The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [110]
When the Moties did not answer at once, Jonathon said, “Between them the biologists have tried a lot of things. New foods, analysis of the Brown’s digestive fluids, x-rays for tumor. They even changed the atmosphere in her cabin to match the Mote Prime atmosphere. Nothing works. She’s unhappy, she whines, she doesn’t move around much. She’s getting thin. Her hair is coming out.
Whitbread’s Motie spoke in a voice gone oddly flat. “You haven’t any idea what might be wrong with her?”
“No,” said Whitbread.
It was strange and uncomfortable, the way the Moties were looking at them. They seemed identical now, floating half-crouched, anchored by hand holds: identical pose, identical markings, identical faint smiles. Their individual identities didn’t show now. Perhaps it was all a pose—
“We’ll get you some food,” Potter’s Motie said suddenly. “You may hae guessed right. It may be her diet.”
Both Moties left. Presently Whitbread’s Motie returned with a pressure bag that contained grain and plum-sized fruits and a chunk of red meat. “Boil the meat, soak the grain, and give her the fruit raw,” she said. “And test the ionization in her cabin air.” She ushered them out.
The boys boarded an open scooter to return to the cutter. Presently Potter said, “They behaved verra strangely. I canna but think that something important happened a minute ago.”
“Yah.”
“Then what was it?”
“Maybe they think we’ve been mistreating the Brown. Maybe they wonder why we won’t bring her here. Maybe the other way around: they’re shocked that we take so much trouble for a mere Brown.”
“And perhaps they were tired and we imagined it.” Potter fired thruster clusters to slow the scooter.
“Gavin. Look behind us.”
“Not now. I must see to the safety o’ my command.” Potter took his time docking the scooter, then looked around.
More than a dozen Moties had been working outside the ship. The bracing for the toroids was conspicuously unfinished . . . but the Moties were all streaming into the airlock.
The Mediators came streaming into the toroid, bouncing gently from the walls in their haste to get out of each other’s way. Most of them showed in one way or another that they were Fyunch(click) to aliens. They tended to underuse their lower right arms. They wanted to line themselves with their heads pointing all in the same direction.
The Master was white. The tufts at her armpits and groin were long and silky, like the fur of an Angora cat. When they were all there, the Master turned to Whitbread’s Motie and said, “Speak.”
Whitbread’s Motie told of the incident with the midshipmen. “I’m certain they meant it all,” she concluded.
To Potter’s Motie the Master said, “Do you agree?”
“Yes, completely.”
There was a panicky undercurrent of whispers, some Motie tongues, some in Anglic. It cut off when the Master said, “What did you tell them?”
“We told them the disease might well be a diet deficiency—”
There was shocked human-sounding laughter amoung the Mediators, none at all among the few who had not been assigned Fyunch(click)s.
“—and gave them food for the Engineer. It will not help, of course.”
“Were they fooled?”
“Difficult to tell. We are not good at lying directly. It is not our specialty,” said Potter’s Motie.
A buzz of talk rose in the toroid. The Master allowed it for a time. Presently she spoke. “What can it mean? Speak of this.”
One answered. “They cannot be so different from us. They fight wars. We have heard hints of whole planets rendered uninhabitable.”
Another interrupted. There was something gracefully human—feminine, in the way she moved. It seemed grotesque to the Master. “We think we know what causes humans to fight. Most animals on our world and theirs have a surrender reflex that prevents one member of a species from killing another. Humans use weapons instinctively. It makes the surrender reflex too slow.”
“But it was the same