by David Brin
Robert obviously felt caught between conflicting loyalties. Athaclena could sense his tension.
His arm still in a sling, Fiben Bolger watched them argue, but he kept his silence for the time being.
Athaclena shook her head. “Robert, I explained to you that what Major Prathachulthorn has planned is likely to prove disastrous.”
“Then tell him!”
Of course she had tried, over dinner that very evening. Prathachulthorn had listened courteously to her careful explanation of the possible consequences of attacking the Gubru ceremonial site. His expression had been indulgent. But when she had finished, he only asked one question. Would the assault be considered one against the Earthlings’ legitimate enemy, or against the Uplift Institute itself.
“After the delegation from the Institute arrives, the site becomes their property,” she had said. “An attack then would be catastrophic for humanity.”
“But before then?” he had asked archly.
Athaclena had shaken her head irritably. “Until then the Gubru still own the site. But it’s not a military site! It was built for what might be called holy purposes. The propriety of the act, without handling it just right …”
It had gone on for some time, until it became clear that all argument would be useless. Prathachulthorn promised to take her opinions into account, ending the matter. They all knew what the Marine officer thought of taking advice from “E.T. children.”
“We’ll send a message to Megan,” Robert suggested.
“I believe you have already done that,” Athaclena answered.
He scowled, confirming her guess. Of course it violated all protocol to go over Prathachulthorn’s head. At minimum it would seem like a spoiled boy crying to mama. It might even be a court-martial offense.
That he had done so proved that it wasn’t out of fear for himself that Robert was reticent about directly opposing his commander, but out of loyalty to his sworn oath.
Indeed, he was right. Athaclena respected his honor.
But I am not ruled by the same duty, she thought. Fiben, who had been silent so far, met her gaze. He rolled his eyes expressively. About Robert they were in complete agreement.
“I already suggested to th’ major that knocking out the ceremonial site might actually be doin’ the enemy a favor. After all, they built it to use it on Garthlings. Whatever their scheme with us chims, it’s probably a last ditch effort to make up some of their losses. But what if th’ site is insured? We blow it up, they blame us and collect?”
“Major Prathachulthorn mentioned your idea about that.” Athaclena said to Fiben. “I find it acute, but I’m afraid he did not credit it as very likely.”
“Y’mean he thought it was a cuckoo pile of apeshi—”
He stopped as they heard footsteps on the cool stone outside. “Knock knock!” A feminine voice said from beyond the curtain. “May I come in?”
“Please do, Lieutenant McCue,” Athaclena said. “We were nearly finished anyway.” The dusky-skinned human woman entered and sat on one of the crates next to Robert. He gave her a faint smile but soon was staring down at his hands again. The muscles in his arms rippled and tensed as his fists clenched and unclenched.
Athaclena felt a twinge when McCue placed her hand on Robert’s knee and spoke to him. “His nibs wants another battle-planning conference before we all turn in.” She turned to look at Athaclena and smiled. Her head inclined. “You’re welcome to attend should you wish. You’re our respected guest, Athaclena.”
Athaclena recalled when she had been the mistress of these caverns and had commanded an army. I must not let that influence me, she reminded herself. All that mattered now was to see that these creatures harmed themselves as little as possible in the coming days.
And, if at all possible, she was dedicated to furthering a certain jest. One that she, herself, still barely understood, but had recently come to appreciate.
“No, thank you, lieutenant. I think that I shall go say hello to a few of my chim friends and then retire. It was a long several days’ ride.”
Robert glanced back at her as he left with his human lover. Over his head a metaphorical cloud seemed to hover, flickering with lightning strokes. I did not know you could do that with glyphs, Athaclena wondered. Every day, it seemed, one learned something new.
Fiben’s loose, unhinged grin was a boost as he followed the humans. Did she catch a sense of something from him? A conspiratorial wink?
When they were gone, Athaclena started rummaging through her kit. I am not bound by their duty, she reminded herself. Or by their laws.
The caves could get quite dark, especially when one extinguished the solitary glow bulb that illuminated an entire stretch of the hallway. Down here eyesight was not an advantage, but a Tymbrimi corona gave quite an edge.
Athaclena crafted a small squadron of simple but special glyphs. The first one had the sole purpose of darting ahead of her and to the sides, scouting out a path through the blackness. Since cold, hard matter was searing to that which was not, it was easy to tell where the walls and obstacles lay. The little wisp of nothing avoided them adroitly.
Another glyph spun overhead, reaching forth to make certain that no one was aware of an intruder in these lower levels. There were no chims sleeping in this stretch of hallway, which had been set aside for human officers.
Lydia and Robert were out on patrol. That left only one aura beside hers in this part of the cave. Athaclena stepped toward it carefully.
The third glyph silently gathered strength, awaiting its turn.
Slowly, silently, she padded over the packed dung of a thousand generations of flying insectivore creatures who had dwelt here until being ousted by Earthlings and their noise. She breathed evenly, counting in the silent human fashion to help maintain the discipline of her thoughts.
Keeping three watchful glyphs up at once was something she’d not have attempted only a few days ago. Now it seemed easy, natural, as if she had done it hundreds of times.
She had ripped this and so many other skills away from Uthacalthing, using a technique seldom spoken of among the Tymbrimi, and even less often tried.
Turning jungle fighter, trysting with a human, and now this. Oh, my classmates would be amazed.
She wondered if her father retained any of the craft she had so rudely taken from him.
Father, you and mother arranged this long ago. You prepared me without my even knowing it. Did you already know, even then, that it would be necessary someday?
Sadly, she suspected she had taken away more than Uthacalthing could afford to spare. And yet, it is not enough. There were huge gaps. In her heart she felt certain that this thing encompassing worlds and species could not reach its conclusion without her father himself.
The scout glyph hovered before a hanging strip of cloth. Athaclena approached, unable to see the covering, even after she touched it with her fingertips. The scout unraveled and melted back into the waving tendrils of her corona.
She brushed the cloth aside with deliberate slowness and crept into the small side chamber. The watch glyph sensed no sign that anyone was aware within. She only kenned the steady rhythms of human slumber.
Major Prathachulthorn did not snore, of course. And his sleep was light, vigilant. She stroked the edges of his ever-present psi-shield, which guarded his thoughts, dreams, and military knowledge.
Their soldiers are good, and getting better, she thought. Over the years Tymbrimi advisors had worked hard to teach their wolfling allies to be fierce Galactic warriors. And the Tymbrimi, in truth, often came away having learned some fascinating bits of trickery themselves, ideas that could never have been imagined by a race brought up under Galactic culture.
But of all Earth’s services, the Terragens Marines used no alien advisors. They were anachronisms, the true wolflings.
The glyph z’schutan cautiously approached the slumbering human. It settled down, and Athaclena saw it metaphorically as a globe of liquid metal. It to
uched Prathachulthorn’s psi-shield and slid in golden rivulets over it, swiftly coating it under a fine sheen.
Athaclena breathed a little easier. Her hand slipped into her pocket and withdrew a glassy ampule. She stepped closer and carefully knelt next to the cot. As she brought the vial of anesthetic gas near the sleeping man’s face, her fingers tensed.
“I wouldn’t,” he said, casually.
Athaclena gasped. Before she could move his hands darted out, catching her wrists! In the dim light all she could see were the whites of his eyes. Although he was awake his psi-shield remained undisturbed, still radiating waves of slumber. She realized that it had been a phantasm all along, a carefully fabricated trap!
“You Eatees just have to keep on underrating us, don’t you? Even you smarty-pants Tymbrimi never seem to get it.”
Gheer hormones surged. Athaclena heaved and pulled to get free, but it was like trying to escape a metal vice. Her clawed nails scratched, but he nimbly kept her fingers out of reach of his callused hands. When she tried to roll aside and kick he deftly applied slight pressure to her arms, using them as levers to keep her on her knees. The force made her groan aloud. The gas pellet tumbled from her limp hand.
“You see,” Prathachulthorn said in an amiable voice, “there are some of us who think it’s a mistake to compromise at all. What can we accomplish by trying to turn ourselves into good Galactic citizens?” he sneered. “Even if it worked, we’d only become horrors, awful things totally divorced from what it means to be human. Anyway, that option isn’t even open. They won’t let us become citizens. The deck is stacked. The dice are loaded. We both know that, don’t we?”
Athaclena’s breath came in ragged gasps. Long after it was clearly useless, the gheer flux kept her jerking and fighting againt the human’s incredible strength. Agility and quickness were to no avail against his reflexes and training.
“We have our secrets, you know,” Prathachulthorn confided. “Things we do not tell our Tymbrimi friends, or even most of our own people. Would you like to know what they are? Would you?”
Athaclena could not find the breath to answer. Prathachulthorn’s eyes held something feral, almost animally fierce.
“Well, if I told you some of them it would be your death sentence,” he said. “And I’m not ready to decide that quite yet. So I’ll tell you one fact some of your people already know.”
In an instant he had transferred both of her wrists to one hand. The other sought and found her throat.
“You see, we Marines are also taught how to disable, and even kill, members of an allied Eatee race. Would you like to know how long it will take me to render you unconscious, miss? Tell you what. Why don’t you start counting?”
Athaclena heaved and bucked, but it was useless. A painful pressure closed in around her throat. Air started getting thick. Distantly, she heard Prathachulthorn mutter to himself.
“This universe is a goddam awful place.”
She would never have imagined it could get blacker, but an even deeper darkness started closing in. Athaclena wondered if she would ever awaken again. I’m sorry, father. She expected those to be her last thoughts.
Continued consciousness came as something of a surprise then. The pressure on her throat, still painful, eased ever so slightly. She sucked a narrow stream of air and tried to figure out what was happening. Prathachulthorn’s arms were quivering. She could tell he was bearing down hard, but somehow the force wasn’t arriving!
Her overheated corona was no help. It was in total ignorance and amazement—when Prathachulthorn’s grip loosened—that she dropped limply to the floor.
The human was breathing hard, now. There were grunts of exertion, and then a crash as the cot toppled over. A water pitcher shattered and there was a sound like that a datawell would make, getting smashed.
Athaclena felt something under her hand. The ampule, she realized. But what had happened to Prathachulthorn?
Fighting enzyme exhaustion, she crawled in a random direction until her hand came down upon the broken datawell. By accident her fingers brushed the power switch, and the rugged machine’s screen spilled forth a dim luminescence.
In that glow, Athaclena saw a stark tableau … the human mel straining—his powerful muscles bulged and sinewy—against two long brown arms that held him from behind.
Prathachulthorn bucked and hissed. He threw his weight left and right. But every effort to get free was to no avail. Athaclena saw a pair of brown eyes over the man’s shoulder. She hesitated for only a moment, then hurried forward with the ampule.
Now Prathachulthorn had no psi-shield. His hatred was open for all to kenn if they had the power. He heaved desperately as she brought forward the little cylinder and broke it under his nose.
“He’s holdin’ his breath,” the neo-chimpanzee muttered as the cloud of blue vapor hovered around the man’s nostrils, then slowly fell groundward.
“That is all right,” Athaclena answered. From her pocket she drew forth ten more.
When he saw them, Prathachulthorn let out a faint sigh. He redoubled his efforts to get away, but all it served was to bring closer the moment when he would finally have to breathe. The man was stubborn. It took five minutes, and even then Athaclena suspected he had fainted of anoxia before he ever felt the drug.
“Some guy,” Fiben said when he finally let go. “Goodall, they make them Marines strong.” He shuddered and collapsed next to the unconscious man.
Athaclena sat limply across from him.
“Thank you, Fiben,” she said quietly.
He shrugged. “Hell, what’s treason an’ assault on a patron? All in a day’s work.”
She indicated his sling, where his left arm had rested ever since the evening of his escape from Port Helenia. “Oh, this?” Fiben grinned. “Well, I guess I have been milking the sympathy a bit. Please don’t tell anybody, okay?”
Then, in a more serious mood, he looked down at Prathachulthorn. “I may not be any expert. But I’ll bet I didn’t win any points with th’ old Uplift Board, tonight.”
He glanced up at Athaclena, then smiled faintly. In spite of everything she had been through, she found she could not help but find everything suddenly hilarious.
She found herself laughing—quietly, but with her father’s rich tones. Somehow, that did not surprise her at all.
The job wasn’t over. Wearily, Athaclena had to follow as Fiben carried the unconscious human through the dim tunnels. As they tiptoed past Prathachulthorn’s dozing corporal, Athaclena reached out with her tender, almost limp tendrils and soothed the Marine’s slumber. He mumbled and rolled over on his cot. Especially wary now, Athaclena made doubly sure the man’s psi-shield was no ruse, that he actually slept soundly.
Fiben puffed, his lips curled back in a grimace as she led him over a tumbled slope of debris from an ancient landslide and into a side passage that was almost certainly unknown to the Marines. At least it wasn’t on the cave map she had accessed earlier today from the rebel database.
Fiben’s aura was pungent each time he stubbed his toes in the dim, twisting climb. No doubt he wanted to mutter imprecations over Prathachulthorn’s dense weight. But he kept his comments within until they emerged at last into the humid, silent night.
“Sports an’ mutations!” he sighed as he laid his burden down. “At least Prathachulthorn isn’t one of th’ tall ones. I couldn’t’ve managed with his hands and feet dragging in the dust all the way.”
He sniffed the air. There was no moon, but a fog spilled over the nearby cliffs like a vaporous flood, and it gave off a faint lambience. Fiben glanced back at Athaclena. “So? Now what, chief? There’s gonna be a hornet’s nest here in a few hours, especially after Robert and that Lieutenant McCue get back. Do you want I should go get Tycho and haul away this bad example to Earthling clients for you? It’ll mean deserting, but what the hell, I guess I was never a very good soldier.”
Athaclena shook her head. She sought with her corona and found the trace
s she was looking for. “No, Fiben. I could not ask that of you. Besides, you have another task. You escaped from Port Helenia in order to warn us of the Gubru offer. Now you must return there and face your destiny.”
Fiben frowned. “Are you sure? You don’t need me?”
Athaclena brought her hands over her mouth. She trilled the soft call of a night bird. From the darkness downslope there came a faint reply. She turned back to Fiben. “Of course I do. We all need you. But where you can do the most good is down there, near the sea. I also sense that you want to go back.”
Fiben pulled at his thumbs. “Gotta be crazy, I guess.”
She smiled. “No. It is only one more indicator that the Suzerain of Propriety knew its business in choosing you … even though it might prefer that you showed a little more respect to your patrons.”
Fiben tensed. Then he seemed to sense some of her irony. He smiled. There was the soft clattering of horses’ hooves on the trail below. “All right,” he said as he bent over to pick up the limp form of Major Prathachulthorn. “Come on, papa. This time I’ll be as gentle as I would with my own maiden aunt.” He smacked his lips against the Marine’s shadowed cheek and looked up at Athaclena.
“Better, ma’am?”
Something she had borrowed from her father made her tired tendrils fizz. “Yes, Fiben.” She laughed. “That’s much better.”
Lydia and Robert had their suspicions when they returned by the dawn’s light to find their legal commander missing. The remaining Terragens Marines glared at Athaclena in open distrust. A small band of chims had gone through Prathachulthorn’s room, cleaning away all signs of struggle before any humans got there, but they couldn’t hide the fact that Prathachulthorn had gone without a note or any trace.
Robert even ordered Athaclena restricted to her chamber, with a Marine at the door, while they investigated. His relief over a likely delay in the planned attack was momentarily suppressed under an outraged sense of duty. In comparison, Lieutenant McCue was an eddy of calm. Outwardly, she seemed unconcerned, as if the major had merely stepped out. Only Athaclena could sense the Earth woman’s underlying confusion and conflict.
