The Uplift War u-3 Page 17

  But Garth was a special case. The BururalH had left a mess, and something had to be done quickly to help stabilize the planet’s rocky ecosystem. New forms had to be introduced from the outside to prevent a complete biosphere collapse. That meant tampering with the continents.

  A narrow watershed had been converted in the shadow of the Mountains of Mulun. Terran plants and animals that thrived here were allowed to diffuse into the foothills under careful observation, slowly filling some of the ecological niches left empty by the Bururalli Holocaust. It was a delicate experiment in practical planetary ecology, but one considered worthwhile. On Garth and on other catastrophe worlds the three races of the Terragens were building reputations as biosphere wizards. Even Mankind’s worst critics would have to approve of work such as this.

  And ye,t, something was jarringly wrong here. Fiben had passed three abandoned ecological management stations on his way, sampling traps and tracer bots stacked in disarray.

  It was a sign of how bad the crisis must be. Holding the humans hostage was one thing — a marginally acceptable tactic by modern rules of war. But for the Gubru to be willing to disturb the resurrection of Garth, the uproar in the galaxy must be profound.

  It didn’t bode well for the rebellion. What if the War Codes really had broken down? Would the Gubru be willing to use planet busters?

  That’s the General’s problem, Fiben decided. I’m just a spy. She’s the Eatee expert.

  At least the farms were working, after a fashion. Fiben passed one field cultivated with zygowheat and another with carrots. The robo-tillers went their rounds, weeding and irrigating. Here and there he saw a dispirited chim riding a spiderlike controller unit, supervising the machinery.

  Sometimes they waved to him. More often they did not.

  Once, he passed a pair of armed Gubru standing in a furrowed field beside their landed flitter. As he came closer, Fiben saw they were scolding a chim farmworker. The avians fluttered and hopped as they gestured at the drooping crop. The foreman nodded unhappily, wiping her palms on her faded dungarees. She glanced at Fiben as he passed by along the road, but the aliens went on with their rebuke, oblivious.

  Apparently the Gubru were anxious for the crops to come in. Fiben hoped it meant they wanted it for their hostages. But maybe they had arrived with thin supplies and needed the food for themselves.

  He was making good time when he drew Tycho off the road into a small grove of fruit trees. The animal rested, browsing on the Earth-stock grass while Fiben sauntered over behind a tree to relieve himself.

  The orchard had not been sprayed or pest-balanced in some time, he observed. A type of stingless wasp was still swarming over the ping-oranges, although the secondary flowering had finished weeks before and they were no longer needed for pollination.

  The air was filled with a fruity, almost-ripe pungency. The wasps climbed over the thin rinds, seeking access to the sweetness within.

  Abruptly, without thinking, Fiben reached out and snatched a few of the insects. It was easy. He hesitated, then popped them into his mouth.

  They were juicy and crunchy, a lot like termites. “Just doing my part to keep the pest population down,” he rationalized, and his brown hands darted out to grab more. The taste of the crunching wasps reminded him of how long it had been since he had last eaten.

  “I’ll need sustenance if I’m to do good work in town tonight,” he thought half aloud. Fiben looked around. The horse grazed peacefully, and no one else was in sight.

  He dropped his tool belt and took a step back. Then, favoring his still tender left ankle, he leaped onto the trunk and shimmied up to one of the fruit-heavy limbs. Ah, he thought as he plucked an almost ripe reddish globe. He ate it like an apple, skin and all. The taste was tart and astringent, unlike the bland human-style food so many chims claimed to like these days.

  He grabbed two more oranges and popped a few leaves into his mouth for good measure. Then he stretched back and closed his eyes.

  Up here, with only the buzz of the wasps for company, Fiben could almost pretend he didn’t have a care, in this world or any other. He could put out of his mind wars and all the other silly preoccupations of sapient beings.

  Fiben pouted, his expressive lips drooping low. He scratched himself under his arm.

  “Ook, ook.”

  He snorted — almost silent laughter — and imagined he was back in an Africa even his great-grandfathers had never seen, in forested hills never touched by his people’s too-smooth, big-nosed cousins.

  What would the universe have been like without men? Without Eatees? Without anyone at all but chimps?

  Sooner or later we would’ve invented starships, and the universe might have been ours.

  The clouds rolled by and Fiben lay back on the branch with narrowed eyes, enjoying his fantasy. The wasps buzzed in futile indignation over his presence. He forgave them their insolence as he plucked a few from the air as added morsels.

  Try as he might, though, .he could not maintain the illusion of solitude. For there arrived another sound, an added drone from high above. And try as he might, he couldn’t pretend he did not hear alien transports cruising uninvited across the sky.

  A glistening fence more than three meters high undulated over the rolling ground surrounding Port Helenia. It was an imposing barrier, put up quickly by special robot machines right after the invasion. There were several gates, through which the city’s chim population seemed to come and go without much notice or impediment. But they could not help being intimidated by the sudden new wall. Perhaps that was its basic purpose.

  Fiben wondered how the Gubru would have managed the trick if the capital had been a real city and not just a small town on a rustic colony world.

  He wondered where the humans were being kept.

  It was dusk as he passed a wide belt of knee-high tree stumps, a hundred meters before the alien fence. The area had been planned as a park, but now only splintered fragments lay on the ground all the way to the dark watchtower and open gate.

  Fiben steeled himself to go through the same scrutiny as earlier at the checkpoint, but to his surprise no one challenged him. A narrow pool of light spilled onto the highway from a pair of pillar spots. Beyond, he saw dark, angular buildings, the dimly lit streets apparently deserted.

  The silence was spooky. Fiben’s shoulders hunched as he spoke softly. “Come on, Tycho. Quietly.” The horse blew and pulled the floating wagon slowly past the steel-gray bunker.

  Fiben chanced a quick glance inside the structure as he passed. A pair of guards stood within, each perched on one knotted, stick-thin leg, its sharp, avian bill buried in the soft down under its left arm. Two saber-rifles lay on the counter beside them, near a stack of standard Galactic faxboards.

  The two Talon Soldiers appeared to be fast asleep!

  Fiben sniffed, his flat nose wrinkling once more at the over-sweet alien aroma. This was not the first time he had seen signs of weaknesses in the reputedly invincible grip of the Gubru fanatics. They had had it easy until now — too easy. With the humans nearly all gathered and neutralized, the invaders apparently thought the only possible threat was from space. That, undoubtedly, was why all the fortifications he had seen had faced upward, with little or no provision against attack from the ground.

  Fiben stroked his sheathed belt knife. He was tempted to creep into the guard post, slipping under the obvious alarm beams, and teach the Gubru a lesson for their complacency.

  The urge passed and he shook his head. Later, he thought. When it will hurt them more.

  Patting Tycho’s neck, he led the horse through the lighted area by the guard post and beyond the gate into the industrial part of town. The streets between the warehouses and factories were quiet — a few chims here and there hurrying about on errands beneath the scrutiny of the occasional passing Gubru patrol skimmer.

  Taking pains not to be observed, Fiben slipped into a side alley and found a windowless storage building not far from the colony’s so
le iron foundry. Under his whispered urging, Tycho pulled the floating hover over to the shadows by the back door of the warehouse. A layer of dust showed that the padlock had not been touched in weeks. He examined it closely. “Hmmm.”

  Fiben took a rag from his belt apron and wrapped it around the hasp. Taking it firmly in both hands, he closed his eyes and counted to three before yanking down hard.

  The lock was strong, but, as he’d suspected, the ring bolt in the dpor was corroded. It snapped with a muffled “crack!” Quickly, Fiben slipped the sheaf and pushed the door along its tracks. Tycho placidly followed him into the gloomy interior, the truck trailing behind. Fiben looked around to memorize the layout of hulking presses and metalworking machinery before hurrying back to close the- door again.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said softly as he unhitched the animal. He hauled a sack of oats out of the hover and split it open on the ground. Then he filled a tub with water from a nearby tap. “I’ll be back if I can,” he added. “If not, you just enjoy the oats for a couple of days, then whinny. I’m sure someone will be by.”

  Tycho switched his tail and looked up from the grain. He gave Fiben a baleful look in the dim light and let out another smelly, gassy commentary.

  “Hmph.” Fiber! nodded, waving away the smell, “You’re probably right, old friend. Still, I’ll wager your descendants will worry too much too, if and when somebody ever gives them the dubious gift of so-called intelligence.”

  He patted the horse in farewell and loped over to the door to peer outside. It looked clear out there. Quieter than even the gene-poor forests of Garth. The navigation beacon atop the Terragens Building still flashed — no doubt used now to guide the invaders in their night operations. Somewhere in the distance a faint electric hum could be heard.

  It wasn’t far from here to the place where he was supposed to meet his contact. This would be the riskiest part of his foray into town.

  Many frantic ideas had been proposed during the two days between the initial Gubru gas attacks and the invaders’ complete seizure of all forms of communication. Hurried, frenzied telephone calls and radio messages had surged from Port Helenia to the Archipelago and to the continental out-lands. During that time the human population had been thoroughly-distracted and what remained of government communications were coded. So it was mainly chims, acting privately, who filled the airwaves with panicked conjectures and wild schemes — most of them horrifically dumb.

  Fiben figured that was just as well, for no doubt the enemy had been listening in even then. Their opinion of neo-chimps must have been reinforced by the hysteria.

  Still, here and there had been voices that sounded rational. Wheat hidden amid the chaff. Before she died, the human anthropologist Dr. Taka had identified one message as having come from one of her former postdoctoral students — one Gailet Jones, a resident of Port Helenia. It was this chim the General had decided to send Fiben to contact.

  Unfortunately, there had been so much confusion. No one but Dr. Taka could say what this Jones person looked like, and by the time someone thought to ask her, Dr. Taka wag dead.

  Fiben’s confidence in the rendezvous site and password was slim, at best. Prob’ly we haven’t even got the night right, he grumbled to himself.

  He slipped outside and closed the door again, replacing the shattered bolt so the lock hung back in place. The ring tilted at a slight angle. But it could fool someone who wasn’t looking very carefully.

  The larger moon would be up in an hour or so. He had to move if he was going to make his appointment in time.

  Closer to the center of Port Helenia, but still on the “wrong” side of town, he stopped in a small plaza to watch light pour from the narrow basement window of a working chim’s bar. Bass-heavy music caused the panes to shake in their wooden frames. Fiben could feel the vibration all the way across the street, through the soles of his feet. It was the only sign of life for blocks in all directions, if one did not count quiet apartments where dim lights shone dimly through tightly drawn curtains.

  He faded back into the shadows as a whirring patroller robot cruised by, floating a meter above the roadway. The squat machine’s turret swiveled to fix on his position as it passed. Its sensors must have picked him out, an infrared glow in the misty trees. But the machine went on, probably having identified him as a mere neo-chimpanzee.

  Fiben had seen other dark-furred forms like himself hurrying hunch-shouldered through the streets. Apparently, the curfew was more psychological than martial. The occupation forces weren’t being strict because there didn’t seem to be any need.

  Many of those not in their homes had been heading for places like this — the Ape’s Grape. Fiben forced himself to stop scratching a persistent itch under his chin. This was the sort of establishment favored by grunt laborers and probationers, chims whose reproductive privileges were restricted by the Edicts of Uplift.

  There were laws requiring even humans to seek genetic counseling when they bred. But for their clients, neo-dolphins and neo-chimpanzees, the codes were far more severe. In this one area normally liberal Terran law adhered closely to Galactic standards. It was that or lose chims and ’fins forever to some more senior clan. Earth was far too weak to defy the most honored of Galactic traditions.

  About a third of the chim population carried green reproduction cards, allowing them to control their own fertility, subject only to guidance from the Uplift Board and possible penalties if they weren’t careful. Those chims with gray or yellow cards were more restricted. They could apply, after they joined a marriage group, to reclaim and use the sperm or ova they stored with the Board during adolescence, before routine sterilization. Permission might be granted if they achieved meritorious accomplishments in life. More often, a yellow-card chimmie would carry to term and adopt an embryo engineered with the next generation .of “improvements” inserted by the Board’s technicians.

  Those with red cards weren’t even allowed near chim children.

  By pre-Contact standards, the system might have sounded cruel. But Fiben had lived with it all his life. On the fast track of Uplift a client race’s gene pool was always being meddled with. At least chims, were consulted as part of the process. Not many client species were so lucky.

  The social upshot, though, was that there were classes among chims. And “blue-carders” like Fiben weren’t exactly welcome in places like the Ape’s Grape.

  Still, this was the site chosen by his contact. There had been no further messages, so he had no choice but to see if the rendezvous would be kept. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the street and walked toward the growling, crashing music.

  As his hand touched the door handle a voice whispered from the shadows to his left.

  “Pink?”

  At first he thought he had imagined it. But the words repeated, a little louder.

  “Pink? Looking for a party?”

  Fiben stared. The light from the window had spoiled his night vision, but he caught a glimpse of a small simian face, somewhat childlike. There was a flash of white as the chim smiled.

  “Pink Party?”

  He let go of the handle, hardly able to believe his ears. “I beg your pardon?”

  Fiben took a step forward. But at that moment the door opened, spilling light and noise out into the street. Several dark shapes, hooting with laughter and stinking of beer-soaked fur, pushed him aside as they stumbled past. By the time the revelers were gone and the door had closed again, the blurry, dark alley was empty once more. The small, shadowy figure had slipped away.

  Fiben felt tempted to follow, if only to verify that he had been offered what he thought he had. And why was the proposition, once tendered, so suddenly withdrawn?

  Obviously, things had changed in Port Helenia. True, he hadn’t been to a place like the Ape’s Grape since his college days. But pimps pandering out of dark alleys were not common even in this part of town. On Earth maybe, or in old threevee films, but here on Garth?

 
He shook his head in mystification and pulled open the door to go inside.

  Fiben’s nostrils flared at the thick aromas of beer and sniff-hi and wet fur. The descent into the club was made unnerving by the sharp, sudden glare of a strobe light, flashing starkly and intermittently over the dance floor. There, several dark shapes cavorted, waving what looked like small saplings over their heads. A heavy, sole-penetrating beat pounded from amplifiers set over a group of squatting musicians.

  Customers lay on reed mats and cushions, smoking, drinking from paper bottles, and muttering coarse observations on the dancers’ performances.

  Fiben wended his way between the close-packed, low wicker tables toward the smoke-shrouded bar, where he ordered a pint of bitters. Fortunately, colonial currency still seemed to be good. He lounged against the rail and began a slow scan of the clientele, wishing the message from their contact had been less vague.

  Fiben was looking for someone dressed as a fisherman, even though this place was halfway across town from the docks on Aspinal Bay. Of course the radio operator who had taken down the message from Dr. Taka’s former student might have gotten it all wrong on that awful evening while the Howletts Center burned and ambulances whined overhead. The chen had thought he recalled Gailet Jones saying something about “a fisherman with a bad complexion.”

  “Great,” Fiben had muttered when given his instructions. “Real spy stuff. Magnificent.” Deep down he was positive the clerk had simply copied the entire thing down wrong.

  It wasn’t exactly an auspicious way to start an insurrection. But that was no surprise, really. Except to a few chims who had undergone Terragens Service training, secret codes, disguises, and passwords were the contents of oldtime thrillers.

  Presumably, those militia officers were all dead or interned now. Except for me. And my specialty wasn’t intelligence or subterfuge. Hett, I could barely jockey poor old TAASF Proconsul.