The Mote In God's Eye

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).

PART FOUR - CRAZY EDDIE'S ANSWER

39 Departure

"Boats report no trace of our midshipmen, my Admiral" Captain Mikhailov's tone was both apologetic and defensive; few officers wanted to report failure to Kutuzov. The burly Admiral sat impassively in his command chair on Lenin's bridge. He lifted his glass of tea and sipped, his only acknowledgment a brief grunt.

Kutuzov turned to the others grouped around him at staff posts. -Rod Blaine still occupied the flag Lieutenant's chair; he was senior to Commander Borman, and Kutuzov was punctilious about such matters.

"Eight scientists," Kutuzov said. "Eight scientists, five officers, fourteen spacers and Marines. All killed by Moties."

"Moties!" Dr. Horvath swiveled his command chair toward Kutuzov. "Admiral, nearly all those men were aboard MacArthur when you destroyed her. Some might still have been alive. As for the midshipmen, if they were foolish enough to try to land with lifeboats... His voice, trailed off as Rod turned dead eyes toward him. "Sorry, Captain. I didn't mean it that way. Truly, I am sorry. I liked those boys too. But you can't blame the Moties for what happened! The Moties have tried to help, and they can do so much for us- Admiral, -when can we get back to the embassy ship?"

Kutuzov's explosive sound might have been a laugh. "Hah! Doctor, we are going home as soon as boats are secured. I thought I had made that clear."

The Science Minister pressed his lips tightly against his wide teeth. "I was hoping that you had regained your sanity." His voice was a cold, feral snarl. "Admiral, you are ruining the best hopes mankind ever had. The technology we can buy-that they'll give us!-is orders of magnitude above anything we could expect for centuries. The Moties have gone to enormous expense to make us welcome. If you hadn't forbidden us to tell them about the escaped miniatures I'm sure they'd have helped. But you had to keep your damned secrets-and because of your stupid xenophobia we lost the survey ship and most of our instruments. Now you antagonize them by going home when they planned more conferences- My God, man, if they were warlike nothing could provoke them as you have!"

"You are finished?" Kutuzov asked contemptuously.

"I'm finished for now. I won't be finished when we get back."