The Uplift War

by David Brin

  Night winds blew the flaps of her tent, and her dreaming mind fashioned the wings of huge birds. Malevolent, they flew just over the tree tops, their gleaming eyes searching, searching.…

  A faint volcanic trembling shook the ground beneath her bedroll, and Athaclena shivered in syncopation, imagining burrowing creatures—the dead—the unavenged, wasted Potential of this world—ruined and destroyed by the Bururalli so long ago. They squirmed just underneath the disturbed ground, seeking.…

  “S’ah brannitsun, tutsunucann!”

  The brush of her own waving tendrils felt like the webs and feet of tiny spiders. Gheer flux sent tiny gnomes wriggling under her skin, busy fashioning unwilled changes.

  Athaclena moaned as the glyph of terrible expectant laughter hovered nearer and regarded her, bent over her, reached down—

  “General? Mizz Athaclena. Excuse me, ma’am, are you awake? I’m sorry to disturb you, ser, but—”

  The chim stopped. He had pulled aside the tent flap to enter, but now he rocked back in dismay as Athaclena sat up suddenly, eyes wide apart, catlike irises dilated, her lips curled back in a rictus of somnolent fear.

  She did not appear to be aware of him. He blinked, staring at the pulsations that coursed slowly, like soliton waves, down her throat and shoulders. Above her agitated tendrils he briefly glimpsed something terrible.

  He almost fled right then. It took a powerful effort of courage to swallow instead, to bear down, and to choke forth words.

  “M-Ma’am, p-please. It’s me … S-Sammy …”

  Slowly, as if drawn back by the sheerest force of will, the light of awareness returned to those gold-flecked eyes. They closed, reopened. With a tremulous sigh, Athaclena shuddered. Then she collapsed forward.

  Sammy stood there, holding her while she sobbed. At that moment, stunned and frightened and astonished, all he could think of was how light and frail she felt in his arms.

  “ … That was when Gailet became convinced that any trick, if th’ Ceremony was a trick at all, had to be a subtle one.

  “You see, the Suzerain of Propriety seems to have done a complete about-face regarding chim Uplift. It had started out convinced it would find evidence of mismanagement, and perhaps even cause to take neo-chimps away from humans. But now the Suzerain seemed to be earnest in searchin’ out … in searchin’ out appropriate race representatives …”

  The voice of Fiben Bolger came from a small playback unit resting on the rough-hewn logs of Athaclena’s table. She listened to the recording Robert had sent. The chim’s report back at the caves had had its amusing moments. Fiben’s irrepressible good nature and dry wit had helped lift Athaclena’s limp spirits. Now, though, while relating Dr. Gailet Jones’s ideas about Gubru intentions, his voice had dropped, and he sounded reticent, almost embarrassed.

  Athaclena could feel Fiben’s discomfort through the vibrations in the air. Sometimes one did not need another’s presence in order to sense their essence.

  She smiled at the irony. He is starting to know who and what he is, and it frightens him. Athaclena sympathized. A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.

  In her hand she held the locket containing her mother’s legacy thread, and her father’s. For the moment, at least, tutsunucann was held at bay. But Athaclena knew somehow that the glyph had returned for good. There would be no sleep now, no rest until tutsunucann changed into something else. Such a glyph was one of the largest known manifestations of quantum mechanics—a probability amplitude that hummed and throbbed in a cloud of uncertainty, pregnant with a thousand million possibilities. Once the wave function collapsed, all that remained would be fate.

  “ … delicate political maneuverings on so many levels—among the local leaders of th’ invasion force, among factions back on the Gubru homeworld, between the Gubru and their enemies and possible allies, between the Gubru and Earth, and among th’ various Galactic Institutes …”

  She stroked the locket. Sometimes one does not need another’s presence in order to sense their essence.

  There was too much complexity here. What did Robert think he would accomplish by sending her this taping? Was she supposed to delve into some vast storehouse of sage Galactic wisdom—or perform some incantation—and somehow come up with a policy to guide them through this? Through this?

  She sighed. Oh father, how I must be a disappointment to you.

  The locket seemed to vibrate under her trembling fingers. For some time it seemed that another trance was settling in, drawing her downward into despair.

  “ … By Darwin, Goodall, and Greenpeace!”

  It was the voice of Major Prathachulthorn that jarred her out of it. She listened for a while longer.

  “ … a target! …”

  Athaclena shuddered. So. Things were, indeed, quite dire. All was explained now. Particularly the sudden, gravid insistence of an impatient glyph. When the pellet ran out she turned to her aides, Elayne Soo, Sammy, and Dr. de Shriver. The chims watched her patiently.

  “I will seek altitude now,” she told them.

  “But—but the storm, ma’am. We aren’t sure it’s passed. And then there’s the volcano. We’ve been talking about an evacuation.”

  Athaclena stood up. “I do not expect to be long. Please send nobody along to guard or look out for me, they will only disturb me and make more difficult what I must do.”

  She stopped at the flap of the tent then, feeling the wind push at the fabric as if searching for some gap at which to pry. Be patient. I am coming. When she spoke to the chims again, it was in a low voice. “Please have horses ready for when I return.”

  The flap dropped after her. The chims looked at each other, then silently went about preparing for the day.

  Mount Fossey steamed in places where the vapor could not be entirely attributed to rising dew. Moist droplets still fell from leaves that shivered in the wind—now waning but still returning now and then in sudden, violent gusts.

  Athaclena climbed doggedly up a narrow game trail. She could tell that her wishes were being respected. The chims remained behind, leaving her undisturbed.

  The day was beginning with low clouds cutting through the peaks like the vanguards of some aerial invasion. Between them she could see patches of dark blue sky. A human’s eyesight might even have picked out a few stubborn stars.

  Athaclena climbed for height, but even more for solitude. In the upper reaches the animal life of the forest was even sparser. She sought emptiness.

  At one point the trail was clogged with debris from the storm, sheets of some clothlike material that she soon recognized. Plate ivy parachutes.

  They reminded her. Down in the camp the chim techs had been striving to meet a strict timetable, developing variations on gorilla gut bacteria in time to meet nature’s deadline. Now, though, it looked as if Major Prathachulthorn’s schedule would not allow Robert’s plan to be used.

  Such foolishness, Athaclena thought. How did humans last even this long, I wonder?

  Perhaps they had to be lucky. She had read of their twentieth century, when it seemed more than Ifni’s chance that helped them squeeze past near certain doom … doom not only for themselves but for all future sapient races that might be born of their rich, fecund world. The tale of that narrow escape was perhaps one reason why so many races feared or hated the k’chu’non, the wolflings. It was uncanny, and unexplained to this day.

  The Earthlings had a saying, “There, but for the love of God, go I.” The sick, raped paucity of Garth was mild compared to what they might easily have done to Terra.

  How many of us would have done better under such circumstances? That was the question that underlay all the smug, superior posturings, and all of the contempt pouring from the great clans. For they had never been tested by the ages of ignorance Mankind suffered. What might it have felt like, to have no patrons, no Library, no ancient wisdom, only the bright flame of mind, unchanneled and undire
cted, free to challenge the Universe or to consume the world? The question was one few clans dared ask themselves.

  She brushed aside the little parachutes. Athaclena edged past the snagged cluster of early spore carriers and continued her ascent, pondering the vagaries of destiny.

  At last she came to a stony slope where the southern outlook gave a view of more mountains and, in the far distance, just the faintest possible colored trace of a sloping steppe. She breathed deeply and took out the locket her father had given her.

  Growing daylight did not keep away the thing that had begun to form amid her waving tendrils. This time Athaclena did not even try to stop it. She ignored it—always the best thing to do when an observer does not yet want to collapse probability into reality.

  Her fingers worked the clasp, the locket opened, and she flipped back the lid.

  Your marriage was true, she thought of her parents. For where two threads had formerly lain, now there was only one larger one, shimmering upon the velvety lining.

  An end curled around one of her fingers. The locket tumbled to the rocky ground and lay there forgotten as she plucked the other end out of the air. Stretched out, the tendril hummed, at first quietly. But she held it tautly in front of her, allowing the wind to stroke it, and she began to hear harmonics.

  Perhaps she should have eaten, should have built her strength for this thing she was about to attempt. It was something few of her race did even once in their lifetimes. On occasions Tymbrimi had died.…

  “A t’ith’tuanoo, Uthacalthing,” she breathed. And she added her mother’s name. “A t’ith’tuanine, Mathicluanna!”

  The throbbing increased. It seemed to carry up her arms, to resonate against her heartbeat. Her own tendrils responded to the notes and Athaclena began to sway. “A t’ith’tuanoo, Uthacalthing …”

  “It’s a beauty, all right. Maybe a few more weeks’ work would make it more potent, but this batch will do, an’ it’ll be ready in time for when the ivy sheds.”

  Dr. de Shriver put the culture back into its incubator. Their makeshift laboratory on the flanks of the mountain had been sheltered from the winds. The storm had not interfered with the experiments. Now, the fruit of their labors seemed nearly ripe.

  Her assistant grumbled, though. “What’s th’ use? The Gubru’d just come up with countermeasures. And anyway, the major says the attack is gonna take place before the stuff’s ready to be used.”

  De Shriver took off her glasses. “The point is that we keep working until Miss Athaclena tells us otherwise. I’m a civilian. So’re you. Fiben and Robert may have to obey the chain of command when they don’t like it, but you and I can choose …”

  Her voice trailed off when she saw that Sammy wasn’t listening any longer. He stared over her shoulder. She whirled to see what he was looking at.

  If Athaclena had appeared strange, eerie this morning, after her terrifying nightmare, now her features made Dr. de Shriver gasp. The disheveled alien girl blinked with eyes narrow and close together in fatigue. She clutched the tent pole as they hurried forward, but when the chims tried to move her to a cot she shook her head.

  “No,” she said simply. “Take me to Robert. Take me to Robert now.”

  The gorillas were singing again, their low music without melody. Sammy ran out to fetch Benjamin while de Shriver settled Athaclena into a chair. Not knowing what to do, she spent a few moments brushing leaves and dirt from the young Tymbrimi’s ruff. The tendrils of her corona seemed to give off a heavy, fragrant heat that she could feel with her fingers.

  And above them, the thing that tutsunucann had become made the air seem to ripple even before the eyes of the befuddled chim.

  Athaclena sat there, listening to the gorillas’ song, and feeling for the first time as if she understood it.

  All, all would play their role, she now knew. The chims would not be very happy about what was to come. But that was their problem. Everybody had problems.

  “Take me to Robert,” she breathed again.

  73

  Uthacalthing

  He trembled, standing there with his back to the rising sun, feeling as if he had been sucked as dry as a husk.

  Never before had a metaphor felt more appropriate. Uthacalthing blinked, slowly returning to the world … to the dry steppe facing the looming Mountains of Mulun. All at once it seemed that he was old, and the years lay heavier than ever before.

  Deep down, on the nahakieri level, he felt a numbness. After all of this, there was no way to tell if Athaclena had even survived the experience of drawing so much into herself.

  She must have felt great need, he thought. For the first time his daughter had attempted something neither of her parents could ever have prepared her for. Nor was this something one picked up in school.

  “You have returned,” Kault said, matter-of-factly. The Thennanin, Uthacalthing’s companion for so many months, leaned on a stout staff and watched him from a few meters away. They stood in the midst of a sea of brown savannah grass, their long shadows gradually shortening with the rising sun.

  “Did you receive a message of some sort?” Kault asked. He had the curiosity shared by many total nonpsychics about matters that must seem, to him, quite unnatural.

  “I—” Uthacalthing moistened his lips. But how could he explain that he had not really received anything at all? No, what happened was that his daughter had taken him up on an offer he had made, in leaving both his own thread and his dead wife’s in her hands. She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world.

  One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.

  Indeed, she drained me dry. He felt as if there was nothing left. And after all that, there was still no guarantee she had even survived the experience. Or that it had left her still sane.

  Shall I lie down and die, then? Uthacalthing shivered.

  No, I think. Not quite yet.

  “I did experience a communion, of sorts,” he told Kault. “Will the Gubru be able to detect this thing you have done?”

  Uthacalthing could not even craft a palanq shrug. “I do not think so. Maybe.” His tendrils lay flat, like human hair. “I don’t know.”

  The Thennanin sighed, his breathing slits flapping. “I wish you would be honest with me, colleague. It pains me to be forced to believe that you are hiding things from me.”

  How Uthacalthing had tried and tried to get Kault to utter those words! And now he could not really bring himself to care. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  The Thennanin blew in exasperation. “I mean that I have begun to suspect that you know more than you are telling me about this fascinating creature I have seen traces of. I warn you, Uthacalthing, I am building a device that will solve this riddle for me. You would be well served to be direct with me before I discover the truth all by myself!”

  Uthacalthing nodded. “I understand your warning. Now, though, perhaps we had better be walking again. If the Gubru did detect what just happened, and come to investigate, we should try to be far from here before they arrive.”

  He owed Athaclena that much, still. Not to be captured before she could make use of what she had taken.

  “Very well, then,” Kault said. “We shall speak of this later.”

  Without any great interest, more out of habit than for any other reason, Uthacalthing led his companion toward the mountains—in a direction selected—again by habit—by a faint blue twinkling only his eyes could see.

  74

  Gailet

  The new Planetary Branch Library was a beauty. Its beige highlights glistened on a site recently cleared atop Sea Bluff Park, a kilometer south of the Tymbrimi Embassy.

  The architecture did not blend as well as the old branch had, into the neo-Fullerite motif of Port Helenia. But it was quite stunning nevertheless—a windowless cube whose pastel shades contrasted well with the nearby chalky, cretaceous outcrops.

  Gailet s
tepped out into a cloud of dry dust as the aircar settled onto the landing apron. She followed her Kwackoo escort up a paved walkway toward the entrance of the towering edifice.

  Most of Port Helenia had turned out to watch, a few weeks ago, as a huge freighter the size of a Gubru battleship cruised lazily out of a chalybeous sky and lowered the structure into place. For a large part of the afternoon the sun had been eclipsed while technicians from the Library Institute set the sanctuary of knowledge firmly into place in its new home.

  Gailet wondered if the new Library would ever really benefit the citizens of Port Helenia. There were landing pads on all sides, but no provision had been made for groundcar or bicycle or foot access to these bluffs from the town nearby. As she passed through the ornate columned portal, Gailet realized that she was probably the first chim ever to enter the building.

  Inside, the vaulted ceiling cast a soft light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. A great ruddy cube dominated the center of the hall, and Gailet knew at once that this was, indeed, an expensive setup. The main data store was many times larger than the old one, a few miles from here. It might even be bigger than Earth’s Main Library, where she had done research at La Paz.

  But the vastness was mostly empty compared to the constant, round-the-clock bustle she was used to. There were Gubru, of course, and Kwackoo. They stood at study stations scattered about the broad hall. Here and there avians clustered in small groups. Gailet could see their beaks move in sharp jerks, and their feet were constantly in motion as they argued. But no sound at all escaped the muffled privacy zones.

  In ribbons and hoods and feather dyes she saw the colors of Propriety, of Accountancy, and of Soldiery. For the most part, each faction kept apart in its own area. There was bristling and some ruffling of down when the follower of one Suzerain passed too close to another.