“Don’t be afraid. I can’t read your mind,” it had said, reading his mind. On many rediscovered worlds of the First Empire there were rumors of mind readers, but none had ever been found, praise the mercy of Allah. This thing claimed that it was not; and it was very alien. The touch was not abhorrent, although people of Bury’s culture hated to be touched. He had been among far too many strange customs and peoples to worry about his childhood prejudices. But this Motie was reassuringly strange—and Bury had never heard of anybody’s Fyunch(click) acting that way. Was it trying to reassure him?
Nothing could have lured him but the hope of profit—profit without ceiling, without limit, profit from merely looking around. Even the terraforming of the New Caladonia worlds by the First Empire had not shown the industrial power that must have moved the asteroids to Mote Beta’s Trojan points.
“A good commercial product,” the Motie was saying, “should not be bulky or massive. We should be able to find items scarce here and plentiful in the Empire, or vice versa. I anticipate great profit from your visit…”
They joined the others in the air lock. Large windows showed the airfield. “Blasted show-offs,” Renner muttered to Bury. When the Trader looked at him quizzically Renner pointed. “There’s city all around, and the airport’s got not one meter of extra space.”
Bury nodded. Around the tiny field were skyscrapers, tall and square-built, jammed close together, with only single belt of green running out of the city to the east. If there were a plane crash it would be a disaster—but the Moties didn’t build planes to crash.
There were three ground cars, limousines, two for passengers and one for luggage, and the human seats took up two-thirds of the room in each. Bury nodded reflectively. Moties didn’t mind being crowded together. As soon as they took their seats the drivers, who were Browns, whipped the cars away. The vehicles ran soundlessly, with a smooth feeling of power, and there was no jolt at all. The motors were in the hubs of the tall balloon tires, much like those of cars on Empire worlds.
Tall, ugly buildings loomed above them to shoulder out the sky. The black streets were wide but very crowded and the Moties drove like maniacs. Tiny vehicles passed each other in intricate curved paths with centimeters of clearance. The traffic was not quite silent. There was a steady low hum that might have been all the hundreds of motors sounding together, and sometimes a stream of high-pitched gibberish that might have been cursing.
Once the humans were able to stop wincing away from each potential collision, they noticed that all the other drivers were Browns, too. Most of the cars earned a passenger, sometimes a Brown-and-white, often a pure White. These Whites were larger than the Brown-and-whites, and their fur was very clean and silky—and they were doing all the cursing as their drivers continued in silence.
Science Minister Horvath turned back to the humans in the seats behind him. “I had a look at the buildings as we came down—roof gardens on every one of them. Well, Mr. Renner, are you glad you came? We were expecting a Navy officer, but hardly you.”
“It seemed most reasonable to send me,” Kevin Renner said. “I was the most thoroughly available officer aboard, as the Captain put it. I won’t be needed to chart courses for a while.”
“And that’s why they sent you?” Sally asked.
“No, I think what really convinced the Captain was the way I screamed and cried and threatened to hold my breath. Somehow he got the idea I really wanted to come. And I did.” The way the navigating officer leaned forward in his seat reminded Sally of a dog sticking its head out of a car window into the wind.
They had only just noticed the walkways that ran one floor up along the edges of the buildings, and they could not see the pedestrians well at all. There were more Whites, and Brown-and-whites, and… others.
Something tall and symmetrical came walking like a giant among the Whites. Three meters tall it must have been, with a small, earless head that seemed submerged beneath the sloping muscles of the shoulders. It carried a massive-looking box of some kind under each of two arms. It walked like a juggernaut, steady and unstoppable.
“What’s that?” Renner asked.
“Worker,” Sally’s Motie replied. “Porter. Not very intelligent.”
There was something else Renner strained to see, for its fur was rust-red, as if it had been dipped in blood. It was the size of his own Motie, but with a smaller head, and as it raised and flexed its right hands it showed fingers so long and delicate that Renner thought of Amazon spiders. He touched his Fyunch(click)’s shoulder and pointed. “And that?”
“Physician. Emm Dee,” Renner’s Motie said. “We’re a differentiated species, as you may have gathered by now. They’re all relatives, so to speak.”
“Yah. And the Whites?”
“Givers of orders. There was one aboard ship, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yah, we guessed that.” The Tsar had, anyway. What else was he right about?
“What do you think of our architecture?”
“Ugly. Industrial hideous,” said Renner. “I knew your ideas of beauty would be different from ours, but—on your honor. Do you have a standard of beauty?”
“Come, I will conceal nothing from you. We do, but it doesn’t resemble yours. And I still don’t know what you people see in arches and pillars—”
“Freudian symbolism,” Renner said firmly. Sally snorted.
“That’s what Horvath’s Motie keeps saying, but I’ve never heard a coherent explanation,” Renner’s Motie said. “Meanwhile, what do you think of your vehicles?”
The limousines were radically different from the two-seaters that zipped past them. No two of the two-seaters were alike either—the Moties did not seem to have discovered the advantages of standardization. But all the other vehicles they had seen were tiny, like a pair of motorcycles, while the humans rode in low-slung stream-lined vehicles with soft curves bright with polish.
“They’re beautiful,” said Sally. “Did you design them just for us?”
“Yes,” her Motie replied. “Did we guess well?”
“Perfectly. We’re most flattered,” Sally said. “You must have put considerable expense into… this…” She trailed off. Renner turned to see where she was looking, and gasped.
There had been castles like this in the Tyrolean Alps of Earth. They were still there, never bombed, but Renner had only seen copies on other worlds. Now a fairy-tale castle, graceful with tall spires, stood among the square buildings of the Motie city. At one corner a reaching minaret was circled by a thin balcony.
“What is that place?” Renner asked.
Sally’s Motie answered. “You will stay there. It is pressurized and self-enclosed, with a garage and cars for your convenience.”
Horace Bury spoke into the admiring silence. “You are most impressive hosts.”
From the first they called it the Castle. Beyond question it had been designed and built entirely for them. It was large enough for perhaps thirty people. Its beauty and luxury were in the tradition of Sparta—with a few jarring notes.
Whitbread, Staley, Sally, Drs. Hardy and Horvath—they knew their manners. They kept firm rein on their laughter as their Fyunch(click) s showed them about their respective rooms. Able Spacers Jackson and Weiss were awed to silence and wary of saying something foolish. Horace Bury’s people had rigid traditions of hospitality; aside from that, he found all customs strange except on Levant.
But Renner’s people respected candor; and candor, he had found, made life easier for everyone. Except in the Navy. In the Navy he had learned to keep his mouth shut. Fortunately his Fyunch(click) held views similar to his own.