The Mote in God's Eye (29 page)

“Four of them.” Rod was trying to get used to the idea. The cutter wasn’t a commissioned vessel, but it was one of His Majesty’s warships, and somehow having a bunch aliens aboard was—nuts. Horvath knew the risks he was taking. “Only four? Doesn’t Sinclair have a guide?”

“Oddly enough, no. A number of them are watching him work in the tool room, but there was no special one assigned to him.”

“And none for the coxswain or the spacers on the cutter?”

“No.” Hardy thought a moment. “That is odd, isn’t it? As if they class Commander Sinclair with the unimportant crewmen.”

“Maybe they just don’t like the Navy.”

David Hardy shrugged. Then, carefully, he said, “Captain, sooner or later we’ll have to invite them aboard
MacArthur
.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

Hardy sighed. “Well, that’s why I brought it up now, that we could thrash it out. They’ve shown that they trust us, Captain. There’s not a cubic centimeter of their embassy ship that we haven’t seen, or at least probed with instruments. Whitbread will testify that there’s no sign of weaponry aboard. Eventually they’re going to wonder what guilty secrets we’re hiding aboard.”

“I’m going to tell you. Are there Moties within earshot?”

“No. And they haven’t learned Anglic
that
well anyway.”

“Don’t forget they
will
learn, and don’t forget recorders. Now, Chaplain, you’ve got a problem—about Moties and Creation. The Empire has another. For a long time we’ve talked about the Great Galactic Wizards showing up and deciding whether to let the humans join, right? Only it’s the other way around, isn’t it? We’ve got to decide whether to let the Moties out of their system, and until that’s decided we don’t want them to see the Langston Field generators, the Alderson Drive, our weapons . . . not even just how much of
MacArthur
is living space, Chaplain. It would give away too much about our capabilities. We’ve a lot to hide, and we’ll hide it.”

“You’re treating them as enemies,” David Hardy said gently.

“And that’s neither your decision nor mine, Doctor. Besides, I’ve got some questions I want answered before I decide that the Moties are nothing more than steadfast friends.” Rod let his gaze go past the Chaplain, and his eyes focused a long way off. I’m not sorry it’s not my decision, he thought. But ultimately they’re going to ask me. As future Marquis of Crucis, if nothing else.

He had known the subject would come up, and would again, and he was ready. “First, why did they send us a ship from Mote Prime? Why not from the Trojan cluster? It’s much closer.”

“I’ll ask them when I can.”

“Second, why four Moties? It may not be important, but I’d like to know why they assigned one to each of you scientists, one to Whitbread, and none to any of the crew.”

“They were right, weren’t they? They set guides on the four people most interested in teaching them—”

“Exactly. How did they know? Just for example, how could they have known Dr. Horvath would be aboard? And the third question is, what are they building
now
?”

“All right, Captain.” Hardy looked unhappy, not angry. He was and would be harder to refuse than Horvath . . . partly because he was Rod’s confessor. And the subject would come up again. Rod was sure of that.

During the weeks that followed
MacArthur
was a bustle of activity. Every scientist worked overtime after each data transmission from the cutter, and every one of them wanted Navy assistance
immediately
. There was also the problem of the escaped miniatures, but this had settled to a game, with
MacArthur
losing. In the mess room it was even money that they were both dead, but no bodies were found. It worried Rod Blaine, but there was nothing he could do.

He also allowed the Marines to stand watches in normal uniform. There were no threats to the cutter, and it was ridiculous to keep a dozen men uncomfortable in battle armor. Instead he doubled the watch keeping surveillance around
MacArthur
, but no one—or no thing—tried to approach, escape, or send messages. Meanwhile the biologists went wild over clues to Motie psychology and physiology, the astronomy section continued to map Mote Prime, Buckman dithered whenever anyone else used the astronomical gear, and Blaine tried to keep his overcrowded ship’ running smoothly. His appreciation of Horvath grew every time he had to mediate a dispute between scientists.

There was more activity aboard the cutter. Commander Sinclair had gone aboard and been immediately taken to the Motie ship. Three days passed before a Brown-and-white began following Sinclair around, and it was a peculiarly quiet Motie. It did seem interested in the cutter’s machinery, unlike the others who had assigned themselves to a human. Sinclair and his Fyunch(click) spent long hours aboard the alien ship, poking into corners, examining everything.

“The lad was right about the tool room,” Sinclair told Blaine during one of his daily reports. “It’s like the nonverbal intelligence tests BuPers worked up for new recruits. There are things wrong wi’ some o’ the tools, and ‘tis my task to put them right.”

“Wrong how?”

Sinclair chuckled, remembering. He had some difficulty explaining the joke to Blaine. The hammer with the big, flat head would hit a thumb every time. It needed to be trimmed. The laser heated too fast . . . and that was a tricky one. It had generated the wrong frequency of light. Sinclair fixed it by doubling the frequency—somehow. He also learned more about compact lasers than he’d ever known before. There were other tests like that. “They’re good, Captain. It took ingenuity to come up wi’ some of the testing gadgets wi’out giving away more than they did. But they canna keep me from learning about their ship... Captain, I already ken enough to redesign the ship’s boats to be more efficient. Or make millions o’ crowns designing miner ships.”

“Retiring when we go back, Sandy?” Rod asked; but he grinned widely to show he didn’t mean it.

In the second week, Rod Blaine also acquired a Fyunch(click).

He was both dismayed and flattered. The Motie looked like all the others: brown-and-white markings, a gentle smile in a lopsided face just high enough above the deck that Rod could have patted her on the head—if he’d ever seen the Motie face to face, which he never would.

Each time he called the cutter she was there, always eager to see Blaine and talk to him. Each time he called, her Anglic was better. They would exchange a few words, and that was that. He didn’t have
time
for a Fyunch(click), or a need for one either. Learning Motie language wasn’t his job—from the progress made, it wasn’t
anyone’s
job—and he only saw her through a phone link. What use was a guide he would never meet?

“They seem to think you’re important,” was Hardy’s dead-pan answer.

It was something to think about while he presided over his madhouse of a ship. And the alien didn’t complain at all.

The month’s flurry of activity hardly affected Horace Bury. He received no news at all from the cutter, and had nothing to contribute to the scientific work on the ship. Alert to rumors, which were always helpful, he waited for news to filter down through the grapevine; but not very much did. Communications with the cutter seemed to stop with the bridge, and he had no real friends among the scientists other than Buckman. Blaine had given up putting everything on the intercom. For the first time since he left New Chicago, Bury felt imprisoned.

It bothered him more than it should have, although he was introspective enough to know why. All his life he had tried to control his environment as far as he could reach: around a world, across light years of space and decades of time—or throughout a Navy battle cruiser. The crew treated him as a guest, but not as a master; and anywhere he was not master, he was a prisoner.

He was losing money, too. Somewhere in the restricted sections of
MacArthur
, beyond the reach of all but the highest-ranking scientists, physicists were studying the golden stuff from the Stone Beehive. It took weeks of effort to pick up the rumor that it was a superconductor of heat.

That would be priceless stuff, and he knew he must obtain a sample. He even knew how it might be done, but forced himself to idleness. Not yet! The time to steal his sample would be just before
MacArthur
docked in New Scotland. Ships would be waiting there despite the cost, not only a ship openly acknowledging him as owner, but at least one other. Meanwhile, listen, find out, know what else he should have when he left
MacArthur
.

He had several reports on the Stone Beehive to crosscheck against each other. He even tried to gain information from Buckman; but the results were more amusing than profitable.

“Oh, forget the Stone Beehive,” Buckman had exclaimed. “It was
moved
into place. It’s no damned use at all. The Beehive’s got nothing to do with the formation of the Trojan point clusters, and the Moties have messed up the internal structure to the point where you can’t tell
anything
about the original rock...”

So. The Moties could and did make superconductors of heat. And there were always the little Moties. He enjoyed the search for the escaped miniatures. Naturally most of the Navy personnel were silently rooting for the underdog, the fleeing miniature and the child, Eliza crossing the ice. And the miniature was winning. Food disappeared from odd places: staterooms, lounges, everywhere but the kitchen itself. The ferrets could find no scent. How could the miniatures have made truce with the ferrets? Bury wondered. Certainly the aliens were . . . alien, yet the ferrets had had no trouble scenting them the first night.

Bury enjoyed the hunt, but... He took the lesson: a miniature was harder to catch than to keep. If he expected to sell many as pets he had better sell them in foolproof cages. Then there was the matter of acquiring a breeding pair. The longer the miniatures remained free, the less grew Bury’s chances of persuading the Navy that they were harmless, friendly pets.

But it was fun seeing the Navy look foolish. Bury rooted for both sides, and practiced patience; and the weeks went on.

While six Fyunch(click)s bunked aboard the cutter, the rest of the Moties worked. The interior of the alien ship changed like dreams; it was different every time anyone went aboard. Sinclair and Whitbread made a point of touring it periodically to see that no weapons were built; perhaps they would have known and perhaps not.

One day Hardy and Horvath stopped by the Captain’s watch cabin after an hour in
MacArthur
’s exercise rooms.

“The Moties have a fuel tank coming,” Horvath told Rod. “It was launched at about the same time as their own ship, by linear accelerator, but in a fuel-saving orbit. It should arrive in two weeks.”

“So that’s what it is.” Blaine and his officers had worried about that silent object coasting at leisure toward their position.

“You knew about it? You might have mentioned it to us.”

“They’ll need to retrieve it,” Blaine speculated. “Hmm. I wonder if one of my boats might get it for them. Would they let us do that?”

“I see no reason why not. We’ll ask,” said David Hardy. “One more thing, Captain.”

Rod knew something tricky was coming. Horvath had Dr. Hardy ask for all the things Rod might refuse.

“The Moties want to build an air-lock bridge between the cutter and the embassy ship,” Hardy finished.

“It’s only a temporary structure and we need it.” Horvath paused. “It’s only a hypothesis, you understand, but, Captain, we now think that every structure is only temporary to them. They must have had high-gee couches at takeoff, but they’re gone now. They arrived with no fuel to take them home. They almost certainly redesigned their life-support system for free fall in the three hours following their arrival.”

“‘And this too shall pass away,’“ Hardy added helpfully. “But the idea doesn’t bother them. They seem to like it.”

“It’s a major departure from human psychology,” Horvath said earnestly. “Perhaps a Motie would never try to design anything permanent at all. There will be no sphinx, no pyramids, no Washington Monument, no Lenin’s Tomb.”

“Doctor, I don’t like the idea of joining the two ships.”

“But, Captain, we
need
something like this. People and Moties are constantly passing back and forth, and they have to use the taxi every time. Besides, the Moties have already started work—”

“May I point out that if they join those two ships, you and everyone aboard will thenceforth be hostage to the Moties’ good will?”

Horvath was ruffled. “I’m sure the aliens can be trusted, Captain. We’re making very good progress with them.”

“Besides,” Chaplain Hardy added equably, “we’re hostage
now
. There was never a way to avoid the situation.
MacArthur
and
Lenin
are our protection, if we need protection. If two battleships don’t scare them—well, we knew the situation when we boarded the cutter.”

Blaine ground his teeth. If the cutter was expendable, the cutter’s personnel were not. Sinclair, Sally Fowler, Dr. Horvath, the Chaplain—
MacArthur
’s most valuable people were living aboard the cutter. Yet the Chaplain was clearly right. They were all subject to murder at any moment, save for the risk of
MacArthur
’s vengeance.

“Tell them to go ahead,” Rod said. The air-lock bridge would not increase the danger at all.

The lock was begun as soon as Rod gave permission. A tube of thin metal, flexibly jointed, jutting from the hull of the Motie ship, it snaked toward them like a living creature. Moties swarmed around it in fragile-seeming suits. As seen from the cutter’s main port, they might almost have been men—almost.

Sally’s eyes blurred as she watched. The lighting was strange—dim Mote light and space-black shadows, and occasional flares of artificial light, everything reflected from the bright, curved metal surface. The perspective was all wrong, and it gave her a headache.

“I keep wondering where they’re getting the metal,” said Whitbread. He sat near her, as he usually did when they were both between jobs. “There wasn’t any spare mass aboard the ship, not the first time I went through it and not now. They must be tearing their ship apart.”