The Gripping Hand (45 page)

"I think that one's a doctor," Jennifer said. "Look at the fingers. And the Motie nose is in the roof of the mouth. That thing's got enhanced smell and surgeon's fingers. There was a Doctor caste on Mote Prime."

"Maybe several."

"Right. And between them, the Doctor and the Engineer are going to decide how to keep us alive. I've got to say I don't like that."

Now the three Watchmakers were moving about the cabin drawing green lines. They squeezed the stuff out of what the Navy would have called
ration tubes
. The patterns weren't complex enough to be writing. The Watchmakers covered the walls with lines and curves, and presently converged where the sewage recycling system had been.

Freddy asked, "Why not, Jennifer? The way you and Glenda Ruth talk, these Moties can do anything, including keep humans healthy."

"But it's all very
basic
, isn't it? Nothing like the castle they built for us on Mote Prime."

"It's a battle fleet, not a city," Glenda Ruth said.

Terry Kakumi snapped, "It's a poor little pathetic battle fleet. Look at them, Jennie. Tiny little ships, mostly tank, big cabins because there are too many of the buggers, motors that do a meter per sec squared at best. What's left for weapons? Are they supposed to make them on the spot?

"What would a real fleet be like, Jennie? Rape my lizard, what
couldn't
we build with Motie Engineers at the Yards? They're church-rat poor. We've been captured by BuReloc transportees! They're stripping our car and fixing our life support with borrowed chewing gum and string!"

Jennifer giggled. "Bag ladies with borrowed chewing gum. I love it!"

Glenda Ruth felt herself bristling, as if these were her Moties. But she could feel it: Terry was right. "What can we do?"

"
Talk
to them, Glenda Ruth. Tell them we're worth the price of their last coin," Terry said. "Tell them to pull the pea out from all those mattresses, I'm just a pathetic mass of bruises. Explain ransom to them. Or they'll let us strangle."

She said, "These don't talk. We'll have to wait."

The new East India Mediator was old, as old as Eudoxus, with gray streaks at the muzzle and along the flanks. She was escorted into the chamber by a Warrior and a younger Mediator, who both left quickly.

When she was presented to Horace Bury, the trader flinched. Chris Blaine moved closer and saw what the Motie was carrying. "A newborn?" he asked, and watched Bury relax.
Of course Bury took it for a Watchmaker.

The aged Mediator examined the humans and turned toward Bury radiating delighted surprise. "Excellency! I had never dared hope to meet you in person, even when it became known that you were again in the Mote system. I have thought long on the name I would give myself and have chosen Omar rather than something more pretentious. It is my greatest pleasure finally to meet you."

Bury bowed slightly. "I am pleased to have had such apt students."

"And my new apprentice. We have not chosen a name, but—"

"You presume," Eudoxus said. "We too have new apprentices, and we are eager to introduce them to His Excellency."

"Of course." Omar turned to Wordsworth and began to speak.

"Hracht!"
Eudoxus looked pleased. "We agreed that all conversation will be in Anglic. This means yours as well, does it not?"

Wordsworth was about to speak, but some gesture from Omar silenced her. "I would prefer rigid rules to no rules," Omar said. "Very well, I will receive my information for all to hear. Where do matters stand now?"

"Not good not bad," Wordsworth said. "We make progress, agree that East India will have honored place, second to Medina but only to Medina."

The Mediator pup was staring intently at Horace Bury. The trader was not annoyed. Interesting . . .

"Progress indeed," Omar said. "And how will all this be accomplished?"

Chris Blaine smiled thinly. "Not all details have been resolved," he said. "Yet we can agree, there has never been a better time to unite all Moties. Mote Prime is not a factor. The Empire has many ships. With Medina and East India, and allies you may bring . . ."

Omar moved closer to Bury. The Mediator pup stretched toward him. Absently Bury's hand reached out, touched the pup's fur, drew back.

"Excellency," Omar said. "Let us speak seriously. Medina and East India are powerful if united, yet it must be obvious to all that even united we are not the greatest power among the space dwellers."

"King Peter wasn't the most powerful Master on Mote Prime," Chris Blaine said.

Bury spoke softly. "Medina and East India were the first to understand the implications of the protostar. Your ships even now negotiate with the Empire. Why should you not have the rewards of prescience?" He deliberately scratched behind the pup's oversize ear. "May I choose a name? Ali Baba, I think." Bury smiled. "Of course there is a small favor we require."

Eudoxus said, "We have begun to speak with the Crimean Tartars. It goes slowly. They know only obsolete languages."

"Obsolete to you," Omar said. "Not to us. One of my sisters has spoken with the Tartars, and I received word moments before I landed here. Excellency, the Tartars are afraid. They find that every Motie's hand is against them, and they do not know what they have. Only that it is important, and holding it is dangerous."

"They're holding a wolf by the ears," Joyce said.

The hull
clonked
.

In
Hecate
's cabin, they waited.

A Warrior bounded through the new air lock, scuttled about the cabin, and presently settled. It exchanged words with the Warrior already present. It emitted a warbling whistle.

Other Moties entered: a Master, a meter and a half tall and clad in thick white fur, and a smaller Motie furred in a dense brown-and-white pattern: a Mediator.

"We're in business," Glenda Ruth said.

Two Engineers followed, towing
a
glass cylinder with green goo sloshing in it:
Hecate
's sewage recycler. Six-fingered hands had been at work on it, but it didn't seem greatly changed.

"Another compliment," Freddy said. "Given what that cost me, I'd have been surprised if they could make it much more efficient."

Glenda Ruth felt Freddy's relief; she even shared it. Their life spans had just been extended by several weeks. More important was the timing.

"We thank for glorious gift," she said in the language Jock and Charlie had taught her, King Peter's language, from Mote Prime.

The Mediator's stance indicated receptivity but no understanding.

Damn! But free-fall might alter a Motie's body language. (Stance, indeed!) Or her words might be wrong, or her own gestures. How would a crippled Mediator speak, one with a missing arm?

Two of those little Moties with the Engineers weren't Watchmakers; they were Mediator pups. Jennifer waved. The larger pup jumped across ten meters of space, impacted, and clung.
Jennifer
wasn't having trouble communicating.

Okay. Glenda Ruth released her seat belts to give her body full play, worked her foot under a strap for anchorage, and said, palms facing out, regal-but-unarmed. "Our lives much improved by generous—"

The Moties converged on her.

Glenda Ruth had to remember to resume breathing. She was very aware of the spiky Warriors. They shifted constantly to keep a free path between prisoners and weapons. The four humans held quite still as six-fingered hands moved over them.

They had guessed this might happen. Glenda Ruth's mother, the only woman aboard
MacArthur
, had stripped so that Moties could learn something of human anatomy. Jennifer wanted that slot for herself.

It didn't matter. The caste that Jennifer thought was a Doctor moved in with the Engineer, and they peeled
Hecate
's crew like bananas. The humans had to help in self-defense. The Doctor shied back from waves of alien pheromones, then sniffed dutifully. It had been many hours since there was a shower aboard
Hecate
.

Jennifer blushed and twitched at tickle points. Freddy thought it was funny and was trying to hide it. Terry's rounded nudity didn't bother him, but his hyperawareness of the Warriors' guns was driving Glenda Ruth nuts. She tried not to flinch at the touch of Motie hands. Dry. Hard. Right hands felt like a dozen twigs gliding over her face, seeking the muscles that make the front of a human head into a signaling system. The left hand clamped like a vise to hold her arm or leg or torso to be probed.

They turned and twisted for the Doctor. The Mediator and Master hung back, watching.

Human vertebrae fascinated them, as they had thirty years before, when
MacArthur
's crew met Moties from Mote Prime. Evolution had not taken that path on the Mote. Motie life-forms had spines of solid bone and heavy, complex joints.

The brown-and-white pup jumped from human to human, sniffing, feeling, comparing. Even the Master, judging it safe, moved forward to run its right hands along Glenda Ruth's spine. Jennifer collapsed in giggling that was half sobs, sandbagged by everyone's favorite memory from Summer Vacation.

(Outside the museum on Mote Prime, a Master's dozen fingers explored Kevin Renner's back. Renner shifted in delight. "Right! A little lower. Okay, scratch right there. Ahh!")

They couldn't talk under such circumstances. Glenda Ruth tried. They
had
to educate the Mediator, give it words to learn . . . but the others' embarrassment was just too strong. Glenda Ruth quickly gave up.

The Doctor and Engineer began talking to the Master. Pointing, demonstrating, explaining. The white-furred Motie took it all in. It asked short questions (that one inflection, query, brought verbal responses, where another,
command
, caused action), and the Mo-ties resumed their examination. One question sent the Engineer to join its Watchmakers at work in the air recycler. Another had it comparing Freddy and Terry, Jennifer and Glenda Ruth. Hands. Hair. Toes. Spines again. Genitals
(will
you stop that giggling?)

The Mediator watched.

And finally they were allowed, to put their clothes on. They found it hard to look at each other. The Master and its attendants were still talking.

"We should have guessed," Glenda Ruth said. "Masters do talk. It's different from the Mediator skill. They have to organize data from a dozen different castes . . . professions."

Clothed, it was all right to speak again. Jennifer said, "I think the Doctor's nearsighted. In a surgeon that's probably good."

The adult Mediator took the second Mediator pup from its Engineer parent. She crossed to the bridge, caught herself, and offered the little Motie to Freddy: clearly an offer, not a demand.

Freddy looked at Glenda Ruth. He was showing surprise, no distaste, and a touch of hope. She said, "Take it."
Why Freddy?
Freddy immediately reached out, smiling, and accepted the thing into his arms.

Why Freddy? Why not me?

It clung with five limbs, its hands exploring Freddy's head and shoulders, where his skin was exposed. Presently it pulled back to watch his face. Moties caught on to that one quick, the notion of a mobile face.
Why not me, or Terry?

The Master spoke. The Engineer led the Mediator to the safe door. The Mediator began playing with the code readout.

"Damn," Glenda Ruth said. The others looked at her.

If she let the others know exactly what she had in mind, a Mediator would know it now or later. Could she get some help on this? She pointed at the safe and shouted, "Show signs of distress, dammit! It's too soon!"

Distress, right. Freddy spasmed, pointed to the safe with an out-flung arm, and flung the other across his averted eyes, crying, "Weep! Wail!" Glenda Ruth choked back a laugh. The pup was trying to imitate him, right arms pointing, left across its eyes.

Terry's hand closed on her ankle. "The Warriors."

"They—" She looked. They would. "Freddy love, cut it."