Charlie: “They would dissect the pilot. Their biological sciences are as advanced as ours. More advanced. They speak of genetic engineering techniques not recorded in any museum, and certainly not discovered in this Cycle. Thus we must assume their xenobiologists could learn that the pilot was sterile. Renner’s Fyunch(click) told him that Mediators were hybrids.”
“Crazy Eddie. Even then,” Ivan said. “Now she argues incessantly with her Master.” He paused, thinking, his arms waving for silence. “You have done well,” he told Jock. “They would learn you are sterile in any case. It is crucial that they do not learn how important that is. Does this tell humans that Fyunch(click)s can and do lie to humans?”
Silence. Finally Jock spoke. “We do not know. Sally’s Fyunch(click) spoke to her of sex, but the conversation was aboard the human ship. We have no record, only what was reported to us.”
“Reported by a Crazy Eddie,” Ivan said.
Jock said, “I did my utmost to distract them.”
“But did you succeed?”
“Yes. It was evident in their faces.”
Ivan could not read a human face, but he understood the concept: there were muscles around human eyes and mouth used for signaling emotions, like Motie gestures. Mediators could read them. “Go on.”
“Direct reference to the sex act to slow their minds. Then the fact of our life spans, delivered as one might admit to having a terminal disease. Now these long-lived creatures will mourn for us.”
“Well they might,” said Charlie.
“They will pity us for our handicaps. They might even attempt to remedy them.”
Ivan turned quickly to Jock. “Do you believe they can do so?”
“Master, no! Am I Crazy Eddie?”
Ivan relaxed. “You will consider this matter carefully. You will discuss the evidence the humans have, and what they may deduce from it. Were there not two Engineers as well as your Master aboard the embassy ship that met MacArthur?”
Jock: “Affirm.”
“Curse. And how many Mediator pups when they returned?”
“I had four sisters.”
“Curse!” Ivan wanted to say more; but to state the obvious would have lost Jock’s loyalty forever; it might even have shocked Charlie into abnormalities. Curse! Mediators identified with Masters. They held the usual Master emotions about children.
Though sterile from an early age, Ivan was not immune to those emotions; but he knew. The children should have been spaced.
51. After The Ball Is Over
“No point in sitting here,” Renner announced.
“Yeah.” Rod led the way to the Commission’s office suite in the Palace. Sally followed silently.
“Kelley, I think you’d better bring a round of drinks,” Rod said when they were seated at the conference table. “Make mine a double.”
“Aye aye, my lord.” Kelley gave Rod a puzzled look. Was Lady Sally giving him problems already? And them not even married yet?
“Twenty-five years!” Sally exploded. There was bitter anger in her voice. She said it again, this time to Chaplain Hardy. “Twenty-five years?” She waited for him to explain a universe in which there was so much injustice.
“Maybe it’s the price they pay for better than human intelligence,” Renner said. “It’s heavy.”
“There are compensations,” Hardy said thoughtfully. “Their intelligence. And their love of life. They talk so fast, they probably think fast as well. I expect that Moties pack a lot into their few years.”
There was more silence. Kelley returned with a tray. He set down the glasses and left, his face screwed into puzzled disapproval.
Renner glanced at Rod, who was in Thinker position: elbow on chair arm, chin on closed fist, face brooding.
Kevin lifted his glass. “Here’s to the wake.”
No one responded. Rod left his drink untouched. A man could live a good, useful life in a quarter of a century, he thought. Didn’t people live about that long in preatomic days? But it couldn’t be complete. I’m twenty-five now, and I haven’t raised a family, or lived with a woman I love, or even begun my career in politics. He watched Sally rise and pace the floor What does she think she’s doing? Is she going to solve that problem for them? If they can’t, how could we?
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Renner said. He lifted his glass again. “Look, if it doesn’t upset the Mediators that they’re short-lived mules, why should we—” He stopped in mid-sentence. “Mules? Then the pup Mediators on the embassy ship must have been children of the two Browns and the hidden White.”
They all looked at him. Sally stopped her pacing and took her seat again. “There were four pups when we got back to Mote Prime,” she said. “Weren’t there?”
“Indeed,” Hardy said. He swirled brandy in his glass. “That is rather a high birth rate.”
“But they’ve so little time,” Sally protested.
“One would be a high birth rate in that ship. On that mission.” Renner sounded positive. “Chaplain, what do you think of that as an ethical situation? You’re going to meet a strange well-armed race. You’re in a fragile toy of an unarmed ship. So you have children all over the place…”
“I see your point,” said David Hardy. “But I’ll want to think about it. Perhaps—”
He was interrupted by fists slamming on the table. Two fists. Sally’s. “God’s teeth!” She seized the stylus and scribbled symbols on the face of her computer. It hummed and flashed. “We were waiting for the transfer ship. I know I didn’t misunderstand. I couldn’t have.”
Hardy looked puzzlement at Sally. Renner looked a question at Rod. Rod shrugged and watched his girl. “Her Motie never told her they were mules,” he explained to the others.
The computer hummed again. Sally nodded and keyed in instructions. A screen on the back wall lit to show Sally Fowler, eight months younger, talking to a brown-and-white alien. The voices were eerily identical.
Motie: But you marry to raise children. Who raises children born without marriage?
Sally: There are charities.
Motie: I take it you’ve never—
Sally: No, of course not.
The living Sally was almost blushing, but her face remained grim.
Motie: How not? I don’t mean why not, I mean how?
Sally: Well—you know that men and women have to have sexual relations to make a baby, the same as you—I’ve examined you pretty thoroughly…
“Perhaps not thoroughly enough,” Hardy commented.
“Apparently not,” Sally said. “Shh.”
Motie: Pills? How do they work? Hormones?
Sally: That’s right.
Motie: But a proper woman doesn’t use them.
Sally: No.
Motie: When will you get married?
Sally: When I find the right man… I may have found him already.