the royal assemblage there rose a low, atonal moaning.
“Zoooon …”
“Since time immemorial,” the President chirped in formal Galactic Three. “Since before our glory, since before our patronhood, since before even our Uplift into sentience, it has been our way to seek balance.”
The assembly chanted in counter rhythm.
“Balance on the ground’s brown seams,
Balance in the rough air streams,
Balance in our greatest schemes.”
“Back when our ancestors were still pre-sentient beasts, back before our Gooksyu patrons found us and uplifted us to knowledge, back before we even spoke or knew tools, we had already learned this wisdom, this way of coining to decision, this way of coming to consensus, this way of making love.”
“Zoooon …”
“As half-animals, our ancestors still knew that we must . . . must choose . . . must choose three.”
“One to hunt and strike with daring,
for glory and for territory!
One to seek the righteous bearing,
for purity and propriety!
One to warn of danger looming,
for our eggs’ security!”
The bureaucrat of Cost and Caution sensed the other two candidates on either side and knew they were just as electrically aware, just as caught up in tense expectation. There was no greater honor than to be chosen as the three of them had been.
Of course all young Gubru were taught that this way was best, for what other species so beautifully combined politics and philosophy with lovemaking and reproduction? The system had served their race and clan well for ages. It had brought them to the heights of power in Galactic society.
And now it may have brought us to the brink of ruin.
Perhaps it was sacrilegious even to imagine it, but the bureaucrat of Cost and Caution could not help wondering if one of the other methods it had studied might not be better after all. It had read of so many styles of government used by other races and clans—autarchies and aristocracies, technocracies and democracies, syndicates and meritocracies. Might not one of those actually be a better way of judging the right path in a dangerous universe?
The idea might be irreverent, but such unconventional thinking was the reason certain Roost Masters had singled out the bureaucrat for a role of destiny. Over the days and months ahead, someone among the three would have to be the doubting one. That was ever the role of Cost and Caution.
“In this way, we strike a balance. In this way, we seek consensus. In this way, we resolve conflict.”
“Zooon!” agreed the gathered queens and princes.
Much negotiation had gone into selecting each of the candidates, one from the military, one from the priestly orders, and one from the Civil Service. If all worked out well, a new queen and two new princes would emerge from the molting ahead. And along with a vital new line of eggs for the race would also come a new policy, one arising out of the merging of their views.
That was how it was supposed to end. The beginning, however, was another matter. Fated eventually to be lovers, the three would from the start also be competitors. Adversaries.
For there could be only one queen.
“We send forth this trio on a vital mission. A mission of conquest. A mission of coercion.
“We send them also in search of unity … in search of agreement … in search of consensus, to unite us in these troubled times.”
“Zooooon!”
In the eager chorus could be felt the Conclave’s desperate wish for resolution, for an end to bitter disagreements. The three candidates were to lead just one of many battle forces sent forth by the clan of the Gooksyu-Gubru. But clearly the Roost Masters had special hopes for this triumvirate.
Kwackoo servitors offered shining goblets to each candidate. The bureaucrat of Cost and Caution lifted one and drank deeply. The fluid felt like golden fire going down.
First taste of the Royal Liquor …
As expected, it had a flavor like nothing else imaginable. Already, the three candidates’ white plumage seemed to glisten with a shimmering promise of color to come.
We shall struggle together, and eventually one of us shall molt amber. One shall molt blue.
And one, presumably the strongest, the one with the best policy, would win the ultimate prize.
A prize fated to be mine. For it was said to have all been arranged in advance. Caution had to win the upcoming consensus. Careful analysis had shown that the alternatives would be unbearable.
“You shall go forth, then,” the Conclave President sang. “You three new Suzerains of our race and of our clan. You shall go forth and win conquest. You shall go forth and humble the wolfling heretics.”
“Zooooon!” the assembly cheered.
The President’s beak lowered toward her breast, as if she were suddenly exhausted. Then, the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution faintly heard her add,
“You shall go forth and try your best to save us. . . .”
PART ONE
Invasion
Let them uplift us, shoulder high. Then we will see over their heads to the several promised lands, from which we have come, and to which we trust to go.
W. B. YEATS
1
Fiben
There had never been such traffic at Port Helenia’s sleepy landing field—not in all the years Fiben Bolger had lived here. The mesa overlooking Aspinal Bay reverberated with the numbing, infrasonic growl of engines. Dust plumes obscured the launching pits, but that did not prevent spectators from gathering along the peripheral fence to watch all the excitement. Those with a touch of psi talent could tell whenever a starship was about to lift off. Waves of muzzy uncertainty, caused by leaky gravities, made a few onlookers blink quickly moments before another great-strutted spacecraft rose above the haze and lumbered off into the cloud-dappled sky.
The noise and stinging dust frayed tempers. It was even worse for those standing out on the tarmac, and especially bad for those forced to be there against their will.
Fiben certainly would much rather have been just about anywhere else, preferably in a pub applying pints of liquid anesthetic. But that was not to be.
He observed the frenetic activity cynically. We’re a sinking ship, he thought. And all th’ rats are saying adieu.
Everything able to space and warp was departing Garth in indecent haste. Soon, the landing field would be all but empty.
Until the enemy arrives . . . whoever it turns out to be.
“Pssst, Fiben. Quit fidgeting!”
Fiben glanced to his right. The chim standing next to him in formation looked nearly as uncomfortable as Fiben felt. Simon Levin’s dress uniform cap was turning dark just above his bony eye ridges, where damp brown fur curled under the rim. With his eyes, Simon mutely urged Fiben to straighten up and look forward.
Fiben sighed. He knew he should try to stand at attention. The ceremony for the departing dignitary was nearly over, and a member of the Planetary Honor Guard wasn’t supposed to slouch.
But his gaze kept drifting over toward the southern end of the mesa, far from the commercial terminal and the departing freighters. Over there, uncamouflaged, lay an uneven row of drab, black cigar shapes with the blocky look of fighting craft. Several of the small scoutboats shimmered as technicians crawled over them, tuning their detectors and shields for the coming battle.
Fiben wondered if Command had already decided which craft he was to fly. Perhaps they would let the half-trained Colonial Militia pilots draw lots to see who would get the most decrepit of the ancient war machines, recently purchased cut-rate off a passing Xatinni scrap dealer.
With his left hand Fiben tugged at the stiff collar of his uniform and scratched the thick hair below his collarbone. Old ain’t necessarily bad, he reminded himself. Go into battle aboard a thousand-year-old tub, and at least you know it can take punishment.
Most of those battered scoutboats had seen action out on the starlanes before human beings ever heard of Galactic civilization . . . before they had even begun playing with gunpowder rockets, singeing their fingers and scaring the birds back on homework! Earth.
The image made Fiben smile briefly. It wasn’t the most respectful thing to think about one’s patron race. But then, humans hadn’t exactly brought his people up to be reverent.
Jeez, this monkey suit itches! Naked apes like humans may be able to take this, but we hairy types just aren’t built to wear this much clothing!
At least the ceremony for the departing Synthian Consul seemed to be nearing completion. Swoio Shochuhun—that pompous ball of fur and whiskers—was finishing her speech of farewell to the tenants of Garth Planet, the humans and chims she was leaving to their fate. Fiben scratched his chin again, wishing the little windbag would just climb into her launch and get the hell out of here, if she was in such a hurry to be going.
An elbow jabbed him in the ribs. Simon muttered urgently. “Straighten up, Fiben. Her Nibs is looking this way!”
Over among the dignitaries Megan Oneagle, the gray-haired Planetary Coordinator, pursed her lips and gave Fiben a quick shake of her head.
Aw, hell, he thought.
Megan’s son, Robert, had been a classmate of Fiben’s at Garth’s small university. Fiben arched an eyebrow as if to say to the human administrator that he hadn’t asked to serve on this dubious honor guard. And anyway, if humans had wanted clients who didn’t scratch themselves, they never should have uplifted chimpanzees.
He fixed his collar though, and tried to straighten his posture. Form was nearly everything to these Galactics, and Fiben knew that even a lowly neo-chimp had to play his part, or the clan of Earth might lose face.
On either side of Coordinator Oneagle stood the other dignitaries who had come to see Swoio Shochuhun off. To Megan’s left was Kault, the hulking Thennanin envoy, leathery and resplendent in his brilliant cape and towering ridge crest. The breathing slits in his throat opened and closed like louvered blinds each time the big-jawed creature inhaled.
To Megan’s right stood a much more humanoid figure, slender and long-limbed, who slouched slightly, almost in-souciantly in the afternoon sunshine.
Uthacalthing’s amused by something. Fiben could tell. So what else is new?
Of course Ambassador Uthacalthing thought everything was funny. In his posture, in the gently waving silvery tendrils that floated above his small ears, and in the glint in his golden, wide-cast eyes, the pale Tymbrimi envoy seemed to say what could not be spoken aloud—something just short of insulting to the departing Synthian diplomat.
Swoio Shochuhun sleeked back her whiskers before stepping forward to say farewell to each of her colleagues in turn. Watching her make ornate formal paw motions in front of Kault, Fiben was struck by how much she resembled a large, rotund raccoon, dressed up like some ancient, oriental courtier.
Kault, the huge Thennanin, puffed up his crest as he bowed in response. The two uneven-sized Galactics exchanged pleasantries in fluting, highly inflected Galactic Six. Fiben knew that there was little love to be lost between them.
“Well, you can’t choose your friends, can you?” Simon whispered.
“Damn right,” Fiben agreed.
It was ironic. The furry, canny Synthians were among Earth’s few “allies” in the political and military’quagmire of the Five Galaxies. But they were also fantastically self-centered and famous cowards. Swoio’s departure as much as guaranteed there would be no armadas of fat, furry warriors coming to Garth’s aid in her hour of need.
Just like there won’t be any help from Earth, nor Tymbrim, them having enough problems of their own right now.
Fiben understood GalSix well enough to follow some of what the big Thennanin said to Swoio. Kault apparently did not think much of ambassadors who skip out on their posts.
Give the Thennanin that much, Fiben thought. Kault’s folk might be fanatics. Certainly they were listed among Earth’s present official enemies. Nevertheless, they were known everywhere for their courage and severe sense of honor.
No, you can’t always choose your friends, or your enemies.
Swoio stepped over to face Megan Oneagle. The Synthian’s bow was marginally shallower than the one she had given Kault. After all, humans ranked pretty low among the patron races of the galaxy.
And you know what that makes you, Fiben reminded himself.
Megan bowed in return. “I am sorry to see you go,” she told Swoio in thickly accented GalSix. “Please pass on to your people our gratitude for their good wishes.”
“Right,” Fiben muttered. “Tell all th’ other raccoons thanks a whole bunch.” He wore a blank expression, though, when Colonel Maiven, the human commander of the Honor Guard, looked sharply his way.
Swoio’s reply was filled with platitudes.
Be patient, she urged. The Five Galaxies are in turmoil right now. The fanatics among the great powers are causing so much trouble because they think the Millennium, the end of a great era, is at hand. They are the first to act.
Meanwhile, the moderates and the Galactic Institutes must move slower, more judiciously. But act they would, she assured. In due time. Little Garth would not be forgotten.
Sure, Fiben thought sarcastically. Why, help might be no more’n a century or two away!
The other chims in the Honor Guard glanced at one other and rolled their eyes in disgust. The human officers were more reserved, but Fiben saw that one was rotating his tongue firmly in his cheek.
Swoio stopped at last before the senior member of the diplomatic corps, Uthacalthing Man-Friend, the consul-ambassador from the Tymbrimi.
The tall E.T. wore a loose black robe that offset his pale skin. Uthacalthing’s mouth was small, and the unearthly separation between his shadowed eyes seemed very wide. Nevertheless, the humanoid impression was quite strong. It always seemed to Fiben as if the representative of Earth’s greatest ally was always on the verge of laughing at some joke, great or small. Uthacalthing—with his narrow scalp-ruff of soft, brown fur bordered by waving, delicate tendrils—with his long, delicate hands and ready humor—was the solitary being on this mesa who seemed untouched by the tension of the day. The Tymbrimi’s ironic smile affected Fiben, momentarily lifting his spirits.
Finally! Fiben sighed in relief. Swoio appeared to be finished at last. She turned and strode up the ramp toward her waiting launch. With a sharp command Colonel Maiven brought the Guard to attention. Fiben started mentally counting the number of steps to shade and a cool drink.
But it was too soon to relax. Fiben wasn’t the only one to groan low as the Synthian turned at the top of the ramp to address the onlookers one more time.
Just what occurred then—and in exactly what order— would perplex Fiben for a long time afterward. But it appeared that, just as the first fluting tones of GalSix left Swoio’s mouth, something bizarre happened across the landing field. Fiben felt a scratchiness at the back of his eyeballs and glanced to the left, just in time to see a lambency shimmer around one of the scoutboats. Then the tiny craft seemed to explode.
He’did not recall diving to the tarmac, but that’s where he found himself next, trying to burrow into the tough, rubbery surface. What is it? An enemy attack so soon?
He heard Simon snort violently. Then a chorus of sneezes followed. Blinking away dust, Fiben peered and saw that the little scoutcraft still existed. It hadn’t blown up, after all!
But its fields were out of control. They coruscated in a deafening, blinding display of light and sound. Shield-suited engineers scurried to shut down the boat’s malfunctioning probability generator, but not before the noisome display had run everyone nearby through all the senses they had, from touch and taste all the way to smell and psi.
“Whooee!” the chimmie to Fiben’s left whistled, holding her nose uselessly. “Who set off a stinkbomb!”
In a flash Fiben knew, with uncanny certainty, that she had called it right. He rolled over quickly, in time to see the Synthian Ambassador, her nose wrinkled in disgust and whiskers curled in shame, scamper into her ship, abandoning all dignity. The hatch clanged shut.
Someone found the right switch at last and cut off the horrible overload, leaving only a fierce aftertaste and a ringing in his ears. The members of the Honor Guard stood up, dusting themselves and muttering irritably. Some humans and chims still quivered, blinking and yawning vigorously. Only the stolid, oblivious Thennanin Ambassador seemed unaffected. In fact, Kault appeared perplexed over this unusual Earthling behavior.
A stinkbomb. Fiben nodded. I was somebody’s idea of a practical joke.
And I think I know whose.
Fiben looked closely at Uthacalthing. He stared at the being who had been named Man-Friend and recalled how the slender Tymbrimi had smiled as Swoio, the pompous little Synthian, launched into her final speech. Yes, Fiben would be willing to swear on a copy of Darwin that at that very moment, just before the scoutboat malfunctioned, Uthacalthing’s crown of silvery tendrils had lifted and the ambassador had smiled as if in delicious anticipation.
Fiben shook his head. For all of their renowned psychic senses, no Tymbrimi could have caused such an accident by sheer force of will.
Not unless it had been arranged in advance, that is.
The Synthian launch rose upward on a blast of air and skimmed out across the field to a safe distance. Then, in a high whine of gravities, the glittering craft swept upward to meet the clouds.
At Colonel Maiven’s command, the Honor Guard snapped to attention one last time. The Planetary Coordinator and her two remaining envoys passed in review.
It might have been his imagination, but Fiben felt sure
that for an instant Uthacalthing slowed right in front of him. Fiben was certain one of those wide, silver-rimmed eyes looked directly at him.
And the other one winked.
Fiben sighed. Very funny, he thought, hoping the Tymbrimi emissary would pick up the sarcasm in his mind. We all may be smokin dead meat in a week’s time, and you’re making with practical jokes.
Very funny,. Uthacalthing.
2
Athaclena
Tendrils wafted alongside her head, ungentle in their agitation. Athaclena let her frustration and anger fizz like static electricity at the tips of the silvery strands. Their ends waved as if of their own accord, like slender fingers, shaping her almost palpable resentment into something . . .
Nearby, one of the humans awaiting an audience with the Planetary Coordinator sniffed the air and looked around, puzzled. He moved away from Athaclena, without quite knowing why he felt uncomfortable all of a sudden. He was probably a natural, if primitive, empath. Some men and women were able vaguely to kenn Tymbrimi empathy-glyphs, though few ever had the training to interpret anything more than vague emotions.
Someone else also noticed what Athaclena was doing. Across the pubh’c room, standing amid a small crowd of humans, her father lifted his head suddenly. His own corona of tendrils remained smooth and undisturbed, but Uthacalthing cocked his head and turned slightly to regard her, his expression both quizzical and slightly amused.
It might have been similar if a human parent had caught his daughter in the act of kicking the sofa, or muttering to herself sullenly. The frustration at the core was very nearly the same, except that Athaclena expressed it through her Tymbrimi aura rather than an outward tantrum. At her lather’s glance she hurriedly drew back her waving tendrils and wiped away the ugly sense-glyph she had been Grafting overhead.
That did not erase her resentment, however. In this crowd of Earthlings it was hard to forget. Caricatures, was Athaclena’s contemptuous thought, knowing full well it was both unkind and unfair. Of course Earthlings couldn’t help being what they were—one of the strangest tribes to come upon the Galactic scene in aeons. But that did not mean she had to like them!
It might have helped if they were more alien . . . less like hulking, narrow-eyed, awkward versions of Tymbrimi. Wildly varied in color and hairiness, eerily off in their body proportions, and so often dour and moody, they frequently left Athaclena feeling depressed after too long a time spent in their company.
Another thought unbecoming the daughter of a diplomat. She chided herself and tried to redirect her mind. i After all, the humans could not be blamed for radiating their fear right now, with a war they hadn’t chosen about to fall crushingly upon them.
She watched her father laugh at something said by one of the Earthling officers and wondered how he did it. How he bore it so well.
I’ll never learn that easy, confident manner.
I’ll never be able to make him proud of me.
Athaclena wished Uthacalthing would finish up with these Terrans so she could speak to him alone. In a few minutes Robert Oneagle would arrive to pick her up, and she wanted to have one more try at persuading her father not to send her away with the young human.
I can be useful. I know I can! I don’t have to be coddled off into the mountains for safety, like some child!
Quickly she clamped down before another glyph-of-resentment could form above her head. She needed distraction, something to keep her mind occupied while she waited. Restraining her emotions, Athaclena stepped quietly toward two human officers standing nearby, heads lowered in earnest conversation. They were speaking Anglic, the most commonly used Earth-tongue.
“Look,” the first one said. “All we really know is that one of Earth’s survey ships stumbled onto something weird and totally unexpected, out in one of those ancient star clusters on the galactic fringe.”
“But what was it?” the other militiaman asked. “What did they find? You’re in alien studies, Alice. Don’t you have any idea what those poor dolphins uncovered that could stir up such a ruckus?”
The female Earthman shrugged. “Search me. But it didn’t take anything more than the hints in the Streaker’s first beamed report to set the most fanatic clans in the Five Galaxies fighting each other at a level that hasn’t been seen in megayears. The latest dispatches say some of the skirmishes have gotten pretty damn rough. You saw how scared that Synthian looked a week ago, before she decided to pull out.”
The other man nodded gloomily. Neither human spoke for a long moment. Their tension was a thing which arched the space between them. Athaclena kenned it as a simple but dark glyph of uncertain dread.
“It’s something big,” the first officer said at last, in a low voice. “This may really be it.”
Athaclena moved away when she sensed the humans begin to take notice of her. Since arriving here in Garth she had been altering her normal body form, changing her figure and features to resemble more closely those of a human girl. Nevertheless, there were limits to what such manipulations could accomplish, even using Tymbrimi body-imagery methods. There was no way really to disguise who she was. If she had stayed, inevitably, the humans would have asked her a Tymbrimi’s opinion of the current crisis, and she was loathe to tell Earthlings that she really knew no more than they did.
Athaclena found the situation bitterly ironic. Once again, the races of Earth were in the spotlight, as they had been ever since the notorious “Sundiver” affair, two centuries ago. This time an interstellar crisis had been sparked by the first starship ever put under command of neo-dolphins.
Mankind’s second client race was no more than two centuries old—younger even than the neo-chimpanzees. How the cetacean spacers would ever find a way out of the mess they had inadvertently created was anyone’s guess. But the repercussions were already spreading halfway across the Central Galaxy, all the way to isolated colony worlds such as Garth.
“Athaclena—”
She whirled. Uthacalthing stood at her elbow, looking down at her with an air of benign concern. “Are you all right, daughter?”
She felt so small in Uthacalthing’s presence. Athaclena couldn’t help being intimidated, however gentle he always was. His art and discipline were so great that she hadn’t even sensed his approach until he touched the sleeve of her robe! Even now, all that could be kenned from his complex aura was the whirling empathy-glyph called caridouo … a father’s love.
“Yes, Father. I … I am fine.”
“Good. Are you all packed and ready for your expedition then?”
His words were in Anglic. She answered in Tymbrim-dialect Galactic Seven.
“Father, I do not wish to go into the mountains with Robert Oneagle.”
Uthacalthing frowned. “I had thought that you and Robert were friends.”
Athaclena’s nostrils flared in frustration. Why was Uthacalthing purposely misunderstanding her? He had to know that the son of the Planetary Coordinator was unobjectionable as a companion. Robert was as close to a friend as she had among the young humans of Port Helenia.
“It is partly for Robert’s sake that I urge you to reconsider,” she told her father. “He is shamed at being ordered to ‘nursemaid’ me, as they say, while his comrades and classmates are all in the militia preparing for war. And I certainly cannot blame him for his resentment.”
When Uthacalthing started to speak she hurried on. “Also, I do not wish to leave you, Father. I reiterate my earlier arguments-of-logic, when I explained how I might be useful to you in the weeks ahead. And now I add to them this offering, as well.”
With great care she concentrated on Grafting the glyph she had composed earlier in the day. She had named it ke’ipathye … a plea, out of love, to be allowed to face danger at love’s side. Her tendrils trembled above her ears, and the construct quavered slightly over her head as it began to rotate. Finally though, it stabilized. She sent it drifting over toward her father’s aura. At that moment, Athaclena did not even care that they were in a room crowded with hulking, smooth-browed humans and their furry little chim clients. All that mattered in the world was the two of them, and the bridge she so longed to build across this void.
Ke’ipathye fell into Uthacalthing’s waiting tendrils and spun there, brightening in his appreciation. Briefly, Athaclena gasped at its sudden beauty, which she knew had now grown far beyond her own simple art.
Then the glyph fell, like a gentle fog of morning dew, to coat and shine along her father’s corona.
“Such a fine gift.” His voice was soft, and she knew he had been moved.
But . . . She knew, all at once, that his resolve was unshifted.
“I offer you a kenning of my own,” he said to her. And from his sleeve he withdrew a small gilt box with a silver clasp. “Your mother, Mathicluanna, wished for you to have this when you were ready to declare yourself of age. Although we had not yet spoken of a date, I judge that now is the time for you to have it.”
Athaclena blinked, suddenly lost in a whirl of confused emotions. How often had she longed to know what her dead mother had left in her legacy? And yet, right now the small locket might have been a poison-beetle for all the will she had to pick it up.
Uthacalthing would not be doing this if he thought it likely they would meet again.
She hissed in realization. “You’re planning to fight!”
Uthacalthing actually shrugged . . . that human gesture of momentary indifference. “The enemies of the humans are mine as well, daughter. The Earthlings are bold, but they are only wolflings after all. They will need my help.”
There was finality in his voice, and Athaclena knew that any further word of protest would accomplish nothing but to make her look foolish in his eyes. Their hands met around the locket, long fingers intertwining, and they walked silently out of the room together. It seemed, for a short span, as if they were not two but three, for the locket carried something of Mathicluanna. The moment was both sweet and painful.
Neo-chimp militia guards snapped to attention and opened the doors for them as they stepped out of the Ministry Building and into the clear, early spring sunshine. Uthacalthing accompanied Athaclena down to the curbside, where her backpack awaited her. Their hands parted, and Athaclena was left grasping her mother’s locket.
“Here comes Robert, right on time,” Uthacalthing said, shading his eyes. “His mother calls him unpunctual. But I have never known him to be late for anything that mattered.”
A battered floater wagon approached along the long gravel driveway, rolling past limousines and militia staff cars. Uthacalthing turned back to his daughter. “Do try to enjoy the Mountains of Mulun. I have seen them. They are quite beautiful. Look at this as an opportunity, Athaclena.”
She nodded. “I shall do as you asked, Father. I’ll spend the time improving my grasp of Anglic and of wolfling emotional patterns.”
“Good. And keep your eyes open for any signs or traces of the legendary Garthlings.”
Athaclena frowned. Her father’s late interest in odd wolf-ling folk tales had lately begun to resemble a fixation. And yet, one could never tell when Uthacalthing was being serious or simply setting up a complicated jest.
“I’ll watch out for signs, though the creatures are certainly mythical.”
Uthacalthing smiled. “I must go now. My love will travel with you. It will be a bird, hovering”—he motioned with his hands— “just over your shoulder.”
His tendrils touched hers briefly, and then he was gone, striding back up the steps to rejoin the worried colonials. Athaclena was left standing there, wondering why, in parting, Uthacalthing had used such a bizarre human metaphor.
How can love be a bird?
Sometimes Uthacalthing was so strange it frightened even her.
There was a crunching of gravel as the floater car settled down at the curb nearby. Robert Oneagle, the dark-haired young human who was to be her partner-in-exile, grinned and waved from behind the machine’s tiller, but it was easy to tell that his cheery demeanor was superficial, put on for her benefit. Deep down, Robert was nearly as unhappy about this trip as she was. Fate—and the imperious rule of adults— had thrown the two of them together in a direction neither of them would have chosen.
The crude glyph Athaclena formed—invisible to Robert—was little more than a sigh of resignation and defeat. But she kept up appearances with a carefully arranged Earthling-type smile of her own.
“Hello, Robert,” she said, and picked up her pack.
3
Galactics
The Suzerain of Propriety fluffed its feathery down, displaying at the roots of its still-white plumage the shimmering flow that foretold royalty. Proudly, the Suzerain of Propriety opped up onto the Perch of Pronouncement and chirped for attention.
The battleships of the Expeditionary Force were still in interspace, between the levels of the world. Battle was not imminent for some time yet. Because of this, the Suzerain of Propriety was still dominant and could interrupt the activities of the flagship’s crew.
Across the bridge, the Suzerain of Beam and Talon looked up from its own Perch of Command. The admiral shared with the Suzerain of Propriety the bright plumage of dominance. Nevertheless, there was no question of interfering when a religious pronouncement was about to be made. The admiral at once interrupted the stream of orders it had been chirping to subordinates and shifted into a stance of attentive reverence.
All through the bridge the noisy clamor of Gubru engineers and spacers quieted to a low chittering. Their four-footed Kwackoo clients ceased their cooing as well and settled down to listen.
Still the Suzerain of Propriety waited. It would not be proper to begin until all Three were present.
A hatchway dilated. In stepped the last of the masters of the expedition, the third member of the triarchy. As appropriate, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution wore the black tore of suspicion and doubt as it entered and found a comfortable perch, followed by a small covey of its accountants and bureaucrats.
For a moment their eyes met across the bridge. The tension among the Three had already begun, and it would grow in the weeks and months ahead, until the day when consensus was finally achieved—when they molted and a new queen emerged.
It was thrilling, sexual, exhilarating. None of them knew how it would end. Beam and Talon started with an advantage, of course, since this expedition would begin in battle. But that dominance did not have to last.
This moment, for instance, was clearly one for the priesthood.
All breaks turned as the Suzerain of Propriety lifted and flexed one leg, then the other, and prepared to pronounce. Soon a low crooning began to rise from the assembled avians.
—zzooon.
“We embark on a mission, holy mission,” the Suzerain fluted.
—Zzooon—
“Embarking on this mission, we must persevere”
—Zzooon—
“Persevere to accomplish four great tasks”
—Zzooon—
“Tasks which include Conquest for the glory of our Clan, zzooon”
—ZZooon
“Conquest and Coercion, so we may gain the Secret, the Secret that the animal Earthlings clutch talon-tight, clutch to keep from us, zzooon”
—ZZooon—
“Conquest, Coercion, and Counting Coup upon our enemies winning honor and submitting our foes to shame, avoiding shame ourselves, zzooon”
—ZZooon—
“Avoiding shame, as well as Conquest and Coercion, and last, and last to prove our worthiness,
our worthiness before our ancestrals,
our worthiness before the Progenitors whose time of Return has surely come
Our worthiness of Mastery, zzzoooon”
The refrain was enthusiastic. —ZZzooon!—
The two other Suzerains bowed respectfully to the priest, and the ceremony was officially at an end. The Talon Soldiers and Spacers returned to work at once. But as the bureaucrats and civil servants retreated toward their own sheltered offices, they could be heard clearly but softly crooning.
“All … all … all of that. But one thing, one thing more. . . .
“First of all . . . survival of the nest. . . .”
The priest looked up sharply and saw a glint in the eye of the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. And in that instant it knew that its rival had won a subtle but important point. There was triumph in the other’s eye as it bowed again and hummed lowly. “Zooon.”
4
Robert
Dappled sunlight found gaps in the rain forest canopy, illuminating streaks of brilliant color in the dim, vine-laced avenue between. The fierce gales of mid-winter had ebbed some weeks back, but a stiff breeze served as a reminder of those days, causing boughs to dip and sway, and shaking loose moisture from the prior night’s rain. Droplets made fat, plinking sounds as they landed in little shaded pools.
It was quiet in the mountains overlooking the Vale of Sind. Perhaps more silent than a forest ought to be. The woods were lush, and yet their superficial beauty masked a sickness, a malaise arising from ancient wounds. Though the air carried a wealth of fecund odors, one of the strongest was a subtle hint of decay. It did not take an empath to know that this was a sad place. A melancholy world.
Indirectly, that sadness was what had brought Earthlings here. History had not yet written the final chapter on Garth, but the planet was already on a list. A list of dying worlds.
One shaft of daylight spotlighted a fan of multicolored vines, dangling in apparent disorder from the branches of a giant tree. Robert Oneagle pointed in that direction. “You might want to examine those, Athaclena,” he said. “They can be trained, you know.”
The young Tymbrimi looked up from an orchidlike bloom she had been inspecting. She followed his gesture, peering past the bright, slanting columns of light. She spoke carefully in accented but clearly enunciated Anglic.
“What can be trained, Robert? All I see there are vines.”
Robert grinned. “Those very forest vines, Athaclena. They’re amazing things.”
Athaclena’s frown looked very human, in spite of the wide set of her oval eyes and the alien gold-flecked green of their large irises. Her slightly curved, delicate jaw and angled brow made the expression appear faintly ironic.
Of course, as the daughter of a diplomat Athaclena might have been taught to assume carefully tutored expressions at certain times when in the company of humans. Still, Robert was certain her frown conveyed genuine puzzlement. When she spoke, a lilt in her voice seemed to imply that Anglic was somehow limiting.
“Robert, you surely don’t mean that those hanging tendril-plants are pre-sentient, do you? There are a few autotrophic sophont races, of course, but this vegetation shows none of the signs. Anyway …” The frown intensified as she concentrated. From a fringe just above her ears her Tymbrimi ruff quivered as silvery tendrils waved in quest. “. . . Anyway, I can sense no emotional emissions from them at all.”
Robert grinned. “No, of course you can’t. I didn’t mean to imply they have any Uplift Potential, or even nervous systems per se. They’re just rain forest plants. But they do have a secret. Come on. I’ll show you.”
Athaclena nodded, another human gesture that might or might not be naturally Tymbrimi as well. She carefully replaced the flower she had been examining and stood up in a fluid, graceful movement.
The alien girl’s frame was slender, the proportions of her arms and legs different from the human norm—longer calves and less length in the thighs, for instance. Her slim, articulated pelvis flared from an even narrower waist. To Robert, she seemed to prowl in a faintly catlike manner that had fascinated him ever since she arrived on Garth, half a year ago.
That the Tymbrimi were lactating mammals he could tell by the outline of her upper breasts, provocatively evident even under her soft trail suit. He knew from his studies that Athaclena had two more pair, and a marsupial-like pouch as well. But those were not evident at present. Right now she seemed more human—or perhaps elfin—than alien.
“All right, Robert. I promised my father I would make the best of this enforced exile. Show me more of the wonders of this little planet.”
The tone in her voice was so heavy, so resigned, that Robert decided she had to be exaggerating for effect. The theatrical touch made her seem oddly more like a human teenager, and that in itself was a bit unnerving. He led her toward the cluster of vines. “It’s over here, where they converge down at the forest floor.”
Athaclena’s ruff—the helm of brown fur that began in a narrow stroke of down on her spine and rose up the back of her neck to end, caplike, in a widow’s peak above the bridge of her strong nose—was now puffed and riffled at the edges. Over her smooth, softly rounded ears the cilia of her Tymbrimi corona waved as if she were trying to pick out any trace of consciousness other than theirs in the narrow glade.
Robert reminded himself not to overrate Tymbrimi mental powers as humans so often did. The slender Galactics did have impressive abilities in detecting strong emotions and were supposed to have a talent for Grafting a form of art out of empathy itself. Nevertheless, true telepathy was no more common among Tymbrimi than among Earthlings.
Robert had to wonder what she was thinking. Could she know how, since they had left Port Helenia together, his fascination with her had grown? He hoped not. The feeling was one he wasn’t sure he even wanted to admit to himself yet.
The vines were thick, fibrous strands with knotty protrusions every half-meter or so. They converged from many different directions upon this shallow forest clearing. Robert shoved a cluster of the multicolored cables aside to show Athaclena that all of them terminated in a single small pool of umber-colored water.
He explained. “These ponds are found all over this continent, each connected to the others by this vast network of vines. They play a vital role in the rain forest ecosystem. No other shrubs grow near these catchments where the vines do their work.”
Athaclena knelt to get a better view. Her corona still waved and she seemed interested.
“Why is the pool colored so? Is there an impurity in the water?”
“Yes, that’s right. If we had an analysis kit I could take you from pond to pond and demonstrate that each little puddle has a slight overabundance of a different trace element or chemical. “The vines seem to form a network among the giant trees, carrying nutrients abundant in one area to other places where they’re lacking.”
“A trade compact!” Athaclena’s ruff expanded in one of the few purely Tymbrimi expressions Robert was certain he understood. For the first time since they had left the” city together he saw her clearly excited by something.
He wondered if she was at that moment Grafting an “empathy-glyph,” that weird art form that some humans swore they could sense, and even learn to understand a little. Robert knew the feathery tendrils of the Tymbrimi corona were involved in the process, somehow. Once, while accompanying his mother to a diplomatic reception, he’d noticed something that had to have been a glyph—floating, it seemed, above the ruff of the Tymbrimi Ambassador, Uthacalthing.
It had been a strange, fleeting sensation—as if he had caught something which could only be looked at with the blind spot of his eye, which fled out of view whenever he tried to focus on it. Then, as quickly as he had become aware of it, the glimpse vanished. In the end, he was left unsure it had been anything but his imagination after all.
“The relationship is symbiotic, of course,” Athaclena pronounced. Robert blinked. She was talking about the vines, of course.
“Uh, right again. The vines take nourishment from the great trees, and in exchange they transport nutrients the trees’ roots can’t dvaw out of the poor soil. They also flush out toxins and dispose of them at great distances. Pools like this one serve as banks where the vines come together to stockpile and trade important chemicals.”
“Incredible.” Athaclena examined the rootlets. “It mimics the self-interest trade patterns of sentient beings. And I suppose it is logical that plants would evolve this technique sometime, somewhere. I believe the Kanten might have begun in such a way, before the Linten gardeners uplifted them and made them starfarers.”
She looked up at Robert. “Is this phenomenon catalogued? The Z’Tang were supposed to have surveyed Garth for the Institutes before the planet was passed over to you humans. I’m surprised I never heard of this.”
Robert allowed himself a trace of a smile. “Sure, the ZTang report to the Great Library mentions the vines’ chemical transfer properties. Part of the tragedy of Garth was that the network seemed on the verge of total collapse before Earth was granted a leasehold here. And if that actually happens half this continent will turn into desert.
“Rut the Z’Tang missed something crucial. They never seem to have noticed that the vines move about the forest, very slowly, seeking new minerals for their host trees. The forest, as an active trading community, adapts. It changes. There’s actual hope that, with the right helpful nudge here and there, the network might become a centerpiece in the recovery of the planet’s ecosphere. If so, we may be able to make a tidy profit selling the technique to certain parties elsewhere.”
He had expected her to be pleased, but when Athaclena let the rootlets fall back into the umber water she turned to him with a cool tone. “You sound proud to have caught so careful and intellectual an elder race as the Z’Tang in a mistake, Robert. As one of your teledramas might put it, ‘The Eatees and their Library are caught with egg on their faces once again.’ Is that it?”
“Now wait a minute. I—”
“Tell me, do you humans plan to hoard this information, gloating over your cleverness each time you dole out portions? Or will you flaunt it, crying far and wide what any race with sense already knows—that the Great Library is not and never has been perfect?”
Robert winced. The stereotypical Tymbrimi, as pictured by most Earthlings, was adaptable, wise, and often mischievous. But right now Athaclena sounded more like any irritable, opinionated young fern with a chip on her shoulder.
True, some Earthlings went too far in criticizing Galactic civilization. As the first known “wolfling” race in over fifty megayears, humans sometimes boasted too loudly that they were the only species now living who had bootstrapped themselves into space without anybody’s help. What need had they to take for granted everything found in the Great Library of the Five Galaxies? Terran popular media tended to encourage an attitude of contempt for aliens who would rather look things up than find out for themselves.
There was a reason for encouraging this stance. The alternative, according to Terragens psychological scientists, would be a crushing racial’ inferiority complex. Pride was a vital thing for the only “backward” clan in the known universe. It stood between humanity and despair.
Unfortunately, the attitude had also alienated some species who might otherwise have been friendly to Mankind.
But on that count, were Athaclena’s people all that innocent? The Tymbrimi, also, were famed for finding loopholes in tradition and for not being satisfied with what was inherited from the past.
“When will you humans learn that the universe is dangerous, that there are many ancient and powerful clans who have no love of upstarts, especially newcomers who brashly set off changes without understanding the likely consequences!”
Now Robert knew what Athaclena was referring to, what the real source of this outburst was. He rose from the poolside and dusted his hands. “Look, neither of us really knows what’s going on out there in the galaxy right now. But it’s hardly our fault that a dolphin-crewed starship—”
“The Streaker.”
“—that the Streaker happened to discover something bizarre, something overlooked all these aeons. Anyone could have stumbled onto it! Hell, Athaclena. We don’t even know what it was that those poor neo-dolphins found! Last anyone
heard, their ship was being chased from the Morgran transfer point to Ifni-knows-where by twenty different fleets—all fighting over the right to capture her.”
Robert discovered his pulse was beating hard. Clenched hands indicated just how much of his own tension was rooted in this topic. After all, it is frustrating enough whenever your universe threatens to topple in on you, but all the more so when the events that set it all off took place kiloparsecs away, amid dim red stars too distant even to be seen from home.
Athaclena’s dark-lidded eyes met his, and for the first time he felt he could sense a touch of understanding in them. Her long-fingered left hand performed a fluttering half turn.
“I hear what you are saying, Robert. And I know that sometimes I am too quick to cast judgments. It is a fault my father constantly urges me to overcome.
“But you ought to remember that we Tymbrimi have been Earth’s protectors and allies ever since your great, lumbering slowships stumbled into our part of space, eighty-nine paktaars ago. It grows wearying at times, and you must forgive if, on occasion, it shows.”
“What grows wearying?” Robert was confused.
“Well, for one thing, ever since Contact we have had to learn and endure this assemblage of wolfling clicks and growls you have the effrontery to call a language.”
Athaclena’s expression was even, but now Robert believed he could actually sense a faint something emanating from those waving tendrils. It seemed to convey what a human girl might communicate with a subtle facial expression. Clearly she was teasing him.
“Ha ha. Very funny.” He looked down at the ground.
“Seriously though, Robert, have we not, in the seven generations since Contact, constantly urged that you humans and your, clients go slow? The Streaker simply should not have been prying into places where she did not belong—not while your small clan of races is still so young and helpless.
“You cannot keep on poking at the rules to see which are rigid and which are soft!”
Robert shrugged. “It’s paid off a few times.”
“Yes, but now your—what is the proper, beastly idiom? —your cows have come home to roost?
“Robert, the fanatics won’t let go now that their passions are aroused. They will chase the dolphin ship until she is captured. And if they cannot acquire her information that way, powerful clans such as the Jophur and the Soro will seek other means to achieve their ends.”
Dust motes sparkled gently in and out of the narrow shafts of sunlight. Scattered pools of rainwater glinted where the beams touched them. In the quiet Robert scuffed at the soft humus, knowing all too well what Athaclena was driving at.
The Jophur, the Soro, the Gubru, the Tandu—those powerful Galactic patron races which had time and again demonstrated their hostility to Mankind—if they failed to capture Streaker, their next step would be obvious. Sooner or later some clan would turn its attention to Garth, or Atlast, or Calafia-—Earth’s most distant and unprotected outposts— seeking hostages in an effort to pry loose the dolphins’ mysterious secret. The tactic was even permissible, under the loose strictures established by the ancient Galactic Institute for Civilized Warfare.
Some civilization, Robert thought bitterly. The irony was that the dolphins weren’t even likely to behave as any of the stodgy Galactics expected them to.
By tradition a client race owed allegiance and fealty to its patrons, the starfaring species that had “uplifted” it to full sentience. This had been done for Pan chimpanzees and Tursiops dolphins by humans even before Contact with starfaring aliens. In doing so, Mankind had unknowingly mimicked a pattern that had ruled the Five Galaxies for perhaps three billion years.
By tradition, client species served their patrons for a thousand centuries or more, until release from indenture freed them to seek clients of their own. Few Galactic clans believed or understood how much freedom had been given dolphins and chims by the humans of Earth. It was hard to say exactly what the neo-dolphins on the Streaker’s crew would do if humans were taken hostage. But that, apparently, wouldn’t stop the Eatees from trying. Distant listening posts had already confirmed the worst. Battle fleets were coming, approaching Garth even as he and Athaclena stood here talking.
“Which is worth more, Robert,” Athaclena asked softly, “that collection of ancient space-hulks the dolphins are supposed to have found . . . derelicts that have no meaning at all to a clan as young as yours? Or your worlds, with their farms and parks and orbit-cities? I cannot understand the logic of your Terragens Council, ordering Streaker to guard her secret, when you and your clients are so vulnerable!”
Robert looked down at the ground again. He had no answer for her. It did sound illogical, when looked at in that way. He thought about his classmates and friends, gathering now to go to war without him, to fight over issues none of them understood. It was hard.
For Athaclena it would be as bad, of course, banished from her father’s side, trapped on a foreign world by a quarrel that had little or nothing to do with her. Robert decided to let her have the last word. She had seen more of the universe than he anyway and had the advantage of coming from an older, higher-status clan.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
Perhaps, though, he reminded himself as he helped her lift her backpack and then hoisted his own for the next stage of their trek, perhaps a young Tymbrimi can be just as ignorant and opinionated as any human youth, a little frightened and far away from home.
5
Fiben
“TAASF scoutship Bonobo calling scoutship Proconsul. . . . Fiben, you’re out of alignment again. Come on, old chim, try to straighten her out, will you?”
Fiben wrestled with the controls of his ancient, alien-built spacecraft. Only the open mike kept him from expressing his frustration in rich profanity. Finally, in desperation, he kicked the makeshift control panel the technicians had installed back on Garth.
That did it! A red light went out as the antigravity verniers suddenly unfroze. Fiben sighed. At last!
Of course, in all the exertion his faceplate had steamed up. “You’d think they’d come up with a decent ape-suit after all this time,” he grumbled as he turned up the defogger. It was more than a minute before the stars reappeared.
“What was that, Fiben? What’d you say?”
“I said I’ll have this old crate lined up in time!” he snapped. “The Eatees won’t be disappointed.”
The popular slang term for alien Galactics had its roots in an acronym for “Extraterrestrials.” But it also made Fiben think about food. He had been living on ship paste for days. What he wouldn’t give for a fresh chicken and palm leaf sandwich, right now!
Nutritionists were always after chims to curb their appetite for meat. Said too much was bad for the blood pressure. Fiben sniffed.
Heck, I’d settle for a jar of mustard and the latest edition of the Port Helenia Times, he thought.
“Say, Fihen, you’re always up on the latest scuttlebutt. Has anyone figured out yet who’s invading us?”
“Well, I know a chimmie in the Coordinator’s office who told me she had a friend on the Intelligence Staif who thought the bastards were Soro, or maybe Tandu.”
“Tandu! You’re kidding I hope.” Simon sounded aghast, and Fiben had to agree. Some thoughts just weren’t to be contemplated.
“Ah well, my guess is it’s probably just a bunch of Linten gardeners dropping by to make sure we’re treating the plants all right.”
Simon laughed and Fiben felt glad. Having a cheerful wingman was worth more than a reserve officer’s half pay.
He got his tiny space skiff back onto its assigned trajectory. The scoutboat—purchased only a few months back from a passing Xatinni scrap hauler—was actually quite a bit older than his own sapient race. While his ancestors were still harassing baboons beneath African trees, this fighter had seen action under distant suns—controlled by the hands, claws, tentacles of other poor creatures similarly doomed to skirmish and die in pointless interstellar struggles.
Fiben had only been allowed two weeks to study schematics and remember enough Galactiscript to read the instruments. Fortunately, designs changed slowly in the aeons-old Galactic culture, and there were basics most spacecraft shared in common.
One thing was certain, Galactic technology was impressive. Humanity’s best ships were still bought, riot Earth-made. And although this old tub was creaky and cranky, it would probably outlive him, this day.
All around Fiben bright fields of stars glittered, except where the inky blackness of the Spoon Nebula blotted out the thick band of the galactic disk. That was the direction where Earth lay, the homeworld Fiben had never seen, and now probably never would.
Garth, on the other hand, was a bright green spark only three million kilometers behind him. Her tiny fleet was too small to cover the distant hyperspacial transfer points, or even the inner system. Their ragged array of scouts, meteor-oid miners, and converted freighters—plus three modern corvettes—was hardly adequate to cover the planet itself.
Fortunately, Fiben wasn’t in command, so he did not have to keep his mind on the forlorn state of their prospects. He had only to do his duty and wait. Contemplating annihilation was not how he planned to spend the time.
He tried to divert himself by thinking about the Throop family, the small sharing-clan on Quintana Island that had recently invited him to join in their group marriage. For a modern chim it was a serious decision, like when two or three human beings decided to marry and raise a family. He had been pondering the choice for weeks.
The Throop Clan did have a nice, rambling house, good grooming habits, and respectable professions. The adults were attractive and interesting chims, all with green genetic clearances. Socially, it would be a very good move.
But there were disadvantages, as well. For one thing, he would have to move from Port Helenia back out to the islands, where most of the chim and human settlers still lived. Fiben wasn’t sure he was ready to do that. He liked the open spaces of the mainland, the freedom of mountains and wild Garth countryside.
And there was another important consideration. Fiben had to wonder whether the Throops wanted him because they really liked him, or because the Neo-Chimpanzee Uplift Board had granted him a blue card—an open breeding clearance.
Only a white card was higher. Blue status meant he could join any marriage group and father children with only minimal genetic counseling. It couldn’t help but have influenced the Throop Clan’s decision.
“Oh, quit kiddin’ yourself,” he muttered at last. The matter was moot, anyway. Right now he wouldn’t take long odds on his chances of ever even seeing home again alive.
“Fiben? You still there, kid?”
“Yeah, Simon. What’cha got?”
There was a pause.
“I just got a call from Major Forthness. He said he has an uneasy feeling about that gap in the fourth dodecant.”
Fiben yawned. “Humans are always gettin’ uneasy feelings. Alia time worryin’. That’s what it’s like being big-time patron types.”
His partner laughed. On Garth it was fashionable even for well-educated chims to “talk grunt” at times. Most of the better humans took the ribbing with good humor; and those who didn’t could go chase themselves.
“Tell you what,” he told Simon. “I’ll drift over to the ol’ fourth dodecant and give it a lookover for the Major.”
“We aren’t supposed to split up,” the voice in his headphones protested weakly. Still, they both knew having a wingman would hardly make any difference in the kind of fight they were about to face.
“I’ll be back in a jiffy,” Fiben assured his friend. “Save me some of the bananas.”
He engaged the stasis and gravity fields gradually, treating the ancient machine like a virgin chimmie on her first pink. Smoothly, the scout built up acceleration.
Their defense plan had been carefully worked out bearing in mind normally conservative Galactic psychology. The Earthlings’ forces were laid out in a mesh with the larger ships held in reserve. The scheme relied on scouts like him reporting the enemy’s approach in time for the others to coordinate a timed response.
Problem was that there were too few spouts to maintain anywhere near complete coverage.
Fiben felt the powerful thrum of engines through his seat. Soon he was hurtling across the star-field. Got to give the Galactics their due, he thought. Their culture was stodgy and intolerant—sometimes almost fascistic—but they did build well.
Fiben itched inside his suit. Not for the first time, he wished some human pilots had been small enough to qualify for duty in these tiny Xatinni scouts. It would serve them right to have to smell themselves after three days in space.
Often, in his more pensive moods, Fiben wondered if it had really been such a good idea for humans to meddle so, making engineers and poets and part-time starfighters out of apes who might have been just as happy to stay in the forest. Where would he be now, it they refrained? He’d have been dirty perhaps, and ignorant. But at least he’d be free to scratch an itch whenever he damn well pleased!
He missed his local Grooming Club. Ah, for the glory of being curried and brushed by a truly sensitive chen or chimmie, lazing in the shade and gossiping about nothing at all. . . .
A pink light appeared in his detection tank. He reached forward and slapped the display, but the reading would not go away. In fact, as he approached his destination it grew, then split, and divided again.
Fiben felt cold. “Ifni’s incontinence …” He swore, and grabbed for the code-broadcast switch. “Scoutship Proconsul to all units. They’re behind us! Three … no, four battlecruiser squadrons, emerging from B-level hyperspace in the fourth dodecant!”
He blinked as a fifth flotilla appeared as if out of nowhere, the blips shimmering as starships emerged into real-time and leaked excess hyperprobability into the real-space vacuum. Even at this distance he could tell that the cruisers were large.
His headphones brought a static of consternation.
“My Uncle Hairy’s twice-bent manhood] How did they know there was a hole in our line there?”
“… Fiben, are you sure? Why did they pick that particular …”
“… Who th’ hell are they? Can you . . . ?”
The chatter shut down at once as Major Forthness broke in -on the command channel.
“Message received. Proconsul. We’re on our way. Please switch on your repeater, Fiben.”
Fiben slapped his helmet. It had been years since his militia training, and a guy tended to forget things. He switched over to telemetry so the others could share everything his instruments picked up.
Of course broadcasting all that data made him an easy target, but that hardly mattered. Clearly their foe had known where the defenders were, perhaps down to the last ship. Already he detected seeker missiles streaking toward him.
So much for steakh and surprise as the advantages of the weak. As he sped toward the enemy—whoever the devils were—Fiben noticed that the emerging invasion armada stood almost directly between him and the bright green sparkle of Garth.
“Great,” he snorted. “At least when they blast me I’ll be headed for home. Maybe a few hanks of fur will even get there ahead of the Eatees.
“If anyone wishes on a shooting star, tomorrow night, I hope they get whatever th’fuk they ask for.”
He increased the ancient scout’s acceleration and felt a rearward push even through the straining stasis fields. The moan of engines rose in pitch. And as the little ship leaped forward it seemed to Fiben that it sang a song of battle that sounded almost joyful.
6
Uthacalthing
Four human officers stepped across the brick parquet floor of the conservatory, their polished brown boots clicking rhythmically in step. Three stopped a respectful distance from the large window where the ambassador and the Planetary Coordinator stood waiting. But the fourth continued forward and saluted crisply.
“Madam Coordinator, it has begun.” The graying militia commander pulled a document from his dispatch pouch and held it out.
Uthacalthing admired Megan Oneagle’s poise as she took the proffered flimsy. Her expression betrayed none of the dismay she must be feeling as their worst fears were confirmed.
“Thank you, Colonel Maiven,” she said.
Uthacalthing couldn’t help noticing how the tense junior officers kept glancing his way, obviously wondering how the Tymbrimi Ambassador was taking the news. He remained outwardly impassive, as befitted a member of the diplomatic corps. But the tips of his corona trembled involuntarily at the froth of tension that had accompanied the messengers into the humid greenhouse.
From here a long bank of windows offered a glorious view of the Valley of the Sind, pleasantly arrayed with farms and groves of both native and imported Terran trees. It was a lovely, peaceful scene. Great Infinity alone knew how much longer that serenity would last. And Ifni was not confiding her plans in Uthacalthing, at present,
Planetary Coordinator Oneagle scanned the report briefly. “Do you have any idea yet who the enemy is?”
Colonel Maiven shook his head. “Not really, ma’am. The fleets are closing now, though. We expect identification shortly.”
In spite of the seriousness of the moment, Uthacalthing found himself once again intrigued by the quaintly archaic dialect humans used here on Garth. At every other Terran colony he had visited, Anglic had taken in a potpourri of words borrowed from Galactic languages Seven, Two, and Ten. Here, though, common speech was not appreciably different from what it had been when Garth was licensed to the humans and their clients, more than two generations ago.
Delightful, surprising creatures, he thought. Only here, for instance, would one hear such a pure, ancient form— addressing a female leader as “ma’am.” On other Terran-occupied worlds, functionaries addressed their supervisors by the neutral “ser,” whatever their gender.
There were other unusual things about Garth as well. In the months since his arrival here, Uthacalthing had made a private pastime of listening to every odd story, every strange tale brought in from the wild lands by farmers, trappers, and members of the Ecological Recovery Service. There had been rumors. Rumors of strange things going on up in the mountains.
Of course they were silly stories, mostly. Exaggerations and tall tales. Just the sort of thing you would expect from wolflings living at the edge of a wilderness. And yet they had given him the beginnings of an idea.
Uthacalthing listened quietly as each of the staff officers reported in turn. At last, though, there came a long pause— the silence of brave people sharing a common sense of doom. Only then did he venture to speak, quietly. “Colonel Maiven, are you certain the enemy is being so thorough in isolating Garth?”
The Defense Councilor bowed to Uthacalthing. “Mr. Ambassador, we know that hyperspace is being mined by enemy cruisers as close in as six million pseudometers, on at least four of the main levels.”
“Including D-level?”
“Yes, ser. Of course it means we dare not send any of our lightly armed ships out on any of the few hyperpaths available, even if we could have spared any from the battle. It also means anyone trying to get into Garth system would have to be mighty determined.”
Uthacalthing was impressed. They have mined D-level. I would not have expected them to bother. They certainly don’t want anybody interfering in this operation!
This spoke of substantial effort and cost. Someone was sparing little expense in this operation.
“The point is moot,” the Planetary Coordinator said. Megan was looking out over the rolling meadows of the Sind, with its farmsteads and environmental research stations. Just below the window a chim gardener on a tractor tended the broad lawn of Earth-breed grass surrounding Government House.
She turned back to the others. “The last courier ship brought orders from the Terragens Council. We are to defend ourselves as best we can, for honor’s sake and for the record. But beyond that all we can hope to do is maintain some sort of underground resistance until help arrives from the outside.”
Uthacalthing’s deepself almost laughed out loud, for at that moment each human in the room tried hard not to look at him! Colonel Maiven cleared his throat and examined his report. His officers pondered the brilliant, flowering plants. Still, it was obvious what they were thinking.
Of the few Galactic clans that Earth could count as friends, only the Tymbrimi had the military strength to be of much assistance in this crisis. Men had faith that Tymbrim would not let humans and their clients down.
And that was true enough. Uthacalthing knew the allies would face this crisis together.
But it was also clear that little Garth was a long way out on the fringe of things. And these days the homeworlds had to take first priority.
No matter, Uthacalthing thought. The best means to an end are not always those that appear most direct.
Uthacalthing did not laugh out loud, much as he wanted to. For it might only discomfit these poor, grief-stricken people. In the course of his career he had met some Earth-lings who possessed a natural gift for high-quality prank-sterism—a few even on a par with the best Tymbrijni. Still, so many of them were such terribly dour, sober folk! Most tried so desperately hard to be serious at the very moments when humor could most help them through their troubles.
Uthacalthing wondered.
As a diplomat I have taught myself to watch every word, lest our clan’s penchant for japes cause costly incidents. But has this been wise? My own daughter has picked up this habit from me . . . this shroud of seriousness. Perhaps that is why she has grown into such a strange, earnest little creature.
Thinking of Athaclena made him wish all the more he could openly make light of the situation. Otherwise, he might do the human thing and consider the danger she was in. He knew that Megan worried about her own son. She underrates Robert, Uthacalthing thought. She should better know the lad’s potential.
“Dear ladies and gentlemen,” he said, savoring the archaisms. His eyes separated only slightly in amusement. “We can expect the fanatics to arrive within days. You have made conventional plans to offer what resistance your meager resources will allow. Those plans will serve their function.”
“However?” It was Megan Oneagle who posed the question. One eyebrow arched above those brown irises—big and set almost far enough apart to look attractive in the classic Tymbrimi sense. There was no mistaking the look.
She knows as well as I that more is called for. Ah, if Robert ?has half his mother’s brains, I’ll not fear for Athaclena, wandering in the dark forests of this sad, barren world.
Uthacalthing’s corona trembled. “However,” he echoed, “it does occur to me that now might be a good time to consult the Branch Library.”
Uthacalthing picked up some of their disappointment. Astonishing creatures! Tymbrimi skepticism toward modern Galactic culture never went so far as the outright contempt so many humans felt for the Great Library!
Wolflings. Uthacalthing sighed to himself. In the space above his head he crafted the glyph called syullf-tha, anticipation of a puzzle almost too ornate to solve. The specter revolved in expectancy, invisible to the humans—although for a moment Megan’s attention seemed to flutter, as if she were just on the edge of noticing something.
Poor Wolflings. For all of its faults, the Library is where everything begins and ends. Always, somewhere in its treasure trove of knowledge, can be found some gem of wisdom and solution. Until you learn that, my friends, little inconveniences like ravening enemy battle fleets will go on ruining perfectly good spring mornings like this one!
7
Athaclena
Robert led the way a few feet ahead of her, using a machete to lop off the occasional branch encroaching on the narrow trail. The bright sunshine of the sun, Gimelhai, filtered sofdy through the forest canopy, and the spring air was warm.
Athaclena felt glad of the easy pace. With her weight redistributed from its accustomed pattern, walking was something of an adventure in itself. She wondered how human women managed to go through most of their lives with such a wide-hipped stance. Perhaps it was a sacrifice they paid for having big-headed babies, instead of giving birth early and then sensibly slipping the child into a postpartum pouch.
This experiment—subtly changing her body shape to make it seem more humanlike—was one of the more fascinating aspects of her visit to an Earth colony. She certainfy could not have moved among local crowds as inconspicuously on a world of the reptiloid Soro, or the sap-ring-creatures of Jophur. And in the process she had learned a lot more about physiological control than the instructors had-taught her back in school.
Still, the inconveniences were substantial, and she was considering putting an end to the experiment.
Oh, Ifni. A glyph of frustration danced at her tendril tips. Changing back at this point might be more effort than it’s worth.
There were limits to what even the ever-adaptable Tymbrimi physiology could be expected to do. Attempting too many alterations in a short time ran the risk of triggering enzyme exhaustion.
Anyway, it was a little flattering to kenn the conflicts taking shape in Robert’s mind. Athaclena wondered. Is he actually attracted to me? A year ago the very idea would have shocked her. Even Tymbrimi boys made her nervous, and Robert was an alien!
Now though, for some reason, she felt more curiosity than revulsion.
There was something almost hypnotic about the steady rocking of the pack on her back, the rhythm of soft boots on the rough trail, and the warming of leg muscles too long leashed by city streets. Here in the middle altitudes the air was warm and moist. It carried a thousand rich scents, oxygen, decaying humus, and the musty smell of human perspiration.
As Athaclena trudged, following her guide along the steep-sided ridgeline, a low rumbling could soon be heard coming from the distance ahead of them. It sounded like a rumor of great engines, or perhaps an industrial plant. The murmur faded and then returned with every switchback, just a little more forceful each time they drew near its mysterious source. Apparently Robert was relishing a surprise, so Athaclena bit back her curiosity and asked no questions.
At last, though, Robert stopped and waited at a.bend in the trail. He closed his eyes, concentrating, and Athaclena thought she caught, just for a moment, the flickering traces of primitive emotion-glyph. Instead of true kenning, it brought to mind a visual image—a high, roaring fountain painted in garish, uninhibited blues, and greens.
He really is getting much better, Athaclena thought. Then she joined him at the bend and gasped in surprise.
Droplets, trillions of tiny liquid lenses, sparkled in the shafts of sunlight that cut sharply through the cloud forest. The low rumble that had drawn them onward for an hour was suddenly an earthshaking growl that rattled tree limbs left and right, reverberating through the rocks and into their bones. Straight ahead a great cataract spilled over glass-smooth boulders, dashing into spume and spray in a canyon carved over persistent ages.
The falling river was an extravagance of nature, pouring forth more exuberantly than the most shameless human entertainer, prouder then any sentient poet.
It was too much to be taken in with ears and eyes alone. Athaclena’s tendrils waved, seeking, kenning, one of those moments Tymbrimi glyphcrafters sometimes spoke of—when a world seemed to join into the mesh of empathy usually reserved for living things. In a time-stretched instant, she realized that ancient Garth, wounded and crippled, could still sing.
Robert grinned. Athaclena met his gaze and smiled as well. Their hands met and joined. For a long, wordless time they stood together and watched the shimmering, ever-changing rainbows arch over nature’s percussive flood.
Strangely, the epiphany only made Athaclena feel sad, and even more regretful she had ever come to this world. She had not wanted to discover beauty here. It only made the little world’s fate seem more tragic.
How many times had she wished Uthacalthing had never accepted this assignment? But wishing seldom made things so.
As much as she loved him, Athaclena had always found her father inscrutable. His reasoning was often too convoluted for her to fathom, his actions too unpredictable. Such as taking this posting when he could have had a more prestigious one simply by asking.
And sending her into these mountains with Robert . . . it hadn’t been just “for her safety,” she could tell that much. Was she actually supposed to chase those ridiculous rumors of exotic mountain creatures? Unlikely. Probably Uthacalthing only suggested the idea in order to distract her from her worries.
Then she thought of another possible motive.
Could her father actually imagine that she might enter into a self-other bond . . . with a human? Her nostrils flared to twice their normal size at the thought. Gently, suppressing her corona in order to keep her feelings hidden, she relaxed her grip on Robert’s hand, and felt relieved when he did not hold on.
Athaclena crossed her arms and shivered.
Back home she had taken part in only a few, tentative practice bondings with boys, and those mostly as class assignments. Before her mother’s death this had been a cause of quite a few family arguments. Mathicluanna had almost despaired of her oddly reserved and private daughter. But Athaclena’s father, at least, had not pestered her to do more than she was ready for.
Until now maybe?
Robert was certainly charming and likable. With his high cheekbones and eyes pleasantly set apart, he was about as handsome as a human might hope to get. And yet, the very fact that she might think in such terms shocked Athaclena.
Her tendrils twitched. She shook her head and wiped out a nascent glyph before she could even realize what it would have been. This was a topic she had no wish to consider right now, even less than the prospect of war.
“The waterfall is beautiful, Robert,” she enunciated carefully in Anglic. “But if we stay here much longer, we shall soon be quite damp.”
He seemed to return from a distant contemplation. “Oh. Yeah, Clennie. Let’s go.” With a brief smile he turned and led the way, his human empathy waves vague and far away.
The rain forest persisted in long fingers between the hills, becoming wetter and more robust as they gained altitude. Little Garthian creatures, timid and scarce at the lower levels, now made frequent skittering rustles behind the lush vegetation, occasionally even challenging them with impudent squeaks.
Soon they reached the summit of a foothill ridge, where a chain of spine-stones jutted up, bare and gray, like the bony plates along the back of one of those ancient reptiles Uthacalthing had shown her, in a lesson book on Earth history. As they removed their packs for a rest, Robert told her that no one could explain the formations, which topped many of the hills below the Mountains of Mulun.
“Even the Branch Library on Earth has no reference,” he said as he brushed a hand along one of the jagged monoliths. “We’ve submitted a low-priority inquiry to the district branch at Tanith. Maybe in a century or so the Library Institute’s computers will dig up a report from some long-extinct race that once lived here, and then we’ll know the answer.”
“Yet you hope they do not,” she suggested.
Robert shrugged. “I guess I’d rather it were left a mystery. Maybe we could be the first to figure it out.” He looked pensively at the stones.
A lot of Tymbrimi felt the same way, preferring a good puzzle to any written fact. Not Athaclena, however. This attitude—this resentment of the Great Library—was something she found absurd.
Without the Library and the other Galactic Institutes, oxygen-breathing culture, dominant in the Five Galaxies, would long ago have fallen into total disarray—probably ending in savage, total war.
True, most starfaring clans relied far too much on the Library. And the Institutes only moderated the bickering of the most petty and vituperative senior patron lines. The present crisis was only the latest in a series that stretched back long before any now living race had come into existence.
Still, this planet was an example of what could happen when the restraint of Tradition broke down. Athaclena listened to the sounds of the forest. Shading her eyes, she watched a swarm of small, furry creatures glide from branch to branch in the direction of the afternoon sun.
“Superficially, one might not even know this was a holocaust world,” she said softly.
Robert had set their packs in the shade of a towering spine-stone and began cutting slices of soyastick salami and bread for their luncheon. “It’s been fifty thousand years since the Bururalli made a mess of Garth, Athaclena. That’s enough time for lots of surviving animal species to radiate and fill some of the emptied niches. Right now I guess you’d probably have to be a zoologist to notice the sparse species list.”
Athaclena’s corona was at full extension, kenning faint traceries of emotion from the surrounding forest. “I notice, Robert,” she said. “I can feel it. This watershed lives, but it is lonely. It has none of the life-complexity a wildwood should know. And there is no trace of Potential at all.”
Robert nodded seriously. But she sensed his distance from it all. The Bururalli Holocaust happened a long time ago, from an Earthling’s point of view.
The Bururalli had also been new, back then, just released from indenture to the Nahalli, the patron race that uplifted them to sentience. It was a special time for the Bururalli, for only when its knot of obligations was loosened at last could a client species establish unsupervised colonies of its own. When their time came the Galactic Institute of Migration had just declared the fallow world Garth ready again for limited occupation. As always, the Institute expected that local lifeforms—especially those which might some day develop Uplift Potential—would be protected at all cost by the new tenants.
The Nahalli boasted-that they had found the Bururalli a quarrelsome clan of pre-sentient carnivores and uplifted them to become perfect Galactic citizens, responsible and reliable, worthy of such a trust.
The Nahalli were proven horribly wrong.
“Well, what do you expect when an entire race goes completely crazy and starts annihilating everything in sight?” Robert asked. “Something went wrong and suddenly the Bururalli turned into berserkers, tearing apart a world they were supposed to take care of.
“It’s no wonder you don’t detect any Potential in a Garth forest, Clennie. Only those tiny creatures who could burrow and hide escaped the Bururalli’s madness. The bigger, brighter animals are all one with yesterday’s snows.”
Athaclena blinked. Just when she thought she had a grasp of Anglic Robert did this to her again, using that strange human penchant for metaphors. Unlike similes, which compared two objects, metaphors seemed to declare, against all logic, that unlike things were the same! No Galactic language allowed such nonsense.
Generally she was able to handle those odd linguistic juxtapositions, but this one had her baffled. Above her waving corona the small-glyph teev’nus formed briefly—standing for the elusiveness of perfect communication.
“I have only heard brief accounts of that era. What happened to the murderous Bururalli themselves?”
Robert shrugged. “Oh, officials from the Institutes of Uplift and Migration finally dropped by, about a century or so after the holocaust began. The inspectors were horrified, of course.
“They found the Bururalli warped almost beyond recognition, roaming the planet, hunting to death anything they could catch. By then they’d abandoned the horrible technological weapons they’d started with and nearly reverted to tooth and claw. I suppose that’s why some small animals did survive.
“Ecological disasters aren’t as uncommon as the Institutes would have it seem, but this one was a major scandal. There was galaxy-wide revulsion. Battle fleets were sent by many of the major clans and put under unified, command. Soon the Bururalli were no more.”
Athaclena nodded. “I assume their patrons, the Nahalli, were punished as well.”
“Right. They lost status and are somebody’s clients now, the price of negligence. We’re taught the story in school. Several times.”
When Robert offered the salami again, Athaclena shook her head. Her appetite had vanished. “So you humans inherited another reclamation world.”
Robert put away their lunch. “Yeah. Since we’re two-client patrons, we had to be allowed colonies, but the Institutes have mostly handed us the leavings of other peoples’ disasters. We have to work hard helping this world’s ecosystem straighten itself out, but actually, Garth is really nice compared with some of the others. You ought to see Deemi and Horst, out in the Canaan Cluster.”
“I have heard of them.” Athaclena shuddered. “I do not think I ever want to see—”
She stopped mid-sentence. “I do not …” Her eyelids fluttered as she looked around, suddenly confused. “Thu’un dun!” Her ruff puffed outward. Athaclena stood quickly and walked—half in a trance—to where the towering spine-stones overlooked the misty tops of the cloud forest.
Robert approached from behind. “What is it?”
She spoke softly. “I sense something.”
“Hmmph. That doesn’t surprise me, with that Tymbrimi nervous system of yours, especially the way you’ve been altering your body form just to please me. It’s no wonder you’re picking up static.”
Athaclena shook her head impatiently. “I have not been doing it just to please you, you arrogant human male! And I’ve asked you before kindly to be more careful with your horrible metaphors. A Tymbrimi corona is not a radio!” She gestured with her hand. “Now please be quiet for a moment.”
Robert fell silent. Athaclena concentrated, trying to kenn again. . . .
A corona might not pick up static like a radio, but it could suffer interference. She sought after the faint aura she had felt so very briefly, but it was impossible. Robert’s clumsy, eager empathy flux crowded it out completely.
“What was it, Clennie?” he asked softly.
“I do not know. Something not very far away, off toward the southeast. It felt like people—men and neo-chimpanzees mostly—but there was something else as well.”
Robert frowned. “Well, I guess it might have been one of the ecological management stations. Also, there are isolated freeholds all through this area, mostly higher up, where the seisin grows.”
She turned swiftly. “Robert, I felt Potential! For the briefest moment of clarity, I touched the emotions of a pre-sentient being!”
Robert’s feelings were suddenly cloudy and turbulent, his face impassive. “What do you mean?”
“My father told me about something, before you and I left for the mountains. At the time I paid little attention. It seemed impossible, like those fairy tales your human authors create to give us Tymbrimi strange dreams.”
“Your people buy them by the shipload,” Robert interjected. “Novels, old movies, threevee, poems …”
Athaclena ignored his aside. “Uthacalthing mentioned stories of a creature of this planet, a native being of high Potential . . . one who is supposed to have actually survived the Bururalli Holocaust.” Athaclena’s corona foamed forth a glyph rare to her . . . syullf-tha, the joy of a puzzle to be solved. “I wonder. Could the legends possibly be true?” ‘
Did Robert’s mood flicker with a note of relief? Athaclena felt his crude but effective ejnotional guard go opaque.
“Hmmm. Well, there is a legend,” he said. “A simple story told by wolflings. It could hardly be of interest to a sophisticated Galactic, I suppose.”
Athaclena eyed him carefully and touched his arm, stroking it gently. “Are you going to make me wait while you draw out this mystery with dramatic pauses? Or will you save yourself bruises and tell me what you know at once?”
Robert laughed. “Well, since you re so persuasive. You just might have picked up the empathy output of a Garthling.”
Athaclena’s broad, gold-flecked eyes blinked. “That is the name my father used!”
“Ah. Then Uthacalthing has been listening to old seisin hunters’ tales. . . . Imagine having such after only a hundred Earth years here. . . . Anyway, it’s said that one large animal did manage to escape the Bururalli, through cunning, ferocity, and a whole lot of Potential. The mountain men and chims tell of sampling traps robbed, laundry stolen from clotheslines, and strange markings scratched on unclimbable cliff faces.
“Oh, it’s probably all a lot of eyewash.” Robert smiled. “But I did recall those legends when Mother told me I was to come up here. So I figured, so that it wouldn’t be a total loss, I might as well take a Tymbrimi along to see if she could flush out a Garthling with her empathy net.”
Some metaphors Athaclena understood quite readily. Her fingernails pressed into Robert’s arm. “So?” she asked with a questing lilt. “That is the entire reason I am in this wilderness? I am to be a sniffer-out of smoke and legends for you?”
“Sure,” Robert teased. “Why else would I come out here, all alone in the mountains with an alien from outer space?”
Athaclena hissed through her teeth. But within she could not help but feel pleased. This human sardonicism wasn’t unlike reverse-talk among her own people. And when Robert laughed aloud, she found she had to join him. For the moment all worry of war and danger was banished. It was a welcome release for both of them.
“If such a creature exists, we must find it, you and I,” she said at last.
“Yeah, Clennie. We’ll find it together.”
8
Fiben
TAASF Scoutship Proconsul hadn’t outlived its pilot after all. It had seen its last mission—the ancient boat was dead in space—but within its bubble canopy life still remained.
Enough life, at least, to inhale the pungent stench of a six days unwashed ape—and to exhale an apparently unceasing string of imaginative curses.
Fiben finally ran down when he found he was repeating himself. He had long ago covered every permutation, combination, and juxtaposition of bodily, spiritual, and hereditary attributes—real and imaginary—the enemy could possibly possess. That exercise had carried him all the way through his own brief part in the space battle, while he fired his popgun weaponry and evaded counterblows like a gnat ducking sledgehammers, through the concussions of near-misses and the shriek of tortured metal, and into an aftermath of dazed, confused bemusement that he did not seem to be dead after all. Not yet at least.
When he was sure the life capsule was still working and not about to sputter out along with the rest of the scoutboat, Fiben finally wriggled out of his suit and sighed at his first opportunity to scratch in days. He dug in with a will, using not only his hands but the lingers and tumb of his left foot, as well. Finally he sagged back, aching from the pounding he had been through.
His main job had been to pass close enough to collect good data for the rest of the defense force. Fiben guessed that zooming straight down the middle of the invading fleet probably qualified. Heckling the enemy he had thrown in for free.
It seemed the interlopers failed toxappreciate his running commentary as Proconsul plunged through their midst. He’d lost count of how many times close calls came near to cooking him. By the time he had passed behind and beyond the onrush-ing armada, Proconsul’s entire aft end had been turned into a glazed-over hunk of slag.
The main propulsion system was gone, of course. There was no way to return and help his comrades in the desperate, futile struggle that followed soon after. Drifting farther and farther from the one-sided battle, Fiben could only listen helplessly.
It wasn’t even a contest. The fighting lasted little more than a day.
He remembered the last charge of the corvette, Darwin, accompanied by two converted freighters and a small swarm of surviving scoutboats. They streaked down, blasting their way into the flank of the invading host, turning it, throwing one wing of battlecruisers into confusion under clouds of smoke and waves of noisome probability waves.
Not a single Terran craft came out of that maelstrom. Fiben knew then that TAASF Bonobo, and his friend Simon, were gone.
Right now, the enemy seemed to be pursuing a few fugitives off toward Ifni knew where. They were taking their time, cleaning up thoroughly before proceeding to supine Garth.
Now Fiben resumed his cursing along a new tack. All in a spirit of constructive criticism, of course, he dissected the character faults of the species his own race was unfortunate enough to have as patrons.
Why? he asked the universe. Why did humans—those hapless, hairless, wolfling wretches—have the incredibly bad taste to have uplifted neo-chimpanzees into a galaxy so obviously run by idiots?
Eventually, he slept.
His dreams were fitful. Fiben kept imagining that he was trying to speak, but his voice would not shape the sentences, a nightmare possibility to one whose great-grandfather spoke only crudely, with the aid of devices, and whose slightly more distant ancestors faced the world without words at all.
Fiben sweated. No shame was greater than this. In his dream he sought speech as if it were an object, a thing that might be misplaced, somehow.
On looking down he saw a glittering gem lying on the ground. Perhaps this was the gift of words, Fiben thought, and he bent over to take it. But he was too clumsy! His thumb refused to work with his forefinger, and he wasn’t able to pluck the bauble out of the dust. In fact, all of his efforts seemed only to push it in deeper.
Despairing finally, he was forced to crouch down and pick it up with his lips.
It burned! In his dream he cried out as a terrible searing poured down his throat like liquid fire.
And yet, he recognized that this was one of those strange nightmares—the kind in which one could be both objective and terrified at the same time. As one dreamself writhed in agony, another part of Fiben witnessed it in a state of interested detachment.
All at once the scene shifted. Fiben found himself standing in the midst of a gathering of bearded men in black coats and floppy hats. They were mostly elderly, and they leafed through dusty texts as they argued with each other. An oldtime Talmudic conclave, he recognized suddenly, like those he had read about in comparative religions class, back at the University. The rabbis sat in a circle, discussing symbolism and biblical interpretation. One lifted an aged hand to point at Fiben.
“He that lappeth like an animal, Gideon, he shall thou not take …”
“Is that what it means?” Fiben asked. The pain was gone. Now he was more bemused than fearful. His pal, Simon, had been Jewish. No doubt that explained part of this crazy symbolism. What was going on here was obvious. These learned men, these wise human scholars, were trying to illuminate that frightening first part of his dream for him.
“No, no,” a second sage countered. “The symbols relate to the trial of the infant Moses! An angel, you’ll recall, guided his hand to the glowing coals, rather than the shining jewels, and his mouth was burned . . .”
“But I don’t see what that tells me!” Fiben protested.
The oldest rabbi raised his hand, and the others all went silent.
“The dream stands for none of those things. The symbolism should be obvious,” he said.
“It comes from the oldest book . . .”
The sage’s bushy eyebrows knotted with concern.
“… And Adam, too, ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge . . .”
“Uh,” Fiben groaned aloud, awakening in a sweat. The gritty, smelly capsule was all around him again, and yet the vividness of the dream lingered, making him wonder for a moment which was real after all. Finally he shrugged it off. “Old Proconsul must have drifted through the wake of some Eatee probability mine while I slept. Yeah. That must be it. I’ll never doubt the stories they tell in a spacer’s bar again.”
When he checked his battered instruments Fiben found that the battle had moved on around the sun. His own derelict, meanwhile, was on a nearly perfect intersect orbit with a planet.
“Hmmmph,” he grunted as he worked the computer. What it told him was ironic. It really is Garth.
He still had a little maneuvering power in the gravity systems. Perhaps enough, just maybe, to get him within escape pod range.
And wonder of wonders, if his ephemerides were right, he might even be able to reach the Western Sea area … a bit east of Port Helenia. Fiben whistled tunelessly for a few minutes. He wondered what the chances were that this should happen. A million to one? Probably more like a trillion.
Or was the universe just suckering him with a bit of hope before the next whammy?
Either way, he decided, there was some solace in thinking that, under all these stars, someone out there was still thinking of him personally.
He got out his tool kit and set to work making the necessary repairs.
9
Uthacalthing
Uthacalthing knew it was unwise to wait much longer. Still he remained with the Librarians, watching them try to coax forth one more valuable detail before it was time at last to go.
He regarded the human and neo-chimpanzee technicians as they hurried about under the high-domed ceiling of the Planetary Branch Library. They all had jobs to do and concentrated on them intently, efficiently. And yet one could sense a ferment just below the surface, one of oarely suppressed fear.
Unbidden, rittitees formed in the low sparking of his corona. The glyph was one commonly used by Tymbrimi parents to calm frightened children.
They can’t detect you, Uthacalthing told rittitees. And yet it obstinately hovered, trying to soothe young ones in distress.
Anyway, these people aren’t children. Humans have only known of the Great Library for two Earth centuries. But they had thousands of years of their own history before that. They may still lack Galactic polish and sophistication, but that deficit has sometimes been an advantage to them.
Rarely. Rittitees was dubious.
Uthacalthing ended the argument by drawing the uncertain glyph back where it belonged, into his own well of being.
Under the vaulted stone ceiling towered a five-meter gray monolith, embossed with a rayed spiral sigil—symbol of the Great Library for three billion years. Nearby, data loggers filled crystalline memory cubes. Printers hummed and spat bound reports which were quickly annotated and carted away.
This Library station, a class K outlet, was a small one indeed. It contained only the equivalent of one thousand times all the books humans had written before Contact, a pittance compared with the full Branch Library on Earth, or sector general on Tanith.
Still, when Garth was taken this room, too, would fall to the invader.
Traditionally, that should make no difference. The Library was supposed to remain open to all, even parties fighting over the territory it stood upon. In times like these, however, it was unwise to count on such niceties. The colonial resistance forces planned to carry off what they could in hopes of using the information somehow, later.
A pittance of a pittance. Of course it had been his suggestion that they do this, but Uthacalthing was frankly amazed that the humans had gone along with the idea so vigorously. After all, why bother? What could such a small smattering of information accomplish?
This raid on the Planetary Library served his purposes, but it also reinforced his opinion of Earth people. They just never gave up. It was yet another reason he found the creatures delightful.
The hidden reason for this chaos—his own private jest— had called for the dumping and misplacing of a few specific megafiles, easily overlooked in all of this confusion. In fact, nobody appeared to have noticed when he briefly attached his own input-output cube to the massive Library, waited a few seconds, then pocketed the little sabotage device again.
Done. Now there was little to do but watch the wolflings while he waited for his car.
Off in the distance a wailing tone began to rise and fall. It was the keening of the spaceport siren, across the bay, as another crippled refugee from the rout in space came in for an emergency landing. They had heard that sound all too infrequently. Everyone already knew that there had been few survivors.
Mostly the traffic consisted of departing aircraft. Many mainlanders had already taken flight to the chain of islands in the Western Sea where the vast majority of the Earthling population still made its home. The Government was preparing its own evacuation.
When the sirens moaned, every man and chim looked up briefly. Momentarily, the workers broadcast a complex
fugue of anxiety that Uthacalthing could almost taste with his corona.
Almost taste?
Oh, what lovely, surprising things, these metaphors, Uthacalthing thought. Can one taste with one’s corona? Or touch with one’s eyes? Anglic is so silly, yet so delightfully thought provoking.
And do not dolphins actually see with their ears?
Zunour’thzun formed above his waving tendrils, resonating with the fear of the men and chims.
Yes, we all hope to live, for we have so very much left to do or taste or see or kenn. . . .
Uthacalthing wished diplomacy did not require that Tymbrimi choose their dullest types as envoys. “He had been selected as an ambassador because, among other qualities, he was boring, at least from the point of view of those back home.
And poor Athaclena seemed to be even worse off, so sober and serious.
He freely admitted that it was partly his own fault. That was one reason he had brought along his own father’s large collection of pre-Contact Earthling comic recordings. The Three Stooges, especially, inspired him. Alas, as yet Athaclena seemed unable to understand the subtle, ironic brilliance of those ancient Terran comedic geniuses.
Through Sylth—that courier of the dead-but-remembered—his long-dead wife still chided him, reaching out from beyond life to say that their daughter should be home, where her lively peers might yet draw her out from her isolation.
Perhaps, he thought. But Mathicluanna had had her try. Uthacalthing believed in his own prescription for their odd daughter.
A small, uniformed neo-chimpanzee female—a chimmie— stepped in front of Uthacalthing and bowed, her hands folded respectfully in front of her.
“Yes, miss?” Uthacalthing spoke first, as protocol demanded. Although he was a patron speaking to a client, he generously included the polite, archaic honorific.
“Y-your excellency.” The chimmie’s scratchy voice trembled slightly. Probably, this was the first time she had ever spoken to a non-Terran. “Your excellency, Planetary Coordinator Oneagle has sent word that the preparations have been completed. The fires are about to be set.
“She asks if you would like to witness your . . . er, program, unleashed.”
As Uthacalthing’s eyes separated wider in amusement, the wrinkled fur between his brows flattening momentarily. His “program” hardly deserved the name. It might better be called a devious practical joke on the invaders. A long shot, at best.
Not even Megan Oneagle knew what he was really up to. That necessity was a pity, of course. For even if it failed—as was likely—it would still be worthy of a chuckle or two. A laugh might help his friend through the dark times ahead of her.
“Thank you, corporal,” he nodded. “Please lead the way.”
As he followed the little client, Uthacalthing felt a faint sense of regret at leaving so much undone. A good joke required much preparation, and there was just not enough time.
If only I had a decent sense of humor!
Ah, well. Where subtlety fads us we must simply make do with cream pies.
Two hours later he was on his way back to town from Government House. The meeting had been brief, with battle fleets approaching orbit and landings expected soon. Megan Oneagle had already moved most of the government and her few remaining forces to safer ground.
Uthacalthing figured they actually had a little more time. There would be no landing until the invaders had broadcast their manifesto. The rules of the Institute for Civilized Warfare required it.
Of course, with the Five Galaxies in turmoil, many starfaring clans were playing fast and loose with tradition right now. But in this case observing the proprieties would cost the enemy nothing. They had already won. Now it was only a matter of occupying the territory.
Besides, the battle in space had showed one thing. It was clear now the enemy were Gubru.
The humans and chims of this planet were not in for a pleasant time. The Gubru Clan had been among the worst of Earth’s tormentors since Contact. Nonetheless, the avian Ga-lactics were sticklers for rules. By their own interpretation of them, at least.
Megan had been disappointed when he turned down her offer of transportation to sanctuary. But Uthacalthing had his own ship. Anyway, he still had business to take care of here in town. He bid farewell to the Coordinator with a promise to see her soon.
“Soon” was such a wonderfully ambiguous word. One of many reasons he treasured Anglic was the wolfling tongue’s marvelous untidiness!
By moonlight Port Helenia felt even smaller and more forlorn than the tiny, threatened village it was by day. Winter might be mostly over, but a stiff breeze still blew from the east, sending leaves tumbling across the nearly empty streets as his driver took him back toward his chancery compound. The wind carried a moist odor, and Uthacalthing imagined he could smell the mountains where his daughter and Megan’s son had gone for refuge.
It was a decision that had not won the parents much thanks.
His car had to pass by the Branch Library again on its way to the Tymbrimi Embassy. The driver had to slow to go around another vehicle. Because of this Uthacalthing was treated to a rare sight—a high-caste Thennanin in full fury under the streetlights.
“Please stop here,” he said suddenly.
In front of the stone Library building a large floatercraft hummed quietly. Light poured out of its raised cupola, creating a dark bouquet of shadows on the broad steps. Five clearly were cast by neo-chimpanzees, their long arms exag- , gerated in the stretched silhouettes. Two even longer penum-bral shadows swept away from slender figures standing close to the floater. A pair of stoic, disciplined Ynnin—looking like tall, armored kangaroos—stood unmoving as if molded out of stone.
Their employer and patron, owner of the largest silhouette, towered above the little Terrans. Blocky and powerful, the creature’s wedgelike shoulders seemed to merge right into its bullet-shaped head. The latter was topped by a high, rippling crest, like that of a helmeted Greek warrior.
As Uthacalthing stepped out of his own car he heard a loud voice rich in guttural sibilants.
The chimpanzees shook their heads, confused and clearly intimidated. Obviously none of them spoke Galactic Six. Still, when the huge Thennanin started forward the little Earthlings moved to interpose themselves, bowing low, but adamant in their refusal to let him pass.
This only served to make the speaker angrier. “Idatess! Nittaril kollunta …”
The large Galactic stopped abruptly on seeing Uthacalthing. His leathery, beaklike mouth remained closed as he switched to Galactic Seven, speaking through his breathing slits.
“Ah! Uthacalthing, ab-Caltmour ab-Brma abKrallnith ul-Tytlal! I see you!”
Uthacalthing would have recognized Kault in a city choked with Thennanin. The big, pompous, high-caste male knew that protocol did not require use of full species names in casual encounters. But now Uthacalthing had no choice. He had to reply in kind.
“Kault, ab-Wortl ab-Kosh ab-Rosh ab-Tothtoon ul-Paimin ul-Rammin ul-Ynnin ul-Olumimin, I see you as well.”
Each “ab” in the lengthy patronymic told of one of the patron races from which the Thennanin clan was descended, back to the eldest still living. “Ul” preceded the name of each client species the Thennanin had themselves uplifted to starfaring sentience. Kault’s people had been very busy, the last megayear or so. They bragged incessantly of their long species name.
The Thennanin were idiots.
“Uthacalthing! You are adept in that garbage tongue the Earthlings use. Please explain to these ignorant, half-uplifted creatures that I wish to pass! I have need to use the Branch Library, and if they do not stand aside I shall be forced to have their masters chastise them!”
Uthacalthing shrugged the standard gesture of regretful inability to comply. “They are only doing their jobs, Envoy Kault. When the Library is fully occupied with matters of planetary defense, it is briefly allowable to restrict access solely to the lease owners.”
Kault stared unblinkingly at Uthacalthing. His breathing slits puffed. “Babes,” he muttered softly in an obscure dialect of Galactic Twelve—unaware perhaps that Uthacalthing understood. “Infants, ruled by unruly children, tutored by juvenile delinquents!”
Uthacalthing’s eyes separated and his tendrils pulsed with irony. They crafiedfsu’usturatu, which sympathizes, while laughing.
Damn good thing Thennanin have a rock’s sensitivity to empathy. Uthacalthing thought in Anglic as he hurriedly erased the glyph. Of the Galactic clans involved in the current spate of fanaticism, the Thennanin were less repulsive than most. Some of them actually believed they were acting in the best interests of those they conquered.
It was apparent whom Kault meant when he spoke of “delinquents” leading the clan of Earth astray. Uthacalthing was far from offended.
“These infants fly starships, Kault,” he answered in the same dialect, to the Thennanin’s obvious surprise. “The neo-chimpanzees may be the finest clients to appear in half a megayear . . . with the possible exception of their cousins, the neo-dolphins. Shall we not respect their earnest desire to do their duty?”
Kault’s crest went rigid at the mention of the other Earthling client race. “My Tymbrimi friend, did you mean to imply that you have heard more about the dolphin ship? Have they been found?”
Uthacalthing felt a little guilty for toying with Kault. All considered, he was not a bad sort. He came from a minority political faction among the Thennanin which had a few times even spoken for peace with the Tymbrimi. Nevertheless, Uthacalthing had reasons for wanting to pique his fellow diplomat’s interest, and he had prepared for an encounter like this.
“Perhaps I have said more than I should. Please think nothing more of it. Now I am saddened to say that I really must be going. I am late for a meeting. I wish you good fortune and survival in the days ahead, Kault.”
He bowed in the casual fashion of one patron to another and turned to go. But within, Uthacalthing was laughing. For he knew the real reason Kault was here at the Library. The Thennanin could only have come looking for him.
“I ..-. .” Kault dropped back into GalSeven. “I must speak with you regarding the evacuation. You may have heard, my ship is in disrepair. I am at the moment bereft of transport.”
The Thennanin’s crest fluttered in discomfort. Protocol and diplomatic standing were one thing, but the fellow obviously would rather not be in town when the Gubru landed. “I must ask therefore. Will there be some opportunity to discuss the possibility of mutual aid?” The big creature said it in a rush.
Uthacalthing pretended to ponder the idea seriously. After all, his species and Kault’s were officially at war right now. He nodded at last. “Be at my compound about midnight tomorrow night—no later than a mictaar thereafter, mind you. And please bring only a minimum of baggage. My boat is small. With that understood, I gladly offer you a ride to sanctuary.”
He turned to his neo-chimp driver. “That would only be courteous and proper, would it not, corporal?”
The poor chimmie blinked up at Uthacalthing in confusion. She had been selected for this duty because she knew GalSeven. But that was a far cry from penetrating the arcana that were going on here.
“Y-yessir. It, it seems like the kind thing to do.”
Uthacalthing nodded, and smiled at Kault. “There you are, my dear colleague. Not merely correct, but kind. It is well when we elders learn from such wise precociousness, and add that quality to our own actions, is it not?”
For the first time, he saw the Thennanin blink. Turmoil radiated from the creature. At last though, relief won out over suspicion that he was being played for the fool. Kault bowed to Uthacalthing. And then, because Uthacalthing had included her in the conversation, he added a brief, shallow nod to the little chimmie.
“For my clientsss and myssselfff, I thank you,” he said awkwardly in Anglic. Kault snapped his elbow spikes, and his Ynnin clients followed him as he lumbered into the floater. The closing cupola cut off the sharp dome light at last. The chims from the Library looked at Uthacalthing gratefully.
The floater rose on its gravity cushion and moved off rapidly. Uthacalthing’s driver held the door of his own wheelcar for him, but he stretched his arms and inhaled deeply. “I am thinking that it might be a nice idea to go for a walk,” he told her. “The embassy is only a short distance from here. Why don’t you take a few hours off, corporal, and spend some time with your family and friends?”
“B-but ser …”
“I will be all right,” he said firmly. He bowed, and felt her rush of innocent joy at the simple courtesy. She bowed deeply in return.
Delightful creatures, Uthacalthing thought as he watched the car drive off. I have met a few neo-chimpanzees who even seem to have the glimmerings of a true sense of humor.
I do hope the species survives.
He started walking. Soon he had left the clamor of the Library behind him and passed into a residential neighborhood. The breeze had left the night air clear, and the city’s soft lights did not drive away the flickering stars. At this time the Galactic rim was a ragged spill of diamonds across the sky. There were no traces to be seen of the battle in space; it had been too small a skirmish to leave much visible residue.
All around Uthacalthing were sounds that told of the difference of this evening. There were distant sirens and the growl of aircraft passing overhead. On nearly every block he heard someone crying . . . voices, human or chim, shouting or murmuring in frustration and fear. On the fluttering level of empathy, waves beat up against one another in a froth of emotion. His corona could not deflect the inhabitants’ dread as they awaited morning.
Uthacalthing did not try to keep it out as he strolled up dimly lit streets lined with decorative trees. He dipped his tendrils into the churning emotional flux and drew forth above him a strange new glyph. It floated, nameless and terrible, Time’s ageless threat made momentarily palpable.
Uthacalthing smiled an ancient, special kind of smile. And at that moment nobody, not even in the darkness, could possibly have mistaken him for a human being.
There are many paths, … he thought, again savoring the open, undisciplined nuances of Anglic.
He left the thing he had made to hang in the air, dissolving slowly behind him, as he walked under the slowly wheeling pattern of the stars.
10
Robert
Robert awoke two hours before dawn.
There was a period of disorientation as the strange feelings and images of sleep slowly dissipated. He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his head of muzzy, clouded confusion.
He had been running, he recalled. Running as one does sometimes but only in dreams—in long, floating steps that reach for leagues and seem barely to touch down. Around him had shifted and drifted vague shapes, mysteries, and half-born images that slipped out of reach even as his waking mind tried to recall them.
Robert looked over at Athaclena, lying nearby in her own sleeping bag. Her brown Tymbrimi ruff—that tapered helm of soft brown fur—was puffed out. The silvery tendrils of her corona waved delicately, as if probing and grappling with something invisible in the space overhead.
She sighed and spoke very low—a few short phrases in the rapid, highly syllabic Tymbrimi dialect of Galactic Seven.
Perhaps that explained his own strange dreams, Robert realized. He must have been picking up traces of hers!
Watching the waving tendrils, .he blinked. For just a moment it had seemed as if something was there, floating in the air just above the sleeping alien girl. It had been like . . . like …
Robert frowned, shaking his head. It hadn’t been like anything at all. The very act of trying to compare it to something else seemed to drive the thing away even as he thought about it.
Athaclena sighed and turned over. Her corona settled down. There were no more half glimmers in the dimness.
Robert slid out of his bag and fumbled for his boots before standing. He felt his way around the towering spine-stone beneath which they had made camp. There was barely enough starlight to find a path among the strange monoliths.
He came to a promontory looking over toward the westward mountain chain, and the northern plains to his right. Below this ridgetop vantage point there lay a gently rippling sea of dark woods. The trees filled the air with a damp, heavy aroma.
Resting his back against a spine-stone, he sat down on the ground to try to think.
If only the adventure were all there was to this trip. An idyllic interlude in the Mountains of Mulun in the company of an alien beauty. But there was no forgetting, no escaping the guilty sureness that he should not be here. He really ought to be with his classmates—with his militia unit—facing the troubles alongside them.
That was not to be, however. Once again, his mother’s career had interfered with his own life. It was not the first time Robert had wished he were not the son of a politician.
He watched the stars, sparkling in bright strokes that followed the meeting of two Galactic spiral arms.
Perhaps if I had known more adversity in my life, I might be better prepared for what’s to come. Better able to accept disappointment.
It wasn’t just that he was the son of the Planetary Coordinator, with all of the advantages that came with status. It went beyond that.
All through childhood he had noticed that where other boys had stumbled and suffered growing pains, he had always somehow had the knack of moving gracefully. Where most had groped their way in awkwardness and embarrassment toward adolescence and sexuality, he had slipped into pleasure and popularity with all the comfort and ease of putting on an old shoe.
His mother—and his starfarer father, whenever Sam Tennace sojourned on Garth—had always emphasized that he should watch the interactions of his peers, not simply let things happen and accept them as inevitable. And indeed, he began to see how, in every age group, there were a few like him—for whom growing up was easier somehow. They stepped lightly through the morass of adolescence while everyone else slogged, overjoyed to find an occasional patch of solid ground. And it seemed many of those lucky ones accepted their happy fate as if it were some sign of divine election. The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.
In Robert’s case, he had never sought a reputation as a playboy. But one had come, over time, almost against his will. In his heart a secret fear had started to grow: a superstitition that he had confided in nobody. Did the universe balance all things? Did it take away to compensate for whatever it gave? The Cult of Ifni was supposed to be a starfarer’s joke. And yet sometimes things seemed so contrived!
It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.
Still …
Like many humans, he sometimes envied the handsome, flexible, self-sufficient Tymbrimi. A young race by Galactic standards, they were nevertheless old and galaxy-wise compared with Mankind. Humanity had discovered sanity, peace, and a science of mind only a generation before Contact. There were still plenty of kinks to be worked out of Terragens society. The Tymbrimi, in comparison, seemed to know themselves so well.
Is that the basic reason why I am attracted to Athaclena? Symbolically she is the elder, the more knowledgeable one. It gives me an opportunity to be awkward and stumble, and enjoy the role.
It was all so confusing, and Robert wasn’t even certain of his own feelings. He was having fun up here in the mountains with Athaclena, and that made him ashamed. He resented his mother bitterly for sending him, and felt guilty about that as well.
Oh, if only I’d been allowed to fight! Combat, at least, was straightforward and easy to understand. It was ancient, honorable, simple.
Robert looked up quickly. The’re, among the stars, a pinpoint had flared up to momentary brilliance. As he watched, two more sudden brightnesses burst forth, then another. The sharp, glowing sparks lasted long enough for him to note their positions.
The pattern was too regular to be an accident. . . twenty degree intervals above the equator, from the Sphinx all the way across to the’Batman, where the red planet Tloona shone in the middle of the ancient hero’s belt.
So, it has come. The destruction of the synchronous satellite network had been expected, but it was startling actually to witness it. Of course this meant actual landings would not be long delayed.
Robert felt a heaviness and hoped that not too many of his human and chim friends had died.
I never found out if I had what it takes when things really counted. Now maybe I never will.
He was resolved about one thing. He would do the job he had been assigned—escorting a noncombatant alien into the mountains and supposed safety. There was one duty he had to perform tonight, while Athaclena slept. As silently as he could, Robert returned to their backpacks. He pulled the radio set from his lower left pouch and began disassembling it in the dark.
He was halfway finished when another sudden brightening made him look up at the eastern sky. A bolide streaked flame across the glittering starfield, leaving glowing embers in its wake. Something was entering fast, burning as it penetrated the atmosphere.
The debris of war.
Robert stood up and watched the manmade meteor lay a fiery trail across the sky. It disappeared behind a range of hills not more than twenty kilometers away. Perhaps much closer.
“God keep you,” he whispered to the warriors whose ship it must have been.
He had no fear of blessing his enemies, for it was clear which side needed help tonight, and would for a long time to come.
11
Galactics
The Suzerain of Propriety moved about the bridge of the flagship in short skips and hops, enjoying the pleasure of pacing while Gubru and Kwackoo soldiery ducked out of the way.
It might be a long time before the Gubru high priest would enjoy such freedom of movement again. After the occupation force landed, the Suzerain would not be able to set foot on the “ground” for many miktaars. Not until propriety was assured and consolidation complete could it touch the soil of the planet that lay just ahead of the advancing armada.
The other two leaders of the invasion force—the Suzerain of Beam and Talon and the Suzerain of Cost and Caution— did not have to operate under such restrictions. That was all right. The military and the bureaucracy had their own functions. But to the Suzerain of Propriety was given the task of overseeing Appropriateness of Behavior for the Gubru expedition. And to do that the priest would have to remain perched.
Far across the command bridge, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution could be heard complaining. There had been unexpected losses in the furious little fight the humans had put up. Every ship put out of commission hurt the Gubru cause in these dangerous times.
Foolish, short-sighted carping, the Suzerain of Propriety thought. The physical damage done by the humans’ resistance had been far less significant than the ethical and legal harm. Because the brief fight had been so sharp and effective, it could not simply be ignored. It would have to be credited.
The Earth wolflings had recorded, in action, their opposition to the arrival of Gubru might. Unexpectedly, they had done it with meticulous attention to the Protocols of War.
They may be more than mere clever beasts —
More than beasts —
Perhaps they and their clients should be studied —
Studied — zzooon
That gesture of resistance by the tiny Earthling flotilla meant that the Suzerain would have to remain perched for at least the initial part of the occupation. It would have to find an excuse, now, the sort of casus belli that would let the Gubru proclaim to the Five Galaxies that the Earthlings’ lease on Garth was null and void.
Until that happened, the Rules of War applied, and in enforcing them, the Suzerain of Propriety knew there would be conflicts with the other two commanders. Its future lovers and competitors. Correct policy demanded tension among them, even if some of the laws the priest had to enforce struck it, deep down, as stupid.
Oh for the time, may it be soon —
Soon, when we are released from rules — zzooon
Soon, when Change rewards the virtuous —
When the Progenitors return — zzooon
The Suzerain fluttered its downy coat. It commanded one of its servitors, a fluffy, imperturbable Kwackoo, to bring a feather-blower and groomer.
The Earthlings will stumble —
They will give us justification — zzooon
12
Athaclena
That morning Athaclena could tell that something had happened the night before. But Robert said little in answer to her questions. His crude but effective empathy shield blocked her attempts at kenning.
Athaclena tried not to feel insulted. After all, her human friend had only just begun learning to use his modest talents. He could not know the many subtle ways an empath could use to show a desire for privacy. Robert only knew how to close the door completely.
Breakfast was quiet. When Robert spoke she answered in monosyllables. Logically, Athaclena could understand his guardedness, but then there was no rule that said she had to be outgoing, either.
Low clouds crested the ridgelines that morning, to be sliced by rows of serrated spine-stones. It made for an eerie, foreboding scene. They hiked through the tattered wisps of brumous fog in silence, gradually climbing higher in the foothills leading toward the Mountains of Mulun. The air was still and seemed to carry a vague tension Athaclena could not identify. It tugged at her mind, drawing forth unbeckoned memories.
She recalled a time when she had accompanied her mother into the northern mountains on Tymbrim—riding gurval-back up a trail only slightly wider than this one—to attend a Ceremony of Uplift for the Tytlal.
Uthacalthing had been away on a diplomatic mission, and nobody knew yet what type of transport her father would be able to use for his return trip. It was an all-important question, for if he was able to come all the way via A-level hyperspace and transfer points, he could return home in a hundred days or less. If forced to travel by D-level—or worse, normal space—Uthacalthing might be away for the rest of their natural lives.
The Diplomatic Service tried to inform its officers’ families as soon as these matters were clear, but on this occasion they had taken far too long. Athaclena and her mother had started to become public nuisances, throwing irksome anxiety shimmers all over their neighborhood. At that point it had been politely hinted that they ought to get out of the city for a while. The Service offered them tickets to go watch the representatives of the Tytlal undergo another rite of passage on the long path of Uplift.
Robert’s slick mind shield reminded her of Mathicluanna’s closely guarded pain during that slow ride into purple-frosted hills. Mother and daughter hardly spoke to each other at all as they passed through broad fallow parklands and at last arrived at the grassy plain of an ancient volcano caldera. There, near a solitary symmetrical hilltop, thousands of Tymbrimi had gathered near a swarm of brightly colored canopies to witness the Acceptance and Choice of the Tytlal.
Observers had come from many distinguished starfaring clans—Synthians, Kanten, Mrgh’4luargi—and of course a gaggle of cachinnatous humans. The Earthlings mixed with their Tymbrimi allies down near the refreshment tables, making a boisterous high time of it. She remembered her attitude then, upon seeing so many of the atrichic, bromopnean creatures. Was I really Such a snob? Athaclena wondered.
She had sniffed disdainfully at the noise the humans made with their loud, low laughter. Their strange, applanate stares were everywhere as they strutted about displaying their bulging muscles. Even their females looked like caricatures of Tymbrimi weightlifters.
Of course, Athaclena had barely embarked on adolescence back on that day. Now, on reflection, she recalled that her own people were just as enthusiastic and flamboyant as the humans, waving their hands intricately and sparking the air with brief, flashing glyphs. This was, after all, a great day. For the Tytlal were to “choose” their patrons, and their new Uplift Sponsors.
Various dignitaries rested under the bright canopies. Of course the immediate patrons of the Tymbrimi, the Caltmour, could not attend, being tragically extinct. But their colors and sigil were in view, in honor of those who had given the Tymbrimi the gift of sapience.
Those present were honored, however^ by a delegation of the chattering, stalk-legged Brma, who had uplifted the Caltmour long, long ago.
Athaclena remembered gasping, her corona crackling in surprise, when she saw that another shape curled under a dark brown covering, high upon the ceremonial mount. It was a Krallnith! The seniormost race in their patron-line had sent a representative! The Krallnith were nearly torpid by now, having given over most of their waning enthusiasm to strange forms of meditation. It was commonly assumed they would not be around many more epochs. It was an honor to have one of them attend, and offer its blessing to the latest members of their clan.
Of course, it was the Tytlal themselves who were the center of attention. Wearing short silvery robes, they nonetheless looked much like those Earth creatures known as otters. The Tytlal legatees fairly radiated pride as they prepared for their latest rite of Uplift.
“Look,” Athaclena’s mother had pointed. “The Tytlal have elected their muse-poet, Sustruk, to represent them. Do you recall meeting him, Athaclena?”
Naturally she remembered. It had been only the year before, when Sustruk visited their home back in the city. Uthacalthing had brought the Tytlal genius by to meet his wife and daughter, shortly before he was to leave on his latest mission.
“Sustruk’s poetry is simpleminded doggerel,” Athaclena muttered.
Mathicluanna looked at her sharply. Then her corona waved. The glyph she crafted was sh’cha’kuon, the dark mirror only your own mother knew how to hold up before you. Athaclena’s resentment reflected back at her, easily seen for what it was. She looked away, shamed.
It was, after all, unfair to blame the poor Tytlal for reminding her of her absent father.
The ceremony was indeed beautiful. A glyph-choir of Tymbrimi from the colony-world Juthtath performed “The Apotheosis of Lerensini,” and even the bare-pated humans stared in slack-jawed awe, obviously kenning some of the intricate, floating harmonies. Only the bluff, impenetrable Thennanin ambassadors seemed untouched, and they did not seem to mind at all being left out.
After that the Brma singer Kuff-KufFt crooned an ancient, atonal paean to the Progenitors.
One bad moment for Athaclena came when the hushed audience listened to a composition specially created for the occasion by one of the twelve Great Dreamers of Earth, the whale named Five Bubble Spirals. While whales were not officially sentient beings, that fact did not keep them from being honored treasures. That they dwelled on Earth, under the care of “wolfling” humans, was one more cause for resentment by some of the more conservative Galactic clans.
Athaclena recalled sitting down and covering her ears while everyone else swayed happily to the eerie cetacean music. To her it was worse than the sound of houses falling. Mathicluanna’s glance conveyed her worry. My strange daughter, what are we to do with you? At least Athaclena’s mother did not chide aloud or in glyph, embarrassing her in public.
At last, to Athaclena’s great relief, the entertainment ended. It was the turn of the Tytlal delegation, the time of Acceptance and Choice.
Led by Sustruk, their great poet, the delegation approached the supine Krallnith dignitary and bowed low. Then they made their allegiance to the Brma representatives, and afterward expressed polite submissiveness to the humans and other patron-class alien visitors.
The Tymbrimi Master of Uplift received obeisance last. Sustruk and his consort, a Tytlal scientist named Kihimik, stepped ahead of the rest of their delegation as the mated pair chosen above all others to be “race representatives.” Alternately, they replied as the Master of Uplift read a list of formal questions and solemnly noted their answers.
Then the pair came under the scrutiny of the Critics from the Galactic Uplift Institute.
Thus far it had been a perfunctory version of the Fourth Stage Test of Sentience. But now there was one more chance for the Tytlal to fail. One of the Galactics focusing sophisticated instruments on Sustruk and Kihimik, was a Soro . . . no friend of Athaclena’s clan. Possibly the Soro was looking for an excuse, any excuse, to embarrass the Tymbrimi by rejecting their clients.
Discreetly buried under the caldera was equipment that had cost Athaclena’s race plenty. Right now the scrutiny of the Tytlal was being cast all through the Five Galaxies. There was much to be proud of today, but also some potential for humiliation.
Of course Sustruk and Kihimik passed efasily. They bowed low to each of the alien examiners. If the Soro examiner was disappointed, she did not show it.
The delegation of furry, short-legged Tytlal ambled up to a cleared circle at the top of the hill. They began to sing, swaying together in that queer, loose-limbed manner so common among the creatures of their native planet, the fallow world where they had evolved into pre-sentience, where the Tymbrimi had found and adopted them for the long process of Uplift.
Technicians focused the amplifier which would display for all those assembled, and billions on other worlds, the choice the Tytlal had made. Underfoot, a deep rumbling told of powerful engines at work.
Theoretically, the creatures could even decide to reject their patrons and abandon Uplift altogether, though there were so many rules and qualifications that in practice it was almost never allowed. Anyway, nothing like that was expected on that day. The Tymbrimi had excellent relations with their clients.
Still, a dry, anxious rustling swept the crowd as the Rite of Acceptance approached completion. The swaying Tytlal moaned, and a low hum rose from the amplifier. Overhead a holographic image took shape, and the crowd roared with laughter and approval. It was the face of a Tymbrimi, of course, and one everyone recognized at once. Oshoyoythuna, Trickster of the City of Foyon, who had included several Tytlal as helpers in some of his most celebrated jests.
Of course the Tytlal had reaffirmed the Tymbrimi as their patrons, but choosing Oshoyoythuna as their symbol went far beyond that! It exclaimed the Tytlal’s pride in what it really meant to be part of their clan.
After the cheering and laughter died down, there remained only one part of the ceremony to finish, the selection of the Stage Consort, the species who would speak for the Tytlal during the next phase of their Uplift. The humans, in their strange tongue, called it the Uplift Midwife.
The Stage Consort had to be of a race outside of the Tymbrimi’s own clan. And while the position was mostly ceremonial, a Consort could legally intervene on the new client species’ behalf, if the Uplift process appeared to be in trouble. Wrong choices in the past had created terrible problems.
No one had any idea what race the Tytlal had chosen. It was one of those rare decisions that even the most meddlesome patrons, such as the Soro, had to leave to their charges.
Sustruk and Kihimik crooned once more, and even from her position at the back of the crowd Athaclena could sense a growing feeling of anticipation rising from the furry little clients. The little devils had cooked up something, that was certain!
Again, the ground shuddered, the amplifier murmured once more, and holographic projectors formed a blue cloudiness over the crest of the hill. In it there seemed to float murky shapes, flicking back and forth as if through backlit water.
Her corona offered no clue, for the image was strictly visual. She resented the humans their sharper eyesight as a shout of surprise rose from the area where most of the Earthlings had congregated. All around her, Tymbrimi were standing up and staring. She blinked. Then Athaclena and her mother joined the rest in amazed disbelief.
One of the murky figures flicked up to the foreground and stopped, grinning out at the audience, displaying a long, narrow grin of white, needle-sharp teeth. There was a glittering eye, and bubbles rose from its glistening gray brow.
The stunned silence lengthened. For in all of Ifhi’s starfield, nobody had expected the Tytlal to choose dolphins!
The visiting Galactics were stricken dumb. Neo-dolphins . . . why the seeond client race of Earth were the youngest acknowledged sapients in all five galaxies—much younger than the Tytlal themselves! This was unprecedented. It was astonishing.
It was . . .
It was hilarious! The Tymbrimi cheered. Their laughter rose, high and clear. As one, their coronae sparkled upward a single, coruscating glyph of approval so vivid that even the Thennanin Ambassador seemed to blink and take notice. Seeing that their allies weren’t offended, the humans joined in, hooting and slapping their hands together with intimidating energy.
Kihimik and most of the other assembled Tytlal bowed, accepting their patrons’ accolade. Good clients, it seemed they had worked hard to come up with a fine jest for this important day. Only Sustruk himself stood rigid at the rear, still quivering from the strain.
All around Athaclena crested waves of approval and joy. She heard her mother’s laughter, joining in with the others.
But Athaclena herself had backed away, edging out of the cheering crowd until there was room to turn and flee. In a full gheer flux, she ran and ran until she passed the caldera’s rim and could drop down the trail out of sight or sound. There, overlooking the beautiful Valley of Lingering Shadows, she collapsed to the ground while the waves of enzyme reaction shook her.
That horrible dolphin . . .
Never since that day had she confided in anyone what she had seen in the eye of the imaged cetacean. Not to her mother, nor even her father, had she ever told the truth . . . that she had sensed deep within that projected hologram a glyph, one rising from Sustruk himself, the poet of the Tytlal.
Those present thought it was all a grand jest, a magnificent blague. They thought they knew why the Tytlal had chosen the youngest race of Earth as their Stage Consort . . . to honor the clan with a grand and harmless joke. By choosing dolphins, they seemed to be saying that they needed no protector, that they loved and honored their Tymbrimi patrons without reservation. And by selecting the humans’ second clients, they also tweaked those stodgy old Galactic clans who so disapproved of the Tymbrimi’s friendship with wolf-lings. It was a fine gesture. Delicious.
Had Athaclena been the only one, then, to see the deeper truth? Had she imagined it? Many years later on a distant planet, Athaclena shivered as she recalled that day.
Had she been the only one to pick up Sustruk’s third harmonic of laughter and pain and confusion? The muse-poet died only days after that episode, and he took his secret with him to his grave.
Only Athaclena seemed to sense that the Ceremony had been no joke, after all, that Sustruk’s image had not come from his thoughts but out of Time! The Tytlal had, indeed, chosen their protectors, and the choice was in desperate earnest.
Now, only a few years later, the Five Galaxies had been sent into turmoil over certain discoveries made by a certain obscure client race, the youngest of them all. Dolphins.
Oh, Earthlings, she thought as she followed Robert higher into the Mountains of Mulun. What have you done? No, that was not the right question. What, oh what is it you are planning to become?
That afternoon the two wanderers encountered a steep field of plate ivy. A plain of glossy, wide-brimmed plants covered the southeastward slope of the ridge like green, overlapping scales on the flank of some great, slumbering beast. Their path to the mountains was blocked.
“I’ll bet you’re wondering how we’ll get across all this to the other side,” Robert asked.
“The slope looks treacherous,” Athaclena ventured. “And it stretches far in both directions. I suppose we’ll have to turn around.”
There was something in the fringes of Robert’s mind, though, that made that seem unlikely. “These are fascinating plants,” he said, squatting next to one of the plates—a shieldlike inverted bowl almost two meters across. He grabbed its edge and yanked backward hard. The plate stretched away from the tightly bound field until Athaclena could see a tough, springy root attached to its center. She moved closer to help him pull, wondering what he had in mind.
“The colony buds a new generation of these caps every few weeks, each layer overlapping the prior one,” Robert explained as he grunted and tugged the fibrous root taut.
“In late autumn the last layers of caps flower and becoijie wafer thin. They break off and catch the strong winter winds, sailing into the sky, millions of ‘em. It’s quite a sight, believe me, all those rainbow-colored kites drifting under the clouds, even if it is a hazard to flyers.”
“They are seeds, then?” Athaclena asked.
“Well, spore carriers, actually. And most of the pods that litter the Sind in early winter are sterile. Seems the plate ivy used to rely on some pollinating creature that went extinct during the Bururalli Holocaust. Just one more problem for the ecological recovery teams to deal with.” -Robert shrugged. “Right now, though, in the springtime, these early caps are rigid and strong. It’ll take some doing to cut one free.”
Robert drew his knife and reached under to slice away at the taut fibers holding the cap down. The strips parted suddenly, releasing the tension and throwing Athaclena back with the bulky plate on top of her.
“Oops! I’m sorry, Clennie.” She felt Robert’s effort to suppress laughter as he helped her struggle out from under the heavy cap. Just like a bby . . . Athaclena thought.
“Are you okay?”
“I am fine,” she answered stiffly, and dusted herself off. Tipped over, the plate’s inner, concave side looked like a bowl with a thick, central stem of ragged, sticky strands.
“Good. Then why don’t you help me carry it over to that sandy bank, near the dropoff.”
The field of plate ivy stretched around the prominence of the ridge, surrounding it on three sides. Together they hefted the detached cap over to where the bumpy green slope began, laying it inner face up.
Robert set to work trimming the ragged interior of the plate. After a few minutes he stood back and examined his handiwork. “This should do.” He nudged the plate with his foot. “Your father wanted me to show you everything I could about Garth. In my opinion your education’d be truly lacking if I never taught you to ride plate ivy.”
Athaclena looked from the upended plate to the scree of slick caps. “Do you mean …” But Robert was already loading their gear into the upturned bowl. “You cannot be serious, Robert.”
He shrugged, looking up at her sidelong. “We can backtrack a mile or two and find a way around all this, if you like.”
“You aren’t joking.” Athacleana sighed. It was bad enough that her father and her friends back home thought her too timid. She could not refuse a dare offered by this human. “Very well, Robert, show me how it is done.”
Robert stepped into the plate and checked its balance. Then he motioned for her to join him. She climbed into the rocking thing and sat where Robert indicated, in front of him with her knees on either side of the central stump.
It was then, with her corona waving in nervous agitation, that it happened again. Athaclena sensed something that made her convulsively clutch the rubbery sides of the plate, setting it rocking.
“Hey! Watch it, will you? You almost tipped us over!”
Athaclena grabbed his arm while she scanned the valley below. All around her face a haze of tiny tendrils fluttered. “I kenn it again. It’s down there, Robert. Somewhere in the forest!”
‘What? What’s down there?”
“The entity I kenned earlier! The thing that was neither man nor chimpanzee! It was a little like either, and yet different. And it reeks with Potential!”
Robert shaded his eyes. “Where? Can you point to it?”
Athaclena concentrated. She tried localizing the faint brush of emotions.
“It … it is gone,” she sighed at last.
Robert radiated nervousness. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a chim? There are lots of them up in these hills, seisin gatherers and conservation workers.”
Athaclena cast a palang glyph. Then, recalling that Robert wasn’t likely to notice the sparkling essence of frustration. She shrugged to indicate approximately the same nuance.
“No, Robert. I have met many neo-chimpanzees, remember? The being I sensed was different! I’d swear it wasn’t fully sapient, for one thing. And, there was a feeling of sadness, of submerged power. …”
Athaclena turned to Robert, suddenly excited. “Can it have been a ‘Garthling’? Oh, let’s hurry! We might be able to get closer!” She settled in around the center post and looked up at Robert expectantly.
“The famed Tymbrimi adaptability,” Robert sighed. “All of a sudden you’re anxious to go! And here I’d been hoping to impress and arouse you with a white-knuckler ride.”
Boys, she thought again, shaking her head vigorously. How can they think such things, even in jest?
“Stop joking and let’s be off!” she urged.
He settled into the plate behind her. Athaclena held on tightly to his knees. Her tendrils waved about his face, but Robert did not complain. “All right, here we go.”
His musty human aroma was close around her as he pushed off and the plate began to slip forward.
It all came back to Robert as their makeshift sled accelerated, skidding and bouncing over the slick, convex caps of plate ivy. Athaclena gripped his knees tightly, her laughter higher and more bell-like than a human girl’s. Robert, too, laughed and shouted, holding Athaclena as he leaned one way and then the other to steer the madly hopping sled.
Must’ve been eleven years old when I did this last.
Every jounce and leap made his heart pound. Not even an amusement park gravity ride was like this! Athaclena let out a squeak of exhilaration as they sailed free and landed again with a rubbery rebound. Her corona was a storm of silvery threads that seemed to crackle with excitement.
I only hope I remember how to control this thing right.
Maybe it was his rustiness. Or it might have been Athaclena’s presence, distracting him. But Robert was just a little late reacting when the near-oak stump—a remnant of the forest that had once grown on this slope—loomed suddenly in their path.
Athaclena laughed in delight as Robert leaned hard to the left, swerving their crude boat wildly. By the time she sensed his sudden change of mood their spin was already a tumble, out of control. Then their plate caught on something unseen. Impact swerved them savagely, sending the contents of the sled flying.
At that moment luck and Tymbrimi instincts were with Athaclena. Stress hormones surged and reflexes tucked her head down, rolling her into a ball. On impact her body made its own sled, bouncing and skidding atop the plates like a rubbery ball.
It all happened in a blur. Giants’ fists struck her, tossed her about. A great roar filled her ears and her corona blazed as she spun and fell, again and again.
Finally Athaclena tumbled to a halt, still curled up tight, just short of the forest on the valley floor. At first she could only lie there as the gheer enzymes made her pay the price for her quick reflexes. Breath came in long, shuddering gasps; her high and low kidneys throbbed, struggling with the sudden overload.
And there was pain. Athaclena had trouble localizing it. She seemed only to have picked up a few bruises and scrapes. So where . . . ?
Realization came in a rush as she uncurled and opened her eyes. The pain was coming from Robert! Her Earthling guide was broadcasting blinding surges of agony!
She got up gingerly, still dizzy from reaction, and shaded her eyes to look around the bright hillside. The human wasn’t in sight, so she sought him with her corona. The searing painflood led her stumbling awkwardly over the glossy plates to a point not far from the upended sled.
Robert’s legs kicked weakly from under a layer of broad plate ivy caps. An effort to back out culminated in a low, muffled moan. A sparkling shower of hot agones seemed to home right in on Athaclena’s corona.
She knelt beside him. “Robert! Are you caught on something? Can you breathe?”
What foolishness, she realized, asking multiple questions when she could tell the human was barely even conscious!
I must do something. Athaclena drew her jack-laser from her boot top and attacked the plate ivy, starting well away from Robert, slicing stems and grunting as she heaved aside the caps, one at a time.
Knotty, musky vines remained tangled around the human’s head and arms, pinning him to the thicket. “Robert, I’m going to cut near your head. Don’t move!”
Robert groaned something indecipherable. His right arm was badly twisted, and so much distilled ache fizzed around him that she had to withdraw her corona to keep from fainting from the overload. Aliens weren’t supposed to commune this strongly with Tymbrimi! At least she had never believed it possible before this.
Robert gasped as she heaved the last shriveled cap away from his face. His eyes were closed, and his mouth moved as if he were silently talking to himself. What is he doing now?
She felt the overtones of some obviously human rite-of-discipline. It had something to do with numbers and counting. Perhaps it was that “self-hypnosis” technique all humans were taught in school. Though primitive, it seemed to be doing Robert some good.
“I’m going to cut away the roots binding your arm now,” she told him.
He jerked his head in a nod. “Hurry, Clennie. I’ve . . . I’ve never had to block this much pain before. …” He let out a shivering sigh as the last rootlet parted. His arm sprang free, floppy and broken.
What now? Athaclena worried. It was always hazardous to interfere with an injured member of an alien race. Lack of training was only part of the-problem. One’s most basic succoring instincts might be entirely wrong for helping someone of another species.
Athaclena grabbed a handful of coronal tendrils and twisted them in indecision. Some things have to be universal!
Make sure the victim keeps breathing. That she had done automatically.
Try to stop leaks of bodily fluids. All she had to go on were some old, pre-Contact “movies” she and her father had watched on the journey to Garth—dealing with ancient Earth creatures called cops and robbers. According to those films, Robert’s wounds might be called “only scratches.” But she suspected those ancient story-records weren’t particularly strong on realism.
Oh, if only humans weren’t so frail!
Athaclena rushed to Robert’s backpack, seeking the radio in the lower side pouch. Aid could arrive from Port Helenia in less than an hour, and rescue officials could tell her what to do in the meantime.
The radio was simple, of Tymbrimi design, but nothing happened when she touched the power switch.
No. It has to work! She stabbed it again. But the indicator stayed blank.
Athaclena popped the back cover. The transmitter crystal had been removed. She blinked in consternation. How could this be?
They were cut off from help. She was completely on her own.
“Robert,” she said as she knelt by him again. “You must guide me. I cannot help you unless you tell me what to do!”
The human still counted from one to ten, over and over. She had to repeat herself until, at last, his eyes came into focus. “I … I think my arm’s b- busted, Clennie. …” He gasped. “Help get me out of the sun . . . then, use drugs. …”
His presence seemed to fade away, and his eyes rolled up as unconsciousness overcame him. Athaclena did not approve of a nervous system that overloaded with pain, leaving its owner unable to help himself. It wasn’t Robert’s fault. He was brave, but his brain had shorted out.
There was one advantage, of course. Fainting damped down his broadcast agony. That made it easier for her to drag him backward over the spongy, uneven field of plate ivy, attempting all the while not to shake his broken right arm unduly.
Big-boned, huge-thewed, overmuscled human! She cast a glyph of great pungency as she pulled his heavy body all the way to the shady edge of the forest.
Athaclena retrieved their backpacks and quickly found Robert’s first aid kit. There was a tincture she had seen him use only two days before, when he had caught his finger on a wood sliver. This she slathered liberally over his lacerations.
Robert moaned and shifted a little. She could feel his mind struggle upward against the pain. Soon, half automatically, he was mumbling numbers to himself once again.
Her lips moved as she read the Anglic instructions on a container of “flesh foam,” then she applied the sprayer onto his cuts, sealing them under a medicinal layer.
That left the arm—and the agony. Robert had mentioned drugs. But which drugs?
There were many little ampules, clearly labeled in both Anglic and GalSeven. But directions were sparse. There was no provision for a non-Terran having to treat a human without benefit of advice.
She used logic. Emergency medicines would be packaged in gas ampules for easy, quick administration. Athaclena pulled out three likely looking glassine cylinders. She bent forward “until the silvery strands of her corona fell around Robert’s face, bringing close his human aroma—musty and in this case so very male. “Robert,” she whispered carefully in Anglic. “I know you can hear me. Rise within yourself! I need your wisdom out in the here-and-now.”
Apparently she was only distracting him from his rite-of-discipline, for she sensed the pain increase. Robert grimaced and counted out loud.
Tymbrimi do not curse as humans do. A purist would say they make “stylistic statements of record” instead. But at times like this few would be able to tell the difference. Athaclena muttered caustically in her native tongue.
Clearly Robert was not an adept, even at this crude “self-hypnosis” technique. His pain pummeled the fringes of her mind, and Athaclena let out a small trill, like a sigh. She was unaccustomed to having to keep out such an assault. The fluttering of her eyelids blurred vision as would a human’s tears.
There was only one way, and it meant exposing herself more than she was accustomed, even with her family. The prospect was daunting, but there didn’t seem to be any choice. In order to get through to him at all, she had to get a lot closer than this.
