by David Brin
“I’m not so clear on that,” Gailet said. He could barely hear her over the squawking from the make-believe forest. Her finger traced a hand sign on the carpet, one which stood for confusion. “I think it was originally intended for some ceremony, if they were ever able to find and claim Garthlings.
Now, the Suzerain needs something to salvage out of their investment, probably another use for the shunt.
“If I understood the Gubru leader, Fiben, it wants to use the shunt for us.”
Fiben sat down again. For a long moment they did not look at each other. There were only the amplified jungle sounds, the colors of a luminescent fog flowing in between the leaves of a holographic rain forest, and the inaudible murmur of their own uncertain fear. The facsimile of a bright bird watched them for a little while longer from a replicant branch high overhead. When the ghostly fog turned to insubstantial rain, however, it finally spread fictitious wings and flew away.
60
Uthacalthing
The Thennanin was obdurate. There did not seem to be any way to get through to him.
Kault seemed almost a stereotype, a caricature of his race — bluff, open, honorable to a fault, and so trusting that it threatened to drive Uthacalthing into fits of frustration. The glyph, teev’nus, was incapable of expressing Uthacalthing’s bafflement. Over the last few days, something stronger had begun taking shape in the tendrils of his corona — something pungent and reminiscent of human metaphor.
Uthacalthing realized he was starting to get “pissed off.”
Just what would it take to raise Kault’s suspicions? Uthacalthing wondered if he should pretend to talk in his sleep, muttering dire hints and confessions. Would that raise an inkling under the Thennanin’s thick skull? Or maybe he should abandon all subtlety and write out the entire scenario, leaving the unfolded pages in the open for Kault to find!
Individuals can vary widely within a species, Uthacalthing knew. And Kault was an anomaly, even for a Thennanin. It would probably never occur to the fellow to spy on his Tymbrimi companion. Uthacalthing found it hard to understand how Kault could have made it this far in the diplomatic corps of any race.
Fortunately, the darker aspects of the Thennanin nature were not also exaggerated in him. Members of Kault’s faction, it seemed, weren’t quite as smugly sanctimonious or utterly convinced of their own righteousness as those currently in charge of clan policy. More the pity, then, that one side effect of Uthacalthing’s planned jest, if it ever succeeded, would be to weaken that moderate wing even more.
Regrettable. But it would take a miracle to ever bring Kault’s group into power anyway, Uthacalthing reminded himself.
Anyway, the way things were heading, he was going to be spared the moral quandary of worrying about the consequences of his practical joke. At the moment it was getting exactly nowhere. So far this had been a most frustrating journey. The only compensation was that this was not, after all, a Gubru detention camp.
They were in the low, rolling countryside leading inexorably upward toward the southern slopes of the Mountains of Mulun. The variety-starved ecosystem of the plains was giving way gradually to somewhat less monotonous scenery — scrub trees and eroded terraces whose reddish and tan sedimentary layers glittered with the morning light, winking as if in secret knowledge of long departed days.
As the wanderers’ trek brought them ever closer to the mountains, Uthacalthing kept adjusting their path, guided by a certain blue twinkle on the horizon — a glimmer so faint that his eyes could barely make it out at times. He knew for a fact that Kault’s visual apparatus could not detect the spark at all. It had been planned that way.
Faithfully following the intermittent glow, Uthacalthing had led the way and kept a careful watch for the telltale clues. Every time he spotted one, Uthacalthing went through the motions, dutifully rubbing out traces in the dirt, surreptitiously throwing away stone tools, making furtive notes and hiding them quickly when his fellow refugee appeared around the bend.
By now anyone else would be positively seething with curiosity. But not Kault. No, not Kault.
Just this morning it had been the Thennanin’s turn to lead. Their route took them along the edge of a mud flat, still damp from the recent onset of autumn rains. There, crossing their path in plain sight, had been a trail of footprints no more than a few hours old, obviously laid by something shuffling on two legs and a knuckle. But Kault just strode on past, sniffing the air with those great breathing slits of his, commenting in his booming voice on how fresh the day felt!
Uthacalthing consoled himself that this part of his scheme had always been a long shot anyway. Maybe his plan just wasn’t meant to come about.
Perhaps I am simply not clever enough. Perhaps both Kault’s race and my own assigned their dullest types to duty on this back-of-the-arm planet.
Even among humans, there were those who certainly would have been able to come up with something better. One of those legendary agents of the Terragens Council, for instance.
Of course there were no agents or other, more imaginative Tymbrimi here on Garth when the crisis hit. He had been forced to come up with the best plan he could.
Uthacalthing wondered about the other half of his jest. It was clear the Gubru had fallen for his ruse. But how deeply? How much trouble and expense had it cost them? More importantly from the point of view of a Galactic diplomat, how badly had they been embarrassed?
If the Gubru had proved as dense and slow as Kault…
But no, the Gubru are reliable, Uthacalthing reassured himself. The Gubru, at least, are quite proficient at deceit and hypocrisy. It made them easier enemies than the Thennanin.
He shaded his eyes, contemplating how the morning had aged. The air was getting warm. There was a swishing sound, the crackle of breaking foliage. Kault strode into view a few meters back, grumbling a low marching tune and using a long stick to brush shrubs out of his path. Uthacalthing wondered. If our peoples are officially at war, why is it so hard for Kault to notice that I am obviously hiding something from him?
“Hmmmph,” the big Thennanian grunted as he approached. “Colleague, why have we stopped?”
The words were in Anglic. Recently they had made a game of using a different language every day, for practice. Uthacalthing gestured skyward. “It is almost midday, Kault. Gimelhai is getting fierce. We had better find a place to get out of the sun.”
Kault’s leathery ridge crest puffed. “Get out of the sun? But we are not in … oh. Aha. Ha. Ha. A wolfling figure of speech. Very droll. Yes, Uthacalthing. When Gimelhai reaches zenith, it might indeed feel somewhat as if we were roasting in its outer shell. Let us find shelter.”
A small stand of brushy trees stood atop a hillock, not far away. This time Kault led, swinging his homemade staff to clear a path through the tall, grassy growth.
By now they were well practiced at the routine. Kault did the heavy work of delving a comfortable niche, down to where the soil was cool. Uthacalthing’s nimble hands tied the Thennanin’s cape into place as a sunshade. They rested against their packs and waited out the hot middle part of the day.
While Uthacalthing dozed, Kault spent the time entering data in his lap datawell. He picked up twigs, berries, bits of dirt, rubbed them between his large, powerful fingers, and held the dust up to his scent-slits before examining it with his small collection of instruments salvaged from the crashed yacht.
The Thennanin’s diligence was all the more frustrating to Uthacalthing, since Kault’s serious investigations of the local ecosystem had somehow missed every single clue Uthacalthing had thrown his way. Perhaps it is because they were thrown at him. Uthacalthing pondered. The Thennanin were a systematic folk. Possibly, Kault’s worldview prevented him from seeing that which did not fit into the pattern that his careful studies revealed.
An interesting thought. Uthacalthing’s corona fashioned a glyph of appreciated surprise as, all at once, he saw that the Thennanin approach might not be as cumbersome as he had th
ought. He had assumed that it was stupidity that made Kault impervious to his fabricated clues, but…
But after all, the clues really are lies. My confederate out in the bush lays out hints for me to “find” ana “hide.” When Kault ignores them, could it be because his obstinate worldview is actually superior? In reality, he has proven almost impossible to fool!
True or not, it was an interesting idea. Syrtunu riffled and tried to lift off, but Uthacalthing’s corona lay limp, too lazy to abet the glyph.
Instead, his thoughts drifted to Athaclena.
He knew his daughter still lived. To try to learn more would invite detection by the enemy’s psi devices. Still, there was something in those traces — trembling undertones down in the nahakieri levels of feeling — which told Uthacalthing that he would have much new to learn about Athaclena, should they ever meet again in this world.
“In the end, there is a limit to the guidance of parents,” a soft voice seemed to say to him as he drifted in half-slumber. “Beyond that, a child’s destiny is her own.”
And what of the strangers who enter her life? Uthacalthing asked the glimmering figure of his long-dead wife, whose shape seemed to hover before him, beyond his closed eyelids.
“Husband, what of them? They, too, will shape her. And she them. But our own time ebbs.”
Her face was so clear… This was a dream such as humans were known to have, but which was rarer among Tymbrimi. It was visual, and meaning was conveyed in words rather than glyphs. A flux of emotion made his fingertips tremble.
Mathicluanna’s eyes separated, and her smile reminded him of that day in the capital when their coronae had first touched… stopping him, stunned and still in the middle of a crowded street. Half-blinded by a glyph without any name, he had hunted the trace of her down alleyways, across bridges, and past dark cafes, seeking with growing desperation until, at last, he found her waiting for him on a bench not twelve sistaars from where he had first sensed her.
“You see?” she asked in the dream voice of that long ago girl. “We are shaped. We change. But what we once were, that, too, remains always.”
Uthacalthing stirred. His wife’s image rippled, then vanished in wavelets of rolling light. Syullf-tha was the glyph that hovered in the space where she had been… standing for the joy of a puzzle not yet solved.
He sighed and sat up, rubbing his eyes.
For some reason Uthacalthing thought that the bright daylight might disperse the glyph. But syullf-tha was more than a mere dream by now. Without any volition on his part, it rose and moved slowly away from Uthacalthing toward his companion, the big Thennanin.
Kault sat with his back to Uthacalthing, still absorbed in his studies, completely unaware as syullf-tha transformed, changed subtly into syulff-kuonn. It settled slowly over Kault’s ridge crest, descended, settled in, and disappeared. Uthacalthing stared, amazed, as Kault grunted and looked up. The Thennanin’s breath-slits wheezed as he put down his instruments and turned to face Uthacalthing.
“There is something very strange here, colleague. Something I am at a loss to explain.”
Uthacalthing moistened his lips before answering. “Do tell me what concerns you, esteemed ambassador.”
Kault’s voice was a low rumble. “There appears to be a creature… one that has been foraging in these berry patches not long ago. I have seen traces of its eating for some days now, Uthacalthing. It is large… very large for a creature of Garth.”
Uthacalthing was still getting used to the idea that syulff-kuonn had penetrated where so many subtler and more powerful glyphs had failed. “Indeed? Is this of significance?”
Kault paused, as if uncertain whether to say more. The Thennanin finally sighed. “My friend, it is most odd. But I must tell you that there should be no animal, since the Bururalli Holocaust, able to reach so high into these bushes. And its manner of foraging is quite extraordinary.”
“Extraordinary in what way?”
Kault’s crest inflated in short puffs, indicating confusion. “I ask that you do not laugh at me, colleague.”
“Laugh at you? Never!” Uthacalthing lied.
“Then I shall tell you. By now I am convinced that this creature has hands, Uthacalthing. I am sure of it.”
“Hm,” Uthacalthing commented noncommittally.
The Thennanin’s voice dropped even lower. “There is a mystery here, colleague. There is something very odd going on here on Garth.”
Uthacalthing suppressed his corona. He extinguished all facial expression. Now he understood why it had been syulff-kuonn — the glyph of anticipation of a practical joke fulfilled — that penetrated where none had succeeded before.
The joke was on me!
Uthacalthing looked beyond the fringe of their sunshade, where the bright afternoon had begun to color from an overcast spilling over the mountains.
Out there in the bush his confederate had been laying “clues” for weeks, ever since the Tymbrimi yacht came down where Uthacalthing had intended it to, at the edge of the marshlands far southeast of the mountains. Little Jo-Jo — the throwback chim who could not even speak except with his hands — moved just ahead of Uthacalthing, naked as an animal, laying tantalizing footprints, chipping stone tools to leave in their path, maintaining tenuous contact with Uthacalthing through the blue Warder Globe.
It had all been part of a convoluted plan to lead the Thennanin inexorably to the conclusion that pre-sentient life existed on Garth, but Kault had seen none of the clues! None of the specially contrived hints!
No, what Kault had finally noticed was Jo-Jo himself. . . the traces the little chim left as he foraged and lived off the land!
Uthacalthing realized that syulff-kuonn was exactly right. The joke on himself was rich, indeed.
He thought he could almost hear Mathicluanna’s voice once again. “You never know…” she seemed to say.
“Amazing,” he told the Thennanin. “That is simply amazing.”
61
Athaclena
Every now and then she worried that she was getting too used to the changes. The rearranged nerve endings, the redistributed fatty tissues, the funny protrusion of her now-so-humanoid nose — these were things now so accustomed that she sometimes wondered if she would ever be able to return to standard Tymbrimi morphology.
The thought frightened Athaclena.
Until now there had been good reasons for maintaining these humaniform alterations. While she was leading an army of half-uplifted wolfling clients, looking more like a human female had been more than good politics. It had been a sort of bond between her and the chims and gorillas.
And with Robert, she remembered.
Athaclena wondered. Would the two of them ever again experiment, as they once had, with the half-forbidden sweetness of interspecies dalliance? Right now it seemed so very unlikely. Their consortship was reduced to a pair of signatures on a piece of tree bark, a useful bit of politics. Nothing else was the same as before.
She looked down. In the murky water before her, Athaclena saw her own reflection. “Neither fish nor fowl,” she whispered in Anglic, not remembering where she had read or heard the phrase, but knowing its metaphorical meaning. Any young Tymbrimi male who saw her in her present form would surely break down laughing. And as for Robert, well, less than a month ago she had felt very close to him. His growing attraction toward her — the raw, wolfling hunger of it — had flattered and pleased her in a daring sort of way.
Now, though, he is among his own kind again. And I am alone.
Athaclena shook her head and resolved to drive out such thoughts. She picked up a flask and scattered her reflection by pouring a quarter liter of pale liquid into the pool. Plumes of mud stirred near the bank, obscuring the fine web of tendrils that laced through the pond from overhanging vines.
This was the last of a chain of small basins, a few kilometers from the caves. As Athaclena worked she concentrated and kept careful notes, for she knew she was no trained scientist and w
ould have to make up for that with meticulous-ness. Still, her simple experiments had already begun to bear promising results. If her assistants returned from the next valley in time with the data she had sent for, she might have something of importance to show Major Prathachulthorn.
I may look like a freak, but I am still Tymbrimi! I shall prove my usefulness, even if the Earthmen do not think of me as a warrior.
So intense was her concentration, so quiet the still forest, that sudden words were like thunderclaps.
“So this is where you are, Clennie! I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Athaclena spun about, almost spilling a vial of umber-colored fluid. The vines all around her suddenly felt like a net woven just to catch her. Her pulse pounded for the fraction of a second it took to recognize Robert, looking down at her from the arching root of a giant near-oak.
He wore moccassins, a soft leather jerkin, and hose. The bow and quiver across his back made him look like the hero of one of those old-time wolfling romances Athaclena’s mother used to read to her when she was a child. It took longer to regain her composure than she would have preferred. “Robert. You startled me.” He blushed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to.” That wasn’t strictly true, she knew. Robert’s psi shield was better than before, and he obviously was proud of being able to approach undetected. A simple but clear version of kiniwullun flickered like a pixie over Robert’s head. If she squinted, she might almost imagine a young Tymbrimi male standing there…
Athaclena shuddered. She had already decided she could not afford this. “Come and sit down, Robert. Tell me what you have been doing.”