The Mote In God's Eye Read online

  It had become an unending nightmare. Her name was posted at the gate: the Committee of Public Safety wanted her. The other camp inmates swore that Sally Fowler was dead, and since the guards seldom entered the compound she was saved from whatever fate had overtaken other members of governing families.

  As conditions became worse, Sally found a new inner strength. She tried to set an example for others in her tent. They looked to her as their leader, with Adam as her prime minister. When she cried, everyone was afraid. And so, at age twenty-two standard years, her dark hair a tangled mess, her clothes filthy and torn and her hands coarse and dirty, Sally could not even throw herself into a corner and weep. All she could do was endure the nightmare.

  Into the nightmare had come rumors of Imperial battleships in the sky above the black dome-and rumors that the prisoners would be slaughtered before the ships could break through. She had smiled and pretended not to believe it could happen. Pretended? A nightmare was not real.

  Then the marines had crashed through, led by a big blood-covered man with the manners of the Court and one arm in a sling. The nightmare had ended then, and Sally waited to wake up. They'd cleaned her, fed her, clothed her-why didn't she wake up? Her soul felt wrapped in cotton.

  Acceleration was heavy on her chest. The shadows in the cabin were sharp as razors. The New Chicago recruits crowded at the windows, chattering. They must be in space. But Adam and Annie watched her with worried eyes. They'd been fat when first they saw New Chicago. Now the skin of their faces hung in folds. She knew they'd given her too much of their own food. Yet they seemed to have survived better than she.

  I wish I could cry, she thought. I ought to cry. For Dorothy. I kept waiting for them to tell me Dorothy had been found. Nothing. She disappeared from the dream. A recorded voice said something she didn't try to catch. Then the weight lifted from her and she was floating.

  Floating. Were they actually going to let her go?'

  She turned abruptly to the window. New Chicago glowed like any Earthlike world, its distinctive patterns unreadable. Bright seas and lands, all the shades of blue smeared with the white frosting of cloud. Dwindling. As it shrank, she stared out, hiding her face. Nobody should see that feral snarl. In that moment she could have ordered New Chicago burned down to bedrock.

  After inspection, Rod conducted Divine Worship on the hangar deck. They had only just finished the last hymn when the midshipman of the watch announced that the passengers were coming aboard. Blaine watched the crew scurry back to work. There would be no free Sundays while his ship wasn't in fighting trim, no matter what service traditions might say about Sundays in orbit. Blaine listened as the men went past, alert for signs of resentment. Instead he heard idle chatter, and no more than the expected grumbling.

  "All right, I know what a mote is," Stoker Jackson was saying to his partner. "I can understand getting a mote in me eye. But how in God's Name can I get a beam there? You tell me that, now, how can a beam get in a man's eye and him not know it? Ain't reason;"

  "You're absolutely right. What's a beam?"

  "What's a beam? Oh ho, you're from Tabletop, aren't you? Well, a beam is sawn wood-wood. It comes from a tree. A tree, that's a great, big..

  The voices faded out. Blaine made his way quickly back to the bridge. If Sally Fowler had been the only passenger he would have been happy to meet her at the hangar deck, but he wanted this Bury to understand their relationship immediately. It wouldn't do for him to think the captain of one of His Majesty's warships would go out of his way to greet a Trader.

  From the bridge Rod watched the screens as the wedge-shaped craft matched orbit and was winched aboard, drifting into MacArthur between the great rectangular wings of the hangar doors. His hand hovered near the intercom switches. Such operations were tricky.

  Midshipman Whitbread met the passengers. Bury was first, followed by a small dark man the Trader didn't bother to introduce. Both wore clothing reasonable for space, balloon trousers with tight ankle bands, tunics belted into place, all pockets zipped or velcroed closed. Bury seemed angry. He cursed his servant, and Whitbread thoughtfully recorded the man's comments, intending to run them through the ship's brain later. The midshipman sent the Trader forward with a petty officer, but waited for Miss Fowler himself. He'd seen pictures of her.

  They put Bury in the Chaplain's quarters, Sally in the First Lieutenant's cabin. The ostensible reason she got the largest quarters was that Annie, her servant, would have to share her cabin. The menservants could be bunked down with the crew, but a woman, even one as old as Annie, couldn't mingle with the men. Spacers off-planet long enough develop new standards of beauty. They'd never bother a senator's niece, but a housekeeper would be something else. It all made sense, and if the First Lieutenant's cabin was next to Captain Blaine's quarters, while the Chaplain's stateroom was a level down and three bulkheads aft, nobody was going to complain.

  "Passengers aboard, sir," Midshipman Whitbread reported.

  "Good. Everyone comfortable?"

  "Well, Miss Fowler is, sir. Petty Officer Allot showed the Trader to his cabin..."

  "Reasonable." Blaine settled into his command seat. Lady Sandra-no, she preferred Sally, he remembered- hadn't looked too good in the brief moments he'd seen her in the prison camp. The way Whitbread talked, she'd recovered a bit. Rod had wanted to hide when he first recognized her striding out of a tent in the prison camp. He'd been covered with blood and dirt-and then she'd come closer. She'd walked like a lady of the Court, but she was gaunt, half-starved, and great dark circles showed under her eyes. And those eyes. Blank. Well, she'd had two weeks to come back to life, and she was free of New Chicago forever.

  "I presume you'll demonstrate acceleration stations for Miss Fowler?" Rod asked.

  "Yes, sir," Whitbread replied. And null gee practice too, he thought.

  Blaine regarded his midshipman with amusement. He had no trouble reading his thoughts. Well, let him hope, but rank hath its privileges. Besides, he knew the girl; he'd met her when she was ten years old.

  "Signal from Government House," the watch reported.

  Cziller's cheerful, careless voice reached him. "Hello, Blaine! Ready to cast off?" The fleet Captain was slouched bonelessly in a desk chair, puffing on an enormous and disreputable pipe.

  "Yes, sir." Rod started to say something else, but choked it off.

  "Passengers settled in all right?" Rod could have sworn his former captain was laughing at him.

  "Yes, sir."

  "And your crew? No complaints?"

  "You know damned well- We'll manage, sir." Blaine choked back his anger. It was difficult to be angry with Cziller; after all he'd given him his ship, but blast the man! "We're not overcrowded, but she'll space."

  "Listen, Blaine, I didn't strip you for fun. We just don't have the men to govern here, and you'll get crew before any get to us. I've sent you twenty recruits, young locals who think they'll like it in space. Hell, maybe they will. I did."

  Green men who knew nothing and would have to be shown every job, but the petty officers could take care of that. Twenty men would help. Rod felt a little better.

  Cziller fussed with papers. "And I'll give you back a couple squads of your Marines, though I doubt if you'll find enemies to fight in New Scotland."

  "Aye aye, sir. Thank you for leaving me Whitbread and Staley." Except for those two, Cziller and Plekhanov had stripped off every midshipman aboard, and many of the better petty officers as well. But they had left the very best men. There were enough for continuity. The ship lived, although some berths looked as if she'd lost a battle.

  "You're welcome. She's a good ship, Blaine. Odds are the Admiralty won't let you keep her, but you may get lucky. I've got to govern a planet with my bare hands. There's not even money! Only Republic scrip! The rebels took all the Imperial crowns and gave out printed paper. How the blazes are we going to get real money in circulation?"

  "Yes, sir." As a full captain, Rod was in theory equal in rank to C
ziller. A brevet appointment to admiral was for courtesy only, so that captains senior to Cziller could take orders from him as fleet Captain without embarrassment. But a naval promotion board had yet to pass on Blaine's admission to post rank, and he was young enough to worry about the coming ordeal. Perhaps in six weeks time he would be a commander again.

  "One point," said Cziller. "I just said there's no money on the planet, but it's not quite true. We have some very rich men here. One of them is Jonas Stone, the man who let your Marines into the city. He says he was able to hide his money from the rebels. Well, why not? He was one of them. But we've found an ordinary miner dead drunk with a fortune in Imperial crowns. He won't say where he got the money, but we think it was from Bury."

  "Yes, sir."

  "So watch His Excellency. OK, your dispatches and new crewmen will be aboard within the hour," Cziller glanced at his computer. "Make that forty-three minutes. You can boost out as soon as they're aboard." Cziller pocketed the computer and began tamping his pipe. "Give my regards to MacPherson at the Yards, and keep one thing in mind: if the work on the ship drags, and it will, don't send memos to the Admiral. It only gets MacPherson mad. Which figures. Instead, bring Jamie aboard and drink scotch with him. You can't put away as much as he can, but trying to do it'll get you more work than a memo."

  "Yes, sir," Rod said hesitantly. He suddenly realized just how unready he was to command MacArthur. He knew the technical stuff, probably better than Cziller, but the dozens of little tricks that you could learn only through experience

  Cziller must have been reading his mind. It was an ability every officer under him had suspected. "Relax, Captain. They won't replace you before you get to the Capital, and you'll have had a lot of time aboard Old Mac by then. And don't spend your time boning the board exams, either. It won't do you a bit of good." Cziller puffed at the huge pipe and let a thick stream of smoke pour from his mouth. "You've work to do, I won't keep you. But when you get to New Scotland, make a point of looking at the Coal Sack. There are few sights in the galaxy to equal it. The Face of God, some call it." Cziller's image faded, his lopsided smile seeming to remain on the screen like the Cheshire cat's.

  3 Dinner Party

  MacArthur accelerated away from New Chicago at one standard gravity. All over the ship crewmen worked to change over from the down-is-outboard orientation of orbit when spin furnished the gravity to the up-is-forward of powered flight. Unlike merchant ships, which often coast long distances from inner planets to the Alderson Jump points, warships usually accelerate continuously.

  Two days out from New Chicago, Blaine held a dinner party.

  The crew brought out linens and candelabra, heavy silver plate and etched crystal, products of skilled craftsmen on half a dozen worlds; a treasure trove belonging, not to Blaine, but to MacArthur herself. The furniture was all in place, taken from its spin position around the outer bulkheads and remounted on the after bulkheads-except for the big spin table, which was recessed into what was now the cylindrical wardroom wail.

  That curved dining table had bothered Sally Fowler. She had seen it two days ago, when MacArthur was still under spin and the outer bulkhead was a deck, likewise curved. Now Blaine noted her moment of relief as she entered via the stairwell.

  He remarked its absence in Bury, who was affable, very much at ease, and clearly enjoying himself. He had spent time in space, Blaine decided. Possibly more time than Rod.

  It was Blaine's first opportunity to meet the passengers formally. As he sat in his place at the head of the table, watching the stewards in spotless dress white bring in the first course, Blaine suppressed a smile. MacArthur had everything except food.

  "I'm much afraid the dinner's not up to the furnishings," he told Sally. "But we'll see what we find." Kelley and the stewards had conferred with the chief petty officer cook all afternoon, but Rod didn't expect much.

  There was plenty to eat, of course. Ship's fodder: bioplast, yeast steaks, New Washington corn plant; but Blaine had had no chance to lay in cabin stores for himself on New Chicago, and his own supplies had been destroyed in the battle with the rebel planetary defenses. Captain Cziller had of course removed his own personal goods. He'd also managed to take the leading cook and the number-three turret gunner who'd served as captain's cook.

  The first dish was brought in, an enormous platter with a heavy cover that looked like beaten gold. Golden dragons chased each other around the perimeter, while the good fortune hexagrams of the I Ching floated benignly above them. Fashioned on Xanadu, the dish and cover were worth the price of one of MacArthur's gigs. Gunner Kelley stood behind Blaine, imperious in dress whites and scarlet sash, the perfect major-domo. It was difficult to recognize him as the man who could make new recruits faint from his chewing out, the sergeant who had led MacArthur's Marines in battle against the Union Guard. Kelley lifted the cover with a practiced flourish.

  "Magnificent!" Sally exclaimed. If she was only being polite, she carried it off well, and Kelley beamed. A pastry replica of MacArthur and the black-domed fortress she had fought, every detail sculpted more carefully than an art treasure in the Imperial Palace, lay revealed on the platter. The other dishes were the same, so that if they hid yeast cake and other drab fare, the effect was of a banquet. Rod managed to forget his concern and enjoy the dinner.

  "And what will you be doing now, my lady?" Sinclair asked. "Hae you been to New Scotland before?"

  "No, I was supposed to be traveling professionally, Commander Sinclair. It wouldn't be flattering to your homeland for me to have visited there, would it?" She smiled, but there were light-years of blank space behind her eyes.

  "And why would nae we be flattered from a visit by you? There's nae place in the Empire that would no think itself honored."

  "Thank you-but I'm an anthropologist specializing in primitive cultures. New Scotland is hardly that," she assured him. The accent sparked professional interest. Do they really talk that way in New Scotland? The man sounds like something from a pre-Empire novel. But she thought that very carefully, not looking at Sinclair as she did. She could sense the engineer's desperate pride.

  "Well said," Bury applauded. "I seem to have met a number of anthropologists lately. Is it a new specialty?"

  "Yes. Pity there weren't more of us earlier. We've destroyed all that was good in so many places we've taken into the Empire. We hope never to make those mistakes again."

  "I suppose it must be something of a shock," said Blaine, "to be brought into the Empire, like it or not, without warning-even if there weren't any other problems. Perhaps you should have stayed on New Chicago. Captain Cziller said he was having trouble governing the place."

  "I couldn't." She looked moodily down at her plate, then glanced up with a forced smile. "Our first rule is that we must be sympathetic toward the people we study. And I hate that place," she added with venomous sincerity. The emotion felt good. Even hatred was better than emptiness.

  "Aye," Sinclair agreed. "Anyone would, being kept in prison camp for months."

  "Worse than that, Commander. Dorothy disappeared. She was the girl I came with. She just vanished." There was a long silence, and Sally was embarrassed. "Please, don't let me spoil our party."

  Blaine was searching for something to say when Whitbread gave him his opportunity. At first Blaine saw only that the junior midshipman was doing something under the edge of the table-but what? Tugging at the tablecloth, testing its tensile strength. And earlier he'd been looking at the crystal. "Yes, Mr. Whitbread," Rod said. "It's very strong."

  Whitbread looked up, flushing, but Blaine didn't intend to embarrass the boy. "Tablecloth, silverware, plates, platters, crystal, all have to be fairly durable," he told the company at large. "Mere glassware wouldn't last the first battle. Our crystal is something else. It was cut from the windscreen of a wrecked First Empire reentry vehicle. Or go I was told. It's certain we can't make such materials any longer. The linen isn't really linen, either; it's an artificial fiber, also First
Empire. The covers on the platter are crystal-iron electroplated onto beaten gold."

  "It was the crystal I noticed first," Whitbread said diffidently.

  "So did I, some years ago." Blaine smiled at the middies. They were officers, but they were also teen-age boys, and Rod could remember his days in the gunroom. More courses were brought, to meet with shoptalk scaled down for laymen, as Kelley orchestrated the dinner. Finally the table was clear except for coffee and wines.

  "Mr. Vice," Blaine said formally.

  Whitbread, junior to Staley by three weeks, raised his glass. "Captain, my lady. His Imperial Majesty." The officers lifted their glasses to their sovereign, as Navy men had done for two thousand years.

  "You'll let me show you around my homeland," Sinclair asked anxiously.

  "Certainly. Thank you, but I don't know how long we'll be there." Sally looked expectantly to Blaine.

  "Nor I. We're to put in for a refit, and how long that takes is up to the Yard."

  "Well, if it's not too long, I'll stay with you. Tell me, Commander, is there much traffic from New Scotland to the Capital?"

  "More than from most worlds this side of the Coal Sack, though that's nae saying a lot. Few ships with decent facilities for carrying passengers. Perhaps Mr. Bury can say more; his liners put into New Scotland."

  "But, as you say, not to carry passengers. Our business is to disrupt interstellar trade, you know." Bury saw quizzical looks. He continued, "Imperial Autonetics is the business of transporting robotic factories. Whenever we can make something on a planet cheaper than others can ship it in, we set up plants. Our main competition's the merchant carriers."

  Bury poured himself another glass of wine, carefully selecting one that Blaine had said was in short supply. (It must be a good one; otherwise the scarcity wouldn't have bothered the Captain.) "That's why I was on New Chicago when the rebellion broke out."

  Nods of acceptance from Sinclair and Sally Fowler; Blaine with his posture too still and face too blank; Whitbread nudging Staley-Wait'll I tell you-gave Bury most of what he wanted to know. Suspicions, but nothing confirmed, nothing official. "You have a fascinating vocation," he told Sally before the silence could stretch. "Tell us more, won't you? Have you seen many primitive worlds?"