by David Brin
But history told of traitors, also: those who sought advantage wherever it could be found, even over the backs of their comrades.
“Come on, college chum. There’s a bird I want you to meet.”
The grip on his arm was like a tightening vice. Fiben’s look of pained surprise made the mustachioed chim grin. “They put some extra strength genes into my mix,” he sneered. “That part of their meddling worked, but not some of the others. They call me Irongrip, and I got no blue card, or even a yellow.
“Now let’s go. We’ll ask Bright Talon Squadron Lieutenant to explain what the Gubru’s plans are for chim bright boys.”
In spite of the painful pressure on his arm, Fiben affected nonchalance. “Sure. Why not? Are you willing to put a wager on it, though?” His upper lip curled back in disdain. “If I remember my sophomore xenology right, the Gubru are pretty sharply clocked into a diurnal cycle. I’ll bet behind those dark goggles of his you’ll find that bloody bird is fast asleep. Think he’ll like being awakened just to discuss the niceties of Uplift with the likes of you?”
For all his bravado, Irongrip was obviously sensitive about his level of education. Fiben’s put-on assurance momentarily set him back, and he blinked at the suggestion that anyone could possibly sleep through all the cacophony around them.
Finally he growled angrily. “We’ll just see about that. Come on.”
The other zipsuits crowded close. Fiben knew he wouldn’t stand a chance taking on all six of them. And there would be no calling on the law for help, either. Authority wore feathers these days.
His escorts prodded him through the maze of low tables. Lounging customers chuffed in irritation as Irongrip nudged them aside, but their eyes, glazed in barely restrained passion, were all on Sylvie’s dance as the tempo of the music built.
A glance over his shoulder at the performer’s contortions made Fiben’s face feel hot. He backed away without looking and stumbled into a^soft mass of fur and muscle.
“Ow!” a seated customer howled, spilling his drink.
“Sorry,” Fiben muttered, stepping away quickly. His sandals crunched upon another brown hand, producing yet another shout. The complaint turned into an outraged scream as Fiben ground the knuckle down then twisted away to apologize once again.
“Siddown!” a voice shouted from the back of the club. Another squeaked, “Yeah! Beat it! Yer inna way!”
Irongrip glared suspiciously at Fiben and tugged on his arm. Fiben resisted briefly, then released, coming forward suddenly and shoving his captor back into one of the wicker tables. Drinks and sniff stands toppled, sending the seated chims scrambling to their feet, huffing indignantly.
“Hey!”
“Watch it, ye bastid Probie!”
Their eyes, already aflame from both intoxicants and Sylvie’s dance, appeared to contain little reason anymore.
Irongrip’s shaven face was pale with anger. His grasp tightened, and he began to motion to his comrades, but Fiben only smiled conspiratorially and nudged him with his elbow. In feigned drunken confidence, he spoke loudly.
“See what you did? I told you not to bump these guys on purpose, just to see if they’re too stoned to talk…”
From the nearby chims there came a hiss of intaken breath, audible even over the music.
“Who says I can’t talk!” one of the drinkers slurred, barely able to form the words. The tipsy Borachio advanced a step, trying to focus on the source of this insult. “Was it you?”
Fiben’s captor eyed him threateningly and yanked him closer, tightening the vicelike grip. Still, Fiben managed to maintain his stage grin, and winked.
“Maybe they can talk, sorta. But you’re right about them bein’ a bunch o’ knuckle-walkers…”
“What!”
The nearest chim roared and grabbed at Irongrip. The sneering mutant adroitly stepped aside and chopped with the edge of his free hand. The drunk howled, doubled up, and collided with Fiben.
But then the inebriate’s friends dove in, shrieking. The hold on Fiben’s arm tore loose as they were all swamped under a tide of angry brown fur.
Fiben ducked as a snarling ape in a leather work harness swung on him. The fist sailed past and connected with the jaw of one of the zipsuited toughs. Fiben kicked another Probie in the knee as the chim grabbed for him, eliciting a satisfactory howl, but then all was a chaos of flying wicker-work and dark bodies. Cheap straw tables blew apart as they crashed down upon heads. The air filled with flying beer and hair.
The band increased its tempo, but it was barely to be heard over shrieks of outrage or combative glee. There was a wild moment as Fiben felt himself lifted bodily by strong simian arms. They weren’t gentle.
“Whoa-aoh!”
He sailed over the riot and landed in a crash amidst a group of previously uninvolved revelers. The customers stared at him in momentarily stunned puzzlement. Before they could react, Fiben picked himself up from the rubble, groaning. He rolled out into the aisle, stumbling as a sharp pain seemed to lance through his still-tender left ankle.
The fight was spreading, and two of the bright zipsuits were headed his way, canines gleaming. To make matters worse, the customers whose party he had so rudely interrupted were on their feet now, chuffing in anger. Hands reached for him.
“Some other time, perhaps,” Fiben said politely. He hopped out of the debris away from -his pursuers, hurriedly threading between the low tables. When there was no other way forward, he didn’t hesitate, but stepped up onto a pair of broad, hunched shoulders and launched off, leaving his erstwhile springboard grunting in yet another pile of splintered wicker.
Fiben somersaulted over a last row of customers and tumbled to one knee in a broad, open area — the dance floor. Only a few meters away towered the thunder mound, where the alluring Sylvie was bearing down for her final grind, apparently oblivious to the growing commotion below.
Fiben moved quickly across the floor, intending to dash past the bar and out one of the exits beyond. But the moment he stepped out into the open area a sudden blaze of light lanced down from above, dazzling him! From all sides there erupted a tremendous cheer.
Something had obviously pleased the crowd. But what? Peering up against the glare, Fiben couldn’t see that the ecdysiast had done anything new and spectacular — at least no more so than before. Then he realized that Sylvie was looking straight at him! Behind the birdlike mask he could see her eyes watching him in amusement.
He whirled. So were most of those not yet enveloped by the spreading brawl. The audience was cheering him. Even the Gubru in the balcony appeared to be tilting its goggle-shielded head his way.
There wasn’t time to sort out the meaning of this. Fiben saw that several more of his tormentors had broken free of the melee. They were distinctive in their bright clothes as they gestured to each other, moving to cut him off from the exits.
Fiben quashed a sense of panic. They had him cornered. There has to be another way out, he thought furiously.
And then he realized where it would be. The performer’s door, above and behind the padded dance mound! The beaded portal through which Sylvie had made her entrance. A quick scramble and he’d be up and past her — and gone!
He ran across the dance floor and leaped onto the mound, landing upon one of the carpeted ledges.
The crowd roared again! Fiben froze in his crouch. The glaring spotlights had followed him.
He blinked up at Sylvie. The dancer licked her lips and rocked her pelvis at him.
Fiben felt simultaneously repelled and powerfully drawn. He wanted to clamber up and grab her. He wanted to find some dark niche in a tree branch, somewhere, and hide.
Down below the fight was still going strong, but had stopped spreading. With only paper bottles and wicker furniture to use, the combatants seemed to have settled down to an amiable tumult of mutual mayhem, the original cause quite forgotten.
But on the edges of the dance floor stood four chims in bright zipsuits, watching him as
they fingered objects in their pockets. There still looked to be only one way. Fiben clambered up onto another carpeted, “rocky” cleft. Again, the crowd cheered in intensifying excitement. The noise, smells, confusion… Fiben blinked at the sea of fervent faces, all staring up at him in expectation. What was happening?
A flash of motion caught Fiben’s attention. From the balcony over the bar, someone was waving at him. It was a small chim dressed in a dark, hooded cloak, standing out in this frenzied crowd, more than anything else, by a facial expression that was calm, icy sharp.
Fiben suddenly recognized the little pimp, the one who had accosted him briefly by the door to the Ape’s Grape. The chim’s voice didn’t carry over the cacophony, but somehow Fiben picked out the mouthed words.
“Hey, dummy, look up!”
The boyish face grimaced. The panderer pointed overhead.
Fiben glanced upward… just in time to see a sparkling mesh start to fall from the rafters overhead! He leaped aside purely on instinct, fetching hard against another “rock” as the fringe of the falling net grazed his left foot. Electric agony stroked his leg.
“Baboon shit! What in Goodall’s name’…?” He cursed soundly. It took a moment for him to realize that part of the roaring in his ears was more applause. This turned into shouted cheers as he rolled over holding his leg, and thereby happened to escape yet another snare. A dozen loops of sticky mesh flopped out of a simulated rock to tauten over the area he had just occupied.
Fiben kept as still as possible while he rubbed his foot and glared about angrily, suspiciously. Twice he had almost been noosed like some dumb animal. To the crowd it might all be great fun, but he personally had no desire to be trussed up on some bizarre, lunatic obstacle course.
Below on the dance floor he saw bright zipsuits, left, right, and center. The Gubru on the balcony seemed interested, but showed no sign of intervening.
Fiben sighed. His predicament was still the same. The only direction he could go was up.
Looking carefully, he scrambled over another padded ridge. The snares appeared to be intended to be humiliating and incapacitating — and painful — but not deadly. Except in his case, of course. If he were caught, his unwanted enemies would be on him in a trice.
He stepped up onto the next “boulder,” cautiously. Fiben felt a tickling falseness under his right foot and pulled back just as a trap door popped open. The crowd gasped as he teetered on the edge of the revealed pit. Fiben’s arms windmilled as he fought for balance. From an uncertain crouch he leaped, and barely caught a grip on the next higher terrace.
His feet hung over nothingness. Fiben’s breath came in heavy gasps. Desperately he wished humans hadn’t edited some of his ancestors’ “unnecessary” instinctive climbing skills just to make room for trivialities such as speech and reason.
He grunted and slowly scrambled up out of the pit. The audience clamored for more.
As he panted on the edge of the next level, trying to see in all directions at once, Fiben slowly became aware that a public address system was muttering over the noise of the crowd, repeating over and over again, in clipped, mechanical tones.
… more enlightened approach to Uplift… appropriate to the background of the client race… offering opportunity to all… unbiased by warped human standards…
Up in its box, the invader chirped into a small microphone. Its machine-translated words boomed out over the music and the excited jabber of the crowd. Fiben doubted one in ten of the chims below were even aware of the E.T.’s monologue in the state they were in. But that probably didn’t matter.
They were being conditioned!
No wonder he had never heard of Sylvie’s dance-mound striptease before, nor this crazy obstacle course. It was an innovation of the invaders!
But what was its purpose?
They couldn’t have managed all this without help, Fiben thought angrily. Sure enough, the two well-dressed chims sitting near the invader whispered to each other and scribbled on clipboards. They were obviously recording the crowd’s reactions for their new master.
Fiben scanned the balcony and noted that the little pimp in the cowled robe stood not far outside the Gubru’s ring of robot guards. He spared a whole second to memorize the chim’s boyish features. Traitor!
Sylvie was only a few terraces above him now. The dancer twitched her pink bottom at him, grinning as sweat beaded on his face. Human males had their own “instant” visual triggers: rounded female breasts and pelvises and smooth fern skin. None of them could compare with the electric shiver a little color in the right place could send through a male chim.
Fiben shook his head vigorously. “Out. Not in. You want out!”
Concentrating on keeping his balance, favoring his tender left ankle, he scrambled edgewise until he was around the pit, then crawled forward on his hands and knees.
Sylvie leaned over him, two levels up. Her scent carried even over the pungent aromas of the hall, making Fiben’s nostrils flare.
He shook his head suddenly. There was another sharp odor, a cloying stink that seemed to be quite local.
With the little finger of his left hand he probed the terrace he had been about to climb upon. Four inches in he encountered a burning stickiness. He cried out and pulled back hard, leaving behind a small patch of skin.
Alas for instinct! His seared finger automatically popped into his mouth. Fiben almost gagged on the nastiness.
This was a fine fix. If he tried to move up or forward the sticky stuff would get him. If he retreated he would more than likely wind up in the pit!
This maze of traps did explain one thing that he had puzzled about, earlier. No wonder the chens below hadn’t gone nuts and simply charged the hill the moment Sylvie showed pink! They knew only the cocky or foolhardy would dare attempt the climb. The others were content to observe and fantasize. Sylvie’s dance was only the first half of the show.
And if some lucky bastard made it? Well, then, everybody would have the added treat of watching that, too!
The idea repelled Fiben. Private sharings were natural, of course. But this public lewdness was disgusting!
At the same time, he noted that he had already made it most of the way. He felt an old quickening in his blood. Sylvie swayed down a little toward him, and he imagined he could already touch her. The musicians increased their tempo, and strobes began flickering again, approaching like lightning. Artificial thunder echoed. Fiben felt a few stinging droplets, like the beginnings of a rainstorm.
Sylvie danced under the spots, inciting the crowd. He licked his lips and felt himself drawn.
Then, in the flicker of a single lightning flash, Fiben saw something equally enticing, more than attractive enough to pull him out of Sylvie’s hypnotic sway. It was a small, green-lit sign, prim and legalistic, that shone beyond Sylvie’s shoulder.
“EXIT,” it read.
Suddenly the pain and exhaustion and tension caused something to release inside Fiben. He felt somehow lifted above the noise and tumult and recalled with instant clarity something that Athaclena said to him shortly before he left the encampment in the mountains to begin his trek to town. The silvery threads of her Tymbrimi corona had waved gently as if in a breeze of pure thought.
“There is a telling which my father once gave me, Fiben. It’s a ‘haiku poem,’ in an Earthling dialect called Japanese. I want you to take it with you.”
“Japanese,” he had protested. “It’s spoken on Earth and on Calafia, but there aren’t a hundred chims or men on Garth who know it!”
But Athaclena only shook her head. “Neither do I. But I shall pass the telling on to you, the way it was given to me.”
What came when she opened her mouth then was less sound than a crystallization, a brief substrate of meaning which left an imprint even as it faded.
Certain moments qualify,
In winter’s darkest storm,When stars call, and you fly!
Fiben blinked and the sudden relived moment passed. The le
tters still glowed,
EXIT
shining like a green haven.
It all swept back, the noise, the odors, the sharp stinging of the tiny rainlike droplets. But Fiben now felt as if his chest had expanded twofold. Lightness spread down his arms and into his legs. They seemed to weigh next to nothing.
With a deep flexing of his knees he gathered himself and then launched off from his precarious perch to land on the edge of the next terrace, toes grasping inches from the burning, camouflaged glue. The crowd roared and Sylvie stepped back, clapping her hands.
Fiben laughed. He slapped his chest rapidly, as he had seen the gorillas do, beating countertime to the rolling thunder. The audience loved it.
Grinning, he stepped along the edge of the sticky patch, tracing its outline more by instinct than the faint difference in coloration. Arms spread wide for balance, he made it look harder than it actually felt.
The ledge ended where a tall “tree” — simulated out of fiberglass and green, plastic tassels — towered out of the slope of the mound.
Of course the thing was boobytrapped. Fiben wasted no time inspecting it. He leapt up to tap the nearest branch lightly and teetered precariously as he landed, drawing gasps from those below.
The branch reacted a delayed instant after he touched it… just time enough for him to have gotten a solid grip on it, had he tried. The entire tree seemed to writhe. Twigs turned into curling ropes which would have shared an arm, if he were still holding on.
With a yip of exhilaration, Fiben leaped again, this time grabbing a dangling rope as the branch swayed down again. He rode it up like a pole vaulter, sailing over the last two terraces — and the surprised dancer — and flew on into the junglelike mass of girders and wiring overhead.
Fiben let go at the last moment and managed to land in a crouch upon a catwalk. For a moment he had to fight for balance on the tricky footing. A maze of spotlights and unsprung traps lay all around him. Laughing, he hopped about tripping releases, sending wires, nets, and tangle-ropes spilling over onto the mound. There were tubs of some hot, oatmeallike substance which he kicked over. Splatters on the orchestra sent the musicians diving for cover.