Moties

Moties are a fictional species of aliens featured in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's science fiction novels The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand.

Motie physiology
Inhabiting the planet Mote Prime and most of the habitable orbiting bodies in Mote System, as well as many artificial orbiting constructs, the Moties' primary distinguishing physical feature is their specialization into castes. This combines with their high fertility to make them extremely dangerous to any other species with which they might compete for living space. Castes mentioned in the chronicles include Mediators, Engineers, Warriors, Doctors, Runners, Porters, Farmers and Meats. All of these castes will be in the entourage of a Master. Feral forms have also been observed. Engineers use the semi-intelligent Watchmaker caste (called "miniatures" by the crew of MacArthur) as mobile tools. Where a Human can to a greater or lesser degree carry out all or any of these functions, a Motie of a given specialisation is (to a Human) astoundingly skilled in it.

Moties alternate between being male and female. A female Motie will revert to male after giving birth, changing back to female after a time. At some point the female must become pregnant again or else the hormone imbalance will kill her. This naturally forces Moties to become pregnant whenever possible.

The Moties' high fertility drives extremely rapid population growth, which causes wars in the competition for resources. The consequences of the wars cause population collapse, and this cycle is repeated when civilization recovers. These 'Cycles' have been going on for perhaps a million Earth years, and all Moties believe that they cannot be broken - Moties give the name "Crazy Eddie" to those among themselves who have developed the belief that such a break is possible, and regard them as insane.

Since Moties have been a space-based creature for an incredibly long time, at some point they evolved the basic Motie body plan to change from a symmetrical (possibly four-armed) to an asymmetrical layout. Most Moties have two right arms and a much heavier left arm. A form with two human-scale left arms and a heavy right arm occurs when a motie is born left-handed. The gripping hand has only three large fingers, while the other two smaller hands have six each &mdash; four fingers and two opposable thumbs. By analogy with humans counting in base-10 supposedly as a result of their having ten digits, it can be posited that Moties count in base-12 as a result of their two right hands having twelve digits.

Moties have no spine, instead simply having three bones which perform a similar purpose. During first contact with humans, the Moties found the spine to be of great interest. Moties also have no shoulders, the arms instead attach directly to the head. The heavy attachment for the strong gripping left hand causes the head to become permanently tilted to that side.

Motie castes
Motie castes are physically distinct, and differ in coloring, body size and the number and size of the arms. Some of the castes, such as the Masters and Engineers, in some cases so different genetically that they form separate species, can produce offspring together, but the offspring are usually sterile, as with the Mediators. Obedience has been bred into the inferior castes, so Engineers will obey Masters and Mediators without question, while Watchmakers take instruction from Engineers. Warriors can only be controlled by Masters, and their Master's Mediators. Even then it takes a certain number of Masters to control an army of Warriors.

From time to time in Motie history attempts have been made to eliminate some of the dangerous castes, but these have never succeeded. Some Master has always kept a small breeding stock, from which the numbers have been rapidly replenished.

Each of the listed castes come in numerous space-adapted and planet-bred versions.

Masters
Motie Masters have white fur and are described as decision makers by the Mediators. Some might be ship commanders; others might be warlords who control large territories. Masters have the biological imperative to breed and protect their offspring and siblings; however, sterile individuals, or those who have bred a sufficient number of times, can hold positions for the good of the Race. These positions include that of Keeper. Keepers are responsible for the safeguard of the "museums" that preserve technology so that the survivors of a Collapse can find the tools to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible.

The Ambassador to the Second Empire of Man, Ivan, was sterile, and might be considered a Master in accordance with the conditions described above; he was so considered by Jock and Charlie, his Mediator companions.

Engineers
Motie Engineers (also referred to as Browns) have brown fur and are essentially idiot savants. They communicate very little but are geniuses when it comes to anything mechanical or electrical. They can build, modify, or repair almost anything with great speed and competency. The first Motie encountered by humans was an Engineer. Without prompting, she inspected a crew member's gun, then his hand, and modified the grip of his gun using a tube of epoxy resin to better fit his hand. She later had to be locked up because she started disassembling an airlock. She was even able to dissasemble, modify and reassemble a pocket computer, despite it being fabricated as a single integrated circuit. Engineers tend to have a supply of Watchmakers on hand, which they regularly cull to keep the numbers down, for instance tossing most out into the vacuum of space, keeping a few back to use and breed.

Watchmakers
Watchmakers are not Moties proper, but a related (sub?)species. They are about a third the size of Moties, have four arms and brown-and-white mottled fur. They are used by Engineers as assistants and share that caste's ability and ingenuity with anything mechanical or electronic. A pair which got loose on MacArthur quickly bred while also secretly modifying the ship from the inside, simply following their instincts. A contributing factor was that crew members found things being magically repaired and even improved. They quickly discovered that if they had anything broken, to simply leave it out overnight with some food, and it would be fixed by the morning. The items included customized sidearms and shoes, a coffee pot that automatically separated bitter oils from the brew, one-man re-entry vehicles replacing the ship's lifeboats, and even an improved Langston field for the ship. In addition to repairing items in return for food the watchmakers on the MacArthur supported themselves by farming rats in ranches and eventually through cannibalism. In the end, war broke out among the Watchmakers with humans caught in the crossfire, and MacArthur had to be abandoned and destroyed.

Mediators
Mediators are created by breeding Master moties with Engineers. They have mixed white/brown fur and are highly empathetic. They are sterile mules, and because of this their lifespan is shorter than average—about 25 years. Since Moties mature in 15 years the useful life of a Mediator is short.

Mediators learn languages very quickly, which is essential on Mote Prime with its millions of years of population-explosion cycles and competing Masters. They are actually a product of genetic engineering, with their ability to think independently carefully tuned to allow them to negotiate away conflicts while still being loyal to a Master. Mediators can commandeer any kind of transport, so they can travel quickly to damp down hostilities. Extremely fast aircraft are reserved for Mediators alone, as Masters will not trust each other to use them for peaceful purposes.

In The Mote in God's Eye infant Mediators are assigned to several humans when the latter visit Mote System, with the intention that they will learn not only the language but also the culture and personality of their host. Mediators have a word - Fyunch(click) - which describes their relationship with a counterpart whom they must learn about and emulate in every way. Humans who encounter Mediators eventually "...have to count arms to check who is talking..." since the Mediators emulate the sound of the voice and the mannerisms of their human counterpart.

However, relationships with humans are not good for Mediators - they tend to go Crazy Eddie or worse, such is the difference in thought patterns between humans and Moties. Giving the infant Mediators to humans was an attempt to avoid this.

Warriors
Warriors are controlled by Masters and far surpass any human warriors or soldiers (though is it implied that a pure Sauron may be a match). They can operate and maintain any weapon, fire with deadly accuracy, throw any object at high speed, and fight hand-to-hand using built-in weapons. These include fangs, hard edges and horny points on the limbs and extremities, and a vestigial second left arm adapted as a bone dagger. Warriors have enhanced senses, especially vision, enabling them to resolve detail at a distance impossible for a human. They are described as "standing like coiled springs". Their marksmanship is described as "inhumanly accurate" and one of the midshipmen refugees from MacArthur is told that "if you had exposed an eye, any Warrior could have shot it out".

A feral and degenerated form of the Warrior was seen by the expedition from MacArthur during their visit to the zoo in Castle City on Mote Prime, where a swarm of them was seen in the hall devoted to a simulacrum of a ruined city. Video records of these animals gave the analysis team the first clue that there was more to the Moties' history than had been divulged by the Moties brought back to Human space by the MacArthur expedition. In a parallel development, Warriors also degenerated into a wild miniature form which appears in the second novel as a War Rat, a spaceborne version with Watchmaker abilities living in hive-like space colonies.

Doctors
The last of the truly sentient Motie classes, the Doctors are to physiology what Engineers are to electronics. They have a great store of instinctive physiological knowledge, can manipulate the smallest objects, and can build, or cause to be built, any necessary medical devices. Their fur is a rust-red color.

While Doctors do not fight, there is a Doctor-Warrior hybrid which fills the role of the field medic or corpsman in human armies.

A single doctor-master hybrid was bred to serve as a medic for injured humans.

Runners, Porters
These semi-sentient Moties do menial jobs, carrying messages in the one case, and heavy objects in the other. Both are much taller than other Moties, but the Runner is mostly leg, while the Porter has symmetrical strong arms. The Gripping Hand also describes a variety of Runner whose multicolored layers of erectile hairs allow it to camouflage itself while delivering messages.

A feral version of the porter is seen in the zoo, with large teeth and claws.

Farmers
Farmer Moties tend crops, which grow on whatever land is not covered by buildings or roads. They ignore anything except plants and anything that seems to threaten the plants. Their hands and feet are adapted for digging and tamping down soil. They can operate machinery such as tractors.

Meats
A Motie caste bred as a food supply, this caste caused understandable disgust among humans when they discovered them, even though they were kept in a museum as a relic of an earlier time. It was implied that they could again be used as a food source when civilization fell, however.

Hybrids
Besides the Mediators, several other hybrid types were mentioned in the books. The doctor and warrior castes were crossed for a field medic. The engineer and warrior became an engineer with combat capabilities. A master and doctor cross was for when more thought was needed in addition to the doctor caste's instinctual medical ability (this was thought to be useful when the Moties needed to treat an injured human.) It is unknown whether these crosses are mules or fertile.

Mote Prime
Mote Prime is the only habitable planet orbiting the star known to the Empire of Man as the Mote. It is the origin of the whole Motie species, but at the time of the CoDominium chronicles is only one place of many within Mote System inhabited by various Motie groupings. It is a land-and-water planet similar to Earth, but shows evidence of severe environmental damage in the past. Many wars have been fought on Mote Prime, and as some at least were fought using asteroids as weapons - they were dropped onto areas inhabited by a rival social group - the planet from space appears to be all circular land structures as a result of the craters the asteroids created.

At the time of the visit to Mote System by MacArthur and Lenin the planet is in an advanced-industrial phase, with the resulting industrial pollution dimming the sunlight and making necessary the wearing of atmosphere filters by the expedition from MacArthur. However, reports from the Human archaeological teams working on the planet show that wherever they dig and however far they dig down, they never find native rock structures: they always find debris from artificial constructs of some sort, with primitive above - and hence more recent than - complex. They fail to draw from these observations any conclusions on what their findings imply for the history of Mote Prime until much later when back in Human space.

By the time of the second visit to Mote System as a result of the events described in The Gripping Hand, access to Mote Prime is impossible. The Humans are told that in the 25 Earth years since the previous visit, the civilisation on Mote Prime has collapsed; their current condition is vividly described as having "bombed themselves back to the invention of the brick."

Moties