The Gripping Hand (31 page)

"God's navel," Renner said.

"Kevin, have I heard correctly?" Bury demanded.

"Apparently," Renner said. "I heard it too."

"Moties," Joyce said from somewhere aft. "Chris—"

"Later."

"Yes, but—Chris, they're
Moties
!"

"Joyce, it's a great story, but there's no time!" Chris shouted. "Captain, the first two Motie ships are under acceleration. They must be automated; Moties wouldn't have recovered yet."

"Wonder what kind of computer they trust to work that soon after a Jump?" Buckman muttered.

Chris Blaine examined the computer screen. "Continuing in their original directions. My guess is they'll all do that."

Renner said, "Scatter and lose us. Only seven ships, and I don't see any more . . . in fact I've lost one. I'd have thought they would send more."

"Me, too," Blaine said. "Maybe they couldn't."

"Spacecraft are expensive," Bury said. He sounded comfortable enough under 1.5 gravities. "Many resources, of different kinds. A complex society."

"Which may mean they've got problems," Renner said. "Jacob, where in the Mote system will their end of the tramline be?"

"Fairly far out. Well beyond the orbit of their gas giant, Mote Beta."

"We never looked at the Trojan civilizations," Renner said. "Maybe we should have."

Half an hour later it was clear enough. Chris Blaine went back to explain to Joyce and Bury: "There are seven Motie ships. Five are under full acceleration in five different directions. One of them is lost, to us and
Agamemnon
and everyone else. Maybe we'll find it. Maybe not."

"Mercy of Allah," Bury muttered. "And the seventh?"

"The seventh is headed directly toward us, Excellency."

Bury fingered his beard. "They will want to talk, then."

Joyce Mei-Ling was staring at the viewscreen. Suddenly she pointed at the Motie ship. As they watched, a laser beam blinked on and off.

"As you said, Excellency.-If you'll excuse me . . ." Blaine went back to his duty station and turned to Renner. "Apparently they want to talk."

"So do we," Renner said. "We'll never catch any of the others.
Atropos
may, but
we
won't."

"One of the others looks to be heading for the Jump point to New Cal," Blaine said. "
Agamemnon
will be there first, though."

"Meanwhile, that ship is coming to us," Renner said. "Hah. They're modulating that beam. Let's see if any of it makes sense—"

"Imperial ship, this is Motie vessel
Phidippides
," the speaker said.

"I've heard that name," Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo said.

"We come in peace. We seek His Excellency Horace Bury. Is he aboard?"

Joyce said, "Phidippides
was the first Marathon runner. Delivered his message and died."

Renner and Blaine looked at each other, then at Bury flat in his water bed with a screen above his face. Renner looked at the sensors before he spoke. Bury's heartbeat was steady, brain waves indicating he was fully awake. Okay.

"Horace? It's for you."

Foreign relations are like human relations. They are endless. The solution of one problem usually leads to another.

 

—James Reston

 

The Honorable Freddy Townsend woke slowly, savoring each moment of relaxation. He felt eyes on him and turned over. "Hi."

"Hi, yourself."

Nobody puts a big bed aboard a racing ship. It only leaves room for accidents. Freddy had moved the double into
Hecate
for that earlier voyage with Glenda Ruth. He'd left it aboard for this trip . . . of course, why not? It had seemed so empty, until now.

"Chocolate," she said. "Is there any chocolate aboard?"

"You shall have your desire if I have to grow the beans myself," Freddy proclaimed.

"If you find any aboard, lock it up. We're likely to need it."

He stared. Then he reached for her, a tentative gesture. Glenda Ruth laughed. "I won't vanish, you know."

"I can barely follow you, and you always know what I'm thinking. That worries me. If you know so much about—people—from what the Moties taught you, what do they know about us? Everything including what we don't know ourselves?"

"Maybe not that much," she said.

"But you're not sure."

"I only knew three Moties. And they had to be the smartest ones available. I mean, who would you send as ambassadors to another race? To an empire that threatened your whole race?"

"Yeah, you're probably right." This time he took her firmly by the shoulder and pulled her toward him.

It would take them six days to cross to the Jump point to MGC-R-31.

On a later splendid morning Glenda Ruth said, "You should let Kakumi teach you some fighting techniques."

Freddy wasn't quite awake yet. He woke slowly and carefully. "Terry? I don't know that he knows any. Inuit are nice peaceful folk who really know machines."

"Taniths aren't. There was three hundred years of tooth and nail. Terry Kakumi's half Tanith."

"Mmm . . ."

"And maybe five percent Sauron superman, Freddy. He's bound to know something."

Freddy sat bolt upright. "Rape my lizard! Kakumi's been my engineer—Glenda Ruth, how would you know that? You barely know him!"

"I started watching him because I don't want Jennifer hurt. It looked like she and Terry were, um, courting."

"Four years, five, he's kept this ship healthy."

"He's a good man, Freddy, but I noticed things. I've watched him move. He tried to cook for us once?"

"Ugh. I should have warned you. In a race there's just the two of us. I take precooked. It's better."

"They were perfect soldiers, the Saurons. March for a week without sleeping. Tolerate any sunlight level, any gravity. Breathe any atmosphere, never mind the stench. Sleep anywhere, wake instantly." She paused. "Eat anything organic. Anything."

"Oh. I guess that figures. Okay, so he's part—Sauron. There are Sauron loyalists, you know. Kakumi was six years in the Navy. Honorable discharge as an engineering petty officer."

"It doesn't matter."

"Some places it does," Freddy said. "I'm glad they didn't know when we were racing in the Ekaterina system. I'm glad I didn't know. I'd have been too nervous."

"You won, though."

"Sure. Didn't know you . . . You
don't
follow racing. Damn, sometimes you scare me."

"Pooh."

"Yeah, pooh. Let's both take lessons." They'd been in New Cal system for four days; another six would take them through the Jump point to MGC-R-31. Six lessons in how to be a Sauron soldier?

"Oh, Freddy, that's . . ." She stopped.

"You weren't going to say . . . ?"

"No, not because I'm a girl and you're a boy!
Mediators
don't fight. Sure, let's both take lessons."

Terry Kakumi looked hard and round, a little taller than Glenda Ruth but more than half again her weight. When
Hecate
was racing and all needless mass had been stripped out, he slept in the engine compartment. Now there were bulkheads installed to make a cabin for him just forward of the engine compartment, but he hadn't done much with it.

"Bare as the engine room," Freddy told Glenda Ruth. "I suppose it makes sense—are you sure about his ancestry?"

"Want to ask him?"

"No, I don't think so—"

"Of course he may not know."

Freddy tapped on the engine room compartment door.

It opened. "Aye, aye." Kakumi saw Glenda Ruth, came out into the companionway, closing the door behind him. "Need me to relieve George on watch?"

"No, we're on course. Wanted to ask you something, Terry. You were Navy, you must have learned how to fight . . . ?"

Kakumi nodded.

"Or knew already. Anyway, you knew when we left Sparta we'd be trying to get to the Mote. Well, it might be dangerous. We're wondering if you'll give us some lessons?"

Kakumi looked at Freddy, then Glenda Ruth, and shook his head slowly. "Wouldn't be a good idea. Four days or so, you'd learn just enough to get in trouble. If there's trouble, you talk, I'll fight." He grinned, making small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "Better than if I talk and you fight. Jennifer's good at talking, too. Do we know for sure if we're going to the Mote?"

"Not yet."

"Too bad."

"Well. I suppose you're right," Freddy said. "About learning just enough to get killed. All right."

"Let's go look at the charts," Glenda Ruth said. She took Freddy's hand and led him away. When they reached the bridge, she was laughing.

"What?"

"Think about it. Why he closed the door."

"Huh? Oh. Jennifer."

"Interesting that he's that sensitive."

"Excellency, greetings!" The lopsided Motie face bubbled with enthusiasm . . . somehow.

"Salaam. I see that you know me."

"Of course."

Face
had been a new concept to the Moties. Renner remembered that rigid, twisted smile. Motie faces weren't evolved to send messages. The creature must be signaling with body language and intonation:
Glad, glad to see you! How long it has been, how much like coming home!

Bury's indicators were twitchy but not ominously so. "My Fyunch-(click) must be long dead."

"Oh, yes, but she taught another, and that one taught me. I've been Fyunch(click) to you since my birth, yet we meet for the first time. Please tell me, was the coffee-tasting event a success?"

For an instant, Bury gaped. Then, "Yes, indeed. Your teacher's teacher was quite right, the Navy had never considered that a man who doesn't drink wine might still teach them something of discrimination."

"Splendid! But it must seem that I'm talking of some past Dark Age. Let me say in some haste that my task is to persuade you and yours not to fire on us. We come in peace. We carry none of the Warrior class."

Bury nodded in satisfaction. "Astute of you to say so."

Renner and Blaine exchanged glances. Chris Blaine grinned slightly.

"What?" Joyce demanded in a fierce whisper.

"Warriors," Blaine said. When she raised a questioning eyebrow, Chris raised a palm to cut her off. "Later."

The Motie continued to project confidence. "Excellency, our first ship, which we have named Gandhi, wishes to carry an ambassador to your nearest peopled world. She is accompanied by a Mediator, of course, one who can speak to your political authorities. Meanwhile, we aboard Phidippedes wish to accompany you and yours into Mote system."

Bury's passengers stared at their alien communicant. Buckman grinned in anticipation. Joyce scrawled something on her pocket computer. Renner checked again: only Bury was in camera view. "Buckman, cut thrust to half a gee," he said.

"You sure?"

"We're not chasing anything anymore, and Horace has to talk, and that was an order."

Bury ignored the byplay. To the Motie he said, "Me and mine?"

"I was told to invite any ship I found here to follow me home, but particularly the craft with Horace Hussein Bury aboard."