by David Brin
Soon a pair of hooked beaks poked out of the shadows. Yellow eyes watched him unblinkingly. One of the disheveled Gubru rubbed its dented head frill.
Fiben pressed his lips together to fight back a smile. He dismounted and approached until he was even with the bunker, puzzled when neither the aliens nor the machines spoke to him.
He stopped before the two Gubru and bowed low.
They looked at each other and twittered irritably to each other. From one there came something that sounded like a resigned moan. The two Talon Soldiers emerged from under the disabled machine and stood up. Each of them returned a very slight but noticeable nod.
Silence stretched.
One of the Gubru whistled another faint sigh and brushed dust from its feathers. The other simply glared at Fiben.
Now what? he tried to think, but what was he supposed to do? Fiben’s toes itched.
He bowed again. Then, with a dry mouth, he backed away and took the horse’s tether. With affected nonchalance he started walking toward the dark fence surrounding Port Helenia, now visible just a kilometer ahead.
Tycho nickered, swished his tail, and cut loose an aromatic crepidation.
Tycho, pu-lease! Fiben thought. When a bend in the road at last cut off all view of the Gubru, Fiben sank to the ground. He just sat and shook for a few moments.
“Well,” he said at last. “I guess there really is a truce after all.”
After that, the guard post at the town gate was almost anticlimactic. Fiben actually enjoyed making the Talon Soldiers acknowledge his bow. He remembered some of what Gailet had taught him about Galactic protocol. Grudging acknowledgment from the client-class Kwackoo had been vital to achieve. To get it from the Gubru was delicious.
It also clearly meant that the Suzerain of Propriety was holding out. It had not yet given in.
Fiben left a trail of startled chims behind him as he rode Tycho at a gallop through the back streets of Port Helenia. One or two of them shouted at him, but at that moment he had no thought except to hurry toward the site of his former imprisonment.
When he arrived, however, he found the iron gate open and untended. The watch globes had vanished from the stone wall. He left Tycho to graze in the unkempt garden and beat aside a couple of limp plate ivy parachutes that festooned the open doorway.
“Gailet!” he shouted.
The Probationer guards were gone too. Dustballs and scraps of paper blew in through the open door and rolled down the hall. When he came to the room he had shared with Gailet, Fiben stopped and stared.
It was a mess.
Most of the furnishings were still there, but the expensive sound system and holo-wall had been torn out, no doubt taken by the departing Probies. On the other hand, Fiben saw his personal datawell sitting right where he had left it that night.
Gailet’s was gone.
He checked the closet. Most of their clothes still hung there. Clearly she hadn’t packed. He took down the shiny ceremonial robe he had been given by the Suzerain’s staff. The silky material was almost glass-smooth under his fingers.
Gailet’s robe was missing.
“Oh, Goodall,” Fiben moaned. He spun about and dashed down the hall. It took only a second to leap into the saddle, but Tycho barely looked up from his feeding. Fiben had to kick and yell until the beast began to comprehend some of the urgency of the situation. With a yellow sunflower still hanging from his mouth, the horse turned and clomped through the gate and back onto the street. Once there, Tycho brought his head down and gamely gathered momentum.
They made quite a sight, galloping down the silent, almost empty streets, the robe and the flower flapping like banners in the wind. But few witnessed the wild ride until they finally approached the crowded wharves.
It seemed as if nearly every chim in town was there. They swarmed along the waterfront, a churning mass of brown, callipose bodies dressed in autumn parkas, their heads bobbing like the waters of the bay just beyond. More chims leaned precariously over the rooftops, and some even hung from drainage spouts.
It was a good thing Fiben wasn’t on foot. Tycho was really quite helpful as he snorted and nudged startled chims aside with his nose. From his perch on the horse’s back, Fiben soon was able to spy what some of the commotion was about.
About half a kilometer out into the bay, a dozen fishing vessels could be seen operating under neo-chimpanzee crews. A cluster of them jostled and bumped near a sleek white craft that glistened in cliquant contrast to the battered trawlers.
The Gubru vessel was dead in the water. Two of the avian crew members stood atop its cockpit, twittering and waving their arms, offering instructions which the chim seamen politely ignored as they tied hausers to the crippled craft and began gradually towing it toward the shore.
So what? Big deal, Fiben thought. So a Gubru patrol boat suffered a breakdown. For this all the chims in town had spilled out into the streets? The citizens of Port Helenia really must be hard up for entertainment.
Then he realized that only a few of the townfolk were actually watching the minor rescue in the harbor. The vast majority stared southward, out across the bay.
Oh. Fiben’s breath escaped in’a sigh, and he, too, was momentarily struck speechless.
New, shining towers stood atop the far mesa where the colonial spaceport lay. The lambemV monoliths looked nothing like Gubru transports, or their hulking, globular battleships. Instead, these resembled glimmering steeples — spires which towered high and confident, manifesting a faith and tradition more ancient than life on Earth.
Tiny winklings of light lifted from the tall starships — carrying Galactic dignitaries, Fiben guessed — and cruised westward, drawing nearer along the arc of the bay. At last the aircraft joined a spiral of traffic descending over South Point. That was where everyone in Port Helenia seemed to sense that something special was going on.
Unconsciously Fiben guided Tycho through the crowd until he arrived at the edge of the main wharf. There a chain of chims wearing oval badges held back the crowd. So there are proctors again, Fiben realized. The Probationers proved unreliable, so the Gubru had to reinstate civil authority.
A chen wearing the brassard of a proctor corporal grabbed Tycho’s halter and started to speak. “Hey, bub! You can’t …” Then he blinked. “Ifni! Is that you, Fiben?”
Fiben recognized Barnaby Fulton, one of the chims who had been involved in Gailet’s early urban undergound. He smiled, though his thoughts were far across the choppy waters. “Hello, Barnaby. Haven’t seen you since the valley uprising. Glad to see you still scratchin’.”
Now that attention had been drawn his way, chens and chimmies started nudging each other and whispering in hushed voices. He heard his own name repeated. The susurration of the crowd ebbed as a circle of silence spread around him. Two or three of the staring chims reached out to touch Tycho’s heavy flanks, or Fiben’s leg, as if to verify that they were real.
Barnaby made a visible effort to match Fiben’s insouciance. “Whenever it itches, Fiben. Uh, one rumor had it you were s’pozed to be over there.” He gestured toward the monumental activity taking place across the harbor. “Another said you’d busted out an’ taken to the hills. A third …”
“What did the third say?”
Barnaby swallowed. “Some said your number’d come up…”
“Hmph,” Fiben commented softly. “I guess all of them were right.”
He saw that the trawlers had dragged the crippled Gubru patrol boat nearly to the dock. A number of other chim-crewed vessels cruised farther out, but none of them crossed a line of buoys that could be seen stretching all the way across the bay.
Barnaby looked left and right, then spoke in a low voice. “Uh, Fiben, there are quite a few chims in town who… well, who’ve been reorganizing. I had to give parole when I got my brassard back, but I can get word to Professor Oakes that you’re in town. I’m sure he’d want to get together a meetin’ tonight. …”
Fiben shook his head. �
�No time. I’ve got to get over there.” He motioned to where the bright aircraft were alighting on the far headlands.
Barnaby’s lips drew back. “I dunno, Fiben. Those watch buoys. They’ve kept everybody back.”
“Have they actually burned anybody?”
“Well, no. Not that I’ve seen. But—”
Barnaby stopped as Fiben shook the reins and nudged with his heels. “Thanks, Barnaby. That’s all I needed to know,” he said.
The proctors stood aside as Tycho stepped along the wharf. Farther out the little rescue flotilla had just come to dock and were even now tying up the prim white Gubru warcraft. The chim sailors did a lot of bowing and moved in uncomfortable crouched postures under the glare of the irritated Talon Soldiers and their fearsome battle drones.
In contrast, Fiben steered his steed just outside of the range that would have required him to acknowledge the aliens. His posture was erect, and he ignored them completely as he rode past the patrol boat to the far end of the pier, where the smallest of the fishing boats had just come to rest.
He swung his feet over the saddle and hopped down. “Are you good to animals?” he asked the startled sailor, who looked up from securing his craft. When he nodded, Fiben handed the dumbfounded chim Tycho’s reins. “Then we’ll swap.”
He leaped aboard the little craft and stepped behind the cockpit. “Send a bill for the difference to the Suzerain for Propriety. You got that? The Gubru Suzerain of Propriety.”
The wide-eyed chen seemed to notice that his jaw was hanging open. He closed it with an audible clack.
Fiben switched the ignition on and felt satisfied with the engine’s throaty roar. “Cast off,” he said. Then he smiled. “And thanks. Take good care of Tycho!”
The sailor blinked. He seemed about to decide to get angry when some of the chims who had followed Fiben caught up. One whispered in the boatman’s ear. The fisherman then grinned. He hurried to untie the boat’s tether and threw the rope back onto the foredeck. When Fiben awkwardly hit the pier backing up, the chim only winced slightly. “G-good luck,’ he managed to say.
“Yeah. Luck, Fiben,” Barnaby shouted.
Fiben waved and shifted the impellers into forward. He swung about in a wide arc, passing almost under the duraplast sides of the Gubru patrol craft. Up close it did not look quite so glistening white. In fact, the armored hull looked pitted and corroded. High, indignant chirps from the other side of the vessel indicated the frustration of the Talon Soldier crew.
Fiben spared them not a thought as he turned about and got his borrowed boat headed southward, toward the line of buoys that split the bay and kept the chims of Port Helenia away from the high, patron-level doings on the opposite shore.
Foamed and choppy from the wind, the water was cinerescent with the usual garbage the easterlies always brought in, this time of year — everything from leaves to almost transparent plate ivy parachutes to the feathers of molting birds. Fiben had to slow to avoid clots of debris as well as battered boats of all description crowded with chim sightseers.
He approached the barrier line at low speed and felt thousands of eyes watching him as he passed the last shipload, containing the most daring and curious of the Port Helenians.
Goodall, do I really know what I’m doing? he wondered. He had been acting almost on automatic so far. But now it came to him that he really was out of his depth here. What did he hope to accomplish by charging off this way? What was he going to do? Crash the ceremony? He looked at the towering starships across the bay, glistening in power and splendor.
As if he had any business sticking his half-uplifted nose into the affairs of beings from great and ancient clans! All he’d accomplish would be to embarrass himself, and probably his whole race for that matter.
“Gotta think about this,” he muttered. Fiben brought the boat’s engine down to idle as the line of buoys neared. He thought about how many people were watching him right now.
My people, he recalled. I … I was supposed to represent them.
Yes, but I ducked out, obviously the Suzerain realized its mistake and made other arrangements. Or the other Suzerain’s won, and I’d simply be dead meat if I showed up!
He wondered what they would think if they knew that, only days ago, he had manhandled and helped kidnap one of his own patrons, and his legal commander at that. Some race-representative!
Gailet doesn’t need the likes of me. She’s better off without me.
Fiben twisted the wheel, causing the boat to come about just short of one of the white buoys. He watched it go by as he turned.
It, too, looked less than new on close examination — somewhat corroded, in fact. But then, from his own lowly state, who was he to judge?
Fiben blinked at that thought. Now that was laying it on too thick!
He stared at the buoy, and slowly his lips curled back. Why… why you devious sons of bitches…
Fiben cut the impellers and let the engine drop back to idle. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands against his temples, trying to concentrate.
I was girding myself against another fear barrier…like the one at the city fence, that night. But this one is more subtle! It plays on my sense of my own unworthiness. It trades on my humility.
He opened his eyes and looked back at the buoy. Finally, he grinned.
“What humility?” Fiben asked aloud. He laughed and turned the wheel as he set the craft in motion again. This time when he headed for the barrier he did not hesitate, or listen to the doubts that the machines tried to cram into his head.
“After all,” he muttered, “what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow who’s got delusions of adequacy?” The enemy had made a serious mistake here, Fiben knew as he left the buoys behind him and, with them, their artificially induced doubts. The resolution that flowed back into him now was fortified by its very contrast to the earlier depths. He approached the opposite headland wearing a fierce scowl of determination.
Something flapped against his knee. Fiben glanced down and saw the silvery ceremonial robe — the one he had found in the closet back at the old prison. He had crammed it under his belt, apparently, just before leaping atop Tycho and riding, pell-mell, for the harbor. No wonder people had been staring at him, back at the docks!
Fiben laughed. Holding onto the wheel with one hand, he wriggled into the silky garment as he headed toward a silent stretch of beach. The bluffs cut off any view of what was going on over on the sea side of the narrow peninsula. But the drone of still-descending aircraft was — he hoped — a sign that he might not be too late.
He ran the boat aground on a shelf of sparkling white sand, now made unattractive under a tidal wash of flotsam. Fiben was about to leap into the knee-high surf when he glanced back and noticed that something seemed to be going on back in Port Helenia. Faint cries of excitement carried over the water. The churning mass of brown forms at the dockside was now surging to the right.
He plucked up the pair of binoculars that hung by the capstan and focused them on the wharf area.
Chims ran about, many of them pointing excitedly eastward, toward the main entrance to town. Some were still running in that direction. But now more and more seemed to be heading the other way… apparently not so much in fear as in confusion. Some of the more excitable chims capered about. A few even fell into the water and had to be rescued by the more level-headed.
Whatever was happening did not seem to be causing panic so much as acute, near total bewilderment.
Fiben did not have time to hang around and piece to-
fether this added puzzle. By now he thought he understood is own modest powers of concentration.
Focus on just one problem at a time, he told himself. Get to Gailet. Tell her you’re sorry you ever left her. Tell her you’II never ever do it again.
That was easy enough even for him to understand.
Fiben found a narrow trail leading up from the beach. It was crumbling and dangerous, especially in the gusting w
inds. Still, he hurried. And his pace was held down only by the amount of oxygen his limited lungs and heart could pump.
84
Uthacalthing
The four of them made a strange-looking group, hurrying northward under overcast skies. Perhaps some little native animals looked up and stared at them, blinking in momentary astonishment before they ducked back into their burrows and swore off the eating of overripe seeds ever again.
To Uthacalthing, though, the forced inarch was something of a humiliation. Each of the others, it seemed, had advantages over him.
Kault puffed and huffed and obviously did not like the rugged ground. But once the hulking Thennanin got moving he kept up a momentum that seemed unstoppable.
As for Jo-Jo, well, the little chim seemed by now to be a creature of this environment. He was under strict orders from Uthacalthing never to knuckle-walk within sight of Kault — no sense in taking a chance with arousing the Thennanin’s suspicions — but when the terrain got too rugged he sometimes just scrambled over an obstacle rather than going around it. And over the long flat stretches, Jo-Jo simply rode Robert’s back.
Robert had insisted on carrying the chim, whatever the official gulf in status between them. The human lad was impatient enough as it was. Clearly, he would rather have run all’ the way.
The change in Robert Oneagle was astonishing, and far more than physical. Last night, when Kault asked him to explain part of his story for the third time, Robert clearly and unself-consciously manifested a simple version of teev’nus over his head. Uthacalthing could kenn how the human deftly used the glyph to contain his frustration, so that none of it would spill over into outward discourtesy to the Thennanin.
Uthacalthing could see that there was much Robert was not telling. But what he said was enough.
I knew that Megan underestimated her son. But of this I had no expectation.
Clearly, he had underrated his own daughter as well.
Clearly. Uthacalthing tried not to resent his flesh and blood for her power, the power to rob him of more than he had thought he could ever lose.