The Gripping Hand (53 page)

"I can't answer that."

"No, but you must have thought about it."

"Sure. A lot of people have." Interest in Moties flared and died and flared again through the Empire, and the latest news would cause the biggest flare of all. What to do about Moties would be the topic of discussion everywhere. The Humanity League. The Imperial Senate. The Navy League. The Imperial Traders Association. The editorial board of her own news syndicate. Little old ladies at tea parties.

She was beginning to notice the cold . . . or was it the dark? Her body wasn't cold, she was sweating with the exercise, but the black sky and gray ice pulled at her mind. They'd left the domes and ships behind.

Eudoxus bounced alongside her, talking, with the Warrior at the lead. "We've taken a great gamble, you know."

"Yes."

"If we could only understand one thing, we would feel far less at risk. Your superiors seem to expect . . . what shall we call our gathering of alliances? . . . expect the Medina Consortium to remain stable, ultimately to speak for all of Mote system. How can they expect that?"

"I don't know." The Motie was too distant: Joyce couldn't see her face. She wouldn't be able to see Joyce's either. But all discussions of Moties came down to the same thing: there was no central Motie government, and it didn't look as if there ever could be. How could there be stable relations with a caldron of Motie families? Even the real Genghis Khan hadn't been able to form a stable empire of Mongols. . . .

They'd reached a ring of domes wreathed in cables of all sizes and colors, with a great ship rising out of the center. In the minuscule gravity Joyce bounded to the crest of a dome and caught up a handhold line. Joyce considered herself to be hard and fit, but this was hard work . . . and the Warrior was alongside her in an instant, and here was Eudoxus, too. Didn't Moties get tired faster than humans?

Eudoxus spoke to the Warrior, who said little, and then switched to Anglic. "A Master's ship is bigger, to house an entourage, and is built for intelligence and communications and defense, and never for stealth. In battle a Master may be left alive for later negotiations."

"Uh-huh." Joyce was filming the huge ship, retractable antennae, the long cylinder that must be a weapon: ram tube, rocket magazine, laser, whatever.

"I have heard that your Empire prefers not to interfere with its member cultures, but sometimes it must. Is that our fate?"

"I don't know that, either, but it's got to be better than what you've been doing." Joyce was surprised at her own vehemence.
I sounded just like my father, and I never thought of myself as an Imperialist.

"Joyce, we have a great deal more to see. Shall we take a tube?"

Fatigue made her irritable. "Eudoxus, they're too small. Anyway, why would that be easier? We'd still have to move!"

"No. Difference in air pressure moves us. To fit inside we must deflate our oversuits. Let the Messengers follow with them."

"Done."

Victoria came into the humans' area of
Cerberus
. "Representatives of houses allied with your Empire await you," she said. "Gather your possessions. Particularly your trade goods. You will not be returning here, and we may not be able to save this ship."

The humans stared in astonishment. "What's happening?" Glenda Ruth demanded.

"The Khanate comes. We have formed an alliance with Medina Trading. Their representatives await you. They call themselves Mentor and Lord Byron and you must assure them that you have been well treated. I trust there will be no difficulty with that."

"That's not a problem," Freddy said. "And I can afford to lose
Hecate
, but just what's about to happen to us?"

For answer Victoria pointed to an image on the telescope screen. Vermin City continued to change, to dwindle . . . was rapidly melting away, Glenda Ruth saw, leaving long bulges . . . slender spacecraft emerging from the wreckage.

"Looks familiar," she said.

Freddy laughed. "They're oversize copies of
Hecate
.
¹
"

"You'll board the fastest of those. We're running away. Warriors will delay the Khanate as long as they can, others will try to save this ship and any others, but we will be matching velocities with your friends, who appear to be aboard a sizable traveling fortress."

"How fast will we be going?" Jennifer demanded.

Victoria frowned. "As swiftly as possible. Three gravities—Mote Prime gravities."

Mote Prime was a lighter world. Freddy said, "Call it two and a half standard gee. Terry—"

"Terry can't take that," Jennifer said.

"No. Victoria, thanks, but—"

"You will not save your friend by being captured by the Khanate," Victoria said. "And they might not be quite as understanding about the benefits of your cocoa. I am afraid I can leave you no choice here. Your friends will forgive us for leaving behind one human, wounded in activities he insisted on joining. They will not be so kind if we abandon you all. Come."

"I'm staying," Jennifer said. "Glenda Ruth, you and Freddy go. Victoria's right, you're important, and it won't matter how it happened, the Empire won't accept it if you're lost. But someone has to take care of Terry, and you can tell them I insisted. Pollyanna—"

"Stay with Jennifer," the Motie said. Her voice was Jennifer's accent but in a lower register.

"Whatever we do, it must be done quickly," Victoria warned. "A Khanate battle squadron approaches, and your friends are impatient to talk to you."

"Battle squadron. How reasonable will they be?" Glenda Ruth demanded. "Would they talk?"

"Mediators will always talk when there is not active fighting. Sometimes then. Whether the Mediator with this expedition can speak your language is another matter, of course. You will have Pollyanna to help."

"I will help you talk," the Mediator pup affirmed. Jennifer hugged her. She said, "You're not trying to talk me out of staying."

"I had hoped you would stay," Victoria said. "Your Terry might then survive until Medina can buy him back from the Khanate. Without your help I do not think so."

"I don't like this much," Freddy said. "Glenda Ruth?"

"Victoria,
how
will you leave them?"

Victoria chattered rapidly to a Warrior. The Warrior answered briefly. Victoria said, "We can leave you
Cerberus
, minus our own life support segments, and a Warrior pilot and motors to give half a gee . . . in fact, you should have
Hecate
's motor of alien design, to indicate your nature. Jennifer, you might be overlooked, and if so, Medina will find you. I regret we cannot allow Dr. Doolittle to accompany you."

"What are their chances of escape?" Glenda Ruth persisted.

"Not good," Freddy said. "Stealthing is fine, but
Cerberus
needs thrust to get away from here, and they'll see that."

Victoria shrugged. "This is likely. If we delay much longer, none of this will matter. I will also leave recordings in the trade language, informing the Khanate that they have a valuable possession which those more powerful than the Khans will wish to buy back, but only if intact."

"Go on, Glenda Ruth," Jennifer said. "It's the best we're going to get."

"Come," said the Mediator. "Come meet the representatives of your friends."

The Warrior led; then Joyce, then Eudoxus, all in skintights and helmets. Air pressure wafted them down the tube. Their insulating oversuits followed, collapsed, with two little Messengers to tend them.

Eudoxus said, "Bury's Fyunch(click) brought us tales of swimming. Is it like this?"

"A little," Joyce said. The currents kept her from brushing the sides. She drifted like seaweed, in a dead man's float.

An industrial complex wafted by, brightly lighted. Where the tube curved, she could see Watchmakers following her, a swarm of them bracketed by two Engineers.

"Crazy Eddie always misreads the turning of the cycles," Eudoxus said. "Crazy Eddie tries to arrest the turning, to make a civilization that will last for all time. What do humans think of Crazy Eddie, Joyce?"

"I suppose we think he's crazy." Silence prompted her to continue, "Not all that crazy, though. Our cycles of history, they go up and down but generally up. A spiral. We don't just go round and round. We learn."

"So you use the term without embarrassment. Crazy Eddie point . . . our term, yes, but you don't flinch from it. Crazy Eddie Squadron. Joyce, you've studied the Crazy Eddie Squadron?"

"My views are on record, Eudoxus, and you can't have the records. Navy matters." How the hell had Eudoxus learned that? Was there a hole Chris hadn't plugged? So to speak.

"We are allies. It seems unfair that we cannot know what you have told every casual inhabitant of the Empire."

"Unfair. Yes, it is, but it's still not my decision, Eudoxus. I took an oath."

The Motie said, "Yes, of course. Joyce, nobody loves blockade duty. The Squadron is crumbling, isn't it? The opening of the Sister is not a bad thing for you, but how can your companions expect to create stability here?"

Good question, and Joyce didn't know. The Empire had
something
, though. Something to do with the Institute, Joyce thought, and the Crazy Eddie Worm. Joyce knew only the name, and even that she must keep secret.
Why?
But the Mediator was behind her; her view was of Joyce's feet, not her face.

"Mote Prime sent you ambassadors," Eudoxus said. "A Keeper and two Mediators. You've had thirty years to study them. We've studied billions of ourselves for millions of years. What can you possibly have learned that we could not?"

"Eudoxus, I am not supposed to talk about this."

"The Imperials have told you very little, haven't they, Joyce? As if they didn't trust you to keep secrets."

"That's right. So there's not much point in this, is there?"

"Yet you are a public opinion specialist. You are heard throughout the Empire. Joyce, it is clear that your Empire is united as the Moties have never been, but not every family is obedient. Has your Empire the strength to exterminate us? Is this your real plan?"

"No, we don't plan that!"

"Are you so sure? No secret weapons? Ah, but they would not tell you. Joyce, look ahead and up."

The ball of crumpled tinsel was a larger point among the stars. Violet sparks were rising from it. Joyce trained her pickup and spoke for continuity. "Spacecraft are rising to meet us, bringing the human hostages captured by the group our Motie allies call the Crimean Tartars. The humans are Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine. The Hon. Frederick Townsend. Jennifer Banda of the Blaine Institute. And an engineer crewman, Terry Kakumi. . . . Eudoxus, when can we talk to them? To the people who were in that ship? Did they get any pictures of the war rats? What are war rats?"

"In due time. When your friends arrive. For now—we should show you the motors."

Joyce looked up. The crumpled ball and its sparks were setting, and the violet-white glow of Base Six's motors was coming into view ahead. "Yes," said Joyce. "Please."

Eudoxus spoke into his hand. Mediators ruled all transport, Joyce remembered. And sometimes sat in judgment. . . . The wind that moved them almost died; then the tube branched, and pressure wafted them left.

"We knew that Glenda Ruth Blaine must be daughter to Sally Fowler and Roderick Blaine, and the Honorable Frederick Town-send son to another powerful master, but we don't know of a Blaine Institute."

"It's a school, but it does research."

"I thought you called such organizations 'universities'."

"Yes, that's right, the Blaine Institute is like a university, it was deliberately located next to a university, but universities study everything. The Blaine Institute has only one purpose. To study Moties."

"Ah. Was this Institute responsible for the blockade?"

"No, that was Imperial policy. Although Lord and Lady Blaine helped set the policy even as they were founding the Institute. And Lady Blaine's uncle. But the blockade was proclaimed before I was born." Instead of an extermination fleet. The Mediator still couldn't see her face: right. "You can't imagine the impact you made on the Empire. Just your existence."