by David Brin
Besides, the enemy had something new, some secret system that was letting them track chims even under the heaviest growth, even naked, without the simplest trappings of civilization.
All the pursued could dp was split up into smaller and smaller groups. The prospect facing those who made it away from here was to live completely as animals, alone or at most in pairs, wild-eyed and cowering under skies that had once been theirs to roam at will.
Sylvie was helping an older chimmie and two children climb over a vine-covered tree trunk when suddenly upraised hackles told her of gravities drawing near. She quickly signed for the others to take cover, but something — perhaps it was the unsteady rhythm of those motors — made her stay behind, peering over the rim of a fallen log. In the blackness she barely caught the flash of a dim, whitish shape, plummeting through the starlit forest to crash noisily among the branches and then disappear into the jungle gloom.
Sylvie stared down the dark channel the plunging vessel had cut. She listened, chewing on her fingernails, as debris rained down in its wake.
“Donna!” she whispered. The elderly chimmie lifted her head from under a pile of leaves. “Can you make it with the children the rest of the way to the rendezvous?” Sylvie asked. “All you have to do is head downhill to a stream, then follow that stream to a small waterfall and cave. Can you do that?”
Donna paused for a long moment, concentrating, and at last nodded. “Good,” Sylvie, said. “When you see Petri, tell him I saw an enemy scout come down, and I’m goin’ to go and look it over.”
Fear had widened the older chimmie’s eyes so that the whites shone around her irises. She blinked a couple of times, then held out her arms for the children. By the time they were gathered under her protection, Sylvie had already cautiously entered the tunnel of broken trees.
Why am I doing this? Sylvie wondered as she stepped over broken branches still oozing pungent sap. Tiny skittering motions told of native creatures seeking cover after the ruination of their homes. The smell of ozone put Sylvie’s hair on end. And then, as she drew nearer, there came another familiar odor, one of overripe bird.
Everything looked eerie in the dimness. There were absolutely no colors, only shades of Stygian gray. When the off-white bulk of the crashed aircraft loomed in front of her, Sylvie saw that it lay canted at a forty degree slope, its front end quite crumpled from the impact.
She heard a faint crackling as some piece of electronics shorted again and again. Other than that, there came no sound from within. The main hatch had been torn half off its hinges.
Touching the still warm hull for guidance, she approached cautiously. Her fingers traced the outlines of one of the gravitic impellers, and flakes of corrosion came off. Lousy maintenance, she thought, partly in order to keep her mind busy. I wonder if that’s why it crashed. Her mouth was dry and her heart felt in her throat as she reached the opening and bent to peer around the corner.
Two Gubru still lay strapped at their stations, their sharp-beaked heads lolling from slender, broken necks.
Sylvie tried to swallow. She made herself lift one foot and step gingerly onto the sloping deck. Her pulse threatened to stop when the plates groaned and one of the Talon Soldiers moved.
But it was only the broken vessel, creaking and settling slightly. “Goodall,” Sylvie moaned as she brought her hand down from her breast. It was hard to concentrate with all of her instincts screaming just to get the hell out of here.
As she had for many days, Sylvie tried to imagine what Gailet Jones would do under circumstances like this. She knew she would never be the chimmie Gailet was. That just wasn’t in the cards. But if she tried hard…
“Weapons,” she whispered to herself, and forced her trembling hands to pull the soldiers’ sidearms from their holsters. Seconds seemed like hours, but soon two racked saber rifles joined the pistols in a pile outside the hatch. Sylvie was about to lower herself to the ground when she hissed and slapped her forehead. “Idiot! Athaclena needs intelligence more than popguns!”
She returned to the cockpit and peered about, wondering if she would recognize something significant even if it lay right in front of her.
Come on. You’re a Terragens citizen with most of a college education. And you spent months working for the Gubru.
Concentrating, she recognized the flight controls, and — from symbols obviously pertaining to missiles — the weapons console. Another display, still lit by the craft’s draining batteries, showed a relief territory map, with multiple sigils and designations written in Galactic Three.
Could this be what they’re using to find us? she wondered.
A dial, just below the display, used words she knew in the enemy’s language. “Band Selector,” the label said. Experimentally, she touched it.
A window opened in the lower left corner of the display. More arcane writing spilled forth, much too complex for her. But above the text there now whirled a complex design that an adult of any civilized society would recognize as a chemical diagram.
Sylvie was no chemist, but she had had a basic education, and something about the molecule depicted there looked oddly familiar to her. She concentrated and tried to sound out the indentifier, the word just below the diagram. The GalThree syllabary came back to her.
“Hee… Heem… Hee Moog…”
Sylvie felt her skin suddenly course with goose bumps. She traced the line of her lips with her tongue and then whispered a single word.
“Hemoglobin.”
97
Galatics
“Biological warfare!” The Suzerain of Beam and Talon hopped about the bridge of the cruising battleship on which it held court and pointed at the Kwackoo technician who had brought the news. “This corrosion, this decay, this blight on armor and machinery, it was created by design?”
The technician bowed. “Yes. There are several agents — bacteria, prions, molds. When we saw the pattern counter-measures were instituted at once. It will take time to treat all affected surfaces with organisms engineered against theirs, but success will eventually reduce this to a mere nuisance.”
Eventually, the admiral thought bitterly. “How were these agents delivered?”
The Kwackoo pulled from its pouch a filmy clump of clothlike material, bound by slender strands. “When these things began blowing in from the mountains, we consulted Library records and questioned the locals. Irritating infestations occur regularly on this continental coast with the onset of winter, so we ignored them.
“However, it now appears the mountain insurgents have found a way to infect these airborne spore carriers with biological entities destructive to our equipment. By the time we were aware, the dispersal was nearly universal. The plot was most) ingenious.”
The military commander paced. “How bad, how severe, how catastrophic is the damage?”
Again, a deep bow. “One third of our planet-side transport is affected. Two of the spaceport defense batteries will be out of commission for ten planetary days.”
“Ten days!”
“As you know, we are no longer receiving spares from the homeworld.”
The admiral did not need to be reminded. Already most routes to Gimelhai had been interdicted by the approaching alien armadas, now patiently clearing mines away from the fringes of Garth system.
And if that weren’t enough, the two other Suzerains were now united in opposing the military. There was nothing they could do to prevent the coming battles if the admiral’s party chose to fight, but they could withhold both religious and bureaucratic support. The effects of that were already showing.
The pressures had built until a steady, throbbing pain seemed to pulse within the admiral’s head. “They will pay!” the Suzerain shrieked. Curse the limitations of priests and egg counters!
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon recalled with fond longing the grand fleets it had led into this system. But long ago most of those ships had been pulled away by the Roost Masters to meet other desperate needs, and probably q
uite a few of them were already smoking ruins or vapor, out on the contentious Galactic marches.
In order to avoid such thoughts the admiral contemplated instead the noose now tightening around the shrinking mountain strongholds of the insurgents. Soon that worry, at least, would be over forever.
And then, well, let the Uplift Institute enforce the neutrality of its sacred Ceremonial Mound in the midst of a -itched planet-space battle! Under such circumstances, mis-. ijt-s were known to fall astray: — such as into civilian towns, or even neutral ground.
Too bad! There would be commiseration, of course. Such a pity. But those were the fortunes of war!
98
Uthacalthing
No longer did he have to hold secret the yearnings in his heart, or keep contained his deep-stored reservoir of feelings. It did not matter if alien detectors pinpointed his psychic emanations, for they surely would know where to find him, when the time came.
At dawn, while the east grew gray with the cloud-shrouded sun, Uthacalthing walked along the dew-covered slopes and reached out with everything he had.
The miracle of some days back had burst the chrysalis of his soul. Where he thought only winter would forever reign, now bright shoots burst forth. To both humans and Tymbrimi, love was considered the greatest power. But there was, indeed, something to be said for irony, as well.
I live, and kenn the world as beautiful.
He poured all of his craft into a glyph which floated, delicate and light, above his wafting tendrils. To be brought to this place, so near where his schemes began… and to witness how all his jests had been turned around upon himself, giving him all he had wanted, but in such amazing ways…
Dawn brought color to the world. It was a winter land-and seascape of barren orchards and tarp-covered ships. The waters of the bay wore lines of wind-flecked foam. And yet, the sun gave warmth.
He thought of the Universe, so strange, often bizarre, and so filled with danger and tragedy.
But also surprise.
Surprise .,. . the blessing that tells one that this is real — he spread his arms to encompass it all — that even the most imaginative of us could not have made all of this up within his own mind.
He did not set the glyph free. It cast loose as if of its own accord and rose unaffected by the morning winds, to drift wherever chance might take it.
Later came long consultations with the Grand Examiner, with Kault and Cordwainer Appelbe. They all sought his advice. He tried not to disappoint them.
Around noon Robert Oneagle drew him aside and brought up again the idea of escape. The young human wanted to break out of their confinement on the Ceremonial Mound and head off with Fiben to cause the Gubru grief. They all knew of the fighting in the mountains, and Robert wanted to help Athaclena in any way possible.
Uthacalthing sympathized. “But you underestimate yourself in thinking you could ever do this, my son,” he told the young man.
Robert blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the Gubru military are now well aware of how dangerous you and Fiben are. And perhaps through some small efforts of my own they include me on their list. Why do you think they maintain such patrols, when they must have other pressing needs?”
He motioned at the craft which cruised just beyond the perimeter of Institute territory. No doubt even the coolant lines leading to the power stations were watched by expensive drones of deadly sophistication. Robert had suggested using handmade gliders, but the enemy was surely wise even to that wolfling trick by now. They had had expensive lessons.
“In this way we help Athaclena,” Uthacalthing said. “By thumbing our noses at the enemy, by smiling as if we have thought of something special which they have not. By frightening creatures who deserve what they get for having no sense of humor.”
Robert made no outward gesture to show that he understood. But to Uthacalthing’s delight he recognized the glyph the young man formed, a simple version of kiniivullun. He laughed. Obviously, it was one Robert had learned — and earned — from Athaclena.
“Yes, my strange adopted son. We must keep the Gubru painfully aware that b.oys will do what boys do.”
It was later, though, toward sunset, that Uthacalthing stood up suddenly in his dark tent and walked outside. He stared again to the east, tendrils waving, seeking.
Somewhere, out there, he knew his daughter was thinking furiously. Something, some news perhaps, had come to her. And now she was concentrating as if her life depended on it.
Then the brief, fey moment of linkage passed. Uthacalthing turned, but he did not go back to his own shelter. Instead, he wandered a little north and pulled aside the flap of Robert’s tent. The human looked up from his reading, the light of the datawell casting a wild expression onto his face.
“I believe there actually is one way by which we could get off of this mountain,” he told the human. “At least for a little while.”
“Go on,” Robert said.
Uthacalthing smiled. “Did I not once say to you — or was it your mother — that all things begin and end at the Library?”
99
Galactics
Matters were dire. Consensus was falling apart irreparably, and the Suzerain of Propriety did not know how to heal the breach.
The Suzerain of Cost and Caution had nearly withdrawn into itself. The bureaucracy operated on inertia, without guidance.
And their vital third, their strength and virility, the Suzerain of Beam and Talon, would not answer their entreaties for a conclave. It seemed, in fact, bound and determined upon a course that might bring on not only their own destruction but possibly vast devastation to this frail world as well. If that occurred, the blow to the already tottering honor of this expedition, this branch of the clan of Gooksyu-Gubru, would be more than one could stand.
And yet, what could the Suzerain of Propriety do? The Roost Masters, distracted with problems closer to home, offered no useful advice. They had counted on the expedition Triumvirate to meld, to molt, and to reach a consensus of wisdom. But the Molt had gone wrong, desperately wrong. And there was no wisdom to offer them.
The Suzerain of Propriety felt a sadness, a hopelessness, that went beyond that of a leader riding a ship headed for shoals — it was more that of a priest doomed to oversee sacrilege.
The loss was intense and personal, and quite ancient at the heart of the race. True, the feathers sprouting under its white down were now red. But there were names for Gubru queens who achieved their femaleness without the joyous consent and aid of two others, two who share with her the pleasure, the honor, the glory.
Her greatest ambition had come true, and it was a barren prospect, a lonely and bitter one.
The Suzerain of Propriety tucked her beak under her arm, and in the way of her own people, softly wept.
100
Athaclena
“Vampire plants,” was how Lydia McCue summed it up. She stood watch with two of her Terragens Marines, their skins glistening under painted layers of monolayer camouflage. The stuff supposedly protected them from infrared detection and, one could hope, the enemy’s new resonance detector as well.
Vampire plants? Athaclena thought. Indeed. It is a good metaphor.
She poured about a liter of a bright red fluid into the dark waters of a forest pool, where hundreds of small vines came together in one of the ubiquitous nutrient trading stations.
Elsewhere, far away, other groups were performing similar rituals in little glades. It reminded Athaclena of wolfling fairy tales, of magical rites in enchanted forests and mystical incantations. She would have to remember to tell her father of the analogy, if she ever got the chance.
“Indeed,” she said to Lieutenant McCue. “My chims drained themselves nearly white to donate enough blood for our purposes. There are certainly more subtle ways to do this, but none possible in the time available.”
Lydia answered with a grunt and a nod. The Earth woman was still in conflict with herself. Logically, s
he probably agreed that the results would have been catastrophic had Major Prathachulthorn been left in charge, weeks ago. Subsequent events had proven Athaclena and Robert right.
But Lieutenant McCue could not disassociate herself so easily from her oath. Until recently the two women had begun to become friends, talking for hours and sharing their different longings for Robert Oneagle. But now that the truth about the mutiny and kidnapping of Major Prathachulthorn was out, a gulf lay between them.
The red liquid swirled among the tiny rootlets. Clearly, the semi-mobile vines were already reacting, drawing in the new substances.
There had been no time for subtlety, only a brute force approach to the idea that had struck her suddenly, soon after hearing Sylvie’s report. Hemoglobin. The Gubru had detectors that can trace resonance against the primary constituent of Earthling blood. At such sensitivity, the devices must be frightfully expensive!
A way had to be found to counteract the new weapon or she might be left the only sapient being in the mountains. The one possible approach had been drastic, and symbolic of the demands a nation made of its people. Her own unit of guerrillas now tottered around, so depleted by her demands for raw blood that some of the chims had changed her nickname. Instead of ‘the general’ they had taken to referring to Athaclena as ‘the countess,’ and then grimacing with outthrust canines.
Fortunately, there were still a few chim technicians — mostly those who had helped Robert devise little microbes to plague enemy machinery — who could help her with this slapdash experiment.
Bind hemoglobin molecules to trace substances sought by certain vines. Hope the new combination still meets their approval. And pray the vines transfer it along fast enough.