Herold Norn waved impatiently. “Problems, you understand, we have been having problems. These hoppers of yours, they eat anything, everything. They’ve gotten out of control. Millions of them, all over, eating all the grass, and all the crops. The things they’ve done to farmland—the cobalcats love them, yes, but we don’t have enough cobalcats. And the wild ironfangs won’t touch the hoppers. They don’t like the taste, I suppose. I don’t know, not really. But, you understand, all the other grass-eaters left, driven out by these hoppers of yours, and the ironfangs went with them. Where, I don’t know that either. Gone, though. Into the unclaimed lands, beyond the realms of Norn. There are some villages out there, a few farmers, but they hate the Great Houses. Tamberkin, all of them, don’t even have dog fights. They’ll probably try to tame the ironfangs, if they see them.”
“So,” said Tuf. “But then you have your kennels, do you not?”
“Not any more,” Norn said. He sounded very harried. “I ordered them shut. The ironfangs were losing every match, especially after you began to sell to the other Houses. It seemed a foolish waste to maintain dead weight. Besides, the expense—we needed every standard. You bled us dry. We had Arena fees to pay, and of course we had to wager, and lately we’ve had to buy some food from Taraber just to feed all our housemen and trainers. I mean, you would never believe the things the hoppers have done to our crops.”
“Sir,” said Tuf. “You insult me. I am an ecologist. I know a great deal of hoppers and their ways. Am I to understand that you shut your ironfang kennels?”
“Yesyes. We turned the useless things loose, and now they’re gone with the rest. What are we going to do? The hoppers are overrunning the plains, the cats won’t mate, and our money will run out soon if we must continue to import food and pay Arena fees without any hope of victory.”
Tuf folded his hands together. “You do indeed face a series of delicate problems. And I am the very man to help you to their solution. Unfortunately, I have pledged my bond to Danel Leigh Arneth.”
“Is it hopeless, then? Tuf, I am a man begging, I, a Senior Beast-Master of Norn. Soon we will drop from the games entirely. We will have no funds for Arena fees or betting, no animals to enter. We are cursed by ill fortune. No Great House has ever failed to provide its allotment of fighters, not even Feridian during its Twelve Year Drought. We will be shamed. The House of Norn will sully its proud history by sending dogs and cats onto the sand, to be shredded ignominiously by the huge monsters that you have sold the other Houses.”
“Sir,” Tuf said, “if you will permit me an impertinent remark, and one perhaps without foundation—if you will permit this to me—well, then, I will tell you my opinion. I have a hunch—mmm, hunch, yes, that is the proper word, and a curious word it is too—a hunch, as I was saying, that the monsters you fear may be in short supply in the weeks and months to come. For example, the adolescent ursoids of Vagabond may very shortly go into hibernation. They are less than a year old, you understand. I hope the lords of Wrai Hill are not unduly disconcerted by this, yet I fear that they may be. Vagabond, as I’m sure you are aware, has an extremely irregular orbit about its primary, so that its Long Winters last approximately twenty standard years. The ursoids are attuned to this cycle. Soon their body processes will slow to almost nothing—some have mistaken a sleeping ursoid for a dead one, you know—and I don’t think they will be easily awakened. Perhaps, as the trainers of Wrai Hill are men of high good character and keen intellect, they might find a way. But I would be strongly inclined to further suspect that most of their energies and their funds will be devoted to feeding their populace, in the light of the voracious appetites of scampersloths. In quite a like manner, the men of the House of Varcour will be forced to deal with an explosion of Cathadayn tree-slugs. The tree-slugs are particularly fascinating creatures. At one point in their life cycle, they become veritable sponges, and double in size. A large enough grouping is fully capable of drying up even an extensive swampland.” Tuf paused, and his thick fingers beat in drumming rhythms across his stomach. “I ramble unconsciously, sir. Do you grasp my point, though? My thrust?”
Herold Norn looked like a dead man. “You are mad. You have destroyed us. Our economy, our ecology … but why? We paid you fairly. The Houses, the Houses … no beasts, no funds. How can the games go on? No one will send fighters to the Bronze Arena!”
Haviland Tuf raised his hands in shock. “Really?” he said.
Then he turned off the communicator and rose. Smiling a tiny, tight-lipped smile, he began to talk to Dax.
GUARDIANS
Haviland Tuf thought the Six Worlds Bio-Agricultural Exhibition a great disappointment.
He had spent a long, wearying day on Brazelourn, trooping through the cavernous exhibition halls, pausing now and then to give a cursory inspection to a new grain hybrid or a genetically improved insect. Although the Ark’s cell library held cloning material for literally millions of plant and animal species from an uncounted number of worlds, Haviland Tuf was nonetheless always alert for any opportunity to expand his stock-in-trade.
But few of the displays on Brazelourn seemed especially promising, and as the hours passed Tuf grew bored and uncomfortable in the jostling, indifferent crowds. People swarmed everywhere—Vagabonder tunnel-farmers in deep maroon furs, plumed and perfumed Areeni landlords, somber nightsiders and brightly garbed evernoons from New Janus, and a plethora of the native Brazeleen. All of them made excessive noise and favored Tuf with curious stares as he passed among them. Some even brushed up against him, bringing a frown to his long face.
Ultimately, seeking escape from the throngs, Tuf decided he was hungry. He pressed his way through the fairgoers with dignified distaste, and emerged from the vaulting five-story Ptolan Exhibit Hall. Outside, hundreds of vendors had set up booths between the great buildings. The man selling pop-onion pies seemed least busy of those nearby, and Tuf determined that a pop-onion pie was the very thing he craved.
“Sir,” he said to the vendor, “I would have a pie.”
The pieman was round and pink and wore a greasy apron. He opened his hotbox, reached in with a gloved hand, and extracted a hot pie. When he pushed it across the counter at Tuf, he stared. “Oh,” he said, “you’re a big one.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Haviland Tuf. He picked up the pie and bit into it impassively.
“You’re an offworlder,” the pieman observed. “Not from no place nearby, neither.”
Tuf finished his pie in three neat bites, and cleaned his greasy fingers on a napkin. “You belabor the obvious, sir,” he said. He held up a long, calloused finger. “Another,” he said.
Rebuffed, the vendor fetched out another pie without further observations, letting Tuf eat in relative peace. As he savored the flaky crust and tartness within, Tuf studied the milling fairgoers, the rows of vendors’ booths, and the five great halls that loomed over the landscape. When he had done eating, he turned back to the pieman, his face as blank as ever. “Sir. If you will, a question.”
“What’s that?” the other said gruffly.
“I see five exhibition halls,” said Haviland Tuf. “I have visited each in turn.” He pointed. “Brazelourn, Vale Areen, New Janus, Vagabond, and here Ptola.” Tuf folded his hands together neatly atop his bulging stomach. “Five, sir. Five halls, five worlds. No doubt, being a stranger as I am, I am unfamiliar with some subtle point of local usage, yet I am perplexed. In those regions where I have heretofore traveled, a gathering calling itself the Six Worlds Bio-Agricultural Exhibition might be expected to include exhibits from six worlds. Plainly that is not the case here. Perhaps you might enlighten me as to why?”
“No one came from Namor.”
“Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf.
“On account of the troubles,” the vendor added.
“All is made clear,” said Tuf. “Or, if not all, at least a portion. Perhaps you would care to serve me another pie, and explain to me the nature of these troubles. I am nothing if not curious,
sir. It is my great vice, I fear.”
The pieman slipped on his glove again and opened the hotbox. “You know what they say. Curiosity makes you hungry.”
“Indeed,” said Tuf. “I must admit I have never heard them say that before.”
The man frowned. “No, I got it wrong. Hunger makes you curious, that’s what it is. Don’t matter. My pies will fill you up.”
“Ah,” said Tuf. He took up the pie. “Please proceed.”
So the pie-seller told him, at great rambling length, about the troubles on the world Namor. “So you can see,” he finally concluded, “why they didn’t come, with all this going on. Not much to exhibit.”
“Of course,” said Haviland Tuf, dabbing his lips. “Sea monsters can be most vexing.”
Namor was a dark green world, moonless and solitary, banded by wispy golden clouds. The Ark shuddered out of drive and settled ponderously into orbit around it. In the long, narrow communications room, Haviland Tuf moved from seat to seat, studying the planet on a dozen of the room’s hundred viewscreens. Three small gray kittens kept him company, bounding across the consoles, pausing only to slap at each other. Tuf paid them no mind.
A water world, Namor had only one landmass decently large enough to be seen from orbit, and that none too large. But magnification revealed thousands of islands scattered in long, crescent-shaped archipelagoes across the deep green seas, earthen jewels strewn throughout the oceans. Other screens showed the lights of dozens of cities and towns on the nightside, and pulsing dots of energy outlay where settlements sat in sunlight.
Tuf looked at it all, and then seated himself, flicked on another console, and began to play a war game with the computer. A kitten bounded up into his lap and went to sleep. He was careful not to disturb it. Some time later, a second kitten vaulted up and pounced on it, and they began to tussle. Tuf brushed them to the floor.
It took longer than even Tuf had anticipated, but finally the challenge came, as he had known it would. “Ship in orbit,” came the demand, “ship in orbit, this is Namor Control. State your name and business. State your name and business, please. Interceptors have been dispatched. State your name and business.”
The transmission was coming from the chief landmass. The Ark tapped into it. At the same time, it found the ship that was moving toward them—there was only one—and flashed it on another screen.
“I am the Ark,” Haviland Tuf told Namor Control.
Namor Control was a round-faced woman with close-cropped brown hair, sitting at a console and wearing a deep green uniform with golden piping. She frowned, her eyes flicking to the side, no doubt to a superior or another console. “Ark,” she said, “state your homeworld. State your homeworld and your business, please.”
The other ship had opened communications with the planet, the computer indicated. Two more viewscreens lit up. One showed a slender young woman with a large, crooked nose on a ship’s bridge, the other an elderly man before a console. They both wore green uniforms, and they were conversing animatedly in code. It took the computer less than a minute to break it, so Tuf could listen in. “… damned if I know what it is,” the woman on the ship was saying. “There’s never been a ship that big. My God, just look at it. Are you getting all this? Has it answered?”
“Ark,” the round-faced woman was still saying, “state your homeworld and your business, please. This is Namor Control.”
Haviland Tuf cut into the other conversation, to talk to all three of them simultaneously. “This is the Ark,” he said. “I have no homeworld, sirs. My intentions are purely peaceful—trade and consultation. I learned of your tragic difficulties, and moved by your plight, I have come to offer you my services.”
The woman on the ship looked startled. “What are you …” she started. The man was equally nonplussed, but he said nothing, only gaped open-mouthed at Tuf’s blank white visage.
“This is Namor Control, Ark,” said the round-faced woman. “We are closed to trade. Repeat, we are closed to trade. We are under martial law here.”
By then the slender woman on the ship had composed herself. “Ark, this is Guardian Kefira Qay, commanding NGS Sunrazor. We are armed, Ark. Explain yourself. You are a thousand times larger than any trader I have ever seen, Ark. Explain yourself or be fired upon.”
“Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. “Threats will avail you little, Guardian. I am most sorely vexed. I have come all this long way from Brazelourn to offer you my aid and solace, and you meet me with threats and hostility.” A kitten leapt up into his lap. Tuf scooped it up with a huge white hand, and deposited it on the console in front of him, where the viewer would pick it up. He gazed down at it sorrowfully. “There is no trust left in humanity,” he said to the kitten.
“Hold your fire, Sunrazor,” said the elderly man. “Ark, if your intentions are truly peaceful, explain yourself. What are you? We are hard-pressed here, Ark, and Namor is a small, undeveloped world. We have never seen your like before. Explain yourself.”
Haviland Tuf stroked the kitten. “Always I must truckle to suspicion,” he told it. “They are fortunate that I am so kind-hearted, or else I would simply depart and leave them to their fate.” He looked up, straight into the viewer. “Sir,” he said. “I am the Ark. I am Haviland Tuf, captain and master here, crew entire. You are troubled by great monsters from the depths of your seas, I have been told. Very well. I shall rid you of them.”
“Ark, this is Sunrazor. How do you propose doing that?”
“The Ark is a seedship of the Ecological Engineering Corps,” said Haviland Tuf with stiff formality. “I am an ecological engineer and a specialist in biological warfare.”
“Impossible,” said the old man. “The EEC was wiped out a thousand years ago, along with the Federal Empire. None of their seedships remain.”
“How distressing,” said Haviland Tuf. “Here I sit in an illusion. No doubt, now that you have told me my ship does not exist, I shall sink right through it and plunge into your atmosphere, where I shall burn up as I fall.”
“Guardian,” said Kefira Qay from the Sunrazor, “these seedships may indeed no longer exist, but I am fast closing on something that my scopes tell me is almost thirty kilometers long. It does not appear to be an illusion.”
“I am not yet falling,” admitted Haviland Tuf.
“Can you truly help us?” asked the round-faced woman at Namor Control.
“Why must I always be doubted?” Tuf asked the small gray kitten.
“Lord Guardian, we must give him the chance to prove what he says,” insisted Namor Control.
Tuf looked up. “Threatened, insulted, and doubted as I have been, nonetheless my empathy for your situation bids me to persist. Perhaps I might suggest that Sunrazor dock with me, so to speak. Guardian Qay may come aboard and join me for an evening meal, while we converse. Surely your suspicions cannot extend to mere conversation, that most civilized of human pastimes.”
The three Guardians conferred hurriedly with each other and with a person or persons offscreen, while Haviland Tuf sat back and toyed with the kitten. “I shall name you Suspicion,” he said to it, “to commemorate my reception here. Your siblings shall be Doubt, Hostility, Ingratitude, and Foolishness.”
“We accept your proposal, Haviland Tuf,” said Guardian Kefira Qay from the bridge of the Sunrazor. “Prepare to be boarded.”
“Indeed,” said Tuf. “Do you like mushrooms?”
The shuttle deck of the Ark was as large as the landing field of a major starport, and seemed almost a junkyard for derelict spacecraft. The Ark’s own shuttles stood trim in their launch berths, five identical black ships with rakish lines and stubby triangular wings angling back, designed for atmospheric flight and still in good repair. Other craft were less impressive. A teardrop-shaped trading vessel from Avalon squatted wearily on three extended landing legs, next to a driveshift courier scored by battle, and a Karaleo lionboat whose ornate trim was largely gone. Elsewhere stood vessels of stranger, more alien design.
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br /> Above, the great dome cracked into a hundred pie-wedge segments, and drew back to reveal a small yellow sun surrounded by stars, and a dull green manta-shaped ship of about the same size as one of Tuf’s shuttles. The Sunrazor settled, and the dome closed behind it. When the stars had been blotted out again, atmosphere came swirling back in to the deck, and Haviland Tuf arrived soon after.
Kefira Qay emerged from her ship with her lips set sternly beneath her big, crooked nose, but no amount of control could quite conceal the awe in her eyes. Two armed men in golden coveralls trimmed with green followed her.
Haviland Tuf drove up to them in an open three-wheeled cart. “I am afraid that my dinner invitation was only for one, Guardian Qay,” he said when he saw her escort. “I regret any misunderstanding, yet I must insist.”
“Very well,” she said. She turned to her guard. “Wait with the others. You have your orders.” When she got in next to Tuf she told him, “The Sunrazor will tear your ship apart if I am not returned safely within two standard hours.”
Haviland Tuf blinked at her. “Dreadful,” he said. “Everywhere my warmth and hospitality is met with mistrust and violence.” He set the vehicle into motion.
They drove in silence through a maze of interconnected rooms and corridors, and finally entered a huge shadowy shaft that seemed to extend the full length of the ship in both directions. Transparent vats of a hundred different sizes covered walls and ceiling as far as the eye could see, most empty and dusty, a few filled with colored liquids in which half-seen shapes stirred feebly. There was no sound but a wet, viscous dripping somewhere off behind them. Kefira Qay studied everything and said nothing. They went at least three kilometers down the great shaft, until Tuf veered off into a blank wall that dilated before them. Shortly thereafter they parked and dismounted.
A sumptuous meal had been laid out in the small, spartan dining chamber to which Tuf escorted the Guardian Kefira Qay. They began with iced soup, sweet and piquant and black as coal, followed by neograss salads with a gingery topping. The main course was a breaded mushroom top full as large as the plate on which it was served, surrounded by a dozen different sorts of vegetables in individual sauces. The Guardian ate with great relish.
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