“I might have guessed!” Gailet sighed.
Max looked up from his pile of alien booty, his face a grimace of dismay. “I saw him. When the fence failed, he jumped over it and went running toward the fire. Um, I suppose I should’ve gone along, to keep an eye on him.”
“You should have done no such thing, Max. You were exactly right. Of all the foolish stunts!” She sighed. “I might have known he would do something like this. If he gets captured, and gives us away …” She stopped. There was no point in worrying the others more than necessary.
Anyway, she thought a little guiltily, the arrogant chen might only have been killed.
She bit her lip, though, and went to the parapet to look out in the direction of the afternoon sun.
40
Fiben
Behind Fiben came the familiar zip zip of the blue globe firing again. The Gubru squawked less than he might have expected; these were soldiers, after all. Still, they made quite a racket and their attention was diverted. Whether the cache defender was acting to cover his retreat or merely harassing the invaders on general principles, Fiben couldn’t speculate. In moments he was too busy even to think about it.
One look over the edge was enough to make him gulp. The cliff wasn’t a glassy face, but neither was it the sort of route a picnicker would choose to get down to the shining sands below.
The Gubru were shooting back at the blue globe now, but that couldn’t last long. Fiben contemplated the steep dropoff. All told, he would much rather have lived a long, quiet life as country ecologist, donated his sperm samples when required, maybe joined a real fun group family, taken up scrabble.
“Argh!” he commented in man dialect, and stepped off over the grassy verge.
It was a four-handed job, for sure. Gripping a knob with the tingers and tumb of his left foot, he swung way out to grab a second handhold and managed to lower himself to another ledge. A short stretch came easily, then it seemed he needed the grasping power of every extremity. Thank Goodall Uplift had left his people with this ability. If he’d had feet like a human’s, he surely would have fallen by now!
Fiben was sweating, feeling around for a foothold that had to be there, when suddenly the cliff face seemed to lash out, batting away at him. An explosion sent tremors through the rock. Fiben’s face ground into the gritty surface as he clutched for dear life, his feet kicking and dangling in midair.
Of all the damn… He coughed and spat as a plume of dust floated down from the cliff edge. In peripheral vision he glimpsed bright bits of incandescent stone flying out through the sky, spinning down to hissing graves in the sea below.
The root-grubbing, cairn must’ve blown!
Then something whizzed by his head. He ducked but still caught a flash of blueness and heard, within his head, a chuckling of alien laughter. The hilarity reached a crescendo as something seemed to brush the back of his head, then faded as the blue light zipped off again, dropping to skip away southward, just above the waves.
Fiben wheezed and sought frantically for a foothold. At last he found purchase, and he was able to lower himself to the next fairly safe resting place. He wedged himself into a narrow cleft, out of sight from the clifftop. Only then did he spare the extra energy to curse.
Some day, Uthacalthing. Some day.
Fiben wiped dust from his eyes and looked down.
He had made it about halfway to the beach. If he ever reached the bottom safely it should be an easy walk to the closed amusement park at the northwestern corner of Aspinal Bay. From that point it ought to be simple to disappear into back alleys and side streets.
The next few minutes would tell. The survivors of the Gubru patrol might assume he had been killed in the explosion, blown out to sea along with debris from the cache. Or perhaps they’d figure he would have fled by some other route. After all, only an idiot would try to climb down a bluff like this one without equipment.
Fiben hoped he had it thought out right, because if they came down here looking for him his goose was as surely cooked as those birds in the chancery fire.
Just ahead the sun was settling toward the western horizon. Smoke from this afternoon’s conflagration had spread far enough to contribute brilliant umber and crimson hues to the gathering sunset. Out on the water he saw a few boats, here and there. Two cargo barges steamed slowly toward the distant islands — low, brown shapes barely visible on the decks — no doubt carrying food for the hostage human population.
Too bad some of the salts in the seawater on Garth were toxic to dolphins. If the third race of Terragens had been able to establish itself here, it would have been a lot harder for the enemy to isolate the inhabitants of the archipelago so effectively. Besides, ’fins had their own way of thinking. Perhaps they’d have come up with an idea or two Fiben’s people had missed.
The southern headlands blocked Fiben’s view of the port. But he could see traces of gleaming silver, Gubru warships or tenders involved in the construction of space defenses.
Well, Fiben thought, nobody’s come for me yet. No hurry, then. Catch your breath before trying the rest of the trip.
This had been the easy part.
Fiben reached into his pocket and pulled out the shimmering thread he had found in the niche. It might easily be a spider web, or something similarly insignificant. But it was the only thing he had to show for his little adventure. He didn’t know how he would tell Athaclena that his efforts had come only to this. Well, not only this. There was also the destruction of the Tymbrimi Diplomatic Cache. That’d be another thing to have to explain.
He took out his monocular and unscrewed the lens cover. Fiben carefully wrapped the thread into the cap and replaced it. He put the magnifier away.
Yeah, it was going to be a real nice sunset. Embers from the fire sparkled, swept into whirling plumes by Gubru ambulances screaming back and forth from the top of the bluffs. Fiben considered reaching into a pocket for the rest of the peanuts while he watched, but right now his thirst was worse than his hunger. Most modern chims ate too much protein, anyway.
Life’s rough, he thought, trying to find a comfortable position in the narrow notch. But then, it’s never been easy for client-class beings, has it?
There you are, minding your own business in some rain forest, perfectly adequate in your ecological niche, then bam\ Some authoritarian guy with delusions of godhood is sitting on your chest, forcing the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge down your throat. From then on you’re inadequate, because you’re being measured against the “higher” standard of your patron; no freedom; you can’t even breed as you please, and you’ve got all those “responsibilities” — Who ever heard of responsibilities back in the jungle? — responsibilities to your patrons, to your descendants. …
Rough deal. But in the Five Galaxies there’s only one alternative, extermination. Witness the former tenants of Garth.
Fiben licked the sweat salt from his lips and knew that it was nervous reaction that had brought on the momentary wave of bitterness. There was no point to recriminations anyway. If he were a race representative — one of those few chims deputized to speak for all neo-chimpanzees before the Terragens and the great Galactic Institutes — the issues might be worth contemplating. As it was, Fiben realized he was just procrastinating.
I guess they forgot about me, after all, he thought, wondering at his luck.
Sunset reached its peak in a glory of color and texture, casting rich red and orange streamers across Garth’s shallow sea.
Hell, after a day like this, what was climbing down a steep cliff in the dark? Anticlimax, that was all.