The laboratory was another room quarried from living rock. Horowitz gestured imperiously and two graduate assistants opened a refrigerated container. A long table slid out.
The pilot of the Crazy Eddie probe lay disassembled on the smooth white plastic surface. Its organs were arranged in a semblance to the positions they’d had before dissection, with black lines drawn across the flayed skin to join them to points on the skin and the exploded skeleton. Light red and dark red and grayish green, improbable shapes: the components of a Motie Mediator were all the colors and textures of a man hit by a grenade. Rod felt his belly twist within him and remembered ground actions.
He winced as Sally leaned forward impatiently for a better look. Her face was set and grim—but it had been that way back at Horowitz’ office.
“Now!” Horowitz exploded in triumph. His bony finger jabbed at peanut-sized slime-green nodes within the abdomen. “Here. And here. These would have been the testes. The other Motie variants have internal testes too.”
“Yes—” Sally agreed.
“This small?” Horowitz asked contemptuously.
“We don’t know.” Sally’s voice was still very serious. “There were no reproductive organs in the statuettes, and the only Moties the expedition dissected were a Brown and some miniatures. The Brown was female.”
“I’ve seen the miniatures,” Horowitz said smugly.
“Well—yes,” Sally agreed. “The testes in male miniatures were big enough to see—”
“Much bigger than this in proportion. But never mind. These could not have produced sperm. I have proved it. That pilot was a mule!” Horowitz slapped the back of his hand against his open palm. “A mule!”
Sally studied the exploded Motie. She’s really upset, Rod thought.
“Moties start male, then turn female,” Sally mumbled, almost inaudibly. “Couldn’t this one have been immature?”
“A pilot?”
“Yes, of course—” She sighed. “You’re right, anyway. It was the height of a full-grown Mediator. Could it have been a freak?”
“Hah! You laughed at me when I suggested it might have been a mutation! Well, it isn’t. While you were off on that jaunt we did a bit of work here. I’ve identified the chromosomes and gene-coding systems responsible for sexual development. This creature was a sterile hybrid of two other forms which are fertile.” Triumph.
“That fits,” Rod said. “The Moties told Renner the Mediators were a hybrid—”
“Look,” Horowitz demanded. He activated a lecture screen and punched in codes. Shapes flowed across the screen. Motie chromosomes were close-packed discs connected by thin rods. There were bands and shapes on the discs—and Sally and Horowitz were speaking a language Rod didn’t understand. He listened absently, then found a lab assistant making coffee. The girl sympathetically offered a cup, the other assistant joined them, and Rod was pressed for information about Moties. Again.
Half an hour later they left the university. Whatever Horowitz had said, Sally was convinced.
“Why so upset, sweetheart?” he asked. “Horowitz is right. It makes sense for the Mediators to be mules.” Rod grimaced at the memory. Horowitz had pointedly added that being mules, the Mediators wouldn’t be influenced by nepotism.
“But my Fyunch(click) would have told me. I’m sure she would. We did talk about sex and reproduction and she said—”
“What?”
“I don’t remember exactly.” Sally took out her pocket computer and scrawled the symbols for information recall. The gadget hummed, then changed tone to indicate it was using the car’s radio system to communicate with the Palace data banks. “And I don’t remember just when she said it—” She scrawled something else. “I should have used a better cross-reference system when I filed the tape.”
“You’ll find it. Here’s the Palace—we’ve got a conference with the Moties after lunch. Why don’t you ask them about it?”
She grinned.
“You’re blushing.”
Sally giggled. “Remember when the little Moties first coupled? It was the first positive indication we’d had of sex changes in adult Moties, and I went running down to the lounge—Dr. Horvath still thinks I’m some kind of sex maniac!”
“Want me to ask?”
“If I don’t. But, Rod, my Fyunch(click) wouldn’t lie to me. She just wouldn’t have.”
They ate in the executive dining room, and Rod ordered another brandy and coffee. He sipped and said thoughtfully, “There was a message with this—”
“Oh? Have you talked to Mr. Bury?”
“Only to thank him. The Navy’s still entertaining him as a guest. No, the message was the gift itself. It told me he could send messages, even before Lenin made orbit.”
She looked shocked. “You’re right—why didn’t we—”
“Too busy. By the time I thought of it, it didn’t seem important enough to report, so I haven’t. The question is, Sally: What other messages did he send, and why did he want me to know he could do it?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather try to analyze the motivations of aliens than of Mr. Bury. He’s a very strange man.”
“Right. But not a stupid one.” He stood and helped Sally out of her chair. “Time for the conference.”
They met in the Motie quarters of the Palace. This was supposed to be a working conference, and Senator Fowler was running political interference elsewhere so that Rod and Sally could ask questions.
“I’m glad you co-opted Mr. Renner for the advisory staff,” Sally told Rod as they got off the elevator. “He’s got a—well, a different outlook about the Moties.”
“Different. That’s the word.” Rod had also been assigned others from the expedition: Chaplain Hardy, Sinclair, and several scientists. Until Senator Fowler made up his mind about Dr. Horvath’s request for Commission membership they couldn’t use him, though; the Science Minister might refuse to become a subordinate to the Commissioners.
The Marines outside the Motie quarters snapped to attention as Rod and Sally approached. “See. You worry too much,” Rod said as he acknowledged the salutes. “The Moties haven’t complained about the guards.”
“Complained? Jock told me the Ambassador likes having guards,” Sally said. “I guess he’s a little afraid of us.”
Rod shrugged. “They watch a lot of tri-v. God knows what they think of the human race now.” They entered to hear an animated conversation in progress.
“Of course I expected no direct evidence,” Chaplain Hardy was insisting. “But although I didn’t expect it, I would have been pleasantly surprised to find something concrete: scripture, or a religion similar to ours, something like that. But expect it, no.”
“I still wonder what you think you could have found,” Charlie said. “Were it my problem to prove that humans had souls, I shouldn’t know where to begin looking.”
Hardy shrugged. “Nor do I. But begin with your own beliefs—you think you possess something like an immortal soul.”
“Some do, some don’t,” Charlie said. “Most Masters believe it. Like humans, Moties do not care to think their lives are purposeless. Or that they can and will be terminated. Hello, Sally. Rod. Please be seated.”
“Thanks.” Rod nodded greetings to Jock and Ivan. The Ambassador looked like a surrealist rendition of an Angora cat as he lay sprawled on the edge of a couch. The Master flicked the lower right hand, a gesture which Rod had learned meant something similar to “I see you.” There were evidently other greetings, but they were reserved for other Masters: equals, not creatures with whom Mediators discussed business.