The Mote in God's Eye (28 page)

“I conclude they are another subspecies, but closely related to the Browns, perhaps closely enough to breed true. This must be determined by genetic coding, when we take samples back to New Scotland where there is proper equipment. Perhaps the Moties know, but we should be careful about what we ask until we determine what taboos exist among Moties.

“There is obviously no sex discrimination such as exists in the Empire; in fact the predominance of females is remarkable. One Brown is male and cares for both pups. The pups are weaned, or at least there is no obvious sign of a nursing female—or male—aboard.

“My hypothesis is that, unlike humanity after the Secession Wars, there is no shortage of mothers or child bearers, and thus there is no cultural mechanism of overprotectiveness such as survives within the Empire. I have no theory of why there are no pups among the Brown-and-whites, although it is possible that the immature Moties I observe are the issue of Brown-and-whites and the Browns serve as child trainers. There is certainly a tendency to have the Browns do all the technical work.

“The difference in the two types is definite if not dramatic. The hands are larger and better developed in the Brown, and the forehead of the Brown slopes back more sharply. The Brown is smaller. Question: Which is better evolved as a tool user? The Brown-and-white has a slightly larger brain capacity, the Brown has better hands. So far every Brown-and-white I have seen is female, and there is one of each sex of Brown: is this accident, a clue to their culture, or something biological? Transcript ends. Welcome aboard, gentlemen.”

Whitbread said, “Any trouble?”

Her head was in a plastic hood that sealed around her neck like a Navy shower bag; she was obviously not used to nasal respirators. The bag blurred her voice slightly. “None at all. I certainly learned as much as they did from the um, er, orgy. What’s next?”

Language lessons.

There was a word:
Fyunch(click)
. When the Chaplain pointed at himself and said “David,” the Motie he was looking at twisted her lower right arm around into the same position and said “Fyunch(click),” making the click with her tongue.”

Fine. But Sally said, “My Motie had the same name I think.”

“Do you mean you picked the same alien?”

“No, I don’t think so. And I
know
Fyunch(click)”
—
she said it carefully, making the click with her tongue then ruined the effect by giggling
—
”isn’t the word for Motie. I’ve tried that.”

The Chaplain frowned. “Perhaps all proper names sound alike to us. Or we may have the word for
arm
,” he said seriously. There was a classic story about that, so old that it probably came from preatomic days. He turned to another Motie, pointed at himself, and said, “Fyunch(click)?” His accent was nearly perfect, and he didn’t giggle.

The Motie said, “No.”

“They picked that up quickly,” said Sally.

Whitbread tried it. He swam among the Moties, pointing to himself and saying “Fyunch(click)?” He obtained four perfectly articulated
No's
before an inverted Motie tapped him on the kneecap and said, “Fyunch(click) Yes.”

So: there were three Moties who would say “Fyunch(click)” to a human. Each to a different human, and not to the others. So?

“It may mean something like ‘I am assigned to you,’ ” Whitbread suggested.

“Certainly one hypothesis,” Hardy agreed. A rather good one, but there were insufficient data—had the boy made a lucky guess?

Moties crawled around them. Some of the instruments they carried might have been cameras or recorders. Some instruments made noises when the humans spoke; others extruded tape, or made wiggly orange lines on small screens. The Moties gave some attention to Hardy’s instruments, especially the male Brown mute, who disasembled Hardy’s oscilioscope and put it back together again before his eyes. The images on it seemed brighter and the persistence control worked much better, he thought. Interesting. And only the Browns did things like that.

The language lessons had become a group effort. It was a game now, this teaching of Anglic to Moties. Point and say the word, and the Moties would generally remember it. David Hardy gave thanks.

The Moties kept fiddling with the insides of their instruments, tuning them, or sometimes handing them to a Brown with a flurry of bird whistles. The range of their own voices was astonishing. Speaking Mote, they ranged from bass to treble in instants. The pitch was part of the code, Hardy guessed.

He was aware of time passing. His belly was a vast emptiness whose complaints he ignored with absentminded contempt. Chafe spots developed around his nose where the respirator fitted. His eyes smarted from Motie atmosphere that got under his goggles, and he wished he’d opted for either a helmet or a plastic sack like Sally’s. The Mote itself was a diffused bright point that moved slowly across the curved translucent wall. Dry breathing air was slowly dehydrating him.

These things he felt as passing time, and ignored. A kind of joy was in him. David Hardy was fulfilling his mission in life.

Despite the uniqueness of the situation, Hardy decided to stick to traditional linguistics. There were unprecedented problems with
hand, face, ears, fingers
. It developed that the dozen fingers of the right hands had one collective name, the three thick fingers of the left another. The ear had one name flat and another erect. There was no name for
face
, although they picked up the Anglic word immediately, and seemed to think it a worthwhile innovation.

He had thought that his muscles had adjusted to free fall; but now they bothered him. He did not put it down to exhaustion. He did not know where Sally had disappeared to, and the fact did not bother him. This was a measure of his acceptance of both Sally and the Moties as colleagues; but it was also a measure of how tired he was. Hardy considered himself enlightened, but what Sally would have called “overprotectiveness of women” was deeply ingrained in the Imperial culture—especially so in the monastic Navy.

It was only when his air gave out that the others could persuade Hardy to go back to the cutter.

Their supper was plain, and they hurried through it compare notes. Mercifully the others left him alone until he’d eaten, Horvath taking the lead in shushing everyone although he was obviously the most curious of the lot. Even though the utensils were designed for free-fall conditions, none of the others were used to long periods zero gravity, and eating took new habits that could be learned only through concentration. Finally Hardy let one of the crewmen remove his lap tray and looked up. Three eager faces telepathically beamed a million questions at him.

“They learn Anglic well enough,” David said. “I wish I could say the same for my own progress.”

“They work at it,” Whitbread wondered. “When you give them a word, they keep using it, over and over, trying it out in sentences, trying it out on everything around whatever you showed them—I never saw anything like it.”

“That’s because you didn’t watch Dr. Hardy very long,” Sally said. “We were taught that technique in school, but I’m not very good at it.”

“Young people seldom are.” Hardy stretched out to relax. That void had been filled. But it was embarrassing—the Moties were better at his job than he was. “Young people usually haven’t the patience for linguistics. In this case, though, your eagerness helps, since the Moties are directing your efforts quite professionally. By the way Jonathon, where did you go?”

“I took my Fyunch(click) outside and showed him around the taxi. We ran out of things to show the Motic in their own ship and I didn’t want to bring them here. Can we do that?”

“Certainly.” Horvath smiled. “I’ve spoken to Captain Blaine and he leaves it to our judgment. As he says there’s nothing secret on the cutter. However, I’d like there to be something a little special—some ceremony, wouldn’t you think? After all, except for the asteroid miner the Moties have never visited a human ship.”

Hardy shrugged. “They make little enough of our coming aboard their craft. You want to remember, though, unless the whole Motie race is fantastically gifted at languages—a hypothesis I reject—they’ve had their special ceremony before they lifted off their planet. They’ve put language specialists aboard. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that our Fyunch(click)s are the Motie equivalent of full professors.”

Whitbread shook his head. The others looked at him, and finally he spoke. He was rather proud of having worked out a technique to let a junior officer interrupt the others. “Sir, that ship left the Mote planet only
hours
—maybe less than one hour—after
MacArthur
appeared in their system. How would they have time to gather specialists?”

“I hadn’t known that,” Hardy said slowly. “But these
must
be specialists of some kind. What use would such fantastic linguistic abilities be among the general population? And fantastic is not too strong a word. Still and all, we’ve managed to puzzle them slightly, or did the rest of you notice?”

“The tool room?” Sally asked. “I guess that’s what you’d call it, although I don’t think I’d have figured it out if Jonathon hadn’t given me the clue first. They took me there just after I left you, Dr. Hardy, and they didn’t seem puzzled to me. I noticed you stayed a lot longer than I did, though.”

“What did you do there?” David asked.

“Why—nothing. I looked at all the gadgetry. The whole place was covered with junk—by the way, those wall clamps weren’t substantial enough to take real gravity, I’m sure of that. They
must
have built that room after they got here. But anyway, since there wasn’t anything I could understand I didn’t pay much attention to the place.”

Hardy folded his hands in an attitude of prayer, then looked up embarrassed. He’d got into that habit long before he entered the priesthood, and somehow could never break himself of it; but it indicated concentration not reverence. “You did nothing, and they were not curious about it.” He thought furiously for long seconds. “Yet I asked the names of the equipment, and spent quite long time there, and my Fyunch(click) seemed very surprised. I could be misinterpreting the emotion, but I really think my interest in the tools unsettled them.”‘

“Did you try to use any of the gadgets?” Whitbread asked.

“No. Did you?”

“Well, I played around with some of the stuff...”

“And were they surprised or curious about that?”

Jonathon shrugged. “They were all watching me all the time. I didn’t notice anything different.”

“Yes.” Hardy folded his hands again, but this time didn’t notice he was doing it. “I think there is something odd about that room and the interest they showed in our interest in it. But I doubt that we’ll know why until Captain Blaine sends over his expert. Do you know who’s coming?”

Horvath nodded. “He’s sending Chief Engineer Sinclair.”

“Hmmm.” The sound was involuntary. The others looked at Jonathon Whitbread, who grinned slowly. “If the Moties were puzzled by
you
, sir, just think what’ll go through their heads when they hear Commander Sinclair talk.”

On a Navy warship men do not maintain an average weight. During the long idle periods those who like to eat amuse themselves by eating. They grow fat. But men who can dedicate their lives to a cause—including a good percentage of those who will remain in the Navy—tend to forget about eating. Food cannot hold their attention.

Sandy Sinclair looked straight ahead of himself as he sat rigid on the edge of the examining table. It was this way with Sinclair: he could not look a man in the eye while he was naked. He was big and lean, and his stringy muscles were much stronger than they looked. He might have been an average man given a skeleton three sizes too large.

A third of his surface area was pink scar tissue. Sharp metal flying out of an explosion had left that pink ridge across his short ribs. Most of the rest had been burned into him by puffs of flame or droplets of metal. A space battle left burns, if it left a man alive at all.

The doctor was twenty-three, and cheerful. “Twenty four years in service, eh? Ever been in a battle?”

Sinclair snapped, “You’ll hae your own share o’ scars if ye stay wi’ the Navy long enough.”

“I believe you, somehow. Well, Commander, you’re in admirable shape for a man in his forties. You could handle a month of free fall, I think, but we’ll play safe and drag you back to
MacArthur
twice a week. I don’t suppose I have to tell you to keep up on the free-fall exercises.”

Rod Blaine called the cutter several times the next day, but it was evening before he could get anyone besides the pilot. Even Horvath had gone aboard the Motie ship.

Chaplain Hardy was exhausted and jubilant, with a smile spread across his face and great dark circles under his eyes. “I’m taking it as a lesson in humility, Captain. They’re far better at my job—well, at linguistics, anyway—than I am. I’ve decided that the fastest way to learn their language will be to teach them Anglic. No human throat will ever speak their language—languages?—without computer assistance.”

“Agreed. It would take a full orchestra. I’ve heard some of your tapes. In fact, Chaplain, there wasn’t much else to do.”

Hardy smiled. “Sorry. We’ll try to arrange more frequent reporting. By the way, Dr. Horvath is showing a party of Moties through the cutter now. They seem particularly interested in the drive. The brown one wants to take things apart, but the pilot won’t let him. You did say there were no secrets on this boat.”

“Certainly I said that, but it might be a bit premature to let them fool with your power source. What did Sinclair say about it?”

“I don’t know, Captain.” Hardy looked puzzled. “They’ve had him in that tool room all day. He’s still there.”

Blaine fingered the knot on his nose. He was getting the information he needed, but Chaplain Hardy hadn’t been exactly whom he wanted to talk to. “Uh, how many Moties are there aboard your ship?”

“Four. One for each of us: myself, Dr. Horvath, Lady Sally, and Mr. Whitbread. They seem to be assigned mutual guides.”