The Coelura Read online

  The Coelura

  Anne Mccaffrey

  Anne McCaffrey

  The Coelura

  “IT IS YOUR EXALTED SIRE, Trin told Lady Caissa in an apprehensive voice. The elderly dresser bobbed up and down with agitation. “He is dressed for hunting but wishes a word with you.”

  “Then it can’t be too serious,” Caissa replied, smiling to reassure the nervous woman. She threw an opaque wrap about her and strode through the veiled portal to her reception room.

  Though her bare feet made little sound in the deep pile of the floor covering, the athletic figure of her sire whirled from his inspection of a tri-dimensional labyrinth table game into a hunter’s stance.

  Caissa smiled at his reflex and made the obeisance proper for the body-heir of Baythan, Minister Plenipotential of the Federated Sentient Planets to Demeathorn, fourth planet of the Star, Cepheus Two

  As Baythan straightened from his alert half-crouch, he fiddled unnecessarily with an armband of stun-darts, a sign to Caissa that her sire had more on his mind than hunting.

  “You have, of course, heard that Cavernus Moneor has died. . . .” Baythan turned back to his scrutiny of the labyrinth.

  “And his body-heir is already thinking of an heir-contract?” asked Caissa, accurately divining the reason for her sire’s fidgets.

  “As usual, daughter of my flesh, you are blunt to the point of discourtesy,” Baythan replied, regarding her with his notable air of censure.

  “No discourtesy, noble sire, was intended.”

  “None taken, I suppose. I ran a check on the new Cavernus’s genetic patterns and find no significant recessives that might combine unfavorably with yours.”

  Caissa gave her sire a long hard look.

  “Cavernus Gustin may be genetically sound, my sire, but he is inept in the hunt to the point of cowardice and almost incoherent save for the formal phrases which have been dinned into what he uses for a brain. Even then, he’s apt to come out with inappropriate replies. His haste is precipitous, his choice distasteful to me.”

  “I have certain reasons,” and Baythan drew himself to his full height, a movement that displayed his superb physique and emphasized a naturally proud mien, “which I cannot at this juncture reveal even to you, why an alliance with Cavernus Gustin would, in the not too distant future, be profoundly advantageous. I think I am correct in my belief that you would prefer to remain on Demeathorn rather than take up the star-hopping life your womb-mother prefers?”

  “Have you been reassigned, sire?” asked Caissa, startled by Baythan’s vagueness rather than his recommendation.

  “I have not been recalled-yet,” replied Baythan. Despite his bland expression, Caissa caught a hint of bitterness in his voice that she had rarely heard. “There is, and I mention this in the strictest of secrecy,” and Baythan’s urbane smile compounded Caissa’s confusion, “a possibility that I may satisfactorily complete the mission which first brought me to Demeathorn.”

  “As your body-heir, may details of that mission now be imparted to me?” asked Caissa as indifferently as possible, though every ounce of her slender body tensed with expectation.

  “When I have concluded my arrangements, yes. Both you and your womb-mother will know. Indeed so shall the galaxy!” His voice had a ring of triumph long delayed. Then his tone changed to the lightly persuasive one that she had heard him use to much advantage and she became wary. “An heir-contract need last only long enough to produce a healthy child, daughter. Believe me, when I say,” and his tone became more urgent, “that a small sacrifice today might reap unexpected rewards . . . tomorrow. However,” and Baythan’s careless gesture of resignation told Caissa more graphically than any ardent argument how important this proposal was to him, “it will be your decision, my heir.”

  “I shall give the matter my careful consideration, my sire,” she said, bowing her head and making the submission obeisance with her right hand.

  “You’d win this game by playing black to white’s 4S,” he said, making the move on the labyrinth board and smiling at her with gentle condescension.

  In a glance, she saw that Baythan was correct but then, he was as accomplished a gamesmaster as he was a hunter.

  “You have been a joy to me since your conception, daughter Caissa,” Baythan said, stepping forward and gripping her shoulders. He gave her an unexpected paternal kiss on her forehead.

  “My sire,” she said in surprise for demonstrations of affection were rare. This Cavernus contract must be exceedingly important. She bowed again, in the full display of filial acknowledgment, crossing her arms over her breasts, her fingertips touching the body-heir tattoo that entwined the base of her throat.

  She remained in that position until she heard her father departing. Then she raised her head to see him, with a triumphant swagger to his shoulders, stride through the thick privacy veil of her reception room.

  She exhaled on a deep puzzled note and slowly walked to the air-cushioned lounger, settling into it with less than her customary grace.

  Not much interrupted her sire, she reflected, when he had hunting on his program. That he had gone so far as to check the genetic pattern of the new Cavernus emphasized his brief visit. Caissa knew very well that Baythan had rejected several exceptional intra-stellar contracts for her. Yet, search her mind as deep as she could for the reason behind this extraordinary recommendation, she could find no valid advantage to an heir-contract with the callow Cavernus Gustin.

  Baythan’s hint that he might culminate his Ministry on Demeathorn was even more startling. Whatever his mission was, it had drawn the High Lady Cinna of Aldebaran, Caissa’s womb-mother, back to Demeathorn throughout Caissa’s infancy and childhood. Ostensibly, the High Lady Cinna had contracted to oversee Caissa’s early training and education.

  Part of that training, which included intensive study of the involved contracts of FSP society--body-heir alliances, heir-contracts, host-child negotiations and other personal service treaties--suggested to Caissa that the heir-contract between her parents contained an undisclosed clause. Certainly the Lady Cinna had obliquely referred to contractual defaulters often enough in Baythan’s presence.

  The High Lady Cinna was governor-general of four of the wealthiest planets in the Federation yet she made time in the star-hopping life that she led to visit Caissa and Baythan to whom she had inexplicably remained contractually bound.

  True, Baythan had an immaculate lineage, descending from the earliest of space pioneers, an excellent genetic pattern with few recessives. He was a skilled diplomatist, fearless hunter, deft lover, had impeccable taste in mundane matters of dress, design and art and, Caissa thought with objective detachment, was the most handsome man on Demeathorn. She knew that highly placed women frequently made the journey to Demeathorn for the sole purpose of conceiving their body-heir with him. Caissa’s womb-mother, in a moment of rare intimacy, had remarked that, had she known Baythan before she had entered her own heir-contract, she might have conceived her first child by him as well.

  It had become expedient in the twenty-second century for the wealthy and important men and women of the Federated Sentient Planets to ensure that their riches or hereditary positions remained in a direct, and genetically pure, blood line, secured in the person of one healthy heir-designate. This heir had to be conceived naturally (by direct copulation) and be physically perfect at birth, surviving that event by at least three months, or the contract was considered void.

  An intricate tattooed pattern of special inks that could not be duplicated ringed the neck of every body-heir, displayed as warning as well as defense. The child was inviolate and protected by the most stringent galactic laws and penalties, thereby eliminating blood feuds, kidnapping and the presumptive machinations of any greedy
sibling of the same parent. Each man and woman had one body-heir, distinguished by the parent’s tattoo. Of course, man or woman could produce additional children--(the wealthy woman generally employing a host-mother) and provide for them as they wished but the one body-heir enjoyed an incontestable position, zealously guarded, rigidly trained and especially instructed to increase the credit and holdings bequeathed to him or her. And to perpetuate the physical perfection which was as important a prerequisite for the monied, titled and intelligent as their credit balance.

  Once Caissa’s physical perfection and health had been duly attested and Baythan had declared her his official body-heir and ordered her tattoo, he had provided a substantial income for her from investments and businesses on nine other worlds where he had shrewdly placed his own inherited capital during his various ministries for the Federated Planetary System. The High Lady Cinna had capriciously bestowed on her womb-daughter rich mineral rights from two planets and three moons.

  Now twenty years old, Caissa knew that she should seriously consider supplying herself with an heir and, by custom, be guided by her sire’s recommendations. Dutiful though she was to Baythan’s few requests, Caissa could not in conscience consider any sort of alliance with the new Cavernus. Baythan had, however, invoked the recollection of a conversation and a subsequent painful incident with the High Lady Cinna six years ago, the day before Caissa’s fourteenth birthday celebration, the day that Caissa had ventured to raise the matter of the private clause.

  “So that I may know how to set out the most advantageous contracts and alliances for myself, Lady Cinna,” Caissa had hastily explained as the Lady gave her an unexpectedly sharp appraisal.

  “You must ask your noble sire about that clause.” A slight, sly smile curled the Lady Cinna’s delicately tinted lips. “He is in default and I have no wish to embarrass him.”

  Since the High Lady Cinna took an outrageous pleasure in doing just that as frequently as she could, Caissa maintained a bland look of inquiry.

  “Be certain, my pet, to ask for the attainable in any negotiations.” The Lady Cinna took up her hand mirror, checking her elaborate hair style--golden at this season of the year. “I unwisely erred, one of my few misjudgments. I took the promise for the deed, based on past accomplishments. Oh, I’m positive that your sire meant well and I thought coelura well worth waiting for. . . .”

  “Coelura?”

  “Yes, coelura,” said Lady Cinna brusquely, adjusting a drape of the gossamer fabric that garbed her. “What else do you think distinguished this wretched little planet with its senescent troglodytes? Surely you’ve been told of coelura? Ah!” and the Lady Cinna exclaimed in arch comprehension. “No one at all then has mentioned coelura in your presence?” Her brittle laugh had made Caissa quiver. “I could well appreciate that certain data had been expunged from public information but, as your sire’s body-heir, you ought to have been told.”

  Immediately after Caissa had been dismissed from Lady Cinna’s presence, she had tried to remedy her ignorance. Data retrieval would give her no assistance until she obtained official clearance. That meant that there was information locked in the Blue City’s memory banks. However, as she was also preparing for her fourteenth birthday celebration at which she achieved certain privileges and responsibilities, the urgency of acquiring forbidden knowledge was over-shadowed. The day after that fabulous occasion, the Lady Cinna requested the presence of Baythan and Caissa and announced that she would leave Demeathorn within the hour.

  “I have had more than sufficient of the company in your two pitiful Triadic Cities, and certainly more than enough of the hunting and fishing which is evidently all this trivial planet can now boast,” she told Baythan with trenchant scorn. “Until you can fulfill your part of your contract, I shall return to my duties and obligations on other, better endowed worlds.”

  She had held that scornful smile, subtly goading Baythan to protest her accusation of failure but he had remained silent, grimly pale at her insult.

  “And I suppose, failing all else, you will bequeath your quest to your heir,” and the High Lady turned indolently to smile with arch sympathy on her offspring, “who will undoubtedly make a competent minister in your place, knowing the planet as well as she does and so sensibly conditioned for the existence here.”

  With a final scathing glance at her mute listeners, she swept from the room in a froth of fragrant fabric. Her denunciation of Baythan made it impossible for Caissa, unwilling to remind her sire of that distressing scene, to raise the questions of the unmentioned clause or coelura.

  Caissa could, and had, invoked her new rights as a fourteen year old body-heir to the classified section of Blue City’s Memorax.

  “Coelura,” and the display printed reluctantly word by word instead of paragraphic speed, “a passive ovoid aerial life form once indigenous to the northeastern group of islands known as the Oriolis group.”

  Questioning “Oriolis,” a name Caissa had not previously heard though she knew Demeathorn quite well, provided more perplexity and less information. The Oriolii were interdicted by the Triadic Council. For the first time in her carefully tutored life, Caissa recognized that “triad” meant three and she knew only two cities on Demeathorn, the Blue and the Red. Blue and red are primary colors.

  “Yellow Triad City” elicited the information that there had been a third City, now abandoned. It had served as a trade and export center for a product no longer available. Yellow Triad City had been put on minimal care one hundred and twenty years ago. An update line informed Caissa that the ruins were now considered dangerous even for protected excursions.

  Summoning a geographic display of Demeathorn’s large, roughly triangular continent, Caissa regarded it thoughtfully. Blue Triad City was in the southeastern corner, enjoying quite the best temperature on its plateau. Red Triad City was in a direct line of flight to the southwest, situated on the vast bluff that shoved into the western sea. If one considered an equilateral triangle, the upper tip would put the abandoned city precisely north, again in an elevated position, overlooking the scattering of islands that staggered northwards, presumably the interdicted Oriolis group.

  Further queries, even using her father’s private code, brought discouraging answers that were in their phrasing subtle evasions. No sporting animals, no facilities, interdiction by the Red and Blue rulers for residents or visitors due to extreme hazards and lack of rescue units.

  Caissa made a rapid calculation which confirmed that the range of any of the rescue vehicles serving the sporting and fishing areas could reach the farthest north island at a push, even if they had to rely on solar-charged batteries for a return flight. She could extract nothing further about coelura which, in her mother’s estimation, had distinguished Demeathorn and which once had generated the need for the third city. Even at fourteen, Caissa had deduced that much.

  She had abandoned such fruitless research though occasionally in the first few months, she had tried alternative questions on the Memorax. Then she had begun to participate actively in the sporting life which absorbed her sire, and occupied the planet’s inhabitants and the many visitors who came to enjoy hunting Demeathorn’s canny, deadly and diverse predators.

  The intervening six years had passed pleasantly enough for Caissa and she acquired the status of “quota hunter” no small achievement. She had a reputation as well as private wealth to pass on to her own body-heir. Now, mulling over her sire’s request that she consider the new Cavernus, she wondered how that could be connected with Baythan’s boast that he would, at long last, accomplish his mysterious mission and restore his contractual honor with the High Lady Cinna. Caissa would willingly have supported her sire in any effort to acquit himself with the High Lady, but marrying that insipid Cavernus was stretching the sire-bond very thin indeed.

  Caissa rose to pace restlessly about the reception room, reviewing heir-contracts and intimacy requirements. “A small sacrifice today that might reap unexpected rewards,” Baythan ha
d said. “I took the promise for the deed,” Lady Cinna’s high pure voice reminded her.

  Although it had been six years ago that the High Lady had officially left Demeathorn, she had made sporadic and unannounced visits to the Blue Triadic City in which Baythan and Caissa resided. Aware of the antagonism between her natural parents, Caissa noticed that these visits invariably occurred when her sire was protocologically unable to disappear on a hunt or some ministerial errand. Very privately, Caissa likened the Lady Cinna’s attitude towards Baythan as similar to the sly, six-legged deadly nathus of Demeathorn’s deep forests, a creature of immense patience for stalking its prey from the aerial advantage of the closely grown ferfa trees. Her father, on the other hand, reacted like a man caught in a labyrinth, trying to find the one way out to the sun.

  Nor was Caissa immune to her womb-mother’s verbal pricks and darts. These were mainly concerned with the lack of “elegant or suitable” males to carry on the quintessential qualities of Caissa’s historically illustrious heritage of governors, explorers spatial and scientific, male and female.

  Though Baythan had full custody of his heir, Caissa could have requested permission to go anywhere in the galaxy that her private income, which was large, permitted. The Lady Cinna had, however, prejudiced herself in her natural daughter’s estimation by humiliating the sire in the heir’s presence. In the strict terms of contracts which Caissa had studied, as long as Baythan lived, he could not be held in default of that unpublished clause. A strange condition, indeed, Caissa thought, if, as his heir, she would inherit the obligation.

  But Caissa had not wished to travel from Demeathorn, certainly not in the exalted Lady Cinna’s company, for she didn’t much like the woman’s ruthlessness, brittle ways and excessive devotion to bizarre fashions, often including body changes. If such practices were essential for social acceptance outside Demeathorn’s system, Caissa preferred to stay with her father. Again, being candid, Caissa had lately become bored with a life totally devoted to days spent in hunting parties and evenings in parties discussing the days’ hunts.