by David Brin
Fiben waved and shifted the impellers into forward. He swung about in a wide arc, passing almost under the duraplast sides of the Gubru patrol craft. Up close it did not look quite so glistening white. In fact, the armored hull looked pitted and corroded. High, indignant chirps from the other side of the vessel indicated the frustration of the Talon Soldier crew.
Fiben spared them not a thought as he turned about and got his borrowed boat headed southward, toward the line of buoys that split the bay and kept the chims of Port Helenia away from the high, patron-level doings on the opposite shore.
Foamed and choppy from the wind, the water was cinerescent with the usual garbage the easterlies always brought in, this time of year—everything from leaves to almost transparent plate ivy parachutes to the feathers of molting birds. Fiben had to slow to avoid clots of debris as well as battered boats of all description crowded with chim sightseers.
He approached the barrier line at low speed and felt thousands of eyes watching him as he passed the last shipload, containing the most daring and curious of the Port Helenians.
Goodall, do I really know what I’m doing? he wondered. He had been acting almost on automatic so far. But now it came to him that he really was out of his depth here. What did he hope to accomplish by charging off this way? What Was he going to do? Crash the ceremony? He looked at the towering starships across the bay, glistening in power and splendor.
As if he had any business sticking his half-uplifted nose into the affairs of beings from great and ancient clans! All he’d accomplish would be to embarrass himself, and probably his whole race for that matter.
“Gotta think about this,” he muttered. Fiben brought the boat’s engine down to idle as the line of buoys neared. He thought about how many people were watching him right now.
My people, he recalled. I … I was supposed to represent them.
Yes, but I ducked out, obviously the Suzerain realized its mistake and made other arrangements. Or the other Suzerain’s won, and I’d simply be dead meat if I showed up!
He wondered what they would think if they knew that, only days ago, he had manhandled and helped kidnap one of his own patrons, and his legal commander at that. Some race-representative!
Gailet doesn’t need the likes of me. She’s better off without me.
Fiben twisted the wheel, causing the boat to come about just short of one of the white buoys. He watched it go by as he turned.
It, too, looked less than new on close examination—somewhat corroded, in fact. But then, from his own lowly state, who was he to judge?
Fiben blinked at that thought. Now that was laying it on too thick!
He stared at the buoy, and slowly his lips curled back. Why … why you devious sons of bitches.…
Fiben cut the impellers and let the engine drop back to idle. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands against his temples, trying to concentrate.
I was girding myself against another fear barrier … like the one at the city fence, that night. But this one is more subtle! It plays on my sense of my own unworthiness. It trades on my humility.
He opened his eyes and looked back at the buoy. Finally, he grinned.
“What humility?” Fiben asked aloud. He laughed and turned the wheel as he set the craft in motion again. This time when he headed for the barrier he did not hesitate, or listen to the doubts that the machines tried to cram into his head.
“After all,” he muttered, “what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow who’s got delusions of adequacy?” The enemy had made a serious mistake here, Fiben knew as he left the buoys behind him and, with them, their artificially induced doubts. The resolution that flowed back into him now was fortified by its very contrast to the earlier depths. He approached the opposite headland wearing a fierce scowl of determination.
Something flapped against his knee. Fiben glanced down and saw the silvery ceremonial robe—the one he had found in the closet back at the old prison. He had crammed it under his belt, apparently, just before leaping atop Tycho and riding, pell-mell, for the harbor. No wonder people had been staring at him, back at the docks!
Fiben laughed. Holding onto the wheel with one hand, he wriggled into the silky garment as he headed toward a silent stretch of beach. The bluffs cut off any view of what was going on over on the sea side of the narrow peninsula. But the drone of still-descending aircraft was—he hoped—a sign that he might not be too late.
He ran the boat aground on a shelf of sparkling white sand, now made unattractive under a tidal wash of flotsam. Fiben was about to leap into the knee-high surf when he glanced back and noticed that something seemed to be going on back in Port Helenia. Faint cries of excitement carried over the water. The churning mass of brown forms at the dockside was now surging to the right.
He plucked up the pair of binoculars that hung by the capstan and focused them on the wharf area.
Chims ran about, many of them pointing excitedly eastward, toward the main entrance to town. Some were still running in that direction. But now more and more seemed to be heading the other way … apparently not so much in fear as in confusion. Some of the more excitable chims capered about. A few even fell into the water and had to be rescued by the more level-headed.
Whatever was happening did not seem to be causing panic so much as acute, near total bewilderment.
Fiben did not have time to hang around and piece together this added puzzle. By now he thought he understood his own modest powers of concentration.
Focus on Just one problem at a time, he told himself. Get to Gailet. Tell her you’re sorry you ever left her. Tell her you’ll never ever do it again.
That was easy enough even for him to understand.
Fiben found a narrow trail leading up from the beach. It was crumbling and dangerous, especially in the gusting winds. Still, he hurried. And his pace was held down only by the amount of oxygen his limited lungs and heart could pump.
84
Uthacalthing
The four of them made a strange-looking group, hurrying northward under overcast skies. Perhaps some little native animals looked up and stared at them, blinking in momentary astonishment before they ducked back into their burrows and swore off the eating of overripe seeds ever again.
To Uthacalthing, though, the forced march was something of a humiliation. Each of the others, it seemed, had advantages over him.
Kault puffed and huffed and obviously did not like the rugged ground. But once the hulking Thennanin got moving he kept up a momentum that seemed unstoppable.
As for Jo-Jo, well, the little chim seemed by now to be a creature of this environment. He was under strict orders from Uthacalthing never to knuckle-walk within sight of Kault—no sense in taking a chance with arousing the Thennanin’s suspicions—but when the terrain got too rugged he sometimes just scrambled over an obstacle rather than going around it. And over the long flat stretches, Jo-Jo simply rode Robert’s back.
Robert had insisted on carrying the chim, whatever the official gulf in status between them. The human lad was impatient enough as it was. Clearly, he would rather have run all the way.
The change in Robert Oneagle was astonishing, and far more than physical. Last night, when Kault asked him to explain part of his story for the third time, Robert clearly and unself-consciously manifested a simple version of teev’nus over his head. Uthacalthing could kenn how the human deftly used the glyph to contain his frustration, so that none of it would spill over into outward discourtesy to the Thennanin.
Uthacalthing could see that there was much Robert was not telling. But what he said was enough.
I knew that Megan underestimated her son. But of this I had no expectation.
Clearly, he had underrated his own daughter as well.
Clearly. Uthacalthing tried not to resent his flesh and blood for her power, the power to rob him of more than he had thought he could ever lose.
He struggled to keep up with the others, but Uthacalthing’s change nodes alrea
dy throbbed tiredly. It wasn’t just that Tymbrimi were more talented at adaptability than endurance. It was also a fault in his will. The others had purpose, even enthusiasm.
He had only duty to keep him going.
Kault stopped at the top of a rise, where the looming mountains towered near and imposing. Already they were entering a forest of scrub trees that gained stature as they ascended. Uthacalthing looked up at the steep slopes ahead, already misted in what might be snow clouds, and hoped they would not have to climb much farther.
Kault’s massive hand closed around his as the Thennanin helped him up the final few meters. He waited patiently as Uthacalthing rested, breathing heavily through wide-open nostrils.
“I still can scarcely believe what I have been told,” Kault said. “Something about the Earthling’s story does not ring true, my colleague.”
“T’funatu…” Uthacalthing switched to Anglic, which seemed to take less air. “What—what do you find hard to believe, Kault? Do you think Robert is lying?”
Kault waved his hands in front of himself. His ridgecrest inflated indignantly. “Certainly not! I only believe that the young fellow is naive.”
“Naive? In what way?” Uthacalthing could look up now without his vision splitting into two separate images in his cortex. Robert and Jo-Jo weren’t in sight. They must have gone on ahead.
“I mean that the Gubru are obviously up to much more than they claim. The deal they are offering—peace with Earth in exchange for tenancy on some Garthian islands and minor genetic purchase rights from neo-chimpanzee stock—such a deal seems barely worth the cost of an interstellar ceremony. It is my suspicion that they are after something else on the sly, my friend.”
“What do you think they want?”
Kault swung his almost neckless head left and right, as if looking to make sure no one else was within listening range. His voice dropped in both volume and timbre.
“I suspect that they intend to perform a snap-adoption.”
“Adoption? Oh … you mean—”
“Garthlings,” Kault finished for him. “This is why it is so fortunate your Earthling allies brought us this news. We can only hope that they will be able to provide transport, as they promised, or we will never be in time to prevent a terrible tragedy!”
Uthacalthing mourned all that he had lost. For Kault had raised a perplexing question, one well worth a well-crafted glyph of delicate wryness.
He had been successful, of course, beyond his wildest expectations. According to Robert, the Gubru had swallowed the “Garthling” myth “hook, line, and sinker.” At least for long enough to cause them harm and embarrassment.
Kault, too, had come to believe in the ghostly fable. But what was one to make of Kault’s claim that his own instruments verified the story?
Incredible.
And now, the Gubru seemed to be behaving as if they, too, had more to go on than the fabricated clues he had left. They, too, acted as if there were confirmation!
The old Uthacalthing would have crafted syulff-kuonn to commemorate such amazing turns. At this moment, though, all he felt was confused, and very tired.
A shout caused them both to turn. Uthacalthing squinted, wishing right then that he could trade some of his unwanted empathy sense for better eyesight.
Atop the next ridge he made out the form of Robert Oneagle. Seated atop the young human’s shoulders, Jo-Jo waved at them. And something else was there, too. A blue glimmering that seemed to spin next to the two Earth creatures and radiate all of the good will of a perfect prankster.
It was the beacon, the light that had led Uthacalthing ever onward, since the crash months before.
“What are they saying?” Kault asked. “I cannot quite make out the words.”
Neither could Uthacalthing. But he knew what the Terrans were saying. “I believe they are telling us that we don’t have very much farther to go,” he said with some relief. “They are saying that they have found our transport.”
The Thennanin’s breathing slits puffed in satisfaction. “Good. Now if only we can trust the Gubru to follow custom and proper truce behavior when we appear and offer correct diplomatic treatment to accredited envoys.”
Uthacalthing nodded. But as they began marching uphill together again, he knew that that was only one of their worries.
85
Athaclena
She tried to suppress her feelings. To the others, this was serious, even tragic.
But there was just no way to keep it in; her delight would not be contained. Subtle, ornate glyphs spun off from her waving tendrils and diffracted away through the trees, filling the glades with her hilarity. Athaclena’s eyes were at their widest divergence, and she covered her mouth with her hand so the dour chims would not see her human-style smile as well.
The portable holo unit had been set up on a ridgetop overlooking the Sind to the northwest in order to improve reception. It showed the scene being broadcast just then from Port Helenia. Under the truce, censorship had been lifted. And even without humans the capital had plenty of chim “newshounds” on the spot with mobile cameras to show all the debris in stunning detail.
“I can’t stand it,” Benjamin moaned. Elayne Soo muttered helplessly as she watched. “That tears it.”
The chimmie spoke volumes, indeed. For the holo-tank displayed what was left of the fancy wall the invaders had thrown around Port Helenia … now literally ripped down and torn to shreds. Stunned chim citizens milled about a scene that looked as if a cyclone had hit it. They stared around in amazement, picking through the shattered remnants. A few of those who were more exuberant than thoughtful threw pieces of fence material into the air jubilantly. Some even made chest-thumping motions in honor of the unstoppable wave that had crested there only minutes before, then surged onward into the town itself.
On most of the stations the voice-over was computer generated, but on Channel Two a chim announcer was able to speak over his excitement.
“At—at first we all thought it was a nightmare come true. You know … like an archetype out of an old TwenCen flatmovie. Nothing would stop them! They crashed through the Gubru barrier as if it was made of tish-tissue paper. I don’t know about anybody else, but at any moment I expected the biggest of them to go around grabbing our prettiest chimmies and drag them screaming all the way to the top of the Terragens Tower.…”
Athaclena clapped her hand tigher over her mouth in order to keep from laughing out loud. She fought for self-control, and she was not alone, for one of the chims—Fiben’s friend, Sylvie—let out a high chirp of laughter. Most of the others frowned at her in disapproval. After all, this was serious! But Athaclena met the chimmie’s eyes and recognized the light in them.
“But it—it appears that these creatures aren’t complete kongs, after all. They—after their demolishment of the fence, they don’t seem to have done much more damage in their s-sudden invasion of Port Helenia. Mostly, right now, they’re just milling around, opening doors, eating fruit, going wherever they want to. After all, where does a four-hundred-pound gor … oh, never mind.”
This time, another chim joined Sylvie. Athaclena’s vision blurred and she shook her head. The announcer went on.
“They seem completely unaffected by the Gubru’s psi-drones, which apparently aren’t tuned to their brain patterns.…”
Actually, Athaclena and the mountain fighters had known for more than two days where the gorillas were headed. After their first frantic attempts to divert the powerful pre-sentients, they gave up the effort as useless. The gorillas politely pushed aside or stepped over anybody who got in their way. There had simply been no stopping them.
Not even April Wu. The little blond girl had apparently made up her mind to go and find her parents, and short of risking injury to her, there was no way anybody would be able to pry her off the shoulders of one of the giant, silver-backed males.
Anyway, April had told the chims quite matter-of-factly, somebody had to go along and supervise
the ’rillas, or they might get into trouble!
Athaclena remembered little April’s words as she looked at the mess the pre-sentients had made of the Gubru wall. I’d hate to see the trouble they could cause if they weren’t supervised!
Anyway, with the secret out, there was no reason the human child should not be reunited with her family. Nothing she said could hurt anybody now.
So much for the last secrecy of the Howletts Center Project. Now Athaclena might as well just toss away all the evidence she had so dutifully gathered, that first, fateful evening so many months ago. Soon the entire Five Galaxies would know about these creatures. And by some measures that was, indeed, a tragedy. And yet …
Athaclena remembered that day in early spring, when she had been so shocked and indignant to come upon the illegal Uplift experiment hidden in the forest. Now she could scarcely believe she had actually been like that. Was I really such a serious, officious little prig?
Now, syulff-kuonn was only the simplest, most serious of the glyphs she sparked off, casually, tirelessly, in joy over a simply marvelous joke. Even the chims could not help being affected by her profligate aura. Two more laughed when one of the channels showed an alien staff car, manned by squawking irate Kwackoo, in the process of being peeled back by gorillas who seemed passionately interested in how it would taste. Then another chim chuckled. The laughter spread.
Yes, she thought. It is a wonderful jest. To a Tymbrimi, the best jokes were those that caught the joker, as well as everybody else. And this fit the bill beautifully. It was, in truth, a religious experience. For her people believed in a Universe that was more than mere clockwork physics, more than even Ifni’s capricious flux of chance and luck.
It was when something like this happened—the Tymbrimi sages said—that one really knew that God, Himself, was still in charge.
Was I, then, also an agnostic before? How silly of me. Thank you then, Lord, and thank you too, father, for this miracle.
The scene shifted to the dock area, where milling chims danced in the streets and stroked the fur of their giant, patient cousins. In spite of the likely tragic consequences of all this, Athaclena and her warriors could not help but smile at the delight the brown-furred relations obviously took in each other. For now, at least, their pride was shared by all the chims of Port Helenia.
