The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

  "Sir Kevin, Your Excellency," she said. Her eyes twinkled. "I thought I'd introduce myself before my parents made it all formal." Her smile was infectious. "Kevin, I'm delighted to meet you! Your Excellency, did you know my brother was named for your pilot?"

  "No, my Lady—"

  She nodded. "Kevin Christian. We mostly call him Chris. Mom doesn't like us chattering about family. Did they ever tell you, Kevin? But you guessed anyway. Kevin, I still have the christening cup you sent. Thank you, and thank you, too, Your Excellency! There wasn't anything like that for sale for years."

  "It was crafted in our laboratories, my Lady," Bury said. His smile was genuine. "I'm pleased that you remembered."

  "It still delivers the best-tasting milk on Sparta." Glenda Ruth pointed to the wall clock display of the dark and light areas of Sparta. "They're waiting for us. Uh—I'm not supposed to tell, but I hope you're prepared for a surprise." She held the door open for Bury's travel chair.

  There was something about Jennifer Banda's smile as she and Glenda Ruth ushered them into Lady Blaine's office. Both Blaines were wearing that same conspiratorial smile. The air of mystery was getting on Renner's nerves.

  There was another oecupant.

  He stood up slowly from his oddly designed travel chair and bowed. A hairy, grinning, hunchbacked dwarf, not just short but grotesquely misshapen, too. You don't stare at a dwarf, and Renner was in control of his expression, but he lost it all when the stranger bowed. His backbone jutted, broken in two places.

  The mind would always misinterpret that first sight.

  It stood four and a half feet tall. It was hairy. The brown and white markings were still visible, though they had shaded mostly to white. There was one big ear on the right side, and no room for one on the left; the massive shoulder muscles ran right up to knobs at the top of the misshaped skull. There were two slender right arms. The dolphin-grin was simply the shape of its face.

  Renner gaped. For a moment he couldn't take his eyes off it . . . and then he remembered Bury.

  Horace Bury's face was all the wrong colors. He'd opened the case in the arm of his travel chair, but his hands were shaking too badly to deal with the diagnostic sleeve. Renner slipped it into place. The system began feeding Bury tranquilizers at once. Renner studied the readings for a moment before he looked up.

  "Captain, that was nasty. I mean my Lord. My Lord Blaine, you could have killed him, dammit!"

  "Dad, I told you—"

  Earl Blaine nibbled his lip. "I hadn't thought. Your Excellency . . ."

  Bury was furious, but he had it under control. "An excellent joke, my Lord. Excellent. Who are you?"

  The Motie said, "I'm Jock, Excellency. It's good to see you in such health."

  ". . . Yes. It must be, considering. I find it stunning to see you in such health. Did you lie to us? Mediators die around age twenty-five, you said. All Moties die if they cannot be made pregnant, and the Mediators are mules. Sterile, you said."

  Renner said, "Between the legs."

  Bury looked. "Male? Allah's . . . blessing. Lord Blaine— Lady Blaine—this is a stunning achievement. How?"

  Sally Blaine said, "Fyunch(click), give us Charlie 490."

  There was a holowall. Understandably, Renner had not noticed it. Now it showed what looked to be shadows of a CAT scan, the interior of something not human. A Motie, of course. The hips: one intricate and massive joint in backbones as solid as the bones of a human leg. Mote Prime had never invented vertebrae.

  The camera zoomed within the abdomen. A white arrowhead pointed to tiny tadpole-shapes clinging to the abdominal wall.

  "That," Lady Sandra Fowler Blaine said, "is the C-L worm. We did gene-tailoring on a symbiote in the digestive tract. Now it secrets male hormone. It was already secreting something a lot like it. This wasn't the first thing we tried, but we tried all kinds of things, and this didn't get enough attention. Ivan died before we were ready. We think Charlie was killed by the physiological change, female to male. He was too old."

  Bury's color was better. "You've broken the Motie breeding cycle."

  "We've repaired the cycle, Your Excellency," Lady Blaine said coolly. "It's broken in Mediators. Child, male, female, pregnant, male, female, pregnant, that's how it goes with Motie classes. But Mediators are sterile mules, so they're only male once, and they die young.

  "We only had three Moties to test, but we could ask questions. When a Motie's been male awhile, the single testis withers and the Motie goes female. Giving birth excites cells in the birth canal, and more testes form, but only one grows to term."

  "He's carrying more than one of your worms," Renner pointed out.

  "We worried about that, but it's not a problem," Glenda Ruth said. "The kidney flushes the extra hormone. This is an old, well-established Motie parasite. It had already evolved practically to symbiote stage. It won't overbreed inside its host. The hormone itself inhibits that, and the worm long ago developed other mechanisms to protect the host."

  Bury's eyes flicked to Renner's. They must have been thinking exactly alike: there'd be no problem transporting the symbiote.

  Bury said, "What next, my Lady?"

  Sally nibbled her lip. "We don't know. Kevin? I think you understood the Crazy Eddie concept better than most of us. Would they want this?"

  "Of course they will!" Glenda Ruth said.

  Sally looked at her daughter coldly, then turned back to Renner.

  "Does this make them fertile?" Renner asked.

  "No. Not Mediators, anyway," Sally said.

  "Keepers," Renner said'.

  Bury nodded. Keepers were sterile male Masters, less ambitiously territorial than most Motie Masters. The title came from the Keepers of the Museums and other public

  facilities, and three Imperial midshipmen had died to find that out.

  Renner grinned suddenly. "Mediators would want it. Masters would want it for their enemies. But you don't know it works on Masters."

  "No. But it does work on Mediators. And if we had a Master to test . . ."

  "Kevin," Bury said.

  "Yeah?" Bury still looked sick. Renner glanced at the clock face on the travel chair. A dull orange light glowed on its face. "Yeah, you've got to get ready for dinner at the Traders Guild. My Lord, my Lady—"

  "We should speak further on this." Bury seemed to have trouble manipulating his lips. "Later. You have a, an exceedingly powerful . . . tool."

  "We know it," Rod Blaine said. "We won't forget. How long will you be on Sparta, Kevin?"

  "Say two weeks. Maybe three." As long as it takes, Renner thought. Now, if not before.

  "Kevin, let's have dinner," Glenda Ruth said. "I mean, no one can get mad if a girl has dinner with her brother's godfather." She looked at her mother and smiled sweetly. Can they?"

  Renner was sleeping like a baby, but the door chime snapped him awake. He asked, "Horvendile, is Bury present?"

  "His Excellency has just entered."

  Ruth stirred. "Kevin? What is it?"

  "I think I should go hold Bury's hand."

  Nabil passed him at the door to the parlor. Renner asked, "How is he? Is he likely to want to talk?"

  "He ordered hot chocolate," Nabil said.

  "Okay. Two."

  The travel chair was in the middle of the rug. Bury was looking straight ahead, motionless, like a stuffed dummy. Presently he said, "I was affable."

  "I'm impressed. What was His Highness like?"

  "He will not become 'His Highness' until he assumes

  his duties as Viceroy." Bury shook his head slightly. "We were at the same table, but several seats apart. Later, many crowded around him in the clubrooms. I formed the impression of intelligence and charisma, but that would be apparent from his career. Really I learned nothing I had not known, but at least we have been formally introduced, and I detected no signs of distaste."

  "So what's next?"

  "I persuaded him to come to dinner Thursday. It was the only time slot he had. He
can listen to me and Jacob reminisce."

  "That'll tell him if he wants to travel with us to New Cal."

  "Yes. Horvendile, determine Lord Andrew Mercer Calvin's preferences in food and entertainment. Kevin, we must go. These happy lords never really saw the problem, and now they think they have a solution!"

  "You've got to admit, they've got a piece of one."

  "Hoskins sees profit from the Mote. The Blaines will want to try out their new toy. The graduate student, Boyarski, wants to play tourist. He was right. There will certainly be another expedition, if the blockade doesn't fail first."

  "I know. What people know how to do, they do eventually. Look at Earth."

  "There's another thing. The Blaine girl will want to go to the Mote. With her family's influence—"

  "Yep. She'll inherit power all right. Glenda Ruth. Nice of her to remember our present."

  "Kevin, of course she remembers, because she knows it gives you pleasure that she does. As she was delightfully at the edge of informal familiarity with me."

  It took Renner a moment to see what he meant. "Oh, my God. Raised by Motie Mediators. She's going to make one hell of a diplomat."

  Nabil brought mugs of chocolate. Bury used his to warm his hands. "The Crazy Eddie Squadron. If they know how important their work is. The expedition to the Mote, when it comes, would have to go through the blockade."

  "Forget it, Horace. The Navy obeys orders."

  "They swear an oath." Bury tapped at the keyboard in his chair. The wall lit.

  "I solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Empire of Man against all enemies foreign and domestic and to extend the protection of the Empire to all humans; to obey the lawful orders of my superiors, and to uphold and defend as sovereign the legitimate heirs descendant of Lysander the Great; and to bring about the unity of mankind within the Empire of Man."

  "You see? Their oath would force them to halt the expedition, if I show it to be a danger."

  "Forget it, Horace. Oaths are one thing, courts-martial are another. But look at it this way. If worse came to worst—say, if an expedition actually went and brought back a Master and his household. Or if a Motie ship got through the Jump points and as far as New Cal and as far as, oh, personal conducted interviews with the interstellar news media. It could become politically impossible to just wipe them out. You've had such thoughts, haven't you?"

  "I have. A Motie household with a Mediator to swear that they left their Warriors—and Watchmakers—home."

  "But now we could sterilize them without hurting them. It's better, Horace. Now, why don't you go to sleep. The Secret Service expects us to be bright eyed and bouncy tomorrow."

  The look Bury gave him would have imbued a stone statue with pity, or at least fear.

  4

  Veto

  I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.

  —Jean Ingelow

  The Yeoman First Class was clearly impressed. Bury guessed that she'd never before met an Imperial Magnate; she was certainly unfamiliar with his titles. Even so, she worked at being casual, and at covering the fact that Bury was kept waiting ten minutes past the time of his appointment.

  "Captain Cunningham will see you now, Your Excellency," she said. "I'm sorry about the delay. We've been really busy this week, I've never seen anything like it." She got up and opened the door to Cunningham's office as Bury directed his travel chair.

  In twenty-five years Bury had only had three case officers. He had no trouble recognizing Captain Raphael Cunningham. They'd never met, but there had been hologram messages. Cunningham looked like a child: a head round as a bowling ball, ringed in fluffy white, and a button nose and pursed mouth. Bury knew everything published about Cunningham's background and career; additionally, what he knew of the officer's childhood and family connections might or might not have startled his case officer. Presumably the Navy understood that Horace Bury left little to chance.

  His investigations had been disappointing if unsurprising.

  There were few levers on Raphael Cunningham. His forty-year Navy career was not particularly distinguished, but it was certainly unblemished. Bury's agents suspected that Cunningham had not been entirely faithful to his wife, but they couldn't prove it.

  Fools, Bury thought. The Navy cared more about appearances than reality.

  It was an effort to stand in Sparta's gravity, but Bury managed it without a grimace. He bowed slightly; he had learned long ago to wait for some gesture before offering his hand to any Imperial officer.

  Cunningham's smile was broad, and he came from behind his desk to go to Bury. "Excellency, it's a pleasure to meet you after all these years." His handshake was firm but brief.

  So, Bury thought. I am kept waiting for ten minutes, but his secretary apologizes. He will meet me halfway. A very correct man is Captain Cunningham.

  "Excellency, I confess I never expected to meet you."

  "Regrettably, my work does not permit me to visit Sparta often."

  "I took the liberty of ordering coffee." Cunningham touched a square inlaid on his desk, and an orderly came in with a tray. He put a large Navy mug on Cunningham's desk, and a smaller cup of black Turkish coffee at Bury's elbow.

  "Thank you." Bury raised his cup. "To our continued cooperation."

  "I can certainly wish for that," Cunningham said.

  Bury sipped his coffee. "Of course, cooperation may be too strong a word. Given the costs and rewards . . ."

  Cunningham frowned slightly. "I expect I don't know all the costs, but as to rewards, I confess some puzzlement, Excellency. We don't have much besides honors to give. Your work in the Maxroy's Purchase affair merits commendation, but you have refused additional honors. May I ask why?"

  Bury shrugged. "I am certainly not unappreciative of Imperial honors, but perhaps they have less—utility-—to me. I thank you for the offers, but there is something else I desire a great deal more."

  Cunningham raised an eyebrow.

  "Captain, you will long have known that I consider Mote Prime the greatest threat to humanity since the Dinosaur Killer struck Earth sixty-five million years ago."

  "We differ there. Your Excellency, I like the notion that we're not alone in the universe. Different minds, with insights different from ours. Was it the MacArthur thing? The little Watchmaker creatures swarming all through the ship?"

  Bury repressed a shudder. Cunningham likes Moties. A change of subject was in order. "My record shows that I am not a fool. I believe it is no more than a simple statement of fact that the Empire has never had a more effective intelligence officer than me."

  "I can't quarrel with that. Can't offer counterexamples, anyway. Bizarre, the way you can— I gather you see patterns in the flow of money. Is that the way of it?"

  "Money, goods, attitudes. One can see changes in local attitudes by changes in a world's imports or the inflation rate. I followed these matters long before I joined your office," Bury said. "Twenty-five years ago I was—persuaded—to aid the Empire. I seek Outie plots and heresies and treason so that the Empire may concentrate on the real threat. The Moties! Of course you've read my report on Maxroy's Purchase."

  Cunningham smiled. " 'Gripping Hand.' But the Moties hadn't busted loose after all, had they?"

  "No. Not this time, Captain, but—how can I put this?

  "You were frightened."

  Bury glared. Cunningham raised a big, thick-fingered hand. "Don't be offended. How would anyone have reacted? Little bitty lopsided faces looking out of a pressure suit, crawling up a rope just behind you. Christ! Anyone else might have wound up in a mental institution. You—" Cunningham laughed suddenly. "You wound up in the Secret Service. Minor differences."

  Bury spoke low. "Very well. I'm frightened again. I'm frightened for the Empire of Man."

  "So much so that you can't do your work? I must say, Your Excellency, that I don't see supervising a long-term

  naval blockade operation as . . . requiring your special exp
ertise."

  Cunningham already knew. Bury said, "When I was brought into the Secret Service, I had no choice. Since then conditions have changed. Do you believe you could force me to do your will now?"

  Cunningham stiffened. "Excellency, we have never forced you into anything. You go where you will."

  Bury laughed. "A pity Senator Fowler is not alive to hear you say that. In any event, my status has gradually become that of a volunteer."

  Cunningham shrugged. "It always has been."

  "Exactly. And you agree that I am valuable to the Empire?"

  "Of course."

  "Invaluable and inexpensive, in fact," Bury mused. "So. I will continue to be. But now I want something."

  "There is no need to be so aggressive. You want a ticket to the Blockade Squadron," Cunningham said softly.

  "Precisely. Did you learn from Blaine or the IT A?"

  Cunningham laughed. "The Traders don't talk to us. You're serious about this, aren't you?"

  "Captain—" Bury paused. "Captain Cunningham, one of your most effective agents is concerned about a potential threat to the Empire. I am as serious as any other of your madmen. I do not ask for funds, I am quite capable of paying my own expenses. I control seats on the ITA Board, and I have—influence—with several members of Parliament."

  Cunningham sighed. "We're worried about the blockade, too."

  "Oh?" There was something! Bury would not lose face by reaching for his diagnostic sleeve; not yet.

  "There's a threat to the blockade, yes. Of sorts. Maybe we can deal. Have you read the recent news stories by Alysia Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo?"

  "You are the second person to ask me that in as many days. No, but I shall as soon as I return to my rooms."

  "Good. Excellency, that—investigative reporter has been giving us pure holy hell. I won't say she hasn't found some reason to, but God damn it! The Crazy Eddie Squadron has been out there forever. Blockade duty is the worst kind of duty the Navy can assign. Constant possibility of danger, but mostly boredom. Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then—"