The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven

  "You were not guests by any choice of ours," Eudoxus said. "As all here are well aware. You forced yourselves into an alliance, and you did not do your part. Your incompetence has brought the Empire here. Twill demonstrate." Eudoxus turned to Blaine. "Tell us how your Empire knew to come to Crazy Eddie's Sister when you did."

  "The token ships. Mere shells," Blaine said. "They could have but one purpose."

  "Exactly," Eudoxus said. "Had East India sent substantial ships, the Empire would not have guessed, and our ships would be well into Imperial space."

  "Where are the ships now?" Wordsworth asked. "Our embassy to humans, do they live or die? I ask the humans to answer."

  "No Motie ships have been destroyed," Elaine said. "One hides in the asteroids of the red dwarf. The others wait with an Imperial cruiser for escort by the main battle fleet."

  "And East India's representative?"

  "You will forgive us, but until this moment we did not know that East India had representatives aboard those ships," Blaine said.

  Eudoxus spoke slowly in a language of emphatic consonants: like popcorn popping. Her white-furred Master listened carefully, then spoke in the same language.

  "Admiral Mustapha says that both the East India Mediators are safe. There would be no reason to harm them. The Mediators aboard our ships had orders to keep contact with the Empire to a minimum until they could speak with someone in high authority. At that time the East India Mediators will be given the rights we agreed on."

  Wordsworth looked to Chris Elaine. "Does he tell true? No powerful Empire person was there, far side of Sister?"

  "Captain Renner and His Excellency were the highest authorities present."

  "Thank you. I must ask now, what have you agreed with Medina?"

  Blaine looked to Bury, then back. "We agreed to come with them. I think it is no secret that we expected to be taken to Mote Prime. Before we could find our balance"-he had almost said footing-"one of our ships and the Sister had both been lost to the Crimean Tartars. Medina has agreed to assist in rescuing the crew and passengers of Hecate. This seems fair. Their duplicity caused our loss."

  "Can you speak for your Empire?"

  ‘"No, but if all of us here are agreed, that will have great influence. I am Kevin Christian Blaine, son of Lord Roderick Blaine. Commodore Renner has influence with the Navy. His Excellency controls the directors of the Imperial Traders Association. Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo speaks for the news services, Empire-wide. What we agree to will be heard at all levels of the Empire."

  Wordsworth asked, "How do we stand, measured along Medina Trading? Have Medina told you? Is there agreement about us, you and Medina Trading?"

  "No. We were told that you were partners with Medina, and that a readjustment of status was being negotiated."

  "I do not understand."

  "That you and Medina are partners now talking about changes in agreements."

  "That is spoke with massive delicacy," Wordsworth said. He spoke slowly to his Master and received a lengthy reply. "We can agree to readjustment," Wordsworth said. "We know we do not have equals with Medina, but we insist we be heard in all discussions."

  "You are not in a position to insist," Eudoxus said.

  Wordsworth gave the Motie equivalent of a shrug. "For us has been worse. Crimean Tartars flee from their former ganglords. They need to know. They need friends. How if they come to us for refuge? If they carry to us human guests and gripping hand on the Sister to trade? We-"

  "You could not."

  "Medina lost the Crazy Eddie point because too many Masters, too little wealth, move in awkward orbits." Resources badly handled, Chris translated... tentatively. "Was bad mistake. Do not do it again. East India yet has wealth like yours in mass. Crimean Tartars do not know value of what they took. East India can work with Crimean Tartars and humans, or we can work with humans, or we can work with humans and Medina. What do you wish?"

  The silence that followed was not empty. Warriors and Mediators and Masters shifted constantly: handholds and footholds, positions, flickering fingers and arms. Chris let it run for several seconds; but he couldn't read the silence, so he broke it.

  "What is it you're dividing? Do you know?"

  "Access to the Empire and the stars beyond our own," Eudoxus said instantly.

  "Your Fyunch(click)'s student's third student tells us Empire would agree with all Moties," Wordsworth said. "All, never less. A stepping... a hierarchy of sorts would look good to you, yes? So, we speak, we mediate, we argue for command over Mote system, too. Some Motie families will control Mote system. We wish will be part of families."

  "The highest possible stakes," said Eudoxus. Before Chris or anyone could answer-if he had had an answer-both Mediators had turned to talk to their respective Masters.

  Joyce whispered, "At least they agree on that."

  Blaine nodded. He was more interested in getting Horace Bury's reaction. Bury caught the query (eyebrow lift, tilt of head) and said, "There's motive here for an arbitrarily large number of murders."

  Eudoxus's head and shoulders suddenly snapped around to face Joyce Trujillo. "What do you know of our breeding habits?"

  Chris considered throwing his arm across her face. Too bloody late... and it would have told the Mediators what he knew. Eudoxus didn't even wait for her answer, only for the emotions that chased across her face. "So. You would deal with the Moties united. How can you expect us to stay united? Our histories tell that we've tried to unite before, and failed always."

  "Neither problems nor opportunities last forever," Bury said. "And what neither Moties nor humans can do, Moties and humans together may accomplish. Allah is merciful."

  "King Peter's ambassadors must have told you much," Eudoxus said. "What happened to them?"

  "They were well treated," Joyce said. "One was still alive a few years ago, as I remember. At the Blaine Institute. Lieutenant Blaine could tell you more."

  "As His Excellency says, everything has changed," Blaine said. "When there was one point to blockade, and that one easily defended, blockade was an effective way to gain time. Now there are two paths to block. There must be a better way, better for humans and Moties. If not..."

  "Your battle fleets will come," Eudoxus said. "War in the Mote system, and you to exterminate us. Bloody hands forever, but else we escape to the rest of the universe. That is your terror." She had spoken truth; she must have seen it in their faces. "Our numbers increase. Our domains. In a thousand years we enclose you. Yes, we must seek a better answer."

  PART 4 - THE CRAZY EDDIE WORM

  Take up the White Man's burden-

  Send forth the best ye breed-

  Go bind your sons to exile

  To serve your captives' need:

  The ports ye shall not enter,

  The roads ye shall not tread,

  Go make them with your living,

  And mark them with your dead!

  Rudyard Kipling "The White Man's Burden"

  "The United States and the Philippine Islands, 1899"

  1 The Tartars

  Knowledge is valuable when charity informs it.

  St. Augustine, City of God

  Through the windows they could see the beheaded corpse of Hecate.

  A scar gaped along half its length: the gap where Hecate's cabin had been. The rest of the hull had been mounted alongside a silver sausage, one of their captors' ships. It flew three hundred meters distant, keeping pace with their own captor. A slender spine projected aft. The drive flame was a faint violet-white glow running along the spine.

  Hecate's severed cabin rode the flank of another such sausage. From inside they could see almost nothing of that: just a silver membrane bulging with fluid, centimeters away, and a rigid cabin forward.

  But they saw Hecate's host ship well enough. Freddy had set their remaining telescope to following it. The sausage was banded with color-coded lines and chains of handholds and catwalks, and Moties. The maze ran round Hecate, too. Moties in pres
sure suits moved over the hull like lice

  They found the lightsail, Freddy's spinnaker. In minutes they had spread several acres of silver film to inflate ahead of the nose.

  "That won't add much to the thrust," Jennifer said. "Why..."

  "Why not? It's there," Terry Kakumi said. "Blink and it's a signal device, blink again and it's heat shielding. They do love to fiddle."

  "It'll heat their cabin some," Freddy said.

  Hecate rotted before their eyes. Engineers and tiny Watchmakers stripped away sections of hull and plated them over their own ship. They found automated cameras at nose and tail and amidships, an officially approved model, all identical, which the Moties seemed to find confusing. Hecate's fuel tank they studied and then left intact. They worked inside the cut end until the Engineer was able to pull loose a glass tank festooned with tubing- "Dammit. That's our sewage recycling system," Freddy said.

  "We'll starve."

  "We have the goodies locker," Jennifer said. "A week's supplies, maybe."

  "It's a double time limit. Will the sewage crowd us out before we starve for lack of basic protocarb? Stay tuned."

  The men were edgy, talking to distract themselves. But Jennifer was calm, even happy, cradling a six-kilogram alien who clung to her with three arms, watching her face intently, sometimes trying to imitate the sounds she made. And Glenda Ruth... was frightened when she thought about it, and frustrated, and uncomfortable; and alive as never before, playing a game she'd begun learning in the cradle.

  She worked on Freddy's back, running her thumbs along basic shoulder muscles, probing deep. Freddy subsided with a grunt of unwilling satisfaction. He asked, "Do you suppose they'll keep the data cubes? I've got some good recordings of the battle."

  Hecate dwindled. They took half the hull to make a curved mirror to relay light from the light-sail. Kilometers of wiring went into the nose of the captor craft. A small craft arrived from somewhere else; some of the wiring, four cameras, and all of Hecate's little attitude jets went aboard; the Engineer pilot traded places with a replacement, and away it went.

  The Moties exposed Hecate's drive; moved it aft; set it to firing.

  Then they were all over it, tuning, testing. Presently their own drive went off, leaving Hecote's running.

  "Something of a compliment," Glenda Ruth said. Freddy nodded.

  Jennifer asked, "Does it bother you? Hecate..."

  Freddy's shoulders set hard. He said, "Not all that much. A racing yacht, we change anything at the slightest excuse. The idea's to win. It's not like"-to Glenda Ruth-"not like your dad losing his battleship, his first command."

  "He still flinches if you mention MacArthur." Glenda Ruth resumed trying to soften the knots in Freddy's shoulders.

  They could hear the rustling. Engineers and Watchmakers were moving over the surface of their own life bubble. What was happening out there?

  "Then again, Hecate is where you and I got together. I do hate-"

  "The bed's quite safe."

  His tension softened. "We get it back from Balasingham, we can build a ship around it."

  The Mediator pup looked into Jennifer's eyes and said, distinctly. "Go eat." Jennifer let go, and the pup pushed off from Jennifer's chest, setting her rotating, sailing unerringly to impact the Engineer.

  The cabin was aswarm with Moties. The Warrior would remain in place for minutes at a time, then bound about the cabin like a spider on amphetamines, and presently come to rest again. The Engineer and three skinny half-meter Watchmakers, and a slender creature with a harelip and long, delicate fingers and toes, had reshaped the hole in the cabin wall into an oval airlock. The Engineer had found the safe near the cabin's forward cone, tapped at the code readout, then left it alone. Now the Moties had peeled the cabin walls away and were going through the air and water regeneration systems. From time to time there came a whiff of chemical strangeness.

  "Too many of them. They'll strain the air changers," Freddy said.

  "I think that one's a doctor," Jennifer said. "Look at the fingers. And the Motie nose is in the roof of the mouth. That thing's got enhanced smell and surgeon's fingers. There was a Doctor caste on Mote Prime."

  "Maybe several."

  "Right. And between them, the Doctor and the Engineer are going to decide how to keep us alive. I've got to say I don't like that."

  Now the three Watchmakers were moving about the cabin drawing green lines. They squeezed the stuff out of what the Navy would have called ration tubes. The patterns weren't complex enough to be writing. The Watchmakers covered the walls with lines and curves, and presently converged where the sewage recycling system had been.

  Freddy asked, "Why not, Jennifer? The way you and Glenda Ruth talk, these Moties can do anything, including keep humans healthy."

  "But it's all very basic, isn't it? Nothing like the castle they built for us on Mote Prime."

  "It's a battle fleet, not a city," Glenda Ruth said.

  Terry Kakumi snapped, "It's a poor little pathetic battle fleet. Look at them, Jennie. Tiny little ships, mostly tank, big cabins because there are too many of the buggers, motors that do a meter per sec squared at best. What's left for weapons? Are they supposed to make them on the spot?

  "What would a real fleet be like, Jennie? Rape my lizard, what couldn't we build with Motie Engineers at the Yards? They're church-rat poor. We've been captured by BuReloc transportees! They're stripping our car and fixing our life support with borrowed chewing gum and string!"

  Jennifer giggled. "Bag ladies with borrowed chewing gum. I love it!"

  Glenda Ruth felt herself bristling, as if these were her Moties. But she could feel it: Terry was right. "What can we do?"

  "Talk to them, Glenda Ruth. Tell them we're worth the price of their last coin," Terry said. "Tell them to pull the pea out from all those mattresses, I'm just a pathetic mass of bruises. Explain ransom to them. Or they'll let us strangle."

  She said, "These don't talk. We'll have to wait."

  The new East India Mediator was old, as old as Eudoxus, with gray streaks at the muzzle and along the flanks. She was escorted into the chamber by a Warrior and a younger Mediator, who both left quickly.

  When she was presented to Horace Bury, the trader flinched. Chris Blaine moved closer and saw what the Motie was carrying. "A newborn?" he asked, and watched Bury relax. Of course Bury took it for a Watchmaker.

  The aged Mediator examined the humans and turned toward Bury radiating delighted surprise. "Excellency! I had never dared hope to meet you in person, even when it became known that you were again in the Mote system. I have thought long on the name I would give myself and have chosen Omar rather than something more pretentious. It is my greatest pleasure finally to meet you."

  Bury bowed slightly. "I am pleased to have had such apt students."

  "And my new apprentice. We have not chosen a name, but-"

  "You presume," Eudoxus said. "We too have new apprentices, and we are eager to introduce them to His Excellency."

  Of course." Omar turned to Wordsworth and began to speak.

  "Hracht!" Eudoxus looked pleased. "We agreed that all conversation will be in Anglic. This means yours as well, does it not?"

  Wordsworth was about to speak, but some gesture from Omar silenced her. "I would prefer rigid rules to no rules," Omar said. "Very well, I will receive my information for all to hear. Where do matters stand now?"

  "Not good not bad," Wordsworth said. "We make progress, agree that East India will have honored place, second to Medina but only to Medina."

  The Mediator pup was staring intently at Horace Bury. The trader was not annoyed. Interesting...

  "Progress indeed," Omar said. "And how will all this be accomplished?"

  Chris Blaine smiled thinly. "Not all details have been resolved," he said. "Yet we can agree, there has never been a better time to unite all Moties. Mote Prime is not a factor. The Empire has many ships. With Medina and East India, and allies you may bring..."

  Oma
r moved closer to Bury. The Mediator pup stretched toward him. Absently Bury's hand reached out, touched the pup's fur, drew back.

  "Excellency," Omar said. "Let us speak seriously. Medina and East India are powerful if united, yet it must be obvious to all that even united we are not the greatest power among the space dwellers."

  "King Peter wasn't the most powerful Master on Mote Prime," Chris Blaine said.

  Bury spoke softly. "Medina and East India were the first to understand the implications of the protostar. Your ships even now negotiate with the Empire. Why should you not have the rewards of prescience?" He deliberately scratched behind the pup's oversize ear. "May I choose a name? Ali Baba, I think." Bury smiled. "Of course there is a small favor we require."

  Eudoxus said, "We have begun to speak with the Crimean Tartars. It goes slowly. They know only obsolete languages."

  "Obsolete to you," Omar said. "Not to us. One of my sisters has spoken with the Tartars, and I received word moments before I landed here. Excellency, the Tartars are afraid. They find that every Motie's hand is against them, and they do not know what they have. Only that it is important, and holding it is dangerous."

  "They're holding a wolf by the ears," Joyce said.

  The hull clonked

  In Hecate's cabin, they waited.

  A Warrior bounded through the new air lock, scuttled about the cabin, and presently settled. It exchanged words with the Warrior already present. It emitted a warbling whistle.

  Other Moties entered: a Master, a meter and a half tall and clad in thick white fur, and a smaller Motie furred in a dense brown-and-white pattern: a Mediator.

  "We're in business," Glenda Ruth said.

  Two Engineers followed, towing a glass cylinder with green goo sloshing in it: Hecate's sewage recycler. Six-fingered hands had been at work on it, but it didn't seem greatly changed.

  "Another compliment," Freddy said. "Given what that cost me, I'd have been surprised if they could make it much more efficient."