The Uplift War

by David Brin

  The Suzerain of Cost and Caution left the Command Conclave in a state of agitation. Dealing with its fellow Suzerains was always physically exhausting. Three adversaries, dancing and circling, forming temporary alliances, separating and then reforming again, shaping an ever-changing synthesis. So it would have to be as long as the situation in the outer world was indeterminate, in a state of flux.

  Eventually, of course, matters here on Garth would stabilize. One of the three leaders would prove to have been most correct, the best leader. Much rested upon that outcome, not least what color each of them would wear at the end, and what gender.

  But there was no hurry to begin the Molt. Not yet. There would be many more conclaves before that day arrived, and much plumage to be shed.

  Caution’s first debate had been with the Suzerain of Propriety over using Talon Soldiers to subdue the Terragens Marines at the planetary spaceport. In fact, that initial argument had been little more than a minor squabble, and when the Suzerain of Beam and Talon finally tipped the scales, intervening in favor of Propriety, Caution surrendered with good grace. The subsequent ground battle had been expensive in good soldiery. But other purposes were served by the exercise.

  The Suzerain of Cost and Caution had known that the vote would go that way. Actually, it had had no intention of winning their first argument. It knew how much better it was to begin the race in last place, with the priest and the admiral in temporary contention. As a result both of them would tend to ignore the Civil Service for a while. Setting up a proper bureaucracy of occupation and administration would take a lot of effort, and the Suzerain of Cost and Caution did not want to waste energy on preliminary squabbles.

  Such as this most recent one. As the chief bureaucrat stepped away from the meeting pavilion and was joined by its aides and escorts, the other two expedition leaders could still be heard crooning at each other in the background. The conclave was over, yet they were still arguing over what had already been decided.

  For the time being the military would continue the gas attacks, seeking out any humans who might have escaped the initial dosings. The order had been issued minutes ago.

  The high priest—the Suzerain of Propriety—was worried that too many human civilians had been injured or killed by the gas. A few neo-chimpanzees had also suffered. This wasn’t catastrophic from a legal or religious point of view, but it would complicate matters eventually. Compensation might have to be paid, and it could weaken the Gubru case if the matter ever came before interstellar adjudication.

  The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had argued that adjudication was very unlikely. After all, with the Five Galaxies in an uproar, who was going to care about a few mistakes made on a tiny backwater dirtspeck such as this?

  “We care!” the Suzerain of Propriety had declared. And it made its feelings clear by continuing to refuse to step off its perch onto the soil of Garth. To do so prematurely would make the invasion official, it stated. And that would have to wait. The small but fierce space battle, and the defiance of the spaceport, had seen to that. By resisting effectively, however briefly, the legal leaseholders had made it necessary to put off making any formal seizures for a while. Any further mistakes could not only harm Gubru claims here but prove terribly expensive as well.

  The priest had fluttered its allochroous plumage after making that point, smugly certain of victory. After all, expense was an issue that would certainly win it an ally. Propriety felt it would surely be joined by Cost and Caution here!

  How foolish, to think that the Molt will be decided by early bickerings such as these, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution had thought, and proceeded to side with the soldiery.

  “Let the gassings go on, continue and seek out all those still in hiding,” it had said to the priest’s dismay and the admiral’s crowing delight.

  The space battle and landings had proved extraordinarily costly. But not as expensive as it all would likely have been without the Coercion Program. The gas attacks had achieved the objective of concentrating nearly the entire human population onto a few islands where they might be simply controlled. It was easy to understand why the Suzerain of Beam and Talon wanted it that way. The bureaucrat, also, had experience dealing with wolflings. It, too, would feel much more comfortable with all of the dangerous humans gathered where it could see them.

  Soon, of course, something would have to be done to curtail the high costs of this expedition. Already the Roost Masters had recalled elements of the fleet. Matters were critical on other fronts. It was vital to keep a tight perch-grip on expenses here. That was a matter for another conclave, however.

  Today, the military suzerain was riding high. Tomorrow? Well, the alliances would shift and shift again, until at last a new policy emerged. And a queen.

  The Suzerain of Cost and Caution turned and spoke to one of its Kwackoo aides.

  “Have me driven, taken, conveyed to my headquarters.”

  The official hover-barge lifted off and headed toward the buildings the Civil Service had appropriated, on headlands overlooking the nearby sea. As the vehicle hissed through the small Earthling town, guarded by a swarm of battle robots, it was watched by small crowds of the dark, hairy beasts the human wolflings prized as their eldest clients.

  The Suzerain spoke again to its aide. “When we arrive at the chancery, gather the staff together. We shall consider, contemplate, evaluate the new proposal the high priest sent over this morning concerning how to manage these creatures, these neo-chimpanzees.”

  Some of the ideas suggested by the Propriety Department were daring to an extreme. There were brilliant features that made the bureaucrat feel proud of its future mate. What a Threesome we shall make.

  There were other aspects, of course, that would have to be altered if the plan was not to lead to disaster. Only one of the Triumvirate had the sureness of grasp to see such a scheme to its final, victorious conclusion. That had been known in advance when the Roost Masters chose their Three.

  The Suzerain of Cost and Caution let out a treble sigh and contemplated how it would have to manipulate the next leadership conclave. Tomorrow, the next day, in a week. That forthcoming squabble was not far off. Each debate would grow more urgent, more important as both consensus and Molt approached.

  The prospect was one to look upon with a mixture of trepidation, confidence, and utter pleasure.

  26

  Robert

  The denizens of the deep caverns were unaccustomed to the bright lights and loud noises the newcomers had brought with them. Hordes of batlike creatures fled before the interlopers, leaving behind a flat, thick flooring of many centuries’ accumulated dung. Under limestone walls glistening with slow seepage, alkaline rivulets were now crossed by makeshift plank bridges. In drier corners, under the pale illumination of glow bulbs, the surface beings moved nervously, as if loathe to disturb the stygian quiet.

  It was a forbidding place to wake up to. Shadows were stark, acherontic, and surprising. A crag of rock might look innocuous and then, from a slightly different perspective, leap out in familiarity as the silhouette of some monster met a hundred times in nightmares.

  It wasn’t hard to have bad dreams in a place like this.

  Shuffling in robe and slippers, Robert felt positive relief when at last he found the place he’d been looking for, the rebel “operations center.” It was a fairly large chamber, lit by more than the usual sparse ration of bulbs. But furniture was negligible. Some ragged card tables and cabinets had been supplemented by benches fashioned from chopped and leveled stalagmites, plus a few partitions knocked together out of raw timber from the forest high above. The effect only made the towering vault seem all the more mighty, and the refugees’ works all the more pitiful.

  Robert rubbed his eyes. A few chims could be seen clustered around one partition arguing and sticking pins in a large map, speaking softly as they sifted through papers. When one of them raised his voice too loud, echoes reverberated down the surrounding passages making the other
s look up in alarm. Obviously, the chims were still intimidated by their new quarters.

  Robert shuffled into the light. “All right,” he said, his larynx still scratchy from lack of use. “What’s going on here? Where is she and what is she up to now?”

  They stared at him. Robert knew he must look a sight in rumpled pajamas and slippers, his hair uncombed and his arm in a cast to the shoulder.

  “Captain Oneagle,” one of the chims said. “You really should still be in bed. Your fever—”

  “Oh, shove it … Micah.” Robert had to think to remember the fellow’s name. The last few weeks were still a fog in his mind. “My fever broke two days ago. I can read my own chart. So tell me what’s happening! Where is everybody? Where’s Athaclena?”

  They looked at each other. Finally one chimmie took a cluster of colored map pins out of her mouth. “Th’ General … uh, Mizz Athaclena, is away. She’s leading a raid.”

  “A raid.…” Robert blinked. “On the Gubru?” He brought a hand to his eyes as the room seemed to waver. “Oh, Ifni.”

  There was a rush of activity as three chims got in each other’s way hauling over a wooden folding chair. Robert sat down heavily. He saw that these chims were all either very young or old. Athaclena must have taken most of the able-bodied with her.

  “Tell me about it,” he said to them.

  A senior-looking chimmie, bespectacled and serious, motioned the others back to work and introduced herself. “I am Dr. Soo,” she said. “At the Center I worked on gorilla genetic histories.”

  Robert nodded. “Dr. Soo, yes. I recall you helped treat my injuries.” He remembered her face peering over him through a fog while the infection raged hot through his lymphatic system.

  “You were very sick, Captain Oneagle. It wasn’t just your badly fractured arm, or those fungal toxins you absorbed during your accident. We are now fairly certain you also inhaled traces of the Gubru coercion gas, back when they dosed the Mendoza Freehold.”

  Robert blinked. The memory was a blur. He had been on the mend, up in the Mendoza’s mountain ranch, where he and Fiben had spent a couple of days talking, making plans. Somehow they would find others and try to get something started. Maybe make contact with his mother’s government in exile, if it still existed. Reports from Athaclena told of a set of caves that seemed ideal as a headquarters of sorts. Maybe these mountains could be a base of operations against the enemy.

  Then, one afternoon, there were suddenly frantic chims running everywhere! Before Robert could speak, before he could even stand they had plucked him up and carried him bodily out of the farmhouse and up into the hills.

  There were sonic booms … terse images of something immense in the sky.

  “But … but I thought the gas was fatal if …” His voice trailed off.

  “If there’s no antidote. Yes. But your dose was so small.” Dr. Soo shrugged. “As it is, we nearly lost you.”

  Robert shivered. “What about the little girl?”

  “She is with the gorillas.” The chim nutritionist smiled. “She’s as safe as anyone can be, these days.”

  He sighed and sat back a little. “That’s good at least.”

  The chims carrying little April Wu must have got up to the heights in plenty of time. Apparently Robert barely made it. The Mendozas had been slower still and were caught in the stinking cloud that spilled from the belly of the alien ship.

  Dr. Soo went on. “The ’rillas don’t like the caves, so most of them are up in the high valleys, foraging in small groups under loose supervision, away from any buildings. Structures are still being gassed regularly, you know, whether they contain humans or not.”

  Robert nodded. “The Gubru are being thorough.”

  He looked at the wall-board stuck with multicolored pins. The map covered the entire region from the mountains north across the Vale of Sind and west to the sea. There the islands of the Archipelago made a necklace of civilization. Only one city lay onshore, Port Helenia on the northern verge of Aspinal Bay. South and east of the Mulun Mountains lay the wilds of the main continent, but the most important feature was depicted along the top edge of the map. Patient, perhaps unstoppable, the great gray sheets of ice encroached lower every year. The final bane of Garth.

  The map pins, however, dealt with a much closer, nearer-term calamity. It was easy to read the array of pink and red markers. “They’ve really got a grip on things, haven’t they?”

  The elderly chim named Micah brought Robert a glass of water. He frowned at the map also. “Yessir. The fighting seems to all be over. The Gubru have been concentrating their energies around the Port and the Archipelago, so far. There’s been little activity here in the mountains, except this perpetual harassment by robots dropping coercion gas. But the enemy has established a firm presence every place that was colonized.”

  “Where do you get your information?”

  “Mostly from invader broadcasts and censored commercial stations in Port Helenia. Th’ General also sent runners and observers off in all directions. Some of them have reported back, already.”

  “Who’s got runners …?”

  “Th’ Gen- … um.” Micah looked a bit embarrassed. “Ah, some of the chims find it hard to pronounce Miss Athac- … Miss Athaclena’s name, sir. So, well …” His voice trailed off.

  Robert sniffed. I’m going to have to have a talk with that girl, he thought.

  He lifted his water glass and asked, “Who did she send to Port Helenia? That’s going to be a touchy place for a spy to get into.”

  Dr. Soo answered without much enthusiasm. “Athaclena chose a chim named Fiben Bolger.”

  Robert coughed, spraying water over his robe. Dr. Soo hurried on. “He is a militiaman, captain, and Miss Athaclena figured that spying around in town would require an … um … unconventional approach.”

  That only made Robert cough harder. Unconventional. Yes, that described Fiben. If Athaclena had chosen old “Trog” Bolger for that mission, then it spoke well for her judgment. She might not be stumbling in the dark, after all.

  Still, she’s hardly more than a kid. And an alien at that! Does she actually think she’s a general? Commanding what? He looked around the sparsely furnished cavern, the small heaps of scrounged and hand-carried supplies. It was, all told, a pitiful affair.

  “That wall map arrangement is pretty crude,” Robert observed, picking out one thing in particular.

  An elderly chen who hadn’t spoken yet rubbed the sparse hair on his chin. “We could organize much better than this,” he agreed. “We’ve got several mid-size computers. A few chims are working programs on batteries, but we don’t have the power to run them at full capacity.”

  He looked at Robert archly. “Tymbrimi Athaclena insists we drill a geothermal tap first. But I figure if we were to set up a few solar collectors on the surface … very well hidden, of course …”

  He let the thought hang. Robert could tell that one chim, at least, was less than thrilled at being commanded by a mere girl, and one who wasn’t even of Earthclan or Terragens citizenship.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jobert, captain.”

  Robert shook his head. “Well, Jobert, we can discuss that later. Right now, will someone please tell me about this ‘raid’? What is Athaclena up to?”

  Micah and Soo looked at each other. The chimmie spoke first.

  “They left before dawn. It’s already late afternoon outside. We should be getting a runner in any time now.”

  Jobert grimaced again, his wrinkled, age-darkened face dour with pessimism. “They went out armed with pin-rifles and concussion grenades, hoping to ambush a Gubru patrol.

  “Actually,” the elderly chim added dryly. “We were expecting news more than an hour ago. I’m afraid they are already very late getting back.”

  27

  Fiben

  Fiben awoke in darkness, fetal-curled under a dusty blanket.

  Awareness brought back the pain. Just pulling his right ar
m away from his eyes took a stoic effort of will, and the movement set off a wave of nausea. Unconsciousness beckoned him back seductively.

  What made him resist was the filmy, lingering tracery of his dreams. They had driven him to seek consciousness … those weird, terrifying images and sensations. The last, vivid scene had been a cratered desert landscape. Lightning struck the stark sands all around him, pelting him with charged, sparking shrapnel whichever way he tried to duck or hide.

  He recalled trying to protest, as if there were words that might somehow placate a storm. But speech had been taken from him.

  By effort of will, Fiben managed to roll over on the creaking cot. He had to knuckle-rub his eyes before they would open, and then all they made out was the dimness of a shabby little room. A thin line of light traced the overlap of heavy black curtains covering a small window.

  His muscles trembled spasmodically. Fiben remembered the last time he had felt anywhere near this lousy, back on Cilmar Island. A band of neo-chimp circus entertainers from Earth had dropped in to do a show. The visiting “strongman” offered to wrestle the college champion, and like an idiot Fiben had accepted.

  It had been weeks before he walked again without a limp.

  Fiben groaned and sat up. His inner thighs burned like fire. “Oh, mama,” he moaned. “I’ll never scissors-hold again!”

  His skin and body hair were moist. Fiben sniffed the pungent odor of Dalsebo, a strong muscle relaxant. So, at least his captors had taken efforts to spare him the worst aftereffects of stunning. Still, his brain felt like a misbehaving gyroscope when he tried to rise. Fiben grabbed the teetering bedside table for support as he stood up, and held his side while he shuffled over to the solitary window.

  He grabbed rough fabric on both sides of the thin line of light and snapped the drapes apart. Immediately Fiben stumbled back, both arms raised to ward off the sudden brightness. Afterimages whirled.

  “Ugh,” he commented succinctly. It was barely a croak.

  What was this place? Some prison of the Gubru? Certainly he wasn’t aboard an invader battleship. He doubted the fastidious Galactics would use native wood furnishings, or decorate in Late Antediluvian Shabby.