The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [122]
“A working time machine?”
“Not working, Jonathon. It was never completed. His Master went broke trying to finish it.”
“Oh.” Whitbread showed his disappointment.
“It was never tested,” said the Motie. “The basic theory may be flawed.”
The machine looked like a small cyclotron with a cabin inside. It almost made sense, like a Langston Field generator.
“You interest me strangely,” Renner said to his Motie. “You can requisition any transportation, any time?”
“That’s right. Our talent is communication, but our major task is stopping fights. Sally has lectured us on your, let’s say, your racial problems involving weapons and the surrender reflex. We Mediators evolved out of that. We can explain one being’s viewpoint to another. Noncommunication can assume dangerous proportions sometimes—usually just before a war, by one of those statistical flukes that make you believe in coincidence. If one of us can always get to transportation—or even to telephones or radios—war becomes unlikely.”
There were awed expressions among the humans, “Vee-erry nice,” said Renner. Then, “I was wondering whether you could requisition MacArthur.”
“By law and tradition, yes. In practice, don’t be a fool.”
“OK. These things fighting around the time machine—”
“Legendary demons,” Bury’s Motie explained. “They defend the structure of reality.”
Renner remembered ancient Spanish paintings dating from the time of the Black Plague in Europe, paintings of living men and women being attacked by the revived and malevolent dead. Next to the white Moties these red sandstone things had that impossibly lean, bony look, and a malevolence that was almost tangible.
“And why the time machine?”
“The Mediator felt that a certain incident in history had happened because of a lack of communication. He decided to correct it.” Renner’s Motie shrugged with her arms; a Motie couldn’t lift her shoulders. “Crazy Eddie. The Crazy Eddie probe was like that. A little more workable, maybe. A watcher of the sky—a meteorologist, plus some other fields—found evidence that there was life on a world of a nearby star. Right away this Crazy Eddie Mediator wanted to contact them. He tied up enormous amounts of capital and industrial power, enough to affect most of civilization. He got his probe built, powered by a light sail and a battery of laser cannon for—”
“This all sounds familiar.”
“Right. The Crazy Eddie probe was in fact launched toward New Caledonia, much later, and with a different pilot. We’ve been assuming you followed it home.”
“So it worked. Unfortunately the crew was dead, but it reached us. So why are you still calling it the Crazy Eddie probe? Oh, never mind,” said Renner. His Motie was chortling.
Two limousines were waiting for them outside the Museum and stairs had been erected leading down to street level. Tiny two-seater cars zipped around the obstruction without slowing down, and without collisions.
Staley stopped at the bottom. “Mr. Renner! Look!”
Renner looked. A car had stopped alongside a great blank building; for there were no curbs. The brown chauffeur and his white-furred passenger disembarked, and the White walked briskly around the corner. The Brown disengaged two hidden levers at the front, then heaved against the side of the car. It collapsed like an accordian, into something half a meter wide. The Brown turned and followed the white Motie.
“They fold up!” Staley exclaimed.
“Sure they do,” said Renner’s Motie. “Can you imagine the traffic jam if they didn’t?