Rebellious angels are worse than unbelieving men
—St. Augustine, City of God
Base Six had changed. Shaped charges blasted most of the un-worked mass of what had been a comet into shards. A snowstorm of dirty ice and ammonia and rock, all useful ores until the advent of the Sister, expanded in the direction of the battle raging at the Sister. If the detritus didn't shield Base Six from weapons, it would at least blind all watchers. Only Medina's Masters would guess what was happening here, and they only because they had shared in the planning.
The white sphere that remained was colder than a comet need be. East India had known of the refineries that made hydrogen and the ships that took it away, but had never known of the heat pumps. The hydrogen hadn't all been used to fuel ships, and most of the ships hadn't gone all the way out to Medina Trading.
Medina Base Six had become a compact hydrogen iceball with a shell of foamed hydrogen ice. Thus insulated and minutely cooled by evaporation, it would hold its cold for decades; possibly centuries. Buried in the iceball was an industrial-sized Empire-style shield generator that had served all six inner bases.
Base Six was too close to the action, too vulnerable.
Its three dozen ships were mostly disassembled. They always had been, always visibly under repair. East India's visiting Master had complained of this, but had never seen the significance of all those dismounted rocket motors.
Now Medina's Engineers mounted forty-one fusion motors in a ring aft of the half-klick snowball. In hours, Base Six had become a warship. It began accelerating immediately, outward, toward Medina Trading.
Most of Base Six's ships, and the hydrogen they carried, had traveled only as far as the odd-shaped black bubble Mustapha thought of as the Storehouse: odd shaped to avoid detection by radar and other means. Within the Storehouse was a growing store of hydrogen, and a population of Warriors that did not grow because tournaments kept their numbers steady.
Now troopships full of Warriors moved to rendezvous with Base Six. Some would land, some would orbit.
Base Six was an armed carrier and fuel dump and warship, the heart of a fleet capable of defending whatever treasure had emerged from Crazy Eddie's Sister.
Sinbad accelerated at .8 gravities, comfortable enough for Mo-ties, not too great a strain on Bury. Behind them the Mote was not much more than a star. It had a barely discernible disk and was just too bright for unprotected human eyes. Murcheson's Eye was a dull red smear off beyond the Mote.
Four Motie ships, with Eudoxus in the lead; then Sinbad, closely followed by Atropos; finally, four more Motie warships.
"That's all I can detect, Captain Renner," Commander Rawlins said. "I have the general impression there are more ships moving around out there. We get a sudden detection flash, but nothing we can lock onto. Like . . . stealthed ships that change shape?"
"Thank you."
"Sir. We watched the Motie ships during the battle. This gives us another look."
"Have any conclusions?"
"They're pretty good. High performance. We saw nothing but gun actions, no torpedoes. Their ships tend to be small. We could certainly defeat any four of what we've seen so far, barring big surprises."
"I would not rule out surprises."
"No, sir, I sure don't. Captain, can you explain what's going on?"
"Do I detect a note of pathos? All right. It's time for a council of war while we have secure communications." Renner thumbed the intercom. "Please have Lieutenant Blaine come up, and if His Excellency is up to a conversation, he ought to listen in.
"Rawlins, we're not going to Mote Prime. They're out of it. The important players are all offplanet civilizations, and there are a lot of those. The one that was best prepared for the new I-point is Medina Trading, ruled by Caliph Almohad, and his chief negotiator is Eudoxus, the Mediator we're following, all names chosen by Eudoxus. Okay so far?"
"Yes, sir. Who are we fighting?"
"There are a whole bunch of factions." Renner's fingers danced. "I made notes. Here."
"Got it." Rawlins's eyes focused offstage. "Oh boy."
"And that's just the important ones."
"Khanate's got the comet . . . nobody cares . . . the Tartars hold the new Jump point, and a ship . . . oh, my God."
"Yeah. Hecate is a civilian ship piloted by the Honorable Frederick Townsend with Chris Blaine's sister, Glenda Ruth Fowler Blaine, aboard as passenger."
"Oh, my God. Captain, Lord Blaine isn't going to be happy about that! Are we going to rescue them?"
"Could we?"
Rawlins was quiet for a moment. "I don't know, but I'd sure as hell hate to go back without trying."
"I see your point, but Eudoxus doesn't think we have enough ships even with yours. Right now the best evidence is that they're safe, and our Motie allies are trying to deal with the Tartars. Meanwhile, we're headed for a Medina Traders base. Until recently it was a joint base with East India Trading, but apparently there's been a readjustment of that alliance."
"Readjustment?"
"That's the word Eudoxus used."
"Somebody else to fight?"
"Maybe."
Chris Blaine came to the bridge and took a place near Renner.
Commander Rawlins said, "Are things usually this complicated with Moties? Captain, what the hell is our objective?"
"Good question," Renner said. "First is to survive. Second, get Glenda Ruth Blaine back. She's got a cargo that may change things . . . may affect our third objective, which is bringing order out of chaos."
"Cargo?"
Renner said, "Lieutenant Blaine?"
"Yes, sir. As Captain Renner said, there's another objective to consider. The Moties are loose, and that's got to be dealt with, by us or a battle fleet."
"Only there's no battle fleet." Renner sighed. "Okay, Chris. The cargo." Renner caught Cynthia's eye; he negotiated for coffee.
Blaine nodded. "Commander Rawlins, just how much do you know about Moties?"
"Not much. I skipped the classes on Motie society back in the blockade squadron. Studied their tactics, but I didn't see any need to understand them, since all we were supposed to do was kill them."
"Yes, sir. You must have a crewman who was that curious. Find him. Meanwhile, I lecture.
"To begin with, we all know Moties are a strongly differentiated species. Masters are the only Motie class that really counts; whereas the Mediators do all the communicating. Mediators are so likable that we tend to forget that they're not really in charge, that they take orders from Masters."
"But not always," Renner said.
"Okay, consider the three Moties sent to the Empire. Two of King Peter's Mediators, with an older Master related to King Peter but not previously in charge of Jock and Charlie. That gave Jock and Charlie some leeway. They didn't have to obey every order Ivan gave, although they usually did. There must have been rules, but I never learned them. Ivan only lasted six years, and then they were on their own.
"I once asked Jock what Ivan's last orders were. Jock told me, 'Act in such a way as to decrease the risk to our kind in the long term. Keep each other sane. Make us look good! I think she left out considerable detail. And Mediators would lie to us if Ivan had told them to.
"So here we are back in Mote system and everything we know is a little bit wrong. We're dealing with a space civilization, not a planet. All the Classes will be a little different, some a lot different, even including the Masters. Motie civilization is old. The asteroids have been settled for over a hundred thousand years, time enough for evolutionary changes, and we know the Moties have used radical breeding programs on themselves as well."
"Like Saurons," Rawlins said.
"Well, not really," Renner said. "Different objectives, different reasons."
"Yes, sir." Rawlins didn't sound convinced.
"We've had one piece of luck, maybe," Blaine said. "Horace Bury's Mediator apparently left King Peter entirely and sold her services to the highest bidder. Bury-trained Mediators seem to be swapped around out here like money."
"Must make His Excellency happy," Rawlins said. "Is that the reason for all the Arab names they give themselves?"
Chris's forefinger wagged. "No, no! Skipper, these names were all chosen by Medina's Bury-trained Mediator, Eudoxus, probably for their emotional impact on Horace Bury. Tartars are enemies of Arabs. Medina Traders sounds good to an Arab. Eudoxus was a famous Levantine trader who operated out of the Red Sea and discovered the original Arab trade route to India."
"Ho, ho," Rawlins said. "And of course Bury knew that."
"Of course. There is another thing. Motie Masters don't really form societies the way we do. The subordinate classes generally obey the Masters, but Masters don't have any instinct to obey each other, and whatever it is about humans that makes us form societies is largely missing in Masters. Motie Masters will cooperate, and one will take a subordinate position to another, but as far as I can make out, the only loyalties are to a gene line. There's no loyalty at all to any abstraction like an empire, or a city. That's more like an Arab civilization than it's like the Empire, which may account for the popularity of Bury Mediators. Mister Bury is likely to understand things here better than any of us."
"Including you, Blaine?" Rawlins demanded. "The Word in the fleet was that you were raised by Moties."
"Somewhat," Chris Blaine said. "We were still in New Caledonia and my father was on the High Commission until I was six years old. It was when we got back to Sparta and my parents set up the Institute that I got to see the Moties every day. Ivan was dead by then, and Glenda Ruth was just born. She saw a lot more of Jock and Charlie and never met Ivan at all."
"Um. Now what about Hecate's cargo?"
Renner said. "Chris, let me. You've never even seen the Crazy Eddie Worm. You were on blockade—"
"Hold it, Captain." There was a snap in Blaine's voice. "Commander Rawlins, the Worm is a hole card of sorts. Sir, are you sure you want to know more?"
Though he was pretty sure lieutenants didn't talk that way to captains, Renner held his tongue. Rawlins said frostily, "Why wouldn't I want to know, Lieutenant?"
"If you know and you talk to Moties, they'll learn it," Blaine said. "Commander, until you've been around Moties, you just can't understand how quickly they learn to interpret everything you say or do."
"I may have an idea," Rawlins said. "A year aboard my ship and nobody in the wardroom will play poker with you."
"Yes, sir. They may learn from Captain Renner anyway, but probably not. He's had more experience dealing with Moties. They won't learn from His Excellency. Or me."
"Won't learn what?"
They turned to see Joyce Mei-Ling coming into Sinbad's lounge.
"All right," Rawlins said. "I'll take your word for it, it's valuable, and it's better that I don't know about this Crazy Eddie Worm. Captain Renner, if the objective is to recover Miss Blaine and her cargo, how do we go about doing it?"
"That's the question," Renner said.
"We negotiate." Bury was onscreen. "Forgive me, I was invited to listen. Commander Rawlins, what is important now is that we appear to be ready to fight, and that the Moties believe that overwhelming Imperial forces will come to our rescue in the not too distant future, so that it is better for the Moties to conclude an agreement with us now while they still have strength."
"Yeah. And that they don't learn just how far the Blockade Fleet is from us. Only it's not so far, sir. Into the Crazy Eddie point and back with the Squadron."
"Except that whatever's left there will shoot before listening. There's no real way to tell a Motie ship from an Imperial," Renner said.
"Damn. Of course that's right. And we can't get a message back to Agamemnon either. Commodore, I'm real glad you're in charge and not me." Rawlins paused. "One thing, though. Admiral Weigle's in command of the blockade fleet. He's got to know something has happened. The Jump point back to New Cal has moved, he damned well will know that, so he'll send back for orders, fast. Also he'll look for the new Jump point to the Mote."
"What will he do if he finds it?" Renner asked.
Rawlins shook his head. "Stand guard over it, I suppose. But you know, sir, Weigle's an aggressive commander. He just might send a scout. We'd better watch for that. All right, Blaine, what else don't I know?"
"A lot, but we don't know it either," Chris Blaine said. "For example. These space civilizations are more like nomads than anything settled. No stable maps, no permanent homes. A few, like the ones in the big planetary moons, are relatively fixed, but mostly things shift and change. The value of . . . air, food, power, machinery, anything that has to be moved, it depends on distance and delta-vee. It changes every second. There must be ways to sell delta-vee."
"Hah," Rawlins said. "As if the old Silk Routes changed distances. One day it's like walking across a river bridge to get to Far Cathay. Next month it's thousands of miles away."
"It was like that!" Joyce exclaimed. "When things were stable and there were strong governments, it was only a few weeks from Persia to China, but when the nomads were strong and bandits blocked the passes, it could be months or years, or no land routes at all. And there were pirate empires in Viet Nam and Sumatra, so even the sea routes weren't stable."
"An interesting observation," Bury said. "Which may do much to give us new understanding of these Moties. Thank you, Joyce. Kevin, perhaps we should assume these Moties are more similar to bedouin Arabs than to your Empire."
"Wonderful," Renner said. "The only Arabs I know are you and Nabil."
"Face," Joyce said. "Arabs are concerned with saving face, even more than Chinese. Appearances are very important. Maybe to the Moties, too?"
"I didn't notice that on Mote Prime," Renner said. "But maybe I wouldn't have. But— You know, they did have stories about everything. The paintings, the statuary, they made up stories to hide their past, and they did put the best face they could on things. On the other hand it occurs to me that Chris and Glenda Ruth, me, all of us only knew Mote Prime Moties. Which means none of us are real experts."
"Except His Excellency," Chris Blaine said. "Look at how valuable Bury Mediators are. Of course they're expecting the Empire to be much more like Mr. Bury sees it than as we do."
"As I saw it nearly thirty years ago, Lieutenant," Bury said.
"Damnation," Rawlins said. "Commodore, this is way over my head. Only thing I'm sure of, if we let something happen to Lord Blaine's daughter, my career is finished. Well, I guess I know what to do, keep the guns and torpedoes ready and wait for orders. Commodore, you tell me what to shoot at, I'll try to shoot it, but I sure don't know any more than that!"
"Join the club. Signing off." Renner thumbed the switch.
Joyce turned to Chris Blaine. "All right, what's the Crazy Eddie Worm?"
"I can't tell you," Chris said.
She turned to Renner. "The deal was, I learn everything. Now you're going back on that?"
Chris Blaine said. "Joyce, do you want to be forbidden to talk to Moties?"
"No, of course not. And you can't do that!"
"We can't do that. Joyce, we can't fall thirty stories unless somebody's pushed us off a balcony! There are things you can't know. If you know them, you can't talk to Moties because then the Moties would know them, too."
She didn't believe him, not even when Kevin nodded at her.
"Kevin!"
Renner vaguely knew he was asleep, and someone was trying to wake him, and he didn't care.
"Come on, Kevin. Come on, open the bloody circuit. Your attention please, Captain Renner. God damn it, Kevin — "
"Yeah? Buckman? What?"
"It's a message from nowhere, Kevin, nowhere we know about anyway. I just got it."
"Message from nowhere. Important. What is it?"
"It was a general broadcast, wide beam. Must have cost a lot of power to send. Kevin, there's a cover message and a complete library of astronomy for the past hundred thousand years! More, I think! You were asleep, so before I woke you I did some tests. I sampled their observations to see how they match the New Caledonia data base over the past few hundred years. It all verifies, all I tested does anyway. Kevin, I think you've got to do something about this. Oh, and Phidippides wants to talk. Atropos wants to talk."
"Yeah." Renner found his uniform and wrestled his legs into it. "Verification. Well?"
"Loci for some of the more obvious stars check out. I started a program to verify the orbits of Murcheson's Eye and the Mote. Then I came and got you. It should be finished by now."
"Okay, let's go." He squeezed through the curtain. "Hello, Horace. You're looking well this morning. Cynthia, we need breakfast, large, served at our posts." Into his acceleration couch. "Jacob, first show me that message. Then you can get me Atropos."
"It's this file."
The message was printed out on Kevin's screen, but it gave the impression of being written on a scroll:
"Greetings, O Caliph from alar, from the newest of your servants. You may think of us as the Library at Alexandria; our locus is described in this vector. We give you this record of all of our history's observations of this region of the sky. We have watched the skies for countless ages, and we offer all this to you that you will be pleased with us and know how useful we can be. Remember us, O Caliph, when you come into your kingdom."
Renner was at a loss for words. Not so Bury: "This tells us many things," he said, "not the least of which is that they have a Bury-apprentice Mediator."
"What else?"
"They know nothing of us. They're powerless and poor. They have no way to engage in dialogue with us, which may imply that they fear Medina, or that they are light-hours away."
"Both, I'd say," Blaine said. "But they're certainly a long way off towards Mote Gamma. They've got good detection. They broadcast across just over two billion kilometers. Even so, they must be poverty-stricken, or they would have sent something, if only a relay to project a narrower beam."
Bury dreamed, his face calm and perfectly still. "Yes. As is, look what they've done. They've spilled their secrets across the sky. They've given away all they had because there was no way to establish a trade. Perhaps the strangers are not strangers to gratitude. Exactly right, for those with no power at all."
"Thanks—"
"There is more. They believe we are powerful, or likely to become so. This argues that others do also. The question is, why? Certainly we are not now."
"Thanks, Horace. Buckman, what have you got?"
"New program just finishing. Their orbits for the Eye and the Mote check against what I've got, with a minor margin of error."
"A hundred thousand years of observations?"
"That, or two or three."
"Okay, get me—"
"Wait one, Kevin. This is finished. Mmm . . ."
Renner watched Buckman dreaming before his screen and presently said, "See if you can describe it," biting off the words.
"Yeah. It's a reiterative program to predict the collapse of Buck-man's Protostar. Kevin, at first blush it looks like Medina Trading should have had this. It would have given them the right date . . . year. I mean this is really, seriously valuable."
"Okay. Get me Atropos."
"Yes, sir, we received a copy, too," Rawlins said. "It came from an asteriod that trails the Beta Leading Trojans."
"Onk?"
"Beta Leading Trojans, sir—"
"Right, I understand that."
"Well, there's an asteroid that trails that group. The group is sixty degrees in front of Mote Beta."
"Naturally."
"And this is maybe fifty degrees from Beta."
"Unstable. Had to be nudged, right, Jacob? Anything else, Rawlins?"
"Yeah, my Sailing Master is a science buff, and he hasn't
stopped playing with that since he got it."
Eudoxus's sneer was clear and blatant, if hard to describe. " 'Library at Alexandria,' forsooth! Their claim would have been valid once. They're near broken, now. They still had some of their wealth ten years ago."
"That would be when they bought a Bury Mediator," Kevin surmised.
The Motie didn't visibly react. "Yes, they bought their Bury Fyunch(click) from Persia. They were maintaining their ancient tradition of collecting and codifying knowledge. Perhaps they still are.
"They're the oldest family we know of. They've traded in information throughout history. They've had to move countless times. They were in the Leading Trojans of Beta eight thousand years ago, at the killing of the Doctors."
"We heard of that," Renner said. Something made him add, "No, I guess we didn't."
"Was there a Killing of the Doctors on Mote Prime? I'm not surprised," Eudoxus said. "It must seem so obvious. Doctors make population problems worse, yes?"
"Obvious, right."
"Here it was very successful. Alexandria refused to participate and so did some other forgotten civilizations; they must all have been destroyed by the victors. Alexandria alone kept their Doctors. Afterward they bred a basic stock and sold crossbreeds and tailored mutations. But other cultures have sequestered their own breeding stock, Doctors and other rare castes, and Alexandria has fallen on hard times."
"Should we be dealing with them?" Renner asked. He noticed Bury's attention fully on the screen.
"It does no harm," Eudoxus said. "They are considered—a bit strange. But they're no threat, and they can be useful."
Bury was nodding to himself. When Renner broke the connection with Eudoxus, Bury said, "Interesting. Strange. No threat. Librarians. Kevin, this group is poor, but it is permitted to keep its resources." He smiled softly. "Whatever our final decisions, they should include Alexandria."
"Okay, we're closing on it," Buckman said. He enlarged the image on the screen: a dark object surrounded by a glare. "Ah. And now Eudoxus is relaying a better picture."
The Motie ship had run on ahead and was nearly alongside the Motie base. The screens showed a ring of fusion fire linking black candle flames: fusion rocket motors, forty or more, bright enough to wash out the sensors.
The light washed out some detail, but . . . the motors ringed one side of a highly regular iceball. Most of the iceball was webbed in colored lines and studded here and there with domes connected by bright bands on the surface. Some of the domes were transparent. There were ships, too, scores of them on the ice and in the space around it.
The instruments aboard Atropos were superior to what Sinbad carried. A man aboard Atropos was relaying data. "Mass: sixty-five thousand tonnes. One klick by half a klick by half a klick. Albedo: ninety-six percent."
"My God, it's huge," Renner said. "Not so bloody big for a comet, but it's not a comet anymore. It's a carrier spacecraft! Joyce, did the Empire ever build—"
The image became a black ball with only the engine-glare protruding. The proprietors had closed the Field.
Eudoxus appeared. "That's Inner Base Six," she said. "Maneuver to the gripping side in this plane."
From Atropos: "The surface is foamed hydrogen ice. We think the interior is hydrogen ice; the mass is about right. The jets are hydrogen fusion with some refinements."
Renner said, "The Crazy Eddie Probe looked bigger than that.
Way bigger, but it turned out to be only a lightsail. I remember
before we found that out, Captain Blaine was wondering if we'd
have to land on it with Marines."
"This time we do land, I think," Horace Bury said.
Half an hour later, Sinbad was close enough to feel the iceball's minuscule gravity. "Here goes," Renner said.
"Yes, sir," Commander Rawlins said. "Sir, I agree it's best to get Sinbad under a powerful Langston Field, but I won't be sorry to keep Atropos out here where I can maneuver. Captain, they've got a lot of ships and guns in there. There's no way I could force them to let you out."
"Right," Renner said.
"We can presume that Hecate's crew are in similar circumstances," Blaine said.
"The Moties of Mote Prime were gracious hosts," Bury said. "We believe these Moties are even more similar to Arabs."
"Yeah. Well, it's one way to find out if Moties have the same ideas about hospitality that Arabs do," Renner said. "As Allah wills. I am ready, Kevin."
The black shield disappeared. Sinbad sank toward Base Six. Phidippides moved ahead, veering away toward its own mooring.
Chris pointed. "I think that must be ours."
Renner laughed. "Yeah. My God, it's a mosque."
It was magnificent. It was human, the only shape down there that wasn't utilitarian and alien. Light and airy, a bubble of painted masonry afloat on the ice field. The structure couldn't have been marble; it might well have been carved ice. It was far more mosquelike than the castle King Peter's people had built them on Mote Prime, and considerably smaller. A mosque with a cavity in it . . . a vertical channel or well, from which cables were even now snaking toward Sinbad.
The black Field closed over the black sky: the stars disappeared. Atropos, on station well away from Base Six, was now out of communication. Renner felt Sinbad's vulnerability.
Sinbad was winched toward the well in the Mosque. It would fit exactly.
"Close fit," Buckman said. "After what we saw on Mote Prime, there isn't much Motie Engineers can do that would surprise me— looks like they have transfer bays matching the airlocks."
Sinbad was pulled inexorably into the docking bay. Those transfer bays were unfinished, mere holes. And Motie Engineers were waiting in the bays, prepared to finish them on the spot.
Fuel began to flow into Sinbad. Good: they'd kept that promise.
It was nearly an hour before the Moties finished connecting Sin-bad to an antenna extended through the restored Field. By then Renner was savage with impatience. He pulled himself under control—because if he didn't, Rawlins wouldn't!—and said, "Atropos, this is Sinbad. Testing."
"Atropos here, sir. Locked on. Stand by for—"
"I'm here," said Rawlins.
"Right. Commander, we can figure that anything said here is monitored by the Moties. I want you to keep testing this circuit. Be sure we have communications."
"Yes, sir. And if we don't?"
"Try to reestablish, but the instant you're out of touch with Sinbad, you're in command. Do what you think best. You'll recall the last orders you got from Balasingham. Of course you'll stay at full-alert status unless I tell you to stand down."
"Yes, sir. Understood. Do you expect real trouble, Captain Renner?"
"Not from here. I think the Moties here will be perfect hosts. Of course they told us they had a major readjustment of their relationship with the East India Company. That sounded sticky."
"Yes, sir."
"And I'll try to find out what that involved. I'll leave the circuits open on standby." Renner touched switches. "And that's done. Horace, I think it's time. Joyce, do you really want to carry—"
"It only masses eight kilograms." Joyce hefted the gyro-stabilized pickup camera. It wriggled within its sleeve like a thing alive.
Renner touched indicators: inner lock, override, outer lock. Sinbad's air-lock doors swung in and out . . . on a corridor decorated in Moorish abstracts, and good air with a trace of chemicals in it.
Chris Blaine waited impatiently as Eudoxus explained to Horace Bury. "We really don't have room for your Warriors to accompany us," she said. "Of course you don't expect to be escorted by Warriors any more than I do, but a Master of your importance would. My Master will have his Warriors present when you meet."
"It is no matter." Bury waved to indicate Blaine, Cynthia, Nabil, and Joyce. "My friends will have to substitute. In future years we will find new customs for meetings between humans and Moties."
"Thank you." Eudoxus paused. "There's another small matter. We're hoping you won't need your travel chair, Excellency. But we can rebuild the corridors if we must."
Bury smiled. "You are gracious hosts. Thank you, but for the moment Nabil can carry a portable medical unit that will suffice for my needs. Lead on."
"All right. Kevin . . . ?"
"I'd better stay in contact with Atropos," Renner said. He was captain; he could not leave his ship.
The corridors bustled with activity. There were Engineers and Watchmakers everywhere. Blaine glanced over Nabil's shoulder at Bury's medical readouts. Calm. Total calm. Perhaps even frighteningly calm.
They entered a dome, a flattened sphere. Through a forest of vines they looked out on the surface. White snow, pastel domes, lines in primary colors. And—Joyce looked behind her, then dashed that way and pointed her pickup camera between two masses of dark greenery.
The Mosque was magnificent. Joyce held for a moment, then zoomed on Sinbad, its single minaret, the piece that made it an artistic whole. She said, "We'll want to go out."
"No problem," Eudoxus said. "Your viewers would feel cheated if they couldn't see it all. Sensory deprivation?"
Joyce only nodded. An instant later she stumbled . . . as she saw how much she was telling Eudoxus about herself. Chris let his grin show through.
Now the corridor dipped beneath the ice. Branches ran off to the sides and up. Here and there were discreet vertical slits, like arrow notches in an ancient keep. Narrower tubes crossed the corridor above head height. Moties popped through these like leaves in a storm.
Down they went, deep into the interior of Base Six.
The corridor opened into a large chamber. Two grotesque shapes stood by a door at the far end. Chris saw Eudoxus's tension as they passed inside. He looked behind him and was not terribly surprised to see two more of the spiky horrors.
"Warriors," Joyce muttered. "Frightening efficiency, almost beautiful." She waved her pickup.
Nabil and Cynthia were on hair triggers.
One of the Warrior shapes moved to open the door. They were escorted into another large chamber. A white Motie nursed a pup at the far end. To that one's left stood two Warriors, and to their left was another white and a brown-and-white.
Eudoxus spoke rapidly in a language the humans didn't understand. The other Mediator instantly interrupted with splayed arms and an angry bark.
"Hracht! Our Masters spoke that this talk will speak in Anglic," that one said. He seemed unaware that he had the full, dangerous attention of every Warrior in the room. "Then we speak these same thoughts in the trade language. Need is sorrowful, but given recent change in levels, we demand. Else East India Trading Company will not act for you or with you."
Eudoxus gave the impression of bowing. "Very well. I have the honor to present His Excellency Horace Hussein al-Shamlan Bury, Magnate of the Empire, director of the Imperial Traders Association. Your Excellency, my Master, Admiral Mustapha Pasha. Our associate Master of the East India Company, Lord Cornwallis. The young mediator who speaks for Lord Cornwallis may be called Wordsworth." Eudoxus gestured to his master.
Mustapha spoke slowly and carefully.
"Excellency, welcome to Inner Base Six," Eudoxus translated. "In the name of the Caliph Almohad, who sends her greetings. This is your house."
"Thank you," Bury said. "You are gracious hosts." He bowed slightly to both Motie masters, then nodded to Chris Blaine.
"I will speak for His Excellency," Blaine said. "We wish again to thank you for your hospitality, and to assure you we understand that the need for haste was the cause of our coming here with less than full understanding."
Joyce moved to one side so that she could see everyone. Her pickup wriggled in her hands and made a tiny whirring sound. One of the Warriors started a rapid movement that was halted by a short bark from Admiral Mustapha.
Chris Blaine turned to the other Mediator. 'Wordsworth, please assure Lord Cornwallis that we are pleased to meet him."
"Her," Wordsworth said. "Medina speakers tell humans are usually hurrying. Is true?"
"Often," Blaine said.
"Then forgive me if we talk important things now," Wordsworth said. "Do you know what your hosts do to us? We were guests, and betrayed. The half of us are dead, torn by flying bits of metal, ripped apart by no air—"
"You were not guests by any choice of ours," Eudoxus said. "As all here are well aware. You forced yourselves into an alliance, and you did not do your part. Your incompetence has brought the Empire here. I will demonstrate." Eudoxus turned to Blaine. "Tell us how your Empire knew to come to Crazy Eddie's Sister when you did."
"The token ships. Mere shells," Blaine said. "They could have but one purpose."
"Exactly," Eudoxus said. "Had East India sent substantial ships, the Empire would not have guessed, and our ships would be well into Imperial space."
"Where are the ships now?" Wordsworth asked. "Our embassy to humans, do they live or die? I ask the humans to answer."
"No Motie ships have been destroyed," Blaine said. "One hides in the asteroids of the red dwarf. The others wait with an Imperial cruiser for escort by the main battle fleet."
"And East India's representative?"
"You will forgive us, but until this moment we did not know that East India had representatives aboard those ships," Blaine said.
Eudoxus spoke slowly in a language of emphatic consonants: like popcorn popping. Her white-furred Master listened carefully, then spoke in the same language.
"Admiral Mustapha says that both the East India Mediators are safe. There would be no reason to harm them. The Mediators aboard our ships had orders to keep contact with the Empire to a minimum until they could speak with someone in high authority. At that time the East India Mediators will be given the rights we agreed on."
Wordsworth looked to Chris Blaine. "Does he tell true? No powerful Empire person was there, far side of Sister?"
"Captain Renner and His Excellency were the highest authorities present."
"Thank you. I must ask now, what have you agreed with Medina?"
Blaine looked to Bury, then back. "We agreed to come with them. I think it is no secret that we expected to be taken to Mote Prime. Before we could find our balance"—he had almost said footing—"one of our ships and the Sister had both been lost to the Crimean Tartars. Medina has agreed to assist in rescuing the crew and passengers of Hecate. This seems fair. Their duplicity caused our loss."
"Can you speak for your Empire?"
"No, but if all of us here are agreed, that will have great influence. I am Kevin Christian Blaine, son of Lord Roderick Blaine. Commodore Renner has influence with the Navy. His Excellency controls the directors of the Imperial Traders Association. Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo speaks for the news services, Empire-wide. What we agree to will be heard at all levels of the Empire."
Wordsworth asked, "How do we stand, measured along Medina Trading? Have Medina told you? Is there agreement about us, you and Medina Trading?"
"No. We were told that you were partners with Medina, and that a readjustment of status was being negotiated."
"I do not understand."
"That you and Medina are partners now talking about changes in agreements."
"That is spoke with massive delicacy," Wordsworth said. He spoke slowly to his Master and received a lengthy reply. "We can agree to readjustment," Wordsworth said. "We know we do not have equals with Medina, but we insist we be heard in all discussions."
"You are not in a position to insist," Eudoxus said.
Wordsworth gave the Motie equivalent of a shrug. "For us has been worse. Crimean Tartars flee from their former ganglords. They need to know. They need friends. How if they come to us for refuge? If they carry to us human guests and gripping hand on the Sister to trade? We—"
"You could not."
"Medina lost the Crazy Eddie point because too many Masters, too little wealth, move in awkward orbits." Resources badly handled, Chris translated . . . tentatively. "Was bad mistake. Do not do it again. East India yet has wealth like yours in mass. Crimean Tartars do not know value of what they took. East India can work with Crimean Tartars and humans, or we can work with humans, or we can work with humans and Medina. What do you wish?"
The silence that followed was not empty. Warriors and Mediators and Masters shifted constantly: handholds and footholds, positions, flickering fingers and arms. Chris let it run for several seconds; but he couldn't read the silence, so he broke it.
"What is it you're dividing? Do you know?"
"Access to the Empire and the stars beyond our own," Eudoxus said instantly.
"Your Fyunch(click)'s student's third student tells us Empire would agree with all Moties," Wordsworth said. "All, never less. A stepping . . . a hierarchy of sorts would look good to you, yes? So, we speak, we mediate, we argue for command over Mote system, too. Some Motie families will control Mote system. We wish will be part of families."
"The highest possible stakes," said Eudoxus. Before Chris or anyone could answer—if he had had an answer—both Mediators had turned to talk to their respective Masters.
Joyce whispered, "At least they agree on that."
Blaine nodded. He was more interested in getting Horace Bury's reaction. Bury caught the query (eyebrow lift, tilt of head) and said, "There's motive here for an arbitrarily large number of murders."
Eudoxus's head and shoulders suddenly snapped around to face Joyce Trujillo. "What do you know of our breeding habits?"
Chris considered throwing his arm across her face. Too bloody late . . . and it would have told the Mediators what he knew. Eudoxus didn't even wait for her answer, only for the emotions that chased across her face. "So. You would deal with the Moties united. How can you expect us to stay united? Our histories tell that we've tried to unite before, and failed always."
"Neither problems nor opportunities last forever," Bury said. "And what neither Moties nor humans can do, Moties and humans together may accomplish. Allah is merciful."
"King Peter's ambassadors must have told you much," Eudoxus said. "What happened to them?"
"They were well treated," Joyce said. "One was still alive a few years ago, as I remember. At the Blaine Institute. Lieutenant Blaine could tell you more."
"As His Excellency says, everything has changed," Blaine said. "When there was one point to blockade, and that one easily defended, blockade was an effective way to gain time. Now there are two paths to block. There must be a better way, better for humans and Moties. If not . . ."
"Your battle fleets will come," Eudoxus said. "War in the Mote system, and you to exterminate us. Bloody hands forever, but else we escape to the rest of the universe. That is your terror." She had spoken truth; she must have seen it in their faces. "Our numbers increase. Our domains. In a thousand years we enclose you. Yes, we must seek a better answer."