The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven

  "That's your past, a million years or more of your past. Breeding yourselves into a starving cannibal horde, then tearing your numbers down in blood. Vermin City. That's your future, forever, without us." Glenda Ruth waved at the screens. "It's Vermin City or the Crazy Eddie Worm."

  4 Messages

  Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

  "Chris, it's time," Kevin Renner said. "Tell me about you and Joyce."

  Blaine looked from Renner to Horace Bury. No help there. Sinbad's lounge had grown larger yet; it seemed very large, and very empty.

  "All right, Captain, we were sleeping together, so to speak, and then we weren't. I'm more worried about what the Moties might get out of her."

  "So am I. Try again."

  Chris Blaine saw no point in pretending to misunderstand. "I got to know her. I could see what she was looking for in me, in a man, and when I got some free time, I, hell. I let her see it. But when we reached MGC-R-31 and Motie ships came spitting out...How to put this?"

  "She wanted you to keep your promises."

  Chris gaped. "Well, but I never-"

  The Captain said, "What she wants from a man is knowledge and power. That was what you let her see. But when Moties appeared, she wanted in on the action. You couldn't give her that. You couldn't even let her keep interrupting you while you were on duty. What else couldn't you give her?"

  "Aw, hell. Captain, she wanted to know what my sister's bringing. I don't know! Not certainly, I only know what Dad and Mom, what the Institute, wanted."

  "Which is enough," Renner said.

  "Well, no... well. That was the trouble. I couldn't tell her as much as I do know because the Mediators would read her. They'd be doing that now if she knew anything. Now she won't talk to me at all."

  "Chris, you did make promises. You used body language and nuances and all the things Jock and Charlie taught you. You've got to be more careful of how you use people."

  Chris's ears burned.

  "If you told her anything, if she learned anything that the Moties shouldn't know, tell me now."

  "Captain, she heard you talking about Crazy Eddie's worm. She was sure I must know all about it. There was nothing I could do to tell her different."

  "She's a reporter. She must have met every brand of liar there is."

  "Yeah. I thought it must be Mom's C-L worm. I didn't tell her that. Now she thinks I'm dirt. Yes, she's right, I lied to her. I had to."

  Captain Renner studied him and presently sighed. "All right, Lieutenant. Now what the hell else is going on? What's your reading of this situation with the Crimean Tartars?"

  "I think Omar is as confused as we are," Blaine said. "Glenda Ruth must have done something to shake them up."

  "We may well be able to guess what it is," Bury said. "Which could leave her in some danger."

  "Whether or not the worm works as advertised," Chris said.

  "Yeah, I'd thought of that," Renner said. "But so far-"

  "So far no harm has come to them," Bury said. "And time is very much on our side. The Empire, for all its divisions, remains a nearly unified force. We have no need to negotiate alliances to gain great strength. With the Moties it is not so."

  "Horace, what will happen to the Moties?" Renner demanded. "What should happen to them?"

  "I truly do not know."

  "You'll pardon me, but you don't seem quite the fanatic you used to be."

  "Kevin, how could I be? I see here a tragedy, a people not unlike my own, with few resources, divided against themselves."

  "Finding the whole place shot through with Bury Mediators might have changed your perspective?"

  "Don't miss the implication," Chris said. "They can swallow His Excellency's views and not choke. That tells us a lot about them."

  "Yeah, but does it tell us enough? Horace, I can't believe you've changed that much."

  "I bow to Allah's will. Kevin, the Empire barely had the resources to guard one gate, and that one through a sun. Shall it now have two blockade fleets, one to hold a volume of normal space? Perhaps, but at great cost, and for how long? Kevin, the Moties are no less a threat than ever, but our ability to contain them is not adequate to the task."

  "So now what?"

  Bury looked through the Mosque's picture window and made a face. Somewhere on the pale face of Base Six was Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo, unreachable.

  He said, "One day's work at a time. We are to compose a message, which the Moties will attempt to send for us. What shall we say?"

  "Think we're secure here?" Renner asked

  Bury shrugged. "All of Nabil's skills were unable to detect listening devices. I do not believe the Moties can be so confident that they could plant a device with the certainty that we would not find it. If we found one, it would very much affect our relationship. Let us act as if there are no Moties listening, but not act as if we were certain of it."

  "On that score, what happens when Ali Baba's with us?" Renner demanded.

  "Then we are faithful allies of East India," Bury said. "Mediators serve their own Masters."

  Renner nodded. "Blaine. Message."

  "A quick description of the situation, with all of the Alderson geometry data we have," Blaine said. "Including all that data from the Alexandria Library. That will make it a lot easier to get the Fleet in here. Of course there's not much chance it will happen. Admiral the Honorable Sir Harry Weigle. Sent out after Joyce Trujillo's first articles. Assigned to clean up the corruption, put some discipline back in the Crazy Eddie Squadron. He's doing a good job at that, but he's not big on disobeying orders."

  "And his orders are to maintain the blockade," Renner said.

  "Just so."

  "What can we do to convince him?"

  Blaine thought for a moment. "He'd have to be convinced that he had a higher duty than carrying out his orders."

  "Could you persuade him?"

  Chris thought that one over. "Possibly. I can't reach him. You can. So let's look at what he knows. The Alderson point back to New Cal has moved. So has the Jump to the Mote, and he'll know that, but he probably hasn't found it. It's dancing around down there inside a red giant star."

  "MacArthur found it easily enough thirty years ago," Bury reminded them.

  "Different geometry. No jittery new star to distort the path," Renner said. "Not that bloody easily, either. Trust me."

  Blaine nodded. "MacArthur and Lenin were specially equipped and had some of the Empire's best scientists aboard, along with a top navigator. Even then it took them a while to find the old one. So. We're going to help him find the new Crazy Eddie point. That will start him off thinking right. We give him information that helps him in his mission."

  Renner's nod prompted Blaine to continue: "The tricky thing is to be sure we don't ask him to violate orders. Such as letting anything get out of the star and through to New Cal."

  "So if we ask him to listen before he shoots."

  "He might do that," Blaine said. "It's worth a try."

  Eudoxus led her down and slantwise from the lounge. Vacuum gear waited in an alcove a hundred meters below the Mosque. Joyce was taken aback. This hadn't come from Sinbad!

  Eudoxus was watching. That irritating smile... hah. Joyce recorded, "The Motie smile is rigid. It's always there. You don't see it on a Mediator unless she's not sending any other signal."

  Joyce donned a skintight pressure suit (it felt funny, comfortable though), fishbowl helmet, thermal oversuit (lighter than she'd expected) and mirror cloak. They looked archaic: they almost matched Empire Navy specs of thirty years ago, altered to alien tastes.

  "Comfortable?"

  "Yes," she told Eudoxus. She was relieved. She'd thought they would have to return to the Mosque. The helmet would reveal her face for the pickup camera.

  Two of the little Messengers joined them. The party returned to the tunnel as five puffy silver dolls. They passed through three doors of a massive airl
ock and out onto an icy surface.

  Frozen hydrogen, she remembered: fluffy, loosely packed, not visibly different from water ice. Maybe crusted in water ice. How could you tell? She didn't feel the cold.

  "These are handholds, all but the green and red," Eudoxus said. "Don't lose your grip, Joyce. The Base is under acceleration."

  Joyce gripped a yellow-and-orange line. "Green and red?"

  "Green is superconductor cables. Red is fuel." Eudoxus was already moving, jumping along the surface, the cable sliding through her hands. "And the big translucent tubes are for transport."

  The gray ice curved sharply. The top of a dome showed beyond the curve. In another direction, the Mosque cradled Sinbad. A bright red spark looked over its shoulder: the Eye. In another, a violet horizon-glow that had to be the fusion motors pushing Inner Base Six.

  Fabulous pictures! The kind of thing careers are founded on! She chuckled to herself. Chris Blaine's frantic look! As if he'd told me anything to begin with. As if the Moties could read my mind or my face. What could Eudoxus see, anyway? I'm a big silver pillow.

  But if Joyce could see the Motie smile... less irritating, now that she understood it... then Eudoxus could see her face, too.

  Eudoxus was taking them away from the motors: forward. Joyce followed. The Warrior followed her, and the Messengers.

  The cable split; they followed yellow. It led over a small dome. Moties looked up at Joyce through a glass bull's-eye and a forest of dark green moss: three Whites, a Warrior, a Messenger, some Watchmakers.

  Eudoxus asked, "Joyce, what's with Horace Bury?"

  "What do you mean?'

  "Thirty years ago, he thought the Mote system was the way to get rich. He couldn't see enough of anything. Now he seems much calmer, less ambitious, more like a Keeper. But-"

  Joyce was amused. "He was already older than a man can get without serious medical help. It's thirty years later."

  "There's more. He flinches when a Warrior comes near. All right, so do you, I can understand that." Eudoxus had lost all trace of accent, Joyce realized suddenly. "But he flinches from Watchmakers. Even from the newborn, until he knows they are not Watchmakers."

  "They blindside him. His eyes can't be all that-"

  "No, Joyce, it's not their size. He likes the little Mediator pups, once he knew what they are."

  Bury's attitude toward Moties was no secret within the Empire. Rather the opposite. "He has always been afraid of you," Joyce said. "Terrified, even. Since he returned from the first Mote expedition. But that's changing. I can see it."

  "Why?"

  Joyce thought it over. Bury's attitude toward Moties was no secret, but the cause of MacArthur's death was a Navy secret; secret from the Moties, by order of the Privy Council. It was a good question, though. What was changing Horace Bury? Greed, probably. "There are still vast fortunes to be made. Power and influence, for Bury and his relatives."

  Three dissimilar spacecraft nursed from red cables that dipped into the ice. Each ship was built as solidly as a safe. A transparent tube ringed the ships; canisters and Moties of several sizes flew along inside it.

  Eudoxus didn't try to stop Joyce from circling the ships with her pickup camera running. Others-Chris, the Captain, Dr. Buckman-would understand more than she did. She pointed her pickup along the tube, watching the Moties fly. Warriors, four Engineers, a Messenger.

  Eudoxus said, "We don't have to move this slowly, Joyce. The tube is faster and you would still have a view."

  No accent, but an irritating richness, an overemphasis on consonants- My voice! Eudoxus spoke with Joyce Trujillo's voice, exactly as she sounded on video. "No, this is fine," she said. "I'm getting great pictures."

  The Mediator led off. Aft, the glow of jets had faded to black sky.

  Eudoxus stopped. Joyce and the Warrior caught up; Eudoxus spoke briefly to the Warrior. Then her upper right arm pointed ahead and up. "There, Joyce, what do you see in the sky?"

  Joyce followed the creature's long upper-right arm. "Just stars."

  "The Warrior says he's spotted it, the locus of your friends."

  "Do Warriors have good eyes?"

  "Yes."

  Joyce tapped at the pickup, instructing it to find and fix on the brightest spot in its field, narrow the field, zoom in. She raised it by its sleeve, aligned along Eudoxus's arm, and set it going.

  The camera wriggled in its sleeve, gyros whirring. A wide field of stars showed on the monitor screen. There: crumpled tinsel reflecting dim sunlight, just bigger than a point. Joyce set the camera zooming. Structure began to show, crumpled mirrors, a beehive torn open, violet points that might be fusion torches or spacecraft.

  "Do you have it? It's a nest of war rats and Watchmakers. It's being harvested by the Crimean Tartars."

  "Now follow my finger down to the horizon. A scattering of blue points?"

  Joyce shook her head. Again she worked with the pickup.

  "I don't see it either, but Warriors can. That's a war fleet bearing down on the nest."

  "Got it." It was as Eudoxus had said, a scattering of blue points and no more.

  "Mostly Khanate ships. In four hours they will arrive at the rat nest, but in twenty minutes the Tartars will be running. It's being negotiated now. They'll rendezvous with Base Six as we pass, and they have your friends."

  "Great! I should tell the Captain."

  "We will do that," Eudoxus said.

  "Good." Chris should have been here, she thought with satisfaction. A sudden thought. "Have the Tartars become your allies?"

  And thus ours.

  "Perhaps. For the moment they are in mortal danger, and we offer them refuge. For the future-what is the future, Joyce? The question is not what place the Tartars have with Medina and East India, it is what place have Moties in the universe."

  "I can't answer that."

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

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

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

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

  "Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Done."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Looks familiar," she said.

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

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