George Martin - Tuf Voyaging

“Shocking,” said Tuf dispassionately. “Nonetheless, you have your kennels, do you not?”

“Not any more,” Norn said. He sounded 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 Tamber 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. “Kindly give me a certain amount of credit. I am an ecologist. I know a great deal about hoppers and their ways. Am I to understand that you no longer have your ironfangs, then?”

“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, and accepted his money in good faith.”

“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 snufflers and barnyard animals onto the sand, to be shredded ignominiously by the huge monsters that you have sold the other houses.”

“Sir,” Tuf said. “If you will indulge me in a bit of prognostication, it occurs to me that perhaps Norn will not be alone in its quandaries. I have a hunch— 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 such an extent that an untrained observer might even assume them to be dead. I fear that they will not be easily awakened. Perhaps, as the trainers of Wrai Hill are men of 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 unconscionably, I am afraid, and perhaps I am boring you. Do you grasp my point? My thrust?”

Herold Norn looked like a dead man. “You are mad. You have destroyed us. Our economy, our ecology . . . in five years, we will all be dead of starvation.”

“Unlikely,” said Tuf. “My experience in these matters suggests that Lyronica may indeed suffer a certain interlude of ecological instability and hardship, yet it will be of limited duration and ultimately I have no doubt that a new ecosystem will emerge. It appears unlikely that this successor ecology will offer niches for large predators, alas, but I am optimistic that the quality of Lyronican life will be otherwise unimpaired.”

“No predators? No . . . but the games, the arena . . . no one will pay to see a hopper fight a slug! How can the games go on? No one will send fighters to the Bronze Arena!”

Haviland Tuf blinked. “Indeed,” he said. “An intriguing thought. I will have to consider it thoroughly.”

He cleared the screen, and began to talk to Dax.

Rumors were seldom of any concern to Haviland Tuf. For one thing, he seldom heard any. Tuf was not averse to acting the tourist on most of the worlds he visited, but even when he was mingling with others in public places he remained somehow apart and unapproachable. His chalk-white skin and utterly hairless face and body usually made him conspicuous among the peoples of the planets on which he plied his trade, and even on those infrequent occasions when his complexion might have allowed him to pass, his size made him stand out. Thus, though people might stare at Tuf and talk of him everywhere he went, few of them talked to him unless they had business to transact.

Given his nature, then, it was hardly remarkable that Haviland Tuf had never heard of the man called Moses until the evening that he and Dax were assaulted by Jaime Kreen in a restaurant on K’theddion.

It was a small shabby place just off the spaceport. Tuf had finished a plate of smokeroots and neograss and was relaxing with his third liter of mushroom wine when abruptly Dax raised his head from the table. Tuf shook a bit, slopping some wine on his sleeve, and ducked his head quickly to one side, barely far enough so that the bottle Kreen was wielding smashed open against the back of Tuf’s chair instead of the back of Tuf’s skull.

Glass exploded, and the liquid within—a smelly local liquor—went everywhere, soaking the chair, the table, the cat, and both men. Jaime Kreen, a thin blond youth with drunken blue eyes, stood blinking stupidly, holding the broken bottle in a bleeding fist.

Haviland Tuf rose ponderously to his feet, his long white face singularly impassive. He glanced at his assailant, blinked, and then reached down to pick up Dax, who was wet and unhappy. “Can you fathom this, Dax?” he said in a deep bass. “We have here a mystery, albeit an inconvenient one. Why does this odd stranger attack us, I wonder? Do you have any ideas?” He stroked Dax slowly as he cradled him in his arms, and only when the cat began to purr did he look at Jaime Kreen again. “Sir,” he said. “It might be wise of you to release the fragments of that bottle. It appears to me that your hand is full of glass and blood and that particularly noxious brew, and I have severe doubts that the combination will enhance your health.”

The stricken Kreen seemed to come alive. His thin lips drew back in anger, and he flung the bottle away from him. “Are you mocking me, criminal?” he said in a slurred, dangerous voice.

“Sir,” said Haviland Tuf. The restaurant had grown very still: the other patrons were quiet and staring, and the proprietor had vanished. Tuf’s deep voice could be heard in every corner of the room. “I would venture that the title ‘criminal’ as more applicable to you than to myself, but perhaps that is not to the point. No, I am not mocking you. You appear to be upset. Under such conditions it would be folly to mock you, and I am not given to folly.” He placed Dax back on the table and scratched the tomcat behind the ear.

“You are mocking me,” Jaime Kreen said. “I’ll hurt you!”

Haviland Tuf betrayed no emotion. “You will not, sir, although I believe you are thinking of attacking me once again. I do not approve of violence. However, your boorish behavior leaves me with little choice.” So saying, he stepped forward quickly, and lifted Jaime Kreen high off the floor before the younger man could react. Then, carefully, he broke both of his arms.