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"Ah. Then there are the statuettes." Horvath lifted one and smiled. He had them arrayed like toy soldiers on the table before him: a dozen Motie figurines of transparent plastic. Internal organs showed, through in vivid color and detail. He looked at them again contentedly, then grimaced slightly. These had to be brought back.
Actually, he admitted to himself, they didn't. There was nothing special about the plastic, and the statuettes were recorded in every detail; any good plastic former could be programmed to turn out thousands an hour, the same way these probably were made in the first place. But they were alien, and they were gifts, and he wanted them for his desk, or for the New Scotland Museum. Let Sparta have copies for a change!
He could identify most of the forms at a glance: Engineer, Mediator, Master; the huge Porter form; an overmuscled Engineer with broad, stubby-fingered hands and big splayed feet, probably a Farmer. A tiny Watchmaker (damn the Brownies! twice damn the Admiral who wouldn't let the Moties help with their extermination). There was a small-headed long-fingered Physician. Next to it was the spindly Ru
"The Ru
"These statuettes are extremely detailed. They disassemble like puzzles to reveal internal details. Although we do not yet know the function of most internal organs, we may be sure they divide differently from those of human organs, and it is possible that the Moties' conscious design philosophy of overlapping multiple functions is duplicated in their gross anatomy as well. We have identified the heart and lungs, the latter consisting of two distinct lobes of unequal size."
Chaplain Hardy braced himself in the doorway when the ship's acceleration dropped, then surged. After the engineers had steadied it he came into the lounge and sat quietly without speaking. Horvath waved and continued his dictation.
"The only area where the statuettes are vague and undifferentiated is in the reproductive organs." Horvath smiled and winked at the Chaplain. He really did feel contented. "The Moties have always been reticent about sex. "These statuettes may be educational toys for children; certainly they were mass produced. If this is the case-we really must ask the Moties if we get a chance-it implies that the Mote culture shares some similarities with that of humans." Horvath frowned. Sex education for the young was a periodic thing among humanity. Sometimes it was quite explicit and widespread, and at other periods of history it was nonexistent. In the civilized portions of the Empire such things were left to books at present, but there were plenty of newly discovered planets where the whole topic was forbidden knowledge to subadolescents.
"Of course, it may be simple efficiency," Horvath continued. "Statuettes made to differentiate the sex organs would require three times as many figurines, a set for the male, another for the female, and a third for the reproductive phase itself. I note that there is a single developed mammary gland on all the forms, and I believe we were told that all Moties can suckle young." He stopped dictating and punched in codes on his computer. Words flowed across the screen. "Yes. And the single working teat is always on the right side, or at least on the side opposite the single heavy-work arm. Thus the pups may be held with the strong arm, while the right arms are available for petting and grooming; this is very logical, given the ultrasensitivity and dense sensory nerve endings in the right hands." He cleared his throat and reached for the brandy snifter, waving at Hardy to help himself.
"The single teat on the higher forms argues strongly that multiple birth must be extremely rare among the upper-caste Moties. However, litters must be common with the Watchmaker caste, at least this must be the case after the creature has produced several offspring. We can be sure that the vestigial teats down the right side of the miniature develop into working organs at some stage of their development; otherwise their numbers could not have increased so rapidly aboard MacArthur." He set the box down. "How goes it, David?"
"Fairly well. That Motie toy has me fascinated. It's a game of logic, no question about it, and a very good one at that. One player selects some rule to sort the various objects into categories, and the other players attempt to deduce the rule and prove it. Very interesting."
"Ah. Perhaps Mr. Bury will want to market it."
Hardy shrugged. "The Church might buy a few-to train graduate theologians. I doubt if there'd be much mass popular interest. Too tough." He looked at the statuettes and frowned. "There seems to be at least one missing form, did you notice?"
Horvath nodded. "The nonsentient beast we saw in the zoo. The Moties wouldn't talk about it at all while we were there."
"Or afterward either," Hardy added. "I asked my Fyunch(click) but she kept changing the subject."
"Another mystery for future investigation," Horvath said. "Although we might do well to avoid the subject in the presence of Moties. We wouldn't want to ask their ambassadors, for example." He paused invitingly.
David Hardy smiled softly but didn't take the invitation.
"Well," Horvath "You know there aren't many things the Moties didn't want to talk about. I wonder why they're so shy about that caste? I'm fairly sure the thing wasn't an ancestor of the other Motie forms-not an ape or monkey, so to speak."
Hardy sipped his brandy. It was very good, and he wondered where the Moties had obtained a supply for a model. This was undoubtedly a synthetic, and Hardy thought he could detect the difference, but he had to strain. "Very thoughtful of them to put this aboard." He sipped again.
"Too bad we'll have to leave all this," Horvath said. "We're doing all right with the recording, though. Holograms, x-rays, mass densities, radon emissions, and anything that comes apart we take apart and holo the contents. Commander Sinclair has been very helpful-the Navy can be very helpful sometimes. I wish it were always so."
Hardy shrugged. "Have you thought about the problem from the Navy's view? If you guess wrong, you've lost some information. If they guess wrong, they've endangered the race."
"Bosh. One planetful of Moties? No matter how advanced they are, there just aren't enough Moties to threaten the Empire. You know that, David."
"I suppose, Anthony. I don't think the Moties are a threat either. On the other' hand, I can't believe they're quite as simple and open as you seem to think. Of course I've had more time to think about them than you have."
"Eh?" Horvath prompted. He liked Chaplain Hardy. The clergyman always had interesting stories and ideas. Of course he'd be easy to talk to, his profession demanded it, but he wasn't a typical priest-or a typical Navy blockhead either.
Hardy smiled. "I can't perform any of my regular jobs, you know. Linguistic archeology? I'll never even learn the Motie language. As to the commission the Church gave me, I doubt if there's enough evidence to decide anything. Ship's chaplain isn't that time-consuming-what's left but to think about Moties?" He gri