The Mote In God's Eye

by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

  "I'm down. Let me just get loose—" Staley opened the crash webbing and tumbled out on his back. The seat was 30 cm lower within the cone. He drew his weapon and burned out a hole to examine the space below. Compressible foam filled the compartment. "When you get down, make sure there are no Brownies aboard the lifeboat," he ordered crisply.

  "Damn! I nearly flipped over," came Whitbread's voice. "These things are tricky—"

  "I see you, Jonathon!" Potter shouted. "Just hover and I'll come to you."

  "Then look for my parachute," Staley ordered.

  "I don't see you. We could be twenty kilometers apart. Your signal is none too strong," Whitbread answered.

  Staley struggled to his feet. "First things first," he muttered. He looked the lifeboat over carefully. There was no place a miniature might have hidden and lived through reentry, but he looked again to be sure. Then he switched to hailing frequency and tried to call Lenin —expected no answer and got none. Suit radios operate on line of sight only and they are intentionally not very powerful, otherwise all of space would be filled with the chatter of suited men. The redesigned lifeboats had nothing resembling a radio. How did the Brownies intend for survivors to call for help?

  Staley stood uncertainly, not yet adjusted to gravity. There were cultivated fields all around him, alternating rows of purple eggplant-looking bushes with chest-high crowns of dark leaves, and low bushes bright with grain. The rows went on forever in all directions.

  "Still haven't spotted you yet, Horst," Whitbread reported. "This is getting us nowhere. Horst, do you see a big, low building that gleams like a mirror? It's the only building in sight."

  Staley spotted it, a metal-gleaming thing beyond the horizon. It was a long walk away, but it was the only landmark in sight. "Got it."

  "We'll make for that and meet you there."

  "Good. Wait for me."

  "Head that way, Gavin," Whitbread's voice said. "Right," came the reply. There was more chatter between the other two, and Horst Staley felt very much alone.

  "Wup! My rocket's out!" Potter shouted.

  Whitbread watched Potter's cone drop toward the ground. It hit point first, hesitated, and toppled into the plants. Whitbread shouted, "Gavin, are you all right?"

  There were rustling sounds. Then Whitbread heard: "Oh, sometimes I get a twinge in my right elbow when the weather's nasty . . . old football injury. Get as far as you can, Jonathon. I'll meet you both at the building."

  "Aye aye." Whitbread tilted the cone forward on his rocket. The building was large ahead of him.

  It was large. At first there had been nothing to give it scale; now he had been flying toward it for ten minutes or more.

  It was a dome with straight sides blending into a low, rounded roof. There were no windows, and no other features except a rectangular break that might have been a door, ridiculously small in the enormous structure. The gleam of sunlight on the roof was more than metallic; it was mirror-bright.

  Whitbread flew low, traveling quite slowly. There was something awesome about the building set in the endless croplands. That more than the fear that his motor might burn out checked his first impulse to rush to the structure.

  The rocket held. The miniatures might have changed the chemicals in the solid motor; no two things built by Moties were ever quite identical. Whitbread landed just outside the rectangular doorway. This close the door loomed over him. It had been dwarfed by the building.

  "I'm here," he almost whispered, then laughed at himself. "There's a doorway. It's big and closed. Funny—there aren't any roads leading here, and the crops grow right up to the edge of the dome."

  Staley's voice: "Perhaps planes land on the roof."

  "I don't think so, Horst. The roof is rounded. I don't think there are ever many visitors. Must be some kind of storage. Or maybe there's a machine inside that runs itself."

  "Best not fool with it. Gavin, are you all right too?"

  "Aye, Horst. I'll be at yon building in half an hour. See you there."

  Staley prepared for a longer hike. There were no emergency rations that he could see in the lifeboat. He thought for a while before removing his combat armor and the pressure suit under it. There weren't any secrets there. He took the helmet and dogged it onto the neck seal, then rigged it as an air filter. Then he took the radio out of the suit and slung it on his belt, first making one last attempt to contact Lenin. There was no answer. What else? Radio, water bag, sidearm. It would have to do.

  Staley looked carefully around the horizon. There was only the one building—no chance of walking toward the wrong one. He started out toward it, glad of the low gravity, and swung easily into stride.

  A half-hour later he saw the first Motie. He was practically alongside before he noticed it: a creature different from any he'd seen before, and just the height of the plants. It was working between the rows, smoothing soil with its hands, pulling out weeds to lay between the careful furrows. It watched him approach. When he came alongside it turned back to work.

  The Motie was not quite a Brown. The fur patches were thicker, and more thick fur encased all three arms and the legs. The left hand was about the same as a Brown's but the right hands had five fingers each, plus a bud, and the fingers were square and short. The legs were thick and the feet large and flat. The head was a Brown's with drastically back-sloping forehead.

  If Sally Fowler was right, that meant that the parietal area was almost nil. "Hello," Horst said anyway. The Motie looked back at him for a second, then pulled out a weed.

  Afterwards he saw many of them. They watched him just long enough to be sure he wasn't destroying plants; then they lost interest. Horst hiked on in the bright sunshine toward the mirror-bright building. It was much farther than he had thought.

  Mr. Midshipman Jonathon Whitbread waited. He had done enough of that since joining the Navy; but he was only seventeen standard years old, and at that age waiting is never really easy.

  He sat near the tip of the reentry cone, high enough to bring his head above the plants. In the city the buildings had blocked his view of this world. Here he saw the entire horizon. The sky was brown all the way around, shading to something that might have had blue tinges directly overhead. Clouds roiled to the east in thick patches, and a few dirty-white cumulus scudded overhead.

  The sun was just overhead too. He decided he must be near the equator, and remembered that Castle City was far to the north. He could not sense the greater width of the sun's disc, because he could not look directly at it; but it was more comfortable to look at near than the small sun of New Scotland.

  The sense of an alien world was on him, but there was nothing to see. His eyes kept straying to the mirror-surfaced building. Presently he got up to examine the door.

  It was a good ten meters high. Impressively tall to Whitbread, a gigantic thing for a Motie. But were Moties impressed by size? Whitbread thought not. The door must be functional—what was ten meters high? Heavy machinery? There was no sound at all when he put his pickup microphone against the smooth metallic surface.

  At one side of the alcove containing the door was a panel mounted on a stout spring. Behind the panel was what seemed to be a combination lock. And that was that—except that Moties expected each other to solve such puzzles at a glance. A key lock would have been a no trespassing sign. This was not.

  Probably it was intended to keep out—what? Browns? Whites? Laborers and the nonsentient classes? Probably all of them. A combination lock could be thought of as a form of communication.

  Potter arrived panting, his helmet nearly awash with sweat, a water bag hanging from his belt. He turned his helmet mike to activate a small speaker and cut off his radio. "I had to try the Mote Prime air for meself," he said. "Now I know. Well, what hae you found?"

  Whitbread showed him. He also adjusted his own mike. No point in broadcasting everything they said.

  "Um. I wish Dr. Buckman were here. Those are Motie numbers—aye, and the Mote solar system, with the di
al where the Mote ought to be. Let me see. . ."

  Whitbread watched interestedly as Potter stared at the dial. The New Scot pursed his lips, then said, "Aye. The gas giant is three point seven two times as far from the Mote as Mote Prime. Hmmm." He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the ever-present computer box. "Umm . . . three point eight eight, base twelve. Now which way does the dial go?"

  "Then, again, it might be somebody's birthday," said Whitbread. He was glad to see Gavin Potter. He was glad to see anyone human here. But the New Scot's meddling with the dials was—disturbing. Left, right, left, right, Gavin Potter turned the dials. . .

  "I seem to remember Horst gave us orders concerning this building." Whitbread was uneasy.

  " 'Best not fool with it.' Hardly orders. We came to learn about Moties, did we not?"

  “Well . . ." It was an interesting puzzle. "Try left again," Whitbread suggested. "Hold it." Whitbread pushed the symbol representing Mote Prime. It depressed with a click. "Keep going left."

  "Aye. The Motie astronomical maps show the planets going counterclockwise."

  On the third digit the door began to slide upward. "It works!" Whitbread shouted.

  The door slid up to a height of one and a half meters. Potter looked at Whitbread and said, "Now what?"

  "You're kidding."

  "We hae our orders," Potter said slowly. They sat down between the plants and looked at each other. Then they looked at the dome. There was light inside, and they could easily see under the door. There were buildings in there . . .

  Staley had been walking for three hours when he saw the plane. It was high up and moving fast, and he waved at it, not expecting to be seen. He was not and he walked on.

  Presently he saw the plane again. It was behind him, much lower, and he thought it had spread wings. It settled lower and vanished behind the low rolling hills where he had come down. Staley shrugged. It would find his parachute and lifeboat and see his tracks leading away. The direction should be obvious. There was nowhere else to go.

  In a few minutes the plane was higher and coming straight toward him. It was moving slowly now, obviously searching. He waved again, although he had a momentary impulse to hide, which was plainly silly. He needed to be found, although what he would say to a Motie was not at all clear.

  The plane moved past him and hovered. Jet pipes curved down and forward, and it dropped dangerously fast to settle into the plants. There were three Moties inside, and a Brown-and-white emerged quickly.

  "Horst!" it called in Whitbread's voice. "Where are the others?"

  Staley waved toward the rounded dome. It was still an hour's march away.

  Whitbread's Motie seemed to sag. "That's torn it. Horst, are they there yet?"

  "Sure. They're waiting for me. They've been there about three hours."

  "Oh, my God. Maybe they couldn't get inside. Whitbread couldn't get inside. Come on, Horst." She gestured toward the plane. "You'll have to squeeze in somehow."

  Another Brown-and-white was inside and the pilot was a Brown. Whitbread's Motie sang something ranging through five octaves and using at least nine tones. The other Brown-and-white gestured wildly. They made room for Staley between the contoured seats, and the Brown did things to the controls. The plane rose and shot toward the building ahead. "Maybe they didn't get in," Whitbread's Motie repeated. "Maybe."

  Horst crouched uncomfortably in the speeding jet and wondered. He didn't like this at all. "What's wrong?" he asked.

  Whitbread's Motie looked at him strangely. "Maybe nothing." The other two Moties said nothing at all.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Trespassers

  Whitbread and Potter stood alone within the dome. They stared in wonder.

  The dome was only a shell. A single light source very like an afternoon sun blazed halfway down its slope. Moties used that kind of illumination in many of the buildings Whitbread had seen.

  Underneath the dome it was like a small city—but not quite. Nobody was home. There was no sound, no motion, no light in any of the windows. And the buildings . . .

  There was no coherency to this city. The buildings jarred horribly against each other. Whitbread winced at two clean-lined many-windowed pillars framing what might have been an oversized medieval cathedral, all gingerbread, a thousand cornices guarded by what Bury's Motie had said were Motie demons.

  Here were a hundred styles of architecture and at least a dozen levels of technology. Those geodesic forms could not have been built without prestressed concrete or something more sophisticated, not to mention the engineering mathematics. But this building nearest the gate was of sun-baked mud bricks. Here a rectangular solid had walls of partly silvered glass; there the walls were of gray stone, and the tiny windows had no glass in them, only shutters to seal them from the elements.

  "Rain shutters. It must have been here before the dome," Potter said.

  "Anyone can see that. The dome is almost new. That. . . cathedral, it might be, that cathedral in the center is so old it's about to fall apart."

  "Look there. Yon parabolic-hyperboloid structure has been cantilevered out from a wall. But look at the wall!"

  "Yah, it must have been part of another building. God knows how old that is." The wall was over a meter thick, and ragged around the edges and the top. It was made of dressed stone blocks that must have massed five hundred kilos each. Some vinelike plant had invaded it, surrounded it, permeated it to the extent that by now it must be holding the wall together.

  Whitbread leaned close and peered into the vines. "No cement, Gavin. They've fitted the blocks together. And still it supports the rest of the building—which is concrete. They built to last."

  "Do ye remember what Horst said about the Stone Beehive?"

  "He said he could feel the age in it. Right. Right. . ."

  "It must be of all different ages, this place. I think we'll find that it's a museum. A museum of architecture? And they've added to it, century after century. Finally they threw up that dome to protect it from the elements."

  "Yah . . ."

  "Ye sound dubious."

  "That dome is two meters thick, and metal. What kind of elements . . ."

  "Asteroid falls, it may be. No, that's nonsense. The asteroids were moved away eons ago."

  "I think I want to have a look at that cathedral. It looks to be the oldest building here."

  The cathedral was a museum right enough. Any civilized man in the Empire would have recognized it. Museums are all alike.

  There were cases faced in glass, and old things within, marked by plaques with dates and printing on them. "I can read the numbers," said Potter. "Look, they're in four and five figures. And this is base twelve!"

  "My Motie asked me once how old our recorded civilization is. How old is theirs, Gavin?"

  "Well, their year is shorter . . . Five figures. Dating backward from some event; that's a minus sign in front of each of them. Let me see . . ." He took out his computer and scrawled quick, precise figures. "That number would be seventy-four thousand and some-odd. Jonathon, the plaques are almost new."

  "Languages change. They must translate the plaques every so often."

  "Yes . . . yes, I know this sign. 'Approximately.' " Potter moved swiftly from exhibit to exhibit. "Here it is again. Not here . . . but here. Jonathon, come look at this one."

  It was a very old machine. Once iron, it must be rust now, all the way through. There was a sketch of what it must have looked like once. A howitzer cannon.

  "Here on the plaque. This double-approximation sign means educated guesswork. I wonder how many times that legend has been translated?"

  Room after room. They found a wide staircase leading up, the steps shallow but broad enough for human feet. Above, more rooms, more exhibits. The ceilings were low. The lighting came from lines of bulbs of incandescent filaments that came on when they entered, went out when they left. The bulbs were mounted carefully so they wouldn't mar the ceiling. The museum itself must be an exhi
bit.

  The plaques were all alike, but the cases were all different. Whitbread did not think it strange. No two Motie artifacts were ever precisely alike. But one... he almost laughed.

  A bubble of glass several meters long and two meters wide rested on a free-form sculpted frame of almost peach-colored metal. Both looked brand-new. There was a plaque on the frame. Inside was an ornately carved wooden box, coffin sized, bleached white by age, its lid the remains of a rusted wire grille. It had a plaque. Under the rusted wire, a selection of wonderfully shaped, eggshell-thin pottery, some broken, some whole. Each piece in the set had a dated plaque. "It's like nested exhibits," he said.

  Potter did not laugh. "That's what it is. See here? The bubble case is about two thousand years old. . . that can't be right, can it?"

  "Not unless . . ." Whitbread rubbed his class ring along the glass bubble. "They're both scratched. Artificial sapphire." He tried it on the metal. The metal scratched the stone. "I'll accept two thousand."

  "But the box is around twenty-four hundred, and the pottery goes from three thousand up. Look you how the style changes. 'Tis a depiction of the rise and fall of a particular school of pottery styling."

  "Do you think the wooden case came out of another museum?"

  "Aye."

  Whitbread did laugh then. They moved on. Presently Whitbread pointed and said, "Here, that's the same metal, isn't it?" The small two-handed weapon—it had to be a gun—carried the same date as the sapphire bubble.

  Beyond that was a puzzling structure near the wall of the great dome. It was made of a vertical lacework of hexagons, each formed from steel members two meters long. There were thick plastic frames in some of the hexagons, and broken fragments in others.

  Potter pointed out the gentle curve of the structure. " 'Twas another dome. A spherical dome with geodesic bracing. Not much left of it— and it wouldna' hae covered all of the compound anyway."