The Uplift War u-3

by David Brin

  Calm down, she told herself. The silhouette standing on the stone overhead was a large biped, clearly a cousin to Man and no native of Garth. A chimpanzee could never pose a threat to her, of course.

  “H-hello!” She managed Anglic over the trembling left by the receding gheer. Silently she cursed the instinctive reactions which made Tymbrimi dangerous beings to cross but which shortened their lives and often embarrassed them in polite company.

  The figure overhead stared down at her. Standing on two legs, with a belt of tools around its waist, it was hard to discern against the glare. The bright, bluish light of Garth’s sun was disconcerting. Even so, Athaclena could tell that this one was very large for a chimpanzee.

  It did not react. In fact, the creature just stared down at her.

  A client race as young as neo-chimpanzees could not be expected to be too bright. She made allowances, squinting up at the dark, furry figure, and enunciated slowly in Anglic.

  “I have an emergency to report. There is a human being,” she emphasized, “who is injured not far from here. He needs immediate attention. You must please take me to some humans, right now.” She expected an immediate response, but the creature merely shifted its weight and continued to stare. Athaclena was beginning to feel foolish. Could she have encountered a particularly stupid chim? Or perhaps a deviant or a sport? New client races produced a lot of variability, sometimes including dangerous throwbacks — witness what had happened to the Bururalli so recently here on Garth.

  Athaclena extended her senses. Her corona reached out and then curled in surprise!

  It was the pre-sentient! The superficial resemblance — the fur and long arms — had fooled her. This wasn’t a chim at all! It was the alien creature she had sensed only minutes ago!

  No wonder the beast hadn’t responded. It had had no patron yet to teach it to talk! Potential quivered and throbbed. She could sense it just under the surface.

  Athaclena wondered just what one said to a native pre-sophont. She looked more carefully. The creature’s dark, furry coat was fringed by the sun’s glare. Atop short, bowed legs it carried a massive body culminating in a great head with a narrow peak. In silhouette, its huge shoulders merged without any apparent neck.

  Athaclena recalled Ma’chutallil’s famed story about a spacegleaner who encountered, in forests far from a colony settlement, a child who had been brought up by wild limbrunners. After catching the fierce, snarling little thing in his nets, the hunter had aura-cast a simple version of sh’cha’huon, the mirror of the soul.

  Athaclena formed the empathy glyph as well as she could remember it.

  SEE IN ME — AN IMAGE OF THE VERY YOU

  The creature stood up. It reared back, snorting and sniffing at the air.

  She thought, at first, it was reacting to her glyph. Then a noise, not far away, broke the fleeting connection. The pre-sentient chuffed — a deep, grunting sound — then spun about and leaped away, hopping from spine-stone to spine-stone until it was gone from sight.

  Athaclena hurried after, but uselessly. In moments she had lost the trail. She sighed finally and turned back to the east, where Robert had said the Earthling “Howletts Center” lay. After all, finding help had to come first.

  She started picking her way through the maze of spine-stones. They tapered off as the slope descended into the next valley. That was when she passed around a tall boulder and nearly collided with the search party.

  “We’re sorry we frightened you, ma’am,” the leader of the group said gruffly. His voice was somewhere between a growl and the croaking of a pond full of bug-hoppers. He bowed again. “A seisin picker came in and told us of some sort of ship crash out this way, so we sent out a couple of search parties. You haven’t seen anythin’ like a spacecraft comin’ down, have you?”

  Athaclena still shivered from the Ifni-damned overreac-tion. She must have looked terrifying in those first few seconds, when surprise set off another furious change response. The poor creatures had been startled. Behind the leader, four more chims stared at her nervously.

  “No, I haven’t,” Athaclena spoke slowly and carefully, in order not to tax the little clients. “But I do have a different sort of emergency to report. My comrade — a human being — was injured yesterday afternoon. He has a broken arm and a possible infection. I must speak to someone in authority about having him evacuated.”

  The leader of the chims stood a bit above average in height, nearly a hundred and fifty centimeters tall. Like the others he wore a pair of shorts, a tool-bandoleer, and a light backpack. His grin featured an impressive array of uneven, somewhat yellowed teeth.

  “I’m sufficiently in authority. My name is Benjamin, Mizz… Mizz…” His gruff voice ended in a questioning tone.

  “Athaclena. My- companion’s name is Robert Oneagle. He is the son of the Planetary Coordinator.”

  Benjamin’s eyes widened. “I see. Well, Mizz Athac-… well ma’am… you must have heard by now that Garth’s been interdicted by a fleet of Eatee cruisers. Under th’ emergency we aren’t supposed to use aircars if we can avoid it. Still, my crew here is equipped to handle a human with th’ sort of injuries you described. If you’ll lead us to Mr. Oneagle, we’ll see he’s taken care of.”

  Athaclena’s relief was mixed with a pang as she was reminded of larger matters. She had to ask. “Have they determined who the invaders are yet? Has there been a landing?”

  The chimp Benjamin was behaving professionally and his diction was good, but he could not disguise his perplexity as he looked at her, tilting his head as if trying to see her from a new angle. The others frankly stared. Clearly they had never seen a person like her before.

  “Uh, I’m sorry, ma’am, but the news hasn’t been too specific. The Eatees… uh.” The chim peered at her. “Uh, pardon me, ma’am, but you aren’t human, are you?”

  “Great Caltmour, no!” Athaclena bristled. “What ever gave you the …” Then she remembered all the little external alterations she had made as part of her experiment. She must look very close to human by now, especially with the sun behind her. No wonder the poor clients had been confused!

  “No,” she said again, more softly. “I am no human. I am Tymbrimi.”

  The chims sighed and looked quickly at one another. Benjamin bowed, arms crossed in front of him, for the first time offering the gesture of a client greeting a member of a patron-class race.

  Athaclena’s people, like humans, did not believe in flaunting their dominance over their clients. Still, the gesture helped mollify her hurt feelings. When he spoke again, Benjamin’s diction was much better.

  “Forgive me, ma’am. What I meant to say was that I’m not really sure who the invaders are. I wasn’t near a receiver when their manifesto was broadcast, a couple of hours ago. Somebody told me it was the Gubru, but there’s another rumor they’re Thennanin.”

  Athaclena sighed. Thennanin or Gubru. Well, it could have been worse. The former were sanctimonious and narrow-minded. The latter were often vile, rigid, and cruel. But neither were as bad as the manipulative Soro, or the eerie, deadly Tandu.

  Benjamin whispered to one of his companions. The smaller chimp turned and hurried down the trail the way they had come, toward the mysterious Howletts Center. Athaclena caught a tremor of anxiety. Once again she wondered what was going on in this valley that Robert had tried to steer her away from, even at risk to his own health.

  “The courier will carry back word of Mr. Oneagle’s condition and arrange transport,” Benjamin told her. “Meanwhile, we’ll hurry to give him first aid. If you would only lead the way …”

  He motioned her ahead, and Athaclena had to put away her curiosity for now. Robert clearly came first. “All right,” she said. “Let us go.”

  As they passed under the standing stone where she had had her encounter with the strange, pre-sentient alien, Athaclena looked up. Had it really been a “Garthling”? Perhaps the chims knew something about it. Before she could begin to ask, however, Atha
clena stumbled, clutching at her temples. The chims stared at the sudden waving of her corona and the startled, narrow set of her eyes.

  It was part sound — a keening that crested high, almost beyond hearing — and partly a sharp itch that crawled up her spine.

  “Ma’am?” Benjamin looked up at her, concerned. “What is it?”

  Athaclena shook her head. “It’s… It is…”

  She did not finish. For at that moment there was a flash of gray over the western horizon — something hurtling through the sky toward them — too fasti Before Athaclena could flinch it had grown from distant dot to behemoth size. Just that suddenly a giant ship appeared, stock-still, hovering directly over the valley.

  Athaclena barely had enough time to cry out, “Cover your ears!” Then thunder broke, a crash and roar that knocked all of them to the ground. The boom reverberated through the maze of stones and echoed off the surrounding hillsides. Trees swayed — some of them cracking and toppling over — and leaves were ripped away in sudden, fluttering cyclones.

  Finally the pealing died away, diffracting and diminishing into the forest. Only after that, and blinking away tremors of shock, did they at last hear the low, loud growl of the ship itself. The gray monster cast shadows over the valley, a huge, gleaming cylinder. As they stared the great machine slowly settled lower until it dropped below the spine-stones and out of sight. The hum of its engines fell to a deep rumble, uncovering the sound of rockfalls on the nearby slopes.

  The chims slowly stood up and held each others’ hands nervously, whispering to each other in hoarse, low voices. Benjamin helped Athaclena to stand. The ship’s gravity fields had struck her fully extended corona unprepared. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

  “That was a warship, wasn’t it?” Benjamin asked her. “These other chims here haven’t ever been to space, but I went up to see the old Vesarius when it visited, a couple years back, and even she wasn’t as big as that thing!”

  Athaclena sighed. “It was, indeed, a warship. Of Soro design, I think. The Gubru are using that fashion now.” She looked down at the Earthling. “I would say that Garth is no longer simply interdicted, Chim Benjamin. An invasion has begun.”

  Benjamin’s hands came together. He pulled nervously at one opposable thumb, then the other. “They’re hovering over the valley. I can hear ’em! What are they up to?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t we go look?”

  Benjamin hesitated, then nodded. He led the group back to a point where the spine-stones opened up and they could gaze out over the valley.

  The warship hovered about four kilometers east of their position and a few hundred meters above the ground, draping its immense shadow over a small cluster of off-white buildings on the valley floor. Athaclena shaded her eyes against the bright sunshine reflected from its gunmetal gray flanks.

  The deep-throated groan of the giant cruiser was ominous. “It’s just hoverin’ there! What are they doing?” one of the chims asked nervously.

  Athaclena shook her head in Anglic. “I do not know.” She sensed fear from humans and neo-chimps in the settlement below. And there were other sources of emotion as well.

  The invaders, she realized. Their psi shields were down, an arrogant dismissal of any possibility of defense. She caught a gestalt of thin-boned, feathered creatures, descendants of some flightless, pseudo-avian species. A rare real-view came to her briefly, vividly, as seen through the eyes of one of the cruiser’s officers. Though contact only lasted milliseconds, her corona reeled back in revulsion.

  Gubru, she realized numbly. Suddenly, it was made all too real.

  Benjamin gasped. “Look!”

  Brown fog spilled forth from vents in the ship’s broad underbelly. Slowly, almost languidly, the dark, heavy vapor began to fall toward the valley floor.

  The fear below shifted over to panic. Athaclena quailed back against one of the spine-stones and wrapped her arms over her head, trying to shut out the almost palpable aura of dread.

  Too much! Athaclena tried to form a glyph of peace in the space before her, to hold back the pain and horror. But every pattern was blown away like spun snow before the hot wind of a flame.

  “They’re killing th’ humans and “rillas!” one of the chims on the hillside cried, running forward. Benjamin shouted after him. “Petrie! Come back here! Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m goin’ to help!” the younger chim yelled back. “And you would too, if you cared! You can hear ’em screamin’ down there!” Ignoring the winding path, he started scrambling down the scree slope itself — the most direct route toward the roiling fog and the dim sounds of despair.

  The other two chims looked at Benjamin rebelliously, obviously sharing the same thought. “I’m goin’ too,” one said.

  Athaclena’s fear-narrowed eyes throbbed. What were these silly creatures doing now?

  “I’m with you,” the last one agreed. In spite of Benjamin’s shouted curses, both of them started down the steep slope.

  “Stop thi», right now!”

  They turned and stared at Athaclena. Even Petrie halted suddenly, hanging one-handed from a boulder, blinking up at her. She had used the Tone of Peremptory Command, for only the third time in her life.

  “Stop this foolishness and come back here immediately!” she snapped. Athaclena’s corona billowed out over her ears. Her carefully cultured human accent was gone. She enunciated Anglic in the Tymbrimi lilt the neo-chimpanzees must have heard on video countless times. She might look rather human, but no human voice could make exactly the same sounds.

  The Terran clients blinked, open-mouthed.

  “Return at once,” she hissed.

  The chims scrambled back up the slope to stand before her. One by one, glancing nervously at Benjamin and following his example, they bowed with arms crossed in front of them.

  Athaclena fought down her own shaking in order to appear outwardly calm. “Do not make me raise my voice again,” she said lowly. “We must work together, think coolly, and make appropriate plans.”

  Small wonder the chims shivered and looked up at her, wide-eyed. Humans seldom spoke to chims so peremptorily. The species might be indentured to man, but by Earth’s own law neo-chimps were nearly equal citizens.

  We Tymbrimi, though, are another matter. Duty, simple duty had drawn Athaclena out of her totanoo — her fear-induced withdrawal. Somebody had to take responsibility to save these creatures’ lives.

  The ugly brown fog had stopped spilling from the Gubru vessel. The vapor spread across the narrow valley like a dark, foamy lake, barely covering the buildings at the bottom.

  Vents closed. The ship began to rise.

  “Take cover,” she told them, and led the chims around the nearest of the rock monoliths. The low hum of the Gubru ship climbed more than an octave. Soon they saw it rise over the spine-stones.

  “Protect yourselves.”

  The chims huddled close, pressing their hands against their ears.

  One moment the giant invader was there, a thousand meters over the valley floor. Then, quicker than the eye could follow, it was gone. Displaced air clapped inward like a giant’s hand and thunder batted them again, returning in rolling waves that brought up dust and leaves from the forest below.

  The stunned neo-chimps stared at each other for long moments as the echoes finally ebbed. Finally the eldest chim, Benjamin, shook himself. He dusted his hands and grabbed the young chen named Petrie by the back of his neck, marching the startled chim over to face Athaclena.

  Petrie looked down shamefaced. “I … I’m sorry, ma’am,” he muttered gruffly. “It’s just that there are humans down there and… and my mates. …”

  Athaclena nodded. One should try not to be too hard on a well-intended client. “Your motives were admirable. Now that we are calm though, and can plan, we’ll go about helping your patrons and friends more effectively.”

  She offered her hand. It was a less patronizing gesture than
the pat on the head he seemed to have expected from a Galactic. They shook, and he grinned shyly.

  When they hurried around the stones to look out over the valley again, several of the Terrans gasped. The brown cloud had spread over the lowlands like a thick, filthy sea that flowed almost to the forest slopes at their feet. The heavy vapor seemed to have a sharply defined upper boundary barely licking at the roots of nearby trees.

  They had no way of knowing what was going on below, or even if anybody still lived down there.

  “We will split into two groups,” Athaclena told them. “Robert Oneagle still requires attention. Someone must go to him.”

  The thought of Robert lying semi-conscious back there where she had left him was an unrelenting anxiety in her mind. She had to know he was being cared for. Anyway, she suspected most of these chims would be better off going to Robert’s aid than hanging around this deadly valley. The creatures were too shaken and volatile up here in full view of the disaster. “Benjamin, can your companions find Robert by themselves, using the directions I have given?”

  “You mean without leading them there yourself?” Benjamin frowned and shook his head. “Uh, I dunno, ma’am. I … I really think you ought to go along.”

  Athaclena had left Robert under a clear landmark, a giant quail-nut tree close to the main trail. Any party sent from here should have no trouble finding the injured human.

  She could read the chim’s emotions. Part of Benjamin anxiously wished to have one of the renowned Tymbrimi here to help, if possible, the people in the valley. And yet he had chosen to try to send her away!

  The oily smoke churned and rolled below. She could distantly sense many minds down there, turbulent with fear.

  “I will remain,” she said firmly. “You have said these others are a qualified rescue team. They can certainly find Robert and help him. Someone must stay and see if anything can be done for those below.”

  With a human there might have been argument. But the chimps did not even consider contradicting a Galactic with a made up mind. Client-class sophonts simply did not do such things.