“Hmm. Well, yes. I am certain she could be helpful for a while. Tell you what, captain. I’ll put the matter to the Council in my next letter. But we must be sure of one thing. Her status is no longer military. The chims are to cease referring to her as a command officer. Is that clear?”
“Yessir, quite clear.” Robert only wondered how one enforced that sort of order on civilian neo-chimpanzees, who tended to call anybody and anything whatever they pleased.
“Good. Now, as for those formerly under your command … I do happen to have brought with me a few blank colonial commissions which we can assign to chims who have shown notable initiative. I have no doubt you’ll recommend names.”
Robert nodded. “I will, sir’.”
He recalled that one other member of their “army” besides himself had already been in the militia. The thought of Fiben — certainly dead for a long time, now — made him suddenly even more depressed. These caves! They’re driving me nuts. It’s getting harder and harder to bear the time I must spend down here.
Major Prathachulthorn was a disciplined soldier and had spent months in the Council’s underground refuge. But Robert had no such firmness of character. I’ve got to get out!
“Sir,” he said quickly. “I’d like to ask your permission to leave base camp for a few days, to run an errand down near Lome Pass … at the ruins of the Howletts Center.”
Prathachulthorn frowned. “The place where those gorillas were illegally gene-meddled?”
“The place where we won our first victory,” he reminded the commando, “and where we made the Gubru accept parole.”
“Hmph,” the major grunted. “What do you expect to find there?”
Robert suppressed an impulse to shrug. In his suddenly worsening claustrophobia, in his need for any excuse to get away, he pulled forth an idea that had until then only been a glimmer at the back of his mind.
“A possible weapon, sir. It’s a concept for something that might help a lot, if it worked.”
That piqued Prathachulthorn’s interest. “What is this weapon?”
“I’d rather not be specific right now, sir. Not until I’ve had a chance to verify a few things. I’ll only be gone three or four days at the most. I promise.”
“Hmm. Well.” Prathachulthorn’s lips pursed. “It will take that long just to put these data systems into shape. You’ll only get underfoot till that’s done. Afterwards, though, I’ll be needing you. We’ve got to prepare a report to the Council.”
“Yessir, I’ll hurry back.”
“Very well, then. Take Lieutenant McCue with you. I want one of my own men to see the countryside. Show McCue how you accomplished your little coup, introduce her to the leaders of the more important chim partisan bands in that area, then return without delay. Dismissed.”
Robert came to attention. I think I know now why I hate him, Robert realized as he saluted, performed an about-face, and walked out through the hanging blanket that served as a door to the subterranean office.
Ever since he had returned to the caves to find Prathachulthorn and his aides moving around like owners, patronizing the chims and judging everything they had all done together, Robert had been unable to stop feeling like a child who had, until that moment, been allowed to play a wonderful dramatic role, a really fun game. But now the child had to bear paternal pats on the head — strokes that burned, even if intended in praise.
It was an embarrassing analogy, and yet he knew that in a sense it was true after all.
Robert blew a silent sigh and hurried away from the office and dark armory he had shared with Athaclena, but which.now had been completely taken over by grownups.
Only when he was finally back under the tall forest canopy did Robert feel he could breathe freely again. The trees’ familiar scents seemed to cleanse his lungs of the dank cave odors. The scouts who flitted ahead of him and alongside were those he knew, quick, loyal, feral-looking with their crossbows and sooty faces. My chims, he thought, feeling a little guilty that it came to hjm in those words. But the feeling of proprietorship was there anyway. It was like the “old days” — before yesterday — when he had felt important and needed.
The illusion broke apart, though, the next time Lieutenant McCue spoke.
“These mountain forests are very beautiful,” she said. “I wish I’d taken the time to come up here before the war broke out.” The Earthling officer stopped by the side of the trail to touch a blue-veined flower, but it folded away from her fingers and retreated backward into the thicket. “I’ve read about these things, but this is my first chance to see them for myself.”
Robert grunted noncommittally. He would be polite and answer any direct question, but he wasn’t interested in conversation, especially with Major Prathachulthorn’s second in command.
Lydia McCue was an athletic young woman, with dark, well-cut features. Her movements, lithe like a commando’s — or an assassin’s — were by that same nature also quite graceful. Dressed in homespun kilt and blouse, she might have been taken for a peasant dancer, if it weren’t for the self-winding arbalest she cradled in the crook of one arm like a child. In hip pouches were enough darts to pincushion half the Gubru within a hundred kilometers. The knives sheathed at her wrists and ankles were for more than show.
She seemed to have very little trouble keeping up with his rapid pace through the criss-cross jungle mesh of vines. That was just as well, for he wasn’t about to slow down. At the back, of his mind Robert knew he was being unfair. She was probably a nice enough person in her own way, for a professional soldier. But for some reason everything likable about her seemed to irritate him all the more.
Robert wished Athaclena had consented to come along. But she had insisted on remaining in her glade near the caves, experimenting with tame vines and crafting strange, ornate glyphs that were far too subtle to be kenned by his own weak powers. Robert had felt hurt and stormed off, almost outracing his escorts for the first few kilometers.
“So much life.” The Earth woman kept pace beside him and inhaled the rich odors. “This is a peaceful place.”
You’re wrong on both counts, Robert thought, with a trace of contempt for her dull, human insensitivity to the truth about Garth, a truth he could feel all around him. Through Athaclena’s tutoring he now could reach out — albeit tentatively, awkwardly — and trace the life-waves that fluxed through the quiet forest.
“This is an unhappy land,” he replied simply. He did not elaborate, even when she gave him a puzzled look. His primitive empathy sense withdrew from her confusion.
For a while they moved in silence. The morning aged. Once the scouts whistled, and they took cover under thick branches as great cruisers lumbered overhead. When the way was clear Robert took to the trail again without a word.
At last, Lydia McCue spoke again. “This place we’re heading for,” she asked, “this Howletts Center. Would you please tell me about it?”
It was a simple request. He could not refuse, since Prathachulthorn had sent her along to be shown things. But Robert avoided her black eyes as he spoke. He tried to be matter-of-fact, but emotion kept creeping into his voice. Under her low prompting Robert told Lydia McCue about the sad, misguided, but brilliant work of the renegade scientists. His mother had known nothing of the Howletts Center, of course. It was only by accident that he himself had learned of it a year or so before the invasion, and he had decided to keep silent.
Of course the daring experiment was over now. It would take more than a miracle to save the neo-gorillas from sterilization, now that the secret was known, to people like Major Prathachulthorn.