The Mote In God's Eye

"Rod, you can make your exit now," Senator Fowler said. "Hardy'll make your excuses to the Moties."

"Right. Thanks." Rod slipped away. Behind him he heard the sounds of the parade and the muted conversation of his Mends.

"I never heard so many drums in all my life," Sally said.

"Bosh. Goes on every Birthday," Senator Fowler reminded her.

"Well, I don't have to watch all of it on Birthdays."

"Birthday?" Jock asked.

Rod left as Sally was trying to, explain patriotic holidays and a hundred pipers tramped past in Gaelic splendor.

50 The Art of Negotiation

The little group moved in angry silence. Horowitz' hostility was just short of audible as-he led the way deeper underground. I am the most competent xenologist in Trans-Coalsack, he was thinking. They'll have to go to Sparta to find anyone better. And this goddamn lordling and his half-educated lady doubt my professional word.

And I have to put up with it.

There wasn't much doubt about that, Horowitz reflected. The University President had personally made it clear. "For God's sake, Ziggy, do what they want! This Commission is a big deal. Our whole budget, not to mention your department, is going to be affected by theft reports. What if they say we don't cooperate and ask for a team from Sparta?"

So. At least these young aristocrats knew his time was valuable. He'd told them half a dozen times on the way to the labs.

They were deep underground in the Old University, walking on worn rock floors carved an age before. Murcheson himself had paced these corridors before the terraforming of New Scotland was complete, and legend had it that his ghost could still be seen prowling through the rock-walled passageways: a hooded figure with one smoldering red eye.

And just why is this so damned important anyway? Balaam's ass, why does the girl make such a big deal out of it?

The laboratory was another room quarried from living rock. Horowitz gestured imperiously and two graduate assistants opened a refrigerated container. A long table slid out.

The pilot of the Crazy Eddie probe lay disassembled on the smooth white plastic surface. Its organs were arranged in a semblance to the positions they'd had before dissection, with black lines drawn across the flayed skin to join them to points on the skin and the exploded skeleton. Light red and dark red and grayish green, improbable shapes: the components of a Motie Mediator were all the colors and textures of a man hit by a grenade. Rod felt his belly twist within him and remembered ground actions.

He winced as Sally leaned forward impatiently for a better look. Her face was set and grim-but it had been that way back at Horowitz' office.

"Now!" Horowitz exploded in triumph. His bony finger jabbed at peanut-sized slime-green nodes within the abdomen. "Here. And here. These would have been the testes. The other Motie variants have internal testes too."

"Yes-" Sally agreed.

"This small?" Horowitz asked contemptuously.

"We don't know." Sally's voice was still very serious. "There were no reproductive organs in the statuettes, and the only Modes the expedition dissected were a Brown and some miniatures. The Brown was female."

"I've seen the miniatures," Horowitz said smugly.

"Well-yes," Sally agreed. "The testes in male miniatures were big enough to see-"

"Much bigger than this in proportion. But never mind. These could not have produced sperm. I have proved it. That pilot was a mule!" Horowitz slapped the back of his hand against his open palm. "A mule!"

Sally - studied the exploded Motie. She's really upset, Rod thought.

"Modes start- male, then turn female," Sally mumbled, almost inaudibly. "Couldn't this one have been immature?"

"A pilot?"

"Yes, of course-" She sighed. "You're right, anyway. It was the height of a full-grown Mediator. Could it have been a freak?"

"Hah! You laughed at me when I suggested it might have been a mutation! Well, it isn't. While you were off on that jaunt we did a bit of work here. I've identified the chromosomes and gene-coding systems responsible for sexual development. This creature was a sterile hybrid of two -other forms which are fertile." Triumph.

"That fits," Rod said. "The Moties told Renner the Mediators were a hybrid-"

"Look," Horowitz demanded. He activated a lecture screen and punched in codes. Shapes flowed across the screen. Motie chromosomes were close-packed discs connected by thin rods. There were bands and shapes on the discs-and Sally and Horowitz were speaking a language Rod didn't understand. He listened absently, then found a lab assistant making coffee. The girl sympathetically offered a cup, the other assistant joined them, and Rod was pressed for information about Moties. Again.

Half an hour later they left the university. Whatever Horowitz had said, Sally was convinced.

"Why so upset, sweetheart?" he asked. "Horowitz is right. It makes sense for the Mediators to be mules." Rod grimaced at the memory. Horowitz had pointedly added that being mules; the Mediators wouldn't be influenced by nepotism.