by David Brin
“Irongrip was right,” Gailet said. “It’s got to be different for a chen. A white card would be fun fora male chim, I can see that. But for a chimmie? One with ambition to be something for herself?”
She looked away.
“I …” Fiben tried to think of something to say, but for a moment all he could do was sit there feeling thick-headed, stupid. Perhaps, someday, one of his great-to-the-nth grandchildren would be smart enough to know the right words, to know how to comfort someone too far gone into bitterness even to want comforting anymore.
That more fully uplifted neo-chim, a few score more generations down the chain of Uplift, might be bright enough. But Fiben knew he wasn’t. He was only an ape.
“Um.” He coughed. “I remember a time, back on Cilmar Island, it musta been before you returned to Garth. Let’s see, was it ten years ago? Ifni! I think I was just a freshman. …” He sighed. “Anyway, the whole island got all excited, that year, when Igor Patterson came to lecture and perform at the University.”
Gailet’s head lifted a little. “Igor Patterson? The drummer?”
Fiben nodded. “So you’ve heard of him?”
She smirked sarcastically. “Who hasn’t? He’s — ” Gailet spread her hands and let them drop, palms up. “He’s wonderful.”
That summed it up all right. For Igor Patterson was the best.
The thunder dance was only one aspect of the neo-chimpanzee’s love affair with rhythm. Percussion was a favorite musical form, from the quaint farmlands of Hermes to the sophisticated towers of Earth. Even in the early days — back when chims had been forced to carry keyboard displays on their chests in order to speak at all — even then the new race had loved the beat.
And yet, all of the great drummers on Earth and in the colonies were humans. Everyone until Igor Patterson.
He was the first. The first chim with the fine finger coordination, the delicacy of timing, the sheer chutzpah, to make it alongside the best. Listening to Patterson play “Clash Ceramic Lighting” wasn’t only to experience pleasure; for a chim it was to burst with pride. To many, his mere existence meant that chims weren’t just approaching what the Uplift Board wanted them to be, but what they wanted to be, as well.
“The Carter Foundation sent him on a tour of th’ colonies,” Fiben went on. “Partly it was as a goodwill trip for all the outlying chim communities. And of course it was also to spread the good luck around a bit.”
Gailet snorted at the obviousness of it. Of course Patterson had a white card. The chim members of the Uplift Board would have insisted, even if he weren’t also as wonderfully charming, intelligent, and handsome a specimen of neo-chimpanzee as anyone could ask to meet.
And Fiben thought he knew what else Gailet was thinking. For a male having a white card wouldn’t be much of a problem at all — just one long party. “I’ll bet,” she said. And Fiben imagined he detected a clear tone of envy.
“Yeah, well, you should’ve been there, when he showed up to give his concert. I was one of the lucky ones. My seat was way up in back, out of the way, and it happened that I had a real bad cold that night. That was damn fortunate.”
“WhatB^-GaiTet’s eyebrows came together. “What does that have to do with… Oh.” She frowned at him and her jaw tightened. “Oh. I see.”
“I’ll bet you do. The air conditioning was set on high, but I’m told the aroma was still overpowering. I had to sit shivering under the blowers. Damn near caught my death—”
“Will you get to the point?” Gailet’s lips were a thin line.
“Well, as no doubt you’ve guessed, nearly every green-or blue-card chimmie on the island who happened to be in estrus seemed to have a ticket to the concert. None of ’em used olfa-spray. They came, generally, with the complete okay of their group husbands, wearing flaming pink lipstick, just on the off chance—”
“I get the picture,” Gailett said. And for just an instant Fiben wondered if he saw her blink back a faint smile as she pictured the scene. If so, it was only a momentary flicker of her severe frown. “So what happened?”
Fiben stretched, yawning. “What would you expect to happen? A riot, of course.”
Her jaw dropped. “Really? At the University?”
“Sure as I’m sitting here.”
“But—”
“Oh, the first few minutes went all right. Man, old Igor could play as good as his rep, I’ll tell you. The crowd kept getting more and more excited. Even the backup band was feelin’ it. Then things kinda got out of hand.”
“But—”
“Remember old Professor Olvfing, from the Terragens Traditions Department? You know, the elderly chim who sports a monocle? Used to spend his spare time lobbying to get a chim monogamy bill before the legislature?”
“Yes, I knew him.” She nodded, her eyes wide open.
Fiben made a gesture with two hands.
“No! In public? Professor Olvfing?”
“With th’ dean of th’ College of frigging Nutrition, no less.”
Gailet let out a sharp sound. She turned aside, hand to her breast. She seemed to suffer a sudden bout of hiccups.
“Of course, Olvfing’s pair-bond wife forgave him later. It was that or’lose him to a ten-group that said they liked his style.”
Gailet slapped her chest, coughing. She turned further away from Fiben, shaking her head vigorously.
“Poor Igor Patterson,” Fiben continued. “He had problems of his own, of course. Some of th’ guys from the football team had been drafted as bouncers. When it started getting out of hand, they tried using fire extinguishers. That made things slippery, but it didn’t slow ’em down much.”
Gailet coughed louder. “Fiben …”
“It was too bad, really,” he mused aloud. “Igor was getting into a great blues riff, really pounding those skins, packin’ in a backbeat you couldn’t believe. I was groovin’ on it … until this forty-year-old chimmie, naked and slick as a dolphin, dropped straight onto him from th’ rafters.”
Gailet doubled over clutching her belly. She held up a hand, pleading for mercy. “Stop, please. …” she whimpered, weakly.
“Thank heavens it was the snare drum she fell through. Took her long enough gettin’ untangled for poor Igor to escape out the back way, just barely ahead of the mob.”
She toppled over sideways. For a moment Fiben felt concern, her face was so flushed and red. She hooted, slapping the floor, and tears streamed from her eyes. Gailet rolled over onto her back, rocking with peals of laughter.
Fiben shrugged. “And all that was just from playin’ the first number — Patterson’s special version of the bloody national anthem! What a pity. I never did get to hear his variation on Tnagadda Da Vita.’ ”
“Now that I think about it, though,” he sighed once more, “maybe it’s just as well.”
* * *
Power curfew came at 2000 hours, and no exception was made for prisons. A wind had risen before sunset and soon was rattling the shutters of their small window. It came in off the ocean, carrying a heavy salt smell. In the distance could be heard the faint rumblings of an early summer storm.
They slept curled in their blankets as close to each other as their chains allowed, head to head so they could hear each other breathing in the darkness. They slumbered inhaling the soft tang of stone and the mustiness of straw, and exhaled the soft mutterings of their dreams.
Gailet’s hands moved in tiny jerks, as if trying to follow the rhythms of some illusory escape. Her chains tinkled faintly.
Fiben lay motionless, but now and then he blinked, his eyes occasionally opening and closing without the light of consciousness in them. Sometimes a breath caught and held for a long moment before releasing, at last.
They did not notice the low humming sound that penetrated from the hallway outside, nor the light which speared into their cell through cracks in the wooden door. Feet shuffled and claws clicked on flagstones.
When keys rattled in the lock, Fiben jerked, rolled
to one side, and sat up. He knuckled his eyes as the hinges creaked. Gailet lifted her head. She used her hand to block the sharp glare of two lamps, held high on poles.
Fiben sneezed, smelling lavender and feathers. When he and Gailet were hauled to their feet by several of the zipsuited chims, he recognized the gruff voice of their head captor, Irongrip.
“You two better behave yourselves. You’ve got important visitors.”
Fiben blinked, trying to adjust to the light. At last he made out a small crowd of feathered quadrupeds, large balls of white fluff bedecked in ribbons and sashes. Two of them held staffs from which the bright lanterns hung. The rest twittered around what looked like a short pole ending in a narrow platform. On that perch stood a most singular-looking bird.
It, too, was arrayed in bright ribbons. The large, bipedal Gubru shifted its weight from one leg to another, nervously. It might have been the way the light struck the alien’s plumage, but the coloration seemed richer, more luminous than the normal off-white shade. It reminded Fiben of something, as if he had seen this invader or one like it before, somewhere.
What the hell is the thing doing, moving around at night? Fiben wondered. I thought they hated to do that.
“Pay proper respect to honored elders, members of the high clan Gooksyu-Gubru!” Irongrip said, sharply, nudging Fiben.
“I’ll show th’ damn thing my respect.” Fiben made a rude sound in his throat and gathered phlegm.
“No!” Gailet cried. She grabbed his arm and whispered urgently. “Fiben, don’t! Please. Do this for me. Act exactly as I do!”
Her brown eyes were pleading. Fiben swallowed. “Aw hell, Gailet.” She turned back toward the Gubru and folded her arms across her chest. Fiben imitated her, even as she bowed low.
The Galactic peered at them, first with one large, unblinking eye, then another. It shuffled-te-one-end of the^ perch, forcing its holders to adjust their balance. Finally, it began chirping in a_series of sharp, clipped squawks.
From the quadrupeds there emerged a strange, swooping accompaniment, rising and falling, sounding something like “Zoooon.”
One of the Kwackoo servitors ambled forward. A bright, metallic disk hung from a chain around its neck. The vodor gave forth a low, jerky Anglic translation.
“It has been judged… judged in honor
judged in propriety…
That you two have not transgressed…
have not broken…
The rules of conduct… the rules of war.
Zooooon.
“We judge that it is right… proper…
meet to allow for infant status…
To charitably credit… believe…
that your struggles were on your patrons’ behalf.
Zoooooon.
“It comes to our attention… awareness …
knowledge that your status is
As leaders of your gene-flux… race-flow…
species in this place and time.
Zooooooon.
“We therefore offer… present…
deign to honor you
With an invitation … a blessing…
a chance to earn the boon of representation.
Zooooooon.
“It is an honor… beneficence…
glory to be chosenTo seek out… penetrate…
create the future of your race.
Zoon!”
There it finished as abruptly as it had begun.
“Bow again!” Gailet urged in a whisper. He bent over with arms crossed, as she demonstrated. When Fiben looked up again, the small crowd of alien avians had swiveled and moved toward the doorway. The perch was lowered, but still the tall Gubru had to duck down, feathered arms splayed apart for balance, in order to pass through. Irongrip followed behind. The Probationer’s parting glare at them was one of pure loathing.
Fiben’s head rang. He had given up trying to follow the bird’s queer, formal dialect of Galactic Three after the first phrase. Even the Anglic translation had been well nigh impossible to understand.
The sharp lighting faded as the procession moved away down the hallway in a babble of clucking gabble. In the remaining dimness, Fiben and Gailet turned and looked at each other.
“Now who th’ hell was that?” he asked.
Gailet frowned. “It was a Suzerain. One of their three leaders. If I’m not wrong — and I could easily be — it was the Suzerain of Propriety.”
“That tells me a whole lot. Just what on Ifni’s roulette wheel is a Suzerain of Propriety?”
Gailet waved away his question. Her forehead was knotted in deep concentration. “Why did it come to us, instead of having us brought to it?” she wondered aloud, though obviously she wasn’t soliciting his opinion. “And why meet us at night? Did you notice it didn’t even stay to hear if we accepted its offer? It probably felt compelled, by propriety, to make it in person. But its aides can get our answer later.”
“Answer to what? What offer? Gailet, I couldn’t even follow—”
But she made a nervous waving motion with both hands. “Not now. I’ve got to think, Fiben. Give me a few minutes.” She walked back to the wall and sat-down^on the straw facing the blank stone. Fiben had a suspicion it would be considerably longer than she’d estimated before she was done.
You sure can choose ’em, he thought. You deserve what you get when you fall in love with a genius…
He blinked. Shook his head. Say what?
But movement in the hall distracted him from pursuing his own unexpected thought. A solitary chim entered, carrying an armload of straw and folded bolts of dark brown cloth. The load hid the short neochimp’s face. Only when she lowered it to the ground did Fiben see that it was the chimmie who had stared at him earlier, the one who seemed so strangely familiar.
“I brought you some fresh straw, and some more blankets. These nights are still pretty cool.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
She did not meet his eyes. She turned and walked back toward the door, moving with a lithe grace that was obvious, even under the billowing zipsuit. “Wait!” he said suddenly.
She stopped, still facing the door. Fiben walked toward her as far as the heavy chains would allow. “What’s your name?” he asked softly, not wanting to disturb Gailet in her corner.
Her shoulders were hunched. She still faced away from him. “I’m …” Her voice was very low. “S-some people call me Sylvie. …”
Even in swirling quickly through the doorway she moved like a dancer. There was a rattle of keys, and hurried footsteps could be heard receding down the hall outside.
Fiben stared at the blank door. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s grandson.”
He turned around and walked back to the wall where Gailet sat, muttering to herself, and leaned over to drape a blanket upon her shoulders. Then he returned to his own corner to collapse into a heap of sweet-smelling straw.
55
Uthacalthing
Scummy algae foamed in the shallows where a few small, stilt-legged native birds picked desultorily for insects. Bushy plants lay in clumps, outlining the surrounding steppes.
Footprints led from the banks of the small lake up into the nearby scrub-covered hillside. Just glancing at the muddy tracks, Uthacalthing could tell that the walker had stepped with a pigeon-toed gait. It seemed to use a three-legged stance.
He looked up quickly as a flash of blue caught the corner of his eye — the same glimmer that had led him to this place. He tried to focus on the faint twinkle, hut it was gone before he could track it.
He knelt to examine the impressions in the mud. A smile spread as he measured them with his hands. Such beautiful outlines! The third foot was off center from the other two and its print was much smaller than the others, almost as if some bipedal creature had crossed from lake to brush leaning on a blunt-headed staff.
Uthacalthing picked up a fallen branch, but he hesitated before brushing away the outlines.
Shall I leave them? he wondered. I
s it really necessary to hide them?He shook his head.
No. As the humans say, do not change game plans in midstream.
The footprints disappeared as he swept the branch back and forth. Just as he was finishing, he heard heavy footsteps and the sound of breaking shrubs behind him. He turned as Kault rounded a bend in the narrow game trail to the small prairie lake. The glyph, lurrunanu, hovered and darted over the Thennanin’s big, crested head like some frustrated parasitic insect, buzzing about in search of a soft spot that never seemed to be there.
Uthacalthing’s corona ached like an overused muscle. He let lurrunanu bounce against Kault’s bluff stolidity for a minute longer before admitting defeat. He drew the defeated glyph back in and dropped the branch to the ground.
The Thennanin wasn’t looking at the terrain anyway. His concentration was on a small instrument resting in his broad palm. “I am growing suspicious, my friend,” Kault said as he drew even with the Tymbrimi.
Uthacalthing felt blood rush in the arteries at the back of his neck. At last? he wondered.
“Suspicious of what, my colleague?”
Kault folded an instrument and put it away in one of his many vest pouches. “There are signs …” His crest flapped. “I have been listening to the uncoded transmissions of the Gubru, and something odd seems to be going on.”
Uthacalthing sighed. No, Kault’s one-track mind was concentrating on a completely different subject. There was no use trying to draw him away from it with subtle clues.
“What are the invaders up to now?” he asked.
“Well, first of all, I am picking up much less excited military traffic. Suddenly they appear to be engaged in fewer of those small-scale fights up in the mountains than they were days and weeks ago. You’ll recall we were both wondering why they were expending so much effort to suppress what had to be a rather tiny partisan resistance.”