Startide Rising (The Uplift Saga, #2) - David Brin Page 0,141

young man, but he has no poker face.

I think I have things timed right. If only I were certain.

The damned Niss is calling me again. This time I’ll go see what it wants.

Oh, Tom. Would you, if you were here, have misplaced an entire ship’s captain? How can I forgive myself for letting Creideiki go out there alone?

He seemed to be doing so well, though. What in Ifni’s crap-shoot went wrong?

81

Charles Dart

Early in the morning he was at his console at the water’s edge, happily conversing with his new robot. It was already down a kilometer, planting tiny detectors in the drill-tree shaft wall along the way.

Charles Dart mumbled cheerfully. In a few hours he would have it down as deep as the old one, the next-to-worthless probe he had abandoned. Then, after a few more tests to verify his theories about local crustal formations, he could start finding out about bigger questions, like what Kithrup the planet was like.

Nobody, but nobody, could stop him now!

He remembered the years he had spent in California, in Chile, in Italy, studying earthquakes as they happened, working with some of the greatest minds in geophysical science. It had been exciting. Still, after a few years he had begun to realize that something was wrong.

He had been admitted into all the right professional societies, his papers were greeted with both high praise and occasional vehement rejection—both reactions far preferred by any decent scientist over yawns. There was no lack of prestigious job offers.

But there came a time when he suddenly wondered where the students were.

Why didn’t graduate students seek him out as an advisor? He saw his colleagues besieged by eager applicants for research assistantships, yet, in spite of his list of publications, his widely known and controversial theories, only the second-raters came to him, students searching more for grant support than a mentor None of the bright young mels and fems sought him out as an academic patron.

Of course, there had been a couple of minor cases in which his temper had gotten the better of him, and one or two of his students had departed acrimoniously, but that couldn’t account for the doldrums in the pedagogical side of his career, could it?

Slowly, he came to think that it must be something else. Something … racial.

Dart had always held himself aloof from the uplift obsession of many chimps—either the fastidious respectfulness of the majority toward humans, or the sulking resentfulness of a small but vocal minority. A couple of years ago he began paying attention, however. Soon he had a theory. The students were avoiding him because he was a chimpanzee!

It had stunned him. For three solid months he dropped everything to study the problem. He read the protocols governing humanity’s patronhood over his race, and grew outraged over the ultimate authority Mankind held over his species—until, that is, he read about uplift practice in the galaxy at large. Then he learned that no other patron gave a four-hundred-year-old client race seats on its high councils, as Mankind did.

Charles Dart was confused. But then he thought about that word “gave.”

He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?

He learned a new word, “tokenism,” and felt a burning shame. That was when he volunteered for a deep space mission, determined not to return without proof of his academic prowess—his skill as a scientist on a par with any human!

Alas that he had been assigned to Streaker, a ship filled with squeaking dolphins, and water. To top it off, that smugpot Ignacio Metz immediately started treating him like another of his unfinished experimental half-breeds!

He’d learned to live with that. Even cosied up with Metz. He would bear anything until the results from Kithrup were announced.

Then they’ll stand up as Charles Dart enters rooms! The bright young human students will come to him. They’ll all see that he, at least, is no token!

Charlie’s deep thoughts were interrupted by sounds from the forest nearby. He hurriedly slapped the cover plate over a set of controls in a lower corner of his console. He was taking no chances with anyone finding out about the secret part of his experiment.

Dennie Sudman and Toshio Iwashika emerged from the village trail, talking in low voices, carrying small bundles. Charlie busied himself with detailed commands to the robot, but cast a surreptitious