“ ‘Golden cities far…’ Me too.”
Afterwards Whitbread stood by the picture window. The city glowed with a million lights. Most of the tiny cars had disappeared, but the streets were alive with huge silent trucks. The pedestrians had slacked off somewhat. Whitbread spotted something tall and spindly that ran among the Whites as if they were stationary objects. It dodged around a huge Porter type and was gone.
27. The Guided Tour
Renner was up before dawn. The Moties chose and set out clothing for him while he was bathing in the remarkable tub. He let their choice stand. He would indulge them; they might be the last nonmilitary servants he would ever have. His sidearm was discreetly laid out with his clothing, and after a lot of thought, Renner buckled it under a civilian jacket woven from some marvelous shining fibers. He didn’t want the weapon, but regulations were regulations.
The others were all at breakfast, watching the dawn through the big picture window. It came on like sunset, in all the shades of red. Mote Prime’s day was a few hours too long. At night they would stay up longer; they would sleep longer in the mornings and still be up at dawn.
Breakfast featured large, remarkably egg-shaped boiled eggs. Inside the shell it was as if the egg came prescrambled, with a maraschino cherry buried off-center. Renner was told that the cherry thing was not worth eating, and he didn’t try.
“The Museum is only a few blocks from here.” Dr. Horvath’s Motie rubbed her right hands briskly together. “Let’s walk. You’ll want warm clothes, I think.”
The Moties all had that problem: which pair of hands to use to imitate human gestures? Renner expected Jackson’s Motie to go psychotic. Jackson was left-handed.
They walked. A cold breeze whipped them from around corners. The sun was big and dim; you could look directly at it this early in the day. Tiny cars swanned six feet below them. The smell of Mote Prime air seeped faintly through the filter helmets, and so did the quiet hum of cars and the fast jabber of Motie voices.
The group of humans moved among crowds of Moties of all colors—and were ignored. Then a group of white furred pedestrians turned a corner and lingered to examine them. They chattered in musical tones and stared curiously.
Bury seemed uncomfortable; he stayed within the group as much as he could. He doesn’t want eye tracks all over him, Renner decided. The Sailing Master found himself being examined by a very pregnant White, the bulge of her child high up above the complexities of the major joint in her back. Renner smiled at her, squatted on his heels, and turned his back to her. His Fyunch(click) sang in low tones, and the White moved closer, then half a dozen white Moties were running a dozen small hands over his vertebrae.
“Right! A little lower,” said Renner. “OK, scratch right there. Ahh.” When the Whites had moved on, Renner stretched his long legs to catch up with the tour. His Motie trotted alongside.
“I trust I will not learn your irreverence,” his Fyunch(click) said.
“Why not?” Renner asked seriously.
“When you are gone there will be other work for us. No, do not be alarmed. If you are capable of satisfying the Navy, I can have no more trouble keeping the givers of orders happy.” There was an almost wistful tone, Renner thought—but he wasn’t sure. If Moties had facial expressions, Renner hadn’t learned them.
The Museum was a good distance ahead of them. Like other buildings it was square-built, but its face was glass or something like it. “We have many places that fit your word ‘museum,’ ” Horvath’s Motie was saying, “in this and other cities. This one was closest and specializes in painting and sculpture.”
A juggernaut loomed over them, three meters tall, and another meter beyond that because of the cargo on its head. It—she, Renner noted from the long, shallow bulge of pregnancy high on her abdomen. The eyes were soft animal eyes, without awareness, and she caught up with them and passed, never slowing.
“Carrying a child doesn’t seem to slow a Motie down,” Renner observed.
Brown-and-white shoulders and heads turned toward him. Renner’s Motie said, “No, of course not. Why should it?”
Sally Fowler took up the task. She tried carefully to explain just how useless pregnant human females were. “It’s one reason we tend to develop male-oriented societies. And—” She was still lecturing on childbirth problems when they reached the Museum.
The doorway would have caught Renner across the bridge of his nose. The ceilings were higher; they brushed his hair. Dr. Horvath had to bend his head.
And the lighting was a bit too yellow.
And the paintings were placed too low.
Conditions for viewing were not ideal. Aside from that, the colors in the paints themselves were off. Dr. Horvath and his Motie conversed with animation following his revelation that blue plus yellow equals green to a human eye. The Motie eye was designed like a human eye, or an octopus eye, for that matter: a globe, an adaptable lens, receptor nerves along the back. But the receptors were different.
Yet the paintings had impact. In the main hall—which had three-meter ceilings and was lined with larger paintings—the tour stopped before a street scene. Here a Brown-and-white had climbed on a car and was apparently haranguing a swarm of Browns and Brown-and-whites, while behind him the sky burned sunset-red. The expressions were all the same flat smile, but Renner sensed violence and looked closer. Many of the crowd carried tools, always in their left hands, and some were broken. The city itself was on fire.
“It’s called ‘Return to Your Tasks.’ You’ll find that the Crazy Eddie theme recurs constantly,” said Sally’s Motie. She moved on before she could be asked to explain further.
The next painting in line showed a quasi-Motie, tall and thin, small-headed, long-legged. It was running out of a forest, at the viewer. Its breath trailed smoky-white behind it. “The Message Carrier,” Hardy’s Motie called it.
The next was another outdoor scene: a score of Browns and Whites eating around a blazing campfire. Animal eyes gleamed red around them. The whole landscape was dark red; and overhead Murcheson’s Eye gleamed against the Coal Sack.
“You can’t tell what they’re thinking and feeling from looking at them, can you? We were afraid of that,” said Horvath’s Motie. “Nonverbal communication. The signals are different with us.”
“I suppose so,” said Bury. “These paintings would all be salable, but none especially so. They would be only curiosities… though quite valuable as such, because of the huge potential market and the limited source. But they do not communicate. Who painted them?”
“This one is quite old. You can see that it was painted on the wall of the building itself, and—”
“But what kind of Motie? Brown-and-whites?”
There was impolite laughter among the Moties. Bury’s Motie said, “You will never see a work of art that was not made by a Brown-and-white. Communication is our specialty. Art is communication.”
“Does a White never have anything to say?”
“Of course. He has a Mediator say it for him. We translate, we communicate. Many of these paintings are arguments, visually expressed.”
Weiss had been trailing along, saying nothing. Renner noticed. Keeping his voice down, he asked the man, “Any comments?”
Weiss scratched his jaw. “Sir, I haven’t been in a museum since grade school… but aren’t some paintings made just to be pretty?”
“Umm.”
There were only two portraits in all the halls of paintings. Brown-and-whites both, they both showed from the waist up. Expression in the Moties must show in body language, not faces. These portraits were oddly lighted and their arms were oddly distorted. Renner thought them evil.