The Gripping Hand (19 page)

"Good," he said. "Really good. Were they hunted to extinction?"

Cziller finished chewing and put his fork down with a broad smile. "Haven't had that since we were invited to the Palace. No, it wasn't overharvesting. The orcas have learned to hunt sea grendel, but that's not it either. Mostly, there's a lot of ocean down there and not much land. The last passing of Menalaus was too close, the ocean got too warm for them, the West Sea thermal plant was stirring up the water, the fish they were eating went into a decline, and suddenly sea grendels were very scarce. Might have been worse but old Baron Chalmondsley got interested in them. Now the University's on top of the problem. Hey, Kevin, what did you eat on Mote Prime?"

"Mostly ship stores, and protocarb milk, but the Moties found us a few things. There was an interesting melon. We didn't bring anything back, of course." Renner set his fork down. "Anything. My Lord, we could have covered
Lenin
's hull with souvenirs. What would you have brought back, Bury?"

I'll put that back in your teeth, Kevin.
"I thought of taking Motie Watchmakers. I thought they would make wonderful pets. That was before they destroyed His Majesty's battle cruiser
MacArthur
. After that I tried to persuade the Admiral to cremate everything."

"My files say you made a fair profit from the superconductors and the filters," Mercer said.

"I would have vaporized them."

Renner asked, "What would you have brought back, Jacob?"

"Information," the astronomer said brusquely. "That, the Admiral didn't prohibit."

Cziller nodded. "Buckman's Protostar. Kevin, did you get anything named after you?"

"Nope."

"What would you have brought back?"

"Artwork. I wanted the
Time Machine
sculpture long before we knew what those demons were. I wanted a certain painting . . . the one my Fyunch(click) called the
Message Bearer
. Another thing we should have noticed. There's a Runner subspecies, and they're still kept around. When the cycles turn and all the Moties' sophisticated communications collapse, there are still the Message Bearers."

"You said information, Dr. Buckman," Mercer said. "I understand the Moties were not permitted to bring any sophisticated record storage devices, but surely you collected your own."

"What I could," Buckman said.

"Of course the Moties themselves are pretty sophisticated record storage devices," Renner said.

"One reason they haven't developed information technology much," Buckman said. "Things fall apart so often."

"More wine, my Lord?" Bury asked, and signaled Hazel to open another bottle.

He could have had fresh fruit shipped up; but Bury wanted to show off
Sinbad
's kitchen. Dessert was an array of cakes served with fresh espresso. Bury watched Mercer with satisfaction. A Navy wardroom offered nothing like this. The best accommodations on a Hamilton Lines passenger ship could only rival
Sinbad
, and the liner made calls on four planets before reaching New Caledonia.

"Of course if this young pup Arnoff has his way, it'll be called Arnoff's Protostar," Buckman said.

Renner laughed. "What? Hey, it was your discovery. I mean, Jock might argue they ought to call it Jock's Protostar, but as far as humans go—"

Mercer said, "Excuse me? I've studied the Mote expedition records, but I must have missed that one."

"Not surprising," Renner said. "Look, from Mote system you get a good look deep into the Coal Sack. While the rest of us were dealing with the sudden fact of an intelligent species older than we are, Dr. Buckman found a curdling in the Coal Sack. He was able to show that it's a protostar. It's a thickening of the interstellar gas that's about to collapse under its own weight. A new sun."

"Jacob, what is this?" Bury asked.

"Oh, this young idiot believes I got it all wrong, that the protostar will ignite any day now."

"But surely you would have known," Bury protested. "You had
MacArthur
's instruments for observation."

"Some of the data were lost when we abandoned ship," Buckman reminded him. "Only they weren't."

One of the reasons Bury liked Buckman was that their interests were
so
different. He was a man Bury couldn't use. Bury could relax when Buckman was around.

In fact, Bury was paying more attention to Mercer. But he noticed how Renner's hands suddenly gripped the table's edge. Renner said, "What?"

"Some of the observation files were beamed to
Lenin
," Buckman said. "There were Watchmakers all through
MacArthur
then, and the information came all in one dump. About a year ago they were doing upgrades on
Lenin
and the files turned up." Buckman shrugged. "Nothing I thought was new, but this fellow Arnoff thinks he's got enough for a new theory."

Renner said gently, "Jacob, wouldn't you like to live to see it become a star?"

Buckman shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I'd look foolish, but . . . it's impossible anyway. Sometimes it seems unfair. My Fyunch-(click) believed that the fusion burn will begin within the next thousand years. I've reviewed my observations repeatedly since, and I think he's right. I came that close."

"A Mediator. Your Fyunch(click) wasn't really an astronomer. Male, wasn't it? A male would be too young to have had practice at anything."

"Mediators learn to think like their targets. My Mediator was an astronomer, Kevin, at least by the time we separated."

"Uh-huh. Does the Navy know about this Arnoff's theories?" Renner asked.

"I suppose someone in the Bureau of Research watches astrophysics file updates," Buckman said. "Why the Navy?"

"Gerbil shit! Doctor, you have got to learn to look outside your specialty!"

"Kevin?" Bury demanded.

"If the protostar ignites, we get new Alderson paths," Renner said.

"It won't happen," Buckman protested.

"A moment," Mercer said quietly. "Sir Kevin, could you explain?"

"I may have to lecture."

"Please do so."

"Okay. Ships travel along Alderson tramlines. Tramlines form between stars, along lines of equipotential flux. I won't explain that, you got it in high school, but it means they don't form between all pairs of stars. Not all the tramlines are useful, because if the flux densities aren't high enough, they won't carry anything big enough to have a drive aboard.

"The Mote sits out there with the Coal Sack on one side and the big red supergiant Murcheson's Eye on the other. The Eye is big and bright. So bright that the only useful tramline from the Mote is not only to the Eye, it terminates inside the supergiant. Tough on Moties trying to use that tramline. The blockade is there to make it even tougher.

"When Buckman's Protostar ignites, it'll create new tramlines."

"To where? Who would I ask?"

"Damned if I know," Renner said. "Dr. Buckman, maybe. It depends on the energy levels after ignition."

"But the Moties could escape." Bury had his diagnostic sleeve on. It showed him staying remarkably calm, considering. As if he had always known, always known they would get out.

"Yeah," Renner said.

Mercer caught Hazel's eye. "Another of that excellent brandy, please. Thank you, Bury. There's no better at the Palace. Now. Sir Kevin, let me get this straight. For a quarter of a century the Empire has spent billions of crowns to maintain a blockade to contain the Moties, as an alternative to sending in a battle fleet to exterminate them. Now you say that if Dr. Buckman's theory is incorrect, that blockade will be ineffective. Suddenly. Is that a fair statement?"

"As I always feared," Bury said. Renner was nodding, teeth bared.

"Nonsense," Buckman insisted. "That star won't collapse in our lifetimes, I don't care how good your doctors are!"

"I find that comforting," Mercer said. "You will understand that as the new Governor General of the Trans-Coal Sack Sector, I will automatically become chairman of the commission that sets policy regarding the Moties? I'd thought the Motie policy fixed and settled. The political questions regarding New Scotland and New Ireland are more than enough to renew my ulcers." He sipped at the huge snifter Hazel had brought him.

"Jacob." Bury sounded very old. "You once had a different notion about the protostar."

"Oh, I don't think so."

"It was long ago, and memories are fallible," Bury said. His hand strayed to the input ball of his chair, and his fingers played complex chords with the buttons. The inboard wall of the lounge became translucent.

Two images formed. Bury and Buckman, both twenty-five years younger, dressed in shipboard clothing fashionable that long ago.

"Buckman, you really must eat," Bury's image said. "Nabil! Sandwiches."

"The Navy people only let me use the telescopes at their convenience," the younger Buckman said. "Computers, too."

"Are either available now?"

"No. Of course you're right. Thank you. Only—Bury, it's so damned
important
."

"Of course it is. Tell me about it."

"Bury, do I know astrophysics?" Buckman's image didn't wait for a reply. "Not even Horvath thinks he knows more. But the Moties—Bury, they've got a lot of new theories. Some new math to go with it. The Eye. We've been studying the Eye since Jasper Murcheson's time. We've always known it would explode one day. The Moties know
when!"

Bury's image looked apprehensive. "Not soon, I trust?"

"They say a.d. 2,774,020 on April twenty-seventh."

"Doctor—"

"Oh, they're trying to be funny, but dammit, Bury, they're a lot closer than we were, and they can prove that! Then there's the protostar."

Bury's image raised an eyebrow.

"There's a protostar out there," Buckman said. "Forming out in the Coal Sack. I can prove it. It's about ready to collapse."

The younger Bury smiled politely. "I know you a little, Jacob. What do you mean by
now
? Will you have time to eat?"

"Well, what
I
meant was sometime in the next half a million years. But the Moties have been watching it a long time. My— student—how do you say it?"

"Fyunch(click)," Bury's younger image said. (Eyes flicked toward the living Bury. Could a human being have made that sound?)

"Yeah. He says it'll take a thousand years, plus or minus forty."

A younger Nabil came on-screen with sandwiches and an old-fashioned thermos.

Bury touched his controls and the wall faded out. "You see, Jacob? You were led to your theory. Left alone, what might you have thought?"

Buckman frowned. "Not the Moties. Their math."

"Observation reports, too," Renner said. "Theirs."

"Well, yes . . . yes, of course. But Kevin, you're . . ."

"What?"

"You're suggesting my Fyunch(click) lied to me."

"It never would have crossed my mind," Bury said gently, "that my Fyunch(click) would not lie to me. Kevin's played jokes on him, of course. Lady Blaine's certainly lied to her. It's on record."

"Yes." Buckman was not happy. "Then Arnoff's right."

"Jacob? Come with me aboard
Sinbad
to Murcheson's Eye. You can get new data. If you can't destroy this Arnoff's reconstruction, you can refine it, improve it, until half of civilization thinks it's yours."

"I'll come," Buckman said quickly.

"This dithering is a bad habit, Jacob," Renner said.

"I'm getting tired of reviewing old data anyway."

"When does Arnoff say is the earliest this—event—could happen?" Mercer asked.