The Mote In God's Eye

Yet the paintings had impact. In the main hall-which had three-meter ceilings and was lined with larger paintings-the tour stopped before a Street scene. Here a Brown-and-white had climbed on a car and was apparently haranguing a swarm of Browns and Brown-and-whites, while behind him the sky burned sunset-red. The expressions were all the same flat smile, but Re

"It's called ‘Return to Your Tasks.' You'll find that the Crazy Eddie theme recurs constantly," said Sally's Motie. She moved on before she could be asked to explain further.

The next painting in line showed a quasi-Motie, tall and thin, small-headed, long-legged. It was ru

The next was another outdoor scene: a score of Browns and Whites eating around a blazing campfire. Animal eyes gleamed red around them. The whole landscape was dark red; and overhead Murcheson's Eye gleamed against the Coal Sack.

"You can't tell what they're thinking and feeling from looking at them, can you? We were afraid of that," said Horvath's Motie. "Nonverbal communication. The signals are different with us."

"I suppose so," said Bury. "These paintings would all be salable, but none especially so. They would be only curiosities... though quite valuable as such, because of the huge potential market and the limited source. But they do not communicate. Who painted them?"

"This one is quite old. You can see that it was painted on the wail of the building itself, and-"

"But what kind of Motie? Brown-and-whites?"

There was impolite laughter among the Moties. Bury's Motie said, "You will never see a work of art that was not made by a Brown-and-white. Communication is our specialty. Art is communication."

"Does a White never have anything to say?"

"Of course. He has a Mediator say it for him. We translate, we communicate. Many of these paintings are arguments, visually expressed."

Weiss had been trailing along, saying nothing. Re

Weiss scratched his jaw. "Sir, I haven't been in a museum since grade school... but aren't some paintings made just to be pretty?"

"Umm."

There were only two portraits in all the halls of paintings. Brown-and-whites both, they both showed from the waist up. Expression in the Moties must show in body language, not faces. These portraits were oddly lighted and their arms were oddly distorted. Re

"Evil? No!" said Re

"Is it still used?"

"After a fashion. But it fragmented, of course. Languages do that. Sinclair and Potter and Bury don't speak the same language you do. Sometimes the sounds are similar, but the nonverbal signals are very different."

Re

"Re

"I've never tried. I can guess."

"Then can you imagine anyone going to that much trouble if he doesn't have something to say?"

"How about ‘Mountains are pretty'?" Weiss suggested.

Re

The statues were better than the paintings. Differences in pigment and lighting did not intrude. Most did show Moties; but they were more than portraits. A chain of Moties of diminishing size, Porter to three Whites to nine Browns to twenty-seven miniatures? No, they were all done in white marble and had the shape of decision makers. Bury regarded them without expression and said, "It occurs to me that I will need interpretations of any of these before I could sell them anywhere. Or even give them as gifts."

"Inevitably so," said Bury's Motie. "This, for instance, illustrates a religion of the last century. The soul of the parent divides to become the children, and again to become the grandchildren, ad infinitum."

Another showed a number of Moties in red sandstone. They had long, slender fingers, too many on the left hand, and the left arm was comparatively small. Physicians? They were being killed by a thread of green glass that swept among them like a scythe: a laser weapon, held by something offstage. The Moties were reluctant to talk about it. "And unpleasant event in history," said Bury's Motie, and that was that.

Another showed fighting among a few marble Whites and a score of an unrecognizable type done in red sandstone. The red ones were lean and menacing, armed with more than their share of teeth, and claws. Some weird machine occupied the center of the melee. "Now that one is interesting," said Re

"A working time machine?"

"Not working, Jonathon. It was never completed. His Master went broke trying to finish it."

"Oh." Whitbread showed his disappointment.

"It was never tested," said the Mode. "The basic theory may be flawed."

The machine looked like a small cyclotron with a cabin inside. It almost made sense, like a Langston Field generator.

"You interest me strangely," Re

"That's right. Our talent is communication, but our major task is stopping fights. Sally has lectured us on your, let's say, your racial problems involving weapons and the surrender reflex. We Mediators evolved out of that. We can explain one being's viewpoint to another. Noncommunication can assume dangerous proportions sometimes-usually just before a war, by one of those statistical flukes that make you believe in coincidence. If one of us can always get to transportation-or even to telephones or radios-war becomes unlikely."

There were awed expressions among the humans, "Vee-erry nice," said Re

"By law and tradition, yes. In practice, don't be a fool."

"OK. These things fighting around the time machine—"

"Legendary demons," Bury's Motie explained. "They defend the structure of reality."

Re

"And why the time machine?"

"The Mediator felt that a certain incident in history had happened because of a lack of communication. He decided to correct it." Re