by David Brin
“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
Fou
r 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.