George Martin - Tuf Voyaging

Tuf laid down his spoon carefully and folded his hands atop his paunch. “It is my recollection that I brought Havoc here with me on your specific invitation.”

Tolly Mune shook her head. “Won’t wash, Tuf. I’ve got our talk recorded. True, I observed that I’d never seen a live animal before, but that’s a simple factual declaration, and no court could possibly construe it as an incitement for you to commit a criminal violation of our health statutes. No court of ours, anyway.” Her smile was almost apologetic.

“I see,” said Tuf. “In that case, let us dispense with time-consuming legal machinations. I will plead guilty and pay the prescribed fine for this minor infraction.”

“Good,” said Tolly Mune. “The fine is fifty standards.” She gestured, and one of her men strode forward and gathered up Havoc from the table. “Of course,” she finished, “the vermin in question must be destroyed.”

“I hate gravity,” Tolly Mune said to Josen Rael’s smiling, magnified face after she’d finished her report on the dinner. “It exhausts me, and I hate to think what all that goddamned drag does to my muscles, my internal organs. How can you worms live that way? And all that puling food! It was obscene the way he put it away, and the smells . . . ”

“Portmaster, we have more important things to discuss,” Rael said. “It’s done, then? We have him?”

“We have his cat,” she said glumly. “More precisely, I have his goddamned cat.” As if on cue, Havoc yowled and pressed her face against the meshwork plasteel cage that the security men had rigged up in a corner of her apartment. The cat yowled a lot; it was distinctly uncomfortable in weightlessness, and kept spinning out of control when it tried to move. Every time it caromed off the side of the cage, Tolly Mune winced with guilt. “I was sure he’d thumb the transfer to save the puling cat.”

Josen Rael looked upset. “I can’t say I think much of your plan, Portmaster. Why in the name of life would anyone surrender a treasure the magnitude of this Ark to preserve an animal specimen? Especially since you tell me he has other samples of the same type of vermin back aboard his craft?”

“Because he’s got an emotional attachment to this particular vermin,” Tolly Mune said, with a sigh. “Except that Tuf is even cagier than I thought. He called my bluff.”

“Destroy the vermin, then. Show him we mean what we say.”

“Oh, be sane, Josen!” she replied impatiently. “Where does that leave us? If I go ahead and kill the damned cat, then I’ve got nothing. Tuf knows that, and he knows that I know that, and he knows that I know that he knows. At least this way, we’ve got something he wants. We’re stalemated.”

“We’ll change the law,” Josen Rael suggested. “Let me . . . yes, the penalty for smuggling vermin into port should include confiscation of the ship used for the smuggling!”

“A goddamned masterstroke,” said Tolly Mune. “Too bad the charter prohibits retroactive laws.”

“I have yet to hear a better plan from you.”

“That’s because I don’t have one yet, Josen. But I will. I’ll argue him out of it. I’ll swindle him out of it. We know he’s got weaknesses. Food, his cats. Maybe there’s something else, something we can use. A conscience, a libido, a weakness for drink, for gambling.” She paused, thoughtful. “Gambling,” she repeated. “Right. He likes to play games.” She pointed a finger at the screen. “Stay out of it. You gave me three days, and my time’s not up yet. So hold your bladder.” She wiped his features off the huge vidscreen, and replaced them with the darkness of space, with the Ark floating against a field of unwinking stars.

The cat somehow seemed to recognize the image up on the screen, and made a thin, plaintive mewing sound. Tolly Mune looked over, frowned, and asked to be put through to her security monitor. “Tuf,” she barked, “where is he now?”

“In the Worldview Hotel starclass gaming salon, Ma,” the woman on duty responded.

“The Worldview?” she groaned. “He would pick a goddamned worm palace, wouldn’t he? What’s that under, full gee? Oh, puling hell, never mind. Just see that he stays there. I’m coming down.”

She found him playing five-sided quandary against a couple of elderly groundworms, a cybertech she had had suspended for systems-looting a few weeks back, and a moon-faced, fleshy trade negotiator from Jazbo. Judging from the mountain of counters stacked in front of him, Tuf was winning handily. She snapped her fingers, and the salon hostess came gliding over with a chair. Tolly Mune sat herself next to Tuf and touched him lightly on the arm. “Tuf,” she said.

He turned his head and pulled away from her. “Kindly refrain from laying hands upon my person. Portmaster Mune.”

She pulled her hand back. “What are you doing, Tuf?”

“At the moment, I am assaying an interesting new strategem of my own devising against Negotiator Dez. I fear it will be proved unsound, but we shall see. In a larger sense, I strive to earn a few meager standards through the application of statistical analysis and applied psychology. S’uthlam is by no means inexpensive, Portmaster Mune.”

The Jazbot, his long hair gleaming with iridescent oils, his fat face covered with rank-scars, laughed roughly and displayed a mouth of polished black teeth inset with tiny crimson jewels. “I challenge, Tuf,” he said, touching a button underneath his station to flash his array upon the lighted surface of the table.

Tuf leaned forward briefly. “Indeed,” he said. A long pale finger moved appropriately, and his own formation lit up within the gaming circle. “I fear you are lost, sir. My experiment has been proven successful, though no doubt by mere fluke.”

“Blast you and your damnable luck!” the Jazbot said, lurching unsteadily to his feet. More counters changed hands.

“So you game well,” Tolly Mune said to him. “It won’t do you a damned bit of good, Tuf. The odds in these places favor the house. You’ll never gamble your way to the money you need.”

“I am not unaware of this,” Tuf replied.

“Let’s talk.”

“We are engaged in talking at this very moment.”

“Let’s talk privately ,” she stressed.

“During our last private discussion, I was set upon by men with nerveguns, verbally pummeled, cruelly deceived, deprived of a beloved companion, and denied the opportunity to enjoy dessert. I am not favorably predisposed to accept further invitations.”

“I’ll buy you a drink,” said Tolly Mune.

“Very well,” said Tuf. He rose ponderously, scooped up his counters, and bid farewell to the other players.

The two of them walked to a privacy booth on the far side of the gaming room, Tolly Mune puffing a bit from the strain of fighting gravity. Once inside, she slumped into the cushions, ordered iced narcoblasts for two and opaqued the curtain.

“The ingestion of narcotic beverages will have scant effect on my decision-making capacities, Portmaster Mune,” said Haviland Tuf, “and while I am willing to accept your largesse as a token of redress for your earlier perversion of civilized hospitality, my position is nonetheless unchanged.”

“What do you want, Tuf?” she said wearily, after the drinks had come. The tall glasses were rimed with frost, the liquor cobalt blue and icy.

“Like all of humanity, I have many desires. At the moment I most urgently wish the safe return of Havoc to my custody.”

“I told you, I’ll swap the cat for the ship.”

“We have discussed this proposal, and I have rejected it as inequitable. Must we go over the same ground again?”

“I have a new argument,” she said.