The Gripping Hand (15 page)

Renner said, "The circles were the first thing you saw from orbit. Craters everywhere, big and little, and all old, all across Mote Prime. Seas and lakes. One lopsided crater skewed by an earthquake fault line, one across a mountain range . . . you get the idea."

"The great asteroid war. Our Moties didn't remember anything about it," Miriam said.

"They think in circles, too. Cycles. Rise and fall. Population growth and then a war. They keep their museums to help the next civilization get itself together. They don't even try to stop it anymore. They're too old. It's been going on too long."

Miriam said, "Crazy Eddie—"

"Yeah, Crazy Eddie tries to stop it."

"I don't think I understand the Crazy Eddie myth-figure. We have plenty of legends about the coming of the Messiah, and about holy madmen, but no human culture ever pinned all its hopes for the future on a savior who
had
to be crazy."

"Don Quixote?" Ruth Cohen grinned.

Jennifer nodded agreement. "Good point."

"Humans try the impossible. It's part of our nature," Tom Boyarski said. "Submitting to the inevitable is a big part of Motie nature."

"But Jock really liked
Don Quixote
," Jennifer Banda said.

"They
liked
the Persian story about the man who told the king he could teach a horse to sing," Tom said. "And maybe they understood intellectually. But not at a gut level." He laughed. "That's all right. We know a lot about them, too, but deep down they're still a big mystery."

"And always will be," Miriam said.

"No," Tom said. "Next time, we'll know more about what to study. Next time we'll find out."

"Next time," Bury said. "You are planning a new expedition to the Mote?"

Tom looked startled, then laughed. "I don't have the funding." For a moment he must have considered; but he wasn't young enough to suggest that Horace Bury
did
. "No one is," Tom said. "No one I know of, anyway. But sooner or later there's got to be one."

Jennifer Banda's pocket computer chimed. She looked embarrassed, but she stood up and said, "Excuse me, people. I was told to take you back to Lady Blaine's office."

Bury set his chair in motion. Renner stood up. "You don't understand, and that's the truth," he said. "Crazy Eddie is supposed to
fail."

Instead of the receptionist, there was another woman, younger and blond and expensively dressed, in the receiving area outside Lady Sally Blaine's office. Renner had seen a picture of Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine, but he wouldn't have needed that. She had the same finely chiseled features and penetrating eyes as her mother.

"Sir Kevin, Your Excellency," she said. Her eyes twinkled. "I thought I'd introduce myself before my parents made it all formal." Her smile was infectious. "Kevin, I'm delighted to meet you! Your Excellency, did you know my brother was named for your pilot?"

"No, my Lady—"

She nodded. "Kevin Christian. We mostly call him Chris. Mom doesn't like us chattering about family. Did they ever tell you, Kevin? But you guessed anyway. Kevin, I still have the christening cup you sent. Thank you, and thank you, too, Your Excellency! There wasn't anything like that for sale for years."

"It was crafted in our laboratories, my Lady," Bury said. His smile was genuine. "I'm pleased that you remembered."

"It still delivers the best-tasting milk on Sparta." Glenda Ruth pointed to the wall clock display of the dark and light areas of Sparta. "They're waiting for us. Uh—I'm not supposed to tell, but I hope you're prepared for a surprise." She held the door open for Bury's travel chair.

There was something about Jennifer Banda's smile as she and Glenda Ruth ushered them into Lady Blaine's office. Both Blaines were wearing that same conspiratorial smile. The air of mystery was getting on Renner's nerves.

There was another occupant.

He stood up slowly from his oddly designed travel chair, and bowed. A hairy, grinning, hunchbacked dwarf, not just short but grotesquely misshapen, too. You don't stare at a dwarf, and Renner was in control of his expression, but he lost it all when the stranger bowed. His backbone jutted, broken in two places.

The mind would always misinterpret that first sight.

It stood four and a half feet tall. It was hairy. The brown and white markings were still visible, though they had shaded mostly to white. There was one big ear on the right side, and no room for one on the left; the massive shoulder muscles ran right up to knobs at the top of the misshaped skull. There were two slender right arms. The dolphin-grin was simply the shape of its face.

Renner gaped. For a moment he couldn't take his eyes off it . . . and then he remembered Bury.

Horace Bury's face was all the wrong colors. He'd opened the case in the arm of his travel chair, but his hands were shaking too badly to deal with the diagnostic sleeve. Renner slipped it into place. The system began feeding Bury tranquilizers at once. Renner studied the readings for a moment before he looked up.

"Captain, that was nasty. I mean my Lord. My Lord Blaine, you could have killed him, dammit!"

"Dad, I told you—"

Earl Blaine nibbled his lip. "I hadn't thought. Your Excellency . . ."

Bury was furious, but he had it under control. "An excellent joke, my Lord. Excellent.
Who are you?"

The Motie said, "I'm Jock, Excellency. It's good to see you in such health."

". . . Yes. It must be, considering. I find it
stunning
to see you in such health. Did you lie to us? Mediators die around age twenty-five, you said. All Moties die if they cannot be made pregnant, and the Mediators are mules. Sterile, you said."

Renner said, "Between the legs."

Bury looked. "Male? Allah's . . . blessing. Lord Blaine—Lady Blaine—this is a stunning achievement.
How?"

Sally Blaine said, "Fyunch(click), give us Charlie 490."

There was a holowall. Understandably, Renner had not noticed it. Now it showed what looked to be shadows of a CAT scan, the interior of something not human. A Motie, of course. The hips: one intricate and massive joint in backbones as solid as the bones of a human leg. Mote Prime had never invented vertebrae.

The camera zoomed within the abdomen. A white arrowhead pointed to tiny tadpole-shapes clinging to the abdominal wall.

"That," Lady Sandra Fowler Blaine said, "is the C-L worm. We did gene-tailoring on a symbiote in the digestive tract. Now it secrets male hormone. It was already secreting something a lot like it. This wasn't the first thing we tried, but we tried all kinds of things, and this didn't get enough attention. Ivan died before we were ready. We think Charlie was killed by the physiological change, female to male. He was too old."

Bury's color was better. "You've broken the Motie breeding cycle."

"We've repaired the cycle, Your Excellency," Lady Blaine said coolly. "It's broken in Mediators. Child, male, female, pregnant, male, female, pregnant, that's how it goes with Motie classes. But Mediators are sterile mules, so they're only male once, and they die young.

"We only had three Moties to test, but we could ask questions. When a Motie's been male awhile, the single testis withers and the Motie goes female. Giving birth excites cells in the birth canal, and more testes form, but only one grows to term."

"He's carrying more than one of your worms," Renner pointed out.

"We worried about that, but it's not a problem," Glenda Ruth said. "The kidney flushes the extra hormone. This is an old, well-established Motie parasite. It had already evolved practically to symbiote stage. It won't overbreed inside its host. The hormone itself inhibits that, and the worm long ago developed other mechanisms to protect the host."

Bury's eyes flicked to Renner's. They must have been thinking exactly alike:
there'd be no problem transporting the symbiote.

Bury said, "What next, my Lady?"

Sally nibbled her lip. "We don't know. Kevin? I think you understood the Crazy Eddie concept better than most of us. Would they want this?"

"Of course they will!" Glenda Ruth said.

Sally looked at her daughter coldly, then turned back to Renner.

"Does this make them fertile?" Renner asked.

"No. Not Mediators, anyway," Sally said.

"Keepers," Renner said.

Bury nodded. Keepers were sterile male Masters, less ambitiously territorial than most Motie Masters. The title came from the Keepers of the Museums and other public facilities, and three Imperial midshipmen had died to find that out.

Renner grinned suddenly. "Mediators would want it. Masters would want it for their enemies. But you don't know it works on Masters."

"No. But it does work on Mediators. And if we had a Master to test . .."

"Kevin," Bury said.

"Yeah?" Bury still looked sick. Renner glanced at the clock face on the travel chair. A dull orange light glowed on its face. "Yeah, you've got to get ready for dinner at the Traders Guild. My Lord, my Lady—"

"We should speak further on this." Bury seemed to have trouble manipulating his lips. "Later. You have a, an exceedingly powerful . . . tool."

"We know it," Rod Blaine said. "We won't forget. How long will you be on Sparta, Kevin?"

"Say two weeks. Maybe three."
As long as it takes
, Renner thought.
Now, if not before.

"Kevin, let's have dinner," Glenda Ruth said. "I mean, no one can get mad if a girl has dinner with her brother's godfather." She looked at her mother and smiled sweetly. Can they?"

Renner was sleeping like a baby, but the door chime snapped him awake. He asked, "Horvendile, is Bury present?"

"His Excellency has just entered."

Ruth stirred. "Kevin? What is it?"

"I think I should go hold Bury's hand."

Nabil passed him at the door to the parlor. Renner asked, "How is he? Is he likely to want to talk?"

"He ordered hot chocolate," Nabil said.

"Okay. Two."

The travel chair was in the middle of the rug. Bury was looking straight ahead, motionless, like a stuffed dummy. Presently he said, "I was affable."

"I'm impressed. What was His Highness like?"

"He will not become 'His Highness' until he assumes his duties as Viceroy." Bury shook his head slightly. "We were at the same table, but several seats apart. Later, many crowded around him in the clubrooms. I formed the impression of intelligence and charisma, but that would be apparent from his career. Really I learned nothing I had not known, but at least we have been formally introduced, and I detected no signs of distaste."

"So what's next?"

"I persuaded him to come to dinner Thursday. It was the only time slot he had. He can listen to me and Jacob reminisce."

"That'll tell him if he wants to travel with us to New Cal."

"Yes. Horvendile, determine Lord Andrew Mercer Calvin's preferences in food and entertainment. Kevin, we must go. These happy lords never really saw the problem, and now they think they have a solution!"

"You've got to admit, they've got a piece of one."

"Hoskins sees profit from the Mote. The Blaines will want to try out their new toy. The graduate student, Boyarski, wants to play tourist. He was right. There will certainly be another expedition, if the blockade doesn't fail first."

"I know. What people know how to do, they do eventually. Look at Earth."

"There's another thing. The Blaine girl will want to go to the Mote. With her family's influence — "

"Yep. She'll inherit power all right. Glenda Ruth. Nice of her to remember our present."

"Kevin, of course she remembers, because she knows it gives you pleasure that she does. As she was delightfully at the edge of informal familiarity with me."