Fiben pointed at the students. “Tell me what you see down there.”
She glowered, then sighed and bent forward to look. “I see Professor Jimmie Sung leaving lecture hall, explaining something to some students.” She smiled faintly. “It’s probably intermediate Galactic history. … I used to TA for him, and I well recall that expression of confusion on the students’ faces.”
“Good. That’s what you see. Now loojc at it through a Gubru’s eyes.”
Gailet frowned. “What do you mean?”
Fiben gestured again. “Remember, according to Galactic tradition we neo-chimps aren’t much over three hundred years old as a sapient client race, barely older than dolphins — only just beginning our hundred-thousand-year period of probation and indenture to Man.
“Remember, also, that many of the Eatee fanatics resent humans terribly. Yet humans had to be granted patron status and all the privileges that go along with it. Why? Because they already had uplifted chims and dolphins before Contact! That’s how you get status in the Five Galaxies, by having clients and heading up a clan.”
Gailet shook her head. “I don’t get what you’re driving at. Why are you explaining the obvious?” Clearly, she did not like being lectured by a backwoods chim, one without even a postgraduate degree.
“Think! How did humans win their status? Remember how it happened, back in the twenty-second century? The fanatics were outvoted when it came to accepting neo-chimps and neo-dolphins as sapient.” Fiben waved his arm. “It was a diplomatic coup pulled off by the Kanten and Tymbrimi and other moderates before humans even knew what the issues were!”
Gailet’s expression was sardonic, and he recalled that her area of expertise was Galactic sociology. “Of course, but—”
“It became a. fait accompli. But the Gubru and the Soro and the other fanatics didn’t have to like it. They still think we’re little better than animals. They have to believe that, otherwise humans have earned a place in Galactic society equal to most, and better than many!”
“I still don’t see what you’re—”
“Look down there.” Fiben pointed. “Look with Gubru eyes, and tell me what you see!”
Gailet Jones glared at Fiben narrowly. At last, she sighed. “Oh, if you insist,” and she swiveled to gaze down into the courtyard again.
She was silent for a long time.
“I don’t like it,” she said at last. Fiben could barely hear her. He moved to stand closer.
“Tell me what you see.”
She looked away, so he put it into words for her. “What you see are bright, well-trained animals, creatures mimicking the behavior of their masters. Isn’t that it? Through the eyes of a Galactic, you see clever imitations of human professors and human students… replicas of better times, reenacted superstitiously by loyal—”
“Stop it!” Gailet shouted, covering her ears. She whirled on Fiben, eyes ablaze. “I hate you!”
Fiben wondered. This was hard on her. Was he simply getting even for the hurt and humiliation he had suffered over the last three days, partly at her hands?
But no. She had to be shown how her people were looked on by the enemy! How else would she ever learn how to fight them?
Oh, he was justified, all right. Still, Fiben thought. It’s never pleasant being loathed by a pretty girl.
Gailet Jones sagged against one of the pillars supporting the roof of the bell tower. “Oh Ifni and Goodall,” she cried into her hands. “What if they are right! What if it’s true?”
34
Athaclena
The glyph paraphrenll hovered above the sleeping girl, a floating cloud of uncertainty that quivered in the darkened chamber.
It was one of the Glyphs of Doom. Better than any living creature could predict its own fate, paraphrenll knew what the future held for it — what was unavoidable.
And yet it tried to escape. It could do nothing else. Such was the simple, pure, ineluctable nature of paraphrenll.
The glyph wafted upward in the dream smoke of Athaclena’s fitful slumber, rising until its nervous fringe barely touched the rocky ceiling. That instant the glyph quailed from the burning reality of the damp stone, dropping quickly back toward where it had been born.
Athaclena’s head shook slightly on the pillow, and her breathing quickened. Paraphrenll flickered in suppressed panic just above.
The shapeless dream glyph began to resolve itself, its amorphous shimmering starting to assume the symmetrical outlines of a face.
Paraphrenll was an essence — a distillation. Resistance to inevitability was its theme. It writhed and shuddered to hold off the change, and the face vanished for a time.
Here, above the Source, its danger was greatest. Paraphrenll darted away toward the curtained exit, only to be drawn short suddenly, as if held in leash by taut threads.
The glyph stretched thin, straining for release. Above the sleeping girl, slender tendrils waved after the desperate capsule of psychic energy, drawing it back, back.
Athaclena sighed tremulously. Her pale, almost translucent skin throbbed as her body perceived an emergency of some sort and prepared to make adjustments. But no orders came. There was no plan. The hormones and enzymes had no theme to build around.
Tendrils reached out, pulling paraphrenll, hauling it in. They gathered around the struggling symbol, like fingers caressing clay, fashioning decisiveness out of uncertainty, form out of raw terror.
At last they dropped away, revealing what paraphrenll had become … A face, grinning with mirth. Its cat’s eyes glittered. Its smile was not sympathetic.
Athaclena moaned.
A crack appeared. The face divided down the middle, and the halves separated. Then there were two of them!
Her breath came in rapid strokes.
The two figures split longitudinally, and there were four. It happened again, eight… and again… sixteen. Faces multiplied, laughing soundlessly but uproariously.
“Ah-ah!” Athaclena’s eyes opened. They shone with an opalescent, chemical fear-light. Panting, clutching the blankets, she sat up and stared in the small subterranean chamber, desperate for the sight of real things — her desk, the faint light of the hall bulb filtering through the entrance curtain. She could still feel the thing that paraphrenll had hatched. It was dissipating, now that she was awake, but slowly, too slowly! Its laughter seemed to rock with the beating of her heart, and Athaclena knew there would be no good in covering her ears.
What was it humans called their sleep-terror? Nightmare. But Athaclena had heard that they were pale things, dreamed events and warped scenes taken from daily life, generally forgotten simply by awakening.
The sights and sensations of the room slowly took on solidity. But the laughter did not merely vanish, defeated. It faded into the walls, embedding there, she knew. Waiting to return.
“Tutsunacann,” she sighed aloud. Tymbrim-dialect sounded queer and nasal after weeks speaking solely Anglic.
The laughing man glyph, Tutsunacann, would not go away. Not until something altered, or some hidden idea became a resolve which, in turn, must become a jest.
And to a Tymbrimi, jokes were not always funny.
Athaclena sat still while rippling motions under her skin settled down — the unasked-for gheer activity dissipating gradually. You are not needed, she told the enzymes. There is no emergency. Go and leave me alone.
Ever since she had been little, the tiny change-nodes had been a part of her life — occasionally inconveniences, often indispensable. Only since coming to Garth had she begun to picture the little fluid organs as tiny, mouselike creatures, or busy little gnomes, which hurried abou’t making sudden alterations within her body whenever the need arose.