The Uplift War

by David Brin

  A fist whistled past Fiben’s ear like a cannonball. Fiben stepped inside the outstretched arm and swiveled to plant his elbow into his enemy’s exposed stomach.

  … Staring at the abandoned room, he had known that there was very little time left. Tycho had galloped through the deserted streets, a flower dangling from his mouth.…

  The jab wasn’t hard enough. Worse, he was too slow to duck aside as Irongrip’s arm folded fast to come around to cross his throat.

  … and the docks had been filled with chims—they lined the wharves, the buildings, the streets, staring.…

  A crushing constriction threatened to cut off his breath. Fiben crouched, dropping his right foot backward between his opponent’s legs. He tensed in one direction until Irongrip counterbalanced, then Fiben whirled and threw his weight the other way while he kicked out. Irongrip’s right leg slipped out from under him, and his own straining overbalance threw Fiben up and over. The Probationer’s incredible grasp held for an astonishing instant, tearing loose only along with shreds of Fiben’s flesh.

  … He traded his horse for a boat, and headed across the bay, toward the barrier buoys.…

  Blood streamed from Fiben’s torn throat. The gash had missed his jugular vein by half an inch. He backed away when he saw how quickly Irongrip found his feet again. It was downright intimidating how fast the chen could move.

  … He fought a mental battle with the buoys, earning—through reason—the right to pass through.…

  Irongrip bared his teeth, spread his long arms, and let out a blood-curdling shriek. The sight and sound seemed to pierce Fiben like a memory of battles fought long, long before chims ever flew starships, when intimidation had been half of any victory.

  “You can do it, Fiben!” Robert Oneagle cried, countering Irongrip’s threat magic. “Come on, guy! Do it for Simon.”

  Shit, Fiben thought. Typical human trick, guilt-tripping me!

  Still, he managed to wipe away the momentary wave of doubt and grinned back at his enemy. “Sure, you can scream, but can you do this?”

  Fiben thumbed his nose. Then he had to dive aside quickly as Irongrip charged. This time both of them landed clear blows that sounded like beaten drums. Both chims staggered to opposite ends of the arena before managing to turn around again, panting hard and baring their teeth.

  … The beach had been littered, and the trail up the bluffs was long and hard. But that turned out to be only the beginning. The surprised Institute officials had already started disassembling their machines when he suddenly appeared, forcing them to remain and test just one more. They assumed it would not take long to send him home again.…

  The next time they came together, Fiben endured several hard blows to the side of his face in order to step inside and throw his opponent to the ground. It wasn’t the most elegant example of jiu-jitsu. Forcing it, he felt a sudden tearing sensation in his leg.

  For an instant, Irongrip was rolling, helpless. But when Fiben tried to pounce his leg nearly collapsed.

  The Probationer was on his feet again in an instant. Fiben tried not to show a limp, but something must have betrayed him, for this time Irongrip charged his right side, and when Fiben tried to backpedal, the left leg gave way.

  … grueling tests, hostile stares, the tension of wondering if he would ever make it in time.…

  As he fell backward, he kicked out, but all that earned him was a grip that seized his ankle like a roller-press. Fiben scrambled for leverage, but his fingers clawed in the loose soil. He tried to slip aside as his opponent hauled him back and then fell upon him.

  … And he had gone through all of that just to arrive here? Yeah. All in all, it had been one hell of a day.…

  There are certain tricks a wrestler can try against a stronger opponent in a much heavier weight class. Some of these came back to Fiben as he struggled to get free. Had he been a little less close to utter exhaustion, one or two of them might even have worked.

  As it was, he managed to reach a point of quasi-equilibrium. He attained a small advantage of leverage which just counterbalanced Irongrip’s horrendous strength. Their bodies strained and tugged as hands clutched, probing for the smallest opening. Their faces were pressed near the ground and close enough together to smell each other’s hot breath.

  The crowd had been silent for some time. No more shouts of encouragement came, from one side or the other. As he and his enemy rocked gradually back and forth in a deadly serious battle of deceptive slowness, Fiben found himself with a clear view of the downward slope of the Ceremonial Mound. With a small corner of his awareness, he realized that the crowd was gone now. Where there had been a dense gathering of multiformed Galactics, now there was only an empty stretch of trampled grass.

  The remnants could be seen hurrying downhill and eastward, shouting and gesticulating excitedly in a variety of tongues. Fiben caught a glimpse of the arachnoid Serentini, the Grand Examiner, standing amid a cluster of her aides, paying no attention any longer to the two chims’ fight. Even the Pila referee had turned away to face some growing tumult downslope.

  This, after talking as if the fate of everything in the Universe depended upon a battle to the death between two chims? That same detached part of Fiben felt insulted.

  Curiosity betrayed him, even here and now. He wondered. What in th’ world are they up to?

  Lifting his eyes even an inch in an attempt to see was enough to do it. He missed by milliseconds an opening Irongrip created as the Probationer shifted his weight slightly. Then, as Fiben followed through too late, Irongrip took advantage in a sudden slip and hold. He began applying pressure.

  “Fiben!” It was Gailet’s voice, thick with emotion. So he knew that at least somebody was still paying attention, if only to watch his final humiliation and end.

  Fiben fought hard. He used tricks dragged up out of the well of memory. But the best of them required strength he no longer had. Slowly he was forced back.

  Irongrip grinned as he managed to lay his forearm against Fiben’s windpipe. Suddenly breath came in hard, high whistles. Air was very dear, and his struggles took on new desperation.

  Irongrip held on just as urgently. His bared canines reflected bitter highlights as he panted in an open-mouthed grin over Fiben.

  Then the glints faded as something occulted the lights, casting a dark shadow over both of them. Irongrip blinked, and all at once seemed to notice that something bulky had appeared next to Fiben’s head. A hairy black foot. The attached brown leg was short, as stout as a tree trunk, and led upwards to a mountain of fur.…

  For Fiben the world, which had started to spin and go dim, came slowly back into focus as the pressure on his airpipe eased somewhat. He sucked air through the constricted passage and tried to look to see why he was still alive.

  The first thing he saw was a pair of mild brown eyes, which stared back in friendly openness from a jet black face set at the top of a hill of muscle.

  The mountain also had a smile. With an arm the length of a small chimpanzee, the creature reached out and touched Fiben, curiously. Irongrip shuddered and rocked back in amazement, or maybe fear. When the creature’s hand closed on Irongrip’s arm, it only squeezed hard enough to test the chim’s strength.

  Obviously, there was no comparison. The big male gorilla chuffed, satisfied. It actually seemed to laugh.

  Then, using one knuckle to help it walk, it turned and rejoined the dark band that was even then trooping past the amazed rank of chims. Gailet stared in disbelief, and Uthacalthing’s wide eyes blinked rapidly at the sight.

  Robert Oneagle seemed to be talking to himself, and the Gubru gabbled and squawked.

  But it was Kault who was the focus of the gorillas’ attention for a long moment. Four females and three males clustered around the big Thennanin, reaching up to touch him. He responded by speaking to them, slowly, joyfully.

  Fiben refused to make the same mistake twice. What gorillas were doing here, here atop the Ceremonial Mound the Gubru invade
rs had built, was beyond his ability to guess, and he wasn’t even about to try. His concentration returned just a split instant sooner than his opponent’s. When Irongrip looked back down, the Probie’s eyes betrayed instantaneous dismay as he recognized the looming shape of Fiben’s fist.

  The small plateau was a cacophony, a mad scene devoid of any vestige of order. The boundaries of the combat arena did not seem to matter anymore as Fiben and his enemy rolled about under the legs of chims and gorillas and Gubru and whatever else could walk or bounce or slither about. Hardly anybody seemed to be paying them any attention, and Fiben did not really care. All that mattered to him was that he had a promise that he had to keep.

  He pummeled Irongrip, not allowing him to regain balance until the chen roared and in desperation threw Fiben off like an old cloak. As he landed in a painful jolt, Fiben caught a glimpse of motion behind him and turned his head to see the Probationer called Weasel lifting his leg, preparing to strike down with his foot. But the blow missed as the Probie was grabbed up by an affectionate gorilla, who lifted him into a crushing embrace.

  Irongrip’s other comrade was held back by Robert Oneagle—or, rather, held up. The male chim might have vastly greater strength than most humans, but it did him no good suspended in midair. Robert raised Steelbar high overhead, like Hercules subduing Anteus. The young man nodded to Fiben.

  “Watch out, old son.”

  Fiben rolled aside as Irongrip hit the ground where he had lain, sending dust plumes flying. Without delay Fiben leaped onto his opponent’s back and slipped into a half-Nelson hold.

  The world spun as he seemed to ride a bucking bronco. Fiben tasted blood, and the dust seemed to fill his lungs with clogging, searing pain. His tired arms throbbed and threatened to cramp. But when he heard his enemy’s labored breathing he knew he could stand it for a little while longer.

  Down, down Irongrip’s head went. Fiben got his feet around the chim and kicked the other’s legs out from under him.

  The Probationer’s solar plexus landed on Fiben’s heel. And while a flash of pain probably meant several of Fiben’s toes were broken, there was also no mistaking the whistling squeak as Irongrip’s diaphragm momentarily spasmed, stopping all flow of air.

  Somewhere he found the energy. In a whirl he had his foe turned over. Gripping in a tight scissors lock, he brought his forearm around and applied the same illegal-but-who-cares strangulation hold that had earlier been used on him.

  Bone ground against gristle. The ground beneath them seemed to throb and the sky rumbled and growled. Alien feet shuffled on all sides, and there was the incessant squawking and chatter of a dozen jabbering tongues. Still, Fiben listened only for the breath that did not flow through his enemy’s throat … and felt only for the throbbing pulse he so desperately had to silence.…

  That was when something seemed to explode inside his skull.

  It was as if something had broken open within him, spilling what seemed a brilliant light outward from his cortex. Dazzled, Fiben first thought a Probationer or a Gubru must have struck him a blow to the head from behind. But the luminance was not the sort coming from a concussion. It hurt, but not in that way.

  Fiben concentrated on first priorities—holding tightly to his steadily weakening opponent. But he could not ignore this strange occurrence. His mind sought something to compare it to, but there was no correct metaphor. The soundless outburst felt somehow simultaneously alien and eerily familiar.

  All at once Fiben remembered a blue light which danced in hilarity as it fired infuriating bolts at his feet. He remembered a “stink bomb” that had sent a pompous, furry little diplomat scurrying off in abandoned dignity. He remembered stories told at night by the general. The connections made him suspect …

  All around the plateau, Galactics had ceased their multi-tongued babble and stared upslope. Fiben would have to lift his head a bit to see what so captivated them. Before he did so, however, he made certain of his foe. When Irongrip managed to drag in a few thin, desperate breaths, Fiben restored just enough pressure to keep the big chen balanced on the edge of consciousness. That accomplished, he raised his eyes.

  “Uthacalthing,” Fiben whispered, realizing the source of his mental confusion.

  The Tymbrimi stood a little uphill from the others. His arms opened wide and the capelike folds of his formal robe flapped in the cyclone winds circling the gaping hyperspace shunt. His eyes were set far apart.

  Uthacalthing’s corona tendrils waved, and over his head something whirled.

  A chim moaned and pressed her palms against her temples. Somewhere a Pring’s tooth-mashies clattered. To many of those present, the glyph was barely detectable. But for the first time in his life, Fiben actually kenned. And what he kenned named itself tutsunucann.

  The glyph was a monster—titanic with long-pent energy. The essence of delayed indeterminacy, it danced and whirled. And then, without warning, it blew apart. Fiben felt it sweep around and through him—nothing more or less than distilled, unadulterated joy.

  Uthacalthing poured the emotion forth as if a dam had burst. “N’ha s’urustuannu, k’hammin’t Athaclena w’thtanna!” he cried. “Daughter, do you send these to me, and so return what I had lent you? Oh, what interest compounded and multiplied! What a fine jest to pull upon your proud parent!”

  His intensity affected those standing nearby. Chims blinked and stared. Robert Oneagle wiped away tears.

  Uthacalthing turned and pointed up the trail leading toward the Site of Choosing. There, at the pinnacle of the Ceremony Mound, everyone could see that the shunt was connected at last. The deeply buried engines had done their job, and now a tunnel gaped overhead, one whose edges glistened but whose interior contained a color emptier than blackness.

  It seemed to suck away light, making it difficult even to recognize that the opening was there. And yet Fiben knew that this was a link in real time, from this place to countless others where witnesses had gathered to observe and commemorate the evening’s events.

  I hope the Five Galaxies are enjoying the show. When Irongrip showed signs of reviving, Fiben gave the Probie a whack to the side of the head and looked up again.

  Halfway up the narrow trail leading to the pinnacle there stood three ill-matched figures. The first was a small neo-chimpanzee whose arms seemed too long and whose ill-formed legs were bowed and short. Jo-Jo held onto one hand of Kault, the huge Thennanin, ambassador. Kault’s other massive paw was grasped by a tiny human girl, whose blond hair flapped like a bright banner in the whirling breeze.

  Together, the unlikely trio watched the pinnacle itself, where an unusual band had gathered.

  A dozen gorillas, males and females, stood in a circle directly under the half-invisible hole in space. They rocked back and forth, staring up into the yawning emptiness overhead, and crooned a low, atonal melody.

  “I believe …” said the awed Serentini Grand Examiner of the Uplift Institute. “… I believe this has happened before … once or twice … but not in more than a thousand aeons.”

  Another voice muttered, this time in gruff, emotion-drenched Anglic. “It’s no fair. This was s’pozed t’be our time!” Fiben saw tears streaming down the cheeks of several of the chims. Some held each other and sobbed.

  Gailet’s eyes welled also, but Fiben could tell that she saw what the others did not. Hers were tears of relief, of joy.

  From all sides there were heard other expressions of amazement.

  “—But what sort of creatures, entities, beings can they be?” One of the Gubru Suzerains asked.

  “… pre-sentients,” another voice answered in Galactic Three.

  “… They passed through all the test stations, so they had to be ready for a stage ceremony of some sort,” mumbled Cordwainer Appelbe. “But how in the world did goril—”

  Robert Oneagle interrupted his fellow human with an upraised hand. “Don’t use the old name anymore. Those, my friend, are Garthlings.”

  Ionization filled the air
with the smell of lightning. Uthacalthing chanted his pleasure at the symmetry of this magnificent surprise, this great jest, and in his Tymbrimi voice it was a rich, unearthly sound. Caught up in the moment, Fiben did not even notice climbing to his feet, standing to get a better view.

  Along with everyone else he saw the coalescence that took place above the giant apes, humming and swaying on the hilltop. Over the gorillas’ heads a milkiness swirled and began to thicken with the promise of shapes.

  “In the memory of no living race has this happened,” the Grand Examiner said in awe. “Client races have had countless Uplift Ceremonies, over the last billion years. They have graduated levels and chosen Uplift consorts to assist them. A few have even used the occasion to request an end of Uplift … to return to what they had been before.…”

  The filminess assumed an oval outline. And within, dark forms grew more distinct, as if emerging slowly from a deep fog.

  “… But only in the ancient sagas has it been told of a new species coming forth of its own will, surprising all Galactic society, and demanding the right to select its own patrons.”

  Fiben heard a moan and looked down to see Irongrip beginning to rise, trembling, to his elbows. A cruor of blood-tinted dust covered the battered chen from face to foot.

  Got to hand it to him. He’s got stamina. But then, Fiben did not imagine he himself looked a whole lot better.

  He raised his foot. It would be so easy.… He glanced aside and saw Gailet watching him.

  Irongrip rolled over onto his back. He looked up at Fiben in blank resignation.

  Aw, hell. Instead he reached down and offered his hand to his former foe. I don’t know what we were fighting over. Somebody else got the brass ring, anyway.

  A moan of surprise rippled through the crowd. From the Gubru came grating wails of dismay. Fiben finished hauling Irongrip to his feet, got him stable, then looked up to see what the gorillas had wrought to cause such consternation.

  It was the face of a Thennanin. Giant, clear as anything, the image hovering in the focus of the hyperspace shunt looked enough like Kault to be his brother.