by Larry Niven
No, he corrected himself, the children were his kind. As he had told Jase, without explaining, he knew that they were human. He had tested it the only way he could, by the only means available.
Eve walked beside him, her hand seeking his. “Doc,” she cooed, her birdlike singsong voice loving. He gently took their child from her arms, kissing it.
At over sixty years of age, it felt odd to be a new father, but if his lover had her way, as she usually did, his strange family might grow larger still.
Together, the five of them headed into the forest, and home.
This was an early story, and I broke my heart over it. The idea is a good one, but not a happy one. I didn’t know how to handle it. Presently I tossed it in my file cabinet to die.
Ten years later I met Steven Barnes at a LASFS meeting. It struck me that he might be able to do something with “The Locusts.”
Take a lesson: this is the only easy way to collaborate. The effort you put into the story is already lost. The other writer has invested no effort, and need not. “Can you do something with this?” “No.”
Steve said, “Yes.”
• • •
• • •
All of them had craters. At least one crater. Three long, narrow asteroids in succession…and each had a deep crater at one end. One rock twisted almost into a cashew shape; and the crater was at the inside of the curve. Each asteroid in the sequence had a big deep crater in it; and always a line through the center would have gone through the rock’s center of mass.
Bury felt fear and laughter rising in him. “Yes, I see. You found that every one of those asteroids had been moved into place artificially. Therefore you lost interest.”
THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE, 1974
From THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE
[with JERRY POURNELLE]
Jerry Pournelle suggested that we try a collaboration. Working with David Gerrold on The Flying Sorcerers had been fun, so…
Jerry wouldn’t work in Known Space because he couldn’t believe in the politics or the history. [He must have changed his mind. “The Children’s Hour,” by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling, is a wonderful tale of the Man-Kzin Wars.] Instead, he offered a thousand years of a future history that uses the faster-than-light drive designed by our mutual friend Dan Alderson.
I looked it over. Peculiar. A thousand inhabited planets and no intelligent beings save humans? [This is the way to bet but it seemed odd then.] And I realized that the laws of the Alderson Drive allow me to insert an undiscovered alien civilization right in the middle.
That did it: there was going to be a novel. I had abandoned a novella two-thirds written; I dug it out and resurrected the alien. We spent a wild night extrapolating from the Motie Engineer form, to a dozen varieties of Motie, to a million years of history and three planet-busting wars. We swore we would write the novel we wanted to read when we were twelve.
Every time we thought we were finished, we found we weren’t.
Jerry sent our “finished” manuscript to a friend: Robert Heinlein. Robert told us that he could put one terrific blurb on the cover if we made some changes. The first hundred pages had to go…
And we did that, and re-introduced characters and moved background data from the lost prologue to a later scene set on New Scotland, and did more chopping throughout. “There’s a scene I’ve never liked,” I told Jerry, and our whole relationship changed. This was when we learned not to be too polite to a collaborator; it hurts the book.
And we sent it back to Robert, who did a complete line-editing job.
I know of a man who offered Robert Heinlein a reading fee! The results were quite horrid. But in the case of MOTE, Robert hadn’t expected us to take his advice. Nobody ever had before [he told us]. But if “Possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read” were to appear on the cover above Robert Heinlein’s name, then the book had to be that.
It took us forever to write. We won the LASFS’s “Sticky” Award for “Best Unpublished Novel” two years running. It was worth every minute.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Horace Bury had gone to his cabin after the coffee demonstration. He liked to work late at night and sleep after lunch, and although there wasn’t anything to work on at the moment, he’d kept the habit.
The ship’s alarms woke him. Somebody was ordering the Marines into combat uniform. He waited, but nothing else happened for a long time. Then came the stench. It choked him horribly, and there was nothing like it in any of his memories. Distilled quintessence of machines and body odor—and it was growing stronger.
More alarms sounded. “PREPARE FOR HARD VACUUM. ALL PERSONNEL WILL DON PRESSURE SUITS. ALL MILITARY PERSONNEL WILL DON BATTLE ARMOR. PREPARE FOR HARD VACUUM.”
Nabil was crying in panic. “Fool! Your suit!” Bury screamed, and ran for his own. Only after he was breathing normal ship’s air did he listen for the alarms again.
The voices didn’t sound right. They weren’t coming through the intercom, they were—shouted through the corridors. “CIVILIANS WILL ABANDON SHIP. ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL, PREPARE TO ABANDON SHIP.”
Really. Bury almost smiled. This was a first time—was it a drill? There were more sounds of confusion. A squad of Marines in battle armor, weapons clutched at the ready, tramped past. The smile slipped and Bury looked about to guess what possessions he might save.
There was more shouting. An officer appeared in the corridor outside and began shouting in an unnecessarily loud voice. Civilians would be leaving MacArthur on a line. They could take one bag each, but would require one hand free.
Beard of the Prophet! What could cause this? Had they saved the golden asteroid metal, the superconductor of heat? Certainly they would not save the precious self-cleaning percolator. What should he try to save?
The ship’s gravity lessened noticeably. Flywheels inside her were rotating to take off her spin. Bury worked quickly to throw together items needed by any traveler without regard to their price. Luxuries he could buy again, but—
The miniatures. He’d have to get that air tank from D air lock. Suppose we were assigned to a different air lock?
He packed in frenzy. Two suitcases, one for Nabil to carry. Nabil moved fast enough now that he had orders. There was more confused shouting outside, and several times squads of Navy men and Marines floated past the stateroom door. They all carried weapons and wore armor.
His suit began to inflate. The ship was losing pressure, and all thought of drill or exercise left him. Some of the scientific equipment couldn’t stand hard vacuum—and nobody had once come into the cabin to check his pressure suit. The Navy wouldn’t risk civilian lives in drills.
An officer moved into the corridor. Bury heard the harsh voice speaking in deadly calm tones. Nabil stood uncertainly and Bury motioned to him to turn on his suit communications.
“ALL CIVILIAN PERSONNEL, GO TO YOUR NEAREST AIR LOCKS ON THE PORT FLANK,” the unemotional voice said. The Navy always spoke that way when there was a real crisis. It convinced Bury utterly. “CIVILIAN EVACUATION WILL BE THROUGH PORT-SIDE LOCKS ONLY. IF YOU ARE UNSURE OF YOUR DIRECTION ASK ANY OFFICER OR RATING. PLEASE PROCEED SLOWLY. THERE IS TIME TO EVACUATE ALL PERSONNEL.” The officer floated past and turned into another corridor.
Port side? Good. Intelligently, Nabil had hidden the dummy tank in the nearest air lock. Praise to the Glory of Allah that had been on the port side. He motioned to his servant and began to pull himself from hand hold to hand hold along the wall. Nabil moved gracefully; he had had plenty of practice since they had been confined.
There was a confused crowd in the corridor. Behind him Bury saw a squad of Marines turn into the corridor. They faced away and fired in the direction they’d come. There was answering fire and bright blood spurted to form ever-diminishing globules as it drifted through the steel ship. The lights flickered overhead.
A petty officer floated down the corridor and fell in
behind them. “Keep moving, keep moving,” he muttered. “God bless the joeys.”
“What are they shooting at?” Bury asked.
“Miniatures,” the petty officer growled. “If they take this corridor, move out fast, Mr. Bury. The little bastards have weapons.”
“Brownies?” Bury asked incredulously. “Brownies?”
“Yes, sir, the ship’s got a plague o’ the little sons of bitches. They changed the air plants to suit themselves…Get movin’, sir. Please. Them joeys can’t hold long.”
Bury tugged at a hand hold and sailed to the end of the corridor, where he was deftly caught by an able spacer and passed around the turn. Brownies? But, they’d been cleared out of the ship…
There was a crowd bunched at the air lock. More civilians were coming, and now noncombatant Navy people began to add to the press. Bury pushed and clawed his way toward the air-bottle locker. Ah. It was still there. He seized the dummy and handed it to Nabil, who fastened it to Bury’s suit.
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” an officer said. Bury realized he was hearing him through atmosphere. There was pressure here—but they hadn’t come through any pressure-tight doors! The Brownies! They’d made the invisible pressure barrier that the miner had on her survey ship! He had to have it! “One never knows,” Bury muttered to the officer. The man shrugged and motioned another pair into the cycling mechanism. Then it was Bury’s turn. The Marine officer waved them forward.
The lock cycled. Bury touched Nabil on the shoulder and pointed. Nabil went, pulling himself along the line into the blackness outside. Blackness ahead, no stars, nothing. What was out there? Bury found himself holding his breath. Praise be to Allah, I witness that Allah is One—No! The dummy bottle was on his shoulders, and inside it two miniatures in suspended animation. Wealth untold! Technology beyond anything even the First Empire ever had! An endless stream of new inventions and design improvements. Only…just what kind of djinn bottle had he opened?
They were through the tightly controlled hole in MacArthur’s Field. Outside was only the blackness of space—and a darker black shape ahead. Other lines led to it from other holes in MacArthur’s Field, and minuscule spiders darted along them. Behind Bury was another space-suited figure, and behind that, another. Nabil and the others ahead of him, and…His eyes were adjusting rapidly now. He could see the deep red hues of the Coal Sack, and the blot ahead must be Lenin’s Field. Would he have to crawl through that? But no, there were boats outside it, and the space spiders crawled into them.
The boat was drawing near. Bury turned for a last look at MacArthur. In his long lifetime he had said good-by to countless temporary homes; MacArthur had not been the best of them. He thought of the technology that was being destroyed. The Brownie-improved machinery, the magical coffeepot. There was a twinge of regret. MacArthur’s crew was genuinely grateful for his help with the coffee, and his demonstration to the officers had been popular. It had gone well. Perhaps in Lenin…
The air lock was tiny now. A string of refugees followed him along the line. He could not see the cutter, where his Motie would be. Would he ever see him again?
He was looking directly at the space-suited figure behind him. It had no baggage, and it was overtaking Bury because it had both hands free. The light from Lenin was shining on its faceplate. As Bury watched, the figure’s head shifted slightly and the light shone right into the faceplate.
Bury saw at least three pairs of eyes staring back at him. He glimpsed the tiny faces.
It seemed to Bury, later, that he had never thought so fast in his life. For a heartbeat he stared at the thing coming up on him while his mind raced, and then—But the men who heard his scream said that it was the shriek of a madman, or a man being flayed alive.
Then Bury flung his suitcase at it.
He put words into his next scream. “They’re in the suit! They’re inside it!” He was wrenching at his back now, ripping the air tank loose. He poised the cylinder over his head, in both hands, and pitched it.
The pressure suit dodged his suitcase, clumsily. A pair of miniatures in the arms, trying to maneuver the fingers…it lost its hand hold, tried to pull itself back. The metal cylinder took it straight in the faceplate and shattered it.
Then space was filled with tiny struggling figures, flailing six limbs as a ghostly puff of air carried them away. Something else went with them, something football shaped, something Bury had the knowledge to recognize. That was how they had fooled the officer at the air locks. A severed human head.
Bury discovered he was floating three meters from the line. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Good: he’d thrown the right air tank. Allah was merciful.
He waited until a man-shaped thing came out of Lenin’s boat on back-pack jets and took him in tow. The touch made him flinch. Perhaps the man wondered why Bury peered so intently into his faceplate. Perhaps not.
BUILDING THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE
[with JERRY POURNELLE]
Collaborations are unnatural. The writer is a jealous god. He builds his universe without interference. He resents the carping of mentally deficient critics and the editor’s capricious demands for revisions. Let two writers try to make one universe, and their defenses get in the way.
But. Our fields of expertise matched each the other’s blind spots, unnaturally well. There were books neither of us could write alone. We had to try it.
At first we were too polite, too reluctant to criticize each other’s work. That may have saved us from killing each other early on, but it left flaws that had to be torn out of the book later.
We had to build the worlds. From Motie physiognomy we had to build Motie technology and history and life styles. Niven had to be coached in the basic history of Pournelle’s thousand-year-old interstellar culture.
It took us three years. At the end we had a novel of 245,000 words…which was too long. We cut it to 170,000, to the reader’s great benefit. We cut 50,000 words off the beginning, including in one lump our first couple of months of work: a prologue, a battle between space-going warcraft, and a prison camp scene. All of the crucial information had to be embedded in later sections.
We give that prologue here. When the Moties and the Empire and the star systems and their technologies and philosophies had become one interrelated whole, this is how it looked from New Caledonia system. We called it
MOTELIGHT
Last night at this time he had gone out to look at the stars. Instead a glare of white light like an exploding sun had met him at the door, and when he could see again a flaming mushroom was rising from the cornfields at the edge of the black hemisphere roofing the University. Then had come sound, rumbling, rolling across the fields to shake the house.
Alice had run out in terror, desperate to have her worst fears confirmed, crying, “What are you learning that’s worth getting us all killed?”
He’d dismissed her question as typical of an astronomer’s wife, but in fact he was learning nothing. The main telescope controls were erratic, and nothing could be done, for the telescope itself was on New Scotland’s tiny moon. These nights interplanetary space rippled with the strange lights of war, and the atmosphere glowed with ionization from shock waves, beamed radiation, fusion explosions…He had gone back inside without answering.
Now, late in the evening of New Scotland’s 27-hour day, Thaddeus Potter, Ph.D., strolled out into the night air.
It was a good night for seeing. Interplanetary war could play hell with the seeing; but tonight the bombardment from New Ireland had ceased. The Imperial Navy had won a victory.
Potter had paid no attention to the newscasts; still, he appreciated the victory’s effects. Perhaps tonight the war wouldn’t interfere with his work. He walked thirty paces forward and turned just where the roof of his house wouldn’t block the Coal Sack. It was a sight he never tired of.
The Coal Sack was a nebular mass of gas and dust, small as such things go—eight to ten parsecs thick—but dense, and close enough to New
Caledonia to block a quarter of the sky. Earth lay somewhere on the other side of it, and so did the Imperial Capital, Sparta, both forever invisible. The Coal Sack hid most of the Empire, but it made a fine velvet backdrop for two close, brilliant stars.
And one of them had changed drastically.
Potter’s face changed too. His eyes bugged. His lantern jaw hung loose on its hinges. Stupidly he stared at the sky as if seeing it for the first time.
Then, abruptly, he ran into the house.
Alice came into the bedroom as he was phoning Edwards. “What’s happened?” she cried. “Have they pierced the shield?”
“No,” Potter snapped over his shoulder. Then, grudgingly, “Something’s happened to the Mote.”
“Oh for God’s sake!” She was genuinely angry, Potter saw. All that fuss about a star, with civilization falling around our ears! But Alice had no love of the stars.
Edwards answered. On the screen he showed naked from the waist up, his long curly hair a tangled bird’s nest. “Who the hell—? Thad. I might have known. Thad, do you know what time it is?”
“Yes. Go outside,” Potter ordered. “Have a look at the Mote.”
“The Mote? The Mote?”
“Yes. It’s gone nova!” Potter shouted. Edwards growled, then sudden comprehension struck. He left the screen without hanging up. Potter reached out to dial the bedroom window transparent. And it was still there.
Even without the Coal Sack for backdrop Murcheson’s Eye would be the brightest object in the sky. At its rising the Coal Sack resembled the silhouette of a hooded man, head and shoulders; and the off-centered red supergiant became a watchful, malevolent eye. The University itself had begun as an observatory funded to study the supergiant.
This eye had a mote: a yellow dwarf companion, smaller and dimmer, and uninteresting. The Universe held plenty of yellow dwarfs.