by David Brin
“This is an expensive setup, isn’t it?” he asked the Tymbrimi Ambassador. “Do we get to keep it if the Thennanin manage to kick the birds out?”
Uthacalthing shrugged. “Probably. And maybe the Ceremonial Mound as well. Your clan is due reparations, certainly.”
“But you have your doubts.”
Uthacalthing stood in the vast entranceway surveying the vaulted chamber and the towering cubic data store within. “It is just that I think it would be unwise to count your chickens before they have met the rooster.”
Robert understood Uthacalthing’s point. Even defeat for the Gubru might come at unthinkable cost.
“It’s counting one’s eggs before they’re laid,” he told the Tymbrimi, who was always anxious to improve his grasp of Anglic metaphors. This time, however, Uthacalthing didn’t thank Robert. His wide-spread eyes seemed to flash as he looked back, sidelong. “Think about it,” he said.
Soon Uthacalthing was deep in conversation with the Kanten Chief Librarian. At a loss to follow their rapid, inflected Galactic, Robert started a circuit of the new Library, taking its measure and looking at its current users.
Except for a few members of the Grand Examiner’s team, all of the occupants were avians. The Gubru present were divided by a gulf he could henn, as well as see. Nearly two thirds of them clustered over to the left. They cooed and cast disapproving glances at the smaller group, which consisted almost entirely of soldiers. The military did not give off happy vibrations, but they hid it well, strutting about their tasks with crisp efficiency, returning their peers’ disapproval with arrogant disdain.
Robert made no effort to avoid being seen. The wave of stares he attracted was pleasing. They obviously knew who he was. If just passing near caused an interruption in their work, so much the better.
Approaching one cluster of Gubru — by their ribbons obviously members of the priestly Caste of Propriety — he bowed to an angle he hoped was correct and grinned as the entire offended gaggle was forced to form up and reply in kind.
Finally Robert came upon a data station formatted in a way he understood. Uthacalthing was still immersed in con-versaticn vith the Librarian, so Robert decided to see what he couk; ::.;d out on his own.
He made very little progress. The enemy had obviously set up safeguards to prevent the unauthorized from accessing information about near-space, or the presumably converging battle fleets of the Thennanin. Still, Robert kept on trying. Time passed as he explored the current data net, finding out where the invaders had set up their blocks.
So intense was his concentration that it took a while before he grew aware that something had changed in the Library. Automatic sound dampers had kept the growing hubbub from intruding on his concentration, but when he looked up at last Robert saw that the Gubru were in an uproar. They waved their downy arms and formed tight clusters around holo-tanks. Most of the soldiers had simply vanished, from sight.
What on Garth has gotten into them? he wondered.
Robert didn’t imagine the Gubru would welcome him peering over their shoulders. He felt frustrated. Whatever was happening, it sure had them perturbed!
Hey! Robert thought. Maybe it’s on the local news.
Quickly he used his own screen to access a public video station. Until recently censorship had been severe, but during the last few days, as soldiers were called away to combat duty, the networks had fallen under the control of the Caste of Cost and Caution. Those glum, apathetic bureaucrats now hardly enforced even modest discipline.
The tank flickered, then cleared to show an excited chim reporter.
“… and so, at latest reports, it seems the surprise offensive from the Mulun hasn’t yet engaged the occupation forces. The Gubru seem unable to agree on how to answer the manifesto of the approaching forces…”
Robert wondered, had the Thennanin made their pronouncement of intent already? That had not been expected for a couple of days at least. Then one word caught in his mind.
From the Mulun?
“… We’ll now rebroadcast the statement read just five minutes ago by the joint commanders of the army right now marching on Port Helenia.”
The view in the holo-tank shifted. The chim announcer was replaced by a recently recorded image showing three figures standing against a forest background. Robert blinked. He knew these faces, two of them intimately. One was a chen named Benjamin. The other two were women he loved.
“… and so we challenge our oppressors. In combat we have behaved well, under the dicta of the Galactic Institute for Civilized Warfare. This cannot be said of our enemies. They have used criminal means and have allowed harm to noncombatant fallow species native to a fragile world.
“Worst of all, they have cheated.”
Robert gaped. The image panned back to show platoons of chims — bearing a motley assortment of weapons — trooping forth from the forest out into the open, accompanied by a few fierce-eyed humans. The one speaking into the camera was Lydia McCue, Robert’s human lover. But Athaclena stood next to her, and in his alien consort’s eyes he saw and knew who had written the words.
And he knew, without any doubt, whose idea this was.
“We demand, therefore, that they send forth their best soldiers, armed as we are armed, to meet our champions out in the open, in the Valley of the Sind…”
“Uthacalthing,” he said, hoarsely. Then again, louder. “Uthacalthing!”
The noise suppressors had been developed by a hundred million generations of librarians. But in all that time there had been only a few wolfling races. For just an instant the vast chamber echoed before dampers shut down the impolite vibrations and imposed hushed quiet once again.
There was nothing, however, to be done about running in the halls.
106
Gailet
“Recombinant Rats!” Fiben cried upon hearing the beginnings of the declaration. They watched a portable holo set up on the slopes of the Ceremonial Mound.
Gailet gestured for silence. “Be quiet, Fiben. Let me hear the rest of it.”
But the meaning of the message had been obvious from the first few sentences. Columns of irregulars, wearing makeshift uniforms of homespun cloth, marched steadily across open, winter-barren fields. Two squads of horse cavalry skirted the ragged army’s perimeter, like escapees from some pre-Contact flatmovie. The marching chims grinned nervously and watched the skies, fondling their captured or mountain-made weapons. But there was no mistaking their attitude of grim resolve.
As the cameras panned back, Fiben did a quick count. “That’s everybody,” he said in awe. “I mean, allowing for recent casualties, it’s everybody who’s had any training or would be any good at all in a fight. It’s all or nothing.” He shook his head. “Clip my blue card if I can figure what she hopes to accomplish.”
Gailet glanced up at him. “Some blue card,” she sniffed. “And I’d have to say she knows exactly what she’s doing, Fiben.”
“But the city rebels were slaughtered out on the Sind.”
She shook her head. “That was then. We didn’t know the score. We hadn’t achieved any respect or status. Anyway, there weren’t any witnesses.
“But the mountain forces have won victories. They’ve been acknowledged. And now the Five Galaxies are watching.”
Gailet frowned. “Oh, Athaclena knows what she’s doing. I just didn’t know things were this desperate.”
They sat quietly for a moment longer, watching the insurgents advance slowly across orchards and winter-barren fields. Then Fiben let out another exclamation. “What?” Gailet asked. She looked where he pointed in the tank, and it was her turn to hiss in surprise.
There, carrying a saber rifle along with the other chim soldiers, strode someone they both knew. Sylvie did not seem uncomfortable with her weapon. In fact, she appeared an island of almost zenlike calm in the sea of nervous neo-chimpanzees.
Who would’ve figured it? Gailet thought. Who would’ve thought that about her?
They watched together. There was little else they could do.
107
Galactics
“This must be handled with delicacy, care, rectitude!” the Suzerain of Propriety proclaimed. “If necessary, we must meet them one on one.”
“But the expense!” wailed the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. “The losses to be expected!”
Gently, the high priest bent over from her perch and crooned to her junior.
“Consensus, consensus… Share with me a vision of harmony and wisdom. Our clan has lost much here, and stands in dire jeopardy of losing far more. But we have not yet forfeited the one thing that will maintain us even at night, even in darkness — our nobility. Our honor.”
Together, they began to sway. A melody rose, one with a single lyric. , ,
“Zoooon. …”
Now if only their strong third were here! Coalescence seemed so near. A message had been sent to the Suzerain of Beam and Talon urging that he return to them, join them, become one with them at last.
How, she wondered. How could he resist knowing, concluding, realizing at last that it is his fate to be my male? Can an individual be so obstinate?
The three of us can yet be happy!
But a messenger arrived with news that brought despair. The battle cruises in the bay had lifted off and was heading inland with its escorts. The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had decided to act. No consensus would restrain him.
The high priest mourned.
We could have been happy.
108
Athaclena
“Well, this may be our answer,” Lydia commented resignedly.
Athaclena looked up from the awkward, unfamiliar task of controlling a horse. Mostly, she let her beast simply follow the others. Fortunately, it was a gentle creature who responded well to her coronal singing.
She peered in the direction pointed out by Lydia McCue, where scattered clouds and haze partially obscured the western horizon. Already many of the chims were gesturing that way. Then Athaclena also saw the glint of flying craft. And she kenned the approaching forces. Confusion… determination… fanaticism… regret… loathing … a turmoil of alien-tinged feelings bombarded her from the ships. But one thing was clear above all.
The Gubru were coming with vast and overwhelming strength.
The distant dots took shape. “I believe you are right, Lydia,” Athaclena told her friend. “It seems we have our answer.”
The woman Marine swallowed. “Shall I order a dispersal? Maybe a few of us can get away.” She sounded doubtful.
Athaclena shook her head. A sad glyph formed. “No. We must play this out. Call all units together. Have the cavalry bring everyone to yonder hilltop.”
“Any particular reason we should make things easy for them?”
Above Athaclena’s waving tendrils the glyph refused to become one of despair. “Yes,” she answered. “There is a reason. The best reason in all the world.”
109
Galactics
The stoop-colonel of Talon Soldiers watched the ragged army of insurgents on a holo-screen and listened as its high commander screamed in delight.
“They shall burn, shall smoke, shall curl into cinders under our fire!”
The stoop-colonel felt miserable. This was intemperate language, bereft of proper consideration of consequences. The stoop-colonel knew, deep within, that even the most brilliant military plans would eventually come to nothing if they did not take into account such matters as cost, caution, and propriety. Balance was the essence of consensus, the foundation of survival.
And yet the Earthlings’ challenge had been honorable! It might be ignored. Or even met with a decent excess of force. But what the leader of the military now planned was unpleasant, his methods extreme.
The stoop-colonel noted that it had already come to think of the Suzerain of Beam and Talon as “he.” The Suzerain of Beam and Talon was a brilliant leader who had inspired his followers, but now, as a prince, he seemed blind to the truth.
To even think of the commander in this critical way caused the stoop-colonel physical pain. The conflict was deep and visceral. .
The doors to the main lift opened and out onto the command dais stepped a trio of white-plumed messengers — a priest, a bureaucrat, and one of the officers who had deserted to the other Suzerains. They strode toward the admiral and proffered a box crafted of richly inlaid wood. Shivering, the Suzerain of Beam and Talon ordered it opened.
Within lay a single, luxuriant feather, colored iridescent red along its entire length except at the very tip.
“Lies! Deceptions! An obvious hoax!” the admiral cried, and knocked the box and its contents out of the startled messengers’ arms.
The stoop-colonel stared as the feather drifted in eddies from the air circulators before fluttering down to the deck. It felt like sacrilege to leave it lying there, and yet the stoop-colonel dared not move to pick it up.
How could the commander ignore this? How could he refuse to accept the rich, blue shades spreading now at the roots of his own down? “The Molt can reverse again,” the Suzerain of Beam and Talon cried out. “It can happen if we win victory at arms!”
Only now what he proposed would not be victory, it would be slaughter.
“The Earthlings are gathering, clustering, coming together upon a single hillmount,” one of the aides reported. “They offer, display, present us with a single, simple target!”
The stoop-colonel sighed. It did not take a priest to tell what this meant. The Earthlings, realizing that there would be no fair fight, had come together to make their demise simple. Since their lives were already forfeit, there was only one possible reason.
They do it in order to protect the frail ecosystem of this world. The purpose of their lease-grant was, after all, to save Garth. In their very helplessness the stoop-colonel saw and tasted bitter defeat. They had forced the Gubru to choose flatly between power and honor.
The crimson feather had the stoop-colonel captivated, its colors ‹loing things to its very blood. “I shall prepare my Talon Soldiers to go down and meet the Terrans,” the stoop-colonel suggested, hopefully. “We shall drop down, advance, attack in equal numbers, lightly armed, without robots.”
“No! You must not, will not, shall not! I have carefully assigned roles for all my forces. I need, require them all when we deal with the Thennanin! There shall be no wasteful squandering.
“Now, heed me! At this moment, this instant, the Earth-lings below shall feel, bear, sustain my righteous vengeance!” the Suzerain of Beam and Talon cried out. “I command that the locks be removed from the weapons of mass destruction. We shall sear this valley, and the next, and the next, until all life in these mountains—”
The order was never finished. The stoop-colonel of Talon Soldiers blinked once, then dropped its saber pistol to the deck. The clatter was followed by a double thump as first the head and then the body of the former military commander tumbled as well.
The stoop-colonel shuddered. Lying there, the body clearly showed those iridescent shades of royalty. The admiral’s blood mixed with the blue princely plumage and spread across the deck to join, at last, with the single crimson feather of his queen.
The stoop-colonel told its stunned subordinates, “Inform, tell, transmit to the Suzerain of Propriety that I have placed myself under arrest, pending the outcome, result, determination of my fate.
“Refer to Their Majesties what it is that must be done.”
For a long, uncertain time — completely on inertia — the task force continued toward the hilltop where the Earthlings had gathered, waiting. Nobody spoke. On the command dais there was hardly any movement at all.
When the report arrived itwas like confirmation of what they had known for some time. A pall of mourning had already settled over the Gubru administration compound. Now the former Suzerain of Propriety and the former Suzerain of Cost and Caution crooned together a sad dirge of loss.
Such great hopes, such fine prosp
ects they had had on setting out for this place, this planet, this forlorn speck in empty space. The Roost Masters had so carefully planned the right oven, the correct crucible, and just the right ingredients — three of the best, three fine products of genetic manipulation, their very finest.
We were sent to bring home a consensus, the new queen thought. And that consensus has come.
It is ashes. We were wrong to think this was the time to strive for greatness.
Oh, many factors had brought this about. If only the first candidate of Cost and Caution had not died… If only they had not been fooled twice by the trickster Tymbrimi and his “Garthlings.” … If only the Earthlings had not proven so wolfishly clever at capitalizing on every weakness — this last maneuver for instance, forcing Gubru soldiery to choose between dishonor and regicide…
But there are no accidents, she knew. They could not have taken advantage if we had not shown flaws.
That was the consensus they would report to the Roost Masters. That there were weaknesses, failures, mistakes which this doomed expedition had tested and brought to light.
It would be valuable information.
Let that console me for my sterile, infertile eggs, she thought, as she comforted her sole remaining partner and lover.
To the messengers she gave one brief command.
“Convey to the stoop-colonel our pardon, our amnesty, our forgiveness. And have the task force recalled to base.”
Soon the deadly cruisers had turned about and were headed homeward, leaving the mountains and the valley to those who seemed to want them so badly.
110
Athaclena