The Mediator spoke at her shoulder, and she jumped. It said, "Mediators talk. No Horace Bury Fyunch(click), but we talk."
"Good," said Glenda Ruth. "Let's talk. Please leave our trade goods alone. This is all we have to bargain with. It should not be ruined."
And now the Crazy Eddie Worm was growing in an Engineer, a female. Had the Warrior been female, too? Would it affect these Watchmakers?
How many Masters were aboard? Too many, of course, more than their captors would actually want, but... three? Four? And the clock was counting down.
"Your Lordship's presence is requested," the voice said. "My Lord. My Lord, I must insist. Rod Blaine, wake up, dammit!"
Rod sat bolt upright. "All right, already."
"What is it?" Sally asked. She sat up with a look of concern. "The children..."
Rod spoke to the ceiling. "Who?"
"Lord Orkovsky. He says the situation is urgent," the telephone said.
Rod Blaine swung his feet over the edge of the bed and found his slippers. "I'll talk to him in the study. Send coffee." He turned to Sally. "Not the kids. The Foreign Secretary wouldn't call us in the middle of the night about that." He went across the hail to his study and sat at his desk. "I'm here. No visuals. All right, Roger, what's up?"
"The Moties are loose."
"How?"
"Actually, it's not quite that bad." Lord Roger Orkovsky, Secretary of State for External Affairs, sounded like a diplomat under stress. "You'll recall there was some question of when Dr. Buckman's protostar would collapse."
"Yes, yes, of course."
"Well, it's happened, and the Moties were ready for it. Due to some clever thinking-Chris is mentioned in the dispatches-Mercer had sent everything he could scrape up out to where the new Alderson point would form, so we were ready, too. Almost ready.
"Details later. We got a whole bunch of reports at once, about stellar geometry and such. You'll have to read them all. What's important is that there are some Motie ships with an ambassador on board cooling their heels under Navy detention while we decide what to do about them. And Mercer wants a battle fleet."
Rod was aware that Sally had come up behind him. "Roger," she said.
"Good morning, Sally. Sorry to yank you up like this-"
"Are the children all right?"
"I was just getting to that," Orkovsky said. "We don't know. Chris volunteered to be Navy liaison aboard Bury's ship-Sinbad. Commodore Kevin Renner commanding."
"Commodore."
"Yeah, that's complicated, too."
"So they went into the Mote System," Rod said.
"Right. Sinbad, a light cruiser-Atropos, Commander Rawlins- and a Motie ship. The reports say the first person the Moties wanted to talk to was Horace Bury."
"Roger, that doesn't make sense," Sally said.
"Maybe not, but it's true. Look, I better give you the rest of this. There'll be a cabinet meeting in the Palace in two hours. We want you there. Both of you. Matter of fact, we want you back on the Motie Commission. You were going back to New Caledonia anyway, now the government will pay for getting you there. The Navy will have a ship ready by the time you get to the Palace."
"We can't leave so soon!" Rod said.
"Yes, we can," Sally said. "Roger, thanks. You mentioned Chris. What about Glenda Ruth?"
"That was the last message in the stack," Orkovsky said. "Sally, a hundred hours after Sinbud went into the Mote system, Freddy Townsend took his yacht through. Glenda Ruth was aboard."
"I want his name," Sally said.
"Huh?"
"Whoever let them through. There's got to be a Navy man in charge out there, and he let our daughter go into the Mote system in an unarmed yacht. I want his name."
"Sally..."
"Yes, I know, he thought he had a good reason."
"Maybe he did."
"It wouldn't matter, would it? When was the last time you won an argument with her? I still want his name. Fyunch(click)!"
"Yes, madame?"
"Is our car ready?"
"Yes, madame."
"Tell Wilson we'll be leaving in an hour. Get clearances for the west entrance to the Palace."
"Yes, madame."
"So what do we take?" Sally said. "Jock. Fyunch(click), we want to talk to Jock. Wake him up, but check with the doctors first."
"Good thinking," Rod said. "Sally, we can't take him with us."
"No, but we can get him to record something to prove he's still alive," Sally said.
"What?" Rod held a sheath of facsimile papers. "The last report says, and I quote: ‘The Hon. Glenda Ruth Blaine, on the basis of brief conversations with the Motie representatives, has concluded that although these Moties know Anglic and have some familiarity with the Empire, they are not part of any Motie group previously encountered.' I don't think they believe her."
"More fools they."
"Madame," the ceiling said. "Jock has been awakened. Do you want visuals?"
"Yes, thank you."
Brown and white fur streaked with gray. "Good morning, Sally. If you don't mind, I'll have chocolate while we talk."
"By all means. Good morning. Jock, the Moties are loose."
"Ah?"
"You knew about the protostar."
"I know what you have told me about the protostar. You said that it would collapse within the next hundred years. I take it that was wrong? That it has already happened?"
"You got it," Rod said. "Jock, we have a problem. Moties that Glenda Ruth believes aren't part of King Peter's group have got out of the Mote system. So far they appear to be stuck in a red dwarf backwater, but we all know the Empire can't keep up two blockades."
"And you and Sally have been given the problem of what to do about the Moties," Jock said. "Have they made you an admiral yet?"
"No."
"They will. And they'll give you a fleet." Jock's hand moved expressively. "At least it's not Kutuzov. Of course they want you to leave immediately. I am afraid I cannot accompany you."
"No, the Jump shock would kill you."
"Are the children well? They must have involved themselves by now."
Sally said, "They've gone to the Mote."
"I did not think you could surprise me," Jock said, "But you have. I see. Give me an hour. I will make what records I can."
"In what language?" Rod asked.
"In several. I will need recent pictures of Chris and Glenda Ruth, as well as of myself."
"We have a meeting."
"Of course. We will discuss this when you're done with that."
The Motie paused, and somehow the Motie smile was a grin of triumph. "So the horse learned to sing after all."
"I hadn't expected this," Jennifer said. "We're infested with Moties! Freddy... Freddy, I can't keep thinking of this ship as Hecate!"
Freddy Townsend looked around. "Yeah. Hecate's cabin mounted on a ship of unknown name. Bandit-One? And we'll just hang numbers on the rest of the fleet."
Glenda Ruth said, "We could ask-"
And she shied back before he snarled, "I won't ask Victoria. She'd give us the name of this Motie ship, like we're strap-on cargo."
Jennifer said, "A two-headed ship. Two captains. We've never seen the Master that gives the orders. Cerberus?"
Five Watchmakers, two Warriors, three Engineers nursing two Mediator pups, the old Mediator they now called Victoria, a Master, a Doctor, and a lean, spidery variant that scuttled back and forth through Cerberus's big new airlock, perhaps bearing messages, had all made their nests in the cabin.
The change had come gradually, while they slept. Glenda Ruth remembered waking from time to time in a shifting pattern of variously shaped Moties. Twelve hours of that, then she woke choking and weeping. The Doctor had examined them and then meeped at the young male Master they'd named Merlin, who warbled at the engineers, who readjusted the air and sewage recyclers until the air was back to standard... but it was still thick with Motie smells, and every human's eyes were still red.