The Mote In God's Eye

"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.