The Mote in God's Eye

Hardy wound a strand of his thinning red hair around a knobby finger and tugged gently. “From your helmet camera? Yes, Jonathon. I think we’re dealing with two kinds of Moties. One is an idiot savant and doesn’t talk. The other… talks,” he finished lamely. He caught himself playing with his hair and smoothed it back into place. “I hope I can learn to talk back.”

They’re all dreading it, Whitbread realized. Especially Sally. And even Chaplain Hardy, who never gets upset about anything. All dreading that first move. Horvath said, “Any other impressions?”

“I keep thinking that ship was designed for free fall. There are sticky strips all over. Inflated furniture likewise. And there are short passages joining the toroids, as wide as the toroids themselves. Under acceleration they’d be like open trap doors with no way around them.”

“That’s strange,” Horvath mused. “The ship was under acceleration until four hours ago.”

“Exactly, sir. The joins must be new.” The thought hit Whitbread suddenly. Those joins must be new.

“But that tells us even more,” Chaplain Hardy said quietly. “And you say the furniture is at all angles. We all saw that the Moties didn’t care how they were oriented when they spoke to you. As if they were peculiarly adapted to free fall. As if they evolved there…”

“But that’s impossible,” Sally protested. “Impossible but—you’re right, Dr. Hardy! Humans always orient themselves. Even the old Marines who’ve been in space all their lives! But nobody can evolve in free fall.”

“An old enough race could,” Hardy said. “And there are the non-symmetric arms. Evolutionary advancement? It would be well to keep the theory in mind when we talk to the Moties.” If we can talk to them, he added to himself.

“They went crazy over my backbone,” Whitbread said. “As if they’d never seen one.” He stopped. “I don’t know whether you were told. I stripped for them. It seemed only fair that they… know what they’re dealing with.” He couldn’t look at Sally.

“I’m not laughing,” she said. “I’m going to have to do the same thing.”

Whitbread’s head snapped up. “What?

”

Sally chose her words with care; remember provincial mores, she told herself. She did not look up from the deck. “Whatever Captain Blaine and Admiral Kutuzov choose to hide from the Moties, the existence of two human sexes isn’t one of them. They’re entitled to know how we’re made, and I’m the only woman aboard MacArthur.”

“But you’re Senator Fowler’s niece!”

She did smile at that. “We won’t tell them.” She stood up immediately. “Coxswain Lafferty, we’ll be going now.” She turned back, very much the Imperial lady, even to her stance, which gave no sign that she was in free fall. “Jonathon, thank you for your concern. Chaplain, you may join me as soon as I call.” And she went.

A long time later Whitbread said, “I wondered what was making everyone so nervous.”

And Horvath, looking straight ahead, said, “She insisted.”

Sally called the cutter when she arrived. The same Motie who had greeted Whitbread, or an identical one, bowed her aboard in a courtly fashion. A camera on the taxi picked that up and caused the Chaplain to lean forward sharply. “That half-nod is very like you, Whitbread. He’s an excellent mimic.”

Sally called again minutes later, by voice alone. She was in one of the toroids. “There are Moties all around me. A lot of them are carrying instruments. Hand-sized. Jonathon, did—”

“Most of them didn’t have anything in their hands. These instruments, what do they look like?”

“Well, one looks like a camera that’s been half taken apart, and, another has a screen like an oscilloscope screen.” Pause. “Well, here goes. Fowler out.” Click.

For twenty minutes they knew nothing of Sally Fowler. Three men fidgeted, their eyes riveted to a blank intercom screen.

When she finally called, her voice was brisk. “All right, gentlemen, you may come over now.”

“I’m on.” Hardy unstrapped and floated in a slow arc to the cutter air lock. His voice, too, was brisk with relief. The waiting was ended.

There was the usual bustle of bridge activities around Rod, scientists looking at the main view screens, quartermasters securing from MacArthur’s fifty-kilometer move. To keep occupied Rod was having Midshipman Staley run through a simulated Marine assault on the Motie ship. All purely theoretical, of course; but it did help keep Rod from brooding about what was happening aboard the alien vessel. The call from Horvath was a welcome distraction, and Rod was ebulliently cordial as he answered.

“Hello, Doctor! How are things going?”

Horvath was almost smiling. “Very well, thank you, Captain. Dr. Hardy is on his way to join Lady Sally. I sent your man Whitbread along.”

“Good.” Rod felt tension pain where it had settled above and between his shoulder blades. So Sally had got through that…