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.
“
“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
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.
The living Sally was almost blushing, but her face remained grim.
“Perhaps not thoroughly enough,” Hardy commented.
“Apparently not,” Sally said. “Shh.”
Someone was chuckling. Sally looked around, to see Rod looking beatifically unconcerned, Hardy smiling gently, and Renner laughing. She looked curses at the Sailing Master, but he obstinately refused to vanish in black smoke.
There were various clunks, and the screen went blank
“The literal truth,” she mused. “ ‘We don’t have sexual relations.’ They don’t either, but not by choice.”
“Really?” David Hardy sounded puzzled “The statement in context with the question is highly misleading…”
“She didn’t want to talk about it any more,” Sally insisted. “And no wonder. I just misunderstood, that’s all.”
“I never misunderstood my Motie,” Renner said. “Sometimes she understood me all too well…”
“Look. Let’s drop it.”
“The day we went down to Mote Prime. You’d known each other for months,” Renner mused. “Chaplain, what do you think?”
“If I understand you properly, the same as you.”
“Just what are you hinting at,
“I’m not hinting it, Sally,” Renner said with sudden decision. “I’m saying it. Your Motie lied to you. Deliberately and with forethought.”
“Nonsense. She was embarrassed—”