Its weight shifted from time to time, and it rested its beak on its chest while standing deep in thought.

The messenger sat on a couch in the corner of the Council Room, holding a blanket around his shoulders while he sipped from a steaming cup of soup. Now and then the young chen shivered, but mostly he looked exhausted. His damp hair still lay in tangled mats from the icy swim that had brought him on the last leg of his dangerous journey.

It’s a wonder he made it here at all, Megan Oneagle thought, watching him. All the spies and recon teams we sent ashore, carrying the finest equipment — none ever returned. But this little chim makes it to us, sailing a tiny raft made of cut trees, with homespun canvas sails.

Carrying a message from my son.’

Megan wiped her eyes again, remembering the courier’s first words to her after swimming the last stretch of underground caves to their deep island redoubt.

“Captain Oneagle sends his felic — his felicitations, ma’am.”

He had drawn forth a packet — waterproofed in oli tree sap — and offered it to her, then collapsed into the arms of the medical techs.

A message from Robert, she thought in wonder. He is alive. He is free. He helps lead an army. She didn’t know whether to exult or shudder at the thought.

It was a thing to be proud of, for sure. Robert might be the sole adult human loose on the surface of Garth, right now. And if his “army” was little more than a ragged band of simian guerrillas, well, at least they had accomplished more than her own carefully hoarded remnants of the official planetary militia had.

If he had made her proud, Robert had also astonished her. Might there be more substance to the boy than she had thought before? Something brought out by adversity, perhaps?

There may be more of his father in him than I’d wanted to see.

Sam Tennace was a starship pilot who stopped at Garth every five years or so, one of Megan’s three spacer husbands. Each was home for only a few months at a stretch — almost never at the same time — then off again. Other ferns might not have been able to deal with such an arrangement, but what suited spacers also met her needs as a politician and career woman. Of the three, only Sam Tennace had given her a child.

And I never wanted my son to be a hero, she realized. As critical as I have been of him, I guess I never really wanted him to be like Sam at all.

For one thing, if Robert had not been so resourceful he might be safe now — interned on the islands with the rest of the human population, pursuing his playboy hobbies among his friends — instead of engaged in a desperate, useless struggle against an omnipotent enemy.

Well, she reassured herself. His letter probably exaggerates .

To her left, mutterings of amazement grew ever more pronounced as the government in exile pored over the message, printed on tree bark in homemade ink. “Son of a bitch!” she heard Colonel Millchamp curse. “So that’s how they always knew where we were, what we were up to, before we even got started!”

Megan moved closer to the table. “Please summarize, colonel.”

Millchamp looked up at her. The portly, red-faced militia officer shook several sheets until someone grabbed his arm and pried them out of his hand.

“Optical fibers!” he cried.

Megan shook her head. “I beg your pardon?”

“They doped them. Every string, telephone cable, communications pipe… almost every piece of electronics on the planet! They’re all tuned to resonate back on a probability band the damn birds can broadcast…” Colonel Millchamp’s voice choked on his anger. He swiveled and walked away.

Megan’s puzzlement must have shown.

“Perhaps I can explain, madam coordinator,” said John Kylie, a tall man with the sallow complexion of a lifetime spacer. Kylie’s peacetime profession was captain of an in-system civilian freighter. His merchant vessel had taken part in the mockery of a space battle, one of the few survivors — if that was the right term. Overpowered, battered, finally reduced to peppering Gubru fighting planetoids with its comm laser, the wreck of the Esperanza only made it back to Port Helenia because the enemy was leisurely in consolidating the Gimelhai system. Its skipper now served as Megan’s naval advisor.

Kylie’s expression was stricken. “Madam coordinator, do you remember that excellent deal we made, oh, twenty years ago, for a turnkey electronics and photonics factory? It was a state-of-the-art, midget-scale auto-fac — perfect for a small colony world such as ours.”

Megan nodded. “Your uncle was coordinator then. I believe your first merchant command was to finalize negotiations and bring the factory home to Garth.”

Kylie nodded. He looked crestfallen. “One of its main products is optical fibers. A few said the bargain we got from the Kwackoo was just too good to be true. But who could have imagined they might have something like this in mind? So far in the future? Just on the off chance that they might someday want to—”

Megan gasped. “The Kwackoo! They’re clients of—”

“Of the Gubru.” Kylie nodded. “The damn birds must have thought, even then, that something like this might someday happen.”

Megan recalled what Uthacalthing had tried to teach her, that the ways of the Galactics are long ways, and patient as the planets in their orbits.

Someone else cleared his throat. It was Major Pratha-chulthorn, the short, powerfully built Terragens Marines officer. He and his small detachment were the only professional soldiers left after the space battle and the hopeless gesture of defiance at the Port Helenia space-field. Millchamp and Kylie held reserve commissions.

“This is most grave, madam coordinator,” Prathachulthorn said. “Optical fibers made at that factory have been incorporated into almost every piece of military and civilian equipment manufactured on the planet. They are integrated into nearly every building. Can we have confidence in your son’sfindings?”

Megan nearly shrugged, but her politician’s instincts stopped her in time. How the hell would I know? she thought. The boy is a stranger to me. She glanced at the small chen who had nearly died bringing Robert’s message to her. She had never imagined Robert could inspire such dedication.

Megan wondered if she was jealous.

A woman Marine spoke next. “The report is co-signed by the Tymbrimi Athaclena,” Lieutenant Lydia McCue pointed out. The young officer pursed her lips. “That’s a second source of verification,” she suggested.

“With all respect, Lydia,” Major Prathachulthorn replied. “The tym is barely more than a child.”

“She’s Ambassador Uthacalthing’s daughter!” Kylie snapped. “And chim technicians helped perform the experiments as well.”

Prathachulthorn shook his head. “Then we have no truly qualified witnesses.”

Several councillors gasped. The sole neo-chimpanzee member, Dr. Suzinn Benirshke, blushed and looked down at the table. But Prathachulthorn didn’t even seem to realize he’d said anything insulting. The major wasn’t known to be strong on tact. Also, he’s a Marine, Megan reminded herself. The corps was the elite Terragens fighting service with the smallest number of dolphin and chim members. For that matter, the Marines recruited mostly males, a last bastion of oldtime sexism.

Commander Kylie sifted through the rough-cut pages of Robert Oneagle’s report. “Still you must agree, major, the scenario is plausible. It would explain our setbacks, and total failure to establish contact, either with the islands or the mainland.”