The Uplift War u-3

by David Brin

  There you are, minding your own business in some rain forest, perfectly adequate in your ecological niche, then bam Some authoritarian guy with delusions of godhood is sitting on your chest, forcing the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge down your throat. From then on you’re inadequate, because you’re being measured against the “higher” standard of your patron; no freedom; you can’t even breed as you please, and you’ve got all those “responsibilities” — Who ever heard of responsibilities back in the jungle? — responsibilities to your patrons, to your descendants. …

  Rough deal. But in the Five Galaxies there’s only one alternative, extermination. Witness the former tenants of Garth.

  Fiben licked the sweat salt from his lips and knew that it was nervous reaction that had brought on the momentary wave of bitterness. There was no point to recriminations anyway. If he were a race representative — one of those few chims deputized to speak for all neo-chimpanzees before the Terragens and the great Galactic Institutes — the issues might be worth contemplating. As it was, Fiben realized he was just procrastinating.

  I guess they forgot about me, after all, he thought, wondering at his luck.

  Sunset reached its peak in a glory of color and texture, casting rich red and orange streamers across Garth’s shallow sea.

  Hell, after a day like this, what was climbing down a steep cliff in the dark? Anticlimax, that was all.

  “Where the devil have you been!” Gailet Jones faced Fiben when he slumped through the door. She approached glowering.

  “Aw, teach.” He sighed. “Don’t scold me. I’ve had a rough day.” He pushed past her and shuffled through the house library, strewn with charts and papers. He stepped right across a large chart laid on the floor, oblivious as two of Gailet’s observers shouted indignantly. They ducked aside as he passed straight over them.

  “We finished debriefing hours ago!” Gailet said as she followed him. “Max managed to steal quite a few of their watch disks …”

  “I know. I saw,” he muttered as he stumbled into the tiny room he had been assigned. He began undressing right there. “Do you have anything to eat?” he asked.

  “Eat?” Gailet sounded incredulous. “We have to get your input to fill in gaps on our Gubru operations chart. That explosion was a windfall, and we weren’t prepared with enough observers. Half of the ones we had just stood and stared when the excitement started.”

  With a “clomp” Fiben’s coveralls fell to the floor. He stepped out of them. “Food can wait,” he mumbled. “I need a drink.”

  Gailet Jones blushed and half turned away. “You might have the courtesy not to scratch,” she said.

  Fiben turned from pouring himself a stiff shot of ping-orange brandy and looked at her curiously. Was this actually the same chimmie who had accosted him with “pink” a fortnight or so ago? He slapped his chest and waved away plumes of dust. Gailet looked disgusted.

  “I was lookin’ forward to a bath, but now I think I’ll skip it,” he said. “Too sleepy now. Gotta rest. Coin’ home, tomorrow.”

  Gailet blinked. “To the mountains?”

  Fiben nodded. “Got to pick up Tycho and head back to report to th’ gen’ral.” He smiled tiredly. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell her you’re doin’ a good job here. Fine job.”

  The chimmie sniffed disgustedly. “You’ve spent the afternoon and evening rolling in dirt and getting soused! Some militia officer! And I thought you were supposed to be a scientist!

  “Well, next time your precious general wants to communicate with our movement here in town, you make sure she sends somebody else, do you hear me?”

  She swiveled and slammed the door behind her.

  What’d I say? Fiben stared after her. Dimly he knew he could have done better somehow. But he was so tired. His body ached, from his singed toes to his burning lungs. He hardly felt the bed as he collapsed into it.

  In his dreams a blueness spun and pulsed. From it there emanated a faint something that could be likened to a distant smile.

  Amusing, it seemed to say. Amusing, but not all that much of a laugh.

  More an appetizer for things to come.

  In his sleep Fiben moaned softly. Then another image came to him, of a small neo-chimpanzee, an obvious throw-back, with bony eyeridges and long arms which rested on a keyboard display strapped to its chest. The atavistic chim could not speak, but when it grinned, Fiben shivered.

  Then a more restful phase of sleep set in, and at last he went on in relief to other dreams.

  41

  Galactics

  The Suzerain of Propriety could not set foot on unsanc-tioned ground. Because of this it rode perched upon a gilded staff of reckoning, guided by a convoy of fluttering Kwackoo attendants. Their incessant cooing murmur was more soothing than the grave chirps of their Gubru patrons. Although the Uplift of the Kwackoo had brought them far toward the Gubru way of viewing the world, they nevertheless remained less solemn, less dignified by nature.

  The Suzerain of Propriety tried to make allowances for such differences as the clucking swarm of fuzzy, rotund clients carried the antigravity perch from the site where the body had lain. It might be inelegant, but already they could be heard gossiping in low tones over who would be chosen as replacement. Who would become the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution?

  It would have to be done soon. Messages had already been sent to the Roost Masters on the homeworld, but if need be a senior bureaucrat would be elevated on the spot. Continuity must be preserved.

  Far from being offended, the Suzerain of Propriety found the Kwackoo calming. It needed their simple songs for the distraction they offered. The days and weeks to come would be stressful. Formal mourning was only one of the many tasks ahead. Somehow, momentum toward a new policy must be restored. And, of course, one had to consider the effects this tragedy would have on the Molt.

  The investigators awaited the arrival of the perch amid a copse of toppled trees near the still smoldering chancery walls. When the Suzerain nodded for them to begin, they proceeded into a dance of presentment — part gesticulation and part audiovisual display — describing what they had determined about the cause of the explosion and fire. As the investigators chirped their findings in syncopated, a cappella song, the Suzerain made an effort to concentrate. This was a delicate matter, after all.

  By the codes the Gubru might occupy an enemy embassy, yet they could still be held responsible for any damage done to it if the fault was theirs.

  Yes, yes, it occurred, did occur, the investigators reported. The building is — has been made — a gutted ruin.

  No, no, no purposeful activity has been traced, is believed to have caused these happenings, No sign that this event path was pre-chosen by our enemies and imposed without our will.

  Even if the Tymbrimi Ambassador sabotaged his own buildings, what of it? If we are not the cause, we need not pay, need not reimburse!

  The Suzerain chirped a brief chastisement. It was not up to the investigators to determine propriety, only evaluations of fact. And anyway, matters of expense were the domain of the officers of the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution, after they recovered from the catastrophe their bureaucracy had suffered here.

  The investigators danced regretful apologies.

  The Suzerain’s thoughts kept hovering in numb wonderment about what the consequences would be. This otherwise minor event had toppled the delicate balance of the Triumvirate just before another Command Conclave, and there would be repercussions even after a new third Suzerain was appointed.

  In the short term, this would help both survivors. Beam and Talon would be free to pursue what few humans remained at large, whatever the cost. And Propriety could engage in research without constant carpings about how expensive it all would be.

  And then there was the competition for primacy to consider. In recent days it had begun to grow clear just how impressive the old Suzerain of Cost and Caution had been. More and more, against all expectation, it had been the one organizing their
debates, drawing their best ideas forth, pushing compromises, leading them toward consensus.

  The Suzerain of Propriety was ambitious. The priest had not liked the direction things were heading. Nor was it pleasant seeing its cleverest plans tinkered with, modified, altered to suit a bureaucrat. Especially one with bizarre ideas about empathy with aliens!

  No, this was not the worst thing to have happened. Not at all. A new Threesome would be much more acceptable. More workable. And in the new balance the replacement would start at a disadvantage.

  Then why, for what reason, for what cause am I afraid? the high priest wondered.

  Shivering, the Suzerain of Propriety fluffed its plumage and concentrated, bring its thoughts back to the present, to the investigators’ report. They seemed to be implying that the explosion and fire had fallen into that broad category of events that the Earthlings might call accidents.

  At its erstwhile colleague’s urging, the Suzerain had of late been trying to learn Anglic, the wolflings’ strange, non-Galactic language. It was a difficult, frustrating effort, and of questionable utility when language computers were facile enough.

  Yet the chief bureaucrat had insisted, and surprisingly the priest discovered there were things to be learned from even so beastly a collection of grunts and moans, things such as the hidden meanings underlying that term, accident.

  The word obviously applied to what the investigators said had happened here, a number of unpredicated factors combined with considerable incompetence in the City Gas Department after the human supervisors had been removed. And yet the way Earthlings defined “accident” was wrong by definition! In Anglic the term actually had no precise meaning!

  Even the humans had a truism, “There are no accidents.”

  If so, why have a word for a nonexistent thing?

  Accident … it served to cover anything from unper-ceived causality, to true randomness, to a full level seven probability storm! In every case the “results” were “accidental.”

  How could a species be spacefaring, be classified at the high level of a patron of a clan with such a murky, undefined, context-dependent way of looking at the universe? Compared with these Earthlings, even the devil trickster Tymbrimi were transparent and clear as the very ether!

  This sort of uncomfortable line of thought was the sort of thing the priest had most hated about the bureaucrat! It was one of the dead Suzerain’s most irritating attributes.

  It was also one of the things most beloved and valuable. It would be missed.

  Such were the confusions when a consensus was broken, when a mating was shattered, half begun.

  Firmly, the Suzerain chirped a word-chain of definition. Introspection was taxing, and a decision had to made about what had happened here.

  Under some potential futures the Gubru might have to pay damages to the Tymbrimi — and even to the Earthlings — for the destruction that occurred on this plateau. It was unpalatable to consider, and might be prevented altogether when the Gubru grand design was fulfilled.

  Events elsewhere in the Five Galaxies would determine that. This planet was a minor, if important, nut to shell with a quick, efficient bill thrust. Anyway, it was the job of the new Suzerain of Cost and Caution to see that expenses were kept down.

  To see that the Gubru Alliance — the true inheritors of the Ancient Ones — were not found failing in propriety when the Progenitors returned, that was the priest’s own task.

  May the winds bring that day, it prayed.

  “Judgment deferred, delayed, put off for now,” the Suzerain declared aloud. And the investigators at once closed their folders.

  The business of the chancery fire being finished, the next stop would be the top of the hill, where there was yet another matter to be evaluated.

  The cooing crowd of Kwackoo huddled close and moved as a mass, carrying the Perch of Reckoning with them, a flat ball of puffy clients surging placidly through a feathery crowd of their hopping, excitable patrons.

  The Diplomatic Cache still smoked on top from the events of the day before. The Suzerain listened carefully as the investigators reported, sometimes one at a time, occasionally joining together to chirp in unison and then counterpoint. Out of the cacophony the Suzerain gathered a picture of the events that had led to this scene.

  A local neo-chimpanzee had been found poking around the cache without first seeking formal passage by the occupying power, a clear violation of wartime protocol. Nobody knew why the silly half-animal had been present. Perhaps it was driven by the “monkey complex” — that irritating, incomprehensible need that drove Earthlings to seek out excitement instead of prudently avoiding it.

  An armed detachment had come upon the curious neochimp while routinely moving to secure the disaster area. The commander had urgently spoken to the furry client-of-humans, insisting that the Earthling creature desist at once, and show proper obeisance.

  Typical of the upspring of humans, the neo-chimp had been obdurate. Instead of behaving in a civilized manner it had run away. In the process of trying to stop it, some defense device of the cairn was set off. The cairn was damaged in the subsequent shooting.

  This time the Suzerain decided that the outcome was most satisfactory. Subclient or no, the chimpanzee was officially an ally of the cursed Tymbrimi. By acting so, it had destroyed the immunity of the cache! The soldiers were within their rights to open fire upon either the chimp or the defender globe without restraint. There had been no violation of propriety, the Suzerain ruled.

  The investigators danced a dance of relief. Of course, the more closely ancient procedures were adhered to, the more brilliant would be the plumage of the Gubru when the Progenitors returned.

  May the winds hurry the day.

  “Open, enter, proceed into the cache,” the priest commanded. “Enter and investigate the secrets within!”

  Certainly the cache fail-safes would have destroyed most of the contents. Still, there might be some information of value left to be deciphered.

  The simpler locks came off quickly, and special devices were brought to remove the massive door. This all took some time. The priest kept occupied holding a service for a company of Talon Soldiers, preaching to reinforce their faith in the ancient values. It was important not to let them lose their keen edge with things so peaceful, so the Suzerain reminded them that in the last two days several small parties of warriors had gone missing in the mountains southeast of this very town. Now would be a useful time for them to remember that their lives belonged to the Nest. The Nest and Honor — nothing else mattered.

  At last the final puzzle bolt was solved. For famous tricksters the Tymbrimi did not seem so clever. Their wards were easy enough for Gubru lockpick robots to solve. The door lifted off in the arms of a carrier drone. Holding instruments before them, the investigators cautiously entered the cairn.

  Moments later, with a chirp-chain of surprise, a feathered form burst forth holding a black crystalline object in its beak. This one was followed almost immediately by another. The investigators’ feet were a blur of dancing excitement as they laid the objects on the ground before the Suzerain’s floating perch.

  Intact! they danced. Two data-stores were found intact, shielded from the self-destruct explosions by a premature rockfall!

  Glee spread among the investigators and from there to the soldiers and the civilians waiting beyond. Even the Kwackoo crooned happily, for they, too, could see that this counted as a coup of at least the fourth order. An Earthling client had destroyed the immunity of the cache through obviously irreverent behavior — the mark of flawed Uplift. And the result had been fully sanctioned access to enemy secrets!

  The Tymbrimi and humans would be shamed, and the clan of Gooksyu-Gubru would learn much!

  The celebration was Gubru-frenetic. But the Suzerain itself danced only for a few seconds. In a race of worriers, it had a role of redoubled concern. There were too many things about the universe that were suspect. Too many things that would be much better
dead, lest they by some chance someday threaten the Nest.

  The Suzerain tilted its head first one way then another. It looked down at the data cubes, black and shiny on the scorched loam. A strange juxtaposition seemed to overlie the salvaged record crystals, a feeling that almost, but not quite, translated into a brooding sense of dread.

  It was not a recognizable psi-sense, nor any other form of scientific premonition. If it had been, the Suzerain would have ordered the cubes converted to dust then and there.

  And yet … It was very strange.

  For only a brief moment, it shuddered under the illusion that the faceted crystals were eyes, the shining, space-black eyes of a large and very dangerous snake.

  42

  Robert

  He ran holding in one hand a new wooden bow. A simple, homespun quiver containing twenty new arrows bounced gently against his back as he puffed up the forest trail. His straw hat had been woven from river rushes. His loincloth and the moccasins on his feet were made of native suede.

  The young man favored his left leg slightly as he ran. The bandage on that thigh covered only a superficial wound. Even the pain from the burn was a pleasure of sorts, reminding him how much preferable a near miss was over the alternative.

  Image of a tall bird, staring unbelievingly at the arrow that had split its breastbone, its laser rifle tumbling to the forest loam, released by death-numbed talons.

  The ridge was quiet. Almost the only sound was his steady breathing and the soft rasp of moccasins against the pebbles. Prickles of perspiration dried quickly as the breeze laid tracks of goose bumps up his arms and legs.

  The touch of wind freshened as he climbed. The slope of the trail tapered, and Robert at last found himself above the trees, among the towering hill-spines of the ridge crest.

  The sudden warmth of the sun was welcome now that he had darkened nearly to the shade of a foon-nut tree. His skin had also toughened, making thorns and nettles less bothersome.