"Captain, that was nasty. I mean my Lord. My Lord Blaine, you could have killed him, dammit!"
"Dad, I told you-"
Earl Blaine nibbled his lip. "I hadn't thought. Your Excellency..."
Bury was furious, but he had it under control. "An excellent joke, my Lord. Excellent. Who are you?"
The Motie said, "I'm Jock, Excellency. It's good to see you in such health."
"Yes. It must be, considering. I find it stunning to see you in such health. Did you lie to us? Mediators die around age twenty-five, you said. All Moties die if they cannot be made pregnant, and the Mediators are mules. Sterile, you said."
Renner said, "Between the legs."
Bury looked. "Male? Allah's... blessing. Lord Blaine-Lady Blaine-this is a stunning achievement. How?"
Sally Blaine said, "Fyunch(click), give us Charlie 490."
There was a holowall. Understandably, Renner had not noticed it. Now it showed what looked to be shadows of a CAT scan, the interior of something not human. A Motie, of course. The hips: one intricate and massive joint in backbones as solid as the bones of a human leg. Mote Prime had never invented vertebrae.
The camera zoomed within the abdomen. A white arrowhead pointed to tiny tadpole-shapes clinging to the abdominal wall.
"That," Lady Sandra Fowler Blaine said, "is the C-L worm. We did gene-tailoring on a symbiote in the digestive tract. Now it secrets male hormone. It was already secreting something a lot like it. This wasn't the first thing we tried, but we tried all kinds of things, and this didn't get enough attention. Ivan died before we were ready. We think Charlie was killed by the physiological change, female to male. He was too old."
Bury's color was better. "You've broken the Motie breeding cycle."
"We've repaired the cycle, Your Excellency," Lady Blaine said coolly. "It's broken in Mediators. Child, male, female, pregnant, male, female, pregnant, that's how it goes with Motie classes. But Mediators are sterile mules, so they're only male once, and they die young.
"We only had three Moties to test, but we could ask questions. When a Motie's been male awhile, the single testis withers and the Motie goes female. Giving birth excites cells in the birth canal, and more testes form, but only one grows to term."
"He's carrying more than one of your worms," Renner pointed out.
"We worried about that, but it's not a problem," Glenda Ruth said. "The kidney flushes the extra hormone. This is an old, well established Motie parasite. It had already evolved practically to symbiote stage. It won't overbreed inside its host. The hormone itself inhibits that, and the worm long ago developed other mechanisms to protect the host."
Bury's eyes flicked to Renner's. They must have been thinking exactly alike: there'd be no problem transporting the symbiote.
Bury said, "What next, my Lady?"
Sally nibbled her lip. "We don't know. Kevin? I think you understood the Crazy Eddie concept better than most of us. Would they want this?"
"Of course they will!" Glenda Ruth said.
Sally looked at her daughter coldly, then turned back to Renner.
"Does this make them fertile?" Renner asked.
"No. Not Mediators, anyway," Sally said.
"Keepers," Renner said.
Bury nodded. Keepers were sterile male Masters, less ambitiously territorial than most Motie Masters. The title came from the Keepers of the Museums and other public facilities, and three Imperial midshipmen had died to find that out.
Renner grinned suddenly. "Mediators would want it. Masters would want it for their enemies. But you don't know it works on Masters."
"No. But it does work on Mediators. And if we had a Master to test..."
"Kevin," Bury said.
"Yeah?" Bury still looked sick, Renner glanced at the clock face on the travel chair. A dull orange light glowed on its face. "Yeah, you've got to get ready for dinner at the Traders Guild. My Lord, my Lady-"
"We should speak further on this." Bury seemed to have trouble manipulating his lips. "Later. You have a, an exceedingly powerful... tool."
"We know it," Rod Blaine said. "We won't forget. How long will you be on Sparta, Kevin?'
"Say two weeks. Maybe three." As long as it takes, Renner thought. Now, if not before.
"Kevin, let's have dinner," Glenda Ruth said. "I mean, no one can get mad if a girl has dinner with her brother's godfather." She looked at her mother and smiled sweetly. "Can they?"
Renner was sleeping like a baby, but the door chime snapped him awake. He asked, "Horvendile, is Bury present?"
"His Excellency has just entered."
Ruth stirred. "Kevin? What is it?"
"I think I should go hold Bury's hand."
Nabil passed him at the door to the parlor. Renner asked, "How is he? Is he likely to want to talk?"
"He ordered hot chocolate," Nabil said.
"Okay. Two."
The travel chair was in the middle of the rug. Bury was looking straight ahead, motionless, like a stuffed dummy. Presently he said, "I was affable."
"I'm impressed. What was His Highness like?"
"He will not become ‘His Highness' until he assumes his duties as Viceroy." Bury shook his head slightly. "We were at the same table, but several seats apart. Later, many crowded around him in the clubrooms. I formed the impression of intelligence and charisma, but that would be apparent from his career. Really I learned nothing I had not known, but at least we have been formally introduced, and I detected no signs of distaste."
"So what's next?"
"I persuaded him to come to dinner Thursday. It was the only time slot he had. He can listen to me and Jacob reminisce."
"That'll tell him if he wants to travel with us to New Cal."
"Yes. Horvendile, determine Lord Andrew Mercer Calvin's preferences in food and entertainment. Kevin, we must go. These happy lords never really saw the problem, and now they think they have a solution!"
"You've got to admit, they've got a piece of one."
"Hoskins sees profit from the Mote. The Blaines will want to try out their new toy. The graduate student, Boyarski, wants to play tourist. He was right. There will certainly be another expedition, if the blockade doesn't fail first."
"I know. What people know how to do, they do eventually. Look at Earth."
"There's another thing. The Blaine girl will want to go to the Mote. With her family's influence-"
"Yep. She'll inherit power all right. Glenda Ruth. Nice of her to remember our present."
"Kevin, of course she remembers, because she knows it gives you pleasure that she does. As she was delightfully at the edge of informal familiarity with me."
It took Renner a moment to see what he meant. "Oh, my God. Raised by Motie Mediators. She's going to make one hell of a diplomat."
Nabil brought mugs of chocolate. Bury used his to warm his hands. "The Crazy Eddie Squadron. If they know how important their work is. The expedition to the Mote, when it comes, would have to go through the blockade."
"Forget it, Horace. The Navy obeys orders."
"They swear an oath." Bury tapped at the keyboard in his chair. The wall lit.
"I solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Empire of Man against all enemies foreign and domestic and to extend the protection of the Empire to all humans; to obey the lawful orders of my superiors, and to uphold and defend as sovereign the legitimate heirs descendant of Lysander the Great; and to bring about the unity of mankind within the Empire of Man."
"You see? Their oath would force them to halt the expedition, if I show it to be a danger."