The Mote In God's Eye

"It's a gift," Whitbread told her. "Maybe you'll want it for a museum. There are things the Captain wants you to know about us-"

"And things he wants to conceal. Certainly."

From orbit the planet was all circles: seas, lakes, an arc of a mountain range, the line of a river, a bay. There was one, eroded and masked by a forest. It would have been undetectable had it not fallen exactly across a line of mountains, breaking the backbone of a continent as a man's foot breaks a snake. Beyond, a sea the size of the Black Sea showed a flattish island in the exact center.

"The magma must have welled up where the asteroid tore the crust open," said Whitbread. "Can you imagine the sound it must have made?"

Whitbread's Motie nodded.

"No wonder you moved all the asteroids out to the Trojan points. That was the reason, wasn't it?"

"I don't know. Our records aren't complete from that long ago. I imagine the asteroids must have been easier to mine, easier to make a civilization from, once they were lumped together like that."

Whitbread remembered that the Beehive had been stone cold without a trace of radiation. "Just how long ago did all this happen?"

"Oh, at least ten thousand years. Whitbread, how old are your oldest records?"

"I don't know. I could ask someone." The midshipman looked down. They were crossing the Terminator-which was a series of arcs. The night side blazed with a galaxy of cities. Earth might have looked this way during the CoDominium; but the Empire's worlds had never bee so heavily populated.

"Look ahead." Whitbread's Motie pointed to a fleck o flame at the world's rim. "That's the transfer ship. Nov we can show you our world."

"I think your civilization must be a lot older than ours," said Whitbread.

Sally's equipment and personal effects were packed and ready in the cutter's lounge, and her minuscule cabin seemed bare and empty now. She stood at the view port and watched the silver arrowhead approach MacArthur Her Motie was not watching.

"I, um, I have a rather indelicate question," Sally's Fyunch(click) said.

Sally turned from the view port. Outside, the Motie ship had come alongside and a small boat was approaching from MacArthur. "Go ahead."

"What do you do if you don't want children yet?"

"Oh, dear," said Sally, and she laughed a little. She was the only woman among nearly a thousand men-and in a male-oriented society. She had known all this before she came, but still she missed what she thought of as girl talk. Marriage and babies and housekeeping and scandals: they were part of civilized life. She hadn't known how big a part until the New Chicago revolt caught her up, and she missed it even more now. Sometimes in desperation she had talked recipes with MacArthur's cooks as a poor substitute, but the only other feminine-oriented mind within light years was-her Fyunch(click).

"Fyunch(click)," the alien reminded her. "I wouldn't raise the subject but I think I ought to know-do you have children aboard MacArthur?"

"Me? No!" Sally laughed again. "I'm not even married."

"Married?"

Sally told the Motie about marriage. She tried not to skip any basic assumptions. It was sometimes hard to remember that the Motie was an alien. "This must sound a bit weird," she finished.

"'Come, I will conceal nothing from you,' as Mr. Re

"Well-yes."

"But you marry to raise children. Who raises children born without marriage?"

"There are charities," Sally said grimly. Her distaste was impossible to disguise.

"I take it you've never..." The Motie paused delicately.

"No, of course not."

"How not? I don't mean why not, I mean how?"

"Well-you know that men and women have to have sexual relations to make a baby, the same as you-I've examined you pretty thoroughly."

"So that if you aren't married you just don't-get together?"

"That's right. Of course, there are pills a woman can take if she likes men but doesn't want to take the consequences.

"Pills? How do they work? Hormones?" The Motie seemed interested, if somewhat detached.

"That's right." They had discussed hormones. Motie physiology employed chemical triggers also, but the chemicals were quite different.

"But a proper woman doesn't use them," Sally's Motie suggested.

"When will you get married?"

"When I find the right man." She thought for a moment, hesitated, and added, "I may have found him already." And the damn fool may already be married to his ship, she added to herself.

"Then why don't you marry him?"

Sally laughed. "I don't want to jump into anything. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure.' I can get married an time." Her trained objectivity made her add, "Well, an time within the next five years. I'll be something of spinster if I'm not married by then."

"Spinster?"

"People would think it odd." Curious now, she asked, "What if a Motie doesn't want children?"

"We don't have sexual relations," Sally's Motie said primly.

There was an almost inaudible clunk as the ground-to orbit ship secured alongside.

The landing boat was a blunt arrowhead coated with ablative material. The pilot's cabin was a large wrap-around transparency, and there were no other windows. When Sally and her Motie arrived at the entryway; she was startled to see Horace Bury just ahead of her.

"You're going down to the Mote, Your Excellency? Sally asked.

"Yes, my lady." Bury seemed as surprised as Sally. He entered the co

But Dr. Horvath moved forward into the control cabin and took a seat next to the brown pilot. Bury settled into the front row, where seats were only two abreast-and a Motie took the other. Fear surged into his throat. Allah is merciful, I witness that Allah is One- No! There was nothing to fear and he had done nothing dangerous.

And yet-he was here, and the alien was beside him, while behind him on MacArthur, any accident might bring the ship's officers to discover what he had done to his pressure suit.

A pressure suit is the most identity locked artifact a man of space can own. It is far more personal than a pipe or a toothbrush. Yet others had exposed their suits to the ministrations of the unseen Brownies. During the long voyage to Mote Prime, Commander Sinclair had examined the modifications the Brownies had made.

Bury had waited. Presently he learned through Nabil that the Brownies had doubled the efficiency of the recycling systems. Sinclair had returned the pressure suits to their owners-and begun modifying the officers suits in a similar fashion.

One of the air tanks on Bury's suit was now a dummy. It held half a liter of pressurized air and two miniatures in suspended animation. The risks were great. He might be caught. The miniatures might die from the frozen-sleep drugs. Someday he might need air that was not there. Bury had always been willing to take risks for sufficient profit.

When the call came, he had been certain he was discovered. A Navy rating had appeared on his room screen, said, "Call for you, Mr. Bury," smiled evilly, and switched over. Before he could wonder Bury found himself facing an alien.