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The Mote In God's Eye
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Dramatis Personae
Chronology
Prologue
Part One: The Crazy Eddie Probe
Chapter One - Command
Chapter Two - The Passengers
Chapter Three - Dinner Party
Chapter Four - Priority OC
Chapter Five - The Face of God
Chapter Six - The Light Sail
Chapter Seven - The Crazy Eddie Probe
Chapter Eight - The Alien
Chapter Nine - His Highness Has Decided
Chapter Ten - The Planet Killer
Chapter Eleven - The Church of Him
Chapter Twelve - Descent into Hell
Part Two: The Crazy Eddie Point
Chapter Thirteen - Look Around You
Chapter Fourteen - The Engineer
Chapter Fifteen - Work
Chapter Sixteen - Idiot Savant
Chapter Seventeen - Mr. Crawford's Eviction
Chapter Eighteen - The Stone Beehive
Chapter Nineteen - Channel Two's Popularity
Chapter Twenty - Night Watch
Chapter Twenty-one - The Ambassadors
Chapter Twenty-two - Word Games
Chapter Twenty-three - Eliza Crossing the Ice
Chapter Twenty-four - Brownies
Chapter Twenty-five - The Captain's Motie
Part Three: Meet Crazy Eddie
Chapter Twenty-six - Mote Prime
Chapter Twenty-seven - The Guided Tour
Chapter Twenty-eight - Kaffee Klatsch
Chapter Twenty-nine - Watchmakers
Chapter Thirty - Nightmare
Chapter Thirty-one - Defeat
Chapter Thirty-two - Lenin
Chapter Thirty-three - Planetfall
Chapter Thirty-four - Trespassers
Chapter Thirty-five - Run Rabbit Run
Chapter Thirty-six - Judgement
Chapter Thirty-seven - History Lesson
Chapter Thirty-eight - Final Solution
Part Four: Crazy Eddie's Answer
Chapter Thirty-nine - Departure
Chapter Forty - Farewell
Chapter Forty-one - Gift Shop
Chapter Forty-two - A Bag of Broken Glass
Chapter Forty-three - Trader's Lament
Chapter Forty-four - Council of War
Chapter Forty-five - The Crazy Eddie Jump
Chapter Forty-six - Personal and Urgent
Chapter Forty-seven - Homeward Bound
Chapter Forty-eight - Civilian
Chapter Forty-nine - Parades
Chapter Fifty - The Art of Negotiation
Chapter Fifty-one - After the Ball Is Over
Chapter Fifty-two - Options
Chapter Fifty-three - The Djinn
Chapter Fifty-four - Out of the Bottle
Chapter Fifty-five - Renner's Hole Card
Chapter Fifty-six - Last Hope
Chapter Fifty-seven - All the Skills of Treason
Chapter Fifty-eight - And Maybe the Horse Will Sing
Epilogue
About Larry Niven
About Jerry Pournelle
THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE
Larry Niven
www.larryniven.net
Jerry Pournelle
www.jerrypournelle.com
Copyright © 1974 by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Cover design by Passageway Pictures, Inc.
Collaborative Works by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
INFERNO
THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE
OATH OF FEALTY
FOOTFALL
LUCIFER'S HAMMER
THE GRIPPING HAND
THE BURNING CITY
BURNING TOWER
ESCAPE FROM HELL
Collaborative Works by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes
THE LEGACY OF HEOROT
BEOWULF'S CHILDREN
Collaborative Works by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn
FALLEN ANGELS
THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE
Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
RODERICK HAROLD, Lord Blaine, Commander, Imperial Space Navy
ARKLEY KELLY, Gunner, Imperial Marines, and Blaine family retainer
ADMIRAL SIR VLADIMIR RICHARD GEORGE PLEKHANOV, Vice Admiral Commanding Imperial Navy Forces, New Chicago, and Acting Governor General, New Chicago
CAPTAIN BRUNO CULLER, Imperial Space Navy, Master of INSS MacArthur
COMMANDER JOHN CARGILL, ISN, First Lieutenant of MacArthur
COMMANDER JOCK (SANDY) SINCLAIR, ISN, Chief Engineer of MacArthur
MIDSHIPMAN HORST STALEY, ISN, senior midshipman aboard INSS MacArthur
MIDSHIPMAN JONATHON WHITBREAD, ISN
KEVIN RENNER, Sailing Master Lieutenant, Imperial Space Navy Reserve
LADY SANDRA LIDDELL LEONOVNA BRIGHT FOWLER, B.A., M.S., doctoral candidate in anthropology, Imperial University of Sparta
HIS EXCELLENCY HORACE HUSSEIN BURY, Trader and Magnate; Chairman of the Board, Imperial Autonetics Company, Ltd.
MIDSHIPMAN GAVIN POTTER, ISN
FLEET ADMIRAL HOWLAND CRANSTON, Commander-in-Chief, His Majesty's Forces Beyond the Coal Sack
HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS RICHARD STEFAN MERRILL, Viceroy for His Majesty's Dominions Beyond the Coal Sack
DR. ANTHONY HORVATH, Minister of Science for Trans-Coalsack Sector
DR. JACOB BUCKMAN, Astrophysicist
FATHER DAVID HARDY, Chaplain-Captain, Imperial Space Navy Reserve
ADMIRAL LAVRENTI KUTUZOV, Vice Admiral Commanding His Majesty's Expedition Beyond Murcheson's Eye
SENATOR BENJAMIN BRIGHT FOWLER, Majority Leader and Member of Privy Council
DR. SIGMUND HOROWITZ, Professor of Xenobiology, University of New Scotland
HERBERT COLVIN, one time Captain of Space Forces of the Republic of Union, and onetime master of Union cruiser Defiant
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Matthew 7:3
Prologue
"Throughout the past thousand years of history it has been traditional to regard the Alderson Drive as an unmixed blessing. Without the faster than light travel Alderson's discoveries made possible, humanity would have been trapped in the tiny prison of the Solar System when the Great Patriotic Wars destroyed the CoDominium on Earth. Instead, we had already settled more than two hundred worlds.
"A blessing, yes. We might now be extinct were it not for the Alderson Drive. But unmixed? Consider. The same tramline effect that colonized the stars, the same interstellar contacts that allowed the formation of the First Empire, allow interstellar war. The worlds wrecked in two hundred years of Secession Wars were both settled and destroyed by ships using the Alderson Drive.
"Because of the Alderson Drive we need never consider the space between the stars. Because we can shunt between stellar systems in zero time, our ships and ships' drives need cover only interplanetary distances. We say that the Second Empire of Man rules two hundred worlds and all the space between, over fifteen million cubic parsecs. . .
"Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing. . ."
—from a speech delivered by Dr. Anthony Horvath at the Blaine Institute, 3029 ad.
Part One
The Crazy Eddie Probe
Chapter One
Command
3017 AD
"Admiral's compliments, a
nd you're to come to his office right away," Midshipman Staley announced.
Commander Roderick Blaine looked frantically around the bridge, where his officers were directing repairs with low and urgent voices, surgeons assisting at a difficult operation. The gray steel compartment was a confusion of activities, each orderly by itself, but the overall impression was of chaos. Screens above one helmsman's station showed the planet below and the other ships in orbit near MacArthur, but everywhere else the panel covers had been removed from consoles, test instruments were clipped into their insides, and technicians stood by with color-coded electronic assemblies to replace everything that seemed doubtful. Thumps and whines sounded through the ship as somewhere aft the engineering crew worked on the hull.
The scars of battle showed everywhere, ugly burns where the ship's protective Langston Field had overloaded momentarily. An irregular hole larger than a man's fist was burned completely through one console, and now two technicians seemed permanently installed in the system by a web of cables. Rod Blaine looked at the black stains that had spread across his battle dress. A whiff of metal vapor and burned meat was still in his nostrils, or in his brain, and again he saw fire and molten metal erupt from the hull and wash across his left side. His left arm was still bound across his chest by an elastic bandage, and he could follow most of the previous week's activities by the stains it carried.
And I've only been aboard an hour! he thought. With the Captain ashore, and everything a mess. I can't leave now! He turned to the midshipman. "Right away?"
"Yes, sir. The signal's marked urgent."
Nothing for it, then, and Rod would catch hell when the Captain came back aboard. First Lieutenant Cargill and Engineer Sinclair were competent men, but Rod was Exec and damage control was his responsibility, even if he'd been away from MacArthur when she took most of the hits.
Rod's Marine orderly coughed discreetly and pointed to the stained uniform. "Sir, we've time to get you more decent?"
"Good thinking." Rod glanced at the status board to be sure. Yes, he had half an hour before he could take a boat down to the planet's surface. Leaving sooner wouldn't get him to the Admiral's office any quicker. It would be a relief to get out of these coveralls. He hadn't undressed since he was wounded.
They had to send for a surgeon's mate to undress him. The medic snipped at the armor cloth embedded in his left arm and muttered. "Hold still, sir. That arm's cooked good." His voice was disapproving. "You should have been in sick bay a week ago."
"Hardly possible," Rod answered. A week before, MacArthur had been in battle with a rebel warship, who'd scored more hits than she ought to have before surrendering. After the victory Rod was prize master in the enemy vessel, and there weren't facilities for proper treatment there. As the armor came away he smelled something worse than week-old sweat. Touch of gangrene, maybe.
"Yessir." A few more threads were cut away. The synthetic was as tough as steel. "Now it's gonna take surgery, Commander. Got to cut all that away before the regeneration stimulators can work. While we got you in sick bay we can fix that nose."
"I like my nose," Rod told him coldly. He fingered the slightly crooked appendage and recalled the battle when it was broken. Rod thought it made him look older, no bad thing at twenty-four standard years; and it was the badge of an earned, not inherited, success. Rod was proud of his family background, but there were times when the Blaine reputation was a bit hard to live up to.
Eventually the armor was cut loose and his arm smeared with Numbitol. The stewards helped him into a powder-blue uniform, red sash, gold braid, epaulettes; all wrinkled and crushed, but better than monofiber coveralls. The stiff jacket hurt his arm despite the anesthetic until he found that he could rest his forearm on the pistol butt.
When he was dressed he boarded the landing gig from MacArthur's hangar deck, and the coxswain let the boat drop through the big flight elevator doors without having the spin taken off the ship. It was a dangerous maneuver, but it saved time. Retros fired, and the little winged flyer plunged into atmosphere.
NEW CHICAGO: Inhabited world, Trans-Coalsack Sector, approximately 20 parsecs from Sector Capital. The primary is an F9 yellow star commonly referred to as Beta Hortensis.
The atmosphere is very nearly Earth-normal and breathable without aids or filters. Gravity is 1.08 standard. The planetary radius is 1.05, and mass is 1.21 Earth-standard, indicating a planet of greater than normal density. New Chicago is inclined at 41 degrees with a semi-major axis of 1.06 AU, moderately eccentric. The resulting variations in seasonal temperatures have confined the inhabited areas to a relatively narrow band in the south temperate zone.
There is one moon at normal distance, commonly called Evanston. The origin of the name is obscure.
New Chicago is 70 percent seas. Land area is mostly mountainous with continuing volcanic activity. The extensive metal industries of the First Empire period were nearly all destroyed in the Secession Wars; reconstruction of an industrial base has proceeded satisfactorily since New Chicago was admitted to the Second Empire in 2940 AD.
Most inhabitants reside in a single city which bears the same name as the planet. Other population centers are widely scattered, with none having a population over 45,000. Total planet population was reported as 6.7 million in the census of 2990. There are iron mining and smelting towns in the mountains, and extensive agricultural settlements. The planet is self-sufficient in foodstuffs.
New Chicago possesses a growing merchant fleet, and is located at a convenient point to serve as a center of Trans-Coalsack interstellar trade. It is governed by a governor general and a council appointed by the Viceroy of Trans-Coalsack Sector, there is an elected assembly, and two delegates have been admitted to the Imperial Parliament.
Rod Blaine scowled at the words flowing across the screen of his pocket computer. The physical data were current, but everything else was obsolete. The rebels had changed even the name of their world, from New Chicago to Dame Liberty. Her government would have to be built all over again. Certainly she'd lose her delegates; she might even lose the right to an elected assembly.
He put the instrument away and looked down. They were over mountainous country, and he saw no signs of war. There hadn't been any area bombardments, thank God.
It happened sometimes: a city fortress would hold out with the aid of satellite-based planetary defenses. The Navy had no time for prolonged sieges. Imperial policy was to finish rebellions at the lowest possible cost in lives—but to finish them. A holdout rebel planet might be reduced to glittering lava fields, with nothing surviving but a few cities lidded by the black domes of Langston Fields; and what then? There weren't enough ships to transport food across interstellar distances. Plague and famine would follow.
Yet, he thought, it was the only possible way. He had sworn the Oath on taking the Imperial commission. Humanity must be reunited into one government, by persuasion or by force, so that the hundreds of years of Secession Wars could never happen again. Every Imperial officer had seen what horrors those wars brought; that was why the academies were located on Earth instead of at the Capital.
As they neared the city he saw the first signs of battle. A ring of blasted lands, ruined outlying fortresses, broken concrete rails of the transportation system; then the almost untouched city which had been secure within the perfect circle of its Langston Field. The city had taken minor damage, but once the Field was off, effective resistance had ceased. Only fanatics fought on against the Imperial Marines.
They passed over the ruins of a tall building crumpled over by a falling landing boat. Someone must have fired on the Marines and the pilot hadn't wanted his death to be for nothing. . .
They circled the city, slowing to allow them to approach the landing docks without breaking out all the windows. The buildings were old, most built by hydrocarbon technology, Rod guessed, with strips torn out and replaced by more modern structures. Nothing remained of the First Empire city which had stood here.
When
they dropped onto the port on top of Government House, Rod saw that slowing hadn't been required. Most city windows were smashed already. Mobs milled in the streets, and the only moving vehicles were military convoys. Some people stood idly, others ran in and out of shops. Gray-coated Imperial Marines stood guard behind electrified riot fences around Government House. The flyer landed.
Blaine was rushed down the elevator to the Governor General's floor. There wasn't a woman in the building, although Imperial government offices usually bristled with them, and Rod missed the girls. He'd been in space a long time. He gave his name to the ramrod-straight Marine at the receptionist's desk and waited.