“Yessir, I’ll hurry back.”
“Very well, then. Take Lieutenant McCue with you. I want one of my own men to see the countryside. Show McCue how you accomplished your little coup, introduce her to the leaders of the more important chim partisan bands in that area, then return without delay. Dismissed.”
Robert came to attention. I think I know now why I hate him, Robert realized as he saluted, performed an about-face, and walked out through the hanging blanket that served as a door to the subterranean office.
Ever since he had returned to the caves to find Prathachulthorn and his aides moving around like owners, patronizing the chims and judging everything they had all done together, Robert had been unable to stop feeling like a child who had, until that moment, been allowed to play a wonderful dramatic role, a really fun game. But now the child had to bear paternal pats on the head — strokes that burned, even if intended in praise.
It was an embarrassing analogy, and yet he knew that in a sense it was true after all.
Robert blew a silent sigh and hurried away from the office and dark armory he had shared with Athaclena, but which.now had been completely taken over by grownups.
Only when he was finally back under the tall forest canopy did Robert feel he could breathe freely again. The trees’ familiar scents seemed to cleanse his lungs of the dank cave odors. The scouts who flitted ahead of him and alongside were those he knew, quick, loyal, feral-looking with their crossbows and sooty faces. My chims, he thought, feeling a little guilty that it came to hjm in those words. But the feeling of proprietorship was there anyway. It was like the “old days” — before yesterday — when he had felt important and needed.
The illusion broke apart, though, the next time Lieutenant McCue spoke.
“These mountain forests are very beautiful,” she said. “I wish I’d taken the time to come up here before the war broke out.” The Earthling officer stopped by the side of the trail to touch a blue-veined flower, but it folded away from her fingers and retreated backward into the thicket. “I’ve read about these things, but this is my first chance to see them for myself.”
Robert grunted noncommittally. He would be polite and answer any direct question, but he wasn’t interested in conversation, especially with Major Prathachulthorn’s second in command.
Lydia McCue was an athletic young woman, with dark, well-cut features. Her movements, lithe like a commando’s — or an assassin’s — were by that same nature also quite graceful. Dressed in homespun kilt and blouse, she might have been taken for a peasant dancer, if it weren’t for the self-winding arbalest she cradled in the crook of one arm like a child. In hip pouches were enough darts to pincushion half the Gubru within a hundred kilometers. The knives sheathed at her wrists and ankles were for more than show.
She seemed to have very little trouble keeping up with his rapid pace through the criss-cross jungle mesh of vines. That was just as well, for he wasn’t about to slow down. At the back, of his mind Robert knew he was being unfair. She was probably a nice enough person in her own way, for a professional soldier. But for some reason everything likable about her seemed to irritate him all the more.
Robert wished Athaclena had consented to come along. But she had insisted on remaining in her glade near the caves, experimenting with tame vines and crafting strange, ornate glyphs that were far too subtle to be kenned by his own weak powers. Robert had felt hurt and stormed off, almost outracing his escorts for the first few kilometers.
“So much life.” The Earth woman kept pace beside him and inhaled the rich odors. “This is a peaceful place.”
You’re wrong on both counts, Robert thought, with a trace of contempt for her dull, human insensitivity to the truth about Garth, a truth he could feel all around him. Through Athaclena’s tutoring he now could reach out — albeit tentatively, awkwardly — and trace the life-waves that fluxed through the quiet forest.
“This is an unhappy land,” he replied simply. He did not elaborate, even when she gave him a puzzled look. His primitive empathy sense withdrew from her confusion.
For a while they moved in silence. The morning aged. Once the scouts whistled, and they took cover under thick branches as great cruisers lumbered overhead. When the way was clear Robert took to the trail again without a word.
At last, Lydia McCue spoke again. “This place we’re heading for,” she asked, “this Howletts Center. Would you please tell me about it?”
It was a simple request. He could not refuse, since Prathachulthorn had sent her along to be shown things. But Robert avoided her black eyes as he spoke. He tried to be matter-of-fact, but emotion kept creeping into his voice. Under her low prompting Robert told Lydia McCue about the sad, misguided, but brilliant work of the renegade scientists. His mother had known nothing of the Howletts Center, of course. It was only by accident that he himself had learned of it a year or so before the invasion, and he had decided to keep silent.
Of course the daring experiment was over now. It would take more than a miracle to save the neo-gorillas from sterilization, now that the secret was known, to people like Major Prathachulthorn.
Prathachulthorn might hate Galactic Civilization with a passion that bordered on fanaticism, but he knew how essential it was that Terrans not break their solemn pacts with the great Institutes. Right now, Earth’s only hope lay in the ancient codes of the Progenitors. To keep the protection of those codes, weak clans had to be like Caesar’s wife, above reproach.
Lydia McCue listened attentively. She had high cheekbones and eyes that were sultry in their darkness. It pained Robert to look at them, though. Those eyes seemed somehow to be set too close together, too immobile. He kept his attention on the crooked path ahead of him.
And yet, with a soft voice the young Marine officer drew him out. Robert found himself talking about Fiben Bolger, about their narrow escape together from the gas-bombing of the Mendoza Freehold, and of his friend’s first journey down into the Sind.
And the second, from which he never returned.
They crested a ridge topped with eerie spine-stones and came to an opening overlooking a narrow vale, just west of Lome Pass. He gestured to the tumbled outlines of several burned structures. “The Howletts Center,” he said, flatly.
“This is where you forced the Gubru to acknowledge chim combatants, isn’t it? And made them give parole?” Lydia McCue asked. Robert realized he was hearing respect in her voice, and turned briefly to stare at her. She returned his look with a smile. Robert felt his face grow warm.
He swung back quickly, pointing to the hillside nearest the center and rapidly describing how the trap had been laid and sprung, skipping only his own trapeze leap to take out the Gubru sentry. His part had been unimportant, anyway. The chims were the crucial ones that morning. He wanted the Earthling soldiers to know that.
He was finishing his story when Elsie approached. The chimmie saluted him, something that had never seemed necessary before the Marines arrived.
“I don t know about actually goin’ down there, ser,” she said, earnestly. “The enemy’s already shown an interest in those ruins. They may have come back.”
Robert shook his head. “When Benjamin paroled the enemy survivors, one condition they accepted was to stay out of this valley, and not even keep its approaches under surveillance, from then on. Has there been any sign of them breaking their word?”
Elsie shook her head. “No, but — ” Her lips pressed together, as if she felt she ought to forbear comment on the wisdom of trusting the pledges of Eatees.
Robert smiled. “Well, then. Come on. If we hurry we can be in and back out by nightfall.”