The Uplift War u-3

by David Brin

  Fiben shook his head in wonder that they persevered at all.

  Sure, humans were notoriously liberal in their Uplift policy, treating their clients as near equals in the face of a Galactic tradition that was far less generous. Elder Galactic clans might glower in disapproval, but chim and dolphin members deliberated next to their patrons on Terragens Councils. The client races had even been entrusted with a few starships of their own.

  But a college without men?

  Fiben had wondered why the invader held such a loose rein over the chim population, meddling only in a few crass ways like at the Ape’s Grape.

  Now he thought he knew why.

  “Mimicry! They must think we’re playing pretend!” he muttered half aloud.

  “What did you say?” Gailet looked at him. They had made a truce in order to get the job done, but clearly she did not savor spending all day as his tour guide.

  Fiben pointed at the students. “Tell me what you see down there.”

  She glowered, then sighed and bent forward to look. “I see Professor Jimmie Sung leaving lecture hall, explaining something to some students.” She smiled faintly. “It’s probably intermediate Galactic history. … I used to TA for him, and I well recall that expression of confusion on the students’ faces.”

  “Good. That’s what you see. Now loojc at it through a Gubru’s eyes.”

  Gailet frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Fiben gestured again. “Remember, according to Galactic tradition we neo-chimps aren’t much over three hundred years old as a sapient client race, barely older than dolphins — only just beginning our hundred-thousand-year period of probation and indenture to Man.

  “Remember, also, that many of the Eatee fanatics resent humans terribly. Yet humans had to be granted patron status and all the privileges that go along with it. Why? Because they already had uplifted chims and dolphins before Contact! That’s how you get status in the Five Galaxies, by having clients and heading up a clan.”

  Gailet shook her head. “I don’t get what you’re driving at. Why are you explaining the obvious?” Clearly, she did not like being lectured by a backwoods chim, one without even a postgraduate degree.

  “Think! How did humans win their status? Remember how it happened, back in the twenty-second century? The fanatics were outvoted when it came to accepting neo-chimps and neo-dolphins as sapient.” Fiben waved his arm. “It was a diplomatic coup pulled off by the Kanten and Tymbrimi and other moderates before humans even knew what the issues were!”

  Gailet’s expression was sardonic, and he recalled that her area of expertise was Galactic sociology. “Of course, but—”

  “It became a. fait accompli. But the Gubru and the Soro and the other fanatics didn’t have to like it. They still think we’re little better than animals. They have to believe that, otherwise humans have earned a place in Galactic society equal to most, and better than many!”

  “I still don’t see what you’re—”

  “Look down there.” Fiben pointed. “Look with Gubru eyes, and tell me what you see!”

  Gailet Jones glared at Fiben narrowly. At last, she sighed. “Oh, if you insist,” and she swiveled to gaze down into the courtyard again.

  She was silent for a long time.

  “I don’t like it,” she said at last. Fiben could barely hear her. He moved to stand closer.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  She looked away, so he put it into words for her. “What you see are bright, well-trained animals, creatures mimicking the behavior of their masters. Isn’t that it? Through the eyes of a Galactic, you see clever imitations of human professors and human students… replicas of better times, reenacted superstitiously by loyal—”

  “Stop it!” Gailet shouted, covering her ears. She whirled on Fiben, eyes ablaze. “I hate you!”

  Fiben wondered. This was hard on her. Was he simply getting even for the hurt and humiliation he had suffered over the last three days, partly at her hands?

  But no. She had to be shown how her people were looked on by the enemy! How else would she ever learn how to fight them?

  Oh, he was justified, all right. Still, Fiben thought. It’s never pleasant being loathed by a pretty girl.

  Gailet Jones sagged against one of the pillars supporting the roof of the bell tower. “Oh Ifni and Goodall,” she cried into her hands. “What if they are right! What if it’s true?”

  34

  Athaclena

  The glyph paraphrenll hovered above the sleeping girl, a floating cloud of uncertainty that quivered in the darkened chamber.

  It was one of the Glyphs of Doom. Better than any living creature could predict its own fate, paraphrenll knew what the future held for it — what was unavoidable.

  And yet it tried to escape. It could do nothing else. Such was the simple, pure, ineluctable nature of paraphrenll.

  The glyph wafted upward in the dream smoke of Athaclena’s fitful slumber, rising until its nervous fringe barely touched the rocky ceiling. That instant the glyph quailed from the burning reality of the damp stone, dropping quickly back toward where it had been born.

  Athaclena’s head shook slightly on the pillow, and her breathing quickened. Paraphrenll flickered in suppressed panic just above.

  The shapeless dream glyph began to resolve itself, its amorphous shimmering starting to assume the symmetrical outlines of a face.

  Paraphrenll was an essence — a distillation. Resistance to inevitability was its theme. It writhed and shuddered to hold off the change, and the face vanished for a time.

  Here, above the Source, its danger was greatest. Paraphrenll darted away toward the curtained exit, only to be drawn short suddenly, as if held in leash by taut threads.

  The glyph stretched thin, straining for release. Above the sleeping girl, slender tendrils waved after the desperate capsule of psychic energy, drawing it back, back.

  Athaclena sighed tremulously. Her pale, almost translucent skin throbbed as her body perceived an emergency of some sort and prepared to make adjustments. But no orders came. There was no plan. The hormones and enzymes had no theme to build around.

  Tendrils reached out, pulling paraphrenll, hauling it in. They gathered around the struggling symbol, like fingers caressing clay, fashioning decisiveness out of uncertainty, form out of raw terror.

  At last they dropped away, revealing what paraphrenll had become … A face, grinning with mirth. Its cat’s eyes glittered. Its smile was not sympathetic.

  Athaclena moaned.

  A crack appeared. The face divided down the middle, and the halves separated. Then there were two of them!

  Her breath came in rapid strokes.

  The two figures split longitudinally, and there were four. It happened again, eight… and again… sixteen. Faces multiplied, laughing soundlessly but uproariously.

  “Ah-ah!” Athaclena’s eyes opened. They shone with an opalescent, chemical fear-light. Panting, clutching the blankets, she sat up and stared in the small subterranean chamber, desperate for the sight of real things — her desk, the faint light of the hall bulb filtering through the entrance curtain. She could still feel the thing that paraphrenll had hatched. It was dissipating, now that she was awake, but slowly, too slowly! Its laughter seemed to rock with the beating of her heart, and Athaclena knew there would be no good in covering her ears.

  What was it humans called their sleep-terror? Nightmare. But Athaclena had heard that they were pale things, dreamed events and warped scenes taken from daily life, generally forgotten simply by awakening.

  The sights and sensations of the room slowly took on solidity. But the laughter did not merely vanish, defeated. It faded into the walls, embedding there, she knew. Waiting to return.

  “Tutsunacann,” she sighed aloud. Tymbrim-dialect sounded queer and nasal after weeks speaking solely Anglic.

  The laughing man glyph, Tutsunacann, would not go away. Not until something altered, or some hidden idea became a resolve which, in turn, must be
come a jest.

  And to a Tymbrimi, jokes were not always funny.

  Athaclena sat still while rippling motions under her skin settled down — the unasked-for gheer activity dissipating gradually. You are not needed, she told the enzymes. There is no emergency. Go and leave me alone.

  Ever since she had been little, the tiny change-nodes had been a part of her life — occasionally inconveniences, often indispensable. Only since coming to Garth had she begun to picture the little fluid organs as tiny, mouselike creatures, or busy little gnomes, which hurried abou’t making sudden alterations within her body whenever the need arose.

  What a bizarre way of looking at a natural, organic function! Many of the animals of Tymbrim shared the ability. It had evolved in the forests of homeworld long before the starfaring Caltmour had arrived to give her ancestors speech and law.

  That was it, of course… the reason why she had never likened the nodes to busy little creatures before coming to Garth. Prior to Uplift, her pre-sentient ancestors would have been incapable of making baroque comparisons. And after Uplift, they knew the scientific truth.

  Ah, but humans… the Terran wolflings… had come into intelligence without guidance. They were not handed answers, as a child is given knowledge by its parents and teachers. They had emerged ignorant into awareness and spent long millennia groping in darkness.

  Needing explanations and having none available, they got into the habit of inventing their own! Athaclena remembered when she had been amused… amused reading about some of them.

  Disease was caused by “vapors,” or excess bile, or an enemy’s curse… The Sun rode across the sky in a great chariot… The course of history was determined by economics…

  And inside the body, there resided animus…

  Athaclena touched a throbbing knot behind her jaw and started as the small bulge seemed to skitter away, like some small, shy creature. It was a terrifying image, that metaphor, more frightening than tutsunacann, for it invaded her body — her very sense of self!

  Athaclena moaned and buried her face in her hands. Crazy Earthlings! What have they done to me?

  She recalled how her father had bid her to learn more about human ways, to overcome her odd misgivings about the denizens of Sol III. But what had happened? She had found her destiny entwined with theirs, and it was no longer within her power to control it.

  “Father,” she spoke aloud in Galactic Seven. “I fear.”

  All she had of him was memory. Even the nahakieri glimmer she had felt back at the burning Howletts Center was unavailable, perhaps gone. She could not go down to seek his roots with hers, for tutsunacann lurked there, like some subterranean beast, waiting to get her.

  More metaphors, she realized. My thoughts are filling with them, while my own glyphs terrify me!

  Movement in the hall outside made her look up. A narrow trapezoid of light spilled into the room as the curtain was drawn aside. The slightly bowlegged outline of a chim stood silhouetted against the dim glow.

  “Excuse me, Mizz Athaclena, ser. I’m sorry to bother you during your rest period, but we thought you’d want to know.”

  “Ye …” Athaclena swallowed, chasing more mice from her throat. She shivered and concentrated on Anglic. “Yes? What is it?”

  The chim stepped forward, partly cutting off the light. “It’s Captain Oneagle, ser. I’m,. . . I’m afraid we can’t locate him anywhere.”

  Athaclena blinked. “Robert?”

  The chim nodded. “He’s gone, ser. He’s just plain disappeared!”

  35

  Robert

  The forest animals stopped and listened, all senses aquiver. A growing rustle and rumble of footfalls made them nervous. Without exception they scuttled for cover and watched from hiding as a tall beast ran past them, leaping from boulder to log to soft forest loam.

  They had begun to get used to the smaller two-legged variety, and to the much larger kind that chuffed and shambled along on three limbs as often as two. Those, at least, were hairy and smelled like animals. This one, though, was different. It ran but did not hunt. It was chased, yet it did not try to lose its pursuers. It was warm-blooded, yet when it rested it lay in the open noon sunshine, where only animals stricken with madness normally ventured.

  The little native creatures did not connect the running thing with the kind that flew about in tangy-smelling metal and plastic, for that type had always made such noise, and reeked of those things.

  This one, though… this one ran unclothed.

  “Captain, stop!”

  Robert hopped one rock farther up the tumbled boulder scree. He leaned against another to catch his breath and looked back down at his pursuer.

  “Getting tired, Benjamin?”

  The chim officer panted, stooping over with both hands on his knees. Farther downslope the rest of the search party lay strung out, some flat on their backs, barely able to move.

  Robert smiled. They must have thought it would be easy to catch him. After all, chims were at home in a forest. And just one of them, even a female, would be strong enough to grab him and keep him immobile for the rest to bundle home.

  But Robert had planned this. He had kept to open ground and played the chase to take advantage of his long stride.

  “Captain Oneagle …” Benjamin tried again, catching his breath. He looked up and took a step forward. “Captain, please, you’re not well.”

  “I feel fine,” Robert announced, lying just a little. Actually, his legs shivered with the beginnings of a cramp, his lungs burned, and his right arm itched all over from where he had chipped and peeled his cast away.

  And then there were his bare feet…

  “Parse it logically, Benjamin,” he said. “Demonstrate to me that I am ill, and just maybe I’ll accompany you back to those smelly caves.”

  Benjamin blinked up at him. Then he shrugged, obviously willing to clutch at any straw. Robert had proven they could not run him down. Perhaps Jogic might work.

  “Well, ser.” Benjamin licked his lips. “First off, there’s the fact that you aren’t wearing any clothes.”

  Robert nodded. “Good, go for the direct. I’ll even posit, for now, that the simplest, most parsimonious explanation for my nudity is that I’ve gone bonkers. I reserve the right to offer an alternative theory, though.”

  The chim shivered as he saw Robert’s smile. Robert could not help sympathizing with Benjamin. From the chim’s point of view this was a tragedy in progress, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

  “Continue, please,’ Robert urged.

  “Very well.” Benjamin sighed. “Second, you are running away from chims under your own command. A patron afraid of his own loyal clients cannot be in complete control of himself.”

  Robert nodded. “Clients who would throw this patron into a straitjacket and dope him full of happy juice first chance they got? No good, Ben. If you accept my premise, that I have reasons for what I’m doing, then it only follows that I’d try to keep you guys from dragging me back.”

  “Um …” Benjamin took a step closer. Robert casually retreated one boulder higher. “Your reason could be a false one,” Benjamin ventured. “A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior. The sick person actually believes—”

  “Good point,” Robert agreed, cheerfully. “I’ll accept, for later discussion, the possibility that my ‘reasons’ are actually rationalizations by an unbalanced mind. Will you, in exchange, entertain the possibility that they might be valid?”

  Benjamin’s lip curled back. “You’re violating orders being out here!”

  Robert sighed. “Orders from an E.T, civilian to a Terragens officer? Chim Benjamin, you surprise me. I agree that Athaclena should organize the ad hoc resistance. She seems to have a flair for it, and most of the chims idolize her. But I choose to operate independently. You know I have the right.”

  Benjamin’s frustration was evident. The chim seemed on the verge of tears.
“But you’re in danger out here!”

  At last. Robert had wondered how long Ben could maintain this game of logic while every fiber must be quivering over the safety of the last free human. Under similar circumstances, Robert doubted many men would have done better.

  He was about to say something to that effect when Benjamin’s head jerked up suddenly. The chim put a hand to his ear, listening to a small receiver. A look of alarm spread across his face.

  The other chims must have heard the same report, for they stumbled to their feet, staring up at Robert in growing panic.

  “Captain Oneagle, Central reports acoustic signatures to the northeast. Gasbots!”

  “Estimated time of arrival?”

  “Four minutes! Please, captain, will you come now?”

  “Come where?” Robert shrugged. “We can’t possibly make the caves in time.”

  “We can hide you.” But from the tone of dread in his voice, Benjamin clearly knew it was useless.

  Robert shook his head. “I’ve got a better idea. But it means we have to cut our little debate short. You must accept that I’m out here for a valid reason, Chim Benjamin. At once!”

  — The chim stared at him, then nodded tentatively. “I — Idon’t have any choice.”

  “Good,” Robert said. “Now take off your clothes.”

  “S-serr…”

  “Your clothes! And that sonic receiver of yours! Have everybody in your party strip. Remove everything! As you love your patrons, leave on nothing but skin and hair, then come join me up in those trees at the top of the scree!”

  Robert did not wait for the blinking chim to acknowledge the strange command. He turned and took off upslope, favoring the foot most cut up by pebbles and twigs since his early morning foray had begun.

  How much time remained? he wondered. Even if he was correct — and Robert knew he was taking a terrible gamble — he would still need to get as much altitude as possible.

  He could not help scanning the sky for the expected robot bombers. The preoccupation caused him to stumble and fall to his knees as he reached the crest. He skinned them further crawling the last two meters to the shade under the nearest of the dwarf trees. According to his theory it wouldn’t matter much whether or not he concealed himself. Still, Robert sought heavy cover. The Gubru machines might have simple optical scanners to supplement their primary homing mechanism.