Larry Niven - The Mote in God's Eye

There was no answer.

“Thank you, Kevin,” Rod said slowly. He didn’t dare look at Sally. “Jock, is this or is it not a Motie class?”

“There’s more, Captain,” Renner said. “Look real close at the Farmer. Now that we know what to look for.”

The image wasn’t very clear, little more than a fuzzy edged silhouette; but the bulge was unmistakable on the full profile view.

“She’s pregnant,” Sally exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that! A pregnant statuette? But— Jock, what does this mean?”

“Yeah,” Rod asked coldly.

But it was impossible to get Jock’s attention.

“Stop! Say no more!” Ivan commanded.

“What would I say?” Jock wailed. “The idiots took a Warrior! We are finished, finished, when moments ago we had the universe in our hand!” The Motie’s powerful left hand closed crushingly on air.

“Silence. Control yourself. Now. Charlie, tell me what you know of the probe. How was it built?”

Charlie gestured contempt interrupted by respect. “It should be obvious. The probe builders knew an alien species inhabited this star. They knew nothing more. Thus they must have assumed the species resembled ours, if not in appearance, then in the essentials.”

“Cycles. They must have assumed Cycles,” Ivan mused. “We had yet to know that all races are not condemned to the Cycles.”

“Precisely,” said Charlie. “The hypothetical species had survived. It was intelligent. They would have no more control of their breeding than we, since such control is not a survival characteristic. Thus the probe was launched in the belief that this star’s people would be in collapse when the probe arrived.”

“So.” Ivan thought for a moment. “The Crazy Eddies put pregnant females of every class aboard. Idiots!”

“Give them credit. They did their best,” said Charlie. “The probe must have been rigged to dump the passengers into the sun the instant it was hailed by a space-traveling civilization. If the hypothetical aliens were that advanced, they would find, not an attempt to take over their planet with the light sail as a weapon, but a Mediator sent on a peaceful errand.” Charlie paused for thought. “An accidentally dead Mediator. The probe would have been set to kill her, so the aliens would learn as little as possible. You are a Master: is this not what you would do?”

“Am I also Crazy Eddie, to launch the probe at all? The strategy did not work. Now we must tell these humans something.”

“I say tell them all,” Charlie said. “What else can we do? We are caught in our own lies.”

“Wait,” Ivan commanded. Only seconds had passed, but Jock was normal again. The humans were staring curiously. “We must say something momentous. Hardy knows we are excited. True?”

“Yes,” Charlie gestured.

“What discovery could so have excited us?”

“Trust me,” Jock said quickly. “We may yet be saved. Demon worshipers! We told you we have no racial enemies, and this is true; but there is a religious faction, secret, which makes gods of the time demons. They are vicious, and very dangerous. They must have seized the probe before it left the asteroid belt. Secretly, perhaps—”

“Then the passengers and crew were alive?” Rod asked.

Charlie shrugged. “I believe so. They must have committed suicide. Who knows why? Possibly they thought we had developed a faster-than-light drive and were waiting for them. What did you do when you approached them?”

“Sent messages in most human languages,” Rod answered. “You’re sure they were alive?”

“How would we know?” Jock asked. “Do not be concerned about them .” The voice was filled with contempt. “They were not proper representatives of our race. Their rituals include sacrifice of sentient classes.”

“Just how many of these demon worshipers are there?” Hardy asked. “I was never told of them.”

“We are not proud of their existence,” Jock answered. “Did you tell us of outies? Of the excesses of Sauron System? Are you pleased that we know humans are capable of such things?”

There were embarrassed murmurs.

“Damn,” Rod said quietly. “They were alive after all—after all that distance.” The thought was bitter.

“You are distressed,” Jock said. “We are pleased that you did not speak to them before you met us. Your expedition would have been of quite a different character if you had—”

She stopped, watching curiously. Dr. Sigmund Horowitz had risen from his seat and was bent against the screen, examining the time-machine picture. He fingered the screen controls to enlarge one of the demon statuettes. The silhouette from the probe faded, leaving half the screen blank, then another picture came on and grew and grew—a sharp-fanged, rat-faced creature squatting on a pile of rubble.

“Aha!” Horowitz shouted in triumph. “I wondered what the ancestry of the rats could be! Degenerate forms of this…” He turned to the Moties. There was nothing in his manner but curiosity, as if he’d paid no attention to the conversation before. “What do you use this caste for?” he asked. “Soldiers, aren’t they? Have to be. What else would they be good for?”

“No. They are only myths.”

“Balderdash. Demons with weapons? Father Hardy, can you imagine devils carrying blast rifles?” Horowitz fingered the controls again and the probe silhouette appeared. “Abraham’s Beard! That’s no statue. Come now, this is a Motie subspecies. Why do you hide it? Fascinating— I’ve never seen anything so well adapted for…” Horowitz’ voice trailed off.

“A Warrior caste,” Ben Fowler said slowly. “I don’t wonder that you hid it from us. Dr. Horowitz, would you suppose that—creature—is as prolific as we know the other Moties can be?”

“Why not?”

“But I tell you the demons are legendary,” Jock insisted. “The poem. Dr. Hardy, you recall the poem? These are the creatures who made the skies fall.”

“I believe that,” Hardy said. “I’m not sure I believe they’re extinct. You keep their feral descendants in zoos. Anthony, I put a hypothetical question to you: If the Moties have a very prolific caste devoted to warfare; their Masters have pride in independence similar to terran lions; they have had several disastrous wars; and they are hopelessly trapped in a single planetary system: what is the most reasonable projection of their history?”

Horvath shuddered. So did the others. “Like— MacArthur ,” Horvath answered sadly. “Cooperation among Masters must break down when population pressures become severe enough… if that’s really a current caste, David.”

“But I tell you again, they are legendary demons,” Jock protested.

“I’m afraid we don’t believe everything you tell us,” Hardy said. There was deep sadness in his voice. “Not that I ever accepted everything you said. Priests hear a lot of lies. But I always did wonder what you were hiding. It would have been better if you’d shown us some kind of military or police forces. But you couldn’t, could you? They were—” he gestured at the screen. “Those.”

“Rod,” Senator Fowler said. “You look pretty grim.”

“Yes, sir. I was thinking what it would be like to fight a race that’s bred Warriors for ten thousand years. Those things must be adapted to space warfare too. Give the Moties Field technology, and—Ben, I don’t think we could beat them! It’d be like trying to fight millions of Sauron cyborgs! Hell, the couple of thousand they had were enough to keep the war going for years!”

Sally listened helplessly. “But what if Jock’s telling the truth? Couldn’t she be right? There was a Warrior caste, it’s extinct now, and outlaw Moties—want to bring them back.”