Serious creatures, those birds. And dangerous as h.e.l.l.

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

But the a.n.a.logy 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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, b.u.t.the 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-cla.s.s beings whose Library-derived culture and technology were all but omnipotent long, long before humans rose -up out of Africa's savannah, blinking with the dawnlight of fearful curiosity. By the time man's lumbering slowships stumbled upon Galactic civilization, the Gubru and their clients had wrested aposition of some eminence among the powerful interstellar clans. Fierce conservatism and facile use of the Great Library had taken them far since their own patrons had found them on the Gubru homeworld and given them the gift of completed minds.

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 ident.i.ty . . . ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.sed through the ma.s.sive bureaucracy of the Library Inst.i.tute 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.

"Now," the vodor barked, perhaps with a note of relief. "State name and purposes."

"Uh, I'm F-Fiben . . . uh, s-s-ser." His hands fluttered in front of him. It was a bit of theater, but the Gubru might know that neo-chimpanzees under stress still spoke using parts of the brain originally devoted to hand control.

It certainly looked as if the Talon Soldier was frustrated. Its feathers ruffled, and it hopped a little dance. ". . . purpose . . . purpose . . . state your purpose in approaching the urban area!"

Fiben bowed again, quickly.

"Uh . . . th' hover won't work no more. Th' humans are all gone . . . n.o.body to tell us what to do at th' farm ..."

He scratched his head. "I figured, well, they must need food in town . . . and maybe some- somebody can fix th' cart in trade for grain . . . ?" His voice rose hopefully.

The second Gubru returned and chirped briefly to the one in charge. Fiben could follow its GalThree well enough to get the gist.

The hover was a real farm tool. It would not take a genius to tell that the rotors just needed to be unfrozen for it to run again. Only a helpless drudge would haul an antigravity truck all the way to town behind a beast of burden, unable to make such a simple repair on his own.

The first guard kept one taloned, splay-fingered hand over the vodor, but Fiben gathered their opinion of chims had started low and was rapidly dropping. The invaders hadn't even bothered to issue ident.i.ty cards to the neo-chimpanzee population.

For centuries Earthlings-humans, dolphins, and chims -- : had known the galaxies were a dangerous place where it was often better to have more cleverness than one was credited for. Even before the invasion, word had gone out among the chim population of Garth that it might be necessary to put on the old "Yes, ma.s.sa!" routine.

Yeah, Fiben reminded himself. But n.o.body ever counted on all the humans being taken away! Fiben felt a knot in his stomach when he imagined the humans-mels, ferns, and children-huddled behind barbed wire in crowded camps.

Oh yeah. The invaders would pay.

The Talon Soldiers consulted a map. The first Gubru uncovered its vodor and twittered again at Fiben.

"You may go," the vodor barked. "Proceed to the Eastside Garage Complex. . . . You may go ... Eastside Garage. . . . Do you know the Eastside Garage?"

Fiben nodded hurriedly. "Y-yessir."

"Good . . . good creature . . . take your grain to the town storage area, then proceed to the garage ... to the garage . . . good creature. . . . Do you understand?"

"Y-yes!"

Fiben bowed as he backed away and then scuttled with an exaggeratedly bowlegged gait over to the post where Tycho's reins were tied. He averted his gaze as he led the animal back onto the dirt embankment beside the road. The soldiers idly watched him pa.s.s, chirping contemptuous remarks they were certain he could not understand.

Stupid d.a.m.ned birds, he thought, while his disguised belt camera panned the fortification, the soldiers, a hover-tank that whined by a few minutes later, its crew sprawled upon its flat upper deck, taking in the late afternoon sun.

Fiben waved as they swept by, staring back at him.

I'll bet you'd taste just fine in a nice orange glaze, he thought after the feathered creatures.

Fiben tugged the horse's reins. "C'mon, Tycho," he urged. "We gotta make Port Helenia by nightfall."

Farms were still operating in the Valley of the Sind.

Traditionally, whenever a starfaring race was licensed to colonize a new world, the continents were left as much as possible in their natural state. On Garth as well, the major Earthling settlements had been established on an archipelago in the shallow Western Sea. Only those islands had been converted completely to suit Earth-type animals and vegetation.

But Garth was a special case. The BururalH had left a mess, and something had to be done quickly to help stabilize the planet's rocky ecosystem. New forms had to be introduced from the outside to prevent a complete biosphere collapse. That meant tampering with the continents.

A narrow watershed had been converted in the shadow of the Mountains of Mulun. Terran plants and animals that thrived here were allowed to diffuse into the foothills under careful observation, slowly filling some of the ecological niches left empty by the Bururalli Holocaust. It was a delicate experiment in practical planetary ecology, but one considered worthwhile. On Garth and on other catastrophe worlds the three races of the Terragens were building reputations as biosphere wizards. Even Mankind's worst critics would have to approve of work such as this.

And ye,t, something was jarringly wrong here. Fiben had pa.s.sed three abandoned ecological management stations on his way, sampling traps and tracer 'bots stacked in disarray.

It was a sign of how bad the crisis must be. Holding the humans hostage was one thing-a marginally acceptable tactic by modern rules of war. But for the Gubru to be willing to disturb the resurrection of Garth, the uproar in the galaxy must be profound.

It didn't bode well for the rebellion. What if the War Codes really had broken down? Would the Gubru be willing to use planet busters?

That's the General's problem, Fiben decided. I'm just a spy. She's the Eatee expert.

At least the farms were working, after a fashion. Fiben pa.s.sed one field cultivated with zygowheat and another with carrots. The robo-tillers went their rounds, weeding and irrigating. Here and there he saw a dispirited chim riding a spiderlike controller unit, supervising the machinery.

Sometimes they waved to him. More often they did not.

Once, he pa.s.sed a pair of armed Gubru standing in a furrowed field beside their landed flitter. As he came closer, Fiben saw they were scolding a chim farmworker. The avians fluttered and hopped as they gestured at the drooping crop. The foreman nodded unhappily, wiping her palms on her faded dungarees. She glanced at Fiben as he pa.s.sed by along the road, but the aliens went on with their rebuke, oblivious.

Apparently the Gubru were anxious for the crops to come in. Fiben hoped it meant they wanted it for their hostages. But maybe they had arrived with thin supplies and needed the food for themselves.

He was making good time when he drew Tycho off the road into a small grove of fruit trees. The animal rested, browsing on the Earth-stock gra.s.s while Fiben sauntered over behind a tree to relieve himself.

The orchard had not been sprayed or pest-balanced in some time, he observed. A type of stingless wasp was still swarming over the ping-oranges, although the secondary flowering had finished weeks before and they were no longer needed for pollination.

The air was filled with a fruity, almost-ripe pungency. The wasps climbed over the thin rinds, seeking access to the sweetness within.

Abruptly, without thinking, Fiben reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed a few of the insects. It was easy. He hesitated, then popped them into his mouth.

They were juicy and crunchy, a lot like termites. "Just doing my part to keep the pest population down," he rationalized, and his brown hands darted out to grab more. The taste of the crunching wasps reminded him of how long it had been since he had last eaten.

"I'll need sustenance if I'm to do good work in town tonight," he thought half aloud. Fiben looked around. The horse grazed peacefully, and no one else was in sight.

He dropped his tool belt and took a step back. Then, favoring his still tender left ankle, he leaped onto the trunk and shimmied up to one of the fruit-heavy limbs. Ah, he thought as he plucked an almost ripe reddish globe. He ate it like an apple, skin and all. The taste was tart and astringent, unlike the bland human-style food so many chims claimed to like these days.

He grabbed two more oranges and popped a few leaves into his mouth for good measure. Then he stretched back and closed his eyes.

Up here, with only the buzz of the wasps for company, Fiben could almost pretend he didn't have a care, in this world or any other. He could put out of his mind wars and all the other silly preoccupations of sapient beings.

Fiben pouted, his expressive lips drooping low. He scratched himself under his arm.

"Ook, ook."

He snorted-almost silent laughter-and imagined he was back in an Africa even his great-grandfathers had never seen, in forested hills never touched by his people's too-smooth, big-nosed cousins.

What would the universe have been like without men? Without Eatees? Without anyone at all but chimps?

Sooner or later we would've invented starships, and the universe might have been ours.

The clouds rolled by and Fiben lay back on the branch with narrowed eyes, enjoying his fantasy. The wasps buzzed in futile indignation over his presence. He forgave them their insolence as he plucked a few from the air as added morsels.

Try as he might, though, .he could not maintain the illusion of solitude. For there arrived another sound, an added drone from high above. And try as he might, he couldn't pretend he did not hear alien transports cruising uninvited across the sky.

A glistening fence more than three meters high undulated over the rolling ground surrounding Port Helenia. It was an imposing barrier, put up quickly by special robot machines right after the invasion. There were several gates, through which the city's chim population seemed to come and go without much notice or impediment. But they could not help being intimidated by the sudden new wall. Perhaps that was its basic purpose.

Fiben wondered how the Gubru would have managed the trick if the capital had been a real city and not just a small town on a rustic colony world.

He wondered where the humans were being kept.

It was dusk as he pa.s.sed a wide belt of knee-high tree stumps, a hundred meters before the alien fence. The area had been planned as a park, but now only splintered fragments lay on the ground all the way to the dark watchtower and open gate.

Fiben steeled himself to go through the same scrutiny as earlier at the checkpoint, but to his surprise no one challenged him. A narrow pool of light spilled onto the highway from a pair of pillar spots. Beyond, he saw dark, angular buildings, the dimly lit streets apparently deserted.

The silence was spooky. Fiben's shoulders hunched as he spoke softly. "Come on, Tycho. Quietly." The horse blew and pulled the floating wagon slowly past the steel-gray bunker.

Fiben chanced a quick glance inside the structure as he pa.s.sed. A pair of guards stood within, each perched on one knotted, stick-thin leg, its sharp, avian bill buried in the soft down under its left arm. Two saber-rifles lay on the counter beside them, near a stack of standard Galactic faxboards.

The two Talon Soldiers appeared to be fast asleep!

Fiben sniffed, his flat nose wrinkling once more at the over-sweet alien aroma. This was not the first time he had seen signs of weaknesses in the reputedly invincible grip of the Gubru fanatics. They had had it easy until now-too easy. With the humans nearly all gathered and neutralized, the invaders apparently thought the only possible threat was from s.p.a.ce. That, undoubtedly, was why all the fortifications he had seen had faced upward, with little or no provision against attack from the ground.

Fiben stroked his sheathed belt knife. He was tempted to creep into the guard post, slipping under the obvious alarm beams, and teach the Gubru a lesson for their complacency.

The urge pa.s.sed and he shook his head. Later, he thought. When it will hurt them more.

Patting Tycho's neck, he led the horse through the lighted area by the guard post and beyond the gate into the industrial part of town. The streets between the warehouses and factories were quiet-a few chims here and there hurrying about on errands beneath the scrutiny of the occasional pa.s.sing Gubru patrol skimmer.

Taking pains not to be observed, Fiben slipped into a side alley and found a windowless storage building not far from the colony's sole iron foundry. Under his whispered urging, Tycho pulled the floating hover over to the shadows by the back door of the warehouse. A layer of dust showed that the padlock had not been touched in weeks. He examined it closely. "Hmmm."

Fiben took a rag from his belt ap.r.o.n and wrapped it around the hasp. Taking it firmly in both hands, he closed his eyes and counted to three before yanking down hard.

The lock was strong, but, as he'd suspected, the ring bolt in the dpor was corroded. It snapped with a m.u.f.fled "crack!" Quickly, Fiben slipped the sheaf and pushed the door along its tracks. Tycho placidly followed him into the gloomy interior, the truck trailing behind. Fiben looked around to memorize the layout of hulking presses and metalworking machinery before hurrying back to close the- door again.

"You'll be all right," he said softly as he unhitched the animal. He hauled a sack of oats out of the hover and split it open on the ground. Then he filled a tub with water from a nearby tap. "I'll be back if I can," he added. "If not, you just enjoy the oats for a couple of days, then whinny. I'm sure someone will be by."