The Uplift War

by David Brin

  But on the edges of the dance floor stood four chims in bright zipsuits, watching him as they fingered objects in their pockets. There still looked to be only one way. Fiben clambered up onto another carpeted, “rocky” cleft. Again, the crowd cheered in intensifying excitement. The noise, smells, confusion … Fiben blinked at the sea of fervent faces, all staring up at him in expectation. What was happening?

  A flash of motion caught Fiben’s attention. From the balcony over the bar, someone was waving at him. It was a small chim dressed in a dark, hooded cloak, standing out in this frenzied crowd, more than anything else, by a facial expression that was calm, icy sharp.

  Fiben suddenly recognized the little pimp, the one who had accosted him briefly by the door to the Ape’s Grape. The chim’s voice didn’t carry over the cacophony, but somehow Fiben picked out the mouthed words.

  “Hey, dummy, look up!”

  The boyish face grimaced. The panderer pointed overhead.

  Fiben glanced upward … just in time to see a sparkling mesh start to fell from the rafters overhead! He leaped aside purely on instinct, fetching hard against another “rock” as the fringe of the falling net grazed his left foot. Electric agony stroked his leg.

  “Baboon shit! What in Goodall’s name …?” He cursed soundly. It took a moment for him to realize that part of the roaring in his ears was more applause. This turned into shouted cheers as he rolled over holding his leg, and thereby happened to escape yet another snare. A dozen loops of sticky mesh flopped out of a simulated rock to tauten over the area he had just occupied.

  Fiben kept as still as possible while he rubbed his foot and glared about angrily, suspiciously. Twice he had almost been noosed like some dumb animal. To the crowd it might all be great fun, but he personally had no desire to be trussed up on some bizarre, lunatic obstacle course.

  Below on the dance floor he saw bright zipsuits, left, right, and center. The Gubru on the balcony seemed interested, but showed no sign of intervening.

  Fiben sighed. His predicament was still the same. The only direction he could go was up.

  Looking carefully, he scrambled over another padded ridge. The snares appeared to be intended to be humiliating and incapacitating—and painful—but not deadly. Except in his case, of course. If he were caught, his unwanted enemies would be on him in a trice.

  He stepped up onto the next “boulder,” cautiously. Fiben felt a tickling falseness under his right foot and pulled back just as a trap door popped open. The crowd gasped as he teetered on the edge of the revealed pit. Fiben’s arms windmilled as he fought for balance. From an uncertain crouch he leaped, and barely caught a grip on the next higher terrace.

  His feet hung over nothingness. Fiben’s breath came in heavy gasps. Desperately he wished humans hadn’t edited some of his ancestors’ “unnecessary” instinctive climbing skills just to make room for trivialities such as speech and reason.

  He grunted and slowly scrambled up out of the pit. The audience clamored for more.

  As he panted on the edge of the next level, trying to see in all directions at once, Fiben slowly became aware that a public address system was muttering over the noise of the crowd, repeating over and over again, in clipped, mechanical tones.

  … more enlightened approach to Uplift … appropriate to the background of the client race … offering opportunity to all … unbiased by warped human standards …

  Up in its box, the invader chirped into a small microphone. Its machine-translated words boomed out over the music and the excited jabber of the crowd. Fiben doubted one in ten of the chims below were even aware of the E.T.’s monologue in the state they were in. But that probably didn’t matter.

  They were being conditioned!

  No wonder he had never heard of Sylvie’s dance-mound striptease before, nor this crazy obstacle course. It was an innovation of the invaders!

  But what was its purpose?

  They couldn’t have managed all this without help, Fiben thought angrily. Sure enough, the two well-dressed chims sitting near the invader whispered to each other and scribbled on clipboards. They were obviously recording the crowd’s reactions for their new master.

  Fiben scanned the balcony and noted that the little pimp in the cowled robe stood not far outside the Gubru’s ring of robot guards. He spared a whole second to memorize the chim’s boyish features. Traitor!

  Sylvie was only a few terraces above him now. The dancer twitched her pink bottom at him, grinning as sweat beaded on his face. Human males had their own “instant” visual triggers: rounded female breasts and pelvises and smooth fem skin. None of them could compare with the electric shiver a little color in the right place could send through a male chim.

  Fiben shook his head vigorously. “Out. Not in. You want out!”

  Concentrating on keeping his balance, favoring his tender left ankle, he scrambled edgewise until he was around the pit, then crawled forward on his hands and knees.

  Sylvie leaned over him, two levels up. Her scent carried even over the pungent aromas of the hall, making Fiben’s nostrils flare.

  He shook his head suddenly. There was another sharp odor, a cloying stink that seemed to be quite local.

  With the little fìnger of his left hand he probed the terrace he had been about to climb upon. Four inches in he encountered a burning stickiness. He cried out and pulled back hard, leaving behind a small patch of skin.

  Alas for instinct! His seared finger automatically popped into his mouth. Fiben almost gagged on the nastiness.

  This was a fine fix. If he tried to move up or forward the sticky stuff would get him. If he retreated he would more than likely wind up in the pit!

  This maze of traps did explain one thing that he had puzzled about, earlier. No wonder the chens below hadn’t gone nuts and simply charged the hill the moment Sylvie showed pink! They knew only the cocky or foolhardy would dare attempt the climb. The others were content to observe and fantasize. Sylvie’s dance was only the first half of the show.

  And if some lucky bastard made it? Well, then, everybody would have the added treat of watching that, too!

  The idea repelled Fiben. Private sharings were natural, of course. But this public lewdness was disgusting!

  At the same time, he noted that he had already made it most of the way. He felt an old quickening in his blood. Sylvie swayed down a little toward him, and he imagined he could already touch her. The musicians increased their tempo, and strobes began flickering again, approaching like lightning. Artificial thunder echoed. Fiben felt a few stinging droplets, like the beginnings of a rainstorm.

  Sylvie danced under the spots, inciting the crowd. He licked his lips and felt himself drawn.

  Then, in the flicker of a single lightning flash, Fiben saw something equally enticing, more than attractive enough to pull him out of Sylvie’s hypnotic sway. It was a small, greenlit sign, prim and legalistic, that shone beyond Sylvie’s shoulder.

  “EXIT,” it read.

  Suddenly the pain and exhaustion and tension caused something to release inside Fiben. He felt somehow lifted above the noise and tumult and recalled with instant clarity something that Athaclena said to him shortly before he left the encampment in the mountains to begin his trek to town. The silvery threads of her Tymbrimi corona had waved gently as if in a breeze of pure thought.

  “There is a telling which my father once gave me, Fiben. It’s a ‘haiku poem,’ in an Earthling dialect called Japanese. I want you to take it with you.”

  “Japanese,” he had protested. “It’s spoken on Earth and on Calafia, but there aren’t a hundred chims or men on Garth who know it!”

  But Athaclena only shook her head. “Neither do I. But I shall pass the telling on to you, the way it was given to me.”

  What came when she opened her mouth then was less sound than a crystallization, a brief substrate of meaning which left an imprint even as it faded.

  Certain moments qualify,

  In winter’s darkest storm,


  When stars call, and you fly!

  Fiben blinked and the sudden relived moment passed. The letters still glowed,

  EXIT

  shining like a green haven.

  It all swept back, the noise, the odors, the sharp stinging of the tiny rainlike droplets. But Fiben now felt as if his chest had expanded twofold. Lightness spread down his arms and into his legs. They seemed to weigh next to nothing.

  With a deep flexing of his knees he gathered himself and then launched off from his precarious perch to land on the edge of the next terrace, toes grasping inches from the burning, camouflaged glue. The crowd roared and Sylvie stepped back, clapping her hands.

  Fiben laughed. He slapped his chest rapidly, as he had seen the gorillas do, beating countertime to the rolling thunder. The audience loved it.

  Grinning, he stepped along the edge of the sticky patch, tracing its outline more by instinct than the faint difference in coloration. Arms spread wide for balance, he made it look harder than it actually felt.

  The ledge ended where a tall “tree”—simulated out of fiberglass and green, plastic tassels—towered out of the slope of the mound.

  Of course the thing was boobytrapped. Fiben wasted no time inspecting it. He leapt up to tap the nearest branch lightly and teetered precariously as he landed, drawing gasps from those below.

  The branch reacted a delayed instant after he touched it … just time enough for him to have gotten a solid grip on it, had he tried. The entire tree seemed to writhe. Twigs turned into curling ropes which would have shared an arm, if he were still holding on.

  With a yip of exhilaration, Fiben leaped again, this time grabbing a dangling rope as the branch swayed down again. He rode it up like a pole vaulter, sailing over the last two terraces—and the surprised dancer—and flew on into the junglelike mass of girders and wiring overhead.

  Fiben let go at the last moment and managed to land in a crouch upon a catwalk. For a moment he had to fight for balance on the tricky footing. A maze of spotlights and un-sprung traps lay all around him. Laughing, he hopped about tripping releases, sending wires, nets, and tangle-ropes spilling over onto the mound. There were tubs of some hot, oatmeallike substance which he kicked over. Splatters on the orchestra sent the musicians diving for cover.

  Now Fiben could easily see the outlines of the obstacle course. Clearly there was no real solution to the puzzle except the one he had used, bypassing the last few terraces altogether.

  In other words, one had to cheat.

  The mound was not a fair test, then. A chen couldn’t hope to win by being more clever, only by letting others take the risks first, suffering pain and humiliation in the traps and deadfalls. The lesson the Gubru were teaching here was insidiously simple.

  “Those bastards,” he muttered.

  The exalted feeling was beginning to fade, and with it some of Fiben’s temporary sense of borrowed invulnerability. Obviously Athaclena had given him a parting gift, a posthypnotic charm of sorts, to help him if he found himself in a jam. Whatever it was, he knew it wouldn’t do to push his luck.

  It’s time to get out of here, he thought.

  The music had died when the musicians fled the sticky oatmeal stuff. But now the the public address system was squawking again, issuing clipped exhortations that were beginning to sound a bit frantic.

  … unacceptable behavior for proper clients … Cease expressions of approval for one who has broken rules … One who must be chastised …

  The Gubru’s pompous urgings fell flat, for the crowd seemed to have gone completely ape. When Fiben hopped over to the mammoth speakers and yanked out wires, the alien’s tirade cut off and there rose a roar of hilarity and approval from the audience below.

  Fiben leaned into one of the spotlights, swiveling it so that it swept across the hall. When the beam passed over them chims picked up their wicker tables and torc them apart over their heads. Then the spot struck the E.T. in the balcony box, still shaking its microphone in apparent outrage. The birdlike creature wailed and cringed under the sharp glare.

  The two chimps sharing the VIP box dove for cover as the battle-robots rotated and fired at once. Fiben leaped from the rafters just before the spotlight exploded in a shower of metal and glass.

  He landed in a roll and came to his feet at the peak of the dance mound … King of the Mountain. He concealed his limp as he waved to the crowd. The hall shook with their cheers.

  They abruptly quieted as he turned and took a step toward Sylvie.

  This was the payoff. Natural male chimpanzees in the wild weren’t shy about mating in front of others, and even uplifted neo-chimps “shared” when the time and place was right. They had few of the jealousy or privacy taboos which made male humans so strange.

  The evening’s climax had come much sooner than the Gubru planned, and in a fashion it probably did not like, but the basic lesson could still be the same. Those below were looking for a vicarious sharing, with all the lessons psychologically tailored.

  Sylvie’s bird-mask was part of the conditioning. Her bared teeth shone as she wriggled her bottom at him. The many-slitted skirt whirled in a rippling flash of provocative color. Even the zipsuiters were staring now, licking their lips in anticipation, their quarrel with him forgotten. At that moment he was their hero, he was each of them.

  Fiben quashed a wave of shame. We’re not so bad … not when you figure we’re only three hundred years old. The Gubru want us to feel we’re barely more than animals, so we’ll be harmless. But I hear even humans used to sometimes revert like this, back in the olden days.

  Sylvie chuffed at him as he approached. Fiben felt a powerful tightening in his loins as she crouched to await him. He reached for her. He gripped her shoulder.

  Then Fiben swung her about to face him. He exerted strength to make her stand up straight.

  The cheering crowd fell into confused muttering. Sylvie blinked up at him in hormone-drenched surprise. It was apparent to Fiben that she must have taken some sort of drug to get into this condition.

  “F-frontwards?” she asked, struggling with the words. “But Big-Beak s-said he wanted it to look natural.…”

  Fiben took her face in his hands. The mask had a complex set of buckles, so he bent around the jutting beak to kiss her once, gently, without removing it.

  “Go home to your mates,” he told her. “Don’t let our enemies shame you.”

  Sylvie rocked back as if he had struck her a blow.

  Fiben faced the crowd and raised his arms. “Upspring of the wolflings of Terra!” he shouted. “All of you. Go home to your mates! Together with our patrons we’ll guide our own Uplift. We don’t need Eatee outsiders to tell us how to do it!”

  From the crowd there came a low rumbling of consternation. Fiben saw that the alien in the balcony was chirping into a small box, probably calling for assistance, he realized.

  “Go home!” he repeated. “And don’t let outsiders make spectacles of us again!”

  The muttering below intensified. Here and there Fiben saw faces wearing sudden frowns—chims looking about the room in what he hoped was dawning embarrassment. Brows wrinkled with uncomfortable thoughts.

  But then, out of the babble below, someone shouted up at him.

  “Whassamatta? Can’t ya’ get it up?”

  About half of the crowd laughed uproariously. There were follow-up jeers and whistles, especially from the front rows.

  Fiben really had to get going. The Gubru probably didn’t dare shoot him down outright, not in front of the crowd. But the avian had doubtless sent for reinforcements.

  Still, Fiben couldn’t pass up a good straight line. He stepped to the edge of the plateau and glanced back at Sylvie. He dropped his pants.

  The jeers stopped abruptly, then the brief silence was broken by whistles and wild applause.

  Cretins, Fiben thought. But he did grin and wave before rebuttoning his fly.

  By now the Gubru was flapping its arms and squawking, pushin
g at the well-dressed neo-chimps who shared its box. They, in turn, leaned over to shout at the bartenders. There were faint noises that sounded like sirens in the distance.

  Fiben grabbed Sylvie for one more kiss. She answered this time, swaying as he released her. He paused for one last gesture up at the alien, making the crowd roar with laughter. Then he turned and ran for the exit.

  Inside his head a little voice was cursing him for an extroverted idiot. This wasn’t what the General sent you to town to do, fool!

  He swept through the beaded curtain but then stopped abruptly, face to face with a frowning neo-chimp in a cowled robe. Fiben recognized the small chim he had briefly seen twice this evening—first outside the door to the Ape’s Grape and later standing just outside the Gubru’s balcony box.

  “You!” he accused.

  “Yeah, me.” the panderer answered. “Sorry I can’t make the same offer as before. But I guess you’ve had other things on your mind tonight.”

  Fiben frowned. “Get out of my way.” He moved to push the other aside.

  “Max!” the smaller chim called. A large form emerged from the shadows. It was the huge, scar-faced fellow he had met at the bar, just before the zipsuited probationers showed up, the one so interested in his blue card. There was a stun gun in his meaty grasp. He smiled apologetically. “Sorry, chum.”

  Fiben tensed, but it was already too late. A rolling tingle washed over his body, and all he managed to do was stumble and fall into the smaller chim’s arms.

  He encountered softness and an unexpected aroma. By Ifni, he thought in a stunned instant.

  “Help me, Max,” the nearby voice said. “We’ve got to move fast.”

  Strong arms lifted him, and Fiben almost welcomed the collapse of consciousness after this last surprise—that the young-faced little “pimp” was actually a chimmie, a girl!

  25

  Galactics