The Uplift War

by David Brin

  “What was that, Fiben? What’d you say?”

  “I said I’ll have this old crate lined up in time!” he snapped. “The Eatees won’t be disappointed.”

  The popular slang term for alien Galactics had its roots in an acronym for “Extraterrestrials.” But it also made Fiben think about food. He had been living on ship paste for days. What he wouldn’t give for a fresh chicken and palm leaf sandwich, right nov

  Nutritionists were always after chims to curb their appetite for meat. Said too much was bad for the blood pressure. Fiben sniffed.

  Heck, I’d settle for a jar of mustard and the latest edition of the Port Helenia Times, he thought.

  “Say, Fiben, you’re always up on the latest scuttlebutt. Has anyone figured out yet who’s invading us?”

  “Well, I know a chimmie in the Coordinator’s office who told me she had a friend on the Intelligence Staff who thought the bastards were Soro, or maybe Tandu.”

  “Tandu! You’re kidding I hope.” Simon sounded aghast, and Fiben had to agree. Some thoughts just weren’t to be contemplated.

  “Ah well, my guess is it’s probably just a bunch of Linten gardeners dropping by to make sure we’re treating the plants all right.”

  Simon laughed and Fiben felt glad. Having a cheerful wingman was worth more than a reserve officer’s half pay.

  He got his tiny space skiff back onto its assigned trajectory. The scoutboat—purchased only a few months back from a passing Xatinni scrap hauler—was actually quite a bit older than his own sapient race. While his ancestors were still harassing baboons beneath African trees, this fighter had seen action under distant suns—controlled by the hands, claws, tentacles of other poor creatures similarly doomed to skirmish and die in pointless interstellar struggles.

  Fiben had only been allowed two weeks to study schematics and remember enough Galactiscript to read the instruments. Fortunately, designs changed slowly in the aeons-old Galactic culture, and there were basics most spacecraft shared in common.

  One thing was certain, Galactic technology was impressive. Humanity’s best ships were still bought, not Earth-made. And although this old tub was creaky and cranky, it would probably outlive him, this day.

  All around Fiben bright fields of stars glittered, except where the inky blackness of the Spoon Nebula blotted out the thick band of the galactic disk. That was the direction where Earth lay, the homeworld Fiben had never seen, and now probably never would.

  Garth, on the other hand, was a bright green spark only three million kilometers behind him. Her tiny fleet was too small to cover the distant hyperspacial transfer points, or even the inner system. Their ragged array of scouts, meteoroid miners, and converted freighters—plus three modern corvettes—was hardly adequate to cover the planet itself.

  Fortunately, Fiben wasn’t in command, so he did not have to keep his mind on the forlorn state of their prospects. He had only to do his duty and wait. Contemplating annihilation was not how he planned to spend the time.

  He tried to divert himself by thinking about the Throop family, the small sharing-clan on Quintana Island that had recently invited him to join in their group marriage. For a modern chim it was a serious decision, like when two or three human beings decided to marry and raise a family. He had been pondering the choice for weeks.

  The Throop Clan did have a nice, rambling house, good grooming habits, and respectable professions. The adults were attractive and interesting chims, all with green genetic clearances. Socially, it would be a very good move.

  But there were disadvantages, as well. For one thing, he would have to move from Port Helenia back out to the islands, where most of the chim and human settlers still lived. Fiben wasn’t sure he was ready to do that. He liked the open spaces of the mainland, the freedom of mountains and wild Garth countryside.

  And there was another important consideration. Fiben had to wonder whether the Throops wanted him because they really liked him, or because the Neo-Chimpanzee Uplift Board had granted him a blue card—an open breeding clearance.

  Only a white card was higher. Blue status meant he could join any marriage group and father children with only minimal genetic counseling. It couldn’t help but have influenced the Throop Clan’s decision.

  “Oh, quit kiddin’ yourself,” he muttered at last. The matter was moot, anyway. Right now he wouldn’t take long odds on his chances of ever even seeing home again alive.

  “Fiben? You still there, kid?”

  “Yeah, Simon. What’cha got?”

  There was a pause.

  “I just got a call from Major Forthness. He said he has an uneasy feeling about that gap in the fourth dodecant.”

  Fiben yawned. “Humans are always gettin’ uneasy feelings. Alla time worryin’. That’s what it’s like being big-time patron types.”

  His partner laughed. On Garth it was fashionable even for well-educated chims to “talk grunt” at times. Most of the better humans took the ribbing with good humor; and those who didn’t could go chase themselves.

  “Tell you what,” he told Simon. “I’ll drift over to the ol’ fourth dodecant and give it a lookover for the Major.”

  “We aren’t supposed to split up” the voice in his headphones protested weakly. Still, they both knew having a wingman would hardly make any difference in the kind of fight they were about to face.

  “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” Fiben assured his friend. “Save me some of the bananas.”

  He engaged the stasis and gravity fields gradually, treating the ancient machine like a virgin chimmie on her first pink. Smoothly, the scout built up acceleration.

  Their defense plan had been carefully worked out bearing in mind normally conservative Galactic psychology. The Earthlings’ forces were laid out in a mesh with the larger ships held in reserve. The scheme relied on scouts like him reporting the enemy’s approach in time for the others to coordinate a timed response.

  Problem was that there were too few scouts to maintain anywhere near complete coverage.

  Fiben felt the powerful thrum of engines through his seat. Soon he was hurtling across the star-field. Got to give the Galactics their due, he thought. Their culture was stodgy and intolerant—sometimes almost fascistic—but they did build well.

  Fiben itched inside his suit. Not for the first time, he wished some human pilots had been small enough to qualify for duty in these tiny Xatinni scouts. It would serve them right to have to smell themselves after three days in space.

  Often, in his more pensive moods, Fiben wondered if it had really been such a good idea for humans to meddle so, making engineers and poets and part-time starfighters out of apes who might have been just as happy to stay in the forest. Where would he be now, it they refrained? He’d have been dirty perhaps, and ignorant. But at least he’d be free to scratch an itch whenever he damn well pleased!

  He missed his local Grooming Club. Ah, for the glory of being curried and brushed by a truly sensitive chen or chimmie, lazing in the shade and gossiping about nothing at all.…

  A pink light appeared in his detection tank. He reached forward and slapped the display, but the reading would not go away. In fact, as he approached his destination it grew, then split, and divided again.

  Fiben felt cold. “Ifni’s incontinence …” He swore, and grabbed for the code-broadcast switch. “Scoutship Proconsul to all units. They’re behind us! Three … no, four battlecruiser squadrons, emerging from B-level hyperspace in the fourth dodecant!”

  He blinked as a fifth flotilla appeared as if out of nowhere, the blips shimmering as starships emerged into real-time and leaked excess hyperprobability into the real-space vacuum. Even at this distance he could tell that the cruisers were large.

  His headphones brought a static of consternation.

  “My Uncle Hairy’s twice-bent manhood! How did they know there was a hole in our line there?”

  “ … Fiben, are you sure? Why did they pick that particular …”

  “ … Who th’ he
ll are they? Can you …?”

  The chatter shut down at once as Major Forthness broke in on the command channel.

  “Message received. Proconsul. We’re on our way. Please switch on your repeater, Fiben.”

  Fiben slapped his helmet. It had been years since his militia training, and a guy tended to forget things. He switched over to telemetry so the others could share everything his instruments picked up.

  Of course broadcasting all that data made him an easy target, but that hardly mattered. Clearly their foe had known where the defenders were, perhaps down to the last ship. Already he detected seeker missiles streaking toward him.

  So much for stealth and surprise as the advantages of the weak. As he sped toward the enemy—whoever the devils were—Fiben noticed that the emerging invasion armada stood almost directly between him and the bright green sparkle of Garth.

  “Great,” he snorted. “At least when they blast me I’ll be headed for home. Maybe a few hanks of fur will even get there ahead of the Eatees.

  “If anyone wishes on a shooting star, tomorrow night, I hope they get whatever th’fuk they ask for.”

  He increased the ancient scout’s acceleration and felt a rearward push even through the straining stasis fields. The moan of engines rose in pitch. And as the little ship leaped forward it seemed to Fiben that it sang a song of battle that sounded almost joyful.

  6

  Uthacalthing

  Four human officers stepped across the brick parquet floor of the conservatory, their polished brown boots clicking rhythmically in step. Three stopped a respectful distance from the large window where the ambassador and the Planetary Coordinator stood waiting. But the fourth continued forward and saluted crisply.

  “Madam Coordinator, it has begun.” The graying militia commander pulled a document from his dispatch pouch and held it out.

  Uthacalthing admired Megan Oneagle’s poise as she took the proffered flimsy. Her expression betrayed none of the dismay she must be feeling as their worst fears were confirmed.

  “Thank you, Colonel Maiven,” she said.

  Uthacalthing couldn’t help noticing how the tense junior officers kept glancing his way, obviously wondering how the Tymbrimi Ambassador was taking the news. He remained outwardly impassive, as befitted a member of the diplomatic corps. But the tips of his corona trembled involuntarily at the froth of tension that had accompanied the messengers into the humid greenhouse.

  From here a long bank of windows offered a glorious view of the Valley of the Sind, pleasantly arrayed with farms and groves of both native and imported Terran trees. It was a lovely, peaceful scene. Great Infinity alone knew how much longer that serenity would last. And Ifni was not confiding her plans in Uthacalthing, at present.

  Planetary Coordinator Oneagle scanned the report briefly. “Do you have any idea yet who the enemy is?”

  Colonel Maiven shook his head. “Not really, ma’am. The fleets are closing now, though. We expect identification shortly.”

  In spite of the seriousness of the moment, Uthacalthing found himself once again intrigued by the quaintly archaic dialect humans used here on Garth. At every other Terran colony he had visited, Anglic had taken in a potpourri of words borrowed from Galactic languages Seven, Two, and Ten. Here, though, common speech was not appreciably different from what it had been when Garth was licensed to the humans and their clients, more than two generations ago.

  Delightful, surprising creatures, he thought. Only here, for instance, would one hear such a pure, ancient form—addressing a female leader as “ma’am.” On other Terran-occupied worlds, functionaries addressed their supervisors by the neutral “ser,” whatever their gender.

  There were other unusual things about Garth as well. In the months since his arrival here, Uthacalthing had made a private pastime of listening to every odd story, every strange tale brought in from the wild lands by farmers, trappers, and members of the Ecological Recovery Service. There had been rumors. Rumors of strange things going on up in the mountains.

  Of course they were silly stories, mostly. Exaggerations and tall tales. Just the sort of thing you would expect from wolflings living at the edge of a wilderness. And yet they had given him the beginnings of an idea.

  Uthacalthing listened quietly as each of the staff officers reported in turn. At last, though, there came a long pause—the silence of brave people sharing a common sense of doom. Only then did he venture to speak, quietly. “Colonel Maiven, are you certain the enemy is being so thorough in isolating Garth?”

  The Defense Councilor bowed to Uthacalthing. “Mr. Ambassador, we know that hyperspace is being mined by enemy cruisers as close in as six million pseudometers, on at least four of the main levels.”

  “Including D-level?”

  “Yes, ser. Of course it means we dare not send any of our lightly armed ships out on any of the few hyperpaths available, even if we could have spared any from the battle. It also means anyone trying to get into Garth system would have to be mighty determined.”

  Uthacalthing was impressed. They have mined D-level. I would not have expected them to bother. They certainly don’t want anybody interfering in this operation!

  This spoke of substantial effort and cost. Someone was sparing little expense in this operation.

  “The point is moot,” the Planetary Coordinator said. Megan was looking out over the rolling meadows of the Sind, with its farmsteads and environmental research stations. Just below the window a chim gardener on a tractor tended the broad lawn of Earth-breed grass surrounding Government House.

  She turned back to the others. “The last courier ship brought orders from the Terragens Council. We are to defend ourselves as best we can, for honor’s sake and for the record. But beyond that all we can hope to do is maintain some sort of underground resistance until help arrives from the outside.”

  Uthacalthing’s deepself almost laughed out loud, for at that moment each human in the room tried hard not to look at him! Colonel Maiven cleared his throat and examined his report. His officers pondered the brilliant, flowering plants. Still, it was obvious what they were thinking.

  Of the few Galactic clans that Earth could count as friends, only the Tymbrimi had the military strength to be of much assistance in this crisis. Men had faith that Tymbrim would not let humans and their clients down.

  And that was true enough. Uthacalthing knew the allies would face this crisis together.

  But it was also clear that little Garth was a long way out on the fringe of things. And these days the homeworlds had to take first priority.

  No matter, Uthacalthing thought. The best means to an end are not always those that appear most direct.

  Uthacalthing did not laugh out loud, much as he wanted to. For it might only discomfit these poor, grief-stricken people. In the course of his career he had met some Earthlings who possessed a natural gift for high-quality pranksterism—a few even on a par with the best Tymbrimi. Still, so many of them were such terribly dour, sober folk! Most tried so desperately hard to be serious at the very moments when humor could most help them through their troubles.

  Uthacalthing wondered.

  As a diplomat I have taught myself to watch every word, lest our clans penchant for japes cause costly incidents. But has this been wise? My own daughter has picked up this habit from me … this shroud of seriousness. Perhaps that is why she has grown into such a strange, earnest little creature.

  Thinking of Athaclena made him wish all the more he could openly make light of the situation. Otherwise, he might do the human thing and consider the danger she was in. He knew that Megan worried about her own son. She underrates Robert, Uthacalthing thought. She should better know the lad’s potential.

  “Dear ladies and gentlemen,” he said, savoring the archaisms. His eyes separated only slightly in amusement. “We can expect the fanatics to arrive within days. You have made conventional plans to offer what resistance your meager resources will allow. Those plans will serve their function
.”

  “However?” It was Megan Oneagle who posed the question. One eyebrow arched above those brown irises—big and set almost far enough apart to look attractive in the classic Tymbrimi sense. There was no mistaking the look.

  She knows as well as I that more is called for. Ah, if Robert has half his mother’s brains, I’ll not fear for Athaclena, wandering in the dark forests of this sad, barren world.

  Uthacalthing’s corona trembled. “However,” he echoed, “it does occur to me that now might be a good time to consult the Branch Library.”

  Uthacalthing picked up some of their disappointment. Astonishing creatures! Tymbrimi skepticism toward modern Galactic culture never went so far as the outright contempt so many humans felt for the Great Library!

  Wolflings. Uthacalthing sighed to himself. In the space above his head he crafted the glyph called syullf-tha, anticipation of a puzzle almost too ornate to solve. The specter revolved in expectancy, invisible to the humans—although for a moment Megan’s attention seemed to flutter, as if she were just on the edge of noticing something.

  Poor Wolflings. For all of its faults, the Library is where everything begins and ends. Always, somewhere in its treasure trove of knowledge, can be found some gem of wisdom and solution. Until you learn that, my friends, little inconveniences like ravening enemy battle fleets will go on ruining perfectly good spring mornings like this one!

  7

  Athaclena

  Robert led the way a few feet ahead of her, using a machete to lop off the occasional branch encroaching on the narrow trail. The bright sunshine of the sun, Gimelhai, filtered softly through the forest canopy, and the spring air was warm.

  Athaclena felt glad of the easy pace. With her weight redistributed from its accustomed pattern, walking was something of an adventure in itself. She wondered how human women managed to go through most of their lives with such a wide-hipped stance. Perhaps it was a sacrifice they paid for having big-headed babies, instead of giving birth early and then sensibly slipping the child into a postpartum pouch.