The young Russian midshipman carried himself proudly. His battle armor was spotless, and all his equipment arranged properly by the Book. “The Admiral requests that you conic to the bridge,” he chirped in flawless Anglic.
Rod Blaine followed listlessly. They floated through the air lock from Lenin’s number-two hangar deck to a flurry of salutes front Kutuzov’s Marines. The full honors of a visiting captain only stirred his grief. He’d given his last orders, and he’d been the last man to leave his ship. Now he was an observer, and this was probably the last time anyone would render him boarding honors.
Everything aboard the battleship seemed too large, yet he knew it was only an illusion. With few exceptions the compartments and corridors of capital ships were standardized, and - he might as well have been aboard MacArthur. Lenin was at battle stations, with all her airtight doors closed and dogged. Marines were posted at the more important passageway controls, but otherwise they saw no one, and Rod was glad of that. He could not have faced any of his former crew. Or passengers.
Lenin’s bridge was enormous. She was fitted out as a flagship, and in addition to the screens and command posts for the ship herself there were a dozen couches for the Admiral’s battle staff. Rod woodenly acknowledged the Admiral’s greeting and sank gratefully into the flag Captain’s chair. He didn’t even wonder where Commander Borman, Kutuzov’s flag lieutenant and chief of staff, had gone. He was alone with the Admiral at the flag command station.
MacArthur was displayed from half a dozen views on the screens above him. The last of Lenin’s boats were pulling away from her. Staley must have accomplished his mission, Rod thought. Now she has only a few minutes to live. When she’s gone I’ll really be finished. A newly promoted captain who lost his ship on her first mission---even the Marquis’ influence would not overcome that. Blind hatred for the Mote and all its inhabitants welled up inside him.
“Dammit, we ought to be able to get her back from a bunch of-of goddamn animals!” he blurted.
Kutuzov looked up in surprise. His craggy eyebrows came closer together in a frown, then relaxed slightly. “Da. If that is all they are. But suppose they are more than that? In any event is too late.”
“Yes, sir. They triggered the torpedoes.” Two hydrogen bombs. The Field generator would vaporize in milliseconds, and MacArthur would- He writhed in pain at the thought. When the screens flared, she’d be gone. He looked up suddenly. “Where are my midshipmen, Admiral?”
Kutuzov grunted. “They have decelerated to a lower orbit and are beyond the horizon. I will send a boat for them when everything is clear.”
Strange, Rod thought. But they couldn’t come directly to Lenin by the Admiral’s orders, and the boats wouldn’t provide any real protection when MacArthur exploded. What they had done was unnecessary caution since the torpedoes did not give off a large fraction of their energy in K-rays and neutrons, but it was understandable caution.
The timers twirled noiselessly to zero. Kutuzov watched grimly as another minute, and another, Went past. “The torpedoes did not fire,” he said accusingly.
“No, sir.” Rod’s misery was complete. And now- “Captain Mikhailov. You will please prepare main battery to fire on MacArthur.” Kutuzov turned his dark gaze to Rod. “I dislike this, Captain. Not so much as you. But I dislike it. Do you prefer to give order yourself? Captain Mikhailov, you permit?”
“Da, Admiral.”
“Thank you, sir.” Rod took a deep breath. A man ought to kill his own dog. “Shoot!”
Space battles are lovely to see. The ships approach like smooth black eggs, their drives radiating dazzling light. Scintillations in the black flanks record - the explosions of torpedoes that have escaped destruction from the stabbing colors of the secondary lasers. The main batteries pour energy into each other’s Fields, and lines of green and ruby reflect interplanetary dust.
Gradually the Fields begin to glow. Dull red, brighter yellow, glaring green, as the Fields become charged with energy. The colored eggs are linked by red and green threads from the batteries, and the colors change.
Now three green threads linked Lenin and MacArthur. Nothing else happened. The battle cruiser did not move and made no attempt to fight back. Her Field began to glow red, shading to yellow where the beams converged amidships. When it became white it would overload and the energy stored in it would be released-inward and out. Kutuzov watched in growing puzzlement.
“Captain Mikhailov. Please take us back a klick.” The lines on the Admiral’s brow deepened as Lenin’s drive moved her gently away from MacArthur.
MacArthur shaded green with faintly bluish spots. The image receded on the screens. Hot spots vanished as the lasers spread slightly. A thousand kilometers away she glowed richly in the telescopes.
“Captain, are le at rest with respect to MacArthur?” Kutuzov asked.
”Da, Admiral.”
“She appears to move closer.”
“Da, Admiral. Her Field is expanding.”
“Expanding?” Kutuzov turned to Rod. “You have explanation?”
“No, sir?’ He wanted nothing more than oblivion. Speaking was pain, awareness agony. But he tried to think. “The Brownies must have rebuilt the generator, sir. And they always improve anything they work on.”
“It seems pity to destroy it,” Kutuzov muttered. “Expanded like that, with that great radiating surface, MacArthur would be match for any vessel in Fleet...
MacArthur’s Field was violet now, and huge. It filled the screens, and Kutuzov adjusted his to drop the magnification by a factor of ten. She was a great violet balloon tethered by green threads. They waited, fascinated, as ten minutes went by. Fifteen.
“No ship has ever survived that long in violet,” Kutuzov muttered. “Are you still convinced we deal only with animals, Captain Blaine?”
“The scientists are convinced, sir. They convinced me,” he added carefully. “I wish Dr. Horvath were here now.”
Kutuzov grunted as if struck in the belly. “That fool. Pacifist. He would not understand what he saw.” They watched in silence for another minute.
The intercom buzzed. “Admiral, there is a signal from the Mote embassy ship,” the communications officer announced.
Kutuzov scowled. “Captain Blaine. You will take that call.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Answer the call from the Moties. I will not speak to any alien directly.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Its face was any Motie’s face, but it sat uncomfortably erect, and Rod was not surprised when it announced, “I am Dr. Horvath’s Fyunch (click). I have distressing news for you, Captain Blaine. And by the way, we appreciate the warning you gave us-we don’t understand why you wish to destroy your ship, but if we had been alongside-“
Blaine rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’re fighting a plague. Maybe killing MacArthur stopped it. We can hope. Listen, we’re a little busy now. What’s your message?”
“Yes, of course. Captain, the three small craft which escaped from MacArthur have attempted reentry to Mote Prime. I am sorry, but none survived.”
Lenin’s bridge seemed to fog. “Reentry with lifeboats? But that’s plain silly. They wouldn’t-“
“No, no, they tried to land. We tracked them part way- Captain, we have recordings of them, They burned up, completely-“
“God damn it to hell! They were safe!”
“We’re terribly sorry.”
Kutuzov’s face was a mask. He mouthed; “Recordings.”
Rod nodded. He felt very tired. He told the Motie, “We would like those recordings. Are you certain that none of my young officers survived?”
“Quite certain, Captain. We are very distressed by this. Naturally, we had no idea they would attempt such a thing, and there was absolutely nothing we could do under the circumstances.”
“Of course not. Thank you.” Rod turned off the screen and looked back at the battle display in front of him.
Kutuzov muttered, “So there are no bodies and no wreckage. Very convenient.” He touched a button on the arm of his command couch and said, “Captain Mikhailov, please send cutter to look for the midshipmen.” He turned back to Rod. “There will be nothing, of course.”
“You don’t believe the Moties, do you, sir?” Rod asked.
“Do you, Captain?”
“I-I don’t know, sir. I don’t see what we can do about it.”
“Nor I, Captain. The cutter will search, and will find nothing. We do not know where they attempted reentry. The planet is large. Even if they survive and are free, we could search for days and not find them. And if they are captives-they will never be found.” He grunted again and spoke into his command circuit. “Mikhailov, see that the cutter searches well. And use torpedoes to destroy that vessel, if you please.”
“Yes, sir.” Lenin’s captain spoke quietly at his post on the opposite side of the big bridge. A score of torpedoes arced out toward MacArthur. They couldn’t go through the Field; the stored energy there would fuse them instantly. But they exploded all at once, a perfect time-on-target salvo, and a great ripple of multicolored light swept around MacArthur’s violet-glowing surface. Bright white spots appeared and vanished.
“Burn-through in nine places,” the gunnery officer announced.
“Burn-through into what?” Rod asked innocently. She was still his ship, and she was fighting valiantly for her life...
The Admiral snarled. The ship was five hundred meters inward from that hellish violet surface-the bright flashes might never have reached her, or might have missed entirely.
“Guns will continue to fire. Launch another torpedo attack,” Kutuzov ordered.
Another fleet of glowing darts arced out. They exploded all across the violet shimmering surface. More white spots rippled across, and there was an expanding ripple of violet flame.
And then MacArthur was as she was. A violet fire balloon a full kilometer in diameter, tethered by threads of green light.
A mess steward handed Rod a cup of coffee. Absently he sipped. It tasted terrible.
“Shoot!” Kutuzov commanded. He glared at the screens in hatred. “Shoot!”
And suddenly it happened. MacArthur’s Field expanded enormously, turned blue, yellow-and vanished. Automatic scanners whirred and the magnification of the screens increased. The ship was there.
She glowed red, and parts had melted. She should not have been there at all. When a Field collapses, everything inside it vaporizes...
“They must have fried in there,” Rod said mechanically.
“Da. Shoot!”
The green lights stabbed out. MacArthur changed, bubbled, expanded, fuming air into space. A torpedo moved almost slowly to her and exploded. Still the laser batteries fired. When Kutuzov finally ordered them off, there was nothing left but vapor.
Rod and the Admiral watched the empty screen for a long time. Finally the Admiral turned away. “Call in the boats, Captain Mikhailov. We are going home,”
Three smallish cones, falling. A man nested in each, like an egg in an egg cup.
Horst Staley was in the lead. He could see forward on a small square screen, but his rear view was all around him. Except for his pressure suit he was naked to space. He turned gingerly, to see two other flame-tipped cones behind him. Somewhere, far beyond the horizon, were MacArthur and Lenin. There was no chance that his suit radio would carry that far, but he turned to the hailing frequency and called anyway. There was no answer.
It had all happened so fast. The cones had fired retrorockets and b~ the time he had called Lenin it had been too late. Perhaps the signal crew had been busy with something else, perhaps he had been slow- Mont felt suddenly alone.
They continued to fall. The rockets cut off.
“Horst!” It was Whitbread’s voice. Staley answered.
“Horst, these things are going to reenter!”
“Yeah. Stick with it. What else can we do?”
That did not call for an answer. In lonely silence three small cones fell toward the bright green planet below. Then: reentry.
It was not the first time for any of them. They knew the colors of the plasma field that builds before a ship’s nose, colors differing according to the chemistry of the ablation shield. But this time they were practically naked to it. Would there be radiation? Heat?
Whitbread’s voice reached Staley through the static. “I’m trying to think like a Brownie, and it isn’t easy. They knew about our suits. They’d know how much radiation they’d stop. How much do they think we can take? And heat?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Staley heard Potter say. “I am not going down.”
Staley tried to ignore their laughter. He was in charge of three lives, and he took it seriously. He tried to relax his muscles as he waited for heat, turbulence, unfelt radiation, tumbling of the cone, discomfort and death.
Landscape streamed past him through plasma distortions. Circular seas and arcs of river. Vast stretches of city. Mountains cased in ice and cityscape, the continuous city engulfing the slopes to the snowy peaks. A long stretch of ocean; would the damn cones float? More land. The cones slowing, the features getting larger. Air whipping around them now. Boats on a lake, tiny specks, hordes of them. A stretch of green forest, sharply bounded, laced by roads.
The rim of Staley’s cone opened and a ring of parachute streamed back. Staley sagged deep into the contoured seat. For a minute he saw only blue sky. Then came a bone-jarring Thump. He cursed in his mind. The cone teetered and toppled on its side.
Potter’s voice rang in Staley’s ears. “I hae found the hover controls! Look for a sliding knob near the center, if the beasties hae done the same to all. That is the thrust control, and moving the whole bloody control panel on its support tilts the rocket.”
Too bad he hadn’t found it sooner! Staley thought. He said, “Get near the ground and hover there. The fuel may burn out. Did you find a parachute release, Potter?”
“No. ‘Tis hanging under me. Yon rocket flame must hae burned it away by now. Where are you?”
“I’m down. Let me just get loose-“ Staley opened the crash webbing and tumbled out on his back. The seat was 30 cm lower within the cone. He drew his weapon and burned out a hole to examine the space below. Compressible foam filled the compartment. “When you get down, make sure there are no Brownies aboard the lifeboat,” he ordered crisply.
“Damn! I nearly flipped over,” came Whitbread’s voice. “These things are tricky-“
“I see you, Jonathon!” Potter shouted. “Just hover and I’ll come to you.”
“Then look for my parachute,” Staley ordered.
“I don’t see you. We could be twenty kilometers apart. Your signal is none too strong,” Whitbread answered.
Staley struggled to his feet. “First things first,” he muttered. He looked the lifeboat over carefully. There was no place a miniature might have hidden and lived through reentry, but he looked again to be sure. Then he switched to hailing frequency and tried to call Lenin-expected no answer and got none. Suit radios operate on line of sight only and they are intentionally not very powerful, otherwise all of space would be filled with the chatter of suited men. The redesigned lifeboats had nothing resembling a radio. How did the Brownies intend for survivors to call for help?
Staley stood uncertainly, not yet adjusted to gravity. There were cultivated fields all around him, alternating rows of purple eggplant-looking bushes with chest-high crowns of dark leaves, and low bushes bright with grain. The rows went on forever in all directions.
“Still haven’t spotted you yet, Horst,” Whitbread reported. “This is getting us nowhere. Horst, do you see a big, low building that gleams like a mirror? It’s the only building in sight.”
Staley spotted it, a metal-gleaming thing beyond the horizon. It was a long walk away, but it was the only landmark in sight. “Got it.”
“We’ll make for that and meet you there,”
”Good. Wait for me.”
“Head that way, Gavin,” Whitbread’s voice said.
“Right.” came the reply. There was more chatter between the other two, and Horst Staley felt very much alone.
“Wup! My rocket’s out!” Potter shouted.
Whitbread watched Potter’s cone drop toward the ground. It hit point first, hesitated, and toppled into the plants. Whitbread shouted, “Gavin, are you all right?”
There were rustling sounds. Then Whitbread heard: “Oh, sometimes I get a twinge in my right elbow when the weather’s nasty . . . old football injury. Get as far as you can, Jonathon. I’ll meet you both at the building.”
“Aye aye.” Whitbread tilted the cone forward on his rocket The building was large ahead of him.
It was large. At first there had been nothing to give it scale; now he had been flying toward it for ten minutes or more.
It was a dome with straight sides blending into a low, rounded roof. There were no windows, and no other features except a rectangular break that might have been a door, ridiculously small in the enormous structure. The gleam of sunlight on the roof was more than metallic; it was mirror-bright.
Whitbread flew low, traveling quite slowly. There was something awesome about the building set in the endless croplands. That more than the fear that his motor might burn out checked his first impulse to rush to the structure.
The rocket held. The miniatures might have changed the chemicals in the solid motor; no two things built by Moties were ever quite identical. Whitbread landed just outside the rectangular doorway. This close the door loomed over him, it had been dwarfed by the building.
“I’m here,” he almost whispered, then laughed at himself. “There’s a doorway. It’s big and closed. Funny- there - aren’t any roads leading here, and the crops grow right-up to the edge of the dome.” -
Staley’s voice “Perhaps planes land on the root”
”I don’t think so, Horst. The roof is rounded; I don’t think there are ever many visitors. Must be some kind of storage. Or maybe there’s a machine inside that runs itself.”
“Best not fool with it. Gavin, are you all right too?”
“Aye, Horst. I’ll be at yon building in half an hour. See you there.”
Staley prepared for a longer hike. There were no emergency rations that he could see in the lifeboat. He thought for a while before removing his combat Armor and the pressure suit under it. There weren’t any secrets there. He took the helmet and dogged it onto the neck seal, then rigged it as an air filter. Then he took the radio out of the suit and slung it on his belt, first making one last attempt to contact Lenin. There was no answer. What else? Radio, water bag, sidearm. It would have to do.
Staley looked carefully around the horizon. There was only the one building-no chance of walking toward the wrong one. He started out toward it, glad of the low gravity, and swung easily into stride.
A half-hour later he saw the first Mode. He was practically alongside before he noticed it: a creature different from any he’d seen before, and just the height of the plants. It was working between the rows, smoothing soil with its hands, pulling out weeds to lay between the careful furrows. It watched him approach. When he came alongside it turned back to work.
The Mode was not quite a Brown. The fur patches were thicker, and more thick fur encased all three arms and the legs. The left hand was about the same as a Brown’s but the right hands had five fingers each, plus a bud, and the fingers were square and short. The legs were thick and the feet large and flat. The head was a Brown’s with drastically back-sloping forehead.
If Sally Fowler was right, that meant that the parietal area was almost nil. “Hello,” Horst said anyway. The Mode looked back at him for a second, then pulled out a weed.
Afterwards he saw many of them. They watched him just long enough to be sure he wasn’t destroying plants; then they lost interest. Horst hiked on in the bright sunshine toward the mirror-bright building. It was much farther than he had thought.
Mr. Midshipman Jonathon Whitbread waited. He had done enough of that since joining, the Navy; but he was only seventeen standard years old, and at that age waiting is never really easy.
He sat near the tip of the reentry cone, high enough to bring his head above the plants. In the city the buildings had blocked his view of this world. Here he saw the entire horizon. The sky was brown all the way around, shading to something that might have had blue tinges directly overhead. Clouds roiled to the east in thick patches, and a few dirty-white cumulus scudded overhead.
The sun was just overhead too. He decided he must be near the equator, and remembered that Castle City was far to the north. He could not sense the greater width of the sun’s disc, because he could not look directly at it; but it was more comfortable to look at near than the small sun of New Scotland. The sense of an alien world was on him, but there was nothing to see. His eyes kept straying to the mirror-surfaced building. Presently he got up to examine the door.
It was a good ten meters high. Impressively tall to Whitbread, a gigantic thing for a Mode. But were Moties impressed by size? Whitbread thought not. The door must be functional-what was ten meters high? Heavy machinery? There was no sound at all when he put his pickup microphone against the smooth metallic surface.
At one side of the alcove containing the door was a panel mounted on a stout spring. Behind the panel was what seemed to be a combination lock. And that was that-except that Modes expected each other to solve such puzzles at a glance. A key lock would have been a NO Trespassing sign. This was not.
Probably it was intended to keep out-what? Browns? Whites? Laborers and the nonsentient classes? Probably all of them. A combination lock could be thought of as a form of communication.
Potter arrived panting, his helmet nearly awash with sweat, a water bag hanging from his belt. He turned his helmet mike to activate a small speaker and cut off his radio. “I had to try the Mote Prime air for myself,” he said. “Now I know. Well, what hae you found?”
Whitbread showed him. He also adjusted his own mike. No point in broadcasting everything they said.
“Um. I wish Dr. Buckman were here. Those are Motie numbers-aye, and the Mote solar system, with the dial where the Mote ought to be, Let me see ...”
Whitbread watched interestedly as Potter stared at the dial. The New Scot pursed his lips, then said, “Aye. The gas giant is three point seven two times as far from the Mote as Mote Prime. Hmmm.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the ever-present computer box. “Umm . . . three point eight eight, base twelve. Now which way does the dial go?”
“Then, again, it might be somebody’s birthday,” said Whitbread. He was glad to see Gavin Potter. He was glad to see anyone human here. But the New Scot’s meddling with the dials was-disturbing. Left, right, left, right, Gavin Potter turned the dials...
“I seem to remember Horst gave us orders concerning this building.” Whitbread was uneasy.
“Best not fool with it. Hardly orders. We came to learn about Moties, did we not?”
“Well...It was an interesting puzzle. “Try left again,” Whitbread suggested. “Hold it.” Whitbread pushed the symbol representing Mote Prime. It depressed with a click. “Keep going left.”
“Aye. The Mode astronomical maps show the planets going counterclockwise.”
On the third digit the door began to slide upward. “It works!” Whitbread shouted.
The door slid up to a height of one and a half meters. Potter looked at Whitbread and said, “Now what?”
“You’re kidding.”
“We hae our orders,” Potter said slowly. They sat down between the plants and looked at each other. Then looked at the dome. There was light inside, and they could easily see under the door. There were buildings in there...
Staley had been walking for three hours when he saw the plane. It was high up and moving fast, and he waved at it, not expecting to be seen: He was not and he walked on.
Presently he saw the plane again. It was behind him, much lower, and he thought it had spread wings. It settled lower and vanished behind the low rolling hills where he had come down. Staley shrugged. It would find his parachute and lifeboat and see his tracks leading away. The direction should be obvious. There was nowhere else to go.
In a few minutes the plane was higher and coming straight toward him. It was moving slowly now, obviously searching. He waved again, although he had a momentary impulse to hide, which was plainly silly. He needed to be found, although what he would say to a Motie was not at all clear.
The plane moved past him and hovered. Jet pipes curved down and forward, and it dropped dangerously fast to settle into the plants. There were three Moties inside, and a Brown-and-white emerged quickly.
“Horst!” it called in Whitbread’s voice. “Where are the others?”
Staley waved toward the rounded dome. It was still an hour’s march away.
Whitbread’s Mode seemed to sag. “That’s torn it. Horst, are they there yet?”
“Sure. They’re waiting for me. They’ve been there about three hours.”
“Oh, my God. Maybe they couldn’t get inside. Whitbread couldn’t get inside. Come on, Horst.” She gestured toward the plane. “You’ll have to squeeze in somehow.”
Another Brown-and-white was inside and the pilot was a Brown. Whitbread’s Mode sang something ranging through five octaves and using at least nine tones. The other Brown-and-white gestured wildly. They made room for Staley between the contoured seats, and the Brown did things to the controls. The plane rose and shot toward the building ahead. “Maybe they didn’t get in,” Whitbread’s Mode repeated. “Maybe.”
Horst crouched uncomfortably in the speeding jet and. wondered. He didn’t like this at all. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Whitbread’s Motie looked at him strangely. “Maybe nothing.” The other two Moties said nothing at all.
Whitbread and Potter stood alone within the dome. They stared in wonder.
The dome was only a shell. A single light source very like an afternoon sun blazed halfway down its slope. Moties used that kind of illumination in many of the buildings Whitbread had seen.
Underneath the dome it was like a small city-but not quite. Nobody was home. There was no sound, no motion, no light in any of the windows. And the buildings...
There was no coherency to this city. The buildings jarred horribly against each other. Whitbread winced at two- clean-lined many-windowed pillars framing what might have been an oversized medieval cathedral, all gingerbread, a thousand cornices guarded by what Bury’s Motie had said were Motie demons.
Here were a hundred styles of architecture and at least a dozen levels of technology. Those geodesic forms could not have been built without prestressed concrete or something more sophisticated, not to mention the engineering mathematics. But this building nearest the gate was of sun-baked mud bricks. Here a rectangular solid had walls of partly silvered glass; there the walls were of gray stone, and the tiny windows had no glass in them, only shutters to seal them from the elements.
“Rain shutters. It must have been here before the dome,” Potter said.
”Anyone can see that. The dome is almost new. That cathedral, it might be, that cathedral in the center is so old it’s about to fall apart.”
“Look there. Yon parabolic-hyperboloid structure has been cantilevered out from a wall. But look at the wall!”
”Yah, it must have been part of another building. God knows how old that is.” The wall was over a meter thick, and ragged around the edges and the top. It was made of dressed stone blocks that must have massed five hundred kilos each. Some vine-like plant had invaded it, surrounded it, permeated it to the extent that by now it must be holding the wall together.
Whitbread leaned close and peered into the vines. “No cement, Gavin. They’ve fitted the blocks together. And still it supports the rest of the building-which is concrete. They built to last.”
“Do ye remember what Horst said about the Stone Beehive?”
“He said he could feel the age in it. Right. Right...”
“It must be of all different ages, this place. I think we’ll find that it’s a museum. A museum of architecture? And they’ve added to it, century after century. Finally they threw up that dome to protect it from the elements.”
”Ye sound dubious.”
“That dome is two meters thick, and metal. What kind of elements...”
“Asteroid - falls, it may be. No, that’s nonsense. The asteroids were moved away eons ago.”
“I think I want to have a look at that cathedral. It looks to be the oldest building here.”
The cathedral was a museum right enough. Any civilized man in the Empire would have recognized it. Museums are all alike.
There were cases faced in glass, and old things within, marked by plaques- with dates and printing on them. “I can read the numbers,” said Potter. “Look, they’re in four and five figures. And this is base twelve!”
“My Motie asked me once how old our recorded civilization is. How old is theirs, Gavin?”
“Well, their year is shorter ... Five figures. Dating backward from some event; that’s a minus sign in front of each of them. Let me see...” He took out his computer and scrawled quick, precise figures. “That number would be seventy-four thousand and some-odd. Jonathon, the plaques are almost new.”
“Languages change. They must translate the plaques every so often.”
“Yes . . . yes, I know this sign. ‘Approximately.’” Potter moved swiftly from exhibit to exhibit. “Here it is again. Not here. . . but here. Jonathon, come look at this one.”
It was a, very old machine. Once iron, it must be rust now, all the way through. There was a sketch of what it must have looked like once. A howitzer cannon.
“Here on the plaque. This double-approximation sign means educated guesswork. I wonder how many times that legend has been translated.”
Room after room. They found a wide staircase leading up, the steps shallow but broad enough for human feet. Above, more rooms, more exhibits. The ceilings were low. The lighting came from lines of bulbs of incandescent filaments that came on when they entered, went out when they left. The bulbs were mounted carefully so they wouldn’t mar the ceiling. The museum itself must be an exhibit.
The plaques were all alike, but the cases were all different. Whitbread did not think it strange. No two Motie artifacts were ever precisely alike. But one. . . he almost laughed. - -
A bubble of glass several meters long and two meters wide rested on a free-form sculpted frame of almost beach-colored metal. Both, looked brand-new. There was a plaque on the frame. Inside was an ornately carved wooden box, coffin sized, bleached white by age, its lid the remains of a rusted wire grille. It had a plaque. Under the rusted wire, a selection of wonderfully shaped, eggshell-thin pottery, some broken, some whole. Each piece in the set had a dated plaque. “It’s like nested exhibits,” he said.
Potter did not laugh. “That’s what it is. See here? The bubble case is about two thousand years old. . . that can’t be right, can it?”
“Not unless...”. Whitbread rubbed his class ring along the glass bubble. “They’re both scratched. Artificial sapphire.” He tried it on the metal. The metal scratched the stone. “I’ll accept two thousand.”
“But the box is around twenty-four hundred, and the pottery goes from three thousand up. Look you how the style changes. ‘Tis a depiction of the rise and fall of a particular school of pottery styling.”
“Do you think the wooden case came out of another museum?”
“Aye.”
Whitbread did laugh then. They moved on. Presently Whitbread pointed and said, “Here, that’s the same metal, isn’t it?” The small two-handed weapon-it had to be a gun-carried the same date as the sapphire bubble.
Beyond that was a puzzling structure near the wail of the great dome. It was made of a vertical lacework of hexagons, each formed from steel members two meters long. There were thick plastic frames in some of the hexagons, and broken fragments in others.
Potter pointed out the gentle curve of the structure. “’Twas another dome. A spherical dome with geodesic bracing. Not much left of it-and it wouldn’t hae covered all of the compound anyway.”
“You’re right. It didn’t weather away, though. Look at how these members near the edge are twisted. Tornadoes? This part of the country seems fiat enough.”
It took Potter a moment to understand. There were no tornadoes in the rough terraformed New Scotland. He remembered his meteorology lessons and nodded. “Aye. Maybe. Maybe.” Beyond the fragments of the earlier dome Potter found a framework of disintegrating metal within what might have been a plastic shell. The plastic itself looked frayed and moth-eaten. There were two dates on the plaque, both in five figures. The sketch next to the plaque showed a narrow ground car, primitive looking, with three seats in a row. The motor hood was open.
“Internal combustion,” said Potter. “I had the idea that Mote Prime was short on fossil fuels.”
“Sally had an idea on that too. Their civilization may have gone downhill when they used up all their fossil fuels. I wonder.”
But the prize was behind a great glass picture window in one wall. They found themselves looking into the “steeple” past an ancient, ornately carved bronze plaque that had a smaller plaque on it.
Within the “steeple” was a rocket ship. Despite the holes in the sides and the corrosion everywhere, it still held its shape: a long, cylindrical tank, very thin-walled, with a cabin showing behind a smoothly pointed nose.
They made for the stairs. There must be another window on the first floor...
And there was. They knelt to look into the motor.
Potter said, “I don’t quite...”
“NERVA style,” said Whitbread. His voice was almost a whisper. “Atomic. Very early type. You send some inert fuel through a core of uranium or plutonium or the like. Fission pile, prefusion...”
“Are you sure?”
Whitbread looked again before he nodded. “I’m sure.”
Fission had been developed after internal combustion; but there were still places in the Empire that employed internal combustion engines. Fission power was very nearly a myth, and as they stared the age of the place seemed to fail from the walls like a cloak and wrap them in silence.
The plane landed near the orange rags of a parachute and the remains of a cone. The open doorway was an accusing mouth just beyond.
Whitbread’s Motie jumped from the plane and rushed over to the cone. She twittered, and the pilot bounded from the ship to join her. “They opened it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “I never thought Jonathon would solve it. It must have been Potter. Horst, is there any chance at all they didn’t go inside?”
Staley shook his head.
The Motie twittered to the Brown again. “Watch for aircraft, Horst,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She spoke to the other Brown-and-white, who left the airplane and stared at the skies.
The Brown picked up Whitbread’s empty pressure suit and armor. She worked rapidly, shaping something to take the place of the missing helmet and closing the suit top. Then she worked on the air regenerator, picking at the insides with tools from a belt pouch. The suit inflated and was set upright. Presently the Brown closed the panel and the suit was taut, like a man in vacuum. She tied lengths of line to constrict the shoulders and punched a hole at each wrist.
The empty man raised his arms to the Sound of hissing air blowing out the wrist holes. The pressure dropped and the arms fell. Another spurt of hissing, and the arms rose again...
“That ought to do it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “We set your suit up the same way, and raised the temperature to your body normal. With luck they may blast it without checking to see if you’re in it.”
”Blast it?”
“We sure can’t count on it, though. I wish there were some way to make it fire on an aircraft...”
Staley shook the Motie’s shoulder. The Brown stood by watching with the tiny half-smile that meant nothing at all. The equatorial sun was high overhead. “Why would anyone want to kill us?” Staley demanded.
“You’re all under death sentence, Horst.”
“But why? Is it the dome? Is there a taboo?”
“The dome, yes. Taboo, no. What do you take us for primitives? You know too much, that’s all. Dead you-name-its tell no tales. Now come on, we’ve got to find them and get out of here.”
Whitbread’s Motie stooped to get under the door. Needlessly: but Whitbread would have stooped. The other Brown-and-white followed silently, leaving the Brown standing outside, her face a perpetual gentle smile.
They saw the other midshipmen near the cathedral. Horst Staley’s boots clumped hollowly as they approached. Whitbread looked up, noticed the Motie’s walk, and said “Fyunch(click) ?”
“Fyunch (click).”
”We’ve been exploring your-“
”Jonathon, we don’t have time,” the Motie said. The other Brown-and-white eyed them with an air of impatience.
“We’re under a death sentence for trespassing.” Staley said flatly. “I don’t know why.”
There was silence. Whitbread said, “Neither do I. This is nothing but a museum-“
“Yes,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “You would have to land here. It’s not even bad luck. Your dumb animal miniatures must have programmed the reentry cones not to hit water or cities or mountain peaks. You were bound to come down in farm lands. Well, that’s where we put museums.”
“Out here? Why?” Potter asked. He sounded as if he already knew. “There are nae people here-“
“So they won’t get bombed.”
The silence was part of the age of the place. The Motie said, “Gavin, you aren’t showing much surprise.”
Potter attempted to rub his jaw. His helmet prevented it. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of persuading you that we hae learned nothing?”
“Not really. You’ve been here three hours.”
Whitbread broke in. “More like two. Horst, this place is fantastic! Museums within museums; it goes back incredibly far-is that the secret? That civilization is very old here? I don’t see why you’d hide that.”
“You’ve had a lot of wars,” Potter said slowly.
The Motie bobbed her head and shoulder. “Yah.”
“Big wars.”
“Right. Also little wars.”
“How many?”
“God’s sake, Potter! Who counts? Thousands of Cycles. Thousands of collapses back to savagery. Crazy Eddie eternally trying to stop it. Well, I’ve had it. The whole decision-maker caste has turned Crazy Eddie, to my mind. They think they’ll stop the pattern of Cycles by moving into space and settling other solar systems.”
Horst Staley’s tone was flat. As he spoke he looked carefully around the dome and his hand rested on his pistol butt. “Do they? And what is it we know too much on”
“I’m going to tell you. And then I’m going to try to get you to your ship, alive-“ She indicated the other Motie, who had stood impassively during the conversation. Whitbread’s Motie whistled and hummed. “Best call her Charlie,” she said. “You can’t pronounce the name. Charlie represents a giver of orders who’s willing to help you. Maybe. It’s your only chance, anyway-“
“So what do we do now?” Staley demanded.
“We try to get to Charlie’s boss. You’ll be protected there. (Whistle, click, whistle.) Uh, call him King Peter.
We don’t have kings, but he’s male now. He’s one of the most powerful givers of orders, and after he talks to you he’ll probably be willing to get you home.”
“Probably,” Horst said slowly. “Look, just what is this secret you’re so afraid of?”
“Later. We’ve got to get moving.”
Horst Staley drew his pistol. “No. Right now. Potter, is there anything in this museum that could communicate with Lenin? Find something.”
“Aye aye-do ye think ye must hae the pistol?”
“Just find us a radio!”
“Horst, listen,” Whitbread’s Motie insisted: “The decision makers know you landed near here somewhere. If you try to communicate from here, they’ll cut you off. And if you do get a message through, they’ll destroy Lenin.” Staley tried to speak, but the Motie continued insistently. “Oh, yes, they can do it. It wouldn’t be easy. That Field of yours is pretty powerful. But you’ve seen what our Engineers can come up with, and you’ve never seen what the Warriors can do. We’ve seen one of your best ships destroyed now. We know how it can be done. Do you think one little battleship can survive against fleets from both here and the asteroid stations?”
“Jesus, Horst she may be right,” Whitbread said.
“We’ve got to let the Admiral know.” Staley seemed uncertain, but the pistol never wavered. “Potter, carry out your orders.”
“You’ll get a chance to call Lenin as soon as it’s safe,” Whitbread’s Mode insisted. Her voice was almost shrill for a moment, then fell to a modulated tone. “Horst, believe me, it’s the only way. Besides, you’ll never be able to operate a communicator by yourself. You’ll need our help, and we aren’t going to help you do anything stupid. We’ve got to get out of here!”
The other Mode trilled. Whitbread’s Motie answered, and they twittered back and forth. Whitbread’s Mode translated. “If my own Master’s troops don’t get here, the Museum Keeper’s Warriors will. I don’t know where the Keeper stands on this. Charlie doesn’t know either. Keepers are sterile, and they’re not ambitious, but they’re very possessive of what they already have.”
“Will they bomb us?” Whitbread asked.
“Not as long as we’re in here. It would wreck the museum, and museums are important. But the Keeper will send troops-if my own Master’s don’t get here first.”
“Why aren’t they here yet?” Staley demanded. “I don’t hear anything.”
“For God’s sake, they may be coming already! Look, my Master-my old Master-won jurisdiction over human studies. She won’t, give that up, so she won’t invite anybody else in. She’ll try to keep the locals out of this, and since her holdings- are around the Castle it’ll take a while to get Warriors her& It’s about two thousand kilometers.”
“That plane of yours was a fast one,” Staley said flatly.
“An emergency Mediator’s vehicle. Masters forbid each other to use them. Your coming to our system almost started a war over jurisdiction anyway, and putting Warriors in one of those could certainly do it ..
“Don’t your decision makers have any military planes at all?” Whitbread asked.
“Sure, but they’re slower. They might drive you to cover anyway. There’s a subway under this building-“
“Subway?” Staley said carefully. Everything was happening too fast. He was in command here, but he didn’t know what to do.
“Of course. People do visit museums sometimes. And it’ll take a while to get here by subway from the Castle. Who knows what the Keeper will be doing meantime? He might even forbid my Master’s invasion. But if he does, you can be sure he’ll kill you, to keep any other Masters from fighting here.”
“Find anything, Gavin?” Staley shouted.
Potter appeared at the doorway of one of the modernistic glass-and-steel pillars. “Nothing I can operate as a communicator. Nothing I can even be sure is one. And this is all the newer stuff, Horst. Anything in the older buildings may be rusted through.”
”Horst, - we’ve got to get out of here!” Whitbread’s Motie insisted again. “There’s no time for talk-“
“Those Warriors could come in planes to the next station and then take the subway from there,” Whitbread reminded them. “We’d better do something, Horst.”
Staley nodded slowly. “All right. How do we leave? In your plane?”
“It won’t hold all of-us,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “But we can send two with Charlie and I could-“
“No.” Staley’s tone was decisive. “We stay together. Can you call a larger plane?”
“I can’t even be sure that one would escape. You’re probably right. It would be better to stay together. Well, there’s nothing left but the subway.” -
“Which might be full of enemies right now.” Staley thought for a moment. The dome was a bomb shelter and the mirror was a good defense against lasers. They could hole up here-but for how long? He began to feel the necessary paranoia of a soldier in enemy territory.
“Where do we have to go to get a message through to Lenin?” he demanded. That was obviously the first thing.
“King Peter’s territory. It’s a thousand kilometers, but that’s the only place you could get equipment to send a message that couldn’t be detected. Even that might not do it, but there’s certainly nowhere else.”
“And we can’t go by plane-OK. Where’s the subway? We’ll have to set up an ambush.”
“Ambush?” The Motie nodded agreement. “Of course. Horst. I’m not good at tactics. Mediators don’t fight. I’m just trying to get you to Charlie’s Master. You’ll have to worry about them trying to kill us on the way. How good are your weapons?”
“Just hand weapons. Not very powerful.”
“There are others in the museum. It’s part of what museums are for. I don’t know which ones still work.”
“It’s worth a try. Whitbread. Potter. Get to looking for weapons. Now where’s that subway?”
The Modes looked around. Charlie evidently understood what was said, although she attempted no word of Anglic. They twittered for a moment, and Whitbread’s Mode pointed. “In there.” She indicated the cathedral-like building. Then she pointed at the statues of “demons” along the cornices. “Anything you see is harmless except those. They’re the Warrior class, soldiers, bodyguards, police. They’re killers, and they’re good at it. If you see anything like that, run.”
“Run, hell,” Staley muttered. He clutched his pistol. “Sec you below,” he called to the others. “Now what about your Brown?”
“I’ll call her,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She trilled.
The Brown came inside carrying several somethings, which she handed to Charlie. The Modes inspected them I for a moment, and Whitbread’s Mode said, “You’ll want these. Air filters. You can take off the helmets and wear these masks.”
“Our radios-“ Horst protested.
“Carry them. The Brown can work on the radios later, too. Do you really want your ears inside those damn helmets? The air bottles and filters can’t last anyway.”
“Thanks,” Horst said. He took the filter and strapped it on. A soft cup covered his nose, and a tube led to a small canister that attached to his belt. It was a relief to get the helmet off, but he didn’t know what to do with it. Finally he tied it to his belt, where it bobbled along uncomfortably. “OK, let’s get moving.” It was easier to speak without the helmet, but he’d have to remember not to breathe through his mouth.
The ramp was a spiral leading down. Far down. Nothing big moved in the shadowless lighting, but Staley pictured himself as a target to anyone below. He wished for grenades and a troop of Marines. Instead there was only himself and his two brother midshipmen. And the Moties. Mediators. “Mediators don’t fight,” Whitbread’s Mode had said. Have to remember that. She acted so like Jonathon Whitbread that he had to count arms to be sure whom he was talking to, but she didn’t fight. Browns didn’t fight either.
He moved cautiously, leading the aliens down the spiral ramp with his pistol drawn. The ramp ended at a doorway and he paused for a moment. There was silence beyond it. Hell with it, he thought and moved through.
He was alone in a wide cylindrical tunnel with tracks along the bottom and a smoothed ramp to one side. To his left the tunnel ended in a wall of rock, The other end seemed to stretch on forever into darkness. There were scars in the tunnel rock where ribs would have been in a giant whale.
The Motie came up behind him and saw where he was looking. “There was a linear accelerator here; before rising civilization robbed it for metal.”
“I don’t see any cars. How do we get one?”
”I can call—one. Any Mediator can.”/
“Not you, Charlie,” Horst said. “Or do they know she’s in the conspiracy too?”
“Horst, if we wait for a car, it’ll be full of Warriors. The keeper knows you opened his building. I don’t know why his people aren’t here yet. Probably a jurisdictional fight between him and my Master. Jurisdiction is a big thing with decision makers . . . and King Peter will be trying to keep things confused too.”
“We can’t escape by plane. We can’t walk across the fields. And we can’t call a car,” Staley said. “OK. Sketch a subway car for me.”
She drew it on Staley’s- hand computer screen. It was a box on wheels, the universal space-filling shape of vehicles that must hold as many as possible and must be parked in limited space. “Motors here on the wheels. Controls may be automatic-“
“Not on a war car.”
“Controls here at the front, then. And the Browns and Warriors may have made all kinds of changes. They do that, you know. .
“Like armor. Armored glass and sides. Bow guns.” The three Moties stiffened and Horst listened. He heard nothing.
”Footsteps,” the Motie said, “Whitbread and Potter.”
“Maybe.” Staley moved catlike toward the entrance. “Relax, Horst. I recognize the rhythms.”
They had found weapons. “This one’s the prize,” said Whitbread. He held up a tube with a lens in the business end and a butt clearly meant for Mode shoulders. “I don’t know how long the power lasts, but it cut a hole all the way through a thick stone wall. Invisible beam.”
Staley took it. “That’s what we need. Tell me about the others later. Now get into the doorway and stay there.” Staley positioned himself where the passenger ramp ended, just to one side of the tunnel entrance. Nothing would see him until it was coming out of that tunnel. He wondered how good Motie armor was. Would it stop an x-ray laser? There was no sound, and he waited, impatiently.
This is silly, he told himself. But what else is there? Suppose they come in planes and land outside the dome? Should have closed the door and left somebody. Not too late for that, either.
He started to turn toward the others behind him, but then he heard it; a low bumming from far down the track.
It actually relaxed him. There were no more choices to make. Horst moved cautiously and took a better grip on the unfamiliar weapon. The car was coming fast...
It was much smaller than Staley had expected: a toy of a streetcar, whistling past him. Its wind buffeted his face. The car stopped with a jerk, while Staley waved the gun like a magician’s wand, back and forth across it. Was anything coming out the other side? No. The gun was working properly. The beam was invisible, but crisscross lines of red-hot metal lined the vehicle. He swiped the beam across the windows, where nothing showed, and along the roof, then stepped quickly out into the tunnel and fired down its length.
There was another car there. Staley ducked back to cover most of his body but continued to fire, aiming the gun at the oncoming car. How the hell would he know when the battery-or whatever it used for power-quit? A museum piece, for God’s sake! The second car was past, and there were cherry-red lines across it. He swept the weapon along it, then stepped out to fire down the tunnel again. There was nothing there.
No third car. Good, Systematically he fired at the second car. Something had stopped it just behind the first-some kind of collision avoidance system? He couldn’t know. He ran toward the two cars. Whitbread and Potter came out to join him.
“I told you to stay put!”
Whitbread said, “Sorry, Horst.”
“This is a military situation, Mr. Whitbread. You can call me Horst when people aren’t shooting at us.”
“Yes, sir. I wish to point out that nobody has fired except you.”
There was a smell from the car: burning meat. The Moties came out from hiding. Staley carefully approached the cars and looked inside. “Demons,” he said.7
They examined the bodies with interest. Except for statues they’d never seen the type before. Compared to the Mediators and Engineers they seemed wire-thin and agile, like greyhounds next to pugs. The right arms were long, with short thick fingers and only one thumb; the other edge of the right hand was smooth with callus. The left arm was longer, with fingers like sausages. There was something under the left arm.
The demons had teeth, long and sharp, like true monsters from childhood books and half-forgotten legends.
Charlie twittered to Whitbread’s Motie. When there was no answer she twittered again, more shrill, and waved at the Brown. The Engineer approached the door and began to examine it closely. Whitbread’s Mode stood petrified, staring at the dead Warriors.
“Look out for booby traps!” Staley yelled. The Brown paid no attention and began to feel cautiously at the door.
“Watch out!”
“They will have traps, but the Brown will see them,” Charlie said very slowly. “I will tell her to be careful.” The voice was precise and had no accent at all.
“You can talk,” Staley said.
“Not well. It is difficult to think in your language.”
“What’s wrong with my Fyunch(click)” Whitbread demanded.
Instead of answering, Charlie twittered again. The tones rose sharply. Whitbread’s Motie seemed to jerk and turned toward them.
“Sorry,” she said. “Those are my Master’s Warriors. Damn, damn, what am I doing?”
“Let’s get in there,” Staley said nervously. He raised his gun to cut through the side of the car. The Brown was still inspecting the door, very carefully, as if afraid of it.
“Allow me, sir.” Whitbread must have been kidding. He was holding a thick-handled short sword. Horst watched him cut a square doorway in the metal side of the subway car with one continuous smooth, slow sweep of the blade.
“It vibrates,” he said. “I think.”
A few smells got through theft air filters. It must have been worse for the Moties, but they didn’t seem to mind. They crawled inside the second car.
“You better look these over,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She sounded much better now. “Know your enemy.” She twittered at the Brown, and it went to the controls of the car and examined them carefully, then sat in the driver’s seat. She had to toss a Warrior out to do it.
“Have a look under the left arm,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “That’s a second left arm, vestigial in most Mote subspecies. Only thing is, it’s all one nail, like a-“ She thought for a moment. “A hoof. It’s a gutting knife. Plus enough muscle to swing it.”
Whitbread and Potter grimaced. At Staley’s direction they began to heave demon bodies out the hole in the side of the car. The Warriors were like twins of each other, all identical except for the cooked areas where the x-ray laser had swept through them. The feet were sheathed in sharp horn at toe and heel. One kick, backward or forward, and that Would be all. The heads were small.
“Are they sentient?” Whitbread asked.
“By your standards, yes, but they aren’t very inventive,” Whitbread’s Mode said. She sounded like Whitbread reciting lessons to the First Lieutenant, her voice very precise but without feelings. “They can fix any weapon that ever worked, but they don’t tend to invent their own. Oh, and there’s a Doctor form, a hybrid between the real Doctor and the Warrior. Semi-sentient. You should be able to guess what they look like. You’d better have the Brown look at any weapons you keep-“
Without warning the car began to move. “Where are we going?” Staley asked.
Whitbread’s Mode twittered. It sounded a little like a mockingbird whistle. “That’s the next city down the line...”
“They’ll have a roadblock. Or an armed party waiting for us,” Staley said. “How far is it?”
“Oh-fifty kilometers.”
“Take us halfway and stop,” Staley ordered.
“Yes, sir.” The Mode sounded even more like Whitbread. “They’ve underestimated you, Horst. That’s the only way I can explain this. I’ve never heard of a Warrior killed by anything but another Warrior. Or a Master, sometimes, not often. We fight the Warriors against each other. It’s how we keep their population down.”
“Ugh,” Whitbread muttered. “Why not just-not breed them?”
The Motie laughed. It was a peculiarly bitter laugh, very human, and very disturbing. “Didn’t any of you ever wonder what killed the Engineer aboard your ship?”
“Aye.”
“Of course.”
“Sure.” They all answered together. Charlie twittered something.
”They may as well know,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “She died because there was nobody to get her pregnant.” There was a long silence. “That’s the whole secret. Don’t you get it yet? Every variant of my species has to be made pregnant after she’s been female for a while. Child, male, female, pregnancy, male, female, pregnancy, ‘round and ‘round. If she doesn’t get pregnant in time, she dies. Even us. And we Mediators can’t get pregnant. We’re mules, sterile hybrids.”
“But-“ Whitbread sounded like a kid just told the truth about Santa. “How long do you live?”
“About twenty-five of your years. Fifteen years after maturity. But Engineers and Farmers and Masters-especially Masters!-have to be pregnant within a couple of our years. That Engineer you picked up must have been close to the deadline already.”
They drove on in silence. “But-good Lord,” Potter said carefully. “That’s terrible.”
“’Terrible.’ You son of a bitch. Of course it’s terrible. Sally and her-“
“What’s eating you?” Whitbread demanded.
“Birth control pills. We asked Sally Fowler what a human does when she doesn’t want children just yet. She uses birth control pills. But nice girls don’t use them. They just don’t have sex,” she said savagely.
The car was speeding down the tracks. Horst sat at the rear, which was now the front, staring out with his weapon poised. He turned slightly. The Modes were both glaring at the humans, their lips parted slightly to show teeth, enlarging their smile, but the bitterness of the words and tones belied the friendly looks. “They just don’t have sex!” Whitbread’s Motie said again. “Pyoofwuffle” (whistle) I “Now you know why we have wars. Always wars...”
”Population explosion,” Potter said.
“Yeah. Whenever a civilization rises from savagery, Moties stop dying from starvation! You humans don’t know what population pressure is! We can keep the numbers down in the lesser breeds, but what can the givers of orders do about their own numbers? The closest thing we’ve got to a birth control pill is infanticide!”
“And you can nae do that,” Potter said. “Any such instinct would be bred out o’ the race. So presently everyone is fighting for what food is left.”
“Of course.” Whitbread’s Motie was calmer now. “The higher the civilization, the longer the period of savagery. And always there’s Crazy Eddie in there pitching, trying to break the pattern of the Cycles, fouling things up worse. We’re pretty close to a collapse now, gentlemen, in case you didn’t notice. When you came there was a terrible fight over jurisdiction. My Master won-“
Charlie whistled and hummed for a second.
“Yeah. King Peter tried for that, but he couldn’t get enough support. Wasn’t sure he could win a fight with my Master. . What we’re doing now will probably cause that war anyway. It doesn’t matter. It was bound to start soon.”
“You’re so crowded you grow plants on the rooftops,” said Whitbread.
“Oh, that’s just common sense. Like putting strips of cropland through the cities. Some always live, to start the Cycles over.”
“It must be tough, carving out a civilization without even radioactives,” said Whitbread. “You’d have to go direct to hydrogen fusion every time?”
”Sure. You’re getting at something.”
“I’m not sure what.”
“Well, it’s been that way for all of recorded history, - a long time by your standards. Except for one period when they found radioactives in the Trojan asteroids. There were a few alive up there and they brought civilization here.
The radioactives had been pretty thoroughly mined by some older civilization, but there were still some there.”
“God’s eyes,” said Whitbread. “But-“
“Stop the car, please,” Staley ordered. Whitbread’s Mode twittered and the car came smoothly to a halt. “I’m getting nervous about what we’re running into,” Staley explained. “They must be waiting for us. Those soldiers we killed haven’t reported in-and if those were your Master’s men, where are the Keeper’s? Anyway, I want to test the Warriors’ weapons.”
“Have the Brown look them over,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “They may be rigged.”
They looked deadly, those weapons. And no two were identical. The most common type was a slug thrower, but there were also hand lasers and grenades. The butt of each weapon had been individualized. Some balanced only against the upper right shoulder, some squared against both. The gun sights differed. There were two left-handed models. Staley dimly remembered heaving out a left-handed body.
There was a rocket launcher with a fifteen-centimeter aperture. “Have her look at this,” Staley said.
Whitbread’s Motie handed the weapon to the Brown, accepting a slug thrower in return which she put under a bench. “This was rigged.” The Brown looked at the rocket launcher and twittered. “OK,” Whitbread’s Mode said.
“How about the loads?” Staley passed them over. There were several different kinds, and none exactly alike. The Brown twittered again.
“The biggest rocket would explode if you tried to load it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “They may have figured you right at that. Anyway, they certainly prepared enough traps. I’ve been assuming that the Masters think you’re a kind of inept Mediator. It was what we thought, at first. But these traps mean they think you could kill Warriors.”
“Great. I’d rather they thought we were stupid. We’d still be dead without the museum weapons. Come to that, Why keep live guns in a museum?”
“You don’t see the point of a museum, Horst. It’s for the next rise in the Cycles. Savages come to put together another civilization. The faster they can do it, the longer it’ll be before another collapse because they’ll be expanding their capabilities faster than the population. See? So the savages get their choice of a number of previous civilizations, and -the weapons to put a new one into action. You noticed the lock?”
”I did,” said Potter. “You need some astronomy to solve it. I presume that’s to keep the savages from getting the goods before they’re ready.”
“Right.” The Brown handed over a big-nosed rocket with a twitter. “She fixed this one. It’s safe. What are you planning to do with it, Horst?”
“Pick me some more. Potter, you carry that x-ray laser. How close are we to- the surface?”
”Oh. Hm. The”-Bird Whistle-“terminus is only one flight of stairs below the surface. The ground is pretty level in that region. I’d say we’re three to ten meters underground.”
“How close to other transportation?”
“An hour’s walk to- Bird Whistle. Horst, are you going to damage the tunnel? Do you know how long this subway has been in use?”
“No.” Horst slid through the makeshift hatch in the side of the car. He walked a score of meters back the way they had come, then doubled that. The weapons could still be booby-trapped.
The tunnel was infinitely straight ahead of him. It must have been trued with a laser, then dug with something like a hot rock boring machine.
Whitbread’s Motie’s voice carried down the tunnel. “Eleven thousand years!”
Staley fired.
The projectile touched the roof of the tunnel, far down. Horst curled up against the shock wave. When he raised his eyes there was considerable dirt in the tunnel.
He chose another projectile and fired it.
This time there was reddish daylight. He walked down to look at the damage. Yes, they could climb that slope.
Eleven thousand years,
“Send the car on without us,” Horst said. Whitbread’s Mode twittered and the Brown opened the control panel. She worked at blinding speed. Whitbread remembered a Brown asteroid miner who had lived and died eons ago, when MacArthur was home and Moties were a friendly, fascinating unknown.
The Brown leaped off. The car hesitated a second, then accelerated smoothly. They turned to the ramp Horst had created and climbed silently.
The world was all the shades of red as they emerged. Endless rows of crops were folding their leaves against the night. An irregular ring of plants leaned drunkenly around the hole.
Something moved among the plants. Three guns came up. The twisted thing plodded toward them. . . and Staley said, “At ease. It’s a Farmer.”
Whitbread’s Motie moved up beside the midshipmen. She brushed dirt off her fur with all her hands. “There’ll be more of those here. They may even try to smooth out the hole. Farmers aren’t too bright. They don’t have to be. What now, Horst?”
“We walk until we can ride. If you see planes-hmm.”
“Infrared detectors,” said the Motie.
“Do you have tractors in these fields? Could we grab one?” Staley asked.
“They’ll be in the shed by now. They don’t usually work in the dark . . . of course the Farmers may bring one to smooth out that hole.”
Staley thought a moment. “Then we don’t want one. Too conspicuous. Let’s hope we look like Farmers on an infrared screen.”
They walked. Behind them the Farmer began straightening plants and smoothing the soil around their roots. She twittered to herself, but Whitbread’s Motie didn’t translate. Staley idly wondered if Farmers ever said anything, or if they merely cursed, but he didn’t want to talk just yet. He had to think.
The sky darkened. A red point glowed overhead: Murcheson’s Eye. Ahead of them was the yellow city-glow of Bird Whistle. They walked on in silence, the midshipmen alert, weapons ready, the Modes following with their torsos swiveling periodically.
By and by Staley said to the Motie, “I’ve been wondering what’s in this for you.”
“Pain. Exertion. Humiliation. Death.”
“That’s the point. I keep wondering why you came.”
“No, you don’t, Horst. You keep wondering why your Fyunch(dick) didn’t.”
Horst looked at her. He had wondered that. What was his twin mind doing while demons hunted her own Fyunch(click) across a world? It brought dull pain.
“We’re both duty oriented, Hoist, your Fyunch(dick) and I. But your Fyunch (click)’s duty is to her, let us say, her superior officer. Gavin-“
”Aye.”
“I tried to talk your Fyunch(click) into coming down, but she’s got this Crazy Eddie idea that we can end the Cycles by sending our surplus population to other stars. At least neither will help the others find us.”
”Could they?”
“Horst, your Motie must know exactly where you are, assuming I got here; and she’ll know that when she finds out about the dead Warriors.”
“We’d better flip a coin the next time we get a choice. She can’t predict that.”
“She won’t help. Nobody would expect a Mediator to help hunt down her own Fyunch(click).”
“But don’t you have to obey your Master’s orders?” Staley asked.
The Motie swiveled her body rapidly. It was a gesture they hadn’t seen before, obviously not copied from anything human. She said, “Look. Mediators were bred to stop wars. We represent the decision makers. We speak for them. To do our job we have to have some independence of judgment. So the genetic engineers work at the balance.
Too much independence and we don’t represent the Masters properly. We get repudiated. Wars start.”
“Aye,” Potter broke in. “And too little independence makes for inflexible demands, and you hae the wars anyway.” Potter trudged in silence for a moment. “But if obedience is a species-specific thing, then ye’ll be unable simply to help us alone. Ye’ll be taking us to another Master because ye hae nae choice.”
Staley gripped the rocket launcher tighter. “Is this true?”
“Some,” Whitbread’s Mode admitted. “Not as completely as you think. But, yes, it’s easier to choose among many orders than try to act with none at all.”
“And what does King Peter believe should be done?” Staley demanded. “Just what are we walking into?”
The other Mode twittered. Whitbread’s Mode answered. The conversation went on for many seconds, very long for Modes. The sunset light died, and Murcheson’s Eye blazed a hundred times brighter than Earth’s full Moon. There were no other stars in the Coal Sack. Around them the fields of plants were dark red, with sharp black shadows of infinite depth.
“Honesty,” Charlie said at last. “My Master believes we must be honest with you. It is better to live by the ancient pattern of the Cycles than chance total destruction and the doom of all our descendants.”
“But. . .” Potter stammered in confusion. “But why is it nae possible to colonize other stars? The Galaxy is big enough for all. You would nae attack the Empire?”
“No, no,” Whitbread’s Mode protested. “My own Master wants only to buy land as bases on Empire worlds, then move outside the Empire entirely. Eventually we’d be colonizing worlds around the edges of the Empire. There’d be commerce between us. I don’t think we’d try to share the same planets.”
“Then why-“ Potter asked.
“I don’t think you could build that many space craft,” Whitbread interrupted.
“We’d build them on colony worlds and send them back,” the Mode answered. “Hire commercial shipping from men like Bury. We could pay more than anyone else. But look-it couldn’t last. The colonies would secede, so to speak. We’d have to start over with new colonies farther away. And on every world we settled there’d be population problems. Can you imagine what it would be like three hundred years from now?”
Whitbread tried. Ships like flying cities, millions of them. And Secession Wars, like the one that wrecked the First Empire. More and more Moties
“Hundreds of Motie worlds, all trying to ship our expanding population out to newer worlds! Billions of Masters competing for territory and security! It takes time to use your Crazy Eddie Drive. Time and fuel to move around in each system looking for the next Crazy Eddie point. Eventually the outer edge of the Mote Sphere wouldn’t be enough. We’d have to expand inward, into the Empire of Humanity.”
“Um.” said Whitbread. The others only looked at the Motie, then plodded onward toward the city. Staley held the big rocket launcher cradled in his arms, as if the bulk gave him comfort. Sometimes he put his hand to his holster to touch the reassuring butt of his own weapon as well.
“It’d be an easy decision to reach,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “There’d be jealousy.”
“Of us? Of what? Birth control pills?”
“Yes.”
Staley snorted.
“Even that wouldn’t be the end. Eventually there would be a huge sphere of Motie-occupied systems. The center stars couldn’t even reach the edge. They’d fight among themselves. Continual war, continually collapsing civilizations. I suspect a standard technique would be to drop an asteroid into an enemy sun and figure on resettling the planet when the flare dies down. And the sphere would keep expanding, leaving more systems in the center.”
Staley said, “I’m not so sure you could whip the Empire.”
“At the rate our Warriors breed? Oh, skip it. Maybe you’d wipe us out. Maybe you’d save some of us for zoos; you sure wouldn’t have to worry about us not breeding in captivity. I don’t really care. There’s a good chance we’d bring on a collapse just by converting too much of our industrial capacity to building space craft.”
“If you’re not planning war with the Empire,” Staley said, “why are the three of us under death sentence?”
”Four. My Master wants my head as much as yours well, maybe not. You’ll be wanted for dissection.”
Nobody showed surprise.
“You’re under death sentence because you now have enough information to have worked this out yourselves, you and MacArthur’s biologists. A lot of the other Masters support the decision to kill you. They’re afraid that if you escape now, your government will see us as a spreading plague, expanding through the Galaxy, eventually wiping out the Empire.”
“And King Peter? He doesn’t want us killed?” Staley asked. “Why not?”
The Moties twittered again. Whitbread’s Mode spoke for the other one. “He may decide to kill you. I have to be honest about that. But he wants to put the djinn back in the bottle-if there’s any way that humans and Moties can go back to where we were before you found our Crazy Eddie probe, he’ll try it. The Cycles are better than-a whole Galaxy of Cycles!”
“And you?” Whitbread asked. “How do you see the situation?”
“As you do,” the Motie said carefully. “I am qualified to judge my species dispassionately. I am not a traitor.” There was a plea in the alien voice. “I am a judge. I judge that association between our species could only result in mutual envy, you for your birth control pills, us for our superior intelligence. Did you say something?”
“No.”
“I judge that spreading my species across space would involve ridiculous risks and would not end the pattern of the Cycles. It would only make each collapse more terrible. We would breed faster than we could spread, until collapse came for hundreds of planets at a stroke, routinely...”
“But,” said Potter, “ye’ve reached your dispassionate judgment by adopting our viewpoint-or rather, Whitbread’s. You act so much like Jonathon the rest of us have to keep counting your arms. What will happen when you give up the human viewpoint? Might not your judgment- Ugh!”
The alien’s left arm closed on the front of Potter’s uniform, painfully tight, and drew him down until his nose was an inch from the Motie’s sketched-in face. She said, “Never say that. Never think that. The survival of our civilization, any civilization, depends entirely on the justice of my class. We understand all viewpoints, and judge between them, If other Mediators come to a different conclusion from mine, that is their affair, It may be that their facts are incomplete, or their aims different. I judge on the evidence.”
She released him, Potter stumbled backward. With the fingers of a right hand the Motie picked Staley’s gunpoint out of her ear.
“That wasna’ necessary,” said Potter.
“It got your attention, didn’t it? Come on, we’re wasting time.”
“Just a minute.” Staley spoke quietly, but they all heard him easily in the night silence. “We’re going to find this King Peter, who may or may not let us report to Lenin. That’s not good enough. We’ve got to tell the Captain what we know.”
“And how will you do that?” Whitbread’s Motie asked. “I tell you, we won’t help you, and you can’t do it without us. I hope you don’t have something stupid in mind, like threatening us with death? If that scared me, do you think I’d be here?”
“But-“
“Horst, get it through that military mind of yours that the only thing keeping Lenin alive is that my Master and King Peter agree on letting it live! My Master wants Lenin to go back with Dr Horvath and Mr. Bury aboard. If we’ve analyzed you right, they’ll be very persuasive. They’ll argue for free trade and peaceful relationships with us-“
”Aye,” Potter said thoughtfully. “And wi’out our message, there’ll be nae opposition ... why does this King Peter no call Lenin himself?”
Charlie and Whitbread’s Motie twittered. Charlie answered. “He is not sure that the Empire will not come in strength to destroy the Mote worlds once you know the truth. And until he is sure.. .”
“How in God’s name can he be sure of anything like that from talking to us?” Staley demanded. “I’m not sure myself. If His Majesty asked me, right now, I don’t know what I’d advise-for God’s sake, we’re only three midshipmen from one battle cruiser. We can’t speak for the Empire.”
“Could we do it?” Whitbread asked. “I’m beginning to wonder if the Empire would be able to wipe you out.”
“Jesus, Whitbread,” Staley protested.
“I mean it. By the time Lenin gets back and reports to Sparta, they’ll have the Field. Won’t you?”
Both Modes shrugged. The gestures were exactly alike-and exactly like Whitbread’s shrug. “The Engineers will work on it now that they know it exists,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “Even without it, we’ve got some experience in space wars. Now come on. God’s teeth, you don’t know how close to war we are right now! If my Master thinks you’ve told all this to Lenin she’ll order an attack on the ship. If King Peter isn’t convinced there’s a way to make you leave us alone, he might order it.”
“And if we do no hurry, the Admiral will already hae taken Lenin back to New Caledonia,” Potter added. “Mr. Staley, we hae nae choices at all. We find Charlie’s Master before the other Masters find us. ‘Tis as simple as that.”
“Jonathon?” Staley asked.
“You want advice? Sir?” Whitbread’s Mode clucked in disapproval. Jonathon Whitbread looked at her irritably, then grinned. “Yes, sir. I agree with Gavin. What else can we do? We can’t fight a whole goddamn planet, and we’re not going to build secure communications out of anything we’ll find around here.”
Staley lowered his weapon. “Right. Lead on, then.” He looked at his small command. “We’re a damn sorry lot to be the ambassadors of the human race.”
They struck out across the darkened fields toward the brightly lit city beyond.
There was a three-meter-high wall around (Bird Whistle) city. It might have been stone, or a hard plastic; the structure was difficult to see in the red-black light of Murcheson’s Eye. Beyond it they could see great oblong buildings. Yellow windows loomed over their heads.
”The gates will be guarded,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “I’m sure,” Staley muttered. “Does the Keeper live here too?”
”Yes. At the subway terminal. Keepers aren’t allowed farm lands of their own. The temptation to exploit that kind of sell-sufficiency might be too much even for a sterile male.”
“But how do you get to be a Keeper?” Whitbread asked. “You’re always talking about competition among Masters, but how do they compete?”
“God’s eyes, Whitbread!” Staley exploded. “Look, what do we do about that wall?”
“We’ll have to go through it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. She twittered to Charlie for a moment. “There are alarms and there’ll be Warriors on guard.”
“Can we go over it?”
“You’d pass through an x-ray laser, Horst.”
“God’s teeth. What are they so afraid of?”
“Food riots.”
“So we go through it. Any one place better than another?”
The Moties shrugged with Whitbread’s gestures. “Maybe half a kilometer farther. There’s a fast road there.”
They walked along the wall, “Well, how do they compete?” Whitbread insisted. “We’ve got nothing better to talk about.”
Staley muttered something, but stayed close to listen.
“How do you compete?” Whitbread’s Mode asked. “Efficiency. We have commerce, you know. Mr. Bury might be surprised at just how shrewd some of our Traders are. Partly, Masters buy responsibilities-that is, they show they can handle the job. They get other powerful givers of orders to support them. Mediators negotiate it. Contracts-promises of services to be delivered, that kind of thing-are drawn up and published. And some givers of orders work for others, you know. Never directly. But they’ll have a job they take care of, and they’ll consult a more powerful Master about policy. A Master gains prestige and authority when other givers of orders start asking her for advice. And of course her daughters help.”
“It sounds complex,” Potter said. “I think o’ nae time or place similar in human history.”
“It is complex,” said Whitbread’s Mode. “How could it be anything else? How can a decision maker be anything but independent? That’s what drove Captain Blaine’s Fyunch(dick) insane, you know. Here was your Captain, Absolute Master on that ship-except that when whoever it-was on Lenin croaked frog, Captain Blaine hopped around the bridge.”
“Do you really talk about the Captain that way?” Staley asked Whitbread.
“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might tend to get me dumped into the mass converter,” Whitbread said. “Besides, we’re coming to a bend in the wail.
“About here, Mr. Staley,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “There’s a road on the other side.”
“Stand, back.” Horst raised the rocket launcher and fired. At the second explosion light showed through the wail. More lights rippled along its top. Some shone out into the fields, showing crops growing to the edge of the wail. “OK, get through fast,” Staley ordered.
They went through the gap and onto a highway. Cars and larger vehicles whizzed past, missing them by centimeters as they cowered against the wall. The three Moties walked boldly into the road.
Whitbread shouted and tried to grab his Fyunch(click). She shook him off impatiently and strolled across the street. Cars missed her narrowly, cunningly dodging past the Moties without slowing at all.
On the other side the Brown-and-whites waved theft left arms in an unmistakable sign: Come on!
Light poured through the gap in the wail. Something was out there in the fields where they’d been. Staley waved the others into the street and fired back through the gap. The rocket exploded a hundred meters away, and the light went out.
Whitbread and Potter walked across the highway.
Staley loaded the last round into the rocket launcher, but saved it. Nothing was coming through the gap yet. He stepped out into the street and began to walk. Traffic whizzed past. The urge to run and dodge was overwhelming, but he moved slowly, at constant speed. A truck whipped past in a momentary hurricane. Then others.
After a lifetime he reached the other side, alive.
No sidewalks. They were still in traffic, huddled against a grayish concrete-like wall.
Whitbread’s Motie stepped into the street and gave a curious three-armed gesture. A long rectangular truck stopped with screeching brakes. She twittered to the drivers and the Browns immediately got out, went to the back of the truck, and began removing boxes from the cargo compartment. The traffic streamed past without slowing at all.
“That ought to do it,” Whitbread’s Mode said briskly. “The Warriors will be coming to investigate the hole in the wall-“
•The• humans got in quickly. The Brown who’d followed them patiently from the museum climbed• into the right-hand driver’s seat. Whitbread’s Mode started for the other driver’s seat, but Charlie twittered at her. The two Brown-and-whites whistled and chirped, and Charlie gestured vehemently. Finally Whitbread’s Mode climbed into the cargo compartment and closed the doors. As she did the humans saw the original drivers walking slowly down the street away from the truck.
“Where are they going?” Staley asked.
“Better than that, what was the argument about?” Whitbread demanded.
“One at a time, gentlemen,” Whitbread’s Mode began. The truck started. It jolted hard, and there was humming from the motors and the tires. Sounds of myriads of other vehicles filtered in.
Whitbread was jammed between hard plastic boxes, with about as much room as a coffin. It reminded him unpleasantly of his situation. The others had no more room, and Jonathon wondered if they had thought of the analogy. His nose was only centimeters from the roof.
“The Browns will go to a transport pool and report that their vehicle was commandeered by a Mediator,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “And the argument was over who’d stay up front with the Brown. I lost.”
“Why was it an argument?” Staley demanded. “Don’t you trust each other?”
”I trust Charlie. She doesn’t really trust me-I mean, how could she? I’ve walked out on my own Master. As far as she’s concerned, I’m Crazy Eddie. Best to see to things herself.”
“But where are we going?” Staley asked.
“To King Peter’s territory. Best available way.”
“We can’t stay in this vehicle long,” Staley said. “Once those Browns report, they’ll be looking for it-you must have police. Some way to trace a stolen truck. You do have crime, don’t you?”
“Not the way you think of it. There aren’t really any laws-but there are givers of orders who have jurisdiction over missing property. They’ll find the truck for a price. It’ll take tithe, for my Master to negotiate with them, though. First she’ll have to show that I’ve gone insane.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a space port here?” Whitbread asked.
“We couldn’t use it anyway,” Staley said flatly.
They listened to the hum of traffic for awhile. Potter said, “I thought of that too. A spacecraft is conspicuous. If a message would bring an attack on Lenin, ‘tis certain we’d nae be allowed to return ourselves.”
“And how are we going to get home?” Whitbread wondered aloud, He wished he hadn’t asked.
“’Tis a twice-told tale,” Potter said unhappily, “We know aye more than can be allowed. And what we ken is more important than our lives, is it nae so, Mr. Staley?”
“Right.”
“You never know when to give up, do you?” Whitbread’s voice said from the dark. It took a moment for them to realize it was the Motie speaking. “King Peter may let you live, He may let you return to Lenin. If he’s convinced that’s best, he can arrange it. But there’s no way you will send a message to that battleship without his help.”
“The hell we won’t,” Staley said. His voice rose. “Get this through your ear flap. You’ve been square with us-I think. I’ll be honest with you. If there’s a way to get a message out I’m going to send it.”
“And after that, ‘tis as God wills,” Potter added,
They listened to the humming of the traffic. “You won’t have the chance, Horst,” Whitbread’s voice said.
“There’s no threat you can make that would get Charlie or me to have a Brown build you the equipment you’d need. You can’t use our transmitters if you could find one-even I couldn’t use strange gear without a Brown to help. There might not even be the proper communications devices on this planet, for that matter.”
“Come off it,” Staley said. “You’ve got to have space communications, and there are only so many bands in the electromagnetic spectrum.”
“Sure. But nothing stays idle here. If we need something, the Browns put it together. When it’s not needed any more, they build something else out of the parts. And you want something that’ll reach Lenin without letting anyone know you’ve done that”
“I’ll take the chance. If we can broadcast a warning to the Admiral, he’ll get the ship home.” Horst was positive. Lenin might be only one ship, but President Class battlewagons had defeated whole fleets before. Against Modes without the Field she’d be invincible. He wondered why he’d ever believed anything else. Back at the museum there’d been electronics parts, and they could have put together a transmitter of some kind. Now it was too late; why had he listened to the Motie?
They drove on for nearly an hour. The midshipmen were cramped, jammed between hard boxes, in the dark. Staley felt his throat tighten and was afraid to talk any more. There might be a catch in his voice, something to communicate his fears to the others, and he couldn’t let them know he was as afraid as they were. He wished for something to happen, a fight, anything- There were starts and stops. The truck jerked and turned, then came to a halt. They waited. The sliding door opened and Charlie stood framed in light.
“Don’t move,” she said. There were Warriors behind her, weapons ready. At least four.
Horst Staley growled in hatred. Betrayed! He reached for his pistol, but the cramped position prevented him from drawing it.
“No, Horst!” Whitbread’s Mode shouted. She twittered. Charlie hummed and clacked in reply. “Don’t do anything,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “Charlie has commandeered an aircraft. The Warriors belong to its owner. They won’t interfere as long as we go straight from here to the plane.”
“But who are they?” Staley demanded. He kept his grip on the pistol. The odds looked impossible-the Warriors were poised and ready, and they looked deadly and efficient.
“I told you,” Whitbread’s Mode said. “They’re a bodyguard. All Masters have them. Nearly all, anyway. Now get out, slowly, and keep your hands off your weapons. Don’t make them think you might try to attack their Master. If they get that idea, we’re all dead.”
Staley estimated his chances. Not good. If he had Kelley and another Marine instead of Whitbread and Potter- “OK,” he said. “Do as she says.” He climbed slowly out of the van.
They were in a luggage-handling area. The Warriors stood in easy postures, leaning slightly forward on the balls of their wide, horned feet. It looked, Staley thought, like a karate stance. He caught a glimpse of motion near the wall. There were at least two more Warriors over there, under cover. Good thing he hadn’t tried to fight.
The Warriors watched them carefully, falling in behind the strange procession of a Mediator, three humans, another Mediator, and a Brown. Their weapons were held at the ready, not quite pointing at anyone, and they fanned out, never bunching up.
“Will nae yon decision maker call your Master when we are gone?” Potter asked.
The Modes twittered together. The Warriors seemed to pay no attention at all. “Charlie says yes. She’ll notify both my Master and King Peter. But it gets us an airplane, doesn’t it?”
The decision maker’s personal aircraft was a streamlined wedge attended by several Browns. Charlie twittered at them and they began removing seats, bending metal, working at almost blinding speed. Several miniatures darted through the plane. Staley saw them and cursed, but softly, hoping the Moties wouldn’t know why. They stood waiting. near the plan; and the Warriors watched them the whole time.
“I find this slightly unbelievable,” said Whitbread “Doesn’t the owner know we’re fugitives?”
Whitbread’s Motie nodded. “But not his fugitives. He only runs the (Bird Whistle) airport baggage section. He wouldn’t assume the prerogatives of my Master. He’s also talked to the (Bird Whistle) airport manager, and they both agree they don’t want my Master and King Peter fighting here. Best to have us all out of here, fast.”
“Ye’re the strangest creatures I hae ever imagined,” Potter said. “I can no see why such anarchy does nae end in-“ he stopped, embarrassed.
“It does,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “Given our special characteristics, it has to. But industrial feudalism works better than some things we’ve tried.”
The Browns beckoned. When they entered the airplane there was a single Mode-shaped couch starboard aft. Charlie’s Brown went to it. Forward of that were a pair of human seats, then a human seat next to a Mode seat. Charlie and another Brown went through the cargo compartment to the pilot’s section. Potter and Staley sat together without conversation, leaving Whitbread and his Mode side by side. It reminded the midshipman of a more pleasant trip that had not been very long ago.
The plane unfolded an unbelievable area of wing surface. It took off slowly, straight up. Acres of city dwindled beneath them, square kilometers of more city lights rose above the horizon. They flew over the lights, endless city stretching on and on with the great dark sweep of farm land. falling far behind. Staley peered through the view port and thought he could see, away to the left, the edge of the city: beyond it was nothing, darkness, but level. More farm lands.
“You say every Master has Warriors,” Whitbread said. “Why didn’t we ever see any before?”
“There aren’t any Warriors in Castle City,” the Mode said with obvious pride.
“None?”
“None at all. Everywhere else, any holder of territory or important manager goes about with a bodyguard. Even the immature decision maker is guarded by his mother’s troops. But the Warriors are too obviously what they are. My Master and the decision makers concerned with you and this Crazy Eddie idea got the others in Castle City to agree, so that you wouldn’t know just how warlike we are.”
Whitbread laughed. “I was thinking of Dr. Horvath.”
His Motie chuckled. “He had the same idea, didn’t he? Hide your paltry few wars from the peaceful Moties. They might be shocked. Did I tell you the Crazy Eddie probe started a war all by itself?”
“No. You haven’t told us about any of your wars.”
“It was worse than that, actually. You can see the problem. Who gets put in charge of the launching lasers? Any Master or coalition of them will eventually use the lasers to take over more territory for his clan. If Mediators run the installation, some decision maker will take it away from them.”
“You’d just give it up to the first Master who ordered you to?” Whitbread asked incredulously.
“For God’s sake, Jonathon! Of course not. She’d have been ordered not to to begin with. But Mediators aren’t good at tactics. We can’t handle battalions of Warriors.”
“Yet you govern the planet. .
“For the Masters. We have to. If the Masters meet to negotiate for themselves, it always ends up in a fight. Anyway. What finally happened was that a coalition of Whites was given command of the lasers and their children held as hostages on Mote Prime. They were all pretty old and had an adequate number of children. The Mediators lied to them about how much thrust the Crazy Eddie probe would need. From the Masters’ point of view the Mediators blew up the lasers five years early. Clever, huh? Even so...”
“Even so, what?”
“The coalition managed to salvage a couple of lasers. They had Browns with them. They had to. Potter, you’re from the system the probe was aimed at, aren’t you? Your ancestors must have records of just how powerful those launching lasers were.”
“Enough to outshine Murcheson’s Eye. There was even a new religion started about them. We had our own wars, then-“
“They were powerful enough to take over civilization, too. What it amounts to is that the collapse came early that time, and we didn’t fall all the way back to savagery. The Mediators must have planned it that way from the beginning.”
“God’s teeth,” Whitbread muttered. “Do you always work that way?”
“What way, Jonathon?”
“Expecting everything to fall apart at any minute. Using the fact.”
“Intelligent people do. Everyone but the Crazy Eddies. I think the classic case of the Crazy Eddie syndrome was that time machine. You saw it in one of the sculptures.”
“Some historian decided that a great turning point in history had come about two hundred years earlier. If he could interfere with that turning point, all of Mote history from that point on would be peaceful and idyllic. Can you believe it? And he could prove it, too. He had dates, old memoranda, secret treaties...”
“What was the event?”
“There was an-Emperor, a very powerful Master. All of her siblings had been killed and she inherited jurisdiction over an enormous territory. Her mother had persuaded the Doctors and Mediators to produce a hormone that must have been something like your birth control pills. It would stimulate a Master’s body into thinking she was pregnant. Massive shots, and after that she would turn male. A sterile male. When her mother died, the Mediators had the hormone used on the Emperor.”
“But you do have birth control pills then!” Whitbread said. “You can use them to control the population-“
“That’s what this Crazy Eddie thought. Well, they used the hormone for something like three generations in the Empire. Stabilized the populations, all right; Not very many Masters there. Everything peaceful. Meanwhile, of course, the population explosion was happening on the other continents. The other Masters got together and invaded the Emperor’s territory. They had plenty of Warriors-and plenty of Masters to control them. End of Empire. Our time machine builder had the idea she could set things up so that the Empire would control all of Mote Prime.” Whitbread’s Motie snorted in disgust. “It never works. How are you going to get the Masters to become sterile males? Sometimes it happens anyway, but who’d want to before having children? That’s the only time the hormone can work.”
“Right. Even if the Emperor had conquered all of Mote Prime and stabilized the population-and think about it, Jonathon, the only way to do that would be for the rulers to pass control on to breeders while never having any children themselves-even if they did, they’d have been attacked by the asteroid civilizations.”
“But man, it’s a start!” said Whitbread. “There’s got to be a way-“
“I am not a man, and there doesn’t got to be a way. And that’s another reason I don’t want contact between your species and mine. You’re all Crazy Eddies. You think every problem has a solution.”
“All human problems hae at least one final solution,” Gavin Potter said softly from the seat behind them.
“Human, perhaps,” the alien said. “But do Moties have souls?”
“’Tis nae for me to say,” Potter answered. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I am no a spokesman for the Lord.”
“It isn’t for your chaplain to say either. How can you expect to find out? It would take revealed knowledge-a divine inspiration, wouldn’t it? I doubt if you’ll get it.”
“Hae ye nae religion at all, then?” Potter asked incredulously.
“We’ve had thousands, Gavin. The Browns and other semi-sentient classes don’t change theirs much, but every civilization of Masters produces something else. Mostly they’re variants of transmigration of souls, with emphasis on survival through children. You can see why.”
“You didn’t mention Mediators,” Whitbread said.
“I told you-we don’t have children. There are Mediators who accept the transmigration idea. Reincarnation as Masters. That sort of thing. The closest thing to ours I’ve heard of in human religions is Lesser-Way Buddhism. I talked to Chaplain Hardy about this. He says Buddhists believe they can someday escape from what they call the Wheel of Life. That sounds an awful lot like the Cycles. I don’t know, Jonathon. I used to think I accepted reincarnation, but there’s no knowing, is there?”
“And you hae nothing like Christianity?” Potter demanded.
“No. We’ve had prophecies of a Savior who’d end the Cycles, but we’ve had everything, Gavin. It’s for damn sure there’s been no Savior yet.”
The endless city unrolled beneath them. Presently Potter leaned back in his chair and began to snore softly. Whitbread watched in amazement.
“You should sleep too,” said the Motie. “You’ve been up too long.”
“I’m too scared. You tire easier than we do-you ought to sleep.”
“I’m too scared.”
“Brother, now I’m really scared.” Did I really call him brother? No, I called her brother. Hell with it. “There was more to your museum of art than we understood, wasn’t there?”
“Yeah. Things we didn’t want to go into detail about. Like the massacre of the Doctors. A very old event, almost legend now. Mother Emperor, sort of, decided to wipe the entire Doctor breed off the planet. Damn near succeeded, too.” The Motie stretched. “It’s good to talk to you without having to lie. We weren’t made to lie, Jonathon.”
“Why kill off the Doctors?”
“To keep the population down, you idiot! Of course it didn’t work. Some Masters kept secret stables, and after the next collapse they-“
“-were worth their weight in iridium.”
“It’s thought that they actually became the foundation of commerce. Like cattle on Tabletop.”
The city fell behind at last, and the plane moved over oceans dark beneath the red light of Murcheson’s Eye. The red star was setting, glowing balefully near the horizon, and other stars rose in the east below the inky edge of the Coal Sack.
“If they’re going to shoot us down, this is the place,” Staley said. “Where the crash won’t hit anything. Are you sure you know where we’re going?”
Whitbread’s Mode shrugged. “To King Peter’s jurisdiction. If we can get there.” She looked back at Potter. The midshipman was curled into his seat, his mouth slightly open, gently snoring. The lights in the plane were dim and everything was peaceful, the only jarring note the rocket launcher that Staley clutched across his lap. “You ought to get some sleep too.”
“Yeah” Horst leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His hands never relaxed their tight grip on the weapon.
“He even sleeps at attention,” Whitbread said. “Or tries to. I guess Horst is as scared as we are.”
“I keep wondering if any of this does any good,” the alien said. “We’re damned close to falling apart anyway. You missed a couple of other things in that zoo, you know. Like the food beast. A Motie variant, almost armless, unable to defend itself against us but pretty good at surviving. Another of our relatives, bred for meat in a shameful age, a long time ago
“My God.” Whitbread took a deep breath. “But you wouldn’t do anything like that now,”
“Oh, no.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“A mere statistical matter, a coincidence you may find interesting. There isn’t a zoo on the planet that doesn’t have breeding stock of Meats. And the herds are getting larger...”
”God’s teeth! Don’t you ever stop thinking about the next collapse?”
“No.”
Murcheson’s Eye had long since vanished. Now the east was blood-red in a sunrise that still startled Whitbread. Red sunrises were rare on inhabitable worlds. They passed over a chain of islands. Ahead to the west lights glowed where it was still dark. There was a cityscape like a thousand Spartas set edge to edge, crisscrossed everywhere by dark strips of cultivated land. On man’s worlds they would be parks. Here they were forbidden territory, guarded by twisted demons.
Whitbread yawned and looked at the alien beside him. “I think I called you brother, some time last night.”
“I know. You meant sister. Gender is important to us, too. A matter of life and death.”
“I’m not sure I mean that either. I meant friend,” Whitbread said with some awkwardness.
”Fyunch(click) is a closer relationship. But I am glad to be your friend,” said the Motie. “I wouldn’t have given up the experience of knowing you.”
The silence was embarrassing. “I better wake up the others,” Whitbread said softly.
The plane banked sharply and turned northwards, Whitbread’s Mode looked out at the city below, across to the other side to be sure of the location of the sun, then down again. She got up and went forward into the pilot’s compartment, and twittered. Charlie answered and they twittered again.
“Horst,” Whitbread said. “Mr. Staley. Wake up.”
Horst Staley had forced himself to sleep. He was still as rigid as a statue, the rocket launcher across his lap, his hands gripping it tightly.
”Yeah?”
“I don’t know. We changed course, and now-listen,” Whitbread said. The Moties were still chattering. Their voices grew louder.
Whitbread’s Mode came back to her seat. “It’s started,” she said. She didn’t sound like Whitbread now. She sounded like an alien. “War.”
“Who?” Staley demanded.
“My Master and King Peter. The others haven’t joined in yet, but they will.”
“War over us?” Whitbread asked incredulously. He was ready to cry. The transformation in his Fyunch(click) was too much to bear.
“Over jurisdiction over you,” the Motie corrected. She shivered, relaxed, and suddenly Whitbread’s voice spoke to them from the half-smiling alien lips. “It’s not too bad yet. Just Warriors, and raids. Each one wants to show the other what she could do, without destroying anything really valuable. There’ll be a lot of pressure from the other decision makers to keep it that way They don’t want to be in a fallout pattern.”
“God’s teeth,” said Whitbread. He gulped. “But-welcome back, brother.”
“Where does that leave us?” Staley demanded. “Where do we go now?”
“A neutral place. The Castle.”
“Castle?” Horst shouted. “That’s your Master’s territory? His hand was very near his pistol again.
“Think the others would give my Master that much control over you? The Mediators you met were all part of my clan, but the Castle itself belongs to a sterile decision maker. A Keeper.”
Staley looked distrustful. “What do we do once we’re there?”
The Motie shrugged “Wait and see who wins. If King Peter wins he’s going to send you back to Lenin. Maybe this war will convince the Empire that it’s better to leave us alone. Maybe you can even help us.” The Motie gestured disgustedly. “Help us. He’s Crazy Eddie too. There’ll never be an end to the Cycles.”
“Wait?” Staley muttered. “Not me, damn it. Where is this Master of yours?”
“No!” the Motie shouted. “Horst, I can’t help you with something like that. Besides, you’d never get past the Warriors. They’re good, Horst, better than your Marines; and what are you? Three junior officers with damn little experience and some weapons you got from an old museum.”
Staley looked below. Castle City was ahead. He saw tile space port, an open space among many, but gray, not green. Beyond it was the Castle, a spire circled by a balcony. Small as it was, it stood out among the industrial ugliness of the endless cityscape.
There was communications gear in their baggage. When Renner and the others came up, the Sailing Master had left everything but their notes and records in the Castle. He hadn’t said why, but now they knew: he wanted the Moties to think they would return.
There might even be enough to build a good transmitter. Something that would reach Lenin. “Can we land in the street?” Staley asked.
“In the street?” The Motie blinked. “Why not? If Charlie agrees. This is her aircraft.” Whitbread’s Mode trilled. There were answering hums and clicks from the cockpit.
“You’re sure the Castle is safe?” Staley asked. “Whitbread, do you trust the Moties?”
“I trust this one. But I may be a little prejudiced, Hor-Mr. Staley. You’ll have to make your own judgment.”
“Charlie says the Castle is empty, and the ban on Warriors in Castle City still holds,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “She also says King Peter’s winning, but she’s only hearing reports from her side.”
“Will she land near to the Castle?” Staley asked.
“Why not? We have to buzz the street first, to warn the Browns to look up.” The Motie trilled again.
The grumble of motors died to a whisper. Wings spread again, and the plane dipped lower, falling almost straight down to pull level with a swoop. It whizzed past the Castle, giving them a view of its balconies. Traffic moved below, and Staley saw a White on the pedestrian walkway across from the Castle. The Master ducked quickly into a building.
“No demons,” Staley said. “Anybody see Warriors?”
“No.”
“Nae.”
“Me neither.”
The plane banked sharply and fell again. Whitbread stared wide-eyed at the hard concrete sides of skyscrapers whipping past. They watched for Whites-and Warriors- but saw neither.
The plane slowed and leveled off two meters above the ground. They glided toward the Castle like a gull above waters. Staley braced himself at the windows and waited. Cars came at them and swerved around.
They were going to hit the Castle, he realized. Was the Brown trying to ram their way through like the cutter into MacArthur? The plane dropped joltingly and surged against brakes and thrust reverses. They were just beneath the Castle wall.
“Here, trade with me, Potter.” Staley took the x-ray laser. “Now move out.” The door wouldn’t work for him and he waved at the Motie.
She threw the door wide. There was a two-meter space between wingtip and wall, making twenty-five meters in all. That wing of the aircraft had folded somehow. The Motie leaped into the street.
The humans dashed after her, with Whitbread carrying the magic sword in his left hand. The door might be locked, but it would never stand up to that,
The door was locked. Whitbread hefted the sword to hew through it, but his Mode waved him back. She examined a pair of dials set in the door, took one in each of the right hands, and as she twirled them turned a lever with her left arm. The door opened smoothly. “Meant to keep humans out,” she said.
The entryway was empty. “Any way to barricade that damn door?” Staley asked. His voice sounded hollow, and he saw that the furnishings were gone from the room.
When there was no answer, Staley handed Potter the x-ray laser. “Keep guard here. You’ll need the Moties to tell if someone coming through is an enemy. Come on, Whitbread.” He turned and ran for the stairs.
Whitbread followed reluctantly. Horst climbed rapidly, leaving Whitbread out of breath when they reached the floor where their rooms were. “You got something against elevators?’ Whitbread demanded. “Sir?”
Staley didn’t answer. The door to Renner’s room stood open, and Horst dashed inside. “God damn!”
“What’s the matter?” Whitbread panted. He went through the door.
The room was empty. Even the bunks were removed.
There was no sign of the equipment Renner had left behind. “I was hoping to find something to talk to Lenin with,” Staley growled. “Help me look. Maybe they stored our stuff in here somewhere.”
They searched, but found nothing. On every floor it was the same: fixtures, beds, furniture, everything removed. The Castle was a hollow shell. They went back downstairs to the entryway.
”Are we alone?” Gavin Potter asked.
“Yeah,” Staley replied. “And we’ll starve pretty bloody quick if nothing worse. The place has been stripped.”
Both Modes shrugged. “I’m a little surprised,” Whitbread’s Motie said. The two Moties twittered for a moment. “She doesn’t know why either. It looks like the place won’t be used again-“
“Well, they damn well know where we are,” Staley growled. He took his helmet from his belt and connected the leads to his radio. Then he put the helmet on. “Lenin, this is Staley. Lenin, Lenin, Lenin, this is Midshipman Staley. Over.”
“Mr. Staley, where in hell are you?” It was Captain Blaine.
“Captain! Thank God! Captain, we’re holed up in- Wait one moment, sir.” The Moties were twittering to each other, Whitbread’s Mode tried to say something, but Staley didn’t hear it. What he heard was a Mode speaking with Whitbread’s voice- “Captain Blaine, sir. Where do you get your Trish Mist? Over.”
“Staley, cut the goddamn comedy and report! Over.”
“Sorry, sir, I really must know. You’ll understand why I ask. Where do you get your Irish Mist? Over.”
“Staley! I’m tired of the goddamn jokes!”
Horst took the helmet off. “It isn’t the Captain,” he said. “It’s a Motie with the Captain’s voice. One of yours?” he asked Whitbread’s Motie.
“Probably. It was a stupid trick. Your Fyunch(click) would have known better. Which means she’s not cooperating with my Master too well.”
“There’s no way to defend this place,” Staley said. He looked around the entryway. It was about ten meters by thirty, and there was no furniture at all. The hangings and pictures which adorned the walls were gone. “Upstairs,” Horst said. “We’ve got a better chance there.” He led them back up to the living quarters floor, and they took positions at the end of the hail where they could cover the stairwell and elevator.
“Now what?” Whitbread asked.
“Now we wait,” both Moties said in unison. A long hour passed.
The traffic sounds died away. It took - them a minute to notice, then it was obvious. No-thing moved outside.
“I’ll have a look,” Staley said. He went to a room and peered carefully out the window, standing well inside so that he wouldn’t expose himself. - - -
Demons moved on the street below. They came forward in a twisting, flickering quick run, then suddenly raised their weapons and fired down the street. Horst turned and saw another group melting for cover; they left a third of their number dead. Battle sounds filtered through the thick windows.
”What is it, Horst?” Whitbread called. “It sounds like shots.”
”It is shots. Two groups of Warriors in a battle. Over us?”
“Certainly,” Whitbread’s Motie answered. “You know what this means, don’t you?” She sounded very resigned.
-When there was no answer she said, “It means the humans won’t be coming back. They’re gone.”
Staley cried, “I don’t believe it! The Admiral wouldn’t leave us! He’d take on the whole damn planet-“
“No, he wouldn’t, Horst,” Whitbread said. “You know his orders.”
Horst shook his head, but he knew Whitbread was right. He called, “Whitbread’s Motie! Come here and tell me which side is which.”
“No.”
Horst looked around. “What do you mean, no? I need to know who to shoot at!”
“I don’t want to get shot.”
Whitbread’s Motie was a coward! “I haven’t been shot, have I? Just don’t expose yourself.”
Whitbread’s voice said, “Horst, if you’ve exposed an eye, any Warrior could have shot it out. Nobody wants you dead now. They haven’t used artillery, have they? But they’d shoot me.”
“All right. Charlie! Come here and-“
“I will not.”
Horst didn’t even curse. Not cowards, but Brown-and whites. Would his own Motie have come?
The demons had all found cover: cars parked or abandoned, doorways, the fluting along the sides of one building. They moved from cover to cover with the flickering speed of houseflies. Yet every time a Warrior fired, a Warrior died. There had not been all that much gunfire, yet two thirds of the Warriors in sight were dead. Whitbread’s Motie had been right about -their marksmanship. It was inhumanly accurate.
Almost below Horst’s window, a dead Warrior lay with its right arms blown away. A live one waited for a lull, suddenly broke for closer cover-and the fallen one came to life. Then it happened too fast to follow: the gun flying, the two Warriors colliding like a pair of buzz saws, then flying away, broken dolls still kicking and spraying blood.
Something crashed below. There were sounds in the stairwell. Hooves clicked on marble steps. The Moties twittered. Charlie whistled, loudly, and again. There was an answering call from below, then a voice spoke in David Hardy’s perfect Anglic.
“You will not be mistreated. Surrender at once.”
“We’ve lost,” Charlie said.
“My Master’s troops. What will you do, Horst?”
For answer Staley crouched in a corner with the x-ray rifle aimed at the stairwell. He waved frantically at the other midshipmen to take cover.
A brown-and-white Mode turned the corner and stood in the hallway. It had Chaplain Hardy’s voice, but none of his mannerisms. Only the perfect Anglic, and the resonant tones. The Mediator was unarmed. “Come now, be reasonable. Your ship has gone. Your officers believe you are dead. There is no reason to harm you. Don’t get your friends killed over nothing, come out and accept our friendship.”
“Go to hell!”
“What can you gain by this?” the Motie asked. “We only wish you well-“
There were sounds of firing from below. The shots rebounded through the empty rooms and hallways of the Castle. The Mediator with Hardy’s voice whistled and clicked to the other Moties.
“What’s she saying?” Staley demanded. He looked around: Whitbread’s Motie was crouched against the wall, frozen. “Jesus, now what?”
“Leave her alone!” Whitbread shouted. He moved from his post to stand beside the Motie and put his arm on her shoulder. “What should we do?”
The battle noises moved closer, and suddenly two demons were in the hallway. Staley aimed and fired in a smooth motion, cutting down one Warrior. He began to swing the beam toward the other. The demon fired, and Staley was flung against the far wall of the corridor. More demons bounded into the hallway, and there was a burst of fire that held Staley upright for a second. His body was chewed by dragon’s teeth, and he fell to lie very still. Potter fired the rocket launcher. The shell burst at the end of the hallway. Part of the walls fell in, littering the floor with rubble and partly burying the Mediator and Warriors.
“It seems to me that no matter who wins yon fight below, we know aye more about the Langston Field than is safe,” Potter said slowly. “What do ye think, Mr. Whitbread? ‘Tis your command now.”
Jonathon shook himself from his reverie. His Motie was stock-still, unmoving- Potter drew his pistol and waited. There were scrabbling sounds in the hallway. The sounds of battle died away.
“Your friend is tight, brother,” Whitbread’s Mode said. She looked at the unmoving form of Hardy’s Fyunch(click). “That one was a brother too...”
Potter screamed. Whitbread jerked around.
Potter stood unbelieving, his pistol gone, his arm shattered from wrist to elbow. He looked at Whitbread with eyes dull with just realized pain and said, “One of the dead ones threw a rock.”
There were more Warriors in the hall, and another Mediator. They advanced slowly.
Whitbread swung the magic sword that would cut stone and metal. It came up in a backhanded arc and cut through Potter’s neck-Potter, whose religion forbade suicide, as did Whitbread’s. There was a burst of fire as he swung the blade - at his own neck, and two clubs smashed at his shoulders. Jonathon Whitbread fell and did not move.
They did not touch him at first except to remove the weapons from his belt. They waited for a Doctor, while the rest held off King Peter’s attacking forces. A Mediator spoke quickly to Charlie and offered, a communicator
-there was nothing left to fight for. Whitbread’s Motie remained by her Fyunch(click).
The Doctor probed at Whitbread’s shoulders. Although she had never had a human to dissect, she knew everything any Motie knew about human physiology, and her hands were perfectly formed to make use of a thousand Cycles of instincts. The fingers moved gently to the pulverized shoulder joints, the eyes noted that there was no spurting blood. Hands touched the spine, that marvelous organ she’d known only through models.
The fragile neck vertebrae had been snapped. “High velocity bullets,” she hummed to the waiting Mediator. “The impact has destroyed the notochord. This creature is dead.”
The Doctor and two Browns worked frantically to build a blood pump to serve the brain. It was futile. The communication between Engineer and Doctor was too slow, the body was too strange, and there was too little equipment in time.
They took the body and Whitbread’s Motie to the space port controlled by their Master. Charlie would be returned to King Peter, now that the war was finished. There were payments to be made, work in cleaning up after the battle, every Master who had been harmed to be satisfied; when next the humans came, there must be unity among Moties.
The Master never knew, nor did her white daughters ever suspect. But among her other daughters, the brown-and-white Mediator who served her, it was whispered that one of their sisters had done that which no Mediator had ever done throughout all the Cycles. As the Warriors hurried toward this strange human; Whitbread’s Motie had touched it, not with the gentle right hands, but with the powerful left.
She was executed for disobedience; and she died alone. Her sisters did not hate her, but they could not bring themselves to speak to one who had killed her own Fyunch(click).