Herold Norn scratched his scalp between dark hair and brass coronet. “No. It is too thin, too light. Look at the neck! Think what a feridian would do to it.” He shook his head violently. “Besides, it is ugly. And I resent the offer of a scavenger, no matter how ill-tempered. The House of Norn breeds proud fighters, beasts who kill their own game!”
“Indeed,” said Tuf. He touched the button, and the stalking-swine vanished. In its place, bulking large enough to touch the plates and fade into them, was a massive ball of armored grey flesh as featureless as battle plate.
“This creature’s barren homeworld has neither been named nor settled, yet an exploratory party from Old Poseidon once charted and claimed it, and cell samples were taken. Zoo specimens existed briefly but did not thrive. The beast was nicknamed the rolleram. Adults weigh approximately six metric tons. On the plains of their homeworld, the rollerams achieve speed in excess of fifty kilometers per hour, crushing prey beneath them. The beast is, in a sense, all mouth. Thusly, as any portion of its skin can be made to exude digestive enzymes, it simply rests atop its meal until the meat has been absorbed. I can vouch for the mindless hostility of this species. Once, through an unusual set of circumstances that we need not go into, a rolleram was loosed to run free on one of my decks, where it did a truly astonishing amount of damage to bulkheads and instrumentation before finally battering itself to an early and futile death. Moreover, it was quite implacable in its aggression, and attempted to crush me beneath its bulk whenever I descended into its domain to bring it sustenance.”
Herold Norn, himself half-immersed in the looming holograph, sounded impressed. “Ah, yes. Better, much better. An awesome creature. Perhaps . . . but no.” His tone changed suddenly. “No, no, this will never do. A creature weighing six tons and rolling that fast might smash its way out of the Bronze Arena and kill hundreds of our patrons. Besides, who would pay hard coin to watch this thing crush a lizard-lion or a strangler? No. No sport. Your rolleram is too monstrous, Tuf.”
Tuf, unmoved, hit the button once again. The vast grey bulk gave way to a sleek, snarling cat, fully as large as an ironfang, with slitted yellow eyes and powerful muscles bunched beneath a coat of dark-blue fur. The fur was striped; long thick lines of smoky silver ran lengthwise down the creature’s gleaming flanks.
“Ahhhhhhhh,” Norn said. “A beauty, in truth, in truth.”
“The cobalt panther of Celia’s World,” Tuf said, “often called the cobalcat. One of the largest and deadliest of the great cats, or their analogues. The beast is a truly superlative hunter, its senses miracles of biological engineering. It can see into the infrared for night prowling, and the ears—note the size and the spread, Beast-Master—the ears are extremely sensitive. Being of felinoid stock, the cobalcat has psionic ability, but in its case this ability is for more developed than the usual. Fear, hunger, and bloodlust all act as triggers; then the cobalcat becomes a mindreader.”
Norn looked up, startled. “What?”
“Psionics, sir. Surely you are aware of the concept. The cobalcat is quite deadly, simply because it knows what moves an antagonist will make before those moves are made. Do you comprehend?”
“Yes.” Norn’s voice was excited. Haviland Tuf looked over at Dax, and the big tomcat—who’d been not the least disturbed by the parade of scentless phantoms flashing on and off—blinked and stretched lazily. “Perfect, perfect! Why, I’ll venture to say that we can even train these beasts as we’d train ironfangs, eh? And mindreaders! Perfect. Even the colors are right—dark blue, you know, and our ironfangs were blue-black—so the cats will be most Nornic, yesyes!”
Tuf touched his chair arm, and the cobalcat vanished. “Indeed. I would assume, therefore, that we have no need to proceed further, I shall commence the cloning process immediately upon your departure. Delivery will be in three weeks standard, if that pleases you. For the agreed-upon sum, I will provide three pair—two set of younglings who should be released in your wildlands as breeding stock, and one mated set full-grown, who might be immediately sent into the Bronze Arena.”
“So soon,” Norn began. “Fine, but . . . ”
“I employ a chronowarp, Beast-Master. It requires vast energies, true, but has the power to accelerate the very tread of time itself, producing within the tank a chronic distortion that enables me to hurry the clone to maturity. It would perhaps be prudent to add that, although I provide Norn with six animals, only three actual individuals are represented. The Ark carries a triple cobalcat cell. I will clone each specimen twice, male and female, and hope for a viable genetic mix when they crossbreed on Lyronica.”
“Fine, whatever you say,” Norn said. “I will send the ships for the animals promptly. Then we will pay you.”
Dax uttered a tiny little yowl.
“Sir,” said Tuf. “A better thought has occurred to me. You may pay the full fee before any beasts are handed over.”
“But you said on delivery!”
“Admitted. Yet I am given to impulsive whims, and impulse now tells me to collect first, rather than simultaneously.”
“Oh, very well,” Norn said. “Though your demands are arbitrary and excessive. With these cobalcats, we shall soon recoup our fee.” He started to rise.
Haviland Tuf raised a single finger. “One moment. You have not seen fit to inform me overmuch of the ecology of Lyronica, nor the particular realms of Norn House. Perhaps prey exists. I must caution you, however, that your cobalcats are hunters, and therefore require suitable game species.”
“Yesyes, of course.”
“Fortunately, I am equipped to be of help to you. For an additional five thousand standards, I might clone you a breeding stock of Celian hoppers, delightful furred herbivores celebrated on a dozen worlds for their succulent flesh, among diners of a carnivorous inclination.”
Herold Norn frowned. “Bah. You ought to give them to us without charge. You have extorted enough money, Tuf.”
Tuf rose and gave a ponderous shrug. “The man berates me, Dax,” he said to his cat. “What am I to do? I seek only an honest living, and everywhere I am taken advantage of.” He looked at Norn. “Another of my impulses comes to me. I feel, somehow, that you will not relent, not even were I to offer you an excellent discount. Therefore I shall yield. The hoppers are yours without charge.”
“Good. Excellent.” Norn turned toward the door. “We shall take them at the same time as the cobalcats, and release them about the estates.”
Haviland Tuf and Dax followed him from the chamber, and they rode in silence back to Norn’s ship.
The fee was sent up by the House of Norn the day before delivery was due. The following afternoon, a dozen men in black and gray ascended to the Ark, and carried six tranquilized cobalcats from Haviland Tuf’s holding tanks to the waiting cages in their shuttlecraft. Tuf bid them a passive farewell, and heard no more from Herold Norn. But he kept the Ark in orbit about Lyronica.
Less than three of Lyronica’s shortened days passed before Tuf observed that his clients had slated a cobalcat for a bout in the Bronze Arena.
On the appointed evening, Tuf donned a disguise, consisting of a false beard and shoulder-length wig of red hair, plus a gaudy puff-sleeved suit of canary yellow complete with a furred turban, and shuttled down to the City of All Houses with the hope of escaping attention. When the match was called, he was seated in the back of the Arena, a rough stone wall against his shoulders and a narrow wooden seat attempting to support his weight. He had paid a few irons for admission, but had scrupulously bypassed the betting booths.
“Third match,” the announcer cried, even as workers pulled off the scattered meaty chunks of the loser in the second match. “From the House of Varcour, a female lizard-lion, aged nine months, weight 1.4 quintals, trained by Junior Beast-Master Ammari y Varcour Otheni. Once a veteran of the Bronze Arena, once surviving.” Those customers close to Tuf began to cheer and wave their hands wildly, as might be anticipated; he had chosen to enter by the Varcour Gate this
time, walking down a green concrete road and through the gaping maw of a monstrous golden lizard, and thus was surrounded by Varcour partisans. Away and below, a great door enameled in green and gold slid up. Tuf lifted his rented binoculars to his eyes, and saw the lizard-lion scrabble forward—two meters of scaled green reptile with a whiplike tail thrice its own length and the long snout of an Old Earth alligator. Its jaws opened and closed soundlessly, displaying an array of impressive teeth.
“From the House of Norn, imported from offworld for your amusement, a female cobalcat. Aged—” The announcer paused. “Aged three, ah, years,” he said at last, “weight 2.3 quintals, trained by Senior Beast-Master Herold Norn. New to the Bronze Arena.” The metallic dome overhead rang to the cacophoneus cheering of the Norn sector. Herold Norn had packed the Bronze Arena with his housemen, dressed in Norn colors and betting the grey and black standard.
The cobalcat came from the darkness slowly, with cautious fluid grace, and its great golden eyes swept the arena. It was every bit the beast that Tuf had promised—a bundle of deadly muscle and frozen motion, dark-blue fur marbled with silvery streaks. Its growl could scarcely be heard, so far was Tuf from the action, but he saw its mouth gape through his glasses.
The lizard-lion saw it, too, and came waddling forward, its short scaled legs kicking in the sand while the long impossible tail arched above it like the stinger of some reptilian scorpion. When the cobalcat turned its liquid eyes on the enemy, the lizard-lion brought the tail down hard. With a bone-breaking crack the whip made contact, but the cobalcat had smoothly slipped to one side, and nothing shattered but air and sand.
The cat circled, growling. The lizard-lion, implacable, turned and raised its tail again, opened its jaws, lunged forward. The cobalcat avoided both teeth and whip. Again the tail cracked, and yet again; the cat was too quick. Someone in the audience began to moan the killing chant, others picked it up; Tuf turned his binoculars, and saw swaying in the Norn seats. The lizard-lion gnashed its long jaws in frenzy, smashed its whip across the nearest entry door, and began to thrash.
The cobalcat, sensing an opening, moved behind its enemy with a graceful leap, pinned the struggling lizard with one great blue paw, and clawed the soft greenish flanks and belly to ribbons. After a time and a few futile snaps of its whip that only distracted the cat, the lizard-lion lay still.
The Norns were cheering very loudly. Haviland Tuf, his pale features concealed behind his beard, rose from his cramped seat and took his leave.
Weeks passed; the Ark remained in orbit around Lyronica. Haviland Tuf carefully monitored results from the Bronze Arena and noted that the Norn cobalcats were winning match after match. Herold Norn still lost a contest or two, when using an ironfang to fill up his Arena obligations, but those defeats were easily outweighed by his long string of victories.
Tuf sat communing with Dax, played with his other cats, entertained himself with recently acquired holo dramas, ran numerous detailed ecological projections upon his computers, drank many tankards of brown Tamberkin ale and aged mushroom wine, and waited.
Some three standard weeks after the debut of the cobalcats, he had the callers he had anticipated.
Their slim, needle-prowed shuttlecraft was done in green and gold, and the men themselves dressed in scaled armor of gilded plate and green enamel. Three stood stiffly at attention when Tuf rolled up to meet them. The fourth, a florid and corpulent man who wore a golden helmet with a bright green plume to conceal a mottled pate as bald as Tuf’s, stepped forward and offered a meaty hand.
“Your intent is appreciated,” Tuf told him, keeping both of his own hands firmly on Dax, “and I have noted the fact that you are not clutching a weapon. Might I inquire as to your name and business, sir?”
“Morho y Varcour Otheni,” the leader began.
Tuf raised one palm. “So. And you are the Senior Beast-Master of the House of Varcour, come to buy a monster. This turn of events is not entirely unanticipated, I must confess.”
The fat Beast-Master’s mouth puckered in an “o.”
“Your housemen should remain here,” Tuf said. “You may seat youself beside me, and we will proceed.”
Haviland Tuf let Morho y Varcour Otheni utter scarcely a word until they were alone in the same chamber to which he had taken Herold Norn, sitting diagonally opposite. “You heard of me from the Norns,” Tuf said then, “obviously.”
Morho smiled toothily. “Indeed we did. A Norn houseman was persuaded to reveal the source of their cobalcats. To our delight, your Ark was still in orbit. You seem to have found Lyronica diverting?”
“Diversion is not the crux of the matter,” Tuf said. “When problems exist, my professional pride requires me to be of whatever small service I can. Lyronica is rife with problems, alas. Your own individual difficulty, for example. Varcour is, in all probability, now the last and least of the Twelve Great Houses. A man of a more critical turn of mind than myself might remark that your lizard-lions are deplorably marginal monsters at best, and since I understand your realms are chiefly swampland, your choice of arena combatants must therefore be somewhat limited. Have I divined the essence of your complaint?”
“Hmpf. Yes, indeed. You do anticipate me, sir. But you do it well. We were holding our own well enough until you interfered. Since then, well, we have not taken a match from Norn once, and they were previously our chief victims. A few paltry wins over Wrai Hill and Amar Island, a lucky score against Feridian, a pair of death-draws with Arneth and Sin Doon—that has been our lot this past month. Pfui. We cannot survive. They will make me a Brood-Tender and ship me back to the estates unless I act.”
Tuf stroked Dax, and quieted Morho with an upraised hand. “No need to belabor these matters further. Your distress is noted. Since my dealings with Herold Norn, I have been fortunate enough to be gifted with a great deal of leisure. Accordingly, as an exercise of the mind, I have been able to devote myself to the problems of the Great Houses, each in its turn. We need not waste precious time. I can solve your present difficulties. There will be some cost, however.”
Morho grinned. “I come prepared. I heard about your price. It’s high, there is no arguing, but we are prepared to pay, if you can . . . ”
“Sir,” Tuf said. “I am a man of charity. Norn was a poor House, its Beast-Master all but a beggar. In mercy, I gave him a low price. The domains of Varcour are richer, its standards brighter, its victories more wildly sung. For you, I must charge two hundred seventy-five thousand standards, to make up for the losses I incurred in dealing so generously with Norn.”
Morho made a shocked blubbering sound, and his scales gave metallic clinks as he shifted in his seat. “Too much, too much,” he protested. “I implore you. Truly, we are more glorious than Norn, but not so great as you suppose. To pay this price of yours, we must need starve. Lizard-lions would run over our battlements. Our towns would sink on their stilts, until the swamp mud covered them over and the children drowned.”
Dax shifted in Tuf’s lap and made a small meow. “Quite so,” Tuf said. “I am abashed to think that I might cause such suffering. Perhaps two hundred thousand standards would be more equitable.”
Morho y Varcour Otheni began to protest and implore again, but this time Tuf merely sat silently, arms on their armrests, until the Beast-Master, red-faced and sweating, finally ran down and agreed to pay his price.
Tuf touched a button on the arm of his chair. The image of a great muscular saurian materialized between him and Morho; it stood two meters high, covered in grey-green plate scales and standing on four squat clawed legs as thick as tree stumps. Its head was a massive thing, armored by a thick yellowish plate of bone that jutted forward like the ramming prow of an ancient warship, with two curving horns at its upper corners. The creature had a short, thick neck; dim yellow eyes peered from under the jut of its brow ridge. Between them, square in the center of the head, a large, dark, round hole pierced the thick skull plate.
Morho swallowed. “Oh,” he said.
“Yes. Very, ah, large. But it looks—was there originally a third horn in the center, there? It looks as though it has been, ah, removed. Our specimens must be intact, Tuf.”
“The tris neryei of Cable’s Landing,” Tuf said, “or so it was named by the Fyndii, whose colonists preceded humanity on that world by several millennia. The term translates, literally, as ‘living knife.’ There is no missing horn, sir.” A long finger made a small, precise motion, pressed down upon a control. The tris neryei turned its massive head toward the Varcouri Beast-Master, who hiked his bulk forward awkwardly to inspect its image.
As he reached out toward the phantom, tendons bulged in the creature’s thick neck, and a sharpened bone stake, as thick around as Tuf’s forearm and more than a meter long, came thrusting out of the beast’s head in a blur of motion. Morho y Varcour Otheni uttered a high thin squeak and turned gray as the bone spear skewered him and pinned him to his seat. An unfortunate odor filled the chamber.
Tuf said nothing. Morho, blubbering, looked down at where the horn entered his swollen stomach as if he were about to be sick, and it took him a long horrid minute before he realized there was no blood and no pain and the monster was only a hologram. His mouth made an “o.” No sound came out. He swallowed. “Very, ah, dramatic,” he said to Tuf.
The end of the long, discolored bone spear was held tightly within rings and ropes of pulsing blue-black muscle. Slowly the shaft began to pull back into the monster’s head. “The bayonet, if we may be so bold as to call it that, is concealed within a mucous-lined sheath along the creature’s upper neck and back, and the surrounding rings of musculature can deliver it at a speed approximating seventy kilometers per standard hour, with commensurate force. This species’ native habitat is not entirely dissimilar to the areas of Lyronica under the control of the House of Varcoijr.”