“We are therefore doing as they have taught us — behaving as sapient creatures of thought and honor.
“In honor’s name then, and by the Codes of War, I now demand that you and your masters offer their parole, or face the consequences of our legal and righteous wrath!”
“He is doing it,” Athaclena whispered half in wonder.
Robert coughed as he tried not to laugh aloud. The Kwackoo seemed to grow more and more distressed as Benjamin spoke. When he finished, the feathery quadrupeds hopped and squawked. They puffed and preened and objected loudly.
Benjamin, though, would not be bluffed. He referred to his wrist chronometer then spoke three words.
The Kwackoo suddenly stopped protesting. Orders must have arrived, for all at once they bowed again, swiveled, and sped back to the center barge at a gallop.
The sun had risen above the line of hills to the east. Splashes of morning light blazed through the lanes of shattered trees. It grew warm out on the parlay ground, but the chims stood and waited. At intervals Benjamin glanced to his watch and called out the time remaining.
At the edge of the forest Athaclena saw their special weapons team begin setting up their only antimatter projector. Certainly the Gubru were aware of it, too.
She heard Robert softly counting out the minutes.
Finally — in fact nearly at the very last moment — the hatches of all three hover craft opened. From each emerged a procession. The entire complement of Gubru, dressed in the glistening robes of senior patrons, led the way. They crooned a high-pitched song, accompanied by the basso of their faithful Kwackoo.
The pageantry was steeped in ancient tradition. It had its roots in epochs long before life had crawled ashore on the Earth. It wasn’t hard to imagine how nervous Benjamin and the others must feel as those to be paroled assembled before them. Robert’s own mouth felt dry. “Remember to bow again,” he urged in a whisper.
Athaclena smiled, having the advantage of her corona. “Have no fear, Robert. He will remember.” And indeed, Benjamin folded his hands before him in the deeply respectful fashion of a junior client greeting a senior patron. The chims bowed low.
Only a flash of white betrayed the fact that Benjamin was grinning from ear to ear.
“Robert,” she said, nodding in satisfaction. “Your people have done very well by theirs, in only four hundred years.”
“Don’t give us the credit,” he answered. “It was all there in the raw from the start.”
The paroled avians departed toward the Valley of the Sind on foot. No doubt they would be picked up before long. Even if they were not, Athaclena had ordered that word go out. They were to reach home base unmolested. Any chim who touched one feather would be outlawed, his plasm dumped into sewers, his gene-line extinguished. The matter was that serious.
The procession disappeared down the mountain road. Then the hard work began.
Crews of chims hurried to strip the abandoned vehicles in the precious time remaining before retribution arrived. Gorillas chuffed impatiently, grooming and signing to one another as they awaited loads to carry off into the hills.
By then Athaclena had already moved her command post to a spine-covered ridge two miles farther into the mountains. She watched through binoculars as the last salvage was loaded and hauled away, leaving nearly empty hulks under the shadows of the ruined buildings.
Robert had left much earlier, at Athaclena’s insistence. He was departing again on another mission tomorrow and needed to get his rest.
Her corona waved, and she kenned Benjamin before his softly slapping feet could be heard padding up the trail. When he spoke his voice was somber.
“General, we’ve had word by semaphore that the attacks in the Sind failed. A few Eatee construction sites were blown up, but the rest of the assault was nearly a total disaster.”
Athaclena closed her eyes. She had expected as much. They had too many security problems down below, for one thing. Fiben had suspected the town-side resistance was compromised by traitors.
And yet Athaclena had not disallowed the attacks. They had served a valuable purpose by distracting the Gubru defense forces, keeping their quick-reaction fighters busy for from here. She only hoped that not too many chims had lost their lives drawing the invader’s ire.
“The day balances out,” she told her aide. Their victories would have to be symbolic, she knew. To try to expel the enemy with forces such as theirs would be futile. With her growing knack at metaphors she likened it to a caterpillar attempting to move a tree.
No, what we win, we will achieve through subtlety.
Benjamin cleared his throat. Athaclena looked down at him. “You still do not believe we should have let them leave alive,” she told him.
He nodded. “No, ser, I do not. I think I understand some of what you told me about symbolism and all that… and I’m proud you seem to think we handled the parole ceremony all right. But I still believe we should’ve burned them all.”
“Out of revenge?”
Benjamin shrugged. They both knew that was how the majority of the chims felt. They couldn’t care less about symbols. The races of Earth tended to look upon all the bowing and fine class distinctions of the Galactics as the mincing foolishness of a mired, decadent civilization.
“You know that’s not what I think,” Benjamin said. “I’d go along with your logic — about us scoring a real coup here today just by getting them to talk to us — if it weren’t for one thing.”
“What thing is that?”
“The birds had a chance to snoop around the center. They saw traces of Uplift. And I can’t rule out the possibility they caught a glimpse of the gorillas themselves, through the trees!” Benjamin shook his head. “I just don’t think we should’ve allowed them to walk out of here after that,” he said.
Athaclena put a hand on her aide’s shoulder. She did not speak because there did not seem to be anything to say.
How could she explain it to Benjamin?
Syulff-kuonn took form over her head, whirling with satisfaction at the progress of things, things her father had planned.
No, she could not explain to Benjamin that she had insisted on bringing the gorillas along, on making them part of the raid, as a step in a long, involved, and very practical joke.
48
Fiben and Gailet
“Keep your head down!” Fiben growled.
“Will you stop snapping at me?” Gailet answered hotly. She lifted her eyes just to the tops of the surrounding grass stems. “I just want to see if—”
The words cut off as Fiben swept her supporting arms out from under her. She landed with a grunt of expelled air and rolled over spitting dirt. “You pit-scratching, flea-bitten—”
Her eyes remained eloquent even with Fiben’s hand clamped firmly over her mouth. “I told you,” he whispered. “With their sensors, if you can see them it means they’ve got to see you. Our only chance is to crawl like worms until we can find a way to blend back into the civilian chim population.!”
From not far away came the hum of agricultural machinery. The sound had drawn them here. If they could only get close enough to mingle with the farmers, they might yet escape the invaders’ dragnet.
For all Fiben knew, he and Gailet might be the only survivors of the ill-fated uprising in the valley. It was hard to imagine how the mountain guerrillas under Athaclena’s command could have done any better. The insurrection seemed all washed up from where he lay.
He drew back his hand from Gailet’s mouth. If looks could kill, he thought, contemplating the expression in her eyes. With her hair matted and mud-splattered, she was hardly the picture of the serene chimmie intellectual.