The Uplift War u-3 Page 16

  Schultz looked up at her earnestly, his brown eyes harrowed with sadness.

  “I know it is a lot to ask, honored Tymbrimi Athaclena, but will you take our children under your care for a time, as they go into exile in the wilderness?”

  23

  Exile

  The gently humming gravitic craft hovered over an uneven row of dark, rocky ridge-spines. Noon-shortened shadows had begun to grow again as Gimelhai passed its zenith and the flyer settled into the dimness between the stone spines. Its engines grumbled into silence.

  A messenger awaited its passengers at the agreed rendezvous. The chim courier handed Athaclena a note as she stepped out of the machine, while Benjamin hurried to spread radar-fouling camouflage over the little flitter.

  In the letter Juan Mendoza, a’freeholder above Lome Pass, reported the safe arrival of Robert Oneagle and little April Wu. Robert was recuperating well, the message said. He might be up and about in a week or so.

  Athaclena felt relieved. She wanted very much to see Robert — and not only because she needed advice on how to handle a ragged band of refugee gorillas and neo-chimpanzees.

  Some of the Howletts Center chims — those affected by the Gubran gas — had gone to the “city with the humans, hoping antidote would be given as promised… and that it would work. She had left only a handful of really responsible chim technicians to assist her.

  Perhaps more chims would show up, Athaclena told herself — and maybe even some human officials who had escaped gassing by the Gubru. She hoped that somebody in authority might appear and take over soon.

  Another message from the Mendoza household was written by a chim survivor of the battle in space. The militiaman requested help getting in touch with the Resistance Forces.

  Athaclena did not know how to reply. In the late hours last night, as great ships descended upon Port Helenia and the towns on the Archipelago, there had been frantic telephone and radio calls to and from sites all over the planet. There were reports of ground fighting at the spaceport. Some said that it was even hand to hand for a time. Then there was silence, and the Gubru armada consolidated without further incident.

  It seemed that in half a day the resistance so carefully planned by the Planetary Council had fallen completely apart. All traces of a chain of command had dissolved; for nobody had foreseen the use of hostage gas. How could anything be. done when nearly every human on the planet was taken so simply out of action?

  A scattering of chims were trying to organize here and there, mostly by telephone. But few had thought out any but the most nebulous plans.

  Athaclena put away the slips of paper and thanked the messenger. Over the hours since the evacuation she had begun to feel a change within herself. What had yesterday been confusion and grief had evolved into an obstinate sense of determination.

  I will persevere. Uthacalthing would require it of me and I will not let him down.

  Wherever I am, the enemy will not thrive near me.

  She would also preserve the evidence she had gathered, of course. Someday the opportunity might come to present it to Tymbrimi authorities. It could give her people an opportunity to teach the humans a badly needed lesson on how to behave as a Galactic patron race must, before it was too late.

  If it was not too late already.

  Benjamin joined her at the sloping edge of the ridge top. “There!” He pointed into the valley below. “There they are, right on time.”

  Athaclena shaded her eyes. Her corona reached forth and touched the network around her. Yes. And now I see them, as well.

  A long column of figures moved through the forest below, some small ones — brown in color — escorting a more numerous file of larger, darker shapes. Each of the big creatures carried a bulging backpack. A few had dropped to the knuckles of one hand as they shuffled along. Gorilla children ran amidst the adults, waving their arms for balance.

  The escorting chims kept alert watch with beam rifles clutched close. Their attention was directed not on the column or the forest but at the sky.

  The heavy equipment had already made it by circuitous routes to limestone caves in the mountains. But the exodus would not be safe until all the refugees were there at last, in those underground redoubts.

  Athaclena wondered what was going on now in Port Helenia, or on the Earth-settled islands. The escape attempt of the Tymbrimi courier ship had been mentioned twice more by the invaders, then never again.

  If nothing else, she would have to find out if her father was still on Garth, and if he still lived.

  She touched the locket hanging from the thin chain around her neck, the tiny case containing her mother’s legacy — a single thread from Mathicluanna’s corona. It was cold solace, but she did not even have that much from Uthacalthing.

  Oh, Father. How could you leave me without even a strand of yours to guide me?

  The column of dark shapes approached rapidly. A low, growling sort of semi-music rose from the valley as they passed by, like nothing she had ever heard before. Strength these creatures had always owned, and Uplift had also removed some of their well-known frailty. As yet their destiny was unclear, but these were, indeed, powerful entities.

  Athaclena had no intention of remaining inactive, simply a nursemaid for a gang of pre-sentients and hairy clients. One more thing Tymbrimi shared with humans was understanding of the need to act when wrong was being done. The letter from the wounded space-chim had started her thinking.

  She turned to her aide.

  “I am less than completely fluent in the languages of Earth, Benjamin. I need a word. One that describes an unusual type of military force.

  “I am thinking of any army that moves by night and in the shadow of the land. One that strikes quickly and silently, using surprise to make up for small numbers and poor weapons. I remember reading that such forces were common in the pre-Contact history of Earth. They used the conventions of so-called civilized legions when it suited them, and innovation when they liked.

  “It would be a k’chu-non krann, a wolfling army, unlike anything now known. Do you understand what I am talking about, Benjamin? Is there a word for this thing I have in mind?”

  “Do you mean… ?” Benjamin looked quickly down at the column of partly uplifted apes lumbering through the forest below, rumbling their low, strange marching song.

  He shook his head, obviously trying to restrain himself, but his face reddened and finally the guffaws burst out, uncontainable. Benjamin hooted and fell against a spine-stone, then over onto his back. He rolled in the dust of Garth and kicked at the sky, laughing.

  Athaclena sighed. First back on Tymbrim, then among humans, and now here, with the newest, roughest clients known — everywhere she found jokers.

  She watched the chimpanzee patiently, waiting for the silly little thing to catch its breath and finally let her in on what it found so funny.

  PART TWO

  Patriots

  Evelyn, a modified dog,

  Viewed the quivering fringe

  of a special doily,

  Draped across the piano, with some surprise -

  In the darkened room,

  Where the chairs dismayed

  And the horrible curtains

  Muffled the rain,

  She could hardly believe her eyes -

  A curious breeze, a garlic breath

  Which sounded like a snore,

  Somewhere near the Steinway

  (or even from within)

  Had caused the doily fringe to waft

  And tremble in the gloom -

  Evelyn, a dog, having undergone

  Further modification

  Pondered the significance of

  Short Person Behavior

  In pedal-depressed panchromatic resonance

  And other highly ambient domains…

  “Arf!” she said.

  FRANK ZAPPA

  24

  Fiben

  Tall, gangling, storklike figures watched the road from atop
the roof of a dark, low-slung bunker. Their silhouettes, outlined against the late afternoon sun, were in constant motion, shifting from one spindly leg to another in nervous energy as if the slightest sound would be enough to set them into flight.

  Serious creatures, those birds. And dangerous as hell.

  Not birds, Fiben reminded himself as he approached the checkpoint. Not in the Earthly sense, at least.

  But the analogy would do. Their bodies were covered with fine down. Sharp, bright yellow beaks jutted from sleek, swept-back faces.

  And although their ancient wings were now no more than slender, feathered arms, they could fly. Black, glistening gravitic backpacks more than compensated for what their avian ancestors had long ago lost.

  Talon Soldiers. Fiben wiped his hands on his shorts, but his palms still felt damp. He kicked a pebble with one bare foot and patted his draft horse on the flank. The placid animal had begun to crop a patch of blue native grass by the side of the road.

  “Come on, Tycho,” Fiben said, tugging on the reins. “We can’t hang back or they’ll get suspicious. Anyway, you know that stuff gives you gas.”

  Tycho shook his massive gray head and farted loudly.

  “I told you so.” Fiben waved at the air.

  A cargo wagon floated just behind the horse. The dented, half-rusted bin of the farm truck was filled with rough burlap sacks of grain. Obviously the antigrav stator still worked, butthe propulsion engine was kaput.

  “Come on. Let’s get on with it.” Fiben tugged again.

  Tycho gamely nodded, as if the workhorse actually understood. The traces tightened, and the hover truck bobbed along after them as they approached the checkpoint.

  Soon, however, a keening sound on the road ahead warned of oncoming traffic. Fiben hurriedly guided horse and wagon to one side. With a high-pitched whine and a rush of air, an armored hovercraft swept by. Vehicles like it had been cruising eastward intermittently, in ones and twos, all day.

  He looked carefully to make sure nothing else was coming before leading Tycho back onto the road. Fiben’s shoulders hunched nervously. Tycho snorted at the growing, unfamiliar scent of the invaders.

  “Halt!”

  Fiben jumped involuntarily. The amplified voice was mechanical, toneless, and adamant. “Move, move to this side… this side for inspection!”

  Fiben’s heart pounded. He was glad his role was to act frightened. It wouldn’t be hard.

  “Hasten! Make haste and present yourself!”

  Fiben led Tycho toward the inspection stand, ten meters to the right of the highway. He tied the horse’s tether to a railed post and hurried around to where a pair of Talon Soldiers waited.

  Fiben’s nostrils flared at the aliens’ dusty, lavender aroma. I wonder what they’d taste like, he thought somewhat savagely. It would have made no difference at all to his great-to-the-tenth-grandfather that these were sentient beings. To his ancestors, a bird was a bird was a bird.

  He bowed low, hands crossed in front of him, and got his first close look at the invaders.

  They did not seem all that impressive up close. True, the sharp yellow beak and razorlike talons looked formidable. But the stick-legged creatures were hardly much taller than Fiben, and their bones looked hollow and thin.

  No matter. These were starfarers — senior patrons-class beings whose Library-derived culture and technology were all but omnipotent long, long before humans rose -up out of Africa’s savannah, blinking with the dawnlight of fearful curiosity. By the time man’s lumbering slowships stumbled upon Galactic civilization, the Gubru and their clients had wrested aposition of some eminence among the powerful interstellar clans. Fierce conservatism and facile use of the Great Library had taken them far since their own patrons had found them on the Gubru homeworld and given them the gift of completed minds.

  Fiben remembered huge, bellipotent battle cruisers, dark and invincible under their shimmering allochroous shields, with the lambent edge of the galaxy shining behind them…

  Tycho nickered and shied aside as one of the Talon Soldiers — its saber-rifle loosely slung — stepped past him to approach the tethered truck. The alien climbed onto the floating farm-hover to inspect it. The other guard twittered into a microphone. Half buried in the soft down around the creature’s narrow, sharp breastbone, a silvery medallion emitted clipped Anglic words.

  “State… state identity… identity and purpose!”

  Fiben crouched, down and shivered, pantomiming fear. He was sure not many Gubru knew much about neo-chimps. In the few centuries since Contact, little information would have yet passed through the massive bureaucracy of the Library Institute and found its way into local branches. And of course, the Galactics relied on the Library for nearly everything.

  Still, verisimilitude was important. Fiben’s ancestors had understood one answer to a threat when a counter-bluff was ruled out — submission. Fiben knew how to fake it. He crouched lower and moaned.

  The Gubru whistled in apparent frustration, probably having gone through this before. It chirped again, more slowly this time.

  “Do not be alarmed, you are safe,” the vodor medallion translated at a lower volume than before. “You are safe… safe… We are Gubru… Galactic patrons of high dan and family… You are safe… Young haltsentients are safe when they are cooperative… You are safe. …”

  Half-sentients… Fiben rubbed his nose to cover a sniff of indignation. Of course that was what the Gubru were bound to think. And in truth, few four-hundred-year-old client races could be called fully uplifted.

  Still, Fiben noted yet another score to settle.

  He was able to pick out meaning here and there in the invader’s chirpings before the vodor translated them. But one short course in Galactic Three, back in school, was not much to go on, and the Gubru had their own accent and dialect.

  “. . . You are safe …” the vodor soothed. “The humans do not deserve such fine clients… You are safe…” .

  Gradually, Fiben backed away and looked up, still trembling. Don’t overact, he reminded himself. He gave the gangling avian creature an approximation of a correct bow of respect from a bipedal junior client to a senior patron. The alien would surely miss the slight embellishment — an extension of the middle fingers — that flavored the gesture.

  “Now,” the vodor barked, perhaps with a note of relief. “State name and purposes.”

  “Uh, I’m F-Fiben… uh, s-s-ser.” His hands fluttered in front of him. It was a bit of theater, but the Gubru might know that neo-chimpanzees under stress still spoke using parts of the brain originally devoted to hand control.

  It certainly looked as if the Talon Soldier was frustrated. Its feathers ruffled, and it hopped a little dance. “. . . purpose… purpose… state your purpose in approaching the urban area!”

  Fiben bowed again, quickly.

  “Uh… th’ hover won’t work no more. Th’ humans are all gone… nobody to tell us what to do at th’ farm …”

  He scratched his head. “I figured, well, they must need food in town… and maybe some- somebody can fix th’ cart in trade for grain… ?” His voice rose hopefully.

  The second Gubru returned and chirped briefly to the one in charge. Fiben could follow its GalThree well enough to get the gist.

  The hover was a real farm tool. It would not take a genius to tell that the rotors just needed to be unfrozen for it to run again. Only a helpless drudge would haul an antigravity truck all the way to town behind a beast of burden, unable to make such a simple repair on his own.

  The first guard kept one taloned, splay-fingered hand over the vodor, but Fiben gathered their opinion of chims had started low and was rapidly dropping. The invaders hadn’t even bothered to issue identity cards to the neo-chimpanzee population.

  For centuries Earthlings — humans, dolphins, and chims — : had known the galaxies were a dangerous place where it was often better to have more cleverness than one was credited for. Even before the invasion, word had gone out
among the chim population of Garth that it might be necessary to put on the old “Yes, massa!” routine.

  Yeah, Fiben reminded himself. But nobody ever counted on all the humans being taken away! Fiben felt a knot in his stomach when he imagined the humans — mels, ferns, and children — huddled behind barbed wire in crowded camps.

  Oh yeah. The invaders would pay.

  The Talon Soldiers consulted a map. The first Gubru uncovered its vodor and twittered again at Fiben.

  “You may go,” the vodor barked. “Proceed to the Eastside Garage Complex… You may go … Eastside Garage… Do you know the Eastside Garage?”

  Fiben nodded hurriedly. “Y-yessir.”

  “Good… good creature… take your grain to the town storage area, then proceed to the garage … to the garage… good creature… Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes!”

  Fiben bowed as he backed away and then scuttled with an exaggeratedly bowlegged gait over to the post where Tycho’s reins were tied. He averted his gaze as he led the animal back onto the dirt embankment beside the road. The soldiers idly watched him pass, chirping contemptuous remarks they were certain he could not understand.

  Stupid damned birds, he thought, while his disguised belt camera panned the fortification, the soldiers, a hover-tank that whined by a few minutes later, its crew sprawled upon its flat upper deck, taking in the late afternoon sun.

  Fiben waved as they swept by, staring back at him.

  I’ll bet you’d taste just fine in a nice orange glaze, he thought after the feathered creatures.

  Fiben tugged the horse’s reins. “C’mon, Tycho,” he urged. “We gotta make Port Helenia by nightfall.”

  Farms were still operating in the Valley of the Sind.

  Traditionally, whenever a starfaring race was licensed to colonize a new world, the continents were left as much as possible in their natural state. On Garth as well, the major Earthling settlements had been established on an archipelago in the shallow Western Sea. Only those islands had been converted completely to suit Earth-type animals and vegetation.