Then, in the flicker of a single lightning flash, Fiben saw something equally enticing, more than attractive enough to pull him out of Sylvie’s hypnotic sway. It was a small, green-lit sign, prim and legalistic, that shone beyond Sylvie’s shoulder.

“EXIT,” it read.

Suddenly the pain and exhaustion and tension caused something to release inside Fiben. He felt somehow lifted above the noise and tumult and recalled with instant clarity something that Athaclena said to him shortly before he left the encampment in the mountains to begin his trek to town. The silvery threads of her Tymbrimi corona had waved gently as if in a breeze of pure thought.

“There is a telling which my father once gave me, Fiben. It’s a ‘haiku poem,’ in an Earthling dialect called Japanese. I want you to take it with you.”

“Japanese,” he had protested. “It’s spoken on Earth and on Calafia, but there aren’t a hundred chims or men on Garth who know it!”

But Athaclena only shook her head. “Neither do I. But I shall pass the telling on to you, the way it was given to me.”

What came when she opened her mouth then was less sound than a crystallization, a brief substrate of meaning which left an imprint even as it faded.

Certain moments qualify,

In winter’s darkest storm,When stars call, and you fly!

Fiben blinked and the sudden relived moment passed. The letters still glowed,

shining like a green haven.

It all swept back, the noise, the odors, the sharp stinging of the tiny rainlike droplets. But Fiben now felt as if his chest had expanded twofold. Lightness spread down his arms and into his legs. They seemed to weigh next to nothing.

With a deep flexing of his knees he gathered himself and then launched off from his precarious perch to land on the edge of the next terrace, toes grasping inches from the burning, camouflaged glue. The crowd roared and Sylvie stepped back, clapping her hands.

Fiben laughed. He slapped his chest rapidly, as he had seen the gorillas do, beating countertime to the rolling thunder. The audience loved it.

Grinning, he stepped along the edge of the sticky patch, tracing its outline more by instinct than the faint difference in coloration. Arms spread wide for balance, he made it look harder than it actually felt.

The ledge ended where a tall “tree” — simulated out of fiberglass and green, plastic tassels — towered out of the slope of the mound.

Of course the thing was boobytrapped. Fiben wasted no time inspecting it. He leapt up to tap the nearest branch lightly and teetered precariously as he landed, drawing gasps from those below.

The branch reacted a delayed instant after he touched it… just time enough for him to have gotten a solid grip on it, had he tried. The entire tree seemed to writhe. Twigs turned into curling ropes which would have shared an arm, if he were still holding on.

With a yip of exhilaration, Fiben leaped again, this time grabbing a dangling rope as the branch swayed down again. He rode it up like a pole vaulter, sailing over the last two terraces — and the surprised dancer — and flew on into the junglelike mass of girders and wiring overhead.

Fiben let go at the last moment and managed to land in a crouch upon a catwalk. For a moment he had to fight for balance on the tricky footing. A maze of spotlights and unsprung traps lay all around him. Laughing, he hopped about tripping releases, sending wires, nets, and tangle-ropes spilling over onto the mound. There were tubs of some hot, oatmeallike substance which he kicked over. Splatters on the orchestra sent the musicians diving for cover.

Now Fiben could easily see the outlines of the obstacle course. Clearly there was no real solution to the puzzle except the one he had used, bypassing the last few terraces altogether.

In other words, one had to cheat.

The mound was not a fair test, then. A chen couldn’t hope to win by being more clever, only by letting others take the risks first, suffering pain and humiliation in the traps and deadfalls. The lesson the Gubru were teaching here was insidiously simple.

“Those bastards,” he muttered.

The exalted feeling was beginning to fade, and with it some of Fiben’s temporary sense of borrowed invulnerability. Obviously Athaclena had given him a parting gift, a post-hypnotic charm of sorts, to help him if he found himself in a jam. Whatever it was, he knew it wouldn’t do to push his luck.

It’s time to get out of here, he thought.

The music had died when the musicians fled the sticky oatmeal stuff. But now the the public address system was squawking again, issuing clipped exhortations that were beginning to sound a bit frantic.

… unacceptable behavior for proper, clients… Cease expressions of approval for one who has broken rules… One who must be chastised…

The Gubru’s pompous urgings fell flat, for the crowd seemed to have gone completely ape. When Fiben hopped over to the mammoth speakers and yanked out wires, the alien’s tirade cut off and there rose a roar of hilarity and approval from the audience below.

Fiben leaned into one of the spotlights, swiveling it so that it swept across the hall. When the beam passed over them chims picked up their wicker tables and tore them apart over their heads. Then the spot struck the E.T. in the balcony box, still shaking its microphone in apparent outrage. The birdlike creature wailed and cringed under the sharp glare.

The two chimps sharing the VIP box dove for cover as the battle-robots rotated and fired at once. Fiben leaped from the rafters just before the spotlight exploded in a shower of metal and glass.

He landed in a roll and came to his feet at the peak of the dance mound… King of the Mountain. He concealed his limp as he waved to the crowd. The hall shook with their cheers.

They abruptly quieted as he turned and took a step toward Sylvie.

This was the payoff. Natural male chimpanzees in the wild weren’t shy about mating in front of others, and even uplifted neo-chimps “shared” when the time and place was right. They had few of the jealousy or privacy taboos which made male humans so strange.

The evening’s climax had come much sooner than the Gubru planned, and in a fashion it probably did not like, but the basic lesson could still be the same. Those below were looking for a vicarious sharing, with all the lessons psychologically tailored.

Sylvie’s bird-mask was part of tke conditioning. Her bared teeth shone as she wriggled her bottom at him. The many-slitted skirt whirled in a rippling flash of provocative color. Even fhe zipsuiters were staring now, licking their lips in anticipation, their quarrel with him forgotten. At that moment he was their hero, he was each of them.

Fiben quashed a wave of shame. We’re not so bad… not when you figure we’re only three hundred years old. The Gubru want us to feel we’re barely more than animals, so we’ll be harmless. But I hear even humans used to sometimes revert like this, back in the olden days.

Sylvie chuffed at him as he approached. Fiben felt a powerful tightening in his loins as she crouched to await him. He reached for her. He gripped her shoulder.

Then Fiben swung her about to face him. He exerted strength to make her stand up straight.

The cheering crowd fell into confused muttering. Sylvie blinked up at him in hormone-drenched surprise. It was apparent to Fiben that she must have taken some sort of drug to get into this condition.

“F-frontwards?” she asked, struggling with the words. “But Big-Beak s-said he wanted it to look natural. …”

Fiben took her face in his hands. The mask had a complex set of buckles, so he bent around the jutting beak to kiss her once, gently, without removing it.