by David Brin
“Maybe.” Max nodded. “But your second mistake was leaving me, attached to this—”
He had been letting his arms go slack. Now he brought them back with a savage jerk and pulled the chain with all his might. It yanked two of the Probie guards off their feet before the links flew out of their hands.
Max planted his feet and snapped the heavy chain like a whip. His escorts dove for cover, but not all of them made it in time, One of the chim contractors had his skull laid open by a glancing blow. Another stumbled in his desperation to get away and knocked down all three Kwackoo like bowling pins.
Max shouted with joy. He whirled his makeshift weapon until everyone was either toppled or out of reach, then he worked the arc sideways, changing the axis of rotation. When he let go, the chain flew upwards at an angle and wrapped itself around the guardrail of the catwalk overhead.
Shimmying up the heavy links was the easy part. They were too stunned to react in time to stop him. But at the top he had to waste precious seconds unwrapping the chain. Since it was attached to his handcuffs, he’d have to take it along.
Along where? he wondered as he got the links gathered. Max spun about when he glimpsed white feathers over to his right. So he ran the other way and scurried up a flight of stairs to reach the next level.
Of course escape was an absurd notion. He had only two short-term objectives: doing as much harm as possible, and then ending his own life before he could be forced against his will to betray Gailet.
The former goal he accomplished as he ran, flailing the tip of the chain against every knob, tube, or delicate-looking instrument within reach. Some bits of equipment were tougher than they looked, but others smashed and tinkled nicely. Trays of tools went over the edge, toppling onto those below.
He kept a watch out, though, for other options. If no ready implement or weapon presented itself before the time came, he ought to try to get high enough for a good leap over the railing to do the trick.
A Gubru technician and two Kwackoo aides appeared around a corner, immersed in technical discussions in their own chirping dialect. When they looked up Max hollered and swung his chain. One Kwackoo gained a new apterium as feathers flew. During the backstroke Max yelled, “Boo!” at the staring Gubru, who erupted in a squawk of dismay, leaving a cloud of down in its wake.
“With respect,” Max added, addressing the departing avian’s backside. One never knew if cameras were recording an event. Gailet had told him it was okay to kill birds, just so long as he was polite about it.
Alarms and sirens were going off on all sides. Max pushed a Kwackoo over, vaulted another, and swept up a new flight of steps. One level up he found a target just too tempting to pass by. A large cart carrying about a ton of delicate photonics parts lay abandoned very near the edge of a loading platform. There was no guardrail to the lifter shaft. Max ignored all the shouts and noise that approached from every side and put his shoulder to the back end. Move! he grunted, and the wheeled wagon started forward.
“Hey! He’s over this way!” he heard some chim cry out. Max strained harder, wishing his wounds had not weakened him so. The cart started rolling.
“You! Reb! Stop that!”
There were footsteps, too late, he knew, to prevent inertia from doing its work. The wagon and its load toppled over the edge. Now to follow it, Max thought.
But as the command went to his legs they spasmed suddenly. He recognized the agonizing effects of a neural stunning. Recoil spun him about in time to see the gun held by the chim called Irongrip.
Max’s hands clenched spastically, as if the Probie’s throat were within reach. Desperately, he willed himself to fall backward, into the shaft.
Success! Max felt victory as he plummeted past the landing. The tingling numbness would not last long. Now we’re even, Fiben, he thought.
But it wasn’t the end after all. Max distantly felt his nerve-numbed arms half yanked out of their sockets as he came up suddenly short. The cuffs around his wrists had torn bleeding rents, and the taut chain led upward past the end of the landing. Through the metal mesh of the platform, Max could see Irongrip straining, holding on with all his might. Slowly, the Probie looked down at him, and smiled.
Max sighed in resignation and closed his eyes.
When he came to his senses Max snorted and pulled away involuntarily from an odious smell. He blinked and blearily made out a mustachioed neo-chimp holding a broken snap-capsule in his hand. From it still emitted noxious fumes.
“Ah, awake again, I see.”
Max felt miserable. Of course he ached all over from the stunning and could barely move. But also his arms and wrists seemed to be burning. They were tied behind him, but he could guess they were probably broken.
“Wh… where am I?” he asked.
“You’re at the focus of a hyperspace shunt,” Irongrip told him matter-of-factly.
Max spat. “You’re a Goodall-damned liar,”
“Have it your way.” Irongrip shrugged. “I just figured you deserved an explanation. You see, this machine is a special kind of shunt, what’s called an amplifier. It’s s’pozed to take images out of a brain and make em clear for all to see. During the ceremony it’ll be under Institute control, but their representatives haven’t arrived yet. So today we’re going to overload it just a bit as a test.
“Normally the subject’s supposed to be cooperative, and the process is benign. Today though, well, it just isn’t going to matter that much.”
A sharp, chirping complaint came from behind Irongrip. Through a narrow hatch could be seen the technicians of the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. “Time!” the lead Kwackoo snapped. “Quickly! Make haste!”
“What’s your hurry?” Max asked. “Afraid some of the other Gubru factions may have heard the commotion and be on their way?”
Irongrip looked up from closing the hatch. He shrugged.
“All that means is we’ve got time to ask just one question- But it’ll serve. Just tell us all about Gailet.”
“Never!”
“You won’t be able to help it.” Irongrip laughed. “Ever tried not to think about something? You won’t be able to avoid thoughts about her. And once it’s got somethin’ to get a grip on, the machine will rip the rest out of you.”
“You… you…” Max strugggled for words, but this time they were gone. He writhed, trying to move out of the focus of the massive coiled tubes aimed at him from all sides. But his strength was gone. There was nothing he could do.
Except not think of Gailet Jones. But by trying not to, of course, he was thinking about her! Max moaned, even as the machines began giving out a low hum in superficial accompaniment. All at once he felt as if the gravitic fields of a hundred starships were playing up and down his skin.
And in his mind a thousand images whirled. More and more of them pictured his former employer and friend.
“No!” Max struggled for an idea. He mustn’t try not to think of something. What he had to do was find something else to contemplate. He had to find something new to focus his attention on during the remaining seconds before he was torn apart.
Of course! He let the enemy be his guide. For weeks they had questioned him, asking only about Garthlings, Garthlings, nothing but Garthlings. It had become something of a chant. For him it now became a mantra.
“Where are the pre-sentients?” they had insisted. Max concentrated, and in spite of the pain it just had to make him laugh. “Of… all th’ stupid… dumb… idiotic…”
Contempt for the Galactics filled him. They wanted a projection out of him? Well let them amplify this! Outside, in the mountains and forests, he knew it would be about dawn. He pictured those forests, and the closest thing he could imagine to “Garthlings,” and laughed at the image he had made.
His last moments were spent guffawing over the idiocy of life.
72
Athaclena
The autumn storms had returned again, only this time as a great cyclonic front, rolling down the Val
ley of the Sind. In the mountains the accelerated winds surged to savage gusts that sloughed the outer leaves from trees and sent them flying in tight eddies. The debris gave shape and substance to whirling devil outlines in the gray sky.
As if in counterpoint, the volcano had begun to grumble as well. Its rumbling complaint was lower, slower in building than the wind, but its tremors made the forest creatures even more nervous as they huddled in their dens or tightly grasped the swaying tree trunks.
Sentience was no certain protection against the gloom. Within their tents, under the mountain’s shrouded flanks, the chims clung to each other and listened to the moaning zephyrs. Now and then one would give in to the tension and disappear screaming into the forest, only to return an hour or so later, disheveled and embarrassed, dragging a trail of torn foliage behind him.
The gorillas also were susceptible, but they showed it in other ways. At night they stared up at the billowing clouds with a quiet, focused concentration, sniffling, as if searching for something expectantly. Athaclena could not quite decide what it reminded her of, that evening, but later, in her own tent under the dense forest canopy, she could easily hear their low, atonal singing as they answered the storm.
It was a lullaby that eased her into sleep, but not without a price.
Expectancy… such a song would, of course, beckon back that which had never completely gone away.
Athaclena’s head tossed back and forth on her pillow. Her tendrils waved — seeking, repelled, probing, compelled. Gradually, as if in no particular hurry, the familiar essence gathered.
“Tutsunucann…” she breathed, unable to awaken or avoid the inevitable. It formed overhead, fashioned out of that which was not.
“Tutsunucann, s’ah brannitsun. A’twillith’t…”
A Tymbrimi knew better than to ask for mercy, especially from Ifni’s universe. But Athaclena had changed into something that was both more and less than mere Tymbrimi. Tutsunucann had allies now. It was joined by visual images, metaphors. Its aura of threat was amplified, made almost palpable, filled out by the added substance of human-style nightmare. “… s’ah brannitsun,…” she sighed, pleading antephialticly in her sleep.
Night winds blew the flaps of her tent, and her dreaming mind fashioned the wings of huge birds. Malevolent, they flew just over the tree tops, their gleaming eyes searching, searching…
A faint volcanic trembling shook the ground beneath her bedroll, and Athaclena shivered in syncopation, imagining burrowing creatures — the dead — the unavenged, wasted Potential of this world — ruined and destroyed by the Bururalli so long ago. They squirmed just underneath the disturbed ground, seeking. …
“S’ah brannitsun, tutsunucann!”
The brush of her own waving tendrils felt like the webs and feet of tiny spiders. Gheer flux sent tiny gnomes wriggling under her skin, busy fashioning unwilled changes.
Athaclena moaned as the glyph of terrible expectant laughter hovered nearer and regarded her, bent over her, reached down -
“General? Mizz Athaclena. Excuse me, ma’am, are you awake? I’m sorry to disturb you, ser, but—”
The chim stopped. He had pulled aside the tent flap to enter, but now he rocked back in dismay as Athaclena sat up suddenly, eyes wide apart, catlike irises dilated, her lips curled back in a rictus of somnolent fear.
She did not appear to be aware of him. He blinked, staring at the pulsations that coursed slowly, like soliton waves, down her throat and shoulders. Above her agitated tendrils he briefly glimpsed something terrible.
He almost fled right then. It took a powerful effort of courage to swallow instead, to bear down, and to choke forth words.
“M-Ma’am, p-please. It’s me… S-Sammy …”
Slowly, as if drawn back by the sheerest force of will, the light of awareness returned to those gold-flecked eyes. They closed, reopened. With a tremulous sigh, Athaclena shuddered. Then she collapsed forward.
Sammy stood there, holding her while she sobbed. At that moment, stunned and frightened and astonished, all he could think of was how light and frail she felt in his arms.
“… That was when Gailet became convinced that any trick, if th’ Ceremony was a trick at all, had to be a subtle one.
“You see, the Suzerain of Propriety seems to have done a complete about-face regarding chim Uplift. It had started out convinced it would find evidence of mismanagement, and perhaps even cause to take neo-chimps away from humans. But now the Suzerain seemed to be earnest in searchin’ out … in searchin out appropriate race representatives…”
The voice of Fiben Bolger came from a small playback unit resting on the rough-hewn logs of Athaclena’s table. She listened to the recording Robert had sent. The chim’s report back at the caves had had its amusing moments. Fiben’s irrepressible good nature and dry wit had helped lift Athaclena’s limp spirits. Now, though, while relating Dr. Gailet Jones’s ideas about Gubru intentions, his voice had dropped, and he sounded reticent, almost embarrassed.
Athaclena could feel Fiben’s discomfort through the vibrations in the air. Sometimes one did not need another’s presence in order to sense their essence.
She smiled at the irony. He is starting to know who and what he is, and it frightens him. Athaclena sympathized. A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.
In her hand she held the locket containing her mother’s legacy thread, and her father’s. For the moment, at least, tutsunucann was held at bay. But Athaclena knew somehow that the glyph had returned for good. There would be no sleep now, no rest until tutsunucann changed into something else. Such a glyph was one of the largest known manifestations of quantum mechanics — a probability amplitude that hummed and throbbed in a cloud of uncertainty, pregnant with a thousand million possibilities. Once the wave function collapsed, all that remained would be fate.
“… delicate political maneuverings on so many levels — among the local leaders of th’ invasion force, among factions back on the Gubru homeworld, between the Gubru and their enemies and possible allies, between the Gubru and Earth, and among th’ various Galactic Institutes…
She stroked the locket. Sometimes one does -not need another’s presence in order to sense their essence.
There was too much complexity here. What did Robert think he would accomplish by sending her this taping? Was she supposed to delve into some vast storehouse of sage Galactic wisdom — or perform some incantation — and somehow come up with a policy to guide them through this? Through this?
She sighed. Oh father, how I must be a disappointment to you.
The locket seemed to vibrate under her trembling fingers. For some time it seemed that another trance was settling in, drawing her downward into despair.
“. . .By Darwin, Goodall, and Greenpeace!”
It was the voice of Major Prathachulthorn that jarred her out of it. She listened for a while longer.
“. . . a target! …”
Athaclena shuddered. So. Things were, indeed, quite dire. All was explained now. Particularly the sudden, gravid insistence of an impatient glyph. Wheivthe pellet ran out she turned to her aides, Elayne Soo, Sammy, and Dr. de Shriver. The chims watched her patiently.
“I will seek altitude now,” she told them.
“But — but the storm, ma’am. We aren’t sure it’s passed. And then there’s the volcano. We’ve been talking about an evacuation.”
Athaclena stood up. “I do not expect to be long. Please send nobody along to guard or look out for me, they will only disturb me and make more difficult what I must do.”
She stopped at the flap of the tent then, feeling the wind push at the fabric as if searching for some gap at which to pry. Be patient. I am coming. When she spoke to the chims again, it was in a low voice. “Please have horses ready for when I return.”
The flap dropped after her. The chims looked at each other, then silently went about preparing for the day.
; Mount Fossey steamed in places where the vapor could not be entirely attributed to rising dew.»Moist droplets still fell from leaves that shivered in the wind — now waning but still returning now and then in sudden, violent gusts.
Athaclena climbed doggedly up a narrow game trail. She could tett that her wishes were being respected. The chims remained behind, leaving her undisturbed.
The day was beginning with low clouds cutting through the peaks like the vanguards of some aerial invasion. Between them she could see patches of dark blue sky. A human’s eyesight might even have picked out a few stubborn stars.
Athaclena climbed for height, but even more for solitude. In the upper reaches the animal life of the forest was even sparser. She sought emptiness.
At one point the trail was clogged with debris from the storm, sheets of some clothlike material that she soon recognized. Plate ivy parachutes.
They reminded her. Down in the camp the chim techs had been striving to meet a strict timetable, developing variations on gorilla gut bacteria in time to meet nature’s deadline. Now, though, it looked as if Major Prathachulthorn’s schedule would not allow Robert’s plan to be used.
Such foolishness, Athaclena thought. How did humans last even this long, I wonder?
Perhaps they had to be lucky. She had read of their twentieth century, when it seemed more than Ifni’s chance that helped them squeeze past near certain doom… doom not only for themselves but for all future sapient races that might be born of their rich, fecund world. The tale of that narrow escape was perhaps one reason why so many races feared or hated the k’chu’non, the wolflings. It was uncanny, and unexplained to this day.
The Earthlings had a saying, “There, but for the love of God, go I.” The sick, raped paucity of Garth was mild compared to what they might easily have done to Terra.
How many of us would have done better under such circumstances? That was the question that underlay all the smug, superior posturings, and all of the contempt pouring from the great clans. For they had never been tested by the ages of ignorance Mankind suffered. What might it have felt like, to have no patrons, no Library, no ancient wisdom, only the bright flame of mind, unchanneled and undirected, free to challenge the Universe or to consume the world? The question was one few clans dared ask themselves.