As the cameras panned back, Fiben did a quick count. “That’s everybody,” he said in awe. “I mean, allowing for recent casualties, it’s everybody who’s had any training or would be any good at all in a fight. It’s all or nothing.” He shook his head. “Clip my blue card if I can figure what she hopes to accomplish.”
Gailet glanced up at him. “Some blue card,” she sniffed. “And I’d have to say she knows exactly what she’s doing, Fiben.”
“But the city rebels were slaughtered out on the Sind.”
She shook her head. “That was then. We didn’t know the score. We hadn’t achieved any respect or status. Anyway, there weren’t any witnesses.
“But the mountain forces have won victories. They’ve been acknowledged. And now the Five Galaxies are watching.”
Gailet frowned. “Oh, Athaclena knows what she’s doing. I just didn’t know things were this desperate.”
They sat quietly for a moment longer, watching the insurgents advance slowly across orchards and winter-barren fields. Then Fiben let out another exclamation. “What?” Gailet asked. She looked where he pointed in the tank, and it was her turn to hiss in surprise.
There, carrying a saber rifle along with the other chim soldiers, strode someone they both knew. Sylvie did not seem uncomfortable with her weapon. In fact, she appeared an island of almost zenlike calm in the sea of nervous neo-chimpanzees.
Who would’ve figured it? Gailet thought. Who would’ve thought that about her?
They watched together. There was little else they could do.
107
Galactics
“This must be handled with delicacy, care, rectitude!” the Suzerain of Propriety proclaimed. “If necessary, we must meet them one on one.”
“But the expense!” wailed the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. “The losses to be expected!”
Gently, the high priest bent over from her perch and crooned to her junior.
“Consensus, consensus… Share with me a vision of harmony and wisdom. Our clan has lost much here, and stands in dire jeopardy of losing far more. But we have not yet forfeited the one thing that will maintain us even at night, even in darkness — our nobility. Our honor.”
Together, they began to sway. A melody rose, one with a single lyric. , ,
“Zoooon. …”
Now if only their strong third were here! Coalescence seemed so near. A message had been sent to the Suzerain of Beam and Talon urging that he return to them, join them, become one with them at last.
How, she wondered. How could he resist knowing, concluding, realizing at last that it is his fate to be my male? Can an individual be so obstinate?
The three of us can yet be happy!
But a messenger arrived with news that brought despair. The battle cruises in the bay had lifted off and was heading inland with its escorts. The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had decided to act. No consensus would restrain him.
The high priest mourned.
We could have been happy.
108
Athaclena
“Well, this may be our answer,” Lydia commented resignedly.
Athaclena looked up from the awkward, unfamiliar task of controlling a horse. Mostly, she let her beast simply follow the others. Fortunately, it was a gentle creature who responded well to her coronal singing.
She peered in the direction pointed out by Lydia McCue, where scattered clouds and haze partially obscured the western horizon. Already many of the chims were gesturing that way. Then Athaclena also saw the glint of flying craft. And she kenned the approaching forces. Confusion… determination… fanaticism… regret… loathing … a turmoil of alien-tinged feelings bombarded her from the ships. But one thing was clear above all.
The Gubru were coming with vast and overwhelming strength.
The distant dots took shape. “I believe you are right, Lydia,” Athaclena told her friend. “It seems we have our answer.”
The woman Marine swallowed. “Shall I order a dispersal? Maybe a few of us can get away.” She sounded doubtful.
Athaclena shook her head. A sad glyph formed. “No. We must play this out. Call all units together. Have the cavalry bring everyone to yonder hilltop.”
“Any particular reason we should make things easy for them?”
Above Athaclena’s waving tendrils the glyph refused to become one of despair. “Yes,” she answered. “There is a reason. The best reason in all the world.”
109
Galactics
The stoop-colonel of Talon Soldiers watched the ragged army of insurgents on a holo-screen and listened as its high commander screamed in delight.
“They shall burn, shall smoke, shall curl into cinders under our fire!”
The stoop-colonel felt miserable. This was intemperate language, bereft of proper consideration of consequences. The stoop-colonel knew, deep within, that even the most brilliant military plans would eventually come to nothing if they did not take into account such matters as cost, caution, and propriety. Balance was the essence of consensus, the foundation of survival.
And yet the Earthlings’ challenge had been honorable! It might be ignored. Or even met with a decent excess of force. But what the leader of the military now planned was unpleasant, his methods extreme.
The stoop-colonel noted that it had already come to think of the Suzerain of Beam and Talon as “he.” The Suzerain of Beam and Talon was a brilliant leader who had inspired his followers, but now, as a prince, he seemed blind to the truth.
To even think of the commander in this critical way caused the stoop-colonel physical pain. The conflict was deep and visceral. .
The doors to the main lift opened and out onto the command dais stepped a trio of white-plumed messengers — a priest, a bureaucrat, and one of the officers who had deserted to the other Suzerains. They strode toward the admiral and proffered a box crafted of richly inlaid wood. Shivering, the Suzerain of Beam and Talon ordered it opened.
Within lay a single, luxuriant feather, colored iridescent red along its entire length except at the very tip.
“Lies! Deceptions! An obvious hoax!” the admiral cried, and knocked the box and its contents out of the startled messengers’ arms.
The stoop-colonel stared as the feather drifted in eddies from the air circulators before fluttering down to the deck. It felt like sacrilege to leave it lying there, and yet the stoop-colonel dared not move to pick it up.
How could the commander ignore this? How could he refuse to accept the rich, blue shades spreading now at the roots of his own down? “The Molt can reverse again,” the Suzerain of Beam and Talon cried out. “It can happen if we win victory at arms!”
Only now what he proposed would not be victory, it would be slaughter.
“The Earthlings are gathering, clustering, coming together upon a single hillmount,” one of the aides reported. “They offer, display, present us with a single, simple target!”
The stoop-colonel sighed. It did not take a priest to tell what this meant. The Earthlings, realizing that there would be no fair fight, had come together to make their demise simple. Since their lives were already forfeit, there was only one possible reason.
They do it in order to protect the frail ecosystem of this world. The purpose of their lease-grant was, after all, to save Garth. In their very helplessness the stoop-colonel saw and tasted bitter defeat. They had forced the Gubru to choose flatly between power and honor.