The Mote in God's Eye

There were awed expressions among the humans, “Vee-erry nice,” said Renner. Then, “I was wondering whether you could requisition MacArthur.”

“By law and tradition, yes. In practice, don’t be a fool.”

“OK. These things fighting around the time machine—”

“Legendary demons,” Bury’s Motie explained. “They defend the structure of reality.”

Renner remembered ancient Spanish paintings dating from the time of the Black Plague in Europe, paintings of living men and women being attacked by the revived and malevolent dead. Next to the white Moties these red sandstone things had that impossibly lean, bony look, and a malevolence that was almost tangible.

“And why the time machine?”

“The Mediator felt that a certain incident in history had happened because of a lack of communication. He decided to correct it.” Renner’s Motie shrugged with her arms; a Motie couldn’t lift her shoulders. “Crazy Eddie. The Crazy Eddie probe was like that. A little more workable, maybe. A watcher of the sky—a meteorologist, plus some other fields—found evidence that there was life on a world of a nearby star. Right away this Crazy Eddie Mediator wanted to contact them. He tied up enormous amounts of capital and industrial power, enough to affect most of civilization. He got his probe built, powered by a light sail and a battery of laser cannon for—”

“This all sounds familiar.”

“Right. The Crazy Eddie probe was in fact launched toward New Caledonia, much later, and with a different pilot. We’ve been assuming you followed it home.”

“So it worked. Unfortunately the crew was dead, but it reached us. So why are you still calling it the Crazy Eddie probe? Oh, never mind,” said Renner. His Motie was chortling.

Two limousines were waiting for them outside the Museum and stairs had been erected leading down to street level. Tiny two-seater cars zipped around the obstruction without slowing down, and without collisions.

Staley stopped at the bottom. “Mr. Renner! Look!”

Renner looked. A car had stopped alongside a great blank building; for there were no curbs. The brown chauffeur and his white-furred passenger disembarked, and the White walked briskly around the corner. The Brown disengaged two hidden levers at the front, then heaved against the side of the car. It collapsed like an accordian, into something half a meter wide. The Brown turned and followed the white Motie.

“They fold up!” Staley exclaimed.

“Sure they do,” said Renner’s Motie. “Can you imagine the traffic jam if they didn’t? Come on, get in the cars.”

They did. Renner said, “I wouldn’t ride in one of those little death traps for Bury’s own petty-cash fund.”

“Oh, they’re safe. That is,” said Renner’s Motie, “it isn’t the car that’s safe, it’s the driver. Browns don’t have much territorial instinct, for one thing. For another, they’re always fiddling with the car, so nothing’s ever going to fail.”

The limousine started off. Browns appeared behind them and began removing the stairs.

The buildings around them were always square blocks, the streets a rectangular grid. To Horvath the city was clearly a made city, not something that had grown naturally. Someone had laid it out and ordered it built from scratch. Were they all like this? It showed none of the Browns’ compulsion to innovate.

And yet, he decided, it did. Not in basics, but in such things as street lighting. In places there were broad electro luminescent strips along the buildings. In others there were things like floating balloons, but the wind did not move them. Elsewhere, tubes ran along the sides of the streets, or down the center; or there was nothing at all that showed in the daytime.

And those boxlike cars—each was subtly different, in the design of the lights or the signs of repairs or the way the parked cars folded into themselves.

The limousines stopped. “We’re here,” Horvath’s Motie announced. “The zoo. The Life Forms Preserve, to be more exact. You’ll find that it is arranged more for the convenience of the inhabitants than for the spectators.”

Horvath and the rest looked about, puzzled. Tall rectangular buildings surrounded them. There was no open space anywhere.

“On our left. The building, gentlemen, the building! Is there some law against putting a zoo inside a building?”

The zoo, as it developed, was six stories tall, with ceilings uncommonly high for Moties. It was difficult to tell just how high the ceilings were. They looked like sky. On the first floor it was open blue sky, with drifting clouds and a sun that stood just past noon.

They strolled through a steamy jungle whose character changed as they moved. The animals could not reach them, but it was difficult to see why not. They did not seem aware of being penned up.