The Gripping Hand (54 page)

"Do you have children?"

"No. Not yet."

"You will have?"

"Let's leave it at 'not yet! "

"Neither do I, of course. But I'll see your Motie impact on the Empire and
raise
you not getting pregnant until you happen to feel like it!"

Jennifer's ears felt scorched.

Eudoxus said, "Never mind. I might guess the Empire's reaction, knowing that we've solved
your
inbuilt reason for making war and then invented our own."

"How so?"

"Mediators prevent misunderstanding," Eudoxus said. "Moties will fight for territory and power and resources for their descendants, but if there's a way to avoid fighting, the Mediators will find it. You fight because messages are badly worded."

"Oh. And invented your own, yes, of course. If you don't get pregnant, you die. And Mediators don't get pregnant." I should just shut my face and give it a vacation, Joyce thought.

"The Institute, is it considered a success?"

"It gets the best minds in the Empire."

"Yes. But such structures always freeze up, don't they? They get old and can't react anymore, like the Blockade Fleet."

"Oh . . . generally." But she hadn't heard that about Blaine Institute.
"Ossified
is the word you want."

"So they study Moties and nothing else, and they have not yet become ossified. Will they study ways to kill Moties?"

"Don't be absurd! You've met Chris Blaine. His parents own the Institute. What do you think?"

"I think he has secrets, some terrible," Eudoxus said.

So do I. Maybe enough of this. But . . . she can't see my face, so what is she reading?

But I'm a reporter, I'm as good at controlling my face as any politico or poker player. But they put me in a silver balloon and let me get complacent and then snaked me out of it, and who ever taught me to control the muscles in my damn feet?

"Joyce, it's important. What did you tell them?" Renner asked.

"Nothing at all," she said, and laughed. "Look, you don't have to keep asking. I taped it all. Here."

"Thanks. Blaine, let's look at this."

The voices were identical: Joyce Trujillo's voice, recognizable Empire-wide. The only way to tell them apart was through context. This was the alien speaking:
"I think he has secrets, some terrible."

"What do you think she meant?" Renner asked.

Chris Blaine frowned. "I don't know. But notice the context, just after Eudoxus asked if the Institute was set up to find ways to kill Moties. If I'm reading Eudoxus right—pity the camera wasn't on her much—"

"How could it have been?"

"I know, Joyce. Now, if I read this right, Eudoxus is convinced that Joyce doesn't believe the Institute is for making Moties extinct, but that hasn't laid all suspicions to rest."

"Anything we can do about that?"

"I'll think on it. I have some general recordings about the Institute, mostly promo stuff, but they might help. We'll give them to Eudoxus."

"Better review them first."

"Sir, I did already. There's nothing about the Empire they won't already know. I was holding off in case I might be wrong, but now . . ."

"Okay. Sounds reasonable. Anything else?"

"Only the message to Weigle. It should go while East India is still willing and able to deliver it."

"That should do it," Chris Blaine said. He held a message cube. "All the Alderson data we can find including the stuff from Alexandria. The Admiral shouldn't have any trouble finding the new Crazy Eddie point. Now it's your turn, Captain. Remember, heavy on duty. You can't lay that on too thick."

Renner took the cube. "Thanks. I'll be a while, and I have to be alone." He waited until the others had left, then inserted the cube into the recorder and began to dictate.

"And that's the situation as we see it," he concluded. "The Moties are ripe for an alliance. It's dicey, but there may never be a better chance.

"I don't believe we have the power to exterminate the Moties. There are too many of them, too many independent families, scattered through the rocks and the moons and the comets.

"We can't exterminate them, and we never expected to maintain the blockade forever, and now we'd need two blockades. My assessment is that we'd do better to try for an alliance using the Crazy Eddie Worm to help control Motie breeding. Of course we don't know what the Motie reaction to the worm will be, and we won't know for another forty or fifty hours. I don't think I should wait that long. Right now Medina Trading and East India are cooperating to send this, and they have the means to get the message through. God knows what can happen in fifty hours.

"Kevin J. Renner, Captain, Imperial Navy Intelligence; Acting Commodore, Second Mote Expedition. Authentication follows."

The authentication was more trouble than the message had been. Renner stretched a metallic band around his forehead and attached its cable to a small hand-held computer. Then he plugged in earphones and leaned back to relax.

"Hi," a contralto voice said. "Your name?"

"Kevin James Renner."

"Do you eat live snails?"

"I'll eat anything."

"Where were you born?"

"Dionysius."

"Are you alone?"

"Quite alone."

"What's the word?"

"Hollyhocks."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure, you stupid machine."

"Let's try it again. What's the word?"

"Hollyhocks."

"Sure it's not rosebuds?"

"Hollyhocks."

"My instructions are to be certain you are calm and uncoerced."

"Damn it, I am calm and uncoerced."

"Right. If you'll attach me to the message cube recorder . . ."

"You're on."

"Stand by. This may take a while."

Renner waited as seven minutes went by.

"Done. You may disconnect."

Renner took out the message cube. It was encrypted in a code that could only be read by an admiral or at a Navy Sector Headquarters; and the authentication code identified it as coming from a very senior official of Imperial Naval Intelligence. The only way to get that authentication was to convince the encrypting device that you really wanted it done. Any deviation from the script would have produced an authentication sequence that proclaimed the sender was under duress or wasn't the proper sender. Or so Renner had been told.

Renner punched the intercom. "Okay, Blaine, here it is. You sure the Moties can manage to duplicate this at long range?" If the Moties couldn't do that, the cube itself would have to be sent, and that would take days, if it got through at all.

"They're sure. We sent the details of the message cube system to the East India group at the Crazy Eddie point. They've built a recording device. Now we send the encrypted message, they record it onto a cube, and pop it through."

"Fine."

"Now what?" Joyce asked.

"Now we wait," Renner said. "For the Tartars."

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" whilst you find a rock.

 

—Attributed to Talleyrand

 

A day or three ago, the Great Hall must have been solid ice. This day it occupied half the volume of the Mosque. It was lavishly decorated: Renner recognized a modified illustration from
A Thousand Nights and a Night
. Tapestries with fantastic decorations: a djinn, a roc, Baghdad as it might have been in the twelfth century. The carpets were soft with unmistakably Saracen designs. There were also certain anachronisms: the big viewscreen on one wall, the opposite wall a vast curve of glass looking out onto the ice.

The screen showed another region of Inner Base Six, and a ship dropping through the iceball's black Langston Field sky.

Horace Bury paced, looking very relaxed, bobbing as if underwater in the low gravity of Base Six. He hadn't noticed that Joyce's pickup camera was on him. Ali Baba bobbed along beside him, a perfect half-scale mime.

It was a funny sight. Kevin Renner saw that, but he found that command has its own emotions: he had to look beyond humor, and beyond calling attention to humor. There was a lot at stake here, and the responsibility fell squarely on Kevin Renner.
And that's what Captain Blaine felt, back at the Mote. That, and his reluctant tolerance of the smartass Sailing Master. . . .

"Almost neutral territory," Eudoxus said. "Our base, but your part of it, a place where Commodore Renner may come and yet retain control of his ship. Excellency, this is to be a formal reception. Are you certain you will not invite any of the crew of
Atropos
? To act as entourage. Warriors, for instance."

"Is that really important?" Renner asked.

"It is important," Horace Bury said. "But it is also important that all Motie groups understand us as we begin to understand you. Moties and humans must modify their customs when they meet. Let us begin now."

Eudoxus bowed. "As you wish."

Chris Blaine watched the alien ship descend. "Looks like a racing yacht," Blaine said. "But bigger."

Eudoxus said, "I had wondered at the strange design. The Crimean Tartars must have taken considerable resources from the vermin city."

And your Engineers will already be examining everything about that ship,
Renner thought
. Moties aren't just innovative, they're adaptive.

The ship docked in a pattern of concentric scarlet circles, onto a platform that began to descend at once. As it sank from sight, Eudoxus listened to a handset. "They're down. Do you wish to see your friends disembark?"

"Of course," Renner said. Bury and Ali Baba turned as one.

The screen blinked, then showed an opening airlock. A Warrior emerged into the pressurized reception lock, then a Mediator with an odd marking pattern. Glenda Ruth Blaine followed, clutching a sealed carrying case to her chest. After her came a young man in space coveralls who carried a Mediator pup in his arms. Two Warriors and a young Master followed them.

"Only two." Bury and Ali Baba were bristling. "We had understood there were four?"

"Yes, Excellency. We are only now learning the details. One of the four insisted on filming the cleansing of Vermin City. He was hurt. His wounds were serious, life threatening. The Tartars have not ceased to tell us of the resources expended in saving his life.

"But when the Khanate ships were seen to be attacking, all realized that Terry Kakumi would not survive the acceleration required to escape. He was cast adrift. His female companion insisted on accompanying him."

"And thereby hangs a tale," Renner said. He looked at Blaine and got a slight nod. "And what has happened to them since then?"

"I have not been told," Eudoxus said.

The handset squawked. Eudoxus listened for a moment. "Your friends seem to be of two minds. They wish to see you immediately, but they are concerned that their appearance might lead you to suspect they have not been well treated."

"Tell 'em we've already seen them on-screen," Renner said. "With war fleets coming at us from all directions I don't think we have a lot of time to waste washing up. Eudoxus, can Medina Trading send someone to rescue the other humans?"

"I will learn."

" 'Adrift,' you said," Joyce noted.

Eudoxus shrugged. "What better word?"