Now he was glad when he arrived on the westward slope. As the sun sank lower, this was the side on which the wind did not bite quite as fiercely. Fiben shivered as he plodded on, slowly gaining on the diminishing crowd above him.
“Slow down, Gailet,” he muttered. “Can’t you drag your feet or somethin’? You don’t haveta answer every damn question the very second it’s asked. Can’t you tell I’m comin’?”
A dismal part of him wondered if she already knew, and maybe didn’t care.
88
Gailet
She found it increasingly hard to feel that it mattered. And the cause of her depression was more than just the fatigue of a long, hard day, or the burden of all these bewildered chims relying upon her to lead them ever onward and upward through a maze of ever more demanding trials.
Nor was it the constant presence of the tall chen named Irongrip. It certainly was frustrating to see him breeze through tests that other, better chims failed. And as the other Sponsors’ -Choice, he was usually right behind her, wearing an infuriating, smug grin. Still, Gailet could grit her teeth and ignore him most of the time.
Nor, even, did the examinations themselves bother her much. Hell, they were the-best part of the day! Who was the ancient human sage who had said that the purest pleasure, and the greatest force in the ascent of Mankind, had been the skilled worker’s joy in her craft? While Gailet was concentrating she could block out nearly everything, the world, the Five Galaxies, all but the challenge to show her skill. Underneath all the crises and murky questions of honor and duty, there was always a clean sense of satisfaction whenever she finished a task and knew she had done well even before the Institute examiners told her so.
No, the tests weren’t what disturbed her. What bothered Gailet most was the growing suspicion that she had made the wrong choice after all.
I should have refused to participate, she thought. I should have simply said no.
Oh, the logic was the same as before. By protocol and all of the rules, the Gubru had put her in a position where she simply had no choice, for her own good and the good of her race and clan.
And yet, she also knew she was being used. It made her feel defiled.
During that last week of study at the Library she had found herself repeatedly dozing off under the screens, bright with arcane data. Her dreams were always disturbed, featuring birds holding threatening instruments. Images of Max and Fiben and so many others lingered, thickening her thoughts every time she jerked awake again.
Then the Day arrived. She had donned her robe almost with a sense of relief that now, at least, it was all finally approaching an end. But what end?
A slight chimmie emerged from the most recent test booth, mopped her forehead with the sleeve of her silvery tunic, and walked tiredly over to join Gailet. Michaela Nod-dings was only an elementary school teacher, and a green card, but she had proven more adaptable and enduring than quite a few blues, who were now walking the lonely spiral back down again. Gailet felt deep relief on seeing her new friend still among the candidates. She reached out to take the other chimmie’s hand.
“I almost flunked that one, Gailet,” Michaela said. Her fingers trembled in Gailet’s grasp.
“Now, don’t you dare flake out on me, Michaela,” Gailet said soothingly. She brushed her companion’s sweaty locks. “You’re my strength. I couldn’t go on if you weren’t here.”
In Michaela’s brown eyes was a soft gratitude, mixed with irony. “You’re a liar, Gailet. That’s sweet of you to say, but you don’t need any of us, let alone little me. Whatever I can pass, you take at a breeze.”
Of course that wasn’t strictly true. Gailet had figured out that the examinations offered by the Uplift Institute were scaled somehow, in order to measure not only how intelligent the subject was but also how hard he or she was trying. Sure, Gailet had advantages over most of the other chims, in training and perhaps in IQV but at each stage her own trials got harder, too.
Another chim — a Probationer known as Weasel — emerged from the booth and sauntered over to where Irongrip waited with a third member of their band. Weasel did not seem to be much put out. In fact, all three of the surviving Probationers looked relaxed, confident. Irongrip noticed Gailet’s glance and winked at her. She turned away quickly.
One last chim came out then and shook his head. “That’s it,” he said.
“Then Professor Simmins… ?”
When he shrugged, Gailet sighed. This just did not make sense. Something was wrong when fine, erudite chims were failing, and yet the tests did not cull out Irongrip’s bunch from the very start.
Of course, the Uplift Institute might judge “advancement” differently than the human-led Earthclan did. Irongrip and Weasel and Steelbar were intelligent, after all. The Ga-lactics might not view the Probationers’ various character flaws as all that terrible, loathsome as they were to Terrans.
But no, that wasn’t the reason at all, Gailet realized, as she and Michaela stepped past the remaining twenty or so to lead the way upward again. Gailet knew that something else had to be behind this. The Probies were just too cocky. Somehow they knew that a fix was in.
It was shocking. The Galactic Institutes were supposed to be above reproach. But there it was. She wondered what, if anything, could be done about it.
As they approached the next station — this one manned by a plump, leathery Soro inspector and six robots — Gailet looked around and noticed something for the first time, that nearly all of the brightly dressed Galactic observers — the aliens unaffiliated with the Institute who had come to watch and engage in informal diplomacy — nearly all of them had drifted away. A few could still be seen, moving swiftly downslope and to the east, as if drawn by something interesting happening off that way.
Of course they won’t bother telling us what’s going on, she thought bitterly.
“Okay, Gailet,” Michaela sighed. “Yo’ti first again. Show ’em we can talk real good.”
So, even a prim schoolteacher will use grunt dialect as an affectation, a bond. Gailet sighed. “Yeah. Me go do that thing.”
Irongrip grinned at her, but Gailet ignored him as she stepped up to bow to the Soro and submit to the attentions of the robots.
89
Galactics
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon strutted back and forth under the flapping fabric of the Uplift Institute pavilion. The Gubru admiral’s voice throbbed with a vibrato of outrage.
“Intolerable! Unbelievable! Impermissible! This invasion must be stopped, held back, put into abeyance!”
The smooth routine of a normal Uplift Ceremony had been shattered. Officials and examiners of the Institute — Galactics of many shapes and sizes — now rushed about under the great canopy, hurriedly consulting portable Libraries, seeking precedents for an event none of them had ever witnessed or imagined before. An unexpected disturbance had triggered chaos everywhere, and especially in the corner where the Suzerain danced its outrage before a spiderlike being.
The Grand Examiner, an arachnoid Serentini, stood relaxed in a circle of datatanks, listening attentively to the Gubru officer’s complaint.
“Let it be ruled a violation, an infraction, a capital of-fense! My soldiers shall enforce propriety severely!” The Suzerain fluffed its down to display the pinkish tint already visible under the outer feathers — as if the Serentini would be impressed to see that the admiral was nearly female, almost a queen.
But the sight failed to impress the Grand Examiner. Serentini were all female, after all. So what was the big deal?