“I’m a student of Galactic Sociology,” Gailet said rather stiffly.

Irongrip laughed bittterly. “A title given to reward a clever monkey! You must have really done some beautiful tricks on the jungle gym to get a real-as-life, scale-model, sheepskin doctorate!”

He crouched near her. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, little miss? Let me spell it for you. We’re all goddam pre-sentients! Go ahead. Deny it. Tell me I’m wrong!”

It was Gailet’s turn to change color. She glanced at Fiben, and he knew she was remembering that afternoon at the college in Port Helenia, when they had climbed to the top of the bell tower and looked out over a campus empty of humans, filled only with chim students and chim faculty trying to act as if nothing had changed. She had to be remembering how bitter it had been, seeing that scene as a Galactic would.

“I’m a sapient being,” she muttered, obviously trying to put conviction into her voice.

“Yeah,” Irongrip sneered. “What you mean to say, though, is that you’re just a little closer than the rest of us… closer to what the Uplift Board defines as a target for us neo-chims. Closer to what they think we ought to be.

“Tell me, though. What if you took a space trip to Earth, and the captain took a wrong turn onto D-level hyperspace, and you arrived a couple hundred years from now? What do you think would happen to your precious white card then?”

Gailet locked away. “Sic transit gloria mundi.” Irongrip snapped his fingers. “You’d be a relic then, obsolete, a phase long bypassed in the relentless progress of Uplift.” He laughed, reaching oui and taking her chin in his hand to make her meet his eyes. “You’d be Probationer, honey.”

Fiben surged forward but was caught short by his chains. The jolting stop sent pain shooting up from his right wrist, but in his anger Fiben hardly noticed. He was too filled with wrath to be able to speak. Dimly, as he snarled at the other chen, he knew that the same held for Gailet. It was all the more infuriating because it was just one more proof that the bastard was right.

Irongrip met Fiben’s gaze for a long moment before letting go of Gailet. “A hundred years ago,” he went on, “I would’ve been somethin’ special. They would’ve forgiven, ignored, my own little ‘quirks and drawbacks.’ They’d have given me a white card, for my cunning and my strength.

“Time is what decides it, my good little chen and chimmie. It’s all what generation you’re born in.”

He stood up straight. “Or is it?” Irongrip smiled. “Maybe it also depends on who your patrons are, hm? If the standards change, if the target image of the ideal future Pans sapiens changes, well …” He spread his hands, letting the implication sink in.

Gailet was the first to find her voice.

“You… actually… expect… th’ Gubru …”

Irongrip shrugged. “Time’s are achangin’, my darlings. I may yet have more grandkids than either of you.”

Fiben found the key to drive out the incapacitating anger and unlock his own voice. He laughed. He guffawed. “Yeah?” he asked, grinning. “Well, first you’ll haveta fix your other problem, boyo. How’re you going to pass on your genes if you can’t even get it up to—”

This time it was Irongrip’s unshod foot that lashed out. Fiben was more prepared and rolled aside to take the kick at an angle. But more blows followed in a dull rain.

There were no more words, though, and a quick glance told Fiben that it was Irongrip’s turn to be tongue-tied. Low sounds emerged as his mouth opened and closed, flecked with foam. Finally, in frustration, the tall chim gave up kicking at Fiben. He swiveled and stomped out.

The chimmie with the keys watched him go. She stood by the door, looking uncertain what to do.

Fiben grunted as he rolled over onto his back.

“Uh.” He winced as he felt his ribs. None seemed to be broken. “At least Simon Legree wasn’t able to perform a proper exit line. I half expected him to say: ‘I’ll be back, just you wait!’ or somethin’ equally original.”

Gailet shook her head. “What do you gain by baiting him?”

He shrugged. “I got my reasons.”

Gingerly, he backed against the wall. The chimmie in the billowing zipsuit was watching him, but when their eyes met she quickly blinked and turned to leave, closing the door behind her.

Fiben lifted his head and inhaled deeply, through his nose, several times.

“Now what are you doing?” Gailet asked.

He shook his head. “Nothin. Just passin’ the time.”

When he looked again, Gailet had turned her back to him again. She seemed to be crying.

Small surprise, Fiben thought. It probably wasn’t as much fun for her, being a prisoner, as it had been leading a rebellion. For all the two of them knew, the Resistance was washed up, finished, kaput. And there wasn’t any reason to believe things had gone any better in the mountains. Athaclena and Robert and Benjamin might be dead or captured by now. Port Helenia was still ruled by birds and quislings.

“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to cheer her up. “You know what they say about the truest test of sapiency? You mean you haven’t heard of it? Why it’s just comin’ through when the chimps are down!”

Gailet wiped her eyes and turned her head to look at him. “Oh, shut up,” she said.

Okay, so it’s an old joke, Fiben admitted to himself. But it was worth a try .

Still, she motioned for him to turn around. “Come on. It’s your turn. Maybe…” She smiled weakly, as if uncertain whether or not to try a joke of her own. “Maybe I can find something to snack on, too.”

Fiben grinned. He shuffled about and stretched his chains until his back was as close to her as possible, not minding how it strained his various hurts. He felt her hands working to unknot his tangled, furry thatch and rolled his eyes upward.

“Ah, aahh,” he sighed.

A different jailer brought them their noon meal, a thin soup accompanied by two slices of bread. This male Probie possessed none of Irongrip’s fluency. In fact, he seemed to have trouble with even the simplest phrases and snarled when Fiben tried to draw him out. His left cheek twitched intermittently in a nervous tic, and Gailet whispered to Fiben that the feral glint in the chim’s eyes made her nervous.

Fiben tried to distract her. “Tell me about Earth,” he asked. “What’s it like?”

Gailet used a bread crust to sop up the last of her soup. “What’s to tell? Everybody knows about Earth.”

“Yeah. From video and from GoThere cube books, sure. But not from personal experience. You went as a child with your parents, didn’t you? That’s where you got your doctorate?”

She nodded. “University of Djakarta. ”

“And then what?”

Her gaze was distant. “Then I applied for a position at the Terragens Center for Galactic Studies, in La Paz.”

Fiben knew of the place. Many of Earth’s diplomats, emissaries, and agents took training there, learning how the ancient cultures of the Five Galaxies thought and acted. It was crucial if the leaders were to plan a way for the three races of Earth to make their way in a dangerous universe. Much of the fate of the wolfling clan depended on the graduates of the CGS.

“I’m impressed you even applied,” he said, meaning it. “Did they … I mean, did you pass?”

She nodded. “I … it was close. I qualified. Barely. If I’d scored just a little better, they said there’d have been no question.”

Obviously, the memory was painful. She seemed undecided, as if tempted to change the subject. Gailet shook her head. “Then I was told that they’d prefer it if I returned to Garth instead. I should take up a teaching position, they said. They made it plain I’d be more useful here.”

“They? Who’s this ‘they’ you’re talking about?”

Gailet nervously picked at the fur on the back of her arm. She noticed what she was doing and made both hands lay still on her lap. “The Uplift Board,” she said quietly.