It was a nuisance, and it was effective. A way had to be found to stop it.
Robert pulled a sheet of paper from a folder at the end of the table. He wrote down the principal ways the gasbots might be using to detect Earthlings on an alien planet.
Robert regretted having taken so many courses in public administration, and so few on Galactic technologies. He was certain the Great Library’s gigayear-old archives contained many methods of detection beyond just these five. For instance, what if the gasbots actually did “sniff out” a Terran odor, tracing anything Earthly by sense of smell?
No. He shook his head. There came a point where one had to cut a list short, putting aside things that were obviously ridiculous. Leaving them as a last resort, at least.
The rebels did have a Library pico-branch he could try, salvaged from the wreckage of the Howletts Center. The chances of it having any entries of military use were quite slim. It was a tiny branch, holding no more information than all the books written by pre-Contact Mankind, and it was specialized in the areas of Uplift and genetic engineering.
Maybe we can apply to the District Central Library on Tanith for a literature search. Robert smiled at the ironic thought. Even a people imprisoned by an invader supposedly had the right to query the Galactic Library whenever they wished. That was part of the Code of the Progenitors.
Right! He chuckled at the image. We’ll just walk up to Gubru occupation headquarters and demand that they transmit our appeal to Tanith, … a request for information on the invader’s own military technology!
They might even do it. After all, with the galaxies in turmoil the Library must be inundated with queries. They would get around to our request eventually, maybe sometime in the next century.
He looked over his list. At least these were means he had heard of or knew something about.
Possibility one: There might be a satellite overhead with sophisticated optical scanning capabilities, inspecting Garth acre by acre, seeking out regular shapes that would indicate buildings or vehicles. Such a device could be dispatching the gasbots to their targets.
Feasible, but why were the same sites raided over and over again? Wouldn’t such a satellite remember? And how could a satellite know to send robot bombers plunging down on even isolated groups of chims, traveling under the heavy forest canopy?
The reverse logic held for infrared direction. The machines couldn’t be homing in on the target’s body heat. The Gubru drones still swooped down on empty buildings, for instance, cold and abandoned for weeks now.
Robert did not have the expertise to eliminate all the possibilities on his list. Certainly he knew next to nothing about psi and its weird cousin, reality physics. The weeks with Athaclena had begun to open doors to him, but he was far from being more than a rank novice in an area that still caused many humans and chims to shudder in superstitious dread.
Well, as long as I’m stuck here underground I might as well expand my education.
He started to get up, intending to join Athaclena and Benjamin. Then he stopped suddenly. Looking at his list of possibilities he realized that there was one more that he had left out.
… A way for the Gubru to penetrate our defenses so easily when they invaded. … A way for them to find tts again and again, wherever we hide. A way for them to foil our every move.
He did not want to, but honesty forced him to pick up the stylus one more time.
He wrote a single word.
33
Fiben
That afternoon Gailet took Fiben on a tour of Port Helenia — or as much of it as the invader had not placed off limits to the neo-chimp population.
Fishing trawlers still came and went from the docks at the southern end of town. But now they were crewed solely by chim sailors. And less than half the usual number set forth, taking wide detours past the Gubru fortress ship that filled half the outlet of Aspinal Bay.
In’ the markets they saw some items in plentiful supply. Elsewhere there were sparse shelves, stripped nearly bare by scarcity and hoarding. Colonial money was still good for some things, like beer and fish. But only Galactic pellet-scrip would buy meat or fresh fruit. Irritated shoppers had already begun to learn what that archaic term, “inflation,” meant.
Half the population, it seemed, worked for the invader.
There were battlements being built, off to the south of the bay, near the spaceport. Excavations told of more massive structures yet to be.
Placards everywhere in town depicted grinning neo-chimpanzees and promised plenty once again, as soon as enough “proper” money entered circulation. Good work would bring that day closer, they were promised.
“Well? Have you seen enough?” his guide asked.
Fiben smiled. “Not at all. In fact, we’ve barely scratched the surface.”
Gailet shrugged and let him lead the way.
Well, he thought as he looked at the scant market shelves, the nutritionists keep telling us neo-chimps we eat more meat than is good for us … much more than we could get in the wild old days. Maybe this’ll do us some good.
At last their wanderings brought them to the bell tower overlooking Port Helenia College. It was a smaller campus than the University, on Cilmar Island, but Fiben had attended ecological conferences here not so very long ago, so he knew his way around.
As he looked over the school, something struck him as very strange.
It wasn’t just the Gubru hover-tank, dug in at the top of the hill, nor the ugly new wall that grazed the northern fringe of the college grounds on its way around town. Rather, it was something about the students and faculty themselves.
Frankly, he was surprised to see them here at all!
They were all chims, of course. Fiben had come to Port Helenia expecting to find ghettos or concentration camps, crowded with the human population of the mainland. But the last mels and ferns had been moved out to the islands some days ago. Taking their place had been thousands of chims pouring in from outlying areas, including those susceptible to the coercion gas in spite of the invaders’ assurances that it was impossible.
All of these had been given the antidote, paid a small, token reparation, and put to work in town.
But here at the college all seemed peaceful and amazingly close to normal. Fiben and Gailet looked down from the top of the bell tower. Below them, chens and chimmies moved about between classes. They carried books, spoke to one another in low voices, and only occasionally cast furtive glances at the alien cruisers that growled overhead every hour or so.
Fiben shook his head in wonder that they persevered at all.
Sure, humans were notoriously liberal in their Uplift policy, treating their clients as near equals in the face of a Galactic tradition that was far less generous. Elder Galactic clans might glower in disapproval, but chim and dolphin members deliberated next to their patrons on Terragens Councils. The client races had even been entrusted with a few starships of their own.
But a college without men?
Fiben had wondered why the invader held such a loose rein over the chim population, meddling only in a few crass ways like at the Ape’s Grape.
Now he thought he knew why.
“Mimicry! They must think we’re playing pretend!” he muttered half aloud.
“What did you say?” Gailet looked at him. They had made a truce in order to get the job done, but clearly she did not savor spending all day as his tour guide.