The Mote in God's Eye

On a Navy warship men do not maintain an average weight. During the long idle periods those who like to eat amuse themselves by eating. They grow fat. But men who can dedicate their lives to a cause—including a good percentage of those who will remain in the Navy—tend to forget about eating. Food cannot hold their attention.

Sandy Sinclair looked straight ahead of himself as he sat rigid on the edge of the examining table. It was this way with Sinclair: he could not look a man in the eye while he was naked. He was big and lean, and his stringy muscles were much stronger than they looked. He might have been an average man given a skeleton three sizes too large.

A third of his surface area was pink scar tissue. Sharp metal flying out of an explosion had left that pink ridge across his short ribs. Most of the rest had been burned into him by puffs of flame or droplets of metal. A space battle left burns, if it left a man alive at all.

The doctor was twenty-three, and cheerful. “Twenty four years in service, eh? Ever been in a battle?”

Sinclair snapped, “You’ll hae your own share o’ scars if ye stay wi’ the Navy long enough.”

“I believe you, somehow. Well, Commander, you’re in admirable shape for a man in his forties. You could handle a month of free fall, I think, but we’ll play safe and drag you back to MacArthur twice a week. I don’t suppose I have to tell you to keep up on the free-fall exercises.”

Rod Blaine called the cutter several times the next day, but it was evening before he could get anyone besides the pilot. Even Horvath had gone aboard the Motie ship.

Chaplain Hardy was exhausted and jubilant, with a smile spread across his face and great dark circles under his eyes. “I’m taking it as a lesson in humility, Captain. They’re far better at my job—well, at linguistics, anyway—than I am. I’ve decided that the fastest way to learn their language will be to teach them Anglic. No human throat will ever speak their language—languages?—without computer assistance.”

“Agreed. It would take a full orchestra. I’ve heard some of your tapes. In fact, Chaplain, there wasn’t much else to do.”

Hardy smiled. “Sorry. We’ll try to arrange more frequent reporting. By the way, Dr. Horvath is showing a party of Moties through the cutter now. They seem particularly interested in the drive. The brown one wants to take things apart, but the pilot won’t let him. You did say there were no secrets on this boat.”

“Certainly I said that, but it might be a bit premature to let them fool with your power source. What did Sinclair say about it?”

“I don’t know, Captain.” Hardy looked puzzled. “They’ve had him in that tool room all day. He’s still there.”

Blaine fingered the knot on his nose. He was getting the information he needed, but Chaplain Hardy hadn’t been exactly whom he wanted to talk to. “Uh, how many Moties are there aboard your ship?”

“Four. One for each of us: myself, Dr. Horvath, Lady Sally, and Mr. Whitbread. They seem to be assigned mutual guides.”

“Four of them.” Rod was trying to get used to the idea. The cutter wasn’t a commissioned vessel, but it was one of His Majesty’s warships, and somehow having a bunch aliens aboard was—nuts. Horvath knew the risks he was taking. “Only four? Doesn’t Sinclair have a guide?”

“Oddly enough, no. A number of them are watching him work in the tool room, but there was no special one assigned to him.”

“And none for the coxswain or the spacers on the cutter?”

“No.” Hardy thought a moment. “That is odd, isn’t it? As if they class Commander Sinclair with the unimportant crewmen.”

“Maybe they just don’t like the Navy.”

David Hardy shrugged. Then, carefully, he said, “Captain, sooner or later we’ll have to invite them aboard MacArthur.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

Hardy sighed. “Well, that’s why I brought it up now, that we could thrash it out. They’ve shown that they trust us, Captain. There’s not a cubic centimeter of their embassy ship that we haven’t seen, or at least probed with instruments. Whitbread will testify that there’s no sign of weaponry aboard. Eventually they’re going to wonder what guilty secrets we’re hiding aboard.”

“I’m going to tell you. Are there Moties within earshot?”

“No. And they haven’t learned Anglic that well anyway.”

“Don’t forget they will learn, and don’t forget recorders. Now, Chaplain, you’ve got a problem—about Moties and Creation. The Empire has another. For a long time we’ve talked about the Great Galactic Wizards showing up and deciding whether to let the humans join, right? Only it’s the other way around, isn’t it? We’ve got to decide whether to let the Moties out of their system, and until that’s decided we don’t want them to see the Langston Field generators, the Alderson Drive, our weapons… not even just how much of MacArthur is living space, Chaplain. It would give away too much about our capabilities. We’ve a lot to hide, and we’ll hide it.”

“You’re treating them as enemies,” David Hardy said gently.