Uplift - The Uplift War Part 36

"Yeah. From video and from GoThere cube books, sure. But not from personal experience. You went as a child with your parents, didn't you? That's where you got your doctorate?"

She nodded. "University of Djakarta. "

"And then what?"

Her gaze was distant. "Then I applied for a position at the Terragens Center for Galactic Studies, in La Paz."

Fiben knew of the place. Many of Earth's diplomats, emissaries, and agents took training there, learning how the ancient cultures of the Five Galaxies thought and acted. It was crucial if the leaders were to plan a way for the three races of Earth to make their way in a dangerous universe. Much of the fate of the wolfling clan depended on the graduates of the CGS.

"I'm impressed you even applied," he said, meaning it. "Did they ... I mean, did you pa.s.s?"

She nodded. "I ... it was close. I qualified. Barely. If I'd scored just a little better, they said there'd have been no question."

Obviously, the memory was painful. She seemed undecided, as if tempted to change the subject. Gailet shook her head. "Then I was told that they'd prefer it if I returned to Garth instead. I should take up a teaching position, they said. They made it plain I'd be more useful here."

"They? Who's this 'they' you're talking about?"

Gailet nervously picked at the fur on the back of her arm. She noticed what she was doing and made both hands lay still on her lap. "The Uplift Board," she said quietly.

"But . . . but what do they have to say about a.s.signing teaching positions, or influencing career choices for that matter?"

She looked at him. "They have a lot to say, Fiben, if they think neo-chimp or neo-dolphin genetic progress is at stake. They can keep you from becoming a s.p.a.cer, for instance, out of fear your precious plasm might get irradiated. Or they can prevent you from entering chemistry as a profession, out of fear of unpredicted mutations."

She picked up a piece of straw and twirled it slowly. "Oh, we have a lot more rights than other young client races. I know that, I keep reminding myself."

"But they decided your genes were needed on Garth," Fiben guessed in low voice.

She nodded. "There's a point system. If I'd really scored well on the CGS exam it would've been okay. A few chims do get in.

"But I was at the margin. Instead they presented me with that d.a.m.ned white card-like it was some sort of consolation prize, or maybe a wafer for some sacrament-and they sent me back to my native planet, back to poor old Garth.

"It seems my raison d'etre is the babies I'll have. Everything else is incidental."

She laughed, somewhat bitterly. "h.e.l.l, I've been breaking the law for months now, risking my life and womb in this rebellion. Even if we'd have won-fat chance-I could get a big fat medal from the TAASF, maybe even ticker tape parades, and it wouldn't matter. When all the hooplah died down I'd still be thrown into prison by the Uplift Board!"

"Oh, Goodall," Fiben sighed, sagging back against the cool stones. "But you haven't, I mean you haven't yet-"

"Haven t procreated yet? Good observation. One of the few advantages of being a female with a white card is that I can choose anyone blue or higher for the father, and pick my own timing, so long as I have three or more offspring before I'm thirty. I don't even have to raise them myself!" Again came the sharp, bitter laugh. "h.e.l.l, half of the chim marriage groups on Garth would shave themselves bald for the right to adopt one of my kids."

She makes her situation sound so awful, Fiben thought. And^yet there must be fewer than twenty other chims on the planet regarded as highly by the Board. To a member of a client race, it's the highest honor.

Still, maybe he understood after all. She would have come home to Garth knowing one fact. That no matter how brilliant her career, how great her accomplishments, it would only make her ovaries all the more valuable ... only make more frequent the painful, invasive visits to the Plasm Bank, and only bring on more pressure to carry as many as possible to term in her own womb.

Invitations to join group marriages or pair bonds would be automatic, easy. Too easy. There would be no way to know if a group wanted her for herself. Lone male suitors would seek her for the status fathering her child would bring.

And then there would be the jealousy. He could empathize with that. Chims weren't often very subtle at hiding their feelings, especially envy. Quite a few would be downright mean about it.

"Irongrip was right," Gailet said. "It's got to be different for a chen. A white card would be fun fora male chim, I can see that. But for a chimmie? One with ambition to be something for herself?"

She looked away.

"I ..." Fiben tried to think of something to say, but for a moment all he could do was sit there feeling thick-headed, stupid. Perhaps, someday, one of his great-to-the-nth grandchildren would be smart enough to know the right words, to know how to comfort someone too far gone into bitterness even to want comforting anymore.

That more fully uplifted neo-chim, a few score more generations down the chain of Uplift, might be bright enough. But Fiben knew he wasn't. He was only an ape.

"Um." He coughed. "I remember a time, back on Cilmar Island, it musta been before you returned to Garth. Let's see, was it ten years ago? Ifni! I think I was just a freshman. ..." He sighed. "Anyway, the whole island got all excited, that year, when Igor Patterson came to lecture and perform at the University."

Gailet's head lifted a little. "Igor Patterson? The drummer?"

Fiben nodded. "So you've heard of him?"

She smirked sarcastically. "Who hasn't? He's-" Gailet spread her hands and let them drop, palms up. "He's wonderful."

That summed it up all right. For Igor Patterson was the best.

The thunder dance was only one aspect of the neo-chimpanzee's love affair with rhythm. Percussion was a favorite musical form, from the quaint farmlands of Hermes to the sophisticated towers of Earth. Even in the early days-back when chims had been forced to carry keyboard displays on their chests in order to speak at all-even then the new race had loved the beat.

And yet, all of the great drummers on Earth and in the colonies were humans. Everyone until Igor Patterson.

He was the first. The first chim with the fine finger coordination, the delicacy of timing, the sheer chutzpah, to make it alongside the best. Listening to Patterson play "Clash Ceramic Lighting" wasn't only to experience pleasure; for a chim it was to burst with pride. To many, his mere existence meant that chims weren't just approaching what the Uplift Board wanted them to be, but what they wanted to be, as well.

"The Carter Foundation sent him on a tour of th' colonies," Fiben went on. "Partly it was as a goodwill trip for all the outlying chim communities. And of course it was also to spread the good luck around a bit."

Gailet snorted at the obviousness of it. Of course Patterson had a white card. The chim members of the Uplift Board would have insisted, even if he weren't also as wonderfully charming, intelligent, and handsome a specimen of neo-chimpanzee as anyone could ask to meet.

And Fiben thought he knew what else Gailet was thinking. For a male having a white card wouldn't be much of a problem at all-just one long party. "I'll bet," she said. And Fiben imagined he detected a clear tone of envy.

"Yeah, well, you should've been there, when he showed up to give his concert. I was one of the lucky ones. My seat was way up in back, out of the way, and it happened that I had a real bad cold that night. That was d.a.m.n fortunate."

"WhatB^-GaiTet's eyebrows came together. "What does that have to do with . . . Oh." She frowned at him and her jaw tightened. "Oh. I see."

"I'll bet you do. The air conditioning was set on high, but I'm told the aroma was still overpowering. I had to sit s.h.i.+vering under the blowers. d.a.m.n near caught my death-"

"Will you get to the point?" Gailet's lips were a thin line.

"Well, as no doubt you've guessed, nearly every green-or blue-card chimmie on the island who happened to be in estrus seemed to have a ticket to the concert. None of 'em used olfa-spray. They came, generally, with the complete okay of their group husbands, wearing flaming pink lipstick, just on the off chance-"

"I get the picture," Gailett said. And for just an instant Fiben wondered if he saw her blink back a faint smile as she pictured the scene. If so, it was only a momentary flicker of her severe frown. "So what happened?"

Fiben stretched, yawning. "What would you expect to happen? A riot, of course."

Her jaw dropped. "Really? At the University?".

"Sure as I'm sitting here."

"But-"

"Oh, the first few minutes went all right. Man, old Igor could play as good as his rep, I'll tell you. The crowd kept getting more and more excited. Even the backup band was feelin' it. Then things kinda got out of hand."

"But-"

"Remember old Professor Olvfing, from the Terragens Traditions Department? You know, the elderly chim who sports a monocle? Used to spend his spare time lobbying to get a chim monogamy bill before the legislature?"

"Yes, I knew him." She nodded, her eyes wide open.

Fiben made a gesture with two hands.

"No! In public? Professor Olvfing?"

"With th' dean of th' College of frigging Nutrition, no less."

Gailet let out a sharp sound. She turned aside, hand to her breast. She seemed to suffer a sudden bout of hiccups.

"Of course, Olvfing's pair-bond wife forgave him later. It was that or'lose him to a ten-group that said they liked his style."

Gailet slapped her chest, coughing. She turned further away from Fiben, shaking her head vigorously.

"Poor Igor Patterson," Fiben continued. "He had problems of his own, of course. Some of th' guys from the football team had been drafted as bouncers. When it started getting out of hand, they tried using fire extinguishers. That made things slippery, but it didn't slow 'em down much."

Gailet coughed louder. "Fiben ..."

"It was too bad, really," he mused aloud. "Igor was getting into a great blues riff, really pounding those skins, packin' in a backbeat you couldn't believe. I was groovin' on it ... until this forty-year-old chimmie, naked and slick as a dolphin, dropped straight onto him from th' rafters."

Gailet doubled over clutching her belly. She held up a hand, pleading for mercy. "Stop, please. ..." she whimpered, weakly.

"Thank heavens it was the snare drum she fell through. Took her long enough gettin' untangled for poor Igor to escape out the back way, just barely ahead of the mob."

She toppled over sideways. For a moment Fiben felt concern, her face was so flushed and red. She hooted, slapping the floor, and tears streamed from her eyes. Gailet rolled over onto her back, rocking with peals of laughter.

Fiben shrugged. "And all that was just from playin' the first number-Patterson's special version of the b.l.o.o.d.y national anthem! What a pity. I never did get to hear his variation on Tnagadda Da Vita.' "

"Now that I think about it, though," he sighed once more, "maybe it's just as well."

Power curfew came at 2000 hours, and no exception was made for prisons. A wind had risen before sunset and soon was rattling the shutters of their small window. It came in off the ocean, carrying a heavy salt smell. In the distance could be heard the faint rumblings of an early summer storm.

They slept curled in their blankets as close to each other as their chains allowed, head to head so they could hear each other breathing in the darkness. They slumbered inhaling the soft tang of stone and the mustiness of straw, and exhaled the soft mutterings of their dreams.

Gailet's hands moved in tiny jerks, as if trying to follow the rhythms of some illusory escape. Her chains tinkled faintly.

Fiben lay motionless, but now and then he blinked, his eyes occasionally opening and closing without the light of consciousness in them. Sometimes a breath caught and held for a long moment before releasing, at last.

They did not notice the low humming sound that penetrated from the hallway outside, nor the light which speared into their cell through cracks in the wooden door. Feet shuffled and claws clicked on flagstones.

When keys rattled in the lock, Fiben jerked, rolled to one side, and sat up. He knuckled his eyes as the hinges creaked. Gailet lifted her head. She used her hand to block the sharp glare of two lamps, held high on poles.

Fiben sneezed, smelling lavender and feathers. When he and Gailet were hauled to their feet by several of the zipsuited chims, he recognized the gruff voice of their head captor, Irongrip.

"You two better behave yourselves. You've got important visitors."

Fiben blinked, trying to adjust to the light. At last he made out a small crowd of feathered quadrupeds, large b.a.l.l.s of white fluff bedecked in ribbons and sashes. Two of them held staffs from which the bright lanterns hung. The rest twittered around what looked like a short pole ending in a narrow platform. On that perch stood a most singular-looking bird.

It, too, was arrayed in bright ribbons. The large, bipedal Gubru s.h.i.+fted its weight from one leg to another, nervously. It might have been the way the light struck the alien's plumage, but the coloration seemed richer, more luminous than the normal off-white shade. It reminded Fiben of something, as if he had seen this invader or one like it before, somewhere.

What the h.e.l.l is the thing doing, moving around at night? Fiben wondered. I thought they hated to do that.

"Pay proper respect to honored elders, members of the high clan Gooksyu-Gubru!" Irongrip said, sharply, nudging Fiben.

"I'll show th' d.a.m.n thing my respect." Fiben made a rude sound in his throat and gathered phlegm.

"No!" Gailet cried. She grabbed his arm and whispered urgently. "Fiben, don't! Please. Do this for me. Act exactly as I do!"

Her brown eyes were pleading. Fiben swallowed. "Aw h.e.l.l, Gailet." She turned back toward the Gubru and folded her arms across her chest. Fiben imitated her, even as she bowed low.

The Galactic peered at them, first with one large, unblinking eye, then another. It shuffled-te-one-end of the^ perch, forcing its holders to adjust their balance. Finally, it began chirping in a_series of sharp, clipped squawks.

From the quadrupeds there emerged a strange, swooping accompaniment, rising and falling, sounding something like "Zoooon."

One of the Kwackoo servitors ambled forward. A bright, metallic disk hung from a chain around its neck. The vodor gave forth a low, jerky Anglic translation.

"It has been judged . . . judged in honor judged in propriety . . .

That you two have not transgressed . . .

have not broken . . .

The rules of conduct . . . the rules of war.

Zooooon.

"We judge that it is right . . . proper . . .

meet to allow for infant status . . .

To charitably credit . . . believe . . .

that your struggles were on your patrons' behalf.

Zoooooon.

"It comes to our attention . . . awareness ...

knowledge that your status is As leaders of your gene-flux . . . race-flow . . .

species in this place and time.

Zooooooon.