The Gripping Hand

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.

Re

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. Re

"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 stu

Re

Bury looked. "Male? Allah's... blessing. Lord Blaine-Lady Blaine-this is a stu

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

There was a holowall. Understandably, Re

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," Re

"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 Re

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 Re

"Does this make them fertile?" Re

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

"Keepers," Re

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.

Re

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

"Kevin," Bury said.

"Yeah?" Bury still looked sick, Re

"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, Re

"Kevin, let's have di

Re

"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. Re

"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 di

"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 Re

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."