Debris littered the now quiescent Ceremonial Mound. Stiff easterly winds riffled the lawnlike slopes, tugging at stringy rubbish blown in earlier from the distant mountains. Here and there, city chims poked through trash on the lower terraces, looking for souvenirs.

Higher up only a few pavilions still stood. Around these several dozen large black forms lazily groomed each other’s fur and gossiped with their hands, as if they had never had anything more momentous on their minds than who would mate with whom and what they would be fed next meal.

To Robert it seemed as if the gorillas were quite well satisfied with life. I envy them, he thought. In his case even a great victory did not bring an end to worry. Things were still quite dangerous on Garth. Perhaps even more so than two nights ago, when fate and coincidence intervened to surprise them all.

Life was troubling sometimes. All the time.

Robert returned his attention to his datawell and the letter the Uplift Institute officials had relayed to him only an hour before.

How odd, Robert thought, that after so many years despairing of ever winning her approval, now he had it, and didn’t know how to deal with it. Ironically, he felt sympathy for his mother; it was obviously so very difficult for her to say these things at all. He made allowances for the cool tone of the words themselves.

All Garth saw Megan Oneagle as a gracious lady and fair administrator. Only her wandering husbands and Robert himself knew the other side, the one so utterly terrified by permanent obligation and issues of private loyalty. This was the first time in all his life that Robert recalled her apologizing for something really important, something involving family and intense emotions.

Blurring of vision made him close his eyes. Robert blamed the symptoms on the fringing fields of a lifting starship, whose keening engines could be heard all the way from the spaceport. He wiped his cheeks and watched the great liner — silvery and almost angelic in its serene beauty — rise and pass overhead on its leisurely way out to space and beyond.

“One more batch of fleeing rats,” he murmured.

Uthacalthing did not bother turning to look. He lay back on his elbows watching the gray waters. “The Galactic visitors have already had more entertainment than they bargained for, Robert. That Uplift Ceremony was plenty. To most of them, the prospect of a space battle and siege are much less enticing.”

“One of each has been quite enough for me,” Fiben Bolger added without opening his eyes. He lay a little downslope, his head on Gailet Jones’s lap. For the moment, she also had little to say, but concentrated on removing a few tangles from his fur, careful of his still livid black and blue bruises. Meanwhile, Jo-Jo groomed one of Fiben’s legs.

Well, he’s earned it, Robert thought. Although the Uplift Ceremony had been preempted by the gorillas, the test scores handed down by the Institute still held. If humanity managed to get out of its present troubles and could afford the expense of a new ceremony, two rustic colonials from Garth would lead the next procession ahead of all the sophisticated chims of Terra. Though Fiben himself seemed uninterested in the honor, Robert was proud of his friend.

A female chim wearing a simple frock approached up the trail. She bowed languidly in a brief nod to Uthacalthing and Robert. “Who wants the latest news?” Michaela Noddings asked.

“Not me!” Fiben grumped. “Tell th’ Universe t’go f—”

“Fiben,” Gailet chided gently. She looked up at Michaela. “I want to hear it.”

The chimmie sat and began working on Fiben’s other shoulder. Mollified, he closed his eyes again.

“Kault has heard from his people,” Michaela said. “The Thennanin are on their way here.”

“Already.” Robert whistled. “They aren’t wasting any time, are they?”

Michaela shook her head. “Kault’s folk have already contacted the Terragens Council to negotiate purchase of the fallow gorilla genetic base and to hire Earth experts as consul…”

! .,.::*: the Council holds out for a good price.”

“Hcj;gars can’t be choosers,” Gailet suggested. “According to some of the departing Galactic observers, Earth is in pretty desperate straits, as are the Tymbrimi. If this deal means we lose the Thennanin as enemies, and maybe win them as allies instead, it could be vital.”

At the price of losing gorillas — our cousins — as clients of our own. Robert mulled. On the night of the ceremony he had only seen the hilarious irony of it all, sharing that Tymbrimi way of viewing things with Uthacalthing. Now, though, it was harder not to count the cost in serious terms.

They were never really ours in the first place, he reminded himself. At least we’ll have a say in how they’re raised. And Uthacalthing says some Thennanin aren’t as bad as many.

“What about the Gubru?” he asked. “They agreed to make peace with Earth in exchange for acceptance of the ceremony.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly the sort of ceremony they had in mind, was it?” Gailet answered. “What do you think, Ambassador Uthacalthing?”

The Tymbrimi’s tendrils waved lazily. All of yesterday and this morning he had been Grafting little glyphs of puzzle-like intricacy, far beyond Robert’s limited ability to kenn, as if he were delighting in the rediscovery of something he had lost.

“They will act in what they see to be their own self-interest, of course,” Uthacalthing said. “The question is whether they will have the sense to know what is good for them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the Gubru apparently began this expedition with confused goals. Their Triumvirate reflected conflicting factions back home. The initial intent of their expedition here was to use the hostage population of Garth to pry secrets out of the Terragens Council. But then they learned that Earth is as ignorant as everybody else about what that infamous dolphin-ship of yours discovered.”

“Has there been any new word about the Streaker?” Robert interrupted.

Spiraling off a palanq glyph, Uthacalthing sighed. “The dolphins seem to have miraculously escaped a trap set for them by a dozen of the most fanatic patron lines — an astonishing feat by itself — and now the Streaker seems to be loose on the starlanes. The humiliated fanatics lost tremendous face, and so tensions have reached an even higher level than before. It is one more reason why the Gubru Roost Masters grow increasingly frightened.”

“So when the invaders found they couldn’t use hostages to coerce secrets out of Earth, the Suzerains searched for other ways to make some profit out of this expensive expedition,” Gailet surmised.

“Correct. But when the first Suzerain of Cost and Caution was killed it threw their leadership process out of balance. Instead of negotiating toward a consensus of policy, the three Suzerains engaged in unbridled competition for the top position in their Molt. I’m not sure that even now I understand all of the schemes that might have been involved. But the final one — the one they settled on at last — will cost them very dearly. Blatantly interfering with the proper outcome of an Uplift Ceremony is a grave matter.”