That was where Uthacalthing found the artifact.
He bent and picked it up. Examined it.
Native chert, chipped and rubbed, flaked along sharp, glassy-edged lines, dull and round on one side where a hand could find a grip. …
Uthacalthing’s corona waved. Lurrunanu took form again, wafting among his silvery tendrils. The glyph rotated slowly as Uthacalthing turned the little stone axe in his hand. He contemplated the primitive tool, and lurrunanu regarded Kault, still whistling to himself higher up the hillside.
The’ glyph tensed and launched itself toward the hulking Thennanin.
Stone tools — among the hallmarks of pre-sentience, Uthacalthing thought. He had asked Athaclena to watch out for signs, for there were rumors… tales that told of sight-ings in the wild back country of Garth…
“Uthacalthing!”
He swiveled, shifting to hide the artifact behind his back as he faced the big Thennanin. “Yes, Kault?”
“I…” Kault appeared uncertain. “Metoh kanmi, b’twuil’ph… I…” Kault shook his head. His eyes closed and opened again. “I wonder if you have tested these fruits for my needs, as well as yours.”
Uthacalthing sighed. What does it take? Do Thennanin have any curiosity at all?
He let the crude artifact slip out of his hand, to drop into the river mud where he had found it. “Aye, my colleague. They are nutritious, so long as you remember to take your supplements.”
He walked back to join his companion for a fireless supper by the growing sparkle of the galaxies’ light.
52
Athaclena
Gorillas dropped over both sharp rims of the narrow canyon, lowering themselves on stripped forest vines. They slipped carefully past smoking crevices where recent explosions had torn the escarpment. Landslides were still a danger. Nevertheless, they hurried.
On their way down they passed through shimmering rainbows. The gorillas’ fur glistened under coatings of tiny water droplets.
A terrible growling accompanied their descent, echoing from the cliff faces and covering their labored breathing. It had hidden the noise of battle, smothering the bellow of death that had raged here only minutes before. Briefly, the dinsome waterfall had had competition but not for long.
Where its fremescent torrent had formerly fallen to crash upon glistening smooth stones, it now splattered and spumed against torn metal and polymers. Boulders’dislodged from the cliffsides had pounded the new debris at the foot of the falls. Now the water worked it flatter still.
Athaclena watched from atop the overlooking bluffs. “We do not want them to know how we managed this,” she said to Benjamin.
“The filament we bunched up under the falls was pretreated to decay. It’ll all wash away within a few hours, ser. When the enemy gets a relief party in here, they won’t know what ruse we used to trap this bunch.”
They watched the gorillas join a party of chim warriors poking through the wreckage of three Gubru hover tanks. Finally satisfied that all was clear, the chims slung their crossbows and began pulling out bits of salvage, directing the gorillas to lift this boulder or that shattered piece of armor plate out of the way.
The enemy patrol had come in fast, following the scent of hidden prey. Their instruments told them that someone had taken refuge behind the waterfall. And it was a perfectly logical place for such a hideaway — a barrier hard for their normal detectors to penetrate. Only their special resonance scanners had flared, betraying the Earthlings who had taken technology under there.
In order to take those hiding by surprise, the tanks had flown directly up the canyon, covered overhead by swarming battle drones of the highest quality, ready for combat.
Only they did not find much of a battle awaiting them. There were, in fact, no Earthlings at all behind the torrent. Only bundles of thin, spider-silk fiber.
And a trip wire.
And — planted all through the cliffsides — a few hundred kilos of homemade nitroglycerin.
Water spray had cleared away the dust, and swirling eddies had carried off myriad tiny pieces. Still the greater part of the Gubru strike force lay where it had been when explosions rocked the overhanging walls, filling the sky with a rain of dark volcanic stone. Athaclena watched a chim emerge from the wreckage. He hooted and held up a small, deadly Gubru missile. Soon a stream of alien munitions found its way into the packs of the waiting gorillas. The large pre-sentients began climbing out again through the multi-hued spray.
Athaclena scanned the narrow streaks of blue sky that could be seen through the forest canopy. In minutes the invader would have its fighters here. The colonial irregulars must be gone by then, or their fate would be the same as the poor chims who rose last week in the Vale of Sind.
A few refugees had made it to the mountains after that debacle. Fiben Bolger was not one of them. No messenger had come with Gailet Jones’s promised notes. For lack of information, Athaclena’s staff could only guess how long it would take for the Gubru to respond to this latest ambush.
“Pace, Benjamin.” Athaclena glanced meaningfully at her timepiece.
Her aide nodded. “I’ll go hurry ’em up, ser.” He sidled over next to their signaler. The young chimmie began waving flapping flags.
More gorillas and chims appeared at the cliff edge, scrambling up onto the wet, glistening grass. As the chim scavengers climbed out of the water-carved chasm, they grinned at Athaclena and hurried off, guiding their larger cousins toward secret paths through the forest.
Now she no longer needed to coax and persuade., For Athaclena had become an honorary Earthling. Even those who had earlier resented taking orders “from an Eatee” now obeyed her quickly, cheerfully.
It was ironic. In signing the articles that made them consorts, she and Robert had made it so that they now saw less of each other than ever. She no longer needed his authority as the sole free adult human, so he had set forth to raise havoc of his own elsewhere.
I wish I had studied such things better, she pondered. She was unsure just what was legally implied by signing such a document before witnesses. Interspecies “marriages” tended to be more for official convenience than anything else. Partners in a business enterprise might “marry,” even though they came from totally different genetic lines. A reptiloid Bi-Gle might enter into consort with a chitinous F’ruthian. One did not expect issue from such joinings. But it was generally expected that the partners appreciate each other’s company.
She felt funny about the whole thing. In a special sense, she now had a “husband.” And he was not here. So it was for Mathicluanna, all those long, lonely years, Athaclena thought, fingering the locket that hung from a chain around her throat. Uthacalthing’s message thread had joined her mother’s in there. Perhaps their laylacllapt’n spirits wound together in there, close as their bond had been in life.
Perhaps I begin to comprehend something I never understood about them, she wondered.
“Ser?… Uh, ma’am?”
Athaclena blinked and looked up. Benjamin was motioning to her from the trailhead, where one of the ubiquitous vine clusters came together around a small pool of pinkish water. A chimmie technician squatted by an opening in the crowded vines, adjusting a delicate instrument.
Athaclena approached. “You have word from Robert?”
“Yesser,” the chimmie said. “I definitely am detecting one of th’ trace chemicals he took along with him.”
“Which is it?” she asked tensely.
The chimmie grinned. “Th’ one with th’ left-handed adenine spiral. It’s the one we’d agreed would mean victory.”