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.
There it finished as abruptly as it had begun.
“Bow again!” Gailet urged in a whisper. He bent over with arms crossed, as she demonstrated. When Fiben looked up again, the small crowd of alien avians had swiveled and moved toward the doorway. The perch was lowered, but still the tall Gubru had to duck down, feathered arms splayed apart for balance, in order to pass through. Irongrip followed behind. The Probationer’s parting glare at them was one of pure loathing.
Fiben’s head rang. He had given up trying to follow the bird’s queer, formal dialect of Galactic Three after the first phrase. Even the Anglic translation had been well nigh impossible to understand.
The sharp lighting faded as the procession moved away down the hallway in a babble of clucking gabble. In the remaining dimness, Fiben and Gailet turned and looked at each other.
“Now who th’ hell was that?” he asked.
Gailet frowned. “It was a Suzerain. One of their three leaders. If I’m not wrong — and I could easily be — it was the Suzerain of Propriety.”
“That tells me a whole lot. Just what on Ifni’s roulette wheel is a Suzerain of Propriety?”
Gailet waved away his question. Her forehead was knotted in deep concentration. “Why did it come to us, instead of having us brought to it?” she wondered aloud, though obviously she wasn’t soliciting his opinion. “And why meet us at night? Did you notice it didn’t even stay to hear if we accepted its offer? It probably felt compelled, by propriety, to make it in person. But its aides can get our answer later.”
“Answer to what? What offer? Gailet, I couldn’t even follow—”
But she made a nervous waving motion with both hands. “Not now. I’ve got to think, Fiben. Give me a few minutes.” She walked back to the wall and sat-down^on the straw facing the blank stone. Fiben had a suspicion it would be considerably longer than she’d estimated before she was done.
You sure can choose ’em, he thought. You deserve what you get when you fall in love with a genius…
He blinked. Shook his head. Say what?
But movement in the hall distracted him from pursuing his own unexpected thought. A solitary chim entered, carrying an armload of straw and folded bolts of dark brown cloth. The load hid the short neochimp’s face. Only when she lowered it to the ground did Fiben see that it was the chimmie who had stared at him earlier, the one who seemed so strangely familiar.
“I brought you some fresh straw, and some more blankets. These nights are still pretty cool.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
She did not meet his eyes. She turned and walked back toward the door, moving with a lithe grace that was obvious, even under the billowing zipsuit. “Wait!” he said suddenly.
She stopped, still facing the door. Fiben walked toward her as far as the heavy chains would allow. “What’s your name?” he asked softly, not wanting to disturb Gailet in her corner.
Her shoulders were hunched. She still faced away from him. “I’m …” Her voice was very low. “S-some people call me Sylvie. …”
Even in swirling quickly through the doorway she moved like a dancer. There was a rattle of keys, and hurried footsteps could be heard receding down the hall outside.
Fiben stared at the blank door. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s grandson.”
He turned around and walked back to the wall where Gailet sat, muttering to herself, and leaned over to drape a blanket upon her shoulders. Then he returned to his own corner to collapse into a heap of sweet-smelling straw.
55
Uthacalthing
Scummy algae foamed in the shallows where a few small, stilt-legged native birds picked desultorily for insects. Bushy plants lay in clumps, outlining the surrounding steppes.
Footprints led from the banks of the small lake up into the nearby scrub-covered hillside. Just glancing at the muddy tracks, Uthacalthing could tell that the walker had stepped with a pigeon-toed gait. It seemed to use a three-legged stance.
He looked up quickly as a flash of blue caught the corner of his eye — the same glimmer that had led him to this place. He tried to focus on the faint twinkle, hut it was gone before he could track it.
He knelt to examine the impressions in the mud. A smile spread as he measured them with his hands. Such beautiful outlines! The third foot was off center from the other two and its print was much smaller than the others, almost as if some bipedal creature had crossed from lake to brush leaning on a blunt-headed staff.
Uthacalthing picked up a fallen branch, but he hesitated before brushing away the outlines.
Shall I leave them? he wondered. Is it really necessary to hide them?He shook his head.
No. As the humans say, do not change game plans in midstream.
The footprints disappeared as he swept the branch back and forth. Just as he was finishing, he heard heavy footsteps and the sound of breaking shrubs behind him. He turned as Kault rounded a bend in the narrow game trail to the small prairie lake. The glyph, lurrunanu, hovered and darted over the Thennanin’s big, crested head like some frustrated parasitic insect, buzzing about in search of a soft spot that never seemed to be there.
Uthacalthing’s corona ached like an overused muscle. He let lurrunanu bounce against Kault’s bluff stolidity for a minute longer before admitting defeat. He drew the defeated glyph back in and dropped the branch to the ground.
The Thennanin wasn’t looking at the terrain anyway. His concentration was on a small instrument resting in his broad palm. “I am growing suspicious, my friend,” Kault said as he drew even with the Tymbrimi.
Uthacalthing felt blood rush in the arteries at the back of his neck. At last? he wondered.
“Suspicious of what, my colleague?”
Kault folded an instrument and put it away in one of his many vest pouches. “There are signs …” His crest flapped. “I have been listening to the uncoded transmissions of the Gubru, and something odd seems to be going on.”