by Larry Niven
Potter said, "I wonder what a man smells like to a Motie? Dinna answer if you find the question offensive,' he added.
"'Tis a bit hard to say," Potter's Motie answered. "My duty it is, Mr. Potter, to understand everything about my Fyunch(click). Perhaps I fit the part too well. The smell of clean sweat wouldna offend me even if ye had nae been working in our own interest. What is it ye find funny, Mr. Whitbread?"
"Sorry. It's the accent."
"What accent is that?" Potter wondered.
Whitbread and Whitbread's Motie burst out laughing. "Well, it is funny," said Whitbread's Motie. "You used to have trouble telling us apart."
"Now it's the other way around," Jonathon Whitbread said. "I have to keep counting hands to know if I'm talking to Renner or Renner's Motie. Give me a hand here, will you, Gavin?... And Captain Blaine's Motie. I have to keep shaking myself out of the Attention position, and then she'll say something and I'll snap right back into it. She'll give orders like she's master of the cutter, and we'll obey, and then she'll say, ‘Just a minute, Mister, and order us to forgive her. It's confusing."
"Even so," said Whitbread's Motie, "I wonder sometimes whether we've really got you figured out. Just because I can imitate you doesn't mean I can understand you..."
"'Tis our standard technique, as old as the hills, as old as some mountain ranges. It works. What else can we do?" asked Jonathon Whitbread's Fyunch(click).
"I wondered, that's all. These people are so versatile. We can't match all of your abilities, Whitbread. You find it easy to command and easy to obey; how can you do both? You're good with tools-"
"So are you," said Whitbread, knowing it was an understatement.
"But we tire easily. You're ready to go on working, aren't you? We're not."
"And we aren't good at fighting...ell, enough of that. We play your part in order to understand you, but you each seem to play a thousand parts. It makes things difficult for an honest, hardworking bug-eyed monster."
"Who told you about bug-eyed monsters?" Whitbread exclaimed.
"Mr. Renner, who else? I took it as a compliment- that he would trust my sense of humor, that is."
"Dr. Horvath would kill him. We're supposed to be tippy-toe careful in our relationship with aliens. Don't offend taboos, and all that."
"Dr. Horvath," Potter said. "I am reminded that Dr. Horvath wanted us to ask you something. Ye' know that we have a Brown aboard MacArthur."
"Sure. A miner. Her ship visited MacArthur, then came home empty. It was pretty obvious she'd stayed with you."
"She's sick," Potter said. "She has been growing worse. Dr. Blevins says it has the marks of a dietary disease, but he has nae been able to help her. Hae you any idea what it is that she might lack?"
Whitbread thought he knew why Horvath had not asked his Motie about the Brown; if the Moties demanded to see the miner, they must be refused on orders from the Admiral himself. Dr. Horvath thought the order was stupid; he would never be able to defend it. Whitbread and Potter were not called upon to try. Orders were orders.
When the Moties did not answer at once, Jonathon said, "Between them the biologists have tried a lot of things. New foods, analysis of the Brown's digestive fluids, x-rays for tumor. They even changed the atmosphere in her cabin to match the Mote Prime atmosphere. Nothing works. She's unhappy, she whines, she doesn't move around much. She's getting thin. Her hair is coming out.
Whitbread's Motie spoke in a voice gone oddly flat. "You haven't any idea what might be wrong with her?"
"No," said Whitbread.
It was strange and uncomfortable, the way the Moties were looking at them. They seemed identical now, floating half-crouched, anchored by hand holds: identical pose, identical markings, identical faint smiles. Their individual identities didn't show now. Perhaps it was all a pose- "We'll get you some food," Potter's Motie said suddenly. "You may hae guessed right. It may be her diet."
Both Moties left. Presently Whitbread's Motie returned with a pressure bag that contained grain and plum-sized fruits and a chunk of red meat. "Boil the meat, soak the grain, and give her the fruit raw," she said. "And test the ionization in her cabin air." She ushered them out.
The boys boarded an open scooter to return to the cutter. Presently Potter said, "They behaved verra strangely. I canna but think that something important happened a minute ago."
"Yah."
"Then what was it?"
"Maybe they think we've been mistreating the Brown. Maybe they wonder why we won't bring her here. Maybe the other way around: they're shocked that we take so much trouble for a mere Brown."
"And perhaps they were tired and we imagined it." Potter fired thruster clusters to slow the scooter.
"Gavin. Look behind us."
"Not now. I must see to the safety o' my command." Potter took his time docking the scooter, then looked around.
More than a dozen Moties had been working outside the ship. The bracing for the toroids was conspicuously unfinished....ut the Moties were all streaming into the airlock..
The Mediators came streaming into the toroid, bouncing gently from the walls in their haste to get out of each other's way. Most of them showed in one way or another that they were Fyunch(click) to aliens. They tended to underuse their lower right arms. They wanted to line themselves with their heads pointing all in the same direction.
The Master was white. The tufts at her armpits and groin were long and silky, like the fur of an Angora cat. When they were all there, the Master turned to Whitbread's Motie and said, "Speak."
Whitbread's Motie told of the incident with the midshipmen. "I'm certain they meant it all," she concluded.
To Potter's Motie the Master said, "Do you agree?"
"Yes, completely."
There was a panicky undercurrent of whispers, some Motie tongues, some in Anglic. It cut off when the Master said, "What did you tell them?"
"We told them the disease might well be a diet deficiency-"
There was shocked human-sounding laughter among the Mediators, none at all among the few who had not been assigned Fyunch(click)s.
"-and gave them food for the Engineer. It will not help, of course."
"Were they fooled?"
"Difficult to tell. We are not good at lying directly. It is not our specialty," said Potter's Motie.
A buzz of talk rose in the toroid. The Master allots it for a time. Presently she spoke. "What can it mean? Speak of this."
One answered. "They cannot be so different from us. They fight wars. We have heard hints of whole plan rendered uninhabitable."
Another interrupted. There was something gracefully human-feminine, in the way she moved. It seemed grotesque to the Master. "We think we know what causes humans to fight. Most animals on our world and the have a surrender reflex that prevents one member of a species from killing another. Humans use weapons instinctively. It makes the surrender reflex too slow."
"But it was the same with us, once," said a third. "Evolution of the Mediator mules put an end to that. Do you say that humans do not have Mediators?"
Sally Fowler's Motie said, "They have nothing that bred for the task of communicating and negotiating between potential enemies. They are amateurs at everything, second-best at everything they do. Amateurs do their negotiating. When negotiations break down, they fight.
"They are amateurs at playing Master, too," one said. Nervously she stroked the center of her face. "They take turns at playing Master. In their warships they station Marines between fore and aft, in case the aft section should wish to become masters of the ship. Yet, when Lenin speaks, Captain Blaine obeys like a Brown. It is," she said, "difficult to be Fyunch(click) to a part-time Master."
"Agreed," said Whitbread's Motie. "Mine is not a Master, but will be someday."
Another said, "Our Engineer has found much that needs improvement in their tools. There is now no class to fit Dr. Hardy-"
"Stop this," said the Master, and the noise stopped. "Our concern is more specific.
What have you learned of their mating habits?"
"They do not speak of this to us. Learning will be difficult. There seems to be only one female aboard."
"ONE female?"
"To the best that we can learn."
"Are the rest neuters, or are most neuters?"
"It would seem that they are not. Yet the female is not pregnant, has not been pregnant at any time since our arrival."
"We must learn," said the Master. "But you must also conceal. A casual question. It must be asked very carefully, to reveal as little as possible. If what we suspect is true-can it be true?"
One said, "All of evolution is against it. Individuals that survive to breed must carry the genes for the next generation. How, then-?"
"They are alien. Remember, they are alien," said Whitbread's Motie.
"We must find out. Select one among you, and formulate your question, and select the human you will ask. The rest of you must avoid the subject unless the aliens introduce it."
"I think we must conceal nothing." One stroked the center of her face as if for reassurance. "They are alien. They may be the best hope we have ever had. With their help we may break the ancient pattern of the Cycles."
The Master showed her surprise. "You will conceal the crucial difference between Man and ourselves. They will not learn of it."
"I say we must not!" cried the other. "Listen to me! They have their own ways-they solve problems, always-" The others converged on her. "No, listen! You must listen!"
"Crazy Eddie," the Master said wonderingly. "Confine her in comfort. We will need her knowledge. No other must be assigned to her Fyunch(click), since the strain has driven her mad."
Blaine let the cutter lead MacArthur to Mote Prime at .780 gee. He was acutely aware that MacArthur was at alien warship capable of devastating half the Motie planet, and did not like to think of what weaponry might be trained on her by uneasy Moties. He wanted the embassy ship to arrive first-not that it would really help, but it might.
The cutter was almost empty now. The scientific personnel were living and working aboard MacArthur, reading endless data into the computer banks, cross-checking and codifying, and reporting their findings to the Captain for transmission to Lenin. They could have reported directly, of course, but there are many privileges to rank, MacArthur's dinner parties and bridge games tended to become discussion groups.
Everyone was concerned about the brown miner. She became steadily worse, eating as little of the food provided by the Moties as she had of MacArthur's provisions. It was frustrating, and Dr. Blevins tried endless tests with no results. The miniatures had waxed fat and fecund while loose aboard MacArthur, and Blevins wondered if they had been eating something unexpected, like missile propellant, or the insulation from cables. He offered her a variety of unlikely substances, but the Brown'5 eyesight grew dim, her fur came out in patches, and she howled. One day she stopped eating. The next she was dead.
Horvath was beside himself with fury.
Blaine thought it fitting to call the embassy ship. The gently smiling Brown-and-white that answered could only be Horvath's Motie, although Blaine would have been hard-pressed to say how he knew. "Is my Fyunch(click) available?" Rod asked. Horvath's Motie made him uncomfortable.
"I'm afraid not, Captain."
"All right. I called to report that the Brown we had aboard this ship is dead. I don't know how much it means to you, but we did our best. The entire scientific staff of MacArthur tried to cure her."
"I'm sure of that, Captain. It doesn't matter. May we have the body?"
Rod considered it a moment. "I'm afraid not." He couldn't guess what the Moties could learn from the corpse of an alien that had never communicated when alive; but perhaps he was learning from Kutuzov. Could there have been microtattooing below the fur... ? And why weren't the Moties more concerned about the Brown? That was something he certainly couldn't ask. Best to be thankful they weren't upset. "Give my regards to my Fyunch(click) ."
"I have bad news also," said Horvath's Motie. "Captain, you no longer have a Fyunch(click). She has gone mad."
"What?" Rod was more shocked than he would have believed. "Mad? Why? How?"
"Captain, I don't imagine you can grasp what a strain it has been for her. There are Moties who give orders and there are Moties who make and fix tools. We are neither: we communicate. We can identify with a giver of orders and it is no strain, but an alien giver of orders? It was too much. She- How shall I put it? Mutiny. Your word is mutiny. We have none. She is safe and under confinement, but it is best for her that she does not speak with aliens again."
"Thank you," Rod said. He watched the gently smiling image fade from the screen and did nothing more for five minutes. Finally he sighed and began dictating reports for Lenin. He worked alone and it was as if he had lost a part of himself and was waiting for it to come back.
PART THREE - MEET CRAZY EDDIE
26 Mote Prime
MOTE PRIME: Marginally habitable world in the Trans-Coalsack Sector. Primary: G2 yellow dwarf star approximately ten parsecs from the Trans-Coalsack Sector Capital New Caledonia. Generally referred to as the Mote in Murcheson's Eye (q.v.) or the Mote. Mass 0.91 Sol; luminosity 0.78 Sol.
Mote Prime has a poisonous atmosphere breathable with the aid of commercial or standard Navy issue filters. Contraindicated for heart patients or where emphysema problems exist. Oxygen: 16 percent. Nitrogen: 79.4 cent. C02: 2.9 percent. Helium: 1 percent. Complex hydrocarbons including ketones: 0.7 percent.
Gravity: 0.780 standard. The planetary radius is 0.84 and mass is 0.57 Earth standard; a planet of normal density. Period: 0.937 standard years, or 8,750.005 hours. The planet is inclined at 18 degrees with semimajor of 0.93 AU (137 million kilometers). Temperatures cool, poles uninhabitable and covered with ice. Equatorial and tropical regions are temperate to hot. The local day is 27.33 hours.
There is one moon, small and close. It is asteroidal in origin and the back side bears the characteristic indented crater typical of planetoids in the Mote system. The moon based fusion generator and power-beaming station are critical sources for the Mote Prime civilization.
Topography: 50 percent ocean, not including extensive ice caps. Terrain is flat over most of the land area. Mountain ranges are low and heavily eroded. There are few forests. Arable lands are extensively cultivated.
The most obvious features are circular formations which are visible everywhere. The smallest are eroded to the limits of detection, while the largest can be seen only from orbit.
Although the physical features of Mote Prime are of some interest, particularly to ecologists concerned with the effects of intelligent life on planetography, the primary interest in the Mote centers on its inhabitants.
Two scooters converged at the cutter and suited figures climbed aboard. When both humans and Moties had checked over the ship, the Navy ratings who had brought her to orbit gratefully turned her over to the midshipmen and returned to MacArthur. The middies eagerly took their places in the control cabin and examined the landscape below.
"We're to tell you that all contact with you will be through this ship," Whitbread told his Motie. "Sorry, but we can't invite you aboard MacArthur."
Whitbread's Motie gave a very human shrug to express her opinion of orders. Obedience posed no strain on either her or her human. "What will you do with the cutter when you leave?"
"It's a gift," Whitbread told her. "Maybe you'll want it for a museum. There are things the Captain wants you to know about us-"
"And things he wants to conceal. Certainly."
From orbit the planet was all circles: seas, lakes, an arc of a mountain range, the line of a river, a bay. There was one, eroded and masked by a forest. It would have been undetectable had it not fallen exactly across a line of mountains, breaking the backbone of a continent as a man's foot breaks a snake. Beyond, a sea the size of the Black Sea showed a flattish island in the exact center.
"The magma must have welled up where the asteroid tore
the crust open," said Whitbread. "Can you imagine the sound it must have made?"
Whitbread's Motie nodded.
"No wonder you moved all the asteroids out to the Trojan points. That was the reason, wasn't it?"
"I don't know. Our records aren't complete from that long ago. I imagine the asteroids must have been easier to mine, easier to make a civilization from, once they were lumped together like that."
Whitbread remembered that the Beehive had been stone cold without a trace of radiation. "Just how long ago did all this happen?"
"Oh, at least ten thousand years. Whitbread, how old are your oldest records?"
"I don't know. I could ask someone." The midshipman looked down. They were crossing the Terminator-which was a series of arcs. The night side blazed with a galaxy of cities. Earth might have looked this way during the CoDominium; but the Empire's worlds had never bee so heavily populated.
"Look ahead." Whitbread's Motie pointed to a fleck o flame at the world's rim. "That's the transfer ship. Nov we can show you our world."
"I think your civilization must be a lot older than ours," said Whitbread.
Sally's equipment and personal effects were packed and ready in the cutter's lounge, and her minuscule cabin seemed bare and empty now. She stood at the view port and watched the silver arrowhead approach MacArthur Her Motie was not watching.
"I, um, I have a rather indelicate question," Sally's Fyunch(click) said.
Sally turned from the view port. Outside, the Motie ship had come alongside and a small boat was approaching from MacArthur. "Go ahead."
"What do you do if you don't want children yet?"
"Oh, dear," said Sally, and she laughed a little. She was the only woman among nearly a thousand men-and in a male-oriented society. She had known all this before she came, but still she missed what she thought of as girl talk. Marriage and babies and housekeeping and scandals: they were part of civilized life. She hadn't known how big a part until the New Chicago revolt caught her up, and she missed it even more now. Sometimes in desperation she had talked recipes with MacArthur's cooks as a poor substitute, but the only other feminine-oriented mind within light years was-her Fyunch(click).