He clambered back onto the branch amid the torn leaves. Fiben checked his watch. It took almost a minute for sirens to begin wailing again. Another for the floater to take off, wavering as it fought the surging convection of superheated air from the fire.
He looked to see what the chims at the perimeter fence had done. Through the spreading cloud of smoke, Fiben saw that the crowd had not fled. If anything, it had grown. Chims boiled out of nearby buildings to watch. There were hoots and shrieks, a sea of excited brown eyes.
He grunted in satisfaction. That was fine, so long as nobody made any threatening moves.
Then he noticed something else. With an electric thrill he saw that the watch disks were down! All along the barrier fence, the guardian buoys had fallen to the ground.
“Bugger all!” he murmured. “The dumb clucks are saving money on smart robotics. The defense mechs were all remotes!”
When the chancery blew up — for whatever ungodly reason it had chosen to do so — it must have taken out the central controller with it! If somebody just had the presence of mind to grab up some of those buoys…
He saw Max, a hundred meters to his left, scurry over to one of the toppled disks and prod it with a stick.
Good man, Fiben thought, and then dropped it from his mind. He stood up and leaned against the tree trunk while tossing off his sandals. He flexed his legs, testing the support. Here goes nothiri, he sighed.
Fiben took off at full tilt, running along the narrow branch. At the last moment he rode the bucking tip like a springboard and leaped off into the air.
The fence was set back a way from the stream. One of Fiben’s toes brushed the wire at the top as he sailed over. He landed in an awkward rollout on the lawn beyond.
“Oof,” he complained. Fortunately, he hadn’t banged his still-tender ankle. But his ribs hurt, and as he panted sucked in a lungful of smoke from the spreading fire. Coughing, he pulled a handkerchief from his coveralls and wrapped it over his nose as he ran toward the devastation.
Dead invaders lay strewn across the once pristine lawn. He leapt over a sprawled, Kwackoo corpse — four-legged and soot-covered — and ducked through a roiling finger of smoke. He barely evaded collision with a living Gubru. The creature fled squawking.
The invader bureaucrats were completely disorganized, flapping and running about in total chaos. Their noise was overwhelming.
Slamming sonic booms announced the return of soldiery, overhead. Fiben suppressed a fit of coughing and blessed the smoke. No one overhead would spot him, and the Gubru down here were in no condition to notice much. He hopped over singed avians. The stench from the fire kept even his most atavistic appetites at bay.
In fact, he was afraid he might be sick.
It was touch and go as he ran past the burning chancery. The building was completely in flames. The hair on his right arm curled from the heat.
He burst upon a knot of avians huddling in the shadow of a neighboring structure. They had been gathered in a moaning cluster around one particular corpse, a remnant whose once-bright plumage was now stained and ruined. When Fiben appeared so suddenly the Gubru scattered, chirping in dismay.
Am I lost? There was smoke everywhere. He swiveled about, casting for a sign of the right direction.
There! Fiben spied a tiny blue glow through the black haze. He set off at a run, though his lungs already felt afire. The worst of the noise and heat fell behind him as he dashed through the small copse of trees lining the top of the bluff.
Misjudging the distance, he almost stumbled, sliding to a sudden halt before the Tymbrimi Diplomatic Cache. Panting, he bent over to catch his breath.
In a moment he realized that it was just as well he’d stopped when he had. Suddenly the blue globe at the cairn’s peak seemed less friendly. It pulsed at him, throbbing volubly.
So far Fiben had acted in a series of flash decisions. The explosion had been an unexpected opportunity. It had to be taken advantage of.
All right, here I am. Now what? The blue globe might be original Tymbrimi equipment, but it also might have been set there by the invader.
Behind him sirens wailed and floaters began arriving in a continuous, fluttering whine. Smoke swirled about him, whipped by the chaotic comings and goings of great machines. Fiben hoped Gailet’s observers on the roofs of the buildings nearby were taking all this down. If he knew his own people, most of them would be staring slack-jawed or capering in excitement. Still, they might learn a lot from this afternoon’s serendipity.
He took a step forward toward the cairn. The blue globe pulsed at him. He lifted his left foot.
A beam of bright blue light lanced out and struck the ground where he had been about to step.
Fiben leaped at least a meter into the air. He had hardly landed before the beam shot forth again, missing his right foot by millimeters. Smoke curled up from smoldering twigs, joining the heavier pall from the burning chancery.
Fiben tried to back away quickly, but the damned globe wouldn’t let him! A blue bolt sizzled the ground behind him and he had to hop to one side. Then he found himself being herded the other way!
Leap, zap! Hop, curse, zap again!
The beam was too accurate for this to be an accident. The globe wasn’t trying to kill him. Nor was it, apparently, interested in letting him go!
Between bolts Fiben frantically tried to think how to get out of this trap… this infernal practical joke…
He snapped his fingers, even as he jumped from another smoldering spot. Of course!
The Gubru hadn’t messed with the Tymbrimi Cache. The blue globe wasn’t acting like a tool of the avians. But it was exactly the sort of thing Uthacalthing would leave behind!
Fiben cursed as a particularly near miss left one toe slightly singed. Damn bloody Eatees! Even the good ones were almost more than anybody could bear! He gritted histeeth and forced himself to take a single step forward.
The blue beam sliced through a small stone near his instep, cutting it precisely in half. Every instinct in Fiben screamed for him to jump again, but he concentrated on leaving the foot in place and taking one more leisurely step.
Normally, one would think that a defensive device like this would be programmed to give warnings at long range and to start frying in earnest when something came nearer. By such logic what he was doing was stupid as hell.
The blue globe throbbed menacingly and cast forth its lightning. Smoke curled from a spot between the lingers and tumb of his left foot.
He lifted the right.
First a warning, then the real thing. That was the way an Earthling defense drone would work. But how would a Tymbrimi program his? Fiben wasn’t sure he should wager so much on a wild guess. A client-class sophont wasn’t supposed to analyze in the middle of fire and smoke, and especially not when he was being shot at!
Call it a hunch, he thought.
His right foot came down and its toes curled around an oak twig. The blue globe seemed to. consider his persistence, then the blue bolt lanced out again, this time a meter in front of him. A trail of sizzling humus walked toward him in a slow zigzag, the crackle of burning grass popping louder as it came closer and closer.
Fiben tried to swallow.
It’s not designed to kill! he told himself over and over. Why should it be? The Gubru could have blasted that globe at long range long ago.
No, its purpose had to be to serve as a gesture, a declaration of rights under the intricate rules of Galactic Protocol, more ancient and ornate than Japanese imperial court ritual.
And it was designed to tweak the beaks of Gubru.
Fiben held his ground. Another chain of sonic booms rattled the trees, and the heat from the conflagration behind him seemed to be intensifying. All the noise pressed hard against his self-control.