Then, using one knuckle to help it walk, it turned and rejoined the dark band that was even then trooping past the’ amazed rank of chims. Gailet stared in disbelief, and Utha-calthing’s wide eyes blinked rapidly at the sight.
Robert Oneagle seemed to be talking to himself, and the Gubru gabbled and squawked.
But it was Kault who was the focus of the gorillas’ attention for a long moment. Four females and three males clustered around the big Thennanin, reaching up to touch him. He responded by speaking to them, slowly, joyfully.
Fiben refused to make the same mistake twice. What gorillas were doing here, here atop the Ceremonial Mound the Gubru invaders had built, was beyond his ability to guess, and he wasn’t even about to try. His concentration returned just a split instant sooner than his opponent’s. When Irongrip looked back down, the Probie’s eyes betrayed instantaneous dismay as he recognized the looming shape of Fiben’s fist.
The small plateau was a cacophony, a mad scene devoid of any vestige of order. The boundaries of the combat arena did not seem to matter anymore as Fiben and his enemy rolled about under the legs of chims and gorillas and Gubru and whatever else could walk or bounce or slither about. Hardly anybody seemed to be paying them any attention, and Fiben did not really care. All that mattered to him was that he had a promise that he had to keep.
He pummeled Irongrip, not allowing him to regain balance until the chen roared and in desperation threw Fiben off like an old cloak. As he landed in a painful jolt, Fiben caught a glimpse of motion behind him and turned his head to see the Probationer called Weasel lifting his leg, preparing to strike down with his foot. But the blow missed as the Probie was grabbed up by an affectionate gorilla, who lifted him into a crushing embrace.
Irongrip’s other comrade was held back by Robert Oneagle — or, rather, held up. The male chim might have vastly greater strength than most humans, but it did him no good suspended in midair. Robert raised Steelbar high overhead, like Hercules subduing Anteus. The young man nodded to Fiben.
“Watch out, old son.”
Fiben rolled aside as Irongrip hit the ground where he had lain, sending dust plumes flying. Without delay Fiben leaped onto his opponent’s back and slipped into a half-Nelson hold.
The world spun as he seemed to ride a bucking bronco. Fiben tasted blood, and the dust seemed to fill his lungs with clogging, searing pain. His tired arms throbbed and threatened to cramp. But when he heard his enemy’s labored breathing he knew he could stand it for a little while longer.
Down, down Irongrip’s head went. Fiben got his feet around the chim and kicked the other’s legs out from under him.
The Probationer’s solar plexus landed on Fiben’s heel. And while a flash of pain probably meant several of Fiben’s toes were broken, there was also no mistaking the whistling squeak as Irongrip’s diaphragm momentarily spasmed, stopping all flow of air.
Somewhere he found the energy. In a whirl he had his foe turned over. Gripping in a tight scissors lock, he brought his forearm around and applied the same illegal-but-who-cares strangulation hold that had earlier been used on him.
Bone ground against gristle. The ground beneath them seemed to throb and the sky rumbled and growled. Alien feet shuffled on all sides, and there was the incessant squawking and chatter of a dozen jabbering tongues. Still, Fiben listened only for the breath that did not flow through his enemy’s throat… and felt only for the throbbing pulse he so desperately had to silence…
That was when something seemed to explode inside his skull.
It was as if something had broken open within him, spilling what seemed a brilliant light outward from his cortex. Dazzled, Fiben first thought a Probationer or a Gubru must-have struck him a blow to the head from behind. But the luminance was not the sort coming from a concussion. It hurt, but not in that way.
Fiben concentrated on first priorities — holding tightly to his steadily weakening opponent. But he could not ignore this strange occurrence. His mind sought something to compare it to, but there was no correct metaphor. The soundless outburst felt somehow simultaneously alien and eerily familiar.
All at once Fiben remembered a blue light which danced in hilarity as it fired infuriating bolts at his feet. He remembered a “stink bomb” that had sent a pompous, furry little diplomat scurrying off in abandoned dignity. He remembered stories told at night by the general. The connections made him suspect…
All around the plateau, Galactics had ceased their multi-tongued babble and stared upslope. Fiben would have to lift his head a bit to see what so captivated them. Before he did so, however, he made certain of his foe. When Irongrip managed to drag in a few thin, desperate breaths, Fiben restored just enough pressure to keep the big chen balanced on the edge of consciousness. That accomplished, he raised his eyes.
“Uthacalthing,” Fiben whispered, realizing the source of his mental confusion.
The Tymbrimi stood a little uphill from the others. His arms opened wide and the capelike folds of his formal robe flapped in the cyclone winds circling the gaping hyperspace shunt. His eyes were set far apart.
Uthacalthing’s corona tendrils waved, and over his head something whirled.
A chim moaned and pressed her palms against her temples. Somewhere a Pring’s tooth-mashies clattered. To many of those present, the glyph was barely detectable. But for the first time in his life, Fiben actually kenned. And what he kenned named itself tutsunucann.
The glyph was a monster — titanic with long-pent energy. The essence of delayed indeterminacy, it danced and whirled. And then, without warning, it blew apart. Fiben felt it sweep around and through him — nothing more or less than distilled, unadulterated joy.
Uthacalthing poured the emotion forth as if a dam had burst. “N’ha s’urustuannu, k’hammin’t Athaclena w’thtanna!” he cried. “Daughter, do you send these to me, and so return what I had lent you? Oh, what interest compounded and multiplied! What a fine jest to pull upon your proud parent!”
His intensity affected those standing nearby. Chims blinked and stared. Robert Oneagle wiped away tears.
Uthacalthing turned and pointed up the trail leading toward the Site of Choosing. There, at the pinnacle of the Ceremony Mound, everyone could see that the shunt was connected at last. The deeply buried engines had done their job, and now a tunnel gaped overhead, one whose edges glistened but whose interior contained a color emptier than blackness.
It seemed to suck away light, making it difficult even to recognize that the opening was there. And yet Fiben knew that this was a link in real time, from this place to countless others where witnesses had gathered to observe and commemorate the evening’s events.
I hope the Five Galaxies are enjoying the show. When Irongrip showed signs of reviving, Fiben gave the Probie a whack to the side of the head and looked up again.
Halfway up the narrow trail leading to the pinnacle there stood three ill-matched figures. The first was a small neo-chimpanzee whose arms seemed too long and whose ill-formed legs were bowed and short. Jo-Jo held onto one hand of Kault, the huge Thennanin, ambassador. Kault’s other massive paw was grasped by a tiny human girl, whose blond hair flapped like a bright banner in the whirling breeze.
Together, the unlikely trio watched the pinnacle itself, where an unusual band had gathered.
A dozen gorillas, males and females, stood in a circle directly under the half-invisible hole in space. They rocked back and forth, staring up into the yawning emptiness overhead, and crooned a low, atonal melody.
“I believe …” said the awed Serentini Grand Examiner of the Uplift Institute. “… I believe this has happened before… once or twice… but not in more than a thousand aeons.”