Only an hour ago they had been laughing, jostling each other while they fumbled with a complicated mechanical puzzle. For a few minutes they had been able to forget the staring mechanical and alien eyes while they worked as a team, sorting and resorting the pieces and arranging them together. When they stood back at last and looked on the completed tower they had made, they both knew that they had surprised the note-takers. In that moment of satisfaction, Gailet’s hand had slipped, innocently and affectionately, into his.
Imprisonment was like that. Part of the time, Fiben actually felt as if he were profiting from the experience. It was the first time in his life, for instance, that he’d ever really had time to just sit and think. Their captors now let them have books, and he was catching up on quite a few volumes he’d always wanted to read. Conversations with Gailet had opened up the arcane world of alienology. He, in turn, had spoken to her of the great work being done here on Garth, delicately nudging a ruined ecosystem back toward health.
But then, all too common, had been die long, darker intervals, when the hours dragged on and on. A pall hung over them at such times. The walls seemed to close in, and conversation always came back to the War] to memories of their failed insurrection, to lost friends and gloomy speculations over the fate of Earth itself.
At such times, Fiben thought he might trade all hope of a long life for just an hour to run free under trees and clean sky.
So even this new routine of testing by the Gubru had come as a relief for both of them. At least it was a distraction.
Without warning, the machines suddenly pulled away, opening an avenue in front of their bench. “We are finished, finished… You have done well, done well, you have… Now follow the globe, follow it, toward transportation.”
As Fiben and Gailet stood up, a brown, octahedral projection took form in front of them. Without looking at each other they followed the hologram past the silent, brooding avian technicians, out of the testing chamber, and down a long hallway.
Service robots swept past them with the soft whisper of well-tuned machinery. Once a Kwackoo technician darted out of an office door, favored them with a startled look, then ducked back inside. At last Fiben and Gailet passed through a hissing portal and emerged into bright sunshine. Fiben had to shade his eyes. The day was fair, but with a bite that seemed to say that brief summer was now well on its way out. The chims he could see in the streets, beyond the Gubru compound, were wearing light sweaters and sneakers, another sure sign that autumn was near.
None of the chims looked their way. The distance was too great for Fiben to tell anything of their mood, or to hope that somebody might recognize him or Gailet.
“We won’t be riding the same car back,” whispered Gailet. And she motioned down a long parapet toward the landing ramp below. Sure enough, the tan military van that had brought them had been replaced by a large, roofless hover barge. An ornate pedestal stood in the open deck behind the pilot’s station. Kwackoo servitors adjusted a sunshade to keep the fierce light of Gimelhai off their master’s beak and crest.
The large Gubru was recognizable. Its thick, faintly luminous plumage looked shaggier than the last time they had seen it, in the furtive darkness of their suburban prison. The effect was to make it seem even more different than the run-of-the-mill Gubru functionaries they had seen. In some places the allochroous feathers had begun to appear frayed, tattered. The avian aristocrat wore a striped collar. It paced impatiently atop its perch.
“Well, well,” Fiben muttered. “If it ain’t our old friend, the Somethin’ of Good Housekeeping.”
Gailet snorted in something just short of a small laugh. “It’s called the Suzerain of Propriety,” she reminded him. “The striped tore means it’s the leader of the priestly caste. Now just you remember to behave yourself. Try not to scratch too much, and watch what I do.”
“I’ll imitate yer very steps precisely, mistress.”
Gailet ignored his sarcasm and followed the brown guidance hologram down the long ramp toward the brightly colored barge. Fiben kept pace just a little behind her.
The guide projection vanished as they reached the landing. A Kwackoo, with its feathery ruff tinted a garish shade of pink, offered them both a very shallow bow. “You are honored — honored… that our patron — noble patron does deign to show you — you half-formed ones… the favor of your destiny.”
The Kwackoo spoke without the assistance of a vodor. That in itself was no small miracle, given the creature’s highly specialized speech organs. In fact, it spoke the Anglic words fairly clearly, if with a breathless quality which made the alien sound nervous, expectant.
It wasn’t likely the Suzerain of Propriety was the easiest boss in the Universe to work for. Fiben imitated Gailet’s bow and kept silent as she replied. “We are honored by the attention that your master, the high patron of a great clan, condescends to offer us,” she said in slow, carefully enunciated Galactic Seven. “Nevertheless, we retain, in our own patrons’ names, the right to disapprove its actions.”
Even Fiben gasped. The assembled Kwackoo cooed in anger, fluffing up threateningly.
Three high, chirped notes cut their outrage off abruptly. The lead Kwackoo swiveled quickly and bowed to the Suzerain, who had scuttled to the end of its perch closest to the two chims. The Gubru’s beak gaped as it bent to regard Gailet, first with one eye, then the other. Fiben found himself sweating rivulets.
Finally, the alien straightened and squawked a pronouncement in its own highly clipped, inflected version of Galactic Three. Only Fiben saw the tremor of relief that passed down Gailet’s tense spine. He could not follow the Suzerain’s stilted prose, but a vodor nearby commenced translating promptly.
“Well said — said well… spoken well for captured, client-class soldiers of foe-clan Terra… Come, then — come and see… come and see and hear a bargain you will certainly not disapprove — not even in your patrons’ names.” Gailet and Fiben glanced at each other. Then, as one, they bowed.
The late morning air was clear, and the faint ozone smell probably did not foretell rain. Such ancient cues were useless in the presence of high technology anyway.
The barge cruised south past the closed pleasure piers of Port Helenia and out across the bay. It was Fiben’s first chance to see how the harbor had changed since the aliens had arrived.
The fishing fleet had been crippled for one thing. Only one in four trawlers did not lie beached or in dry dock. The main commercial port was almost dead as well. A clump of dispirited-looking seafaring vessels listed at their moorings, clearly untouched for months. Fiben watched one of the still working fishing trawlers heave into view around the point of the bay, probably returning early with a fortuitous catch — or with a mechanical failure the chim crew felt unable to deal with at sea. The tub-bottomed boat rose and fell as it rode the standing swell where sea met bay. The crew had to struggle since the passage was narrower than it had been in days of peace. Half of the strait was now blocked by a towering, curving cliff face — a great fortress of alien cerametal.
The Gubru battleship seemed to shimmer in a faint -haze. Water droplets condensed at the fringes of its ward-screens, rainbows sparkled, and a mist fell over the struggling trawler as it forced its way past the northern tongue of land at last. Fiben could not make out the faces of the chim crew as the Suzerain’s barge swept overhead, but he saw several long-armed forms slump in relief as the boat reached calm waters at last.
From Point Borealis the upper arm of the bayshore swept several kilometers north and east toward Port Helenia itself. Except for a small navigation beacon, those rough heights were unoccupied. The branches of ridgetop pines riffled gently in the sea breezes.