Uplift - The Uplift War Part 35

He met her eyes. "Nevertheless, you're doing what Dr. de Shriver asks, aren't you?"

She nodded. "Dr. de Shriver's nice. She says maybe I might get to go see Mommy and Daddy, sometime soon."

Robert winced. He would have to talk to de Shriver about deceiving the youngster. The chim in charge probably could not bear to tell the human child the truth, that she would be in their care for a long time to come. To send her to Port Helenia now would be to give away the secret of the gorillas, something even Athaclena was now determined to prevent.

"Take me down there, Robert." April demanded with a sweet smile. She pointed to a flat rock where the infant gorilla now capered before some of Robert's group. The chims laughed indulgently at the little male's antics. The satisfied, slightly smug tone in their voices was one Robert found understandable. A very young client race would naturally feel this way toward one even younger. The chims were very proprietary and parental toward the gorillas.

Robert, in turn, felt a little like a father with an unpleasant task ahead of him, one who must somehow break it to his children that the puppy would not remain theirs for long.

He carried April across to the other bank and set her down. The water temperature was much more bearable here. No, it was wonderful. He kicked off his moccasins and wriggled his toes in the tingling warmth.

April and the baby gorilla flanked Robert, resting their elbows on his knees. Elsie sat by his side. It was a brief, peaceful scene. If a neo-dolphin were magically to appear in the water, spy-hopping into view with a wide grin, the tableau would have made a good family portrait.

"Hey, what's that you've got in your mouth?" He moved his hand toward the little gorilla, who quickly shied back out of reach. It regarded him with wide, curious eyes.

"What's he chewing on?" Robert asked Elsie.

"It looks like a strip of plastic. But . . . but what's it doing here? There isn't supposed to be anything here that was manufactured on Garth."

"It's not Garth-made," someone said. They looked up. It was the chimmie who had served them their soup. She smiled and wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n before bending over to pick up the gorilla infant. It gave up the material without fuss. "All the little ones chew these strips. They tested safe, and we're absolutely positive nothing about it screams Terran!' to Gubru detectors."

Elsie and Robert exchanged a puzzled look. "How can you be so sure? What is the stuff?"

She teased the little ape, waving the strip before its face until it chirped and grabbed it, popping the well-masticated piece back into its mouth.

"Some of their parents brought shredded bits of it back from our first successful ambush, back at the Howletts Center. They said it 'smelled good.' Now the brats chew it all the time."

She grinned down at Elsie and Robert. "It's that super-plastic fiber from the Gubru fighting vehicles. You know, that material that stops bullets flat?"

Robert and Elsie stared.

"Hey, Kongie. How about that?" The chimmie cooed at the little gorilla. "You clever little thing, you. Say, if you like chewing armor plating, how about taking on something really tasty next? How about a city? Maybe something simple, like New York?"

The baby lowered the frayed, wet end long enough to yawn, a wide gaping of sharp, glistening teeth.

The chimmie smiled. "Yum! Y'know, I think little Kongie likes the idea."

54 Fiben "Hold still now," Fiben told Gailet as he combed his fingers through her fur.

He needn't have said anything. For although Gailet was turned away, presenting her back to him, he knew her face bore a momentary expression of beatific joy as he groomed her. When she looked like that-calm, relaxed, happy with the delight of a simple, tactile pleasure-her normally stern countenance took on a glow, one that utterly transformed her somewhat ordinary features.

It was only for a minute, unfortunately. A tiny, scurrying movement caught Fiben's eye, and he pounced after it on instinct before it could vanish into her fine hair.

"Ow!" she cried when his fingernails bit a corner of skin, as well as a small squirming louse. Her chains rattled as she slapped his foot. "What are you doing!"

"Eating," he muttered as he cracked the wriggling thing between his teeth. Even then, it didn't quite stop struggling.

"You're lying," she said, in an unconvincing tone of voice.

"Shall I show it to you?"

She shuddered. "Never mind. Just go on with what you were doing."

He spat out the dead louse, though for all their captors had been feeding them, he probably could use the protein. In all the thousands of times he had engaged in mutual grooming with other chims-friends, cla.s.smates, the Throop Family back on Cilmar Island-he had never before been so clearly reminded ofj>ne of the ritual's original purposes, inherited from the jungle of long ago-that of ridding another chim of parasites. He hoped Gailet wouldn't be too squeamish about doing the same for him. After sleeping on straw ticks for more than two weeks, he was starting to itch something awful.

His arms hurt. He had to stretch to reach Gailet, since they were chained to different parts of the stone room and could barely get close enough to do this.

"Well," he said. "I'm almost finished, at least with those places you're willing to uncover. I can't believe the chimmie who said pink to me, a couple of months ago, is such a prude about nudity."

Gailet only sniffed, not even deigning to answer. She had seemed glad enough to see him yesterday, when the renegade chims had brought him here from his former place of confinement. So many days of separate carceral isolation had made them as happy to see each other as long-lost siblings.

Now, though, it seemed she was back to finding fault with everything Fiben did. "Just a little more," she urged. "Over to the left."

"Gripe, gripe, gripe," Fiben muttered under his breath. But he complied. Chims needed to touch and be touched, perhaps quite a bit more than their human patrons, who sometimes held hands in public but seldom more. Fiben found it nice to have someone to groom after all this time. Almost as pleasurable as having it done to you was doing it for somebody else.

Back in college he had read that humans once restricted most of their person-to-person touching to their s.e.xual partners. Some dark-age parents had even refrained from hugging their kids! Those primitives hardly ever engaged in anything that could be likened to mutual grooming -- completely nons.e.xual scratching, combing, ma.s.saging one another, just for the pleasure of contact, with no s.e.x involved at all.

A brief Library search had verified this slanderous rumor, to his amazement. No historical anecdote had ever brought home to Fiben so well just how much agnosy and craziness poor human mels and ferns had endured. It made forgiveness a little easier when he also saw pictures of old-time zoos and circuses and trophies of "the hunt."

Fiben was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of keys rattling. The old-style wooden door slid open. Someone knocked and then walked in.

It was the chimmie who brought them their evening meals. Since being moved here, Fiben had not learned her name, but her heart-shaped face was striking, and somehow familiar.

Her bright zipsuit was of the style worn by the band of Probationers that worked for the Gubru. The costume was bound by elastic bands at ankles and wrists, and a holo-projection armband picted outstretched birds' talons a few centimeters into s.p.a.ce.

"Someone's comin' to see both of you," the female Probie said lowly, softly. "I thought you'd want to know. Have time to get ready."

Gailet nodded coolly. "Thank you." She hardly glanced at the chimmie. But Fiben, in spite of his situation, watched their jailer's sway as she turned and walked away.

"d.a.m.n traitors!" Gailet muttered. She strained against her slender chain, rattling it. "Oh, there are times when I wish I were a chen. I'd ... I'd ..."

Fiben looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

Gailet strained to turn and look at him. "What! You've maybe got a comment?"

Fiben shrugged. "Sure. If you were a chen, you just might be able to bust out of that skinny little chain. But then, they wouldn't have used something like that if you were a male chim, would they?"

He lifted his own arms as far as they would go, barely enough to bring them into her view. Heavy links rattled. The chafing hurt his bandaged right wrist, so he let his hands drop to the concrete floor.

"I'd guess there were other reasons she wishes she was male," came a voice from the doorway. Fiben looked up and saw the Probationer called Irongrip, the leader of the renegades. The chirri smiled theatrically as he rolled one end of his waxed mustache, an affectation Fiben was getting quite sick of.

"Sorry. I couldn't help but overhear that last part, folks."

Gailet's upper lip curled in contempt. "So you were listening. So what? All that means is you're an eavesdropper, as well as a traitor."

The powerfully built chim grinned. "Shall I go for voyeur, also? Why don't I have you two chained together, hm? Ought to make for lots of amus.e.m.e.nt, you like each other so much."

Gailet snorted. She pointedly moved away from Fiben, shuffling over to the far wall.

Fiben refused to give the fellow the pleasure of a response. He returned Irongrip's gaze evenly.

"Actually," the Probationer went on, in a musing tone, "it's pretty understandable, a chimmie like you, wishing she was a chen. Especially with that white breeding card of yours. Why, a white card's d.a.m.n near wasted on a girl!

"What I find hard to figure," Irongrip said to Fiben, "is why you two have been doin' what you were doin'-running around playing soldier for the man. It's hard to figure. You with a blue card, her with a white-jeez, you two could do it any time she's pink-with no pills, no asking her guardian, no by-your-leave 'from the Uplift Board. All th' kids you ever want, whenever you want 'em."

Gailet offered the chim a chilled stare. "You are disgusting."

Irongrip colored. It was especially p.r.o.nounced with his pale, shaved cheeks. "Why? Because I'm fascinated by what's been deprived me? With what I can't have?"

Fiben growled. "More like with what you can't do."

The blush deepened. Irongrip knew his feelings were betraying him. He bent over to bring his face almost even with Fiben's. "Keep it up, college boy. Who knows what you'll be able to do, once we've decided your fate." He grinned.

Fiben wrinkled his nose. "Y'know, the color of a chen's card isn't everything. F'rinstance, even you'd probably get more girls if you just used a mouthwash once in a whi-'

He grunted and doubled over as a fist drove into his abdomen. You pay for your pleasures, Fiben reminded himself as his stomach convulsed and he fought for breath. Still, from the look on the traitor's face he must have struck paydirt. Irongrip's reaction spoke volumes.

Fiben looked up to see concern written in Gailet Jones's eyes. The expression instantly turned to anger.

"Will you two stop it! You're acting like children . . . like pre-sentient-"

Irongrip whirled and pointed at her. "What do you know about it? Hm? Are you some sort of expert? Are you a member of the G.o.ddam Uplift Board? Are you even a mother, yet?"

"I'm a student of Galactic Sociology," Gailet said rather stiffly.

Irongrip laughed bittterly. "A t.i.tle given to reward a clever monkey! You must have really done some beautiful tricks on the jungle gym to get a real-as-life, scale-model, sheepskin doctorate!"

He crouched near her. "Haven't you figured it out yet, little miss? Let me spell it for you. We're all G.o.ddam pre-sentients! Go ahead. Deny it. Tell me I'm wrong!"

It was Gailet's turn to change color. She glanced at Fiben, and he knew she was remembering that afternoon at the college in Port Helenia, when they had climbed to the top of the bell tower and looked out over a campus empty of humans, filled only with chim students and chim faculty trying to act as if nothing had changed. She had to be remembering how bitter it had been, seeing that scene as a Galactic would.

"I'm a sapient being," she muttered, obviously trying to put conviction into her voice.

"Yeah," Irongrip sneered. "What you mean to say, though, is that you're just a little closer than the rest of us . . . closer to what the Uplift Board defines as a target for us neo-chims. Closer to what they think we ought to be.

"Tell me, though. What if you took a s.p.a.ce trip to Earth, and the captain took a wrong turn onto D-level hypers.p.a.ce, and you arrived a couple hundred years from now? What do you think would happen to your precious white card then?"

Gailet locked away. "Sic transit gloria mundi." Irongrip snapped his fingers. "You'd be a relic then, obsolete, a phase long bypa.s.sed in the relentless progress of Uplift." He laughed, reaching oui and taking her chin in his hand to make her meet his eyes. "You'd be Probationer, honey."

Fiben surged forward but was caught short by his chains. The jolting stop sent pain shooting up from his right wrist, but in his anger Fiben hardly noticed. He was too filled with wrath to be able to speak. Dimly, as he snarled at the other chen, he knew that the same held for Gailet. It was all the more infuriating because it was just one more proof that the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was right.

Irongrip met Fiben's gaze for a long moment before letting go of Gailet. "A hundred years ago," he went on, "I would've been somethin' special. They would've forgiven, ignored, my own little 'quirks and drawbacks.' They'd have given me a white card, for my cunning and my strength.

"Time is what decides it, my good little chen and chimmie. It's all what generation you're born in."

He stood up straight. "Or is it?" Irongrip smiled. "Maybe it also depends on who your patrons are, hm? If the standards change, if the target image of the ideal future Pans sapiens changes, well ..." He spread his hands, letting the implication sink in.

Gailet was the first to find her voice.

"You . . . actually . . . expect . . . th' Gubru ..."

Irongrip shrugged. "Time's are achangin', my darlings. I may yet have more grandkids than either of you."

Fiben found the key to drive out the incapacitating anger and unlock his own voice. He laughed. He guffawed. "Yeah?" he asked, grinning. "Well, first you'll haveta fix your other problem, boyo. How're you going to pa.s.s on your genes if you can't even get it up to-"

This time it was Irongrip's unshod foot that lashed out. Fiben was more prepared and rolled aside to take the kick at an angle. But more blows followed in a dull rain.

There were no more words, though, and a quick glance told Fiben that it was Irongrip's turn to be tongue-tied. Low sounds emerged as his mouth opened and closed, flecked with foam. Finally, in frustration, the tall chim gave up kicking at Fiben. He swiveled and stomped out.

The chimmie with the keys watched him go. She stood by the door, looking uncertain what to do.

Fiben grunted as he rolled over onto his back.

"Uh." He winced as he felt his ribs. None seemed to be broken. "At least Simon Legree wasn't able to perform a proper exit line. I half expected him to say: 'I'll be back, just you wait!' or somethin' equally original."

Gailet shook her head. "What do you gain by baiting him?"

He shrugged. "I got my reasons."

Gingerly, he backed against the wall. The chimmie in the billowing zipsuit was watching him, but when their eyes met she quickly blinked and turned to leave, closing the door behind her.

Fiben lifted his head and inhaled deeply, through his nose, several times.

"Now what are you doing?" Gailet asked.

He shook his head. "Nothin". Just pa.s.sin' the time."

When he looked again, Gailet had turned her back to him again. She seemed to be crying.

Small surprise, Fiben thought. It probably wasn't as much fun for her, being a prisoner, as it had been leading a rebellion. For all the two of them knew, the Resistance was washed up, finished, kaput. And there wasn't any reason to believe things had gone any better in the mountains. Athaclena and Robert and Benjamin might be dead or captured by now. Port Helenia was still ruled by birds and quislings.

"Don't worry," he said, trying to cheer her up. "You know what they say about the truest test of sapiency? You mean you haven't heard of it? Why it's just comin' through when the chimps are down!"

Gailet wiped her eyes and turned her head to look at him. "Oh, shut up," she said.

Okay, so it's an old joke, Fiben admitted to himself. But it was worth a try .

Still, she motioned for him to turn around. "Come on. It's your turn. Maybe . . ." She smiled weakly, as if uncertain whether or not to try a joke of her own. "Maybe I can find something to snack on, too."

Fiben grinned. He shuffled about and stretched his chains until his back was as close to her as possible, not minding how it strained his various hurts. He felt her hands working to unknot his tangled, furry thatch and rolled his eyes upward.

"Ah, aahh," he sighed.

A different jailer brought them their noon meal, a thin soup accompanied by two slices of bread. This male Probie possessed none of Irongrip's fluency. In fact, he seemed to have trouble with even the simplest phrases and snarled when Fiben tried to draw him out. His left cheek twitched intermittently in a nervous tic, and Gailet whispered to Fiben that the feral glint in the chim's eyes made her nervous.

Fiben tried to distract her. "Tell me about Earth," he asked. "What's it like?"

Gailet used a bread crust to sop up the last of her soup. "What's to tell? Everybody knows about Earth."