The Mote In God's Eye

by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

  There was another car there. Staley ducked back to cover most of his body but continued to fire, aiming the gun at the oncoming car. How the hell would he know when the battery—or whatever it used for power—quit? A museum piece, for God's sake! The second car went past, and there were cherry-red lines across it. He swept the weapon along it, then stepped out to fire down the tunnel again. There was nothing there.

  No third car. Good. Systematically he fired at the second car. Something had stopped it just behind the first—some kind of collision avoidance system? He couldn't know. He ran toward the two cars. Whitbread and Potter came out to join him.

  "I told you to stay put!"

  Whitbread said, "Sorry, Horst."

  "This is a military situation, Mr. Whitbread. You can call me Horst when people aren't shooting at us."

  "Yes, sir. I wish to point out that nobody has fired except you."

  There was a smell from the cars: burning meat. The Moties came out from hiding. Staley carefully approached the cars and looked inside. "Demons," he said.

  They examined the bodies with interest. Except for statues they'd never seen the type before. Compared to the Mediators and Engineers they seemed wire-thin and agile, like greyhounds next to pugs. The right arms were long, with short thick fingers and only one thumb; the other edge of the right hand was smooth with callus. The left arm was longer, with fingers like sausages. There was something under the left arm.

  The demons had teeth, long and sharp, like true monsters from childhood books and half-forgotten legends.

  Charlie twittered to Whitbread's Motie. When there was no answer she twittered again, more shrill, and waved at the Brown. The Engineer approached the door and began to examine it closely. Whitbread's Motie stood petrified, staring at the dead Warriors.

  "Look out for booby traps!" Staley yelled. The Brown paid no attention and began to feel cautiously at the door. "Watch out!"

  "They will have traps, but the Brown will see them," Charlie said very slowly. "I will tell her to be careful." The voice was precise and had no accent at all.

  "You can talk," Staley said.

  "Not well. It is difficult to think in your language."

  “What's wrong with my Fyunch(click)?" Whitbread demanded.

  Instead of answering, Charlie twittered again. The tones rose sharply. Whitbread's Motie seemed to jerk and turned toward them.

  "Sorry," she said. "Those are my—Master's Warriors. Damn, damn, what am I doing?"

  "Let's get in there," Staley said nervously. He raised his gun to cut through the side of the car. The Brown was still inspecting the door, very carefully, as if afraid of it.

  "Allow me, sir." Whitbread must have been kidding. He was holding a thick-handled short sword. Horst watched him cut a square doorway in the metal side of the subway car with one continuous smooth, slow sweep of the blade. "It vibrates," he said. "I think."

  A few smells got through their air filters. It must have been worse for the Moties, but they didn't seem to mind. They crawled inside the second car.

  "You better look these over," Whitbread's Motie said. She sounded much better now. "Know your enemy." She twittered at the Brown, and it went to the controls of the car and examined them carefully, then sat in the driver's seat. She had to toss a Warrior out to do it.

  "Have a look under the left arm," Whitbread's Motie said. "That's a second left arm, vestigial in most Motie subspecies. Only thing is, it's all one nail, like a—" She thought for a moment. "A hoof. It's a gutting knife. Plus enough muscle to swing it."

  Whitbread and Potter grimaced. At Staley’s direction they began to heave demon bodies out the hole in the side of the car. The Warriors were like twins of each other, all identical except for the cooked areas where the x-ray laser had swept through them. The feet were sheathed in sharp horn at toe and heel. One kick, backward or forward, and that would be all. The heads were small.

  "Are they sentient?" Whitbread asked.

  "By your standards, yes, but they aren't very inventive," Whitbread's Motie said. She sounded like Whitbread reciting lessons to the First Lieutenant, her voice very precise but without feelings. "They can fix any weapon that ever worked, but they don't tend to invent their own. Oh, and there's a Doctor form, a hybrid between the real Doctor and the Warrior. Semisentient. You should be able to guess what they look like. You'd better have the Brown look at any weapons you keep—"

  Without warning the car began to move. “Where are we going?" Staley asked.

  Whitbread's Motie twittered. It sounded a little like a mockingbird whistle. "That's the next city down the line. . ."

  "They'll have a roadblock. Or an armed party waiting for us," Staley said. "How far is it?"

  "Oh—fifty kilometers."

  "Take us halfway and stop," Staley ordered.

  "Yes, sir." The Motie sounded even more like Whitbread. "They've underestimated you, Horst. That's the only way I can explain this. I've never heard of a Warrior killed by anything but another Warrior. Or a Master, sometimes, not often. We fight the Warriors against each other. It's how we keep their population down."

  "Ugh," Whitbread muttered. "Why not just—not breed them?"

  The Motie laughed. It was a peculiarly bitter laugh, very human, and very disturbing. "Didn't any of you ever wonder what killed the Engineer aboard your ship?"

  "Aye." "Of course." "Sure." They all answered together. Charlie twittered something.

  "They may as well know," Whitbread's Motie said. "She died because there was nobody to get her pregnant." There was a long silence. “That's the whole secret. Don't you get it yet? Every variant of my species has to be made pregnant after she's been female for a while. Child, male, female, pregnancy, male, female, pregnancy, 'round and 'round. If she doesn't get pregnant in time, she dies. Even us. And we Mediators can't get pregnant. We're mules, sterile hybrids."

  "But—" Whitbread sounded like a kid just told the truth about Santa. "How long do you live?"

  "About twenty-five of your years. Fifteen years after maturity. But Engineers and Farmers and Masters—especially Masters!—have to be pregnant within a couple of our years. That Engineer you picked up must have been close to the deadline already."

  They drove on in silence. "But—good Lord," Potter said carefully. "That's terrible."

  " ‘Terrible.' You son of a bitch. Of course it's terrible. Sally and her—"

  "What's eating you?" Whitbread demanded.

  "Birth control pills. We asked Sally Fowler what a human does when she doesn't want children just yet. She uses birth control pills. But nice girls don't use them. They just don't have sex," she said savagely.

  The car was speeding down the tracks. Horst sat at the rear, which was now the front, staring out with his weapon poised. He turned slightly. The Moties were both glaring at the humans, their lips parted slightly to show teeth, enlarging their smile, but the bitterness of the words and tones belied the friendly looks. "They just don't have sex!" Whitbread's Motie said again. "Fyoofwuffle" (whistle)! "Now you know why we have wars. Always wars. . ."

  "Population explosion," Potter said.

  "Yeah. Whenever a civilization rises from savagery, Moties stop dying from starvation! You humans don't know what population pressure is! We can keep the numbers down in the lesser breeds, but what can the givers of orders do about their own numbers? The closest thing we've got to a birth control pill is infanticide!"

  "And you can nae do that," Potter said. "Any such instinct would be bred out o' the race. So presently everyone is fighting for what food is left."

  "Of course." Whitbread's Motie was calmer now. "The higher the civilization, the longer the period of savagery. And always there's Crazy Eddie in there pitching, trying to break the pattern of the Cycles, fouling things up worse. We're pretty close to a collapse now, gentlemen, in case you didn't notice. When you came there was a terrible fight over jurisdiction. My Master won—"

  Charlie whistled and hummed for a second.

  "
Yeah. King Peter tried for that, but he couldn't get enough support. Wasn't sure he could win a fight with my Master. What we're doing now will probably cause that war anyway. It doesn't matter. It was bound to start soon."

  "You're so crowded you grow plants on the rooftops," said Whitbread.

  "Oh, that's just common sense. Like putting strips of cropland through the cities. Some always live, to start the Cycles over."

  "It must be tough, carving out a civilization without even radioactives," said Whitbread. "You'd have to go direct to hydrogen fusion every time?"

  "Sure. You're getting at something."

  "I'm not sure what."

  "Well, it's been that way for all of recorded history, a long time by your standards. Except for one period when they found radioactives in the Trojan asteroids. There were a few alive up there and they brought civilization here. The radioactives had been pretty thoroughly mined by some older civilization, but there were still some there."

  "God's eyes," said Whitbread. "But—"

  "Stop the car, please," Staley ordered. Whitbread's Motie twittered and the car came smoothly to a halt. "I'm getting nervous about what we're running into," Staley explained. "They must be waiting for us. Those soldiers we killed haven't reported in—and if those were your Master's men, where are the Keeper's? Anyway, I want to test the Warriors' weapons."

  "Have the Brown look them over," Whitbread's Motie said. "They may be rigged."

  They looked deadly, those weapons. And no two were identical. The most common type was a slug thrower, but there were also hand lasers and grenades. The butt of each weapon had been individualized. Some balanced only against the upper right shoulder, some squared against both. The gun sights differed. There were two left-handed moties. Staley dimly remembered heaving out a left-handed body.

  There was a rocket launcher with a fifteen-centimeter aperture. "Have her look at this," Staley said.

  Whitbread's Motie handed the weapon to the Brown, accepting a slug thrower in return which she put under a bench. "This was rigged." The Brown looked at the rocket launcher and twittered. "OK," Whitbread's Motie said.

  "How about the loads?" Staley passed them over. There were several different kinds, and none exactly alike. The Brown twittered again.

  “The biggest rocket would explode if you tried to load it," Whitbread's Motie said. "They may have figured you right at that. Anyway, they certainly prepared enough traps. I've been assuming that the Masters think you're a kind of inept Mediator. It was what we thought, at first. But these traps mean they think you could kill Warriors."

  "Great. I'd rather they thought we were stupid. We'd still be dead without the museum weapons. Come to that, why keep live guns in a museum?"

  "You don't see the point of a museum, Horst. It's for the next rise in the Cycles. Savages come to put together another civilization. The faster they can do it, the longer it'll be before another collapse, because they'll be expanding their capabilities faster than the population. See? So the savages get their choice of a number of previous civilizations, and the weapons to put a new one into action. You noticed the lock?"

  "No."

  "I did," said Potter. "You need some astronomy to solve it. I presume that's to keep the savages from getting the goods before they're ready."

  "Right." The Brown handed over a big-nosed rocket with a twitter. "She fixed this one. It's safe. What are you planning to do with it, Horst?"

  "Pick me some more. Potter, you carry that x-ray laser. How close are we to the surface?"

  "Oh. Hm. The"—bird whistle—"terminus is only one flight of stairs below the surface. The ground is pretty level in that region. I'd say we're three to ten meters underground."

  "How close to other transportation?"

  "An hour's walk to—" Bird whistle. "Horst, are you going to damage the tunnel? Do you know how long this subway has been in use?"

  "No." Horst slid through the makeshift hatch in the side of the car. He walked a score of meters back the way they had come, then doubled that. The weapons could still be booby-trapped.

  The tunnel was infinitely straight ahead of him. It must have been trued with a laser, then dug with something like a hot-rock boring machine.

  Whitbread's Motie's voice carried down the tunnel. "Eleven thousand years!"

  Staley fired.

  The projectile touched the roof of the tunnel, far down. Horst curled up against the shock wave. When he raised his eyes there was considerable dirt in the tunnel.

  He chose another projectile and fired it.

  This time there was reddish daylight. He walked down to look at the damage. Yes, they could climb that slope.

  Eleven thousand years.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Judgement

  "Send the car on without us," Horst said. Whitbread's Motie twittered and the Brown opened the control panel. She worked at blinding speed. Whitbread remembered a Brown asteroid miner who had lived and died eons ago, when MacArthur was home and Moties were a friendly, fascinating unknown.

  The Brown leaped off. The car hesitated a second, then accelerated smoothly. They turned to the ramp Horst had created and climbed silently.

  The world was all the shades of red as they emerged. Endless rows of crops were folding their leaves against the night. An irregular ring of plants leaned drunkenly around the hole.

  Something moved among the plants. Three guns came up. The twisted thing plodded toward them . . . and Staley said, "At ease. It's a Farmer."

  Whitbread's Motie moved up beside the midshipmen. She brushed dirt off her fur with all her hands. "There'll be more of those here. They may even try to smooth out the hole. Farmers aren't too bright. They don't have to be. What now, Horst?"

  "We walk until we can ride. If you see planes—hmm."

  "Infrared detectors," said the Motie.

  "Do you have tractors in these fields? Could we grab one?" Staley asked.

  "They'll be in the shed by now. They don't usually work in the dark ... of course the Farmers may bring one to smooth out that hole."

  Staley thought a moment. "Then we don't want one. Too conspicuous. Let's hope we look like Farmers on an infrared screen."

  They walked. Behind them the Farmer began straightening plants and smoothing the soil around their roots. She twittered to herself, but Whitbread's Motie didn't translate. Staley idly wondered if Farmers ever said anything, or if they merely cursed, but he didn't want to talk just yet. He had to think.

  The sky darkened. A red point glowed overhead: Murcheson's Eye. Ahead of them was the yellow city-glow of—Bird Whistle. They walked on in silence, the midshipmen alert, weapons ready, the Moties following with their torsos swiveling periodically.

  By and by Staley said to the Motie, "I've been wondering what's in this for you."

  "Pain. Exertion. Humiliation. Death."

  "That's the point. I keep wondering why you came."

  "No, you don't, Horst. You keep wondering why your Fyunch(click) didn't."

  Horst looked at her. He had wondered that. What was his twin mind doing while demons hunted her own Fyunch(click) across a world? It brought dull pain.

  "We're both duty oriented, Horst, your Fyunch(click) and I. But your Fyunch(click)'s duty is to her, let us say, her superior officer. Gavin—"

  "Aye."

  "I tried to talk your Fyunch(click) into coming down, but she's got this Crazy Eddie idea that we can end the Cycles by sending our surplus population to other stars. At least neither will help the others find us."

  "Could they?"

  "Horst, your Motie must know exactly where you are, assuming I got here; and she'll know that when she finds out about the dead Warriors."

  "We'd better flip a coin the next time we get a choice. She can't predict that."

  "She won't help. Nobody would expect a Mediator to help hunt down her own Fyunch(click)."

  "But don't you have to obey your Master's orders?" Staley asked.

  The Motie swiveled her body rap
idly. It was a gesture they hadn't seen before, obviously not copied from anything human. She said, "Look. Mediators were bred to stop wars. We represent the decision makers. We speak for them. To do our job we have to have some independence of judgment. So the genetic engineers work at the balance. Too much independence and we don't represent the Masters properly. We get repudiated. Wars start."

  "Aye," Potter broke in. "And too little independence makes for inflexible demands, and you hae the wars anyway . . ." Potter trudged in silence for a moment. "But if obedience is a species-specific thing, then ye'll be unable simply to help us alone. Ye'll be taking us to another Master because ye hae nae choice."

  Staley gripped the rocket launcher tighter. "Is this true?"

  "Some," Whitbread's Motie admitted. "Not as completely as you think. But, yes, it's easier to choose among many orders than try to act with none at all."

  "And what does King Peter believe should be done?" Staley demanded. "Just what are we walking into?"

  The other Motie twittered. Whitbread's Motie answered. The conversation went on for many seconds, very long for Moties. The sunset light died, and Murcheson's Eye blazed a hundred times brighter than Earth's full Moon. There were no other stars in the Coal Sack. Around them the fields of plants were dark red, with sharp black shadows of infinite depth.

  "Honesty," Charlie said at last. "My Master believes we must be honest with you. It is better to live by the ancient pattern of the Cycles than chance total destruction and the doom of all our descendants."

  "But . . ." Potter stammered in confusion. "But why is it nae possible to colonize other stars? The Galaxy is big enough for all. You would nae attack the Empire?"

  "No, no," Whitbread's Motie protested. "My own Master wants only to buy land as bases on Empire worlds, then move outside the Empire entirely. Eventually we'd be colonizing worlds around the edges of the Empire. There'd be commerce between us. I don't think we'd try to share the same planets."

  "Then why—" Potter asked.

  "I don't think you could build that many space craft," Whitbread interrupted.