The Gripping Hand

"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?"

Re

"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, Re

"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 Re

"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 Re

"That's the question," Re

"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," Re

"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?" Re

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," Re

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

"I didn't notice that on Mote Prime," Re

"Except His Excellency," Chris Blaine said. "Look at how valuable Bury Mediators are. Of course they're expecting the Empire to be much more like Mr. Bury sees it than as we do."

"As I saw it nearly thirty years ago, Lieutenant," Bury said.

"Damnation," Rawlins said. "Commodore, this is way over my head. Only thing I'm sure of, if we let something happen to Lord Blaine's daughter, my career is finished. Well, I guess I know what to do, keep the guns and torpedoes ready and wait for orders. Commodore, you tell me what to shoot at, I'll try to shoot it, but I sure don't know any more than that!"

"Join the club. Signing off." Re

Joyce turned to Chris Blaine. "All right, what's the Crazy Eddie Worm?"

"I can't tell you," Chris said.

She turned to Re

Chris Blaine said. "Joyce, do you want to be forbidden to talk to Moties?"

"No, of course not. And you can't do that!"

"We can't do that. Joyce, we can't fall thirty stories unless somebody's pushed us off a balcony! There are things you can't know. If you know them, you can't talk to Moties because then the Moties would know them, too."

She didn't believe him, not even when Kevin nodded at her.

"Kevin!"

Re

"Come on, Kevin. Come on, open the bloody circuit. Your attention please, Captain Re

"Yeah? Buckman? What?"

"It's a message from nowhere, Kevin, nowhere we know anyway. I just got it."

"Message from nowhere. Important. What is it?"

"It was a general broadcast, wide beam. Must have cost a lot of power to send. Kevin, there's a cover message and a complete library of astronomy for the past hundred thousand years! More, I think! You were asleep, so before I woke you I did some tests. I sampled their observations to see how they match the New Caledonia database over the past few hundred years. It all verifies, all I tested does anyway. Kevin, I think you've got to do something about this. Oh, and Phidippides wants to talk. Atropos wants to talk."

"Yeah." Re

"Loci for some of the more obvious stars check out. I started a program to verify the orbits of Murcheson's Eye and the Mote. Then I came and got you. It should be finished by now."

"Okay, let's go." He squeezed through the curtain. "Hello, Horace. You're looking well this morning. Cynthia, we need breakfast, large, served at our posts." Into his acceleration couch. "Jacob, first show me that message. Then you can get me Atropos."

"It's this file."

The message was printed out on Kevin's screen, but it gave the impression of being written on a scroll: