Larry Niven: The Mote in God's Eye

His father was careful with investments, and he’d used his influence to have Horace Hussein educated on Sparta. He’d even given him a name suggested by an Imperial Navy officer; only later did they learn that Horace was hardly common in the Empire and was a name to be laughed at.

Bury drowned the memory of early days in the Capital schools with another beaker of wine. He’d learned! And now he’d invested his father’s money, and his own. Horace Bury wasn’t someone to laugh at. It had taken thirty years, but his agents had located the officer who’d given him that name. The stereographs of his agony were hidden in Bury’s home on Levant. He’d had the last laugh.

Now he bought and sold men who laughed at him, as he bought votes in Parliament, bought ships, and had almost bought this planet of New Chicago. And by the Prophet—blast!—by damn he’d own it yet. Control of New Chicago would give his family influence here beyond the Coal Sack, here where the Empire was weak and new planets were found monthly. A man might look to—to anything!

The reverie had helped. Now he summoned his agents, the man who’d guard his interests here, and Nabil, who would accompany him as a servant on the warship. Nabil, a small man, much smaller than Horace, younger than he looked, with a ferret face that could be disguised many ways, and skills with dagger and poison learned on ten planets. Horace Hussein Bury smiled. So the Imperials would keep him prisoner aboard their warships? So long as there were no ships for Levant, let them. But when they were at a busy port, they might find it harder to do.

For three days Rod worked on MacArthur . Leaking tankage, burned-out components, all had to be replaced. There were few spares, and MacArthur ’s crew spent hours in space cannibalizing the Union war fleet hulks in orbit around New Chicago.

Slowly MacArthur was put back into battle worthy condition. Blaine worked with Jack Cargill, First Lieutenant and now Exec, and Commander Jock Sinclair, the Chief Engineer. Like many engineering officers, Sinclair was from New Scotland. His heavy accent was common among Scots throughout space. Somehow they had preserved it as a badge of pride during the Secession Wars, even on planets where Gaelic was a forgotten language. Rod privately suspected that the Scots studied their speech off duty so they’d be unintelligible to the rest of humanity.

Hull plates were welded on, enormous patches of armor stripped from Union warships and sweated into place. Sinclair worked wonders adapting New Chicago equipment for use in MacArthur , until he had built a patchwork of components and spares that hardly matched the ship’s original blueprints. The bridge officers worked through the nights trying to explain and describe the changes to the ship’s master computer.

Cargill and Sinclair nearly came to blows over some of the adaptations, Sinclair maintaining that the important thing was to have the ship ready for space, while the First Lieutenant insisted that he’d never be able to direct combat repairs because God Himself didn’t know what had been done to the ship.

“I dinna care to hear such blasphemy,” Sinclair was saying as Rod came into range. “And is it nae enough that I ken wha’ we hae done to her?”

“Not unless you want to be cook too, you maniac tinkerer! This morning the wardroom cook couldn’t operate the coffeepot! One of your artificers took the microwave heater. Now by God you’ll bring that back…”

“Aye, we’ll strip it oot o’ number-three tank, just as soon as you find me parts for the pump it replaces. Can you no be happy, man? The ship can fight again. Or is coffee more important?”

Cargill took a deep breath, then started over. “The ship can fight,” he said in what amounted to baby talk, “until somebody makes a hole in her. Then she has to be fixed. Now suppose I had to repair this,” he said, laying a hand on something Rod was almost sure was an air adsorber-converter. “The damned thing looks half-melted now. How would I know what was damaged? Or if it were damaged at all? Suppose…”

“Man, you wouldna’ hae troubles if you did nae fash yoursel’ wi…”

“Will you stop that? You talk like everybody else when you get excited!”

“ That’s a damn lie! ”

But at that point Rod thought it better to step into view. He sent the Chief Engineer to his end of the ship and Cargill forward. There would be no settling their dispute until MacArthur could be thoroughly refitted in New Scotland’s Yards.

Blaine spent a night in sickbay under orders from the surgeon lieutenant. He came out with his arm immobile in a tremendous padded cast like a pillow grafted on him. He felt mean and preternaturally alert for the next few days; but nobody actually laughed out loud in his hearing.

On the third day after taking command Blaine held ship’s inspection. All work was stopped and the ship given spin. Then Blaine and Cargill went over her.

Rod was tempted to take advantage of his recent experience as MacArthur ’s Exec. He knew all the places where a lazy executive officer might skimp on the work. But it was his first inspection, the ship only just under repair from battle damage, and Cargill was too good an officer to let something pass that he could possibly have corrected. Blaine took a leisurely tour, checking the important gear but otherwise letting Cargill guide him. As he did, he mentally resolved not to let this be a precedent. When there was more time, he’d go over the ship and find out everything.

A full company of Marines guarded the New Chicago spaceport. Since the city’s Langston Field generator had fallen there had been no resurgence of hostilities. Indeed, most of the populace seemed to welcome the Imperial forces with an exhausted relief more convincing than parades and cheering. But the New Chicago revolt had reached the Empire as a stunning surprise; resurgence would be no surprise at all.

So Marines patrolled the spaceport and guarded the Imperial boats, and Sally Fowler felt their eyes as she walked with her servants through hot sunlight toward a boat-shaped lifting body. They didn’t bother her. She was Senator Fowler’s niece; she was used to being stared at.

Lovely, one of the guards was thinking. But no expression. You’d think she’d be happy to be out of that stinking prison camp, but she doesn’t look it. Perspiration dripped steadily down his ribs, and he thought, She doesn’t sweat. She was carved from ice by the finest sculptor that ever lived.

The boat was big, and two-thirds empty. Sally’s eyes took in two small dark men—Bury and his servant, and no doubt about which was which—and four younger men showing fear, anticipation, and awe. The mark of New Chicago’s outback was on them. New recruits, she guessed.

She took one of the last seats at the back. She was not in a conversational mood. Adam and Annie looked at her with worried expressions, then took seats across the aisle. They knew.

“It’s good to be leaving,” said Annie.

Sally didn’t respond. She felt nothing at all.

She’d been like this ever since the Marines had burst into the prison camp. There had been good food, and a hot bath, and clean clothes, and the deference of those about her… and none of it had reached her. She’d felt nothing. Those months in the prison camp had burned something out of her. Perhaps permanently, she thought. It bothered her remotely.

When Sally Fowler left the Imperial University at Sparta with her master’s degree in anthropology she had persuaded her uncle that instead of graduate school she should travel through the Empire, observe newly conquered provinces, and study primitive cultures first hand. She would even write a book.