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, ga.s.sy 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 pa.s.sword 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 bas.e.m.e.nt window of a working chim"s bar. Ba.s.s-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 pa.s.sed. 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 cla.s.ses 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 coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.swords 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.
The Resistance would have to learn as it went now, stumbling in the dark.
At least the beer tasted good, especially after that long trek on the dusty road. Fiben sipped from his paper bottle and tried to relax. He nodded with the thunder music and grinned at the antics of the dancers.
They were all males, of course, out there capering under the flashing strobes. Among the grunts and probationers, feeling about this was so strong that it might even be called religious. The humans, who tended to frown over most types of s.e.xual discrimination, did not interfere in this case. Client races had the right to develop their own traditions, so long as they didn"t interfere with their duties or Uplift.
And according to this generation at least, Chimmies had no place in the thunder dance, and that was that.
Fiben watched one big, naked male leap to the top of a jumbled pile of carpeted "rocks" brandishing a shaker twig. The dancer-by day perhaps a mechanic or a factory laborer -- waved the noisemaker over his head while drums pealed and strobes lanced artificial lightning overhead, turning him momentarily half stark white and half pitch black.
The shaker twig rattled and boomed as he huffed and hopped to the music, hooting as if to defy the G.o.ds of the sky.
Fiben had often wondered how much of the popularity of the thunder dance came from innate, inherited feelings of brontophilia and how much from the well-known fact that fallow, unmodified chimps in the jungles of Earth were observed to "dance" in some crude fashion during lightning storms. He suspected that a lot of neo-chimpanzee "tradition" came from elaborating on the publicized behavior of their unmodified cousins.
Like many college-trained chims, Fiben liked to think he was too sophisticated for such simple-minded ancestor worship. And generally he did prefer Bach or whale songs to simulated thunder.
And yet there were times, alone in his apartment, when he would pull a tape by the Fulminates out of a drawer, put on the headphones, and try to see how much pounding his skull could take without splitting open. Here, under the driving amplifiers, he couldn"t help feeling a thrill" run up his spine as "lightning" bolted across the room and the beating drums rocked patrons, furniture, and fixtures alike.
Another naked dancer climbed the mound, shaking his own branch and chuffing loudly in challenge. He crouched on one knuckle as he ascended, a stylish touch frowned upon by orthopedists but meeting with approval from the cheering audience. The fellow might pay for the verisimilitude with a morning backache, but what was that next to the glory of the dance?
The ape at the top of the hill hooted at his challenger. He leapt and whirled in a finely timed maneuver, shaking his branch just as another bolt of strobe lightning whitened the room. It was a savage and powerful image, a reminder that no more than four centuries ago his wild ancestors had challenged storms in a like fashion from forest hilltops-needing neither man nor his tutling scalpels to tell them that Heaven"s fury required a reply.
The chims at the tables shouted and applauded as the king of the hill jumped from the summit, grinning. He tumbled down the mound, giving his challenger a solid whack as he pa.s.sed.
This was another reason females seldom joined the thunder dance. A full-grown male neo-chim had most of the strength of his natural cousins on Earth. Chimmies who wanted to partic.i.p.ate generally played in the band.
Fiben had always found it curious that it was so different among humans. Their males seemed more often obsessed with the sound making and the females with, dance, rather than vice versa. Of course humans were strange in other ways as well, such as in their odd s.e.xual practices.
He scanned the club. Males usually outnumbered females in bars like this one, but tonight the number of chimmies seemed particularly small. They mostly sat in large groups of friends, with big males at the periphery. Of course there were the barmaids, circulating among the low tables carrying drinks and smokes, dressed in simulated leopard skins.
Fiben was beginning to worry. How was his contact to know him in this blaring, flashing madhouse? He didn"t see anyone who looked like a scar-faced fisherman.
A balcony lined the three walls facing the dance mound. Patrons leaned over, banging on the slats and encouraging the dancers. Fiben turned and backed up to get a better look . . . and almost stumbled over a low wicker table as he blinked in amazement.
There-in an area set aside by rope barrier, guarded by four floating battle-robots-sat one of the invaders. There was the narrow, white ma.s.s of feathers, the sharp breastbone, and that curved beak . . . but this Gubru wore what looked like a woolen cap over the top of its head, where its comblike hearing organ lay. A set of dark goggles covered its eyes.
Fiben made himself look away. It wouldn"t do to seem too surprised. Apparently the customers here had had the last few weeks to get used to an alien in their midst. Now, though, Fiben did notice occasional glances nervously cast up toward the box above the bar. Perhaps the added tension helped explain the frantic mood of the revelers, for the Grape seemed unusually rowdy, even for a working chim"s bar.
Sipping his pint bottle casually, Fiben glanced up again. The Gubru doubtless wore the caplike m.u.f.f and goggles as protection from the noise and lights. The guard-bots had only sealed off a square area near the alien, but that entire wing of the balcony was almost unpopulated.
Almost. Two chims, in fact, sat within the protected area, near the sharp-beaked Gubru.
Quislings? Fiben wondered. Are there traitors among us already?
He shook his head in mystification. Why was the Gubru here? What could one of the invaders possibly find of worth to notice?
Fiben reclaimed his place at the bar.
Obviously, they"re interested in chims, and for reasons other than our value as hostages.
But what were those reasons? Why should Galactics care about a bunch of hairy clients that some hardly credited with being intelligent at all?
The thunder dance climaxed in an abrupt crescendo and one final crash, its last rumblings diminishing as if into a cloudy, stormy distance. The echoes took seconds longer to die away inside Fiben"s head.
Dancers tumbled back to their tables grinning and sweating, wrapping loose robes around their nakedness. The laughter sounded hearty-perhaps too much so.
Now that Fiben understood the tension in this place he wondered why anyone came at all Boycotting an establfsh-ment patronized by the invader would seem such a simple, obvious form of ahisma, of pa.s.sive resistance. Surely the average chim on the street resented these enemies of all Terragens!
What drew such crowds here on a weeknight?
Fiben ordered another beer for appearances, though already he was thinking about leaving. The Gubru made him nervous. If his contact wasn"t going to show, he had better get out of here and begin his own investigations. Somehow, he had to find out what was going on here in Port Helenia and discover a way to make contact with those willing to organize.
Across the room a crowd of rec.u.mbent revelers began pounding the floor and chanting. Soon the shout spread through the hall.
"Sylvie! Sylvie!"
The musicians climbed back onto their platform and the audience applauded as they started up again, this time to a much gentler beat. A pair of chimmies crooned seductively on saxophones as the house lights dimmed.
A spotlight speared down to illuminate the pinnacle of the dancers" mound, and a new figure swept out of a beaded curtain to stand"under the dazzling beam. Fiben blinked in surprise. What was a chimmie doing up there?
The upper half of her face was covered by a beaked mask crested with white feathers. The fem-chim"s bare nipples were flecked with sparkles to stand out in the light. Her skirt of silvery strips began to sway with the slow rhythm.
The pelvises of female neo-chimpanzees were wider than their ancestors", in order to pa.s.s bigger-brained progeny. Nevertheless, swinging hips had never become an ingrained erotic stimulus-a male turn-on-as it was among humans.
And yet Fiben"s heart beat faster as he watched her allicient movements. In spite of the mask his first impression had been of a young girl, but soon he realized that the dancer was a mature female, with faint marks of having nursed. It made her look all the more alluring.
As she moved the swaying strips of her skirt flapped slightly and Fiben soon saw that the fabric was silvery only on the outside. On the inner face each stripe of fabric tinted gradually upward toward a bright, rosy color.
He flushed and turned away. The thunder dance was one thing-he had partic.i.p.ated in a few himself. But this was altogether different! First the little panderer in the alley, and now this? Had the chims of Port Helenia gone s.e.x-crazed?
An abrupt, meaty pressure came down upon his shoulder. Fiben looked to see a large, fur-backed hand resting there, leading up a hairy arm to one of the biggest chims he had ever seen. He was nearly as tall as a small man, and obviously much stronger. The male neo-chimp wore faded blue work dungarees, and his upper lip curled back to expose substantial, almost atavistic canines.
"S"matter? You don"t like Sylvie?" the giant asked.
Although the dance was still in its languid opening phase, the mostly male audience was already hooting encouragement. Fiben realized he must have been wearing his disapproval on his face, like an idiot. A true spy would have feigned enjoyment in order to fit in.
"Headache." He pointed to his right temple. "Rough day. I guess I"d better go."
The big neo-chimp grinned, his huge paw not leaving Fiben"s shoulder. "Headache? Or maybe it"s too bold for ya? Maybe you ain"t had your first sharin" yet, hm?"
Out of the corner of his eye Fiben saw a swaying, teasing display, still demure but growing more sensual by the moment. He could feel the seething s.e.xual tension beginning to fill the room and couldn"t guess where it might lead. There were important reasons why this sort of display was illegal . . . one of the few activities humans proscribed their clients.
"Of course I"ve been in sharings!" he snapped back. "It"s just that here, in public, it-it could cause a riot."
The big stranger laughed and poked him amiably. "When!"
"I beg your par- . . . uh, what d"you mean?"
"I mean when did you first share, hm? From the way you talk, I"ll bet it was one of those college parties. Right? Am I right, Mr. Bluecard?"
Fiben glanced quickly right and left. First impressions notwithstanding, the big fellow seemed more curious and drunk than hostile. But Fiben wished he"d go away. His size was intimidating, and they might be attracting attention.
"Yeah," he muttered, uncomfortable with the recollection. "It was a fraternity initiation-"
The chimmie students back at college might be good friends with, the chens in their cla.s.ses, but they were never invited to sharings. It was just too dangerous to think of green-card females s.e.xually. And anyway, they tended to be paranoid about pregnancy before marriage and genetic counseling. The possible costs were just too great.
So when chens at the University threw a party, they tended to invite girl chims from the far side of the tracks, yellow- and gray-card chimmies whose flame-colored estrus was only an exciting sham.
It was a mistake to judge such behavior by human standards. We have fundamentally different patterns, Fiben had reminded himself back then, and many times since. Still, he had never found those sharings very satisfying or joyful. Maybe someday, when he found the right marriage group . . .
"Sure, my sis used to go to those college parties. Sounded like fun." The scarred chim turned to the bartender and slapped the polished surface. "Two pints! One for me an" one for my college chum!" Fiben winced at the loud voice. Several others nearby had turned to look their way.
"So tell me," his unwelcome acquaintance said, thrusting a paper bottle into Fiben"s hand. "Ya have any kids yet? Maybe some that are registered, but you never met?" He did not sound unfriendly, rather envious.
Fiben took a long swallow of the warm, bitter brew. He shook his head, keeping his voice low. "It doesn"t really work that way. An open birthright isn"t the same as an unlimited-a white card. If the planners have used any of my plasm I wouldn"t know it."
"Well why the h.e.l.l not! I mean its bad enough for you bluesies, having to screw test tubes on orders from the Uplift Board, but to not even know if they"ve used the gunk . . . h.e.l.l, my senior group-wife had a planned kid a year ago . . . you might even be my son"s gene-dad!" The big chim laughed and clapped Fiben again heavily on the shoulder.
This would never do. More heads were turning his way. All this talk about blue cards was not going to win him friends here. Anyway, he did not want to attract attention with a Gubru sitting less than thirty feet away. "I really have to be going," he said, and started to edge backward. "Thanks for the beer. ..."
Somebody blocked his way. "Excuse me," Fiben said. He turned and came face to face with four chims clothed in bright zipsuits, all staring at him with arms crossed. One, a little taller than the others, pushed Fiben back toward the bar.