“Sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear that last part, folks.”
Gailet’s upper lip curled in contempt. “So you were listening. So what? All that means is you’re an eavesdropper, as well as a traitor.”
The powerfully built chim grinned. “Shall I go for voyeur, also? Why don’t I have you two chained together, hm? Ought to make for lots of amusement, you like each other so much.”
Gailet snorted. She pointedly moved away from Fiben, shuffling over to the far wall.
Fiben refused to give the fellow the pleasure of a response. He returned Irongrip’s gaze evenly.
“Actually,” the Probationer went on, in a musing tone, “it’s pretty understandable, a chimmie like you, wishing she was a chen. Especially with that white breeding card of yours. Why, a white card’s damn near wasted on a girl!
“What I find hard to figure,” Irongrip said to Fiben, “is why you two have been doin’ what you were doin’ — running around playing soldier for the man. It’s hard to figure. You with a blue card, her with a white — jeez, you two could do it any time she’s pink — with no pills, no asking her guardian, no by-your-leave from the Uplift Board. All th’ kids you ever want, whenever you want ’em.”
Gailet offered the chim a chilled stare. “You are disgusting.”
Irongrip colored. It was especially pronounced with his pale, shaved cheeks. “Why? Because I’m fascinated by what’s been deprived me? With what I can’t have?”
Fiben growled. “More like with what you can’t do.”
The blush deepened. Irongrip knew his feelings were betraying him. He bent over to bring his face almost even with Fiben’s. “Keep it up, college boy. Who knows what you’ll be able to do, once we’ve decided your fate.” He grinned.
Fiben wrinkled his nose. “Y’know, the color of a chen’s card isn’t everything. F’rinstance, even you’d probably get more girls if you just used a mouthwash once in a whi—”
He grunted and doubled over as a fist drove into his abdomen. You pay for your pleasures, Fiben reminded himself as his stomach convulsed and he fought for breath. Still, from the look on the traitor’s face he must have struck paydirt. Irongrip’s reaction spoke volumes.
Fiben looked up to see concern written in Gailet Jones’s eyes. The expression instantly turned to anger.
“Will you two stop it! You’re acting like children… like pre-sentient—”
Irongrip whirled and pointed at her. “What do you know about it? Hm? Are you some sort of expert? Are you a member of the goddam Uplift Board? Are you even a mother, yet?”
“I’m a student of Galactic Sociology,” Gailet said rather stiffly.
Irongrip laughed bittterly. “A title given to reward a clever monkey! You must have really done some beautiful tricks on the jungle gym to get a real-as-life, scale-model, sheepskin doctorate!”
He crouched near her. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, little miss? Let me spell it for you. We’re all goddam pre-sentients! Go ahead. Deny it. Tell me I’m wrong!”
It was Gailet’s turn to change color. She glanced at Fiben, and he knew she was remembering that afternoon at the college in Port Helenia, when they had climbed to the top of the bell tower and looked out over a campus empty of humans, filled only with chim students and chim faculty trying to act as if nothing had changed. She had to be remembering how bitter it had been, seeing that scene as a Galactic would.
“I’m a sapient being,” she muttered, obviously trying to put conviction into her voice.
“Yeah,” Irongrip sneered. “What you mean to say, though, is that you’re just a little closer than the rest of us… closer to what the Uplift Board defines as a target for us neo-chims. Closer to what they think we ought to be.
“Tell me, though. What if you took a space trip to Earth, and the captain took a wrong turn onto D-level hyperspace, and you arrived a couple hundred years from now? What do you think would happen to your precious white card then?”
Gailet locked away. “Sic transit gloria mundi.” Irongrip snapped his fingers. “You’d be a relic then, obsolete, a phase long bypassed in the relentless progress of Uplift.” He laughed, reaching oui and taking her chin in his hand to make her meet his eyes. “You’d be Probationer, honey.”
Fiben surged forward but was caught short by his chains. The jolting stop sent pain shooting up from his right wrist, but in his anger Fiben hardly noticed. He was too filled with wrath to be able to speak. Dimly, as he snarled at the other chen, he knew that the same held for Gailet. It was all the more infuriating because it was just one more proof that the bastard was right.
Irongrip met Fiben’s gaze for a long moment before letting go of Gailet. “A hundred years ago,” he went on, “I would’ve been somethin’ special. They would’ve forgiven, ignored, my own little ‘quirks and drawbacks.’ They’d have given me a white card, for my cunning and my strength.
“Time is what decides it, my good little chen and chimmie. It’s all what generation you’re born in.”
He stood up straight. “Or is it?” Irongrip smiled. “Maybe it also depends on who your patrons are, hm? If the standards change, if the target image of the ideal future Pans sapiens changes, well …” He spread his hands, letting the implication sink in.
Gailet was the first to find her voice.
“You… actually… expect… th’ Gubru …”
Irongrip shrugged. “Time’s are achangin’, my darlings. I may yet have more grandkids than either of you.”
Fiben found the key to drive out the incapacitating anger and unlock his own voice. He laughed. He guffawed. “Yeah?” he asked, grinning. “Well, first you’ll haveta fix your other problem, boyo. How’re you going to pass on your genes if you can’t even get it up to—”
This time it was Irongrip’s unshod foot that lashed out. Fiben was more prepared and rolled aside to take the kick at an angle. But more blows followed in a dull rain.
There were no more words, though, and a quick glance told Fiben that it was Irongrip’s turn to be tongue-tied. Low sounds emerged as his mouth opened and closed, flecked with foam. Finally, in frustration, the tall chim gave up kicking at Fiben. He swiveled and stomped out.
The chimmie with the keys watched him go. She stood by the door, looking uncertain what to do.
Fiben grunted as he rolled over onto his back.
“Uh.” He winced as he felt his ribs. None seemed to be broken. “At least Simon Legree wasn’t able to perform a proper exit line. I half expected him to say: ‘I’ll be back, just you wait!’ or somethin’ equally original.”
Gailet shook her head. “What do you gain by baiting him?”
He shrugged. “I got my reasons.”
Gingerly, he backed against the wall. The chimmie in the billowing zipsuit was watching him, but when their eyes met she quickly blinked and turned to leave, closing the door behind her.
Fiben lifted his head and inhaled deeply, through his nose, several times.
“Now what are you doing?” Gailet asked.
He shook his head. “Nothin. Just passin’ the time.”
When he looked again, Gailet had turned her back to him again. She seemed to be crying.
Small surprise, Fiben thought. It probably wasn’t as much fun for her, being a prisoner, as it had been leading a rebellion. For all the two of them knew, the Resistance was washed up, finished, kaput. And there wasn’t any reason to believe things had gone any better in the mountains. Athaclena and Robert and Benjamin might be dead or captured by now. Port Helenia was still ruled by birds and quislings.
“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to cheer her up. “You know what they say about the truest test of sapiency? You mean you haven’t heard of it? Why it’s just comin’ through when the chimps are down!”