The Suzerain of Cost and Caution let out a treble sigh and contemplated how it would have to manipulate the next leadership conclave. Tomorrow, the next day, in a week. That forthcoming squabble was not far off. Each debate would grow more urgent, more important as both consensus and Molt approached.
The prospect was one to look upon with a mixture of trepidation, confidence, and utter pleasure.
26
Robert
The denizens of the deep caverns were unaccustomed to the bright lights and loud noises the newcomers had brought with them. Hordes of batlike creatures fled before the interlopers, leaving behind a flat, thick flooring of many centuries’ accumulated dung. Under limestone walls glistening with slow seepage, alkaline rivulets were now crossed by makeshift plank bridges. In drier corners, under the pale illumination of glow bulbs, the surface beings moved nervously, as if loathe to disturb the stygian quiet.
It was a forbidding place to wake up to. Shadows were stark, acherontic, and surprising. A crag of rock might look innocuous and then, from a slightly different perspective, leap out in familiarity as the silhouette of some monster met a hundred times in nightmares.
It wasn’t hard to have bad dreams in a place like this.
Shuffling in robe and slippers, Robert felt positive relief when at last he found the place he’d been looking for, the rebel “operations center.” It was a fairly large chamber, lit by more than the usual sparse ration of bulbs. But furniture was negligible. Some ragged card tables and cabinets had been supplemented by benches fashioned from chopped and leveled stalagmites, plus a few partitions knocked together out of raw timber from the forest high above. The effect only made the towering vault seem all the more mighty, and the refugees’ works all the more pitiful.
Robert rubbed his eyes. A few chims could be seen clustered around one partition arguing and sticking pins in a large map, speaking softly as they sifted through papers.
When one of them raised his voice too loud, echoes reverberated down the surrounding passages making the others look up in alarm. Obviously, the chims were still intimidated by their new quarters.
Robert shuffled into the light. “All right,” he said, his larynx still scratchy from lack of use. “What’s going on here? Where is she and what is she up to now?”
They stared at him. Robert knew he must look a sight in rumpled pajamas and slippers, his hair uncombed and his arm in a cast to the shoulder.
“Captain Oneagle,” one of the chims said. “You really should still be in bed. Your fever—”
“Oh, shove it … Micah.” Robert had to think to remember the fellow’s name. The last few weeks were still a fog in his mind. “My fever broke two days ago. I can read my own chart. So tell me what’s happening! Where is everybody? Where’s Athaclena?”
They looked at each other. Finally one chimmie took a cluster of colored map pins out of her mouth. “Th” General… uh, Mizz Athaclena, is away. She’s leading a raid.”
“A raid. …” Robert blinked. “On the Gubru?” He brought a hand to his eyes as the room seemed to waver. “Oh, Ifni.”
There was a rush of activity as three chims got in each other’s way hauling over a wooden folding chair. Robert sat down heavily. He saw that these chims were all either very young or old. Athaclena must have taken most of the able-bodied with her.
“Tell me about it,” he said to them.
A senior-looking chimmie, bespectacled and serious, motioned the others back to work and introduced herself. “I am Dr. Soo,” she said. “At the Center I worked on gorilla genetic histories.”
Robert nodded. “Dr. Soo, yes. I recall you helped treat my injuries.” He remembered her face peering over him through a fog while the infection raged hot through his lymphatic system.
“You were very sick, Captain Oneagle. It wasn’t just your badly fractured arm, or those fungal toxins you absorbed during your accident. We are now fairly” certain you also inhaled traces of the Gubru coercion gas, back when they dosed the Mendoza Freehold.”
Robert blinked. The memory was a blur. He had been on the mend, up in the Mendoza’s mountain ranch, where he and Fiben had spent a couple of days talking, making plans. Somehow they would find others and try to get something started. Maybe make contact with his mother’s government in exile, if it still existed. Reports from Athaclena told of a set of caves that seemed ideal as a headquarters of sorts. Maybe these mountains could be a base of operations against the enemy.
Then, one afternoon, there were suddenly frantic chims running everywhere! Before Robert could speak, before he could even stand they had plucked him up and carried him bodily out of the farmhouse and up into the hills.
There were sonic booms… terse images of something immense in the sky.
“But… but I thought the gas was fatal if…” His voice trailed off.
“If there’s no antidote. Yes. But your dose was so small.” Dr. Soo shrugged. “As it is, we nearly lost you.”
Robert shivered. “What about the little girl?”
“She is with the gorillas.” The chim nutritionist smiled. “She’s as safe as anyone can be, these days.”
He sighed and sat back a little. “That’s good at least.”
The chims carrying little April Wu must have got up to the heights in plenty of time. Apparently Robert barely made it. The Mendozas had been slower still and were caught in the stinking cloud that spilled from the belly of the alien ship.
Dr. Soo went on. “The Villas don’t like the caves, so most of them are up in the high valleys, foraging in small groups under loose supervision, away from any buildings. Structures are still being gassed regularly, you know, whether they contain humans or not.”
Robert nodded. “The Gubru are being thorough.”
He looked at the wall-board stuck with multicolored pins. The map covered the entire region from the mountains north across the Vale of Sind and west to the sea. There the islands of the Archipelago made a necklace of civilization. Only one city lay onshore, Port Helenia on the northern verge of Aspinal Bay. South and east of the Mulun Mountains lay the wilds of the main continent, but the most important feature was depicted along the top edge of the map. Patient, perhaps unstoppable, the great gray sheets of ice encroached lower every year. The final bane of Garth.
The map pins, however, dealt with a much closer, nearer-term calamity. It was easy to read the array of pink and redmarkers. “They’ve really got a grip on things, haven’t they?”
The elderly chim named Micah brought Robert a glass of water. He frowned at the map also. “Yessir. The fighting seems to all be over. The Gubru have been concentrating their energies around the Port and the Archipelago, so far. There’s been little activity here in the mountains, except this perpetual harassment by robots dropping coercion gas. But the enemy has established a firm presence every place that was colonized.”
“Where do you get your information?”
“Mostly from invader broadcasts and censored commercial stations in Port Helenia. Th’ General also sent runners and observers off in all directions. Some of them have reported back, already.”
“Who’s got runners… ?”
“The Gen—… um.” Micah looked a bit embarrassed. “Ah, some of the chims find it hard to pronounce Miss Athac—… Miss Athaclena’s name, sir. So, well…” His voice trailed off.
Robert sniffed. I’m going to have to have a talk with that girl, he thought.
He lifted his water glass and asked, “Who did she send to Port Helenia? That’s going to be a touchy place for a spy to get into.”
Dr. Soo answered without much enthusiasm. “Athaclena chose a chim named Fiben Bolger.”
Robert coughed, spraying water over his robe. Dr. Soo hurried on. “He is a militiaman, captain, and Miss Athaclena figured that spying around in town would require an … um… unconventional approach.”