The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven [171]
“And you hae nothing like Christianity?” Potter demanded.
“No. We’ve had prophecies of a Savior who’d end the Cycles, but we’ve had everything, Gavin. It’s for damn sure there’s been no Savior yet.”
The endless city unrolled beneath them. Presently Potter leaned back in his chair and began to snore softly. Whitbread watched in amazement.
“You should sleep too,” said the Motie. “You’ve been up too long.”
“I’m too scared. You tire easier than we do—you ought to sleep.”
“I’m too scared.”
“Brother, now I’m really scared.” Did I really call him brother? No, I called her brother. Hell with it. “There was more to your museum of art than we understood, wasn’t there?”
“Yeah. Things we didn’t want to go into detail about. Like the massacre of the Doctors. A very old event, almost legend now. Another Emperor, sort of, decided to wipe the entire Doctor breed off the planet. Damn near succeeded, too.” The Motie stretched. “It’s good to talk to you without having to lie. We weren’t made to lie, Jonathon.”
“Why kill off the Doctors?”
“To keep the population down, you idiot! Of course it didn’t work. Some Masters kept secret stables, and after the next collapse they—”
“—were worth their weight in iridium.”
“It’s thought that they actually became the foundation of commerce. Like cattle on Tabletop.”
The city fell behind at last, and the plane moved over oceans dark beneath the red light of Murcheson’s Eye. The red star was setting, glowing balefully near the horizon, and other stars rose in the east below the inky edge of the Coal Sack.
“If they’re going to shoot us down, this is the place,” Staley said. “Where the crash won’t hit anything. Are you sure you know where we’re going?”
Whitbread’s Motie shrugged. “To King Peter’s jurisdiction. If we can get there.” She looked back at Potter. The midshipman was curled into his seat, his mouth slightly open, gently snoring. The lights in the plane were dim and everything was peaceful, the only jarring note the rocket launcher that Staley clutched across his lap. “You ought to get some sleep too.”
“Yeah.” Horst leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His hands never relaxed their tight grip on the weapon.
“He even sleeps at attention,” Whitbread said. “Or tries to. I guess Horst is as scared as we are.”
“I keep wondering if any of this does any good,” the alien said. “We’re damned close to falling apart anyway. You missed a couple of other things in that zoo, you know. Like the food beast. A Motie variant, almost armless, unable to defend itself against us but pretty good at surviving. Another of our relatives, bred for meat in a shameful age, a long time ago.”
“My God.” Whitbread took a deep breath. “But you wouldn’t do anything like that now.”
“Oh, no.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“A mere statistical matter, a coincidence you may find interesting. There isn’t a zoo on the planet that doesn’t have breeding stock of Meats. And the herds are getting larger...”
“God’s teeth! Don’t you ever stop thinking about the next collapse?”
“No.”
Murcheson’s Eye had long since vanished. Now the east was blood-red in a sunrise that still startled Whitbread. Red sunrises were rare on inhabitable worlds. They passed over a chain of islands. Ahead to the west lights glowed where it was still dark. There was a cityscape like a thousand Spartas set edge to edge, crisscrossed everywhere by dark strips of cultivated land. On man’s worlds they would be parks. Here they were forbidden territory, guarded by twisted demons.
Whitbread yawned and looked at the alien beside him. “I think I called you brother, some time last night.”
“I know. You meant sister. Gender is important to us, too. A matter of life and death.”
“I’m not sure I mean that either. I meant friend,” Whitbread said with some awkwardness.
“Fyunch(click) is a closer relationship. But I am glad to be your friend,” said