The Mote in God's Eye

Charlie pantomimed ritual sorrow: Circumstances force me to disagree with you, Master. “Their original examinations were directionless. Can you say they would be less thorough now? That they would not find that all three of us suffer from hormone imbalances?” Charlie’s arms moved, so, to indicate apology for reminding the Master of his sterility; moved again to indicate pressing importance. “The same imbalance that they detected in the Brown miner. Imbalances that were not present when they found the miner, but which developed before she died aboard MacArthur.”

The others were suddenly quiet. Charlie continued inexorably. “They are not stupid. They may well have connected these disturbances with sexual abstinence. What have they discovered about Watchmakers? They must have had Watchmakers to examine; the miner would have brought them aboard as a matter of course.”

“Curse!” Ivan assumed a pose of thought. “Would they cage the Watchmakers separately?”

Both Mediators gestured lack of knowledge. “Jock was right to answer as she did,” Charlie said. “They have the body that was aboard the Crazy Eddie probe. There must have been one, and it must have been a Mediator, a young one with a long life so that he could negotiate with whomever the probe might find here.”

“But our records show that Mediator would be dead,” Jock said. “He must have been; the humans learned nothing from him. Curse! If only the records were complete—”

“If only the records were complete. If only we had a Brown. If only the humans would tell us what they have done with the probe. If only the humans would tell us why they destroyed MacArthur. You will cease these meaningless phrases. You must have learned them from humans.” Ivan commanded with finality. “Speak of what the humans have learned from the pilot of the probe.”

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.”