When We said to the angels:
"Bow before Adam in adoration,"
they all bowed but Ibis.
He was one of the djinni and rebelled against his Lord's command.
And yet you take him and his offspring as your friends.—al-Qur'an
This way," Jennifer Banda said. She ushered them into a twenty-fourth-floor windowed room that ran most of the length of the Institute. A dozen people in their twenties sat at tables or poured themselves coffee from an Imperial Autonetics urn. One wall of the room was French doors leading onto a veranda cantilevered out over the beach area far below. The brisk wind smelled of seawater.
"Quite a view," Ruth Cohen said.
Kevin Renner nodded absently. The atmosphere was odd. A dozen graduate students. They all knew that Kevin Renner and Horace Bury had been to Mote Prime—and they were all looking at each other, or out at a spectacular view that they had certainly seen before.
"McQuorquodale. Philosophic Journal, about six months ago," someone said. "Studies of a hummingdragon in motion."
"But it's not my field."
"It'll still be on the test. Depend on it."
Jennifer led them out to the balcony. Renner went to the rail and looked over, then noticed that Ruth Cohen had stayed near the door.
"Acrophobia?"
"Maybe a little." She sat at a table near the wall, and after a moment Bury wheeled his travel chair to join her. Renner leaned against the railing and enjoyed the view while listening to the conversations behind him.
A female voice waxed eloquent about the importance of parasites in ecologies, while her male companion pretended interest. Renner remembered similar conversations when he was that age and sympathized.
Two students at the next table sipped tea. "I still say it isn't fair. I'm in political science, for God's sake. I'll never need to know anything about organic chemistry that I can't find on the computer."
"That's what you get to prove next week," another said. He chuckled. "I offered to help, Miriam Anne."
Renner took a seat between Ruth Cohen and Jennifer Banda. "Nice place." He scratched his head. "Okay, I give up."
Jennifer Banda raised an eyebrow.
"This is Blaine Institute, the primary center for the study of Moties. Here are two people who've been on Mote Prime. And no one's interested in us."
"Polite," Jennifer said. "They were warned not to bother you."
"Ah." It was the explanation Renner had expected, but he still felt something was wrong.
"We've all studied your flick, Sir Kevin. And every Imperial Autonetics report that mentions the Mote."
"Commendable," Bury said. "And of course you had the Moties to study. I presume holograms were made of everything they said."
Jennifer's answer was drowned out as the girl at the next table choked on her drink, then set it down with exaggerated care.
"What have you learned?" Bury asked.
"Well, we've compiled a general history of the Mote," Jennifer said. "As much as Jock and Charlie could remember."
"Jock and Charlie?" Ruth asked.
"Jock and Charlie and Ivan were the ambassadors from Mote Prime," Jennifer said. "Admiral Kutuzov couldn't refuse them. But you have to remember, they don't represent the whole system; not even the planet. Just one government, or even one extended family, among maybe tens of thousands."
"King Peter," Bury said, "Of course he wasn't really a king and the government wasn't really a monarchy, but that is the name they chose in hopes that it would sound familiar to us. They knew us that well, even then."
Jennifer nodded. "They certainly learned more about us than we did about them. They sent three ambassadors, a Master and two Mediators. Ruth, you know about Masters and Mediators? Moties are a differentiated species with a lot of different castes. The Masters give the orders and the Mediators talk for them. Anyway, they called the Master 'Ivan'—probably because Admiral Kutuzov was in charge of the expedition and they thought the Russians were Masters in the Empire—and the Mediators got the names Jock and Charlie. Ivan died first, but he never talked much except through the Mediators so we didn't learn much from him. Then—anyway, as His Excellency said, we made holos of everything we could. Of course, once you get back a couple of cycles there wasn't much detail."
"Cycles," Ruth said. "I saw a lot about that in school. It's about all I remember about Moties."
"Too right," Renner said. "Everything about the Mote was cycles. Civilizations rise and fall."
"Sometimes incredibly fast," Jennifer said. "And they tried everything! Industrial feudalism, communism, capitalism, things we never even thought of. Anyway, we got lots of stories, what we'd call folk legends, but not much history."
"There couldn't be," Ruth Cohen said. "It takes continuity to make history. I can feel sorry for the Moties."
"I pity them, too," Bury said. "Who could not? They die in agony if they can't become pregnant and give birth. Endless population expansion, endless wars for limited resources. Sometimes I fear that only I can see how dangerous that makes them. Jennifer, we visited Mote Prime. A world crowded beyond description, with complex competitions for power and prestige. We were told it would collapse soon, and I believed them. We also saw signs of a civilization in the asteroid belt. Jacob Buckman told me that many of the asteroids had been moved."
"I'm surprised he noticed," Renner said.
"He lost interest in them after he found out," Bury said.
Jennifer laughed. The couple at the next table had fallen silent. They were joined by two other students who also pretended not to listen.
"We learned nothing important about the asteroid civilization," Bury said. "That has always concerned me. Perhaps you know more, now?"
"Not a lot," Jennifer said. "The—our Moties had never visited the asteroids. Jock believed that the Trailing Trojans were in an ascendant imperial phase, but he was never certain."
"The industrial feudalism on Mote Prime will long since have collapsed," Bury said. "Other systems will be emerging. Or perhaps nothing but savagery."
"Oh, surely not," the girl at the next table said.
"Circles," Renner said. "You didn't see them."
"Circles?" Ruth Cohen asked.
Before Renner could answer, the girl at the next table stood and bowed slightly. "Miriam Anne Vukcik. Political history. This is Tom Boyarski. May we join you?"
"Please do," Bury said.
"Circles?" Ruth asked again.
Renner said, "The circles were the first thing you saw from orbit. Craters everywhere, big and little, and all old, all across Mote Prime. Seas and lakes. One lopsided crater skewed by an earthquake fault line, one across a mountain range . . . you get the idea."
"The great asteroid war. Our Moties didn't remember anything about it," Miriam said.
"They think in circles, too. Cycles. Rise and fall. Population growth and then a war. They keep their museums to help the next civilization get itself together. They don't even try to stop it anymore. They're too old. It's been going on too long."
Miriam said, "Crazy Eddie—"
"Yeah, Crazy Eddie tries to stop it."
"I don't think I understand the Crazy Eddie myth-figure. We have plenty of legends about the coming of the Messiah, and about holy madmen, but no human culture ever pinned all its hopes for the future on a savior who had to be crazy."
"Don Quixote?" Ruth Cohen grinned.
Jennifer nodded agreement. "Good point."
"Humans try the impossible. It's part of our nature," Tom Boyarski said. "Submitting to the inevitable is a big part of Motie nature."
"But Jock really liked Don Quixote," Jennifer Banda said.
"They liked the Persian story about the man who told the king he could teach a horse to sing," Tom said. "And maybe they understood intellectually. But not at a gut level." He laughed. "That's all right. We know a lot about them, too, but deep down they're still a big mystery."
"And always will be," Miriam said.
"No," Tom said. "Next time, we'll know more about what to study. Next time we'll find out."
"Next time," Bury said. "You are planning a new expedition to the Mote?"
Tom looked startled, then laughed. "I don't have the funding." For a moment he must have considered; but he wasn't young enough to suggest that Horace Bury did. "No one is," Tom said. "No one I know of, anyway. But sooner or later there's got to be one."
Jennifer Banda's pocket computer chimed. She looked embarrassed, but she stood up and said, "Excuse me, people. I was told to take you back to Lady Blaine's office."
Bury set his chair in motion. Renner stood up. "You don't understand, and that's the truth," he said. "Crazy Eddie is supposed to fail."
Instead of the receptionist, there was another woman, younger and blond and expensively dressed, in the receiving area outside Lady Sally Blaine's office. Renner had seen a picture of Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine, but he wouldn't have needed that. She had the same finely chiseled features and penetrating eyes as her mother.
"Sir Kevin, Your Excellency," she said. Her eyes twinkled. "I thought I'd introduce myself before my parents made it all formal." Her smile was infectious. "Kevin, I'm delighted to meet you! Your Excellency, did you know my brother was named for your pilot?"
"No, my Lady—"
She nodded. "Kevin Christian. We mostly call him Chris. Mom doesn't like us chattering about family. Did they ever tell you, Kevin? But you guessed anyway. Kevin, I still have the christening cup you sent. Thank you, and thank you, too, Your Excellency! There wasn't anything like that for sale for years."
"It was crafted in our laboratories, my Lady," Bury said. His smile was genuine. "I'm pleased that you remembered."
"It still delivers the best-tasting milk on Sparta." Glenda Ruth pointed to the wall clock display of the dark and light areas of Sparta. "They're waiting for us. Uh—I'm not supposed to tell, but I hope you're prepared for a surprise." She held the door open for Bury's travel chair.
There was something about Jennifer Banda's smile as she and Glenda Ruth ushered them into Lady Blaine's office. Both Blaines were wearing that same conspiratorial smile. The air of mystery was getting on Renner's nerves.
There was another occupant.
He stood up slowly from his oddly designed travel chair, and bowed. A hairy, grinning, hunchbacked dwarf, not just short but grotesquely misshapen, too. You don't stare at a dwarf, and Renner was in control of his expression, but he lost it all when the stranger bowed. His backbone jutted, broken in two places.
The mind would always misinterpret that first sight.
It stood four and a half feet tall. It was hairy. The brown and white markings were still visible, though they had shaded mostly to white. There was one big ear on the right side, and no room for one on the left; the massive shoulder muscles ran right up to knobs at the top of the misshaped skull. There were two slender right arms. The dolphin-grin was simply the shape of its face.
Renner gaped. For a moment he couldn't take his eyes off it . . . and then he remembered Bury.
Horace Bury's face was all the wrong colors. He'd opened the case in the arm of his travel chair, but his hands were shaking too badly to deal with the diagnostic sleeve. Renner slipped it into place. The system began feeding Bury tranquilizers at once. Renner studied the readings for a moment before he looked up.
"Captain, that was nasty. I mean my Lord. My Lord Blaine, you could have killed him, dammit!"
"Dad, I told you—"
Earl Blaine nibbled his lip. "I hadn't thought. Your Excellency . . ."
Bury was furious, but he had it under control. "An excellent joke, my Lord. Excellent. Who are you?"
The Motie said, "I'm Jock, Excellency. It's good to see you in such health."
". . . Yes. It must be, considering. I find it stunning to see you in such health. Did you lie to us? Mediators die around age twenty-five, you said. All Moties die if they cannot be made pregnant, and the Mediators are mules. Sterile, you said."
Renner said, "Between the legs."
Bury looked. "Male? Allah's . . . blessing. Lord Blaine—Lady Blaine—this is a stunning achievement. How?"
Sally Blaine said, "Fyunch(click), give us Charlie 490."
There was a holowall. Understandably, Renner had not noticed it. Now it showed what looked to be shadows of a CAT scan, the interior of something not human. A Motie, of course. The hips: one intricate and massive joint in backbones as solid as the bones of a human leg. Mote Prime had never invented vertebrae.
The camera zoomed within the abdomen. A white arrowhead pointed to tiny tadpole-shapes clinging to the abdominal wall.
"That," Lady Sandra Fowler Blaine said, "is the C-L worm. We did gene-tailoring on a symbiote in the digestive tract. Now it secrets male hormone. It was already secreting something a lot like it. This wasn't the first thing we tried, but we tried all kinds of things, and this didn't get enough attention. Ivan died before we were ready. We think Charlie was killed by the physiological change, female to male. He was too old."
Bury's color was better. "You've broken the Motie breeding cycle."
"We've repaired the cycle, Your Excellency," Lady Blaine said coolly. "It's broken in Mediators. Child, male, female, pregnant, male, female, pregnant, that's how it goes with Motie classes. But Mediators are sterile mules, so they're only male once, and they die young.
"We only had three Moties to test, but we could ask questions. When a Motie's been male awhile, the single testis withers and the Motie goes female. Giving birth excites cells in the birth canal, and more testes form, but only one grows to term."
"He's carrying more than one of your worms," Renner pointed out.
"We worried about that, but it's not a problem," Glenda Ruth said. "The kidney flushes the extra hormone. This is an old, well-established Motie parasite. It had already evolved practically to symbiote stage. It won't overbreed inside its host. The hormone itself inhibits that, and the worm long ago developed other mechanisms to protect the host."
Bury's eyes flicked to Renner's. They must have been thinking exactly alike: there'd be no problem transporting the symbiote.
Bury said, "What next, my Lady?"
Sally nibbled her lip. "We don't know. Kevin? I think you understood the Crazy Eddie concept better than most of us. Would they want this?"
"Of course they will!" Glenda Ruth said.
Sally looked at her daughter coldly, then turned back to Renner.
"Does this make them fertile?" Renner asked.
"No. Not Mediators, anyway," Sally said.
"Keepers," Renner said.
Bury nodded. Keepers were sterile male Masters, less ambitiously territorial than most Motie Masters. The title came from the Keepers of the Museums and other public facilities, and three Imperial midshipmen had died to find that out.
Renner grinned suddenly. "Mediators would want it. Masters would want it for their enemies. But you don't know it works on Masters."
"No. But it does work on Mediators. And if we had a Master to test . .."
"Kevin," Bury said.
"Yeah?" Bury still looked sick. Renner glanced at the clock face on the travel chair. A dull orange light glowed on its face. "Yeah, you've got to get ready for dinner at the Traders Guild. My Lord, my Lady—"
"We should speak further on this." Bury seemed to have trouble manipulating his lips. "Later. You have a, an exceedingly powerful . . . tool."
"We know it," Rod Blaine said. "We won't forget. How long will you be on Sparta, Kevin?"
"Say two weeks. Maybe three." As long as it takes, Renner thought. Now, if not before.
"Kevin, let's have dinner," Glenda Ruth said. "I mean, no one can get mad if a girl has dinner with her brother's godfather." She looked at her mother and smiled sweetly. Can they?"
Renner was sleeping like a baby, but the door chime snapped him awake. He asked, "Horvendile, is Bury present?"
"His Excellency has just entered."
Ruth stirred. "Kevin? What is it?"
"I think I should go hold Bury's hand."
Nabil passed him at the door to the parlor. Renner asked, "How is he? Is he likely to want to talk?"
"He ordered hot chocolate," Nabil said.
"Okay. Two."
The travel chair was in the middle of the rug. Bury was looking straight ahead, motionless, like a stuffed dummy. Presently he said, "I was affable."
"I'm impressed. What was His Highness like?"
"He will not become 'His Highness' until he assumes his duties as Viceroy." Bury shook his head slightly. "We were at the same table, but several seats apart. Later, many crowded around him in the clubrooms. I formed the impression of intelligence and charisma, but that would be apparent from his career. Really I learned nothing I had not known, but at least we have been formally introduced, and I detected no signs of distaste."
"So what's next?"
"I persuaded him to come to dinner Thursday. It was the only time slot he had. He can listen to me and Jacob reminisce."
"That'll tell him if he wants to travel with us to New Cal."
"Yes. Horvendile, determine Lord Andrew Mercer Calvin's preferences in food and entertainment. Kevin, we must go. These happy lords never really saw the problem, and now they think they have a solution!"
"You've got to admit, they've got a piece of one."
"Hoskins sees profit from the Mote. The Blaines will want to try out their new toy. The graduate student, Boyarski, wants to play tourist. He was right. There will certainly be another expedition, if the blockade doesn't fail first."
"I know. What people know how to do, they do eventually. Look at Earth."
"There's another thing. The Blaine girl will want to go to the Mote. With her family's influence — "
"Yep. She'll inherit power all right. Glenda Ruth. Nice of her to remember our present."
"Kevin, of course she remembers, because she knows it gives you pleasure that she does. As she was delightfully at the edge of informal familiarity with me."
It took Renner a moment to see what he meant. "Oh, my God. Raised by Motie Mediators. She's going to make one hell of a diplomat."
Nabil brought mugs of chocolate. Bury used his to warm his hands. "The Crazy Eddie Squadron. If they know how important their work is. The expedition to the Mote, when it comes, would have to go through the blockade."
"Forget it, Horace. The Navy obeys orders."
"They swear an oath." Bury tapped at the keyboard in his chair. The wall lit.
"I solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Empire of Man against all enemies foreign and domestic and to extend the protection of the Empire to all humans; to obey the lawful orders of my superiors, and to uphold and defend as sovereign the legitimate heirs descendant of Lysander the Great; and to bring about the unity of mankind within the Empire of Man."
"You see? Their oath would force them to halt the expedition, if I show it to be a danger."
"Forget it, Horace. Oaths are one thing, courts-martial are another. But look at it this way. If worse came to worst—say, if an expedition actually went and brought back a Master and his household. Or if a Motie ship got through the Jump points and as far as New Gal and as far as, oh, personal conducted interviews with the interstellar news media. It could become politically impossible to just wipe them out. You've had such thoughts, haven't you?"
"I have. A Motie household with a Mediator to swear that they left their Warriors—and Watchmakers—home."
"But now we could sterilize them without hurting them. It's better, Horace. Now, why don't you go to sleep. The Secret Service expects us to be bright eyed and bouncy tomorrow."
The look Bury gave him would have imbued a stone statue with pity, or at least fear.