The Uplift War

by David Brin

  Her heart beat faster. This time it was not the gheer chemicals responsible. Her tendrils lifted of their own accord, but no glyph emerged. Instead, she found they were reaching toward him along subtle, strong lines, like the fields of a dipole.

  “I think, I think I understand, Robert. I want you to know that I …”

  It was hard to think of what to say. She wasn’t sure herself just what she was thinking at that moment. Athaclena shook her head. “Robert?” she said softly. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Anything, Clennie. Anything in the world.” His eyes were wide open.

  “Good. Then, taking care not to get carried away, perhaps you might go on to explain and demonstrate what you were doing, when you touched me just then … the various physical aspects involved. Only this time, more slowly please?”

  The next day they strolled slowly on their way back to the caves.

  She and Robert dawdled, stopping to contemplate how the sunlight came down in little glades, or standing by small pools of colored liquid, wondering aloud which trace chemical was stockpiled here or there by the ubiquitous trade vines, and not really caring about the answer. Sometimes they just held hands while they listened to the quiet sounds of Garth Planet’s forest life.

  At intervals they sat and experimented, gently, with the sensations brought on by touching.

  Athaclena was surprised to find that most of the needed nerve pathways were already in place. No deep auto-suggestion was required—just a subtle shifting of a few capillaries and pressure receptors—in order to make the experiment feasible. Apparently, the Tymbrimi might have once engaged in a courtship ritual such as kissing. At least they had the capability.

  When she resumed her old form she just might keep some of these adaptations to her lips, throat, and ears. The breeze felt good on them as she and Robert walked. It was like a rather nice empathy glyph tingling at the tips of her corona. And kissing, that warm pressure, stirred intense, if primitive feelings in her.

  Of course none of it would have been possible if humans and Tymbrimi weren’t already so very similar. Many charming, stupid theories had circulated among unsophisticated people of both races to explain the coincidence—for instance, proposing that they might once have had a common ancestor.

  The idea was ridiculous, of course. Still, she knew that her case was not the first. Close association over several centuries had led to quite a few cases of cross-species dalliance, some even openly avowed. Her discoveries must have been made many times before.

  She just hadn’t been aware, having considered such tales rather seamy while growing up. Athaclena realized her friends back on Tymbrim must have thought her pretty much of a prude. And here she was, behaving in a way that would have shocked most of them!

  She still wasn’t sure she wanted anyone back home—assuming she ever made it there again—to think her consortion with Robert was anything but businesslike. Uthacalthing would probably laugh.

  No matter, she told herself firmly. I must live for today. The experiment helped to pass the time. It did have its pleasant aspects. And Robert was an enthusiastic teacher.

  Of course she was going to have to set limits. She was willing to adjust the distribution of fatty tissues in her breasts, for instance, and it was fun to play with the sensations made possible by new nerve endings. But where it came to fundamentals she would have to be adamant. She wasn’t about to go changing any really basic mechanisms … not for any human being!

  On the return trip they stopped to inspect a few rebel outposts and talk with small bands of chim fighters. Morale was high. The veterans of three months’ hard battles asked when their leaders would find a way to lure more Gubru up into the mountains within reach. Athaclena and Robert laughed and promised to do what they could about the lack of target practice.

  Still, they found themselves hard pressed for ideas. After all, how does one invite back a guest whose beak one has repeatedly bloodied? Perhaps it was time to try taking the war to the enemy, instead.

  The problem was lack of good intelligence about matters down in the Sind and Port Helenia. A few survivors of the urban uprising had wandered in and reported that their organization was a shambles. Nobody had seen either Gailet Jones or Fiben Bolger since that ill-fated day. Contact with a few individuals in town was restored, but on a patchy, piecemeal basis.

  They had considered sending in new spies. There seemed to be an opportunity offered by the Gubru public announcements, offering lucrative employment to ecological and uplift experts. But by now the avians must certainly have tuned their interrogation apparatus and developed a fair chim lie detector. In any event, Robert and Athaclena decided against taking the risk. For now, at least.

  They were walking homeward up a narrow, seldom-visited valley, when they encountered a slope with a southern exposure, covered with a low-lying expanse of peculiar vegetation. They stood quietly for a time, looking over the green field of flat, inverted bowls.

  “I never did cook you a meal of baked plate ivy root,” Robert commented at last, dryly.

  Athaclena sniffed, appreciating his irony. The place where the accident had occurred was far from here. And yet, this bumpy hillside brought back vivid memories of that horrible afternoon when their “adventures” all began.

  “Are the plants sick? Is there something wrong with them?” She gestured at the field of plates, overlapping closely like the scales of some slumbering dragon. The upper layers did not look glassy smooth and fat, like those she recalled. The topmost caps in this colony seemed much less thick and sturdy.

  “Hm.” Robert bent to examine the nearest. “Summer’s on its way out, soon. All this heat is already drying the uppermost plates. By mid-autumn, when the east winds come blowing down the Mulun range, the caps will be as thin and light as wafers. Did I ever tell you they were seed pod carriers? The wind will catch them, and they’ll blow away into the sky like a cloud of butterflies.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember you did mention it.” Athaclena nodded thoughtfully. “But did not you also say that—”

  She was interrupted by a sharp call.

  “General! Captain Oneagle!”

  A group of chims hurried into view, puffing along the narrow forest trail. Two were members of their escort squad, but the third was Benjamin! He looked exhausted. Obviously he had run all the way from the caves to meet them.

  Athaclena felt Robert grow tense with sudden worry. But with the advantage of her corona, she already knew that Ben was not bringing dire news. There was no emergency, no enemy attack.

  And yet, her chim aide clearly was confused and distraught. “What is it, Benjamin?” she asked.

  He mopped his brow with a homespun handkerchief. Then he reached into another pocket and drew out a small black cube. “Sers, our courier, young Petri, has finally returned.”

  Robert stepped forward. “Did he reach the refuge?”

  Benjamin nodded. “He got there, all right, and he’s brought a message from th’ Council. This is it here.” He held out the cube.

  “A message from Megan?” Robert sounded breathless as he looked down at the recording.

  “Yesser. Petri says she’s well, and sends her best.”

  “But—but that’s great!” Robert whooped. “We’re in contact again! We aren’t alone anymore!”

  “Yesser. That’s true enough. In fact …” Athaclena watched Benjamin struggle to find the right words. “In fact, Petri brought more than a message. There are five people waiting for you, back at the caves.”

  Both Robert and Athaclena blinked. “Five humans?”

  Benjamin nodded, but with a look that implied he wasn’t exactly sure that term was the most applicable. “Terragens Marines, ser.”

  “Oh,” Robert said. Athaclena merely maintained her silence, kenning more closely than she was listening.

  Benjamin nodded. “Professionals, ser. Five humans. I swear, it’s incredible how it feels after all this time without—I mean, with only th’ two of you unti
l now. It’s made the chims pretty hyper right at the moment. I think it might be best if you both came on back as quick as possible.”

  Robert and Athaclena spoke almost at once.

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, let’s go at once.”

  Almost imperceptibly, the closeness between Athaclena and Robert altered. They had been holding hands when Benjamin ran up. Now they did not renew that grasp. It seemed inappropriate as they marched along the narrow trail. A new unknown factor had slipped in between them. They did not have to look at each other to know what the other was thinking.

  For better or for worse, things had changed.

  58

  Robert

  Major Prathachulthorn pored over the readouts that lay like blown leaves spread across the plotting table. The chaos was only apparent, Robert realized as he watched the small, dark man work, for Prathachulthorn never needed to search for anything. Whatever it was he wanted, somehow he found it with barely a flick of his shadowed eyes and a quick grasp of his callused hands.

  At intervals the Marine officer glanced over to a holo-tank and muttered subvocally into his throat microphone. Data whirled in the tank, shifting and turning in subtle rearrangements at his command.

  Robert waited, standing at ease in front of the table of rough-cut logs. It was the fourth time Prathachulthorn had summoned him to answer tersely phrased questions. Each time Robert grew more awed by the man’s obvious precision and skill.

  Clearly, Major Prathachulthorn was a professional. In only a day he and his small staff had started to bring order to the partisans’ makeshift tactical programs, rearranging data, sifting out patterns and insights the amateur insurgents had never even imagined.

  Prathachulthorn was everything their movement had needed. He was exactly what they had been praying for.

  No question about it. Robert hated the man’s guts. Now he was trying to figure out exactly why.

  I mean, besides the fact that he’s making me stand here in silence until he’s good and ready. Robert recognized that for a simple way of reinforcing the message of who was boss. Knowing that helped him take it with good grace, mostly.

  The major looked every inch the compleat Terragens commando, even though his sole military adornment was an insignia of rank at his left shoulder. Not even in full dress uniform would Robert ever look as much a soldier as Prathachulthorn did right now, draped in ill-fitting cloth woven by gorillas under a sulfrous volcano.

  The Earthman spent some time drumming his fingers on the table. The repetitious thumping reminded Robert of the headache he’d been trying to fight off with biofeedback for an hour or more. For some reason the technique wasn’t working this time. He felt closed in, claustrophobic, short of breath. And seemed to be getting worse.

  At last Prathachulthorn looked up. To Robert’s surprise the man’s first remark could be taken as something distantly akin to a compliment.

  “Well, Captain Oneagle,” Prathachulthorn said. “I confess to having feared things would be much, much worse than I find them here.’

  “I’m relieved to hear it, sir.”

  Prathachulthorn’s eyes narrowed, as if he suspected an ever-so-thin veneer of sarcasm in Robert’s voice. “To be precise,” he went on, “I feared I would discover that you had lied in your report to the Council in Exile, and that I would have to shoot you.”

  Robert suppressed an impulse to swallow and managed to maintain an impassive expression. “I’m glad that did not turn out to be necessary, sir.”

  “So am I. I’m sure your mother would have been irritated, for one thing. As it is, and bearing in mind that yours was a strictly amateur enterprise, I’m willing to credit you with a good effort here.”

  Major Prathachulthorn shook his head. “No, that’s unfairly restrained. Let me put it this way. There is much I’d have done otherwise, had I been here. But in light of how poorly the official forces have fared, you and your chims have performed very well indeed.”

  Robert felt a hollowness in his chest begin to relax. “I’m sure the chims will be glad to hear it, sir. I’d like to point out, though, that I was not sole leader here. The Tymbrimi Athaclena carried a good part of that burden.”

  Major Prathachulthorn’s expression turned sour. Robert wasn’t sure if it was because Athaclena was a Galactic, or because Robert, as a militia officer, should have retained all authority himself.

  “Ah, yes. The ‘General.’ ” His indulgent smile was patronizing, at the very least. He nodded. “I will mention her assistance in my report. Ambassador Uthacalthing’s daughter is clearly a resourceful young alien. I hope she is willing to continue helping us, in some capacity.”

  “The chims worship her, sir,” Robert pointed out.

  Major Prathachulthorn nodded. As he looked over toward the wall, his voice took on a thoughtful tone. “The Tymbrimi mystique, I know. Sometimes I wonder if the media knows what the hell it’s doing, creating such ideas. Allies or no allies, our people have got to understand that Earthclan will always be fundamentally alone. We’ll never be able to fully trust anything Galactic.”

  Then, as if he felt he might have said too much, Prathachulthorn shook his head and changed the subject. “Now about future operations against the enemy—”

  “We’ve been thinking about that, sir. Their mysterious surge of activity in the mountains seems to have ended, though for how long we don’t know. Still, there are some ideas we’ve been batting around. Things we might use against them when and if they come back.”

  “Good.” Prathachulthorn nodded. “But you must understand that in the future we’ll have to coordinate all actions in the Mulun with other planetary forces. Irregulars are simply incapable of hurting the enemy where his real assets are. That was demonstrated when the city chim insurrectionists were wiped out trying to attack the space batteries near Port Helenia.”

  Robert saw Prathachulthorn’s point. “Yessir. Although since then we have captured some munitions which could be useful.”

  “A few missiles, yes. They might be handy, if we can figure out how to use them. And especially if we have the right information about where to point them.

  “We have altogether too little data,” the major went on. “I want to gather more and report back to the Council. After that, our task will be to prepare to support any action they choose to undertake.”

  Robert finally asked the question that he had put off since returning to find Prathachulthorn and his small group of human officers here, turning the cave refuge upside down, poking into everything, taking over. “What will be done with our organization, sir? Athaclena and I, we’ve given a number of chims working officer status. But except for me nobody here has a real colonial commission.”

  Prathachulthorn pursed his lips. “Well, you’re the simplest case, captain. Clearly you deserve a rest. You can escort Ambassador Uthacalthing’s daughter back to the Refuge with our next report, along with my recommendation for a promotion and a medal. I know the Coordinator would like that. You can fill them in on how you made your fine discovery about the Gubru resonance tracking technique.”

  From his tone of voice, the major made it quite clear what he would think of Robert if he took up the offer. “On the other hand, I’d be pleased to have you join my staff, with a brevet marine status of first lieutenant in addition to your colonial commission. We could use your experience.”

  “Thank you, sir. I think I’ll remain here, if it’s all right with you.”

  “Fine. Then we’ll assign someone else to escort—”

  “I’m sure Athaclena will want to stay as well,” Robert hurriedly added.

  “Hmm. Well, yes. I am certain she could be helpful for a while. Tell you what, captain. I’ll put the matter to the Council in my next letter. But we must be sure of one thing. Her status is no longer military. The chims are to cease referring to her as a command officer. Is that clear?”

  “Yessir, quite clear.” Robert only wondered how one enforced that sort of order
on civilian neo-chimpanzees, who tended to call anybody and anything whatever they pleased.

  “Good. Now, as for those formerly under your command … I do happen to have brought with me a few blank colonial commissions which we can assign to chims who have shown notable initiative. I have no doubt you’ll recommend names.”

  Robert nodded. “I will, sir.”

  He recalled that one other member of their “army” besides himself had already been in the militia. The thought of Fiben—certainly dead for a long time, now—made him suddenly even more depressed. These caves! They’re driving me nuts. It’s getting harder and harder to bear the time I must spend down here.

  Major Prathachulthorn was a disciplined soldier and had spent months in the Council’s underground refuge. But Robert had no such firmness of character. I’ve got to get out!

  “Sir,” he said quickly. “I’d like to ask your permission to leave base camp for a few days, to run an errand down near Lorne Pass … at the ruins of the Howletts Center.”

  Prathachulthorn frowned. “The place where those gorillas were illegally gene-meddled?”

  “The place where we won our first victory,” he reminded the commando, “and where we made the Gubru accept parole.”

  “Hmph,” the major grunted. “What do you expect to find there?”

  Robert suppressed an impulse to shrug. In his suddenly worsening claustrophobia, in his need for any excuse to get away, he pulled forth an idea that had until then only been a glimmer at the back of his mind.

  “A possible weapon, sir. It’s a concept for something that might help a lot, if it worked.”

  That piqued Prathachulthorn’s interest. “What is this weapon?”

  “I’d rather not be specific right now, sir. Not until I’ve had a chance to verify a few things. I’ll only be gone three or four days at the most. I promise.”

  “Hmm. Well.” Prathachulthorn’s lips pursed. “It will take that long just to put these data systems into shape. You’ll only get underfoot till that’s done. Afterwards, though, I’ll be needing you. We’ve got to prepare a report to the Council.”