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 mass 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 muff 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 passive 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 recumbent 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 pass 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 participated 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 sex-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 sexual 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 classes, but they were never invited to sharings. It was just too dangerous to think of green-card females sexually. 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…