George Martin - Tuf Voyaging

“Seldom in my voyaging have I encountered any political functionary as frank as yourself, it must be admitted. The experience is refreshing. Still, as invigorated as I am, what assurance do I have that you will not continue your efforts to seize the Ark once aboard?”

“Who, me?” said Tolly Mune. “Now how could I do a thing like that? Don’t worry, I’ll come alone.” She smiled. “Well, almost alone. You’d have no objections if I brought a cat, would you?”

“Certainly not,” said Tuf. “I am pleased to learn that the felines I left in your custody have thrived in my absence. I shall eagerly anticipate your arrival, Portmaster Mune.”

“That’s First Councillor Mune to you, Tuf,” she said, gruffly, before she wiped the screen.

No one had ever alleged that Haviland Tuf was overly rash; he took up a position twelve kilometers beyond the end of one of the great docking spurs of the orbital community known as the Port of S’uthlam, and he kept his shields up continuously as he waited. Tolly Mune rode out to meet him in the small starship Tuf had given her five years before, on the occasion of his previous visit to S’uthlam.

Tuf opened the shields to let her through, and cracked the great dome on the landing deck so she might set down. Ark ’s instrumentation indicated her ship was full of lifeforms, only one of which was human; the rest displayed feline parameters. Tuf set out to meet her, driving a three-wheeled cart with balloon tires, and wearing a deep-green mock-velvet suit belted about his ample middle. On his head was a battered green duckbilled cap decorated with the golden theta of the Ecological Engineering Corps. Dax rode with him, an indolent sprawl of black fur draped across Tuf’s broad knees.

When the airlock opened, Tuf drove with all deliberate speed through the scrapyard of battered spacecraft that he had somehow accumulated over the years, directly to where Tolly Mune, former Portmaster of S’uthlam, was thumping down the ramp of her ship.

A cat walked at her side.

Dax was on his feet in an instant, his dark fur bristling as if his huge, flurry tail had just been plugged into an electric socket. His customary lethargy was suddenly gone; he leapt from Tuf’s lap to the hood of the cart, drew back his ears, and hissed.

“Why, Dax,” Tolly Mune said, “is that any way to greet a goddamned relative?” She grinned, and knelt to pet the huge animal by her side.

“I had expected either Ingratitude or Doubt,” said Haviland Tuf.

“Oh, they’re fine,” she said. “And so are all their goddamned offspring. Several generations’ worth. I should have figured it when you gave me a pair. A fertile male and female. I’ve got . . . ” she frowned, and counted quickly on her fingers, once through and then again. “ . . . let’s see, sixteen, I think. Yes. And two pregnant.” She jerked a thumb at the starship behind her. “My ship has turned into one big cat-house. Most of them don’t care any more for gravity than I do. Born and raised in zero gee. I’ll never understand how they can be so graceful one moment and so hilariously clumsy the next.”

“The feline heritage is rife with contradiction,” said Tuf.

“This is Blackjack.” She picked him up in her arms and rose to her feet. “Damn, he’s heavy. You never realize that in zero gee.”

Dax stared at the other feline, and hissed.

Blackjack, cradled against the chest of Tolly Mune’s old, smelly skinthins, looked down at the huge black tom with disinterested haughtiness.

Haviland Tuf stood two-and-a-half meters tall, with bulk to match, and Dax was just as large, compared to other cats, as Tuf was, compared to other men.

Blackjack was larger.

His hair was long and silky, smoky gray on top, with a lighter silver undercoat. His eyes were silver-gray as well, vast deep pools, serene and somehow eerie. He was the most incredibly beautiful animal ever to dwell in the expanding universe, and he knew it. His manner was that of a princeling born to the royal purple.

Tolly Mune slid awkwardly into the seat beside Tuf. “He’s telepathic, too,” she said cheerfully, “just like yours.”

“Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. Dax was stiff and angry in his lap. He hissed again.

“Jack here was the way I saved the other cats,” Tolly Mune said. Her homely face took on a look of reproach. “You said you were leaving me five years of catfood.”

“For two cats, madam,” said Tuf. “Obviously, sixteen animals consume more than Doubt and Ingratitude alone.” Dax edged closer, bared his teeth, bristled.

“I had problems when the stuff ran out. Given our food shortfalls, I had to justify wasting calories on vermin.”

“Perhaps you might have considered steps to limit your feline reproduction,” Tuf said. “Such a strategy would undoubtedly have yielded results. Thus your home could have served as an educational and sobering illustration of S’uthlamese problems, in microcosm as it were, and the solutions thereof.”

“Sterilization?” Tolly Mune said. “That’s anti-life, Tuf. Out. I had a better idea. I described Dax to certain friends—biotechs, cybertechs, you know—and they made me a familiar of my own, worked up from cells taken from Ingratitude.”

“How appropriate,” said Tuf.

She smiled. “Blackjack’s almost two years old. He’s been so useful I’ve been given a food allowance for the others. He’s helped my political career no end, too.”

“I have no doubt,” said Tuf. “I note that he does not appear discomfitted by gravity.”

“Not Blackjack. These days they need me downstairs a hell of a lot more than I’d like, and Jack goes with me. Everywhere.”

Dax hissed again, and made a low nimbly threatening sound. He darted toward Blackjack, then drew back suddenly and spit disdain at the larger cat.

“You better call him off, Tuf,” Tolly Mune said.

“Felines sometimes demonstrate a biological compulsion to battle in order to establish deference rankings,” Tuf said. “This is particularly true of tomcats. Dax, undoubtedly aided and abetted by his enhanced psionic capabilities, long ago established his supremacy over Chaos and my other cats. Undoubtedly he now feels his position threatened. It is not a matter for serious concern, First Councillor Mune.”

“It is for Dax,” she said, as the black tom crept closer. Blackjack, in her lap, looked up at his rival with vast boredom.

“I fail to grasp your point,” said Tuf.

“Blackjack has those enhanced psionic capabilities, too,” said Tolly Mune. “Plus a few other, ah, advantages. Implanted duralloy claws, sharp as goddamned razors, concealed in special paw sheaths. A subcutaneous net of nonallogenic plasteel mesh that makes him awfully tough to hurt. Reflexes that have been genetically accelerated to make him twice as quick and dextrous as a normal cat. A very high pain threshold. I don’t want to be puling crass about it or anything, but if he gets jumped, Blackjack will slice Dax into little bloody hairballs.”

Haviland Tuf blinked, and shoved the steering stick over toward Tolly Mune. “Perhaps it might be best if you drove.” He reached out, picked up his angry black tomcat by the ruff of the neck, and deposited him, screeching and spitting, in his lap, where he held him very still indeed. “Proceed in that direction,” he said, pointing with a long pale finger.

“It appears,” said Haviland Tuf, steepling his fingers as he regarded her from the depths of a huge wingback armchair, “that circumstances have altered somewhat since I last came to call upon S’uthlam.”

Tolly Mune studied him carefully. His paunch was larger than it had been, and his long face was just as miserly of expression, but without Dax in his lap, Haviland Tuf looked almost naked. Tuf had shut the big black tom up on a lower deck to keep him away from Blackjack. Since the ancient seedship was thirty kilometers long and several of Tuf’s other cats roamed the deck in question, Dax would scarcely lack for space or for companionship, but must be baffled and distraught nonetheless. The psionic tomcat had been Tuf’s constant and inseparable companion for years, had even ridden in Tuf’s ample pockets as a kitten. Tolly Mune felt a little sad about it.