by David Brin
Lifting his eyes even an inch in an attempt to see was enough to do it. He missed by milliseconds an opening Irongrip created as the Probationer shifted his weight slightly. Then, as Fiben followed through too late, Irongrip took advantage in a sudden slip and hold. He began applying pressure.
“Fiben!” It was Gailet’s voice, thick with emotion. So he knew that at least somebody was still paying attention, if only to watch his final humiliation and end.
Fiben fought hard. He used tricks dragged up out of the well of memory. But the best of them required strength he no longer had. Slowly he was forced back.
Irongrip grinned as he managed to lay his forearm against Fiben’s windpipe. Suddenly breath came in hard, high whistles. Air was very dear, and his struggles took on new desperation.
Irongrip held on just as urgently. His bared canines reflected bitter highlights as he panted in an open-mouthed grin over Fiben.
Then the glints faded as something occulted the lights, casting a dark shadow over both of them. Irongrip blinked, and all at once seemed to notice that something bulky had appeared next to Fiben’s head. A hairy black foot. The attached brown leg was short, as stout as a tree trunk, and led upwards to a mountain of fur…
For Fiben the world, which had started to spin and go dim, came slowly back into focus as the pressure on his airpipe eased somewhat. He sucked air through the constricted passage and tried to look to see why he was still alive.
The first thing he saw was a pair of mild brown eyes, which stared back in friendly openness from a jet black .face set at the top of a hill of muscle.
The mountain also had a smile. With an arm the length of a small chimpanzee, the creature reached out and touched Fiben, curiously. Irongrip shuddered and rocked back in amazement, or maybe fear. When the creature’s hand closed on Irongrip’s arm, it only squeezed hard enough to test the chim’s strength.
Obviously, there was no comparison. The big male gorilla chuffed, satisfied. It actually seemed to laugh.
Then, using one knuckle to help it walk, it turned and rejoined the dark band that was even then trooping past the’ amazed rank of chims. Gailet stared in disbelief, and Utha-calthing’s wide eyes blinked rapidly at the sight.
Robert Oneagle seemed to be talking to himself, and the Gubru gabbled and squawked.
But it was Kault who was the focus of the gorillas’ attention for a long moment. Four females and three males clustered around the big Thennanin, reaching up to touch him. He responded by speaking to them, slowly, joyfully.
Fiben refused to make the same mistake twice. What gorillas were doing here, here atop the Ceremonial Mound the Gubru invaders had built, was beyond his ability to guess, and he wasn’t even about to try. His concentration returned just a split instant sooner than his opponent’s. When Irongrip looked back down, the Probie’s eyes betrayed instantaneous dismay as he recognized the looming shape of Fiben’s fist.
The small plateau was a cacophony, a mad scene devoid of any vestige of order. The boundaries of the combat arena did not seem to matter anymore as Fiben and his enemy rolled about under the legs of chims and gorillas and Gubru and whatever else could walk or bounce or slither about. Hardly anybody seemed to be paying them any attention, and Fiben did not really care. All that mattered to him was that he had a promise that he had to keep.
He pummeled Irongrip, not allowing him to regain balance until the chen roared and in desperation threw Fiben off like an old cloak. As he landed in a painful jolt, Fiben caught a glimpse of motion behind him and turned his head to see the Probationer called Weasel lifting his leg, preparing to strike down with his foot. But the blow missed as the Probie was grabbed up by an affectionate gorilla, who lifted him into a crushing embrace.
Irongrip’s other comrade was held back by Robert Oneagle — or, rather, held up. The male chim might have vastly greater strength than most humans, but it did him no good suspended in midair. Robert raised Steelbar high overhead, like Hercules subduing Anteus. The young man nodded to Fiben.
“Watch out, old son.”
Fiben rolled aside as Irongrip hit the ground where he had lain, sending dust plumes flying. Without delay Fiben leaped onto his opponent’s back and slipped into a half-Nelson hold.
The world spun as he seemed to ride a bucking bronco. Fiben tasted blood, and the dust seemed to fill his lungs with clogging, searing pain. His tired arms throbbed and threatened to cramp. But when he heard his enemy’s labored breathing he knew he could stand it for a little while longer.
Down, down Irongrip’s head went. Fiben got his feet around the chim and kicked the other’s legs out from under him.
The Probationer’s solar plexus landed on Fiben’s heel. And while a flash of pain probably meant several of Fiben’s toes were broken, there was also no mistaking the whistling squeak as Irongrip’s diaphragm momentarily spasmed, stopping all flow of air.
Somewhere he found the energy. In a whirl he had his foe turned over. Gripping in a tight scissors lock, he brought his forearm around and applied the same illegal-but-who-cares strangulation hold that had earlier been used on him.
Bone ground against gristle. The ground beneath them seemed to throb and the sky rumbled and growled. Alien feet shuffled on all sides, and there was the incessant squawking and chatter of a dozen jabbering tongues. Still, Fiben listened only for the breath that did not flow through his enemy’s throat… and felt only for the throbbing pulse he so desperately had to silence…
That was when something seemed to explode inside his skull.
It was as if something had broken open within him, spilling what seemed a brilliant light outward from his cortex. Dazzled, Fiben first thought a Probationer or a Gubru must-have struck him a blow to the head from behind. But the luminance was not the sort coming from a concussion. It hurt, but not in that way.
Fiben concentrated on first priorities — holding tightly to his steadily weakening opponent. But he could not ignore this strange occurrence. His mind sought something to compare it to, but there was no correct metaphor. The soundless outburst felt somehow simultaneously alien and eerily familiar.
All at once Fiben remembered a blue light which danced in hilarity as it fired infuriating bolts at his feet. He remembered a “stink bomb” that had sent a pompous, furry little diplomat scurrying off in abandoned dignity. He remembered stories told at night by the general. The connections made him suspect…
All around the plateau, Galactics had ceased their multi-tongued babble and stared upslope. Fiben would have to lift his head a bit to see what so captivated them. Before he did so, however, he made certain of his foe. When Irongrip managed to drag in a few thin, desperate breaths, Fiben restored just enough pressure to keep the big chen balanced on the edge of consciousness. That accomplished, he raised his eyes.
“Uthacalthing,” Fiben whispered, realizing the source of his mental confusion.
The Tymbrimi stood a little uphill from the others. His arms opened wide and the capelike folds of his formal robe flapped in the cyclone winds circling the gaping hyperspace shunt. His eyes were set far apart.
Uthacalthing’s corona tendrils waved, and over his head something whirled.
A chim moaned and pressed her palms against her temples. Somewhere a Pring’s tooth-mashies clattered. To many of those present, the glyph was barely detectable. But for the first time in his life, Fiben actually kenned. And what he kenned named itself tutsunucann.
The glyph was a monster — titanic with long-pent energy. The essence of delayed indeterminacy, it danced and whirled. And then, without warning, it blew apart. Fiben felt it sweep around and through him — nothing more or less than distilled, unadulterated joy.
Uthacalthing poured the emotion forth as if a dam had burst. “N’ha s’urustuannu, k’hammin’t Athaclena w’thtanna!” he cried. “Daughter, do you send these to me, and so return what I had lent you? Oh, what interest compounded and multiplied! What a fine jest to pull upon your proud parent!”
His
intensity affected those standing nearby. Chims blinked and stared. Robert Oneagle wiped away tears.
Uthacalthing turned and pointed up the trail leading toward the Site of Choosing. There, at the pinnacle of the Ceremony Mound, everyone could see that the shunt was connected at last. The deeply buried engines had done their job, and now a tunnel gaped overhead, one whose edges glistened but whose interior contained a color emptier than blackness.
It seemed to suck away light, making it difficult even to recognize that the opening was there. And yet Fiben knew that this was a link in real time, from this place to countless others where witnesses had gathered to observe and commemorate the evening’s events.
I hope the Five Galaxies are enjoying the show. When Irongrip showed signs of reviving, Fiben gave the Probie a whack to the side of the head and looked up again.
Halfway up the narrow trail leading to the pinnacle there stood three ill-matched figures. The first was a small neo-chimpanzee whose arms seemed too long and whose ill-formed legs were bowed and short. Jo-Jo held onto one hand of Kault, the huge Thennanin, ambassador. Kault’s other massive paw was grasped by a tiny human girl, whose blond hair flapped like a bright banner in the whirling breeze.
Together, the unlikely trio watched the pinnacle itself, where an unusual band had gathered.
A dozen gorillas, males and females, stood in a circle directly under the half-invisible hole in space. They rocked back and forth, staring up into the yawning emptiness overhead, and crooned a low, atonal melody.
“I believe …” said the awed Serentini Grand Examiner of the Uplift Institute. “… I believe this has happened before… once or twice… but not in more than a thousand aeons.”
Another voice muttered, this time in gruff, emotion-drenched Anglic. “It’s no fair. This was s’pozed t’be our time!” Fiben saw tears streaming down the cheeks of several of the chims. Some held each other and sobbed.
Gailet’s eyes welled also, but Fiben could tell that she saw what the others did not. Hers were tears of relief, of joy.
From all sides there were heard other expressions of amazement.
“—But what sort of creatures, entities, beings can they be?” One of the Gubru Suzerains asked.
“. . . pre-sentients,” another voice answered in Galactic Three.
“. . . They passed through all the test stations, so they had to be ready for a stage ceremony of some sort,” mumbled Cordwainer Appelbe. “But how in the world did goril—”
Robert Oneagle interrupted his fellow human with an upraised hand. “Don’t use the old name anymore. Those, my friend, are Garthlings”
lonization filled the air with the smell of lightning. Uthacalthing chanted his pleasure at the symmetry of this magnificent surprise, this great jest, and in his Tymbrimi voice it was a rich, unearthly sound. Caught up in the moment, Fiben did not even notice climbing to his feet, standing to get a better view.
Along with everyone else he saw the coalescence that took place above the giant apes, humming and swaying on the hilltop. Over the gorillas’ heads a milkiness swirled and began to thicken with the promise of shapes.
“In the memory of no living race has this happened,” the Grand Examiner said in awe. “Client races have had countless Uplift Ceremonies, over the last billion years. They have graduated levels and chosen Uplift consorts to assist them. A few have even used the occasion to request an end of Uplift … to return to what they had been before. …”
The filminess assumed an oval outline. And within, dark forms grew more distinct, as if emerging slowly from a deep fog.
“. . . But only in the ancient sagas has it been told of a new species coming forth of its own will, surprising all Galac-
tic society, and demanding the right to select its own patrons.”
Fiben heard a moan and looked down to see Irongrip beginning to rise, trembling, to his elbows. A cruor of blood-tinted dust covered the battered chen from face to foot.
Got to hand it to him. He’s got stamina. But then, Fiben did not imagine he himself looked a whole lot better.
He raised his foot. It would be so easy. … He glanced aside and saw Gailet watching him.
Irongrip rolled over onto his back. He looked up at Fiben in blank resignation.
Aw, hell. Instead he reached down and offered his hand to his former foe. I don’t know what we were fighting over. Somebody else got the brass ring, anyway.
A moan of surprise rippled through the crowd. From the Gubru came grating wails of dismay. Fiben finished hauling Irongrip to his feet, got him stable, then looked up to see what the gorillas had wrought to cause such consternation.
It was the face of a Thennanin. Giant, clear as anything, the image hovering in the focus of the hyperspace shunt looked enough like Kault to be his brother.
Such a sober, serious, earnest expression, Fiben thought. So typically Thennanin.
A few of the assembled Galactics chattered in amazement, but most acted as if they had been frozen in place. All except Uthacalthing, whose delighted astonishment still sparked in all directions like a Roman candle.
“Z’wurtin’s’tatta… I worked for this, and never knew!”
The titanic image of the Thennanin drifted backward in the milky oval. All could see the thick, slitted neck, and then the creature’s powerful torso. But when its arms came into view, it became clear that two figures stood on either side of it, holding its hands.
“Duly noted,” the Grand Examiner said to her aides. “The unnamed Stage One client species tentatively called Garthlings have selected, as their patrons, the Thennanin. And as their consorts and protectors, they have jointly chosen the neo-chimpanzees and humans of Earth.”
Robert Oneagle shouted. Cordwainer Appelbe fell to his knees in shock. The sound of renewed Gubru screeching was quite deafening.
Fiben felt a hand slip into his. Gailet looked up at him, the poignancy in her eyes now mixed with pride.
“Oh, well,” he sighed. “They wouldn’t have let us keep ’em, anyway. At least, this way, we get visitation rights. And I hear the Thennanin aren’t too bad as Eatees go.”
She shook her head. “You knew something about these creatures and didn’t tell me?”
He shrugged. “It was supposed to be a secret. You were busy. I didn’t want to bother you with unimportant details. I forgot. Mea culpa. Don’t hit, please.”
Briefly, her eyes seemed to flash. Then she, too, sighed and looked back up the hill. “It won’t take them long to realize these aren’t really Garthlings, but creatures of Earth.”
“What’ll happen then?”
It was her turn to shrug. “Nothing, I guess. Wherever they come from, they’re obviously ready for Uplift. Humans signed a treaty — unfair as it was — forbidding Earthclan to raise ’em, so I guess this’ll stand. Fait accompli. At least we can play a role. Help see the job’s done right.”
Already, the rumbling beneath their feet had begun to diminish. Nearby, the cacophony of Gubru squawking rose in strident tones to replace it. But the Grand Examiner appeared unmoved. Already she was busy with her assistants, ordering records gathered, detailing followup tests to be made, and dictating urgent messages to Institute headquarters.
“And we must help Kault inform his clan,” she added. “They will no doubt be surprised at this news.”
Fiben saw the Suzerain of Beam and Talon stalk off to a nearby Gubru flyer and depart at top speed. The boom of displaced air ruffled the feathers of the avians who “remained behind.
It happened then that Fiben’s gaze met that of the Suzerain of Propriety, staring down from its lonely perch. The alien stood more erect now. It ignored the babbling of its fellows and watched Fiben with a steady, unblinking yellow eye.
Fiben bowed. After a moment, the alien politely inclined its head in return.
Above the pinnacle and the crooning gorillas — now officially the youngest citizens of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies — the opalescent oval shrank back into the narrow
ing funnel. It diminished, but not before those present were treated to yet one more sight none had ever seen before… one they were not likely ever to see again.
Up there in the sky, the image of the Thennanin and those of the chim and human all looked at each other. Then the Thennanin’s head rocked back and he actually laughed.
Richly, deeply, sharing hilarity with its diminutive partners, the leathery figure chortled. It roared.
Among the stunned onlookers, only Uthacalthing and Robert Oneagle felt like joining in as the ghostly creature above did what Thennanin were never known to do. The image kept right on laughing even as it faded back, back, to be swallowed up at last by the closing hole in space and covered by the returning stars.
PART SIX
Citizens
I am a kind of farthing dip,
Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;
A blue-behinded ape, I skip
Upon the trees of Paradise.
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON, “A PORTRAIT”
92
Galactics
“They exist. They have substance! They are!”
The assembled Gubru officials and officers bobbed their downy heads and cried out in unison.
“Zooon!”
“This prize was denied us, honor was set aside, opportunity abandoned, all in the name of penny-pinching, miserly bean-counting! Now the cost will be greater, multiplied, exponentiated!”
The Suzerain of Cost and Caution stood miserably in the corner, listening amid a small crowd ef loyal assistants while it was berated from all sides. It shivered each time the conclave turned and shouted its refrain.
The Suzerain of Propriety stood tall upon its perch. It stepped back and forth, fluffing up to best display the new color that had begun to show under its molting plumage. The assembled Gubru and Kwackoo reacted to that shade with chirps of passionate devotion.
“And now a derelict, recalcitrant, stubborn one forestalls our Molt and consensus, out of which we might at least regain something. Gain honor and allies. Gain peace!”