The car was speeding down the tracks. Horst sat at the rear, which was now the front, staring out with his weapon poised. He turned slightly. The Moties were both glaring at the humans, their lips parted slightly to show teeth, enlarging their smile, but the bitterness of the words and tones belied the friendly looks. “They just don’t have sex!” Whitbread’s Motie said again. “Fyoofwuffle(whistle)! Now you know why we have wars. Always wars…”
“Population explosion,” Potter said.
“Yeah. Whenever a civilization rises from savagery, Moties stop dying from starvation! You humans don’t know what population pressure is! We can keep the numbers down in the lesser breeds, but what can the givers of orders do about their own numbers? The closest thing we’ve got to a birth control pill is infanticide!”
“And you can nae do that,” Potter said. “Any such instinct would be bred out o’ the race. So presently everyone is fighting for what food is left.”
“Of course.” Whitbread’s Motie was calmer now. “The higher the civilization, the longer the period of savagery. And always there’s Crazy Eddie in there pitching, trying to break the pattern of the Cycles, fouling things up worse. We’re pretty close to a collapse now, gentlemen, in case you didn’t notice. When you came there was a terrible fight over jurisdiction. My Master won—”
Charlie whistled and hummed for a second.
“Yeah. King Peter tried for that, but he couldn’t get enough support. Wasn’t sure he could win a fight with my Master… What we’re doing now will probably cause that war anyway. It doesn’t matter. It was bound to start soon.”
“You’re so crowded you grow plants on the rooftops,” said Whitbread.
“Oh, that’s just common sense. Like putting strips of cropland through the cities. Some always live, to start the Cycles over.”
“It must be tough, carving out a civilization without even radioactives,” said Whitbread. “You’d have to go direct to hydrogen fusion every time?”
“Sure. You’re getting at something.”
“I’m not sure what.”
“Well, it’s been that way for all of recorded history, a long time by your standards. Except for one period when they found radioactives in the Trojan asteroids. There were a few alive up there and they brought civilization here. The radioactives had been pretty thoroughly mined by some older civilization, but there were still some there.”
“God’s eyes,” said Whitbread. “But—”
“Stop the car, please,” Staley ordered. Whitbread’s Motie twittered and the car came smoothly to a halt. “I’m getting nervous about what we’re running into,” Staley explained. “They must be waiting for us. Those soldiers we killed haven’t reported in—and if those were your Master’s men, where are the Keeper’s? Anyway, I want to test the Warriors’ weapons.”
“Have the Brown look them over,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “They may be rigged.”
They looked deadly, those weapons. And no two were identical. The most common type was a slug thrower, but there were also hand lasers and grenades. The butt of each weapon had been individualized. Some balanced only against the upper right shoulder, some squared against both. The gun sights differed. There were two left-handed models. Staley dimly remembered heaving out a lefthanded body.
There was a rocket launcher with a fifteen-centimeter aperture. “Have her look at this,” Staley said.
Whitbread’s Motie handed the weapon to the Brown, accepting a slug thrower in return which she put under a bench. “This was rigged.” The Brown looked at the rocket launcher and twittered. “OK,” Whitbread’s Motie said.
“How about the loads?” Staley passed them over. There were several different kinds, and none exactly alike. The Brown twittered again.
“The biggest rocket would explode if you tried to load it,” Whitbread’s Motie said. “They may have figured you right at that. Anyway, they certainly prepared enough traps. I’ve been assuming that the Masters think you’re a kind of inept Mediator. It was what we thought, at first. But these traps mean they think you could kill Warriors.”
“Great. I’d rather they thought we were stupid. We’d still be dead without the museum weapons. Come to that, why keep live guns in a museum?”
“You don’t see the point of a museum, Horst. It’s for the next rise in the Cycles. Savages come to put together another civilization. The faster they can do it, the longer it’ll be before another collapse because they’ll be expanding their capabilities faster than the population. See? So the savages get their choice of a number of previous civilizations, and the weapons to put a new one into action. You noticed the lock?”
“I did,” said Potter. “You need some astronomy to solve it. I presume that’s to keep the savages from getting the goods before they’re ready.”
“Right.” The Brown handed over a big-nosed rocket with a twitter. “She fixed this one. It’s safe. What are you planning to do with it, Horst?”
“Pick me some more. Potter, you carry that x-ray laser. How close are we to the surface?”
“Oh. Hm. The—” (Bird Whistle) “—terminus is only one flight of stairs below the surface. The ground is pretty level in that region. I’d say we’re three to ten meters underground.”
“How close to other transportation?”
“An hour’s walk to—” (Bird Whistle). “Horst, are you going to damage the tunnel? Do you know how long this subway has been in use?”
“No.” Horst slid through the makeshift hatch in the side of the car. He walked a score of meters back the way they had come, then doubled that. The weapons could still be booby-trapped.
The tunnel was infinitely straight ahead of him. It must have been trued with a laser, then dug with something like a hot rock boring machine.
Whitbread’s Motie’s voice carried down the tunnel. “Eleven thousand years!”
Staley fired.
The projectile touched the roof of the tunnel, far down. Horst curled up against the shock wave. When he raised his eyes there was considerable dirt in the tunnel.
He chose another projectile and fired it.
This time there was reddish daylight. He walked down to look at the damage. Yes, they could climb that slope.
Eleven thousand years.
36. Judgment
“Send the car on without us,” Horst said. Whitbread’s Motie twittered and the Brown opened the control panel. She worked at blinding speed. Whitbread remembered a Brown asteroid miner who had lived and died eons ago, when MacArthur was home and Moties were a friendly, fascinating unknown.
The Brown leaped off. The car hesitated a second, then accelerated smoothly. They turned to the ramp Horst had created and climbed silently.
The world was all the shades of red as they emerged. Endless rows of crops were folding their leaves against the night. An irregular ring of plants leaned drunkenly around the hole.
Something moved among the plants. Three guns came up. The twisted thing plodded toward them… and Staley said, “At ease. It’s a Farmer.”
Whitbread’s Motie moved up beside the midshipmen. She brushed dirt off her fur with all her hands. “There’ll be more of those here. They may even try to smooth out the hole. Farmers aren’t too bright. They don’t have to be. What now, Horst?”
“We walk until we can ride. If you see planes—hmm.”
“Infrared detectors,” said the Motie.
“Do you have tractors in these fields? Could we grab one?” Staley asked.