The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven

  Bury's eyes met Kevin's; he didn't speak.

  The Motie said, "Your lost ship should be safe in the hands of the Crimean Tartars. No player in this game would risk harm to something so valuable, not even pirate groups like the Khanate, who can only guess Hecate's value from the maneuvering of others... we'll negotiate how to bring you together."

  Of course a Mediator would negotiate, Kevin thought. She could hardly plan a war, though if she could estimate relative strengths but if Hecate must be rescued, it must be up to the Empire ships.

  "So you had East India watching the wrong part of the sky," he said. "And now they're pissed?"

  "Just so. But they don't command the wealth they had when they wrested the Crazy Eddie point from us. They sent cheap token ships to the Eye, and they can't afford a real war fleet either."

  "Tell me about the Khanate."

  "Ah, yes, the Khanate. You see, Medina Trading's main base is deep among the comets, not conveniently close to the Sister. A succession of large comets have served as inner bases, generally a few light-minutes from the Sister. We're en route for Inner Base Six even now, and more of our ships will meet us there. But as an immediate source of volatiles and water and ores, we sometimes move a small comet head to pass very near the expected Sister

  "The Khanate is based in a cluster of comets outward and forward of Medina Trading. They expect wealth to surge their way when Mote Gamma moves into place in fifty thousand hours. Meanwhile they survive as bandits. They must have wondered at the mad placement of our small comet, but they covet the resources. But the Crimean Tartars seem to know why we wanted resources in place."

  Bury asked, "Might they be working with someone else?"

  "Instruct me," said the Motie.

  "Merely a question, Eudoxus. Who knew of the Sister? Medina and Byzantium and East India, and whoever else might deduce the truth from observation. East India was given a false locus for the Sister, but were you truly prepared to deal fairly with Byzantium?"

  "Of course," Eudoxus said.

  "Any Motie family could learn the truth by observation and deduction," Bury said. "But Byzantium already knew. Perhaps Byzantium grew unhappy with the notion that Medina would command the Sister, so far from Byzantium's sway. Then Byzantium might seek allies easier to dominate.

  "Only a passing thought. Finish your tale, Eudoxus."

  The Motie needed a moment to react. "Tale? Easily told. We were already embattled when East India signaled that a token ship intended for the Crazy Eddie point had failed to pop through to the Eye. We sent tokens along the arms of the arc where the Sister was to be expected. An expedition of ten ships was launched after, provisioned and manned well in advance, and all running from the firefight with the Khanate fleet. The rest of the Medina fleet followed in a guarded retreat, abandoning our little comet, intending to take possession of Crazy Eddie's Sister.

  "By then East India Company's neutrino gauges and telescopes must have seen the action. They have reason for complaint, as you point out. They took our territory by force. Then they donated resources to the exercise: ten years' or more worth of their pitiful token ships. Now they learn that the Sister is not where they were told, but Medina's fleet is in place. They sent ships.

  "None of this surprised us much. But when the Crimean Tartars fleet followed us, we were taken by surprise. Medina expected the entire Khanate fleet to remain with the comet. When our first ship disappeared, the Tartars were seen to correct course. They must have known what they were doing."

  Jacob Buckman's head popped up at Renner's ear. "They knew better than Medina."

  Renner turned. "Talk to me."

  "Why did the Khanate attack now? Now puts the Tartars in just the right position to take the Sister. It looks like some genius among the Tartars-"

  "Figured out exactly when the Curdle would collapse. Uh-huh. Eudoxus, you concur?"

  "It's not my field, Captain Renner. I'll ask. Or they might have been told."

  "By whom?"

  "By anyone! Do you believe I have told you of all the families here?"

  "Okay. Go on."

  "The Tartars destroyed two of the ten Medina expedition ships. One missed the Sister. The rest of us reached the orange dwarf. Our fleet tried to hold the Sister until Byzantium's reinforcements could arrive, but these were not expected soon, or with confidence. Mote Beta is too far. But they held long enough for us all to pop through into an ongoing battle."

  "But not long enough to protect Hecate."

  "No. And that brings us to present time. In ten hours we will reach Inner Base Six."

  8 Medina Base Six

  Rebellious angels are worse than unbelieving men.

  St. Augustine, City of God

  Base Six had changed. Shaped charges blasted most of the worked mass of what had been a comet into shards. A snowstorm of dirty ice and ammonia and rock, all useful ores until the advent of the Sister, expanded in the direction of the battle raging at the Sister. If the detritus didn't shield Base Six from weapons, it would at least blind all watchers. Only Medina's Masters would guess what was happening here, and they only because they had shored in the planning.

  The white sphere that remained was colder than a comet need be. East India had known of the refineries that made hydrogen and the ships that took it away, but had never known of the heat pumps. The hydrogen hadn't all been used to fuel ships, and most of the ships hadn't gone all the way out to Medina Trading.

  Medina Base Six had become a compact hydrogen iceball with a shell of foamed hydrogen ice. Thus insulated and minutely cooled by evaporation, it would hold its cold for decades; possibly centuries. Buried in the iceball was an industrial-sized Empire style shield generator that had served all six inner bases.

  Base Six was too close to the action, too vulnerable.

  Its three dozen ships were mostly disassembled. They always had been, always visibly under repair. East India's visiting Muster had complained of this, but had never seen the significance of all those dismounted rocket motors.

  Now Medina's Engineers mounted forty-one fusion motors in a ring aft of the half-klick snowball. In hours, Base Six had become a warship. It began accelerating immediately, outward, toward Medina Trading.

  Most of Base Six's ships, and the hydrogen they carried, had traveled only as far as the odd-shaped black bubble Mustapha thought of as the Storehouse: odd shaped to avoid detection by radar and other means. Within the Storehouse was a growing store of hydrogen, and a population of Warriors that did not grow because tournaments kept their numbers steady

  Now troopships full of Warriors moved to rendezvous with Base Six. Some would land, some would orbit.

  Base Six was an armed carrier and fuel dump and warship, the heart of a fleet capable of defending whatever treasure had emerged from Crazy Eddie's Sister.

  Sinbad accelerated at .8 gravities, comfortable enough for Moties, not too great a strain on Bury. Behind them the Mote was not much more than a star. It had a barely discernible disk and was just too bright for unprotected human eyes. Murcheson's Eye was a dull red smear off beyond the Mote.

  Four Motie ships, with Eudoxus in the lead; then Sinbad, closely followed by Atropos; finally, four more Motie warships.

  "That's all I can detect, Captain Renner," Commander Rawlins said. "I have the general impression there are more ships moving around out there. We get a sudden detection flash, but nothing we can lock onto. Like... stealthed ships that change shape?"

  "Thank you."

  "Sir. We watched the Motie ships during the battle. This gives us another look."

  "Have any conclusions?"

  "They're pretty good. High performance. We saw nothing but gun actions, no torpedoes. Their ships tend to be small. We could certainly defeat any four of what we've seen so far, barring big surprises."

  "I would not rule out surprises."

  "No, sir, I sure don't. Captain, can you explain what's going on?"

  "Do I detect a note of pathos? All right. It's t
ime for a council of war while we have secure communications." Renner thumbed the intercom. "Please have Lieutenant Blaine come up, and if His Excellency is up to a conversation, he ought to listen in.

  "Rawlins, we're not going to Mote Prime. They're out of it. The important players are all offplanet civilizations, and there are a lot of those. The one that was best prepared for the new I-point is Medina Trading, ruled by Caliph Almohad, and his chief negotiator is Eudoxus, the Mediator we're following, all names chosen by Eucloxus. Okay so far?"

  "Yes, sir. Who are we fighting?"

  "There are a whole bunch of factions." Renner's fingers danced. "I made notes. Here."

  "Got it." Rawlins's eyes focused offstage. "Oh boy."

  "And that's just the important ones."

  "Khanate's got the comet...obody cares... the Tartars hold the new Jump point, and a ship... oh, my God."

  "Yeah. Hecate is a civilian ship piloted by the Honorable Frederick Townsend with Chris Blaine's sister, Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine, aboard as passenger."

  "Oh, my God. Captain, Lord Blaine isn't going to be happy about that! Are we going to rescue them?"

  "Could we?"

  Rawlins was quiet for a moment. "I don't know, but I'd sure as hell hate to go back without trying."

  "I see your point, but Eudoxus doesn't ships even with yours. Right now the best safe, and our Motie allies are trying to deal while, we're headed for a Medina Traders was a joint base with East India Trading, been a readjustment of that alliance."

  "Readjustment?'

  "That's the word Eudoxus used.'

  "Somebody else to fight?"

  "Maybe."

  Chris Blaine came to the bridge and took a place near Renner.

  Commander Rawlins said, "Are things usually this complicated with Moties? Captain, what the hell is our objective?"

  "Good question," Renner said. "First is to survive. Second, get Glenda Ruth Blaine back. She's got a cargo that may change things...may affect our third objective, which is bringing order out of chaos."

  "Cargo?"

  Rennor said, "Lieutenant Blaine?"

  "Yes, sir. As Captain Renner said, there's another objective to consider. The Moties are loose, and that's got to be dealt with, by us or a battle fleet."

  "Only there's no battle fleet." Renner sighed. "Okay, Chris. The cargo." Renner caught Cynthia's eye; he negotiated for coffee.

  Blaine nodded. "Commander Rawlins, just how much do you know about Moties?"

  "Not much. I skipped the classes on Motie society back in the blockade squadron. Studied their tactics, but I didn't see any need to understand them, since all we were supposed to do was kill them."

  "Yes, sir. You must have a crewman who was that curious. Find him. Meanwhile, I lecture."

  "To begin with, we all know Moties are a strongly differentiated species. Masters are the only Motie class that really counts; whereas the Mediators do all the communicating. Mediators are so likable that we tend to forget that they're not really in charge, that they take orders from Masters

  "But not always," Renner said

  "Okay, consider the three Moties sent to the Empire. Two of King Peter's Mediators, with an older Master related to King Peter but not previously in charge of Jock and Charlie. That gave Jock and Charlie some leeway. They didn't have to obey every order Ivan gave, although they usually did. There must have been rules, but I never learned them. Ivan only lasted six years, and then they were on their own.

  "I once asked Jock what Ivan's last orders were. Jock told me, ‘Act in such a way as to decrease the risk to our kind in the long term. Keep each other sane. Make us look good.' I think she left out considerable detail. And Mediators would lie to us if Ivan had told them to,

  "So here we are back in Mote system and everything we know is a little bit wrong. We're dealing with a space civilization, not a planet. All the Classes will be a little different, some a lot different, even including the Masters. Motie civilization is old. The asteroids have been settled for over a hundred thousand years, time enough for evolutionary changes, and we know the Moties have used radical breeding programs on themselves as well."

  "Like Saurons," Rawlins said.

  "Well, not really," Renner said. "Different objectives, different reasons."

  "Yes, sir." Rawlins didn't sound convinced.

  "We've had one piece of luck, maybe," Blaine said. "Horace Bury's Mediator apparently left King Peter entirely and sold her services to the highest bidder. Bury-trained Mediators seem to be swapped around out here like money."

  "Must make His Excellency happy," Rawlins said. "Is that the reason for all the Arab names they give themselves?"

  Chris's forefinger wagged. "No, no! Skipper, these names were all chosen by Medina's Bury-trained Mediator, Eudoxus, probably for their emotional impact on Horace Bury. Tartars are enemies of Arabs. Medina Traders sounds good to an Arab. Eudoxus was a famous Levantine trader who operated out of the Red Sea and discovered the original Arab trade route to India."

  "Ho, ho," Rawlins said. "And of course Bury knew that."

  "Of course. There is another thing. Motie Masters don't really form societies the way we do. The subordinate classes generally obey the Masters, but Masters don't have any instinct to obey each other, and whatever it is about humans that makes us form societies is largely missing in Masters. Motie Masters will cooperate, and one will take a subordinate position to another, but as far as I can make out, the only loyalties are to a gene line. There's no loyalty at all to any abstraction like an empire, or a city. That's more like an Arab civilization than it's like the Empire, which may account for the popularity of Bury Mediators. Mister Bury is likely to understand things here better than any of us."

  "Including you, Blaine?" Rawlins demanded. "The Word in the fleet was that you were raised by Moties."

  "Somewhat," Chris Blaine said. "We were still in New Caledonia and my father was on the High Commission until I was six years old. It was when we got back to Sparta and my parents set up the Institute that I got to see the Moties every day. Ivan was dead by then, and Glenda Ruth was just born. She saw a lot more of Jock and Charlie and never met Ivan at all."

  "Um. Now what about Hecate's cargo?"

  Renner said. "Chris, let me. You've never even seen the Crazy Eddie Worm. You were on blockade-"

  "Hold it, Captain." There was a snap in Blaine's voice. "Commander Rawlins, the Worm is a hole card of sorts. Sir, are you sure you want to know more?"

  Though he was pretty sure lieutenants didn't talk that way to captains, Renner held his tongue. Rawlins said frostily, "Why wouldn't I want to know, Lieutenant?"

  "If you know and you talk to Moties, they'll learn it," Blaine said. "Commander, until you've been around Moties, you just can't understand how quickly they learn to interpret everything you say or do."

  "I may have an idea," Rawlins said. "A year aboard my ship and nobody in the wardroom will play poker with you."

  "Yes, sir. They may learn from Captain Renner anyway, but probably not. He's had more experience dealing with Moties. They won't learn from His Excellency. Or me."

  "Won't learn what?"

  They turned to see Joyce Mei-Ling coming into Sinhad's lounge. "All right," Rawlins said. "I'll take your word for it, it's valuable, and it's better that I don't know about this Crazy Eddie Worm. Captain Renner, if the objective is to recover Miss Blaine and her cargo, how do we go about doing it?"

  "That's the question," Renner said.

  "We negotiate." Bury was onscreen. "Forgive me, I was invited to listen. Commander Rawlins, what is important now is that we appear to be ready to fight, and that the Moties believe that overwhelming Imperial forces will come to our rescue in the not too distant future, so that it is better for the Moties to conclude an agreement with us now while they still have strength."

  "Yeah. And that they don't learn just how far the Blockade Fleet is from us. Only it's not so far, sir. Into the Crazy Eddie point and back with the Squadron."

>   "Except that whatever's left there will shoot before listening. There's no real way to tell a Motie ship from an Imperial," Renner said.

  "Damn. Of course that's right. And we can't get a message back to Agamemnon either. Commodore, I'm real glad you're in charge and not me." Rawlins paused. "One thing, though. Admiral Weigle's in command of the blockade fleet. He's got to know something has happened. The Jump point back to New Cal has moved, he damned well will know that, so he'll send back for orders, fast. Also he'll look for the new Jump point to the Mote."

  "What will he do if he finds it?" Renner asked.

  Rawlins shook his head. "Stand guard over it, I suppose. But you know, sir, Weigle's an aggressive commander. He just might send a scout. We'd better watch for that. All right, Blaine, what else don't I know?"

  "A lot, but we don't know it either," Chris Blaine said. "For example. These space civilizations are more like nomads than anything settled. No stable maps, no permanent homes. A few, like the ones in the big planetary moons, are relatively fixed, but mostly things shift and change. The value of... air, food, power, machinery, anything that has to be moved, it depends on distance and delta-vee. It changes every second. There must be ways to sell delta-vee."

  "Hah," Rawlmns said. "As if the old Silk Routes changed distances. One day it's like walking across a river bridge to get to Far Cathay. Next month it's thousands of miles away."

  "It was like that!" Joyce exclaimed. "When things were stable and there were strong governments, it was only a few weeks from Persia to China, but when the nomads were strong and bandits blocked the passes, it could be months or years, or no land routes at all. And there were pirate empires in Viet Nam and Sumatra, so even the sea routes weren't stable."

  "An interesting observation," Bury said. "Which may do much to give us new understanding of these Moties. Thank you, Joyce. Kevin, perhaps we should assume these Moties are more similar to bedouin Arabs than to your Empire."

  "Wonderful," Renner said. "The only Arabs I know are you and Nabil."

  "Face," Joyce said. "Arabs are concerned with saving face, even more than Chinese. Appearances are very important. Maybe to the Moties, too?"