by David Brin
Now Fiben could easily see the outlines of the obstacle course. Clearly there was no real solution to the puzzle except the one he had used, bypassing the last few terraces altogether.
In other words, one had to cheat.
The mound was not a fair test, then. A chen couldn’t hope to win by being more clever, only by letting others take the risks first, suffering pain and humiliation in the traps and deadfalls. The lesson the Gubru were teaching here was insidiously simple.
“Those bastards,” he muttered.
The exalted feeling was beginning to fade, and with it some of Fiben’s temporary sense of borrowed invulnerability. Obviously Athaclena had given him a parting gift, a post-hypnotic charm of sorts, to help him if he found himself in a jam. Whatever it was, he knew it wouldn’t do to push his luck.
It’s time to get out of here, he thought.
The music had died when the musicians fled the sticky oatmeal stuff. But now the the public address system was squawking again, issuing clipped exhortations that were beginning to sound a bit frantic.
… unacceptable behavior for proper, clients… Cease expressions of approval for one who has broken rules… One who must be chastised…
The Gubru’s pompous urgings fell flat, for the crowd seemed to have gone completely ape. When Fiben hopped over to the mammoth speakers and yanked out wires, the alien’s tirade cut off and there rose a roar of hilarity and approval from the audience below.
Fiben leaned into one of the spotlights, swiveling it so that it swept across the hall. When the beam passed over them chims picked up their wicker tables and tore them apart over their heads. Then the spot struck the E.T. in the balcony box, still shaking its microphone in apparent outrage. The birdlike creature wailed and cringed under the sharp glare.
The two chimps sharing the VIP box dove for cover as the battle-robots rotated and fired at once. Fiben leaped from the rafters just before the spotlight exploded in a shower of metal and glass.
He landed in a roll and came to his feet at the peak of the dance mound… King of the Mountain. He concealed his limp as he waved to the crowd. The hall shook with their cheers.
They abruptly quieted as he turned and took a step toward Sylvie.
This was the payoff. Natural male chimpanzees in the wild weren’t shy about mating in front of others, and even uplifted neo-chimps “shared” when the time and place was right. They had few of the jealousy or privacy taboos which made male humans so strange.
The evening’s climax had come much sooner than the Gubru planned, and in a fashion it probably did not like, but the basic lesson could still be the same. Those below were looking for a vicarious sharing, with all the lessons psychologically tailored.
Sylvie’s bird-mask was part of tke conditioning. Her bared teeth shone as she wriggled her bottom at him. The many-slitted skirt whirled in a rippling flash of provocative color. Even fhe zipsuiters were staring now, licking their lips in anticipation, their quarrel with him forgotten. At that moment he was their hero, he was each of them.
Fiben quashed a wave of shame. We’re not so bad… not when you figure we’re only three hundred years old. The Gubru want us to feel we’re barely more than animals, so we’ll be harmless. But I hear even humans used to sometimes revert like this, back in the olden days.
Sylvie chuffed at him as he approached. Fiben felt a powerful tightening in his loins as she crouched to await him. He reached for her. He gripped her shoulder.
Then Fiben swung her about to face him. He exerted strength to make her stand up straight.
The cheering crowd fell into confused muttering. Sylvie blinked up at him in hormone-drenched surprise. It was apparent to Fiben that she must have taken some sort of drug to get into this condition.
“F-frontwards?” she asked, struggling with the words. “But Big-Beak s-said he wanted it to look natural. …”
Fiben took her face in his hands. The mask had a complex set of buckles, so he bent around the jutting beak to kiss her once, gently, without removing it.
“Go home to your mates,” he told her. “Don’t let our enemies shame you.”
Sylvie rocked back as if he had struck her a blow.
Fiben faced the crowd and raised his arms. “Upspring of the wolflings of Terra!” he shouted. “All of you. Go home to your mates! Together with our patrons we’ll guide our own Uplift. We don’t need Eatee outsiders to tell us how to do it!”
From the crowd there came a low rumbling of consternation. Fiben saw that the alien in the balcony was chirping into a small box, probably calling for assistance, he realized.
“Go home!” he repeated. “And don’t let outsiders make spectacles of us again!”
The muttering below intensified. Here and there Fiben saw faces wearing sudden frowns — chims looking about the room in what he hoped was dawning embarrassment. Brows wrinkled with uncomfortable thoughts.
But then, out of the babble below, someone shouted up at him.
“Whassamatta? Can’t ya’ get it up?”
About half of the crowd laughed uproariously. There were follow-up jeers and whistles, especially from the front rows.
Fiben really had to get going. The Gubru probably didn’t dare shoot him down outright, not in front of the crowd. But the avian had doubtless sent for reinforcements.
Still, Fiben couldn’t pass up a good straight line. He stepped to the edge of the plateau and glanced back at Sylvie. He dropped his pants.
The jeers stopped abruptly, then the brief silence was broken by whistles and wild applause.
Cretins, Fiben thought. But he did grin and wave before rebuttoning his fly.
By now the Gubru was flapping its arms and squawking, pushing at the well-dressed neo-chimps who shared its box. They, in turn, leaned over to shout at the bartenders. There were faint noises that sounded like sirens in the distance.
Fiben grabbed Sylvie for one more kiss. She answered this time, swaying as he released her. He paused for one last gesture up at the alien, making the crowd roar with laughter. Then he turned and ran for the exit.
Inside his head a little voice was cursing him for an extroverted idiot. This wasn’t what the General sent you to town to do, fool!
He swept through the beaded curtain but then stopped abruptly, face to face with a frowning neo-chimp in a cowled robe. Fiben recognized the small chim he had briefly seen twice this evening — first outside the door to the Ape’s Grape and later standing just outside the Gubru’s balcony box.
“You!” he accused.
“Yeah, me.” the panderer answered, “Sorry I can’t make the same offer as before. But I guess you’ve had other things on your mind tonight.”
Fiben frowned. “Get out of my way.” He moved to push the other aside.
“Max!” the smaller chim called. A large form emerged from the shadows. It was the huge, scar-faced fellow he had met at the bar, just before the zipsuited probationers showed up, the one so interested in his blue card. There was a stun gun in his meaty grasp. He smiled apologetically. “Sorry, chum.”
Fiben tensed, but it was already too late. A rolling tingle washed over his body, and all he managed to do was stumble and fall into the smaller chim’s arms.
He encountered softness and an unexpected aroma. By Ifni, he thought in a stunned instant.
“Help me, Max,” the nearby voice said. “We’ve got to move fast.”
Strong arms lifted him% and Fiben almost welcomed the collapse of consciousness after this last surprise — that the young-faced little “pimp” was actually a chimmie,-a girl!
25
Galactics
The Suzerain of Cost and Caution left the Command Conclave in a state of agitation. Dealing with its fellow Suzerains was always physically exhausting. Three adversaries, dancing and circling, forming temporary alliances, separating and then reforming again, shaping an ever-changing synthesis. So it would have to be as long as the situation in the outer world was indeterminate, in a state of flux.
But there was no hurry to begin the Molt. Not yet. There would be many more conclaves before that day arrived, and much plumage to be shed.
Caution’s first debate had been with the Suzerain of Propriety over using Talon Soldiers to subdue the Terragens Marines at the planetary spaceport. In fact, that initial argument had been little more than a minor squabble, and when the Suzerain of Beam and Talon finally tipped the scales, intervening in favor of Propriety, Caution surrendered with good grace. The subsequent ground battle had been expensive in good soldiery. But other purposes were served by the exercise.
The Suzerain of Cost and Caution had known that the vote would go that way. Actually, it had had no intention of winning their first argument. It knew how much better it was to begin the race in last place, with the priest and the admiral in temporary contention. As a result both of them would tend to ignore the Civil Service for a while. Setting up a proper bureaucracy of occupation and administration would take a lot of effort, and the Suzerain of Cost and Caution did not want to waste energy on preliminary squabbles.
Such as this most recent one. As the chief bureaucrat stepped away from the meeting pavilion and was joined by its aides and escorts, the other two expedition leaders could still be heard crooning at each other in the background. The conclave was over, yet they were still arguing over what had already been decided.
For the time being the military would continue the gas attacks, seeking out any humans who might have escaped the initial dosings. The order had been issued minutes ago.
The high priest — the Suzerain of Propriety — was worried that too many human civilians had been injured or killed by the gas. A few neo-chimpanzees had also suffered. This wasn’t catastrophic from a legal or religious point of view, but it would complicate matters eventually. Compensation might have to be paid, and it could weaken the Gubru case if the matter ever came before interstellar adjudication.
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had argued that adjudication was very unlikely. After all, with the Five Galaxies in an uproar, who was going to care about a few mistakes made on a tiny backwater dirtspeck such as this?
“We care!” the Suzerain of Propriety had declared. And it made its feelings clear by continuing to refuse to step off its perch onto the soil of Garth. To do so prematurely would make the invasion official, it stated. And that would have to wait. The small but fierce space battle, and the defiance of the spaceport, had seen to that. By resisting effectively, however briefly, the legal leaseholders had made it necessary to put off making any formal seizures for a while. Any further mistakes could not only harm Gubru claims here but prove terribly expensive as well.
The priest had fluttered its allochroous plumage after making that point, smugly certain of victory. After all, expense was an issue that would certainly win it an ally. Propriety felt it would surely be joined by Cost and Caution here!
How foolish, to think that the Molt will be decided by early bickerings such as these, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution had thought, and proceeded to side with the soldiery.
“Let the gassings go on, continue and seek out all those still in hiding,” it had said to the priest’s dismay and the admiral’s crowing delight.
The space battle and landings had proved extraordinarily costly. But not as expensive as it all would likely have been without the Coercion Program. The gas attacks had achieved the objective of concentrating nearly the entire human population onto a few islands where they might be simply controlled. It was easy to understand why the Suzerain of Beam and Talon wanted it that way. The bureaucrat, also, had experience dealing with wolflings. It, too, would feel much more comfortable with all of the dangerous humans gathered where it could see them.
Soon, of course, something would have to be done to curtail the high costs of this expedition. Already the Roost Masters had recalled elements of the fleet. Matters were critical on other fronts. It was vital to keep a tight perch-grip on expenses here. That was a matter for another conclave, however.
Today, the military suzerain was riding high. Tomorrow? Well, the alliances would shift and shift again, until at Jast a new policy emerged. And a queen.
The Suzerain of Cost and Caution turned and spoke to one of its Kwackoo aides.
“Have me driven, taken, conveyed to my headquarters.”
The official hover-barge lifted off and headed toward the buildings the Civil Service had appropriated, on headlands overlooking the nearby sea. As the vehicle hissed through the small Earthling town, guarded by a swarm of battle robots, it was watched by small crowds of the dark, hairy beasts the human wolflings prized as their eldest clients.
The Suzerain spoke again to its aide. “When we arrive at the chancery, gather the staff together. We shall consider, contemplate, evaluate the new proposal the high priest sent over this morning concerning how to manage these creatures, these neo-chimpanzees.”
Some of the ideas suggested by the Propriety Department were daring to an extreme. There were brilliant features that made the bureaucrat feel proud of its future mate. What a Threesome we shall make.
There were other aspects, of course, that would have to be altered if the plan was not to lead to disaster. Only one of the Triumvirate had the sureness of grasp to see such a scheme to its final, victorious conclusion. That had been known in advance when the Roost Masters chose their Three.
The Suzerain of Cost and Caution let out a treble sigh and contemplated how it would have to manipulate the next leadership conclave. Tomorrow, the next day, in a week. That forthcoming squabble was not far off. Each debate would grow more urgent, more important as both consensus and Molt approached.
The prospect was one to look upon with a mixture of trepidation, confidence, and utter pleasure.
26
Robert
The denizens of the deep caverns were unaccustomed to the bright lights and loud noises the newcomers had brought with them. Hordes of batlike creatures fled before the interlopers, leaving behind a flat, thick flooring of many centuries’ accumulated dung. Under limestone walls glistening with slow seepage, alkaline rivulets were now crossed by makeshift plank bridges. In drier corners, under the pale illumination of glow bulbs, the surface beings moved nervously, as if loathe to disturb the stygian quiet.
It was a forbidding place to wake up to. Shadows were stark, acherontic, and surprising. A crag of rock might look innocuous and then, from a slightly different perspective, leap out in familiarity as the silhouette of some monster met a hundred times in nightmares.
It wasn’t hard to have bad dreams in a place like this.
Shuffling in robe and slippers, Robert felt positive relief when at last he found the place he’d been looking for, the rebel “operations center.” It was a fairly large chamber, lit by more than the usual sparse ration of bulbs. But furniture was negligible. Some ragged card tables and cabinets had been supplemented by benches fashioned from chopped and leveled stalagmites, plus a few partitions knocked together out of raw timber from the forest high above. The effect only made the towering vault seem all the more mighty, and the refugees’ works all the more pitiful.
Robert rubbed his eyes. A few chims could be seen clustered around one partition arguing and sticking pins in a large map, speaking softly as they sifted through papers.
When one of them raised his voice too loud, echoes reverberated down the surrounding passages making the others look up in alarm. Obviously, the chims were still intimidated by their new quarters.
Robert shuffled into the light. “All right,” he said, his larynx still scratchy from lack of use. “What’s going on here? Where is she and what is she up to now?”
They stared at him. Robert knew he must look a sight in rumpled pajamas and slippers, his hair uncombed and
his arm in a cast to the shoulder.
“Captain Oneagle,” one of the chims said. “You really should still be in bed. Your fever—”
“Oh, shove it … Micah.” Robert had to think to remember the fellow’s name. The last few weeks were still a fog in his mind. “My fever broke two days ago. I can read my own chart. So tell me what’s happening! Where is everybody? Where’s Athaclena?”
They looked at each other. Finally one chimmie took a cluster of colored map pins out of her mouth. “Th” General… uh, Mizz Athaclena, is away. She’s leading a raid.”
“A raid. …” Robert blinked. “On the Gubru?” He brought a hand to his eyes as the room seemed to waver. “Oh, Ifni.”
There was a rush of activity as three chims got in each other’s way hauling over a wooden folding chair. Robert sat down heavily. He saw that these chims were all either very young or old. Athaclena must have taken most of the able-bodied with her.
“Tell me about it,” he said to them.
A senior-looking chimmie, bespectacled and serious, motioned the others back to work and introduced herself. “I am Dr. Soo,” she said. “At the Center I worked on gorilla genetic histories.”
Robert nodded. “Dr. Soo, yes. I recall you helped treat my injuries.” He remembered her face peering over him through a fog while the infection raged hot through his lymphatic system.
“You were very sick, Captain Oneagle. It wasn’t just your badly fractured arm, or those fungal toxins you absorbed during your accident. We are now fairly” certain you also inhaled traces of the Gubru coercion gas, back when they dosed the Mendoza Freehold.”
Robert blinked. The memory was a blur. He had been on the mend, up in the Mendoza’s mountain ranch, where he and Fiben had spent a couple of days talking, making plans. Somehow they would find others and try to get something started. Maybe make contact with his mother’s government in exile, if it still existed. Reports from Athaclena told of a set of caves that seemed ideal as a headquarters of sorts. Maybe these mountains could be a base of operations against the enemy.