The Mote in God's Eye

“Let’s get moving,” Senator Fowler said brusquely. “This meeting of the Lords Commissioners Extraordinary representing His Imperial Majesty to the inhabitants of the Mote System is convened. Please write your names and the organizations you represent.” There was a second of silence broken by the soft hums of the computer links.

“We’ve got a lot to cover,” the Senator continued. “Last night it became obvious that the Moties lie to us about certain critical matters—”

“No more than we’ve done to them,” Dr. Horvath interrupted. Blast! I have to control myself better than that. The point must be made, but if the Senator gets really irritated—

“It’s what they lie about that concerns us, Doctor,” Fowler said smoothly. He paused a moment, and power seemed to gather around him. The dumpy old man in baggy clothing vanished. The Prime Minister spoke. “Look, all of you, I like things informal. If you’ve got something to say, spit it out. But let me finish my sentences first.” There was a thin smile, wintry cold. “Anybody else you can interrupt, if you’re big enough. Now, Dr. Horvath, just what are the Moties hiding from us?”

Anthony Horvath ran his slim fingers through thinning hair. “I need more time, Senator. Until this morning it hadn’t occurred to me that the Moties were hiding anything.” He glanced nervously at Chaplain Hardy, but the priest said nothing.

“It was a bit of a surprise to all of us,” Fowler said. “But we’ve got evidence that Moties breed at a godawful rate. The question is, could we make them keep their numbers down if they don’t want to? Rod, could the Moties have been hiding weapons from us?”

Rod shrugged. “In a whole system? Ben, they could hide damn near anything they wanted to.”

“But they are utterly unwarlike,” Horvath protested. “Senator, I am as concerned for the safety of the Empire as anyone in this room. I take my duties as a Sector Minister quite seriously, I assure you.”

You’re not assurin’ us, you’re talkin’ for the record, Kelley thought. Cap’n Blaine knows it, too. What’s botherin’ the boss? He looks like he does before an action.

“—no evidence of warlike activities among the Moties,” Horvath finished.

“That turns out not to be the case,” Renner put in. “Doc, I like Moties as well as you do, but something produced the Mediators.”

“Oh, well, yes,” Horvath said easily. “In their prehistory they must have fought like lions. The analogy is quite apt, by the way. The territorial instinct shows up still in their architecture and in their social organization, for example. But the combats were a long time ago.”

“Just how long?” Senator Fowler asked.

Horvath looked uncomfortable. “Possibly a million years.”

There was silence. Sally shook her head sadly. Cooped up in one tiny system for a million years—a million civilized years! The patience they must have learned!

“No wars in all the time since?” Fowler asked. “Really?”

“Yes, damn it, they’ve had wars,” Horvath answered. “At least two of the kind that Earth went through at the close of the CoDominium period. But that was a long time ago!” He had to raise his voice to carry across Sally’s startled gasp. There were mutters around the table.

“One of those was enough to make Earth damn near uninhabitable,” Ben Fowler said slowly. “How long ago are you talking about? Million years again?”

Horvath said, “Hundreds of thousands, at least.”

“Thousands, probably,” Chaplain Hardy said carefully. “Or less. Sally, have you revised your estimates of the age of that primitive civilization you dug up?”

Sally didn’t answer either. There was an uncomfortable silence.

“For the record, Father Hardy,” Senator Fowler asked, “are you here as Commission staff?”

“No, sir. Cardinal Randolph has asked me to represent the Church to the Commission.”

“Thank you.”

There was more silence.

“They had nowhere to go,” Anthony Horvath said. He shrugged nervously. Someone giggled, then fell silent when Horvath continued. “It’s obvious that their first wars were a very long time ago, in the million-year range. It shows in their development. Dr. Horowitz has examined the expedition biological findings and—well, you tell them, Sigmund.”

Horowitz smiled in triumph. “When I first examined the probe pilot I thought it might be a mutation. I was right. They are mutations, only it all happened a long time ago. The original animal life on Mote Prime is bilaterally symmetric, as on Earth and nearly everywhere. The first asymmetric Motie must have been a drastic mutation. Couldn’t have been as well developed as the present forms, either. Why didn’t it die out? Because there were deliberate efforts to obtain the asymmetric form, I think. And because everything else was mutating also. The competition for survival was low.”

“But that means they had civilization when the present forms developed,” Sally said. “Is that possible?”

Horowitz smiled again.

“What about the Eye?” Sally asked. “It must have irradiated the Mote system when it went supergiant.”