“I was almost killed,” he pointed out, though this time he felt a bit churlish for mentioning it.
“But you weren’t killed. In fact, there may be ways to turn your little misadventure into an advantage. Out on the streets they’re still talking about what you did that night, you know.”
Was that a faint, tentative note of respect in her voice? A peace offering, perhaps?
Suddenly, it was all too much. Much too much for him. Fiben knew it was exactly the wrong thing to do, at exactly the wrong time, but he just couldn’t help himself. He broke up—
“A hook… ?” He giggled, though every shake seemed to rattle his brain in his skull. “A hooker?” He threw back his head and hooted, pounding on the arms of the chair. Fiben slumped. He guffawed, kicking his feet in the air. “Oh, Goodall. That was all I needed to be looking for!”
Gailet Jones glared at him as he gasped for breath. He didn’t even care, right now, if she called in that big chim, Max, to use the stunner on him again.
It was all just too much.
If the look in her eyes right then counted for anything, Fiben knew this alliance was already off to a rocky start.
31
Galactics
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon stepped aboard its personal barge and accepted the salutes of its Talon Soldier escort. They were carefully chosen troops, feathers perfectly preened, crests neatly dyed with colors noting rank and unit. The admiral’s Kwackoo aide hurried forth and took its ceremonial robe. When all had settled onto their perches the pilot took off on gravities, heading toward the defense works under construction in the low hills east of Port Helenia. The Suzerain of Beam and Talon watched in silence as the new city fence fell behind them and the farms of this small Earthling settlement rushed by underneath.
The seniormost stoop-colonel, military second in command, saluted with a sharp beak-clap. “The conclave went well? Suitably? Satisfactorily?” the stoop-colonel asked.
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon chose to overlook the impudence of the question. It was more useful to have a second who could think than one whose plumage was always perfectly preened. Surrounding itself with a few such creatures was one of the things that had won the Suzerain its candidacy. The admiral gave its inferior a haughty eyeblink of assent. “Our consensus is presently adequate, sufficient, it will do.”
The stoop-colonel bowed and returned to its station. Of course it would know that consensus was never perfect at this early stage in a Molt. Anyone could tell that from the Suzerain’s ruffled down and haggard eyes.
This most recent Command Conclave had been particularly indecisive, and several aspects had irritated the admiral deeply.
For one thing, the Suzerain of Cost and Caution was pressing to release much of their support fleet to go assist other Gubru operations, far from here. And as if that weren’t enough, the third leader, the Suzerain of Propriety, still insisted on being carried everywhere on its perch, refusing to set foot on the soil of Garth until all punctilio had been satisfied. The priest was all fluffed and agitated over a number of issues — excessive human deaths from coercion gas, the threatened breakdown of the Garth Reclamation Project, the pitiful size of the Planetary Branch Library, the Uplift status of the benighted, pre-sentient neo-chimpanzees.
On every issue, it seemed, there must be still another realignment, another tense negotiation. Another struggle for consensus.
And yet, there were deeper issues than these ephemera. The Three had also begun to argue over fundamentals, and there the process was actually starting to become enjoyable, somehow. The pleasurable aspects of Triumviracy were emerging, especially when they danced and crooned and argued over deeper matters.
Until now it had seemed that the flight to queenhood would be straight and easy for the admiral, for it had been in command from the start. Now it had begun to dawn on the Suzerain of Beam and Talon that all would not be easy. This was not going to be any trivial Molt after all.
Of course the best ones never were. Very diverse factions had been involved in choosing the three leaders of the Expeditionary Force, for the Roost Masters of home had hopes for a new unified policy to emerge from this particular Threesome. In order for that to happen, all of them had to be very good minds, and very different from each other.
Just how good and how different was beginning to become clear. A few of the ideas the others had presented recently were clever, and quite unnerving.
They are right about one thing, the admiral had to admit. We must not simply conquer, defeat, overrun the wolflings. We must discredit them!
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon had been concentrating so hard on military matters that it had got in the habit of seeing its mates as impediments, little more.
That was wrong, impertinent, disloyal of me, the admiral thought.
In fact, it was devoutly to be hoped that the bureaucrat and the priest were as bright in their own areas as the admiral was in soldiery. If Propriety and Accountancy handled their ends as brilliantly as the invasion had been, then they would be a trio to be remembered!
Some things were foreordained, the Suzerain of Beam and Talon knew. They had been set since the days of the Progenitors, long, long ago. Long before there were heretics and unworthy clans polluting the starlances — horrible, wretched wolflings, and Tymbrimi, and Thennanin, and Soro. … It was vital that the clan of Gooksyu-Gubru prevail in this era’s troubles! The clan must achieve greatness!
The admiral contemplated the way the eggs of the Earth-lings’ defeat had been laid so many years before. How the Gubru force had been able to detect and counteract their every move. And how the coercion gas had left all their plans in complete disarray. These had been the Suzerain’s own ideas — along with members of its personal staff, of course. They had been years coming to fruition.
The Suzerain of Beam and Talon stretched its arms, feeling tension in the flexors that had, ages before its species’ own uplifting, carried his ancestors aloft in warm, dry currents on the Gubru homeworld.
fes! Let my peers’ ideas also be bold, imaginative, brilliant…
Let them be almost, nearly, close to — but not quite — as brilliant as my own.
The Suzerain began preening its feathers as the cruiser leveled off and headed east under a cloud-decked sky.
32
Athaclena
“I am going crazy down here. I feel like I’m being kept prisoner!”
Robert paced, accompanied by twin shadows cast by the cave’s only two glow bulbs. Their stark light glistened in the sheets of moisture that seeped slowly down the walls of the underground chamber.
Robert’s left arm clenched, tendons standing out from fist to elbow to well-muscled shoulder. He punched a nearby cabinet, sending banging echoes down the subterranean passageways. “I warn you, Clennie, I’m not going to be able to wait much longer. When are you going to let me out of here?”
Athaclena winced as Robert slammed the cabinet again, giving vent to his frustration. At least twice he had seemed about to use his still-splinted right arm instead of the undamaged left. “Robert,” she urged. “You have been making wonderful progress. Soon your cast can come off. Please do not jeopardize that by injuring yourself—”
“You’re evading the issue!” he interrupted. “Even wearing a cast I could be out there, helping train the troops and scouting Gubru positions. But you have me trapped down here in these caves, programming minicomps and sticking pins in maps! It’s driving me nuts!”