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“Precedent is, indeed, interpretable in favor of your request. Shall I ask your comrades to indicate their choice by hand? Or by secret ballot?”

“Right!” came an Anglic whisper. The young human who had accompanied Uthacalthing grinned and gave Fiben a thumbs-up sign. Fortunately, none of the Gajactics were looking that way to witness the impertinence.

Fiben forced a serious expression and bowed again. “Oh, a hand vote will do nicely, your honor. Thank you.”

Gailet was more bemused than anything as the election was held. She tried hard to decline her own nomination, but the same captation, the same implacable force that had kept her from speaking earlier made her unable to withdraw her name. She was chosen unanimously.

The contest for male representative was straightforward as well. Fiben faced Irongrip, looking calmly up into the tall Probationer’s fierce eyes. Gailet found that the best she could make herself do was abstain, causing several of the others to look at her in surprise.

Nevertheless, she almost sobbed with relief when the poll came in nine to three … in favor of Fiben Bolger. When he finally approached, Gailet sagged into his arms and sobbed.

“There. There,” he said. And it wasn’t so much the cliche as the sound of his voice that comforted her. “I told you I’d come back, didn’t I?”

She sniffed and rubbed away tears as she nodded. One cliche deserved another. She touched his cheek, and her voice was only slightly sardonic as she said, “My hero.”

The other chims — all except the outnumbered Probies — gathered around, pressing close in a jubilant mass. For the first time it began to look as if the ceremony just might turn into a celebration after all.

They formed ranks, two by two, behind Fiben and Gailet, and started forth along the final path toward the pinnacle where, quite soon, there would be a physical link from this world to spaces far, far away.

That was when a shrill whistle echoed over the small plateau. A new hover car landed in front of the chims, blocking their path. “Oh, no,” Fiben groaned. For he instantly recognized the barge carrying the three Suzerains of the Gubru invasion force.

The Suzerain of Propriety looked dejected. It drooped on its perch, unable to lift its head even to look down at them. The other two rulers, however, hopped nimbly onto the ground and tersely addressed the Examiner.

“We, as well, wish to present, offer, bring forward … a precedent!”

91

Fiben

How easily is defeat snatched from the jaws of victory?

Fiben wondered about that as he stripped out of his formal robe and allowed two of the chims to rub oil into his shoulders. He stretched and tried to hope that he would remember enough from his old wrestling days to make a difference.

I’m too old for this, he thought. And it’s been a long, hard day.

The Gubru hadn’t been kidding when they gleefully announced that they had found an out. Gailet tried to explain it to him while he got ready. As usual, it all seemed to have to do with an abstraction,

“As I see it, Fiben, the Galactics don’t reject the idea of evolution itself, just evolution of intelligence. They believe in something like what we used to call “Darwinism” for creatures all the way up to pre-sentients. What’s more, it’s assumed that nature is wise in the way she forces every species to demonstrate its fitness in the wild.”

Fiben sighed. “Please get to the point, Gailet. Just tell me why I have to go face to face against that momzer. Isn’t trial-by-combat pretty silly, even by Eatee standards?”

She shook her head. For a little while she had seemed to suffer from speechlock. But that had disappeared as her mind slipped into the familiar pedantic mode.

“No, it isn’t. Not if you look at it carefully. You see, one of the risks a patron race runs in uplifting a new client species all the way to starfaring intelligence is that by meddling too much it may deprive the client of its essence, of the very fitness that made it a candidate for Uplift in the first place.”

“You mean—”

“I mean that the Gubru can accuse humans of doing this to chims, and the only way to disprove it is by showing that we can still be passionate, and tough, and physically strong.”

“But I thought all those tests—”

Gailet shook her head. “They showed that everyone on this plateau meets the criteria for Stage Three. Even” — Gailet grimaced as she seemed to have to fight for the words — “even those Probies are superior, at least in most of the ways Institute regulations test for. They’re only deficient by our own, quaint, Earth standards.”

“Such as decency and body odor. Yeah. But I still don’t get—”

“Fiben, the Institute really doesn’t care who actually steps into the shunt, not once we’ve passed all its tests. If the Gubru want our male race-representative to prove he’s better by one more criterion — that of ‘fitness’ — well it’s precedented all right. In fact, it’s been done more often than voting.”

Across the small clearing, Irongrip flexed and grinned back at Fiben, backed up by his two confederates. Weasel and Steelbar joked with the powerful Probationer chief, laughing confidently over this sudden swerve in their favor.

Now it was Fiben’s turn to shake his head and mutter lowly. “Goodall, what a way to run a galaxy. Maybe Pratha-chulthorn was right after all.”

“What was that, Fiben?”

“Nothin’,” he said as he saw the referee, a Pila Institute official, approach the center of the ring. Fiben turned to meet Gailet’s eyes. “Just tell me you’ll marry me if I win.”

“But — ” She blinked, then nodded. Gailet seemed about to say something else, but that look came over her again, as if she simply could not find the phrases. She shivered, and in a strange, distant voice she managed to choke out five words.

“Kill — him — for — me, Fiben.”

It was not feral bloodlust, that look in her eyes, but something much deeper. Desperation.

Fiben nodded- He suffered no illusions over what Irongrip intended for him.

The referee called them forward. There would be no weapons. There would be no rules. Underground the rumbling had turned into a hard, angry growl, and the zone of “nonspace overhead flickered at the edges, as if with deadly lightning.

It began with a slow circling as Fiben and his opponent faced each other warily, sidestepping a complete circuit of the arena. Nine of the other chims stood on the upslope side, alongside Uthacalthing and Kault and Robert Oneagle. Opposite them, the Gubru and Irongrip’s two compatriots watched. The various Galactic observers and officials of the Uplift Institute took up the intervening arcs.

Weasel and Steelbar made fist signs to their leader and bared their teeth. “Go get ’im, Fiben,” one of the other chims urged. All of the ornate ritual, all of the arcane and ancient tradition and science had come to this, then. This was the way Mother Nature finally got to cast the tie-breaking vote.

“Be-gin!” The Pila referee’s sudden shout struck Fiben’s ears as an ultrasonic squeal an instant before the vodor boomed.

Irongrip was quick. He charged straight ahead, and Fiben almost decided too late that the maneuver was a feint. He started to dodge to the left, and at barely the last moment changed directions, striking out with his trailing foot.

The blow did not finish in the satisfying crunch he’d hoped for, but Irongrip did cry out and reel away, holding his ribs. Unfortunately, Fiben was thrown off balance and could not follow up his brief opportunity. In seconds it was gone as Irongrip moved forward again, more warily this time, with murder written in his eyes.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed, Fiben thought as they resumed circling.