The Uplift War

PART TWO

Patriots

24

Fiben

Tall, gangling, storklike figures watched the road from atop the roof of a dark, low-slung bunker. Their silhouettes, outlined against the late afternoon sun, were in constant motion, shifting from one spindly leg to another in nervous energy as if the slightest sound would be enough to set them into flight.

Serious creatures, those birds. And dangerous as hell.

Not birds, Fiben reminded himself as he approached the checkpoint. Not in the Earthly sense, at least.

But the analogy would do. Their bodies were covered with fine down. Sharp, bright yellow beaks jutted from sleek, swept-back faces.

And although their ancient wings were now no more than slender, feathered arms, they could fly. Black, glistening gravitic backpacks more than compensated for what their avian ancestors had long ago lost.

Talon Soldiers. Fiben wiped his hands on his shorts, but his palms still felt damp. He kicked a pebble with one bare foot and patted his draft horse on the flank. The placid animal had begun to crop a patch of blue native grass by the side of the road.

“Come on, Tycho,” Fiben said, tugging on the reins. “We can’t hang back or they’ll get suspicious. Anyway, you know that stuff gives you gas.”

Tycho shook his massive gray head and farted loudly.

“I told you so.” Fiben waved at the air.

A cargo wagon floated just behind the horse. The dented, half-rusted bin of the farm truck was filled with rough burlap sacks of grain. Obviously the antigrav stator still worked, butthe propulsion engine was kaput.

“Come on. Let’s get on with it.” Fiben tugged again.

Tycho gamely nodded, as if the workhorse actually understood. The traces tightened, and the hover truck bobbed along after them as they approached the checkpoint.

Soon, however, a keening sound on the road ahead warned of oncoming traffic. Fiben hurriedly guided horse and wagon to one side. With a high-pitched whine and a rush of air, an armored hovercraft swept by. Vehicles like it had been cruising eastward intermittently, in ones and twos, all day.

He looked carefully to make sure nothing else was coming before leading Tycho back onto the road. Fiben’s shoulders hunched nervously. Tycho snorted at the growing, unfamiliar scent of the invaders.

“Halt!”

Fiben jumped involuntarily. The amplified voice was mechanical, toneless, and adamant. “Move, move to this side… this side for inspection!”

Fiben’s heart pounded. He was glad his role was to act frightened. It wouldn’t be hard.

“Hasten! Make haste and present yourself!”

Fiben led Tycho toward the inspection stand, ten meters to the right of the highway. He tied the horse’s tether to a railed post and hurried around to where a pair of Talon Soldiers waited.

Fiben’s nostrils flared at the aliens’ dusty, lavender aroma. I wonder what they’d taste like, he thought somewhat savagely. It would have made no difference at all to his great-to-the-tenth-grandfather that these were sentient beings. To his ancestors, a bird was a bird was a bird.

He bowed low, hands crossed in front of him, and got his first close look at the invaders.

They did not seem all that impressive up close. True, the sharp yellow beak and razorlike talons looked formidable. But the stick-legged creatures were hardly much taller than Fiben, and their bones looked hollow and thin.

No matter. These were starfarers — senior patrons-class beings whose Library-derived culture and technology were all but omnipotent long, long before humans rose -up out of Africa’s sava

Fiben remembered huge, bellipotent battle cruisers, dark and invincible under their shimmering allochroous shields, with the lambent edge of the galaxy shining behind them…

Tycho nickered and shied aside as one of the Talon Soldiers — its saber-rifle loosely slung — stepped past him to approach the tethered truck. The alien climbed onto the floating farm-hover to inspect it. The other guard twittered into a microphone. Half buried in the soft down around the creature’s narrow, sharp breastbone, a silvery medallion emitted clipped Anglic words.

“State… state identity… identity and purpose!”

Fiben crouched, down and shivered, pantomiming fear. He was sure not many Gubru knew much about neo-chimps. In the few centuries since Contact, little information would have yet passed through the massive bureaucracy of the Library Institute and found its way into local branches. And of course, the Galactics relied on the Library for nearly everything.

Still, verisimilitude was important. Fiben’s ancestors had understood one answer to a threat when a counter-bluff was ruled out — submission. Fiben knew how to fake it. He crouched lower and moaned.

The Gubru whistled in apparent frustration, probably having gone through this before. It chirped again, more slowly this time.

“Do not be alarmed, you are safe,” the vodor medallion translated at a lower volume than before. “You are safe… safe… We are Gubru… Galactic patrons of high dan and family… You are safe… Young haltsentients are safe when they are cooperative… You are safe. …”

Half-sentients… Fiben rubbed his nose to cover a sniff of indignation. Of course that was what the Gubru were bound to think. And in truth, few four-hundred-year-old client races could be called fully uplifted.

Still, Fiben noted yet another score to settle.

He was able to pick out meaning here and there in the invader’s chirpings before the vodor translated them. But one short course in Galactic Three, back in school, was not much to go on, and the Gubru had their own accent and dialect.

“. . . You are safe …” the vodor soothed. “The humans do not deserve such fine clients… You are safe…” .

Gradually, Fiben backed away and looked up, still trembling. Don’t overact, he reminded himself. He gave the gangling avian creature an approximation of a correct bow of respect from a bipedal junior client to a senior patron. The alien would surely miss the slight embellishment — an extension of the middle fingers — that flavored the gesture.