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They walked. Behind them the Farmer began straightening plants and smoothing the soil around their roots. She twittered to herself, but Whitbread's Motie didn't translate. Staley idly wondered if Farmers ever said anything, or if they merely cursed, but he didn't want to talk just yet. He had to think.
The sky darkened. A red point glowed overhead: Murcheson's Eye. Ahead of them was the yellow city-glow of Bird Whistle. They walked on in silence, the midshipmen alert, weapons ready, the Modes following with their torsos swiveling periodically.
By and by Staley said to the Motie, "I've been wondering what's in this for you."
"Pain. Exertion. Humiliation. Death."
"That's the point. I keep wondering why you came."
"No, you don't, Horst. You keep wondering why your Fyunch(dick) didn't."
Horst looked at her. He had wondered that. What was his twin mind doing while demons hunted her own Fyunch(click) across a world? It brought dull pain.
"We're both duty oriented, Hoist, your Fyunch(dick) and I. But your Fyunch (click)'s duty is to her, let us say, her superior officer. Gavin-"
"Aye."
"I tried to talk your Fyunch(click) into coming down, but she's got this Crazy Eddie idea that we can end the Cycles by sending our surplus population to other stars. At least neither will help the others find us."
"Could they?"
"Horst, your Motie must know exactly where you are, assuming I got here; and she'll know that when she finds out about the dead Warriors."
"We'd better flip a coin the next time we get a choice. She can't predict that."
"She won't help. Nobody would expect a Mediator to help hunt down her own Fyunch(click)."
"But don't you have to obey your Master's orders?" Staley asked.
The Motie swiveled her body rapidly. It was a gesture they hadn't seen before, obviously not copied from anything human. She said, "Look. Mediators were bred to stop wars. We represent the decision makers. We speak for them. To do our job we have to have some independence of judgment. So the genetic engineers work at the balance.
Too much independence and we don't represent the Masters properly. We get repudiated. Wars start."
"Aye," Potter broke in. "And too little independence makes for inflexible demands, and you hae the wars anyway." Potter trudged in silence for a moment. "But if obedience is a species-specific thing, then ye'll be unable simply to help us alone. Ye'll be taking us to another Master because ye hae nae choice."
Staley gripped the rocket launcher tighter. "Is this true?"
"Some," Whitbread's Mode admitted. "Not as completely as you think. But, yes, it's easier to choose among many orders than try to act with none at all."
"And what does King Peter believe should be done?" Staley demanded. "Just what are we walking into?"
The other Mode twittered. Whitbread's Mode answered. The conversation went on for many seconds, very long for Modes. The sunset light died, and Murcheson's Eye blazed a hundred times brighter than Earth's full Moon. There were no other stars in the Coal Sack. Around them the fields of plants were dark red, with sharp black shadows of infinite depth.
"Honesty," Charlie said at last. "My Master believes we must be honest with you. It is better to live by the ancient pattern of the Cycles than chance total destruction and the doom of all our descendants."
"But..." Potter stammered in confusion. "But why is it nae possible to colonize other stars? The Galaxy is big enough for all. You would nae attack the Empire?"
"No, no," Whitbread's Mode protested. "My own Master wants only to buy land as bases on Empire worlds, then move outside the Empire entirely. Eventually we'd be colonizing worlds around the edges of the Empire. There'd be commerce between us. I don't think we'd try to share the same planets."
"Then why-" Potter asked.
"I don't think you could build that many space craft," Whitbread interrupted.
"We'd build them on colony worlds and send them back," the Mode answered. "Hire commercial shipping from men like Bury. We could pay more than anyone else. But look-it couldn't last. The colonies would secede, so to speak. We'd have to start over with new colonies farther away. And on every world we settled there'd be population problems. Can you imagine what it would be like three hundred years from now?"
Whitbread tried. Ships like flying cities, millions of them. And Secession Wars, like the one that wrecked the First Empire. More and more Moties
"Hundreds of Motie worlds, all trying to ship our expanding population out to newer worlds! Billions of Masters competing for territory and security! It takes time to use your Crazy Eddie Drive. Time and fuel to move around in each system looking for the next Crazy Eddie point. Eventually the outer edge of the Mote Sphere wouldn't be enough. We'd have to expand inward, into the Empire of Humanity."
"Um." said Whitbread. The others only looked at the Motie, then plodded onward toward the city. Staley held the big rocket launcher cradled in his arms, as if the bulk gave him comfort. Sometimes he put his hand to his holster to touch the reassuring butt of his own weapon as well.
"It'd be an easy decision to reach," Whitbread's Motie said. "There'd be jealousy."
"Of us? Of what? Birth control pills?"
"Yes."
Staley snorted.
"Even that wouldn't be the end. Eventually there would be a huge sphere of Motie-occupied systems. The center stars couldn't even reach the edge. They'd fight among themselves. Continual war, continually collapsing civilizations. I suspect a standard technique would be to drop an asteroid into an enemy sun and figure on resettling the planet when the flare dies down. And the sphere would keep expanding, leaving more systems in the center."
Staley said, "I'm not so sure you could whip the Empire."
"At the rate our Warriors breed? Oh, skip it. Maybe you'd wipe us out. Maybe you'd save some of us for zoos; you sure wouldn't have to worry about us not breeding in captivity. I don't really care. There's a good chance we'd bring on a collapse just by converting too much of our industrial capacity to building space craft."
"If you're not pla
"Four. My Master wants my head as much as yours well, maybe not. You'll be wanted for dissection."
Nobody showed surprise.
"You're under death sentence because you now have enough information to have worked this out yourselves, you and MacArthur's biologists. A lot of the other Masters support the decision to kill you. They're afraid that if you escape now, your government will see us as a spreading plague, expanding through the Galaxy, eventually wiping out the Empire."
"And King Peter? He doesn't want us killed?" Staley asked. "Why not?"
The Moties twittered again. Whitbread's Mode spoke for the other one. "He may decide to kill you. I have to be honest about that. But he wants to put the dji
"And you?" Whitbread asked. "How do you see the situation?"
"As you do," the Motie said carefully. "I am qualified to judge my species dispassionately. I am not a traitor." There was a plea in the alien voice. "I am a judge. I judge that association between our species could only result in mutual envy, you for your birth control pills, us for our superior intelligence. Did you say something?"
"No."
"I judge that spreading my species across space would involve ridiculous risks and would not end the pattern of the Cycles. It would only make each collapse more terrible. We would breed faster than we could spread, until collapse came for hundreds of planets at a stroke, routinely..."