by David Brin
The plan was good.
No, not good. Inspired. It hadn’t been intended to hurt the enemy but to build confidence. The troops had been dispersed so everyone would get to fire at the patrol with minimum risk. The raiders could return home swaggering, but most important, they would make it home.
Even so, they had been hurt. Robert could sense how exhausted Athaclena was, partly from the effort of maintaining everyone’s mood of “victory.”
He felt a touch on his knee and took Athaclena’s hand in his own. Her long, delicate fingers closed tightly, and he felt her triple-beat pulse.
Their eyes met.
“We turned a possible disaster into a minor success today,” Benjamin said. “But so long as the enemy always knows where we are, I don’t see how we can ever do more than play tag with them. And even that game’ll certainly cost more than we can afford to pay.”
30
Fiben
Fiben rubbed the back of his neck and stared irritably across the table. So this was the person he had been sent to contact, Dr. Taka’s brilliant student, their would-be leader of an urban underground.
“What kind of idiocy was that?” he accused. “You let me walk into that club blind, ignorant. There were a dozen times I nearly got caught last night. Or even killed!”
“It was two nights ago,” Gailet Jones corrected him. She sat in a straight-backed chair and smoothed the blue demisilk of her sarong. “Anyway, I was there, at the Ape’s Grape, waiting outside to make contact. I saw that you were a stranger, arriving alone, wearing a plaid work shirt, so I approached you with the password.”
“Pink?” Fiben blinked at her. “You come up to me and whisper pink at me, and that’s supposed to be a bloody, reverted password?”
Normally he would never use such rough language with a young lady. Right now Gailet Jones looked more like the sort of person he had expected in the first place, a chimmie of obvious education and breeding. But he had seen her under other circumstances, and he wasn’t ever likely to forget.
“You call that a password? They told me to look for a fisherman!”
Shouting made him wince. Fiben’s head still felt as though it were leaking brains in five or six places. His muscles had stopped cramping capriciously some time ago, but he still ached all over and his temper was short.
“A fisherman? In that part of town?” Gailet Jones frowned, her face clouding momentarily. “Listen, everything was chaos when I rang up the Center to leave word with Dr. Taka. I figured her group was used to keeping secrets and would make an ideal core out in the countryside. I only had a few moments to think up a way to make a later contact before the Gubru took over the telephone lines. I figured they were already tapping and recording everything, so it had to be something colloquial, you know, that their language computers would have trouble interpreting.”
She stopped suddenly, bringing her hand to her mouth. “Oh no!”
“What?” Fiben edged forward.
She blinked for a moment, then motioned in the air. “I told that fool operator at the Center how their emissary should dress, and where to meet me, then I said I’d pass myself off as a hooker—”
“As a what? I don’t get it.” Fiben shook his head.
“It’s an archaic term. Pre-Contact human slang for one who offers cheap, illicit sex for cash.”
Fiben snapped. “Of all the damn fool, Ifni-cursed, loony ideas!”
Gailet Jones answered back hotly. “All right, smartie, what should I have done? The militia was falling to pieces. Nobody had even considered what to do if every human on the planet was suddenly removed from the chain of command! I had this wild notion of helping to start a resistance movement from scratch. So I tried to arrange a meeting—”
“Uh huh, posing as someone advertising illicit favors, right outside a place where the Gubru were inciting a sexual frenzy.”
“How was I to know what they were going to do, or that they’d choose that sleepy little club as the place to do it in? I conjectured that social restraints would relax enough to let me pull the pose and so be able to approach strangers. It never occurred to me they’d relax that much! My guess was that anyone I came up to by mistake would be so surprised he’d act as you did and I could pull a fade.”
“But it didn’t work out that way.”
“No it did not! Before you appeared, several solitary chens showed up dressed likely enough to make me put on my act. Poor Max had to stun half a dozen of them, and the alley was starting to get full! But it was already too late to change the rendezvous, or the password—”
“Which nobody understood! Hooker? You should have realized something like that would get garbled!”
“I knew Dr. Taka would understand. We used to watch and discuss old movies together. We’d study the archaic words they used. I can’t understand why she …” Her voice trailed off when she saw the expression on Fiben’s face. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m sorry. I just realized that you couldn’t know.” He shook his head. “You see, Dr. Taka died just about the time they got your message, of an allergic reaction to the coercion gas.”
Her breath caught. Gailet seemed to sink into herself. “I … I feared as much when she didn’t show up in town for internment. It’s … a great loss.” She closed her eyes and turned away, obviously feeling more than her words told.
At least she had been spared witnessing the flaming end of the Howletts Center as the soot-covered ambulances came and went, and the glazed, dying face of her mentor as the ecdemic gas took its cruel, statistical toll. Fiben had seen recordings of that fear-palled evening. The images lay in dark layers still, at the back of his mind.
Gailet gathered herself, visibly putting off her mourning for later. She dabbed her eyes and faced Fiben, jaw outthrust defiantly. “I had to come up with something a chim would understand but the Eatees’ language computers wouldn’t. It won’t be the last time we have to improvise. Anyway, what matters is that you are here. Our two groups are in contact now.”
“I was almost killed,” he pointed out, though this time he felt a bit churlish for mentioning it.
“But you weren’t killed. In fact, there may be ways to turn your little misadventure into an advantage. Out on the streets they’re still talking about what you did that night, you know.”
Was that a faint, tentative note of respect in her voice? A peace offering, perhaps?
Suddenly, it was all too much. Much too much for him. Fiben knew it was exactly the wrong thing to do, at exactly the wrong time, but he just couldn’t help himself. He broke up.
“A hook …?” He giggled, though every shake seemed to rattle his brain in his skull. “A hooker?” He threw back his head and hooted, pounding on the arms of the chair. Fiben slumped. He guffawed, kicking his feet in the air. “Oh, Goodall. That was all I needed to be looking for!”
Gailet Jones glared at him as he gasped for breath. He didn’t even care, right now, if she called in that big chim, Max, to use the stunner on him again.
It was all just too much.
If the look in her eyes right then counted for anything, Fiben knew this alliance was already off to a rocky start.
31
Galactics
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon stepped aboard its personal barge and accepted the salutes of its Talon Soldier escort. They were carefully chosen troops, feathers perfectly preened, crests neatly dyed with colors noting rank and unit. The admiral’s Kwackoo aide hurried forth and took its ceremonial robe. When all had settled onto their perches the pilot took off on gravitics, heading toward the defense works under construction in the low hills east of Port Helenia. The Suzerain of Beam and Talon watched in silence as the new city fence fell behind them and the farms of this small Earthling settlement rushed by underneath.
The seniormost stoop-colonel, military second in command, saluted with a sharp beak-clap. “The conclave went well? Suitably? Satisfactorily?” the stoop-colonel asked.
> The Suzerain of Beam and Talon chose to overlook the impudence of the question. It was more useful to have a second who could think than one whose plumage was always perfectly preened. Surrounding itself with a few such creatures was one of the things that had won the Suzerain its candidacy. The admiral gave its inferior a haughty eyeblink of assent. “Our consensus is presently adequate, sufficient, it will do.”
The stoop-colonel bowed and returned to its station. Of course it would know that consensus was never perfect at this early stage in a Molt. Anyone could tell that from the Suzerain’s ruffled down and haggard eyes.
This most recent Command Conclave had been particularly indecisive, and several aspects had irritated the admiral deeply.
For one thing, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution was pressing to release much of their support fleet to go assist other Gubru operations, far from here. And as if that weren’t enough, the third leader, the Suzerain of Propriety, still insisted on being carried everywhere on its perch, refusing to set foot on the soil of Garth until all punctilio had been satisfied. The priest was all fluffed and agitated over a number of issues—excessive human deaths from coercion gas, the threatened breakdown of the Garth Reclamation Project, the pitiful size of the Planetary Branch Library, the Uplift status of the benighted, pre-sentient neo-chimpanzees.
On every issue, it seemed, there must be still another realignment, another tense negotiation. Another struggle for consensus.
And yet, there were deeper issues than these ephemera. The Three had also begun to argue over fundamentals, and there the process was actually starting to become enjoyable, somehow. The pleasurable aspects of Triumviracy were emerging, especially when they danced and crooned and argued over deeper matters.
Until now it had seemed that the flight to queenhood would be straight and easy for the admiral, for it had been in command from the start. Now it had begun to dawn on the Suzerain of Beam and Talon that all would not be easy. This was not going to be any trivial Molt after all.
Of course the best ones never were. Very diverse factions had been involved in choosing the three leaders of the Expeditionary Force, for the Roost Masters of home had hopes for a new unified policy to emerge from this particular Threesome. In order for that to happen, all of them had to be very good minds, and very different from each other.
Just how good and how different was beginning to become clear. A few of the ideas the others had presented recently were clever, and quite unnerving.
They are right about one thing, the admiral had to admit. We must not simply conquer, defeat, overrun the wolflings. We must discredit them!
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had been concentrating so hard on military matters that it had got in the habit of seeing its mates as impediments, little more.
That was wrong, impertinent, disloyal of me, the admiral thought.
In fact, it was devoutly to be hoped that the bureaucrat and the priest were as bright in their own areas as the admiral was in soldiery. If Propriety and Accountancy handled their ends as brilliantly as the invasion had been, then they would be a trio to be remembered!
Some things were foreordained, the Suzerain of Beam and Talon knew. They had been set since the days of the Progenitors, long, long ago. Long before there were heretics and unworthy clans polluting the starlances—horrible, wretched wolflings, and Tymbrimi, and Thennanin, and Soro.… It was vital that the clan of Gooksyu-Gubru prevail in this era’s troubles! The clan must achieve greatness!
The admiral contemplated the way the eggs of the Earthlings’ defeat had been laid so many years before. How the Gubru force had been able to detect and counteract their every move. And how the coercion gas had left all their plans in complete disarray. These had been the Suzerain’s own ideas—along with members of its personal staff, of course. They had been years coming to fruition.
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon stretched its arms, feeling tension in the flexors that had, ages before its species’ own uplifting, carried his ancestors aloft in warm, dry currents on the Gubru homeworld.
Yes! Let my peers’ ideas also be bold, imaginative, brilliant.…
Let them be almost, nearly, close to—but not quite—as brilliant as my own.
The Suzerain began preening its feathers as the cruiser leveled off and headed east under a cloud-decked sky.
32
Athaclena
“I am going crazy down here. I feel like I’m being kept prisoner!”
Robert paced, accompanied by twin shadows cast by the cave’s only two glow bulbs. Their stark light glistened in the sheets of moisture that seeped slowly down the walls of the underground chamber.
Robert’s left arm clenched, tendons standing out from fist to elbow to well-muscled shoulder. He punched a nearby cabinet, sending banging echoes down the subterranean passageways. “I warn you, Clennie, I’m not going to be able to wait much longer. When are you going to let me out of here?”
Athaclena winced as Robert slammed the cabinet again, giving vent to his frustration. At least twice he had seemed about to use his still-splinted right arm instead of the undamaged left. “Robert,” she urged. “You have been making wonderful progress. Soon your cast can come off. Please do not jeopardize that by injuring yourself—”
“You’re evading the issue!” he interrupted. “Even wearing a cast I could be out there, helping train the troops and scouting Gubru positions. But you have me trapped down here in these caves, programming minicomps and sticking pins in maps! It’s driving me nuts!”
Robert positively radiated his frustration. Athaclena had asked him before to try to damp it down. To keep a lid on it, as the metaphor went. For some reason she seemed particularly susceptible to his emotional tides—as stormy and wild as any Tymbrimi adolescent’s.
“Robert, you know why we cannot risk sending you out to the surface. The Gubru gasbots have already swept over our surface encampments several times, unleashing their deadly vapors. Had you been above on any of those occasions you would even now be on your way to Cilmar Island, lost to us. And that is at best! I shudder to think of the worst.”
Athaclena’s ruff bristled at the thought; the silvery tendrils of her corona waved in agitation.
It was mere luck that Robert had been rescued from the Mendoza Freehold just before the persistent Gubru searcher robots swooped down upon the tiny mountain homestead. Camouflage and removal of all electronic items had apparently not been enough to hide the cabin.
Meline Mendoza and the children immediately left for Port Helenia and presumably arrived in time for treatment. Juan Mendoza had been less fortunate. Remaining behind to close down several ecological survey traps, he had been stricken with a delayed allergic reaction to the coercion gas and died within five convulsive minutes, foaming and jerking under the horrified gaze of his helpless chim partners.
“You were not there to see Juan die, Robert, but surely you must have heard reports. Do you want to risk such a death? Are you aware of how close we already came to losing you?”
Their eyes met, brown encountering gold-flecked gray. She could sense Robert’s determination, and also his effort to control his stubborn anger. Slowly, Robert’s left arm unclenched. He breathed a deep sigh and sank into a canvas-backed chair.
“I’m aware, Clennie. I know how you feel. But you’ve got to understand, I’m part of all this.” He leaned forward, his expression no longer wrathful, but still intense. “I agreed to my mother’s request, to guide you into the bush instead of joining my militia unit, because Megan said it was important. But now you’re no longer my guest in the forest. You’re organizing an army! And I feel like a fifth wheel.”
Athaclena sighed. “We both know that it will not be much of an army … a gesture at best. Something to give the chims hope. Anyway, as a Terragens officer you have the right to take over from me any time you wish.”
Robert shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not conceited enough to think I could have done any better. I’m no leader type
, and I know it. Most of the chims worship you, and believe in your Tymbrimi mystique.
“Still, I probably am the only human with any military training left in these mountains … an asset you have to use if we’re to have any chance to—”
Robert stopped abruptly, lifting his eyes to look over Athaclena’s shoulder. Athaclena turned as a small chimmie in shorts and bandoleer entered the underground room and saluted.
“Excuse me, general, Captain Oneagle, but Lieutenant Benjamin has just gotten in. Um, he reports that things aren’t any better over in Spring Valley. There aren’t any humans there anymore. But outposts all up and down every canyon are still being buzzed by the damn gasbots at least once a day. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of it lettin’ up anywhere where our runners have been able to get to.”
“How about the chims in Spring Valley?” Athaclena asked. “Is the gas making them sick?” She recalled Dr. Schultz and the effect the coercion gas had had on some of the chims back at the Center.
The courier shook her head. “No, ma’am. Not anymore. It seems to be the same story all over. All the sus-susceptible chims have already been flushed out and gone to Port Helenia. Every person left in the mountains must be immune by now.”
Athaclena glanced at Robert and they must have shared the same thought.
Every person but one.
“Damn them!” he cursed. “Won’t they ever let up? They have ninety-nine point nine percent of the humans captive. Do they need to keep gassing every hut and hovel, just in order to get every last one?”
“Apparently they are afraid of Homo sapiens, Robert.” Athaclena smiled. “After all, you are allies of the Tymbrimi. And we do not choose harmless species as partners.”
Robert shook his head, glowering. But Athaclena reached out with her aura to touch him, nudging his personality, forcing him to look up and see the humor in her eyes. Against his will, a slow smile spread. At last Robert laughed. “Oh, I guess the damned birds aren’t so dumb after all. Better safe than sorry, hmm?”
