The oily smoke churned and rolled below. She could distantly sense many minds down there, turbulent with fear.
“I will remain,” she said firmly. “You have said these others are a qualified rescue team. They can certainly find Robert and help him. Someone must stay and see if anything can be done for those below.”
With a human there might have been argument. But the chimps did not even consider contradicting a Galactic with a made up mind. Client-class sophonts simply did not do such things.
In Benjamin she sensed a partial relief. . . and a counterpoint of dread.
The three younger chims shouldered their packs. Solemnly they headed westward through the spine-stones, glancing back nervously until they passed out of sight.
Athaclena let herself feel relieved for Robert’s sake. But underneath it all remained a nagging fear for her father. The enemy must certainly have struck Port Helenia first.
“Come, Benjamin. Let’s see what can be done for those poor people down there.”
For all of their unusual and rapid successes in Uplift, Terran geneticists still had a way to go with neo-dolphins and neo-chimpanzees. Truly original thinkers were still rare in both species. By Galactic standards they had made great strides, but Earthmen wanted even more rapid progress. It was almost as if they suspected their clients might have to grow up very quickly, very soon.
When a good mind appeared in Tursiops or Pongo stock, it was carefully nurtured. Athaclena could tell that Benjamin was one of those superior specimens. No doubt this chim had at least a blue card procreation right and had already sired many children.
“Maybe I’d better scout ahead, ma’am,” Benjamin suggested. “I can climb these trees and stay above the level of the gas. I’ll go in and find out how things lie, and then come back for you.”
Athaclena felt the chim’s turmoil as they looked out on the lake of mysterious gas. Here it was about ankle deep, but farther into the valley it swirled several man-heights into the trees.
“No. We’ll stay together,” Athaclena said firmly. “I can climb trees too, you know.”
Benjamin looked her up and down, apparently recalling stories of the fabled Tymbrimi adaptability. “Hmmm, your folk might have once been arboreal at that. No respect intended.” He gave her a wry, unhinged grin. “All right then, miss, let’s go.”
He took a running start, leaped into the branches of a near-oak, scampered around the trunk and darted down another limb. Then Benjamin jumped across a narrow gap to the next tree. He held onto the bouncing branch and looked back at her with curious brown eyes.
Athaclena recognized a challenge. She breathed deeply several times, concentrating. Changes began with a tingling in her hardening fingertips, a loosening in her chest. She exhaled, crouched, and took off, launching herself into the near-oak. With some difficulty she imitated the chim, move by move.
Benjamin nodded in approval as she landed next to him. Then he was off again.
They made slow progress, leaping from tree to tree and creeping around vine-entangled trunks. Several times they were forced to backtrack around clearings choked with the slowly settling fumes. They tried not to breathe when stepping over thicker wisps of the heavy gas, but Athaclena could not help picking up a whiff of pungent, oily stuff. She told herself that her growing itch was probably psychosomatic.
Benjamin kept glancing at her surreptitiously. The chim certainly noticed some of the changes she underwent as the minutes passed — a limbering of the arms, a rolling of the shoulders and loosening and opening of the hands. He clearly had never expected to have a Galactic keep up with him this way, swinging through the trees.
He almost certainly did not know the price the gheer transformation was going to cost her. The hurt had already begun, and Athaclena knew this was only the beginning.
The forest was full of sounds. Small animals scurried past them, fleeing the alien smoke and stench. Athaclena picked up quick, hot pulses of their fear. As they reached the top of a knoll overlooking the settlement, they could hear faint cries — frightened Terrans groping about in a soot-dark forest.
Benjamins’ brown eyes told her that those were his friends down there. “See how the stuff clings to the ground?” he said. “It hardly rises a few meters over the tops of our buildings. If only we’d built one tall structure!”
“They would have blasted that building first,” Athaclena pointed out. “And then released their gas.”
“Hmmph.” Benjamin nodded. “Well, let’s go see if any of my mates made it into the trees. Maybe they managed to help a few of the humans get high enough as well.”
She did not question Benjamin about his hidden fear — the thing he could not bring himself to mention. But there was something added to his worry about the humans and chims below, as if that were not already enough.
The deeper they went into the valley, the higher among the branches they had to travel. More and more often they were forced to drop down, stirring the smoky, unraveling wisps with their feet as they hurried along their arboreal highway. Fortunately, the oily gas seemed to be dissipating at last, growing heavier and precipitating in a fine rain of gray dust.
Benjamin’s pace quickened as they caught glimpses of the off-white buildings of the Center beyond the trees. Athaclena followed as well as she could, but it was getting harder and harder to keep up with the chim. Enzyme exhaustion took its toll, and her corona was ablaze as her body tried to eliminate heat buildup.
Concentrate, she thought as she crouched on one waving branch. Athaclena flexed her legs and tried to sight on the blur of dusty leaves and twigs opposite her.
Go.
She uncoiled, but by now the spring was gone from her leap. She barely made it across the two-meter gap. Athaclena hugged the bucking, swaying branch. Her corona pulsed like fire.
She clutched the alien wood, breathing open-mouthed, unable to move, the world a blur. Maybe it’s more than just gheer pain, she thought. Maybe the gas isn’t just designed for Terrans. It could be killing me.
It took a couple of moments for her eyes to focus again, and then she saw little more than a black-bottomed foot covered with brown fur … Benjamin, clutching the tree branch nimbly and standing over her.
His hand softly touched the waving, hot tendrils of her corona. “You just wait here and rest, miss. I’ll scout ahead an’ be right back.”
The branch shuddered once more, and he was gone.
Athaclena lay still. She could do little else except listen to faint sounds coming from the direction of the Howletts Center. Nearly an hour after the departure of the Gubru cruiser she could still hear panicky chimp shrieks and strange, low cries from some animal she couldn’t recognize.
The gas was dissipating but it still stank, even up here. Athaclena kept her nostrils closed, breathing through her mouth.
Pity the poor Earthlings, whose noses and ears must remain open all the time, for all the world to assault at will. The irony did not escape her. For at least the creatures did not have to listen with their minds.
As her corona cooled, Athaclena felt awash in a babble of emotions… human, chimpanzee, and that other variety that flickered in and out, the “stranger” that had by now become almost familiar. Minutes passed, and Athaclena felt a little better… enough to crawl along the limb to where .branch met trunk. She sat back against the rough bark with a sigh, the flow of noise and emotion surrounding her.
Maybe I’m not dying after all, at least not right away.
Only after a little while longer did it dawn on her that something was happening quite nearby. She could sense that she was being watched — and from very close! She turned and drew her breath sharply. From the branches of a tree only six meters away, four sets of eyes stared back at her — three pairs deep brown and a fourth bright blue.