“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.
“Indeed.” Tuf sipped at his drink.
“Consider the question of ownership, Tuf. By what right do you own the Ark? Did you build it? Did you have any role in its creation? Hell no.”
“I found it,” said Tuf. “True, this discovery was made in the company of five others, and it cannot be denied that their claims to ownership were, in some cases, superior to my own. They, however, are dead, and I am alive. This strengthens my claim considerably. Moreover, I presently possess the artifact in question. In many ethical systems, possession is the key, indeed ofttimes the overriding determinant of ownership.”
“There are worlds where the state owns everything of value, where your goddamned ship would have been seized out of hand.”
“I am mindful of this and purposely avoided such worlds when choosing my destination,” said Haviland Tuf.
“We could take your damned ship by force if we wanted, Tuf. Maybe it’s power that conveys ownership, eh?”
“It is true that you command the fierce loyalty of numerous lackey armed with nerveguns and lasers, while I am alone, a humble trader and neophyte ecological engineer, companioned only by his harmless cats. Nonetheless, I am not without certain small resources of my own. It is theoretically possible for me to have programmed defenses into the Ark that would make such a seizure perhaps less easily accomplished than you imagine. Of course this supposition is entirely hypothetical, but you might do well to give it due consideration. In any case, brutal military action would be illegal under the laws of S’uthlam.”
Tolly Mune sighed. “Some cultures hold that utility confers ownership. Others opt for need.”
“I am not unfamiliar with these doctrines.”
“Good. S’uthlam needs the Ark more than you do, Tuf.”
&nb
sp; “Incorrect. I have need of the Ark to pursue my chosen profession and earn a livelihood. Your world has no need of the ship itself, but rather of ecological engineering. Therefore I have offered you my services, only to find my generous offer spurned and dubbed insufficient. “
“Utility,” Tolly Mune interrupted. “We have a whole goddamned world of brilliant scientists. You’re nothing but a trader, by your own admission. We can make better use of the Ark.”
“Your brilliant scientists are largely specialists in physics, chemistry, cybernetics, and other like fields. S’uthlam is not especially advanced in the areas of biology, genetics, or ecology. This is doubly obvious. If you possessed such expertise as you imply, firstly, your need for the Ark would not be urgent, and secondly, your ecological problem would never have been allowed to reach its present ominous proportions. Therefore I question your assertion that your people would put the ship to more efficient use. Since coming upon the Ark and commencing my voyage here, I have dutifully immersed myself in study, and I would be so bold as to suggest that I am now the single most qualified ecological engineer in human space, possibly excluding Prometheus.”
Haviland Tuf’s long white face was without expression; he shaped each pronouncement carefully and fired them at her in cool salvos. Yet, unflappable as he was, Tolly Mune sensed that behind Tuf’s calm facade was a weakness—pride, ego, a vanity she could twist to her own ends. She jabbed a finger at his face. “Words, Tuf. Nothing but puling empty words. You can call yourself an ecological engineer, but that doesn’t mean a damned thing. You can call yourself a jellyfruit, but you’d still look damned silly squatting in a bowl of clotted cream!”
“Indeed,” Tug said.
“I’ll make you a wager,” she said, going for the kill, “that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing with that damned ship.”
Haviland Tuf blinked, and made a steeple of his—hands on the table. “This is an interesting proposition,” he said. “Continue.”
Tolly Mune smiled. “Your cat against your ship,” she said. “I’ve described our problem. Solve it, and you get back Havoc, safe and sound. Fail, and we get the Ark.”
Tuf raised a finger. “This scheme is flawed. Although you set me a formidable task, I am not loath to accept such a challenge, were the suggested stakes not so imbalanced. The Ark and Havoc are both mine, though you have unscrupulously, albeit legally, seized custody of the latter. Therefore it appears that by winning, I simply get back that which is rightfully mine to begin with, whereas you stand to gain a great prize. This is inequitable. I have a counteroffer. I came to S’uthlam for certain repairs and alterations. In the event of my success, let this work be performed without cost to me.”
Tolly Mune lifted her drink to her mouth to give herself a moment to consider. The ice had turned slushy, but the narcoblaster still had a nice sting to it. “Fifty million standards of free repairs? That’s too damn much.”
“Such was my opinion,” said Tuf.
She grinned. “The cat,” she said, “may have been yours to start with, but now she’s ours. But I’ll go this far on the repairs, Tuf—I’ll give you credit.”
“On what terms and at what interest rate?” Tuf asked.
“We’ll do the refitting,” she said, smiling. “We’ll start immediately. If you win—which you won’t—you get the cat back, and we’ll give you an interest-free loan for the cost of the repair bill. You can pay us off from the money you make out there“—she waved vaguely toward the rest of the universe—“doing your damned eco-engineering. But we get a lien on the Ark. If you haven’t paid half the money back in five standard years, or all of it in ten, the ship is ours.”
“The original estimate of fifty million standards was excessive,” Tuf said, “obviously an inflated figure intended solely to force me to sell you my ship. I suggest we settle on a sum of twenty million standards as the basis for this agreement.”
“Ridiculous,” she snapped. “My spinnerets couldn’t even paint your goddamned ship for twenty million standards. But I’ll go down to forty-five.”
“Twenty-five million,” Tuf suggested. “As I am alone aboard the Ark, it is not strictly necessary that all decks and systems be restored to full optimal function. A few distant, dysfunctional decks are of no ultimate importance. I will trim my work order to include only the repairs that must be made for my safety, comfort, and convenience.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “I’ll go to forty million.”
“Thirty,” Tuf insisted, “would seem more than enough.”
“Let’s not quibble over a few million standards,” said Tolly Mune. “You’re going to lose, so it doesn’t matter one hot damn.”
“I have a somewhat different viewpoint. Thirty million.”
“Thirty-seven,” she said.
“’Thirty-two,” Tuf replied.
“Obviously, we’re going to settle on thirty-five, right? Done!” She stuck out her hand.
Tuf looked at it. “Thirty-four,” he said calmly.
Tolly Mune laughed, withdrew her hand, and said, “What does it matter? Thirty-four.”
Haviland Tuf stood up.
“Have another drink,” she said, gesturing. “To our little wager.”
“I fear I must decline,” Tuf said. “I will celebrate after I have won. For the nonce, there is work to do.”
“I cannot believe you’ve done this,” Josen Rael said, very loudly. Tolly Mune had turned the volume up high on her comm unit, to drown out the constant irritating protests of her captive cat.
“Give me a little sanity, Josen,” she said querulously. “This is goddamned brilliant.”
“You’ve bet the future of our world! Billions and billions of lives! Do you seriously expect me to honor this little pact of yours?”
Tolly Mune sucked on her beer bulb and sighed. Then, in the same voice she would have used to explain things to an especially slow child, she said, “We can’t lose, Josen. Think about it, if that wormy thing in your skull isn’t too atrophied by gravity to be capable of thought. Why the hell did we want the Ark? To feed ourselves, of course. To avoid the famine, to solve the problem, to work a puling biological miracle. To multiply the loaves and fishes.”
“Loaves and fishes?” the First Councillor said, baffled.
“Times infinity. It’s a classical allusion, Josen. Christian, I think. Tuf is going to take a try at making fish sandwiches for thirty billion. I think he’ll just get flour on his face and choke on a fish bone, but that doesn’t matter. If he fails, we get the goddamned seedship, all nice and legal. If he succeeds, we don’t need the Ark any more. We win either way. And the way I got things rigged, even if Tuf does win, he’ll still owe us thirty-four million standards. If by some miracle he pulls it off, odds are we’ll get the ship anyway, when he comes up short on his damned note.” She drank some more beer and grinned at him. “Josen, you’re damned lucky I don’t want your job. Has it ever dawned on you that I’m a lot smarter than you?”
“You’re a lot less politic too, Ma,” he said, “and I doubt you’d last a day in my job. I can’t deny that you do yours well, however. I suppose your plan is viable.”
“You suppose?” she said.
“There are political realities to consider. The expansionists want the ship itself, you must realize, against the day they regain power. Fortunately, they are a minority. We’ll outvote them in council once again.”
“See that you do, Josen,” Tolly Mune said. She broke the connection and sat floating in the dimness of her home. On her vidscreen, the Ark came into view again. Her work crews were all over it now, jury-rigging a temporary dock. Permanence would come later. She expected the Ark to be around for a good few centuries, so they needed a place to keep the damned thing, and even if Tuf did make off with it by some freakish chance, a major expansion of the web was long overdue and would provide new docking facilities for hundreds of ships. With Tuf paying the bill, she saw no sense in postponing the construction any longer. A lon
g translucent plasteel tube was being assembled, section by section, to link the huge seedship to the end of the nearest major spur, so shipments of materials and teams of spinnerets could reach it more easily. Cybertechs were already inside, linked to the ship’s computer system, reprogramming to suit Tuf’s requirements and, incidentally, dismantling any internal defenses he might have coded in. Secret orders from the Steel Widow herself; Tuf didn’t know. It was just a little extra precaution, in case he was a poor loser. She didn’t want any monsters or plagues popping out of her prize box when she opened it.
As for Tuf, her sources said he had been in his own computer room almost continuously since leaving the Worldview’s gaming salon. On her authority as Portmaster, the council databanks had been authorized to give him whatever information he required, and he certainly required a great deal, from the reports she was getting. He had the Ark’s own computers data-storming extensive series of projections and simulations. Tolly Mune had to give him credit; he was giving it his best.
The cage in the corner thumped as Havoc crashed against its side and gave out a small, hurt mew. She felt sorry for the cat. She felt sorry for Tuf, too. Maybe, when he failed, she’d see if she couldn’t get him that Longhaul Nine anyway.
Forty-seven days passed.
Forty-seven days passed with the work crews working triple-shift, so the activity around the Ark was constant, unrelenting, and frenetic. The web crawled out to the seedship and covered it; cables snaked around it like vines; a network of pneumatic tubes plunged in and out of its airlocks as if it were a dying man in a downstairs medcenter; plasteel bubbles swelled out on its hull like fat silver pimples; tendrils of steel and duralloy crisscrossed it like veins; vacuum sleds buzzed about its immensity like stinging insects trailing fire; and everywhere, inside and out, walked platoons of spinnerets. Forty-seven days passed and the Ark was repaired, refinished, modernized, restocked.
Forty-seven days passed without Haviland Tuf leaving his ship for so much as a minute. At first he lived in his computer room, the spinnerets reported, with the simulations running day and night and the data crashing in all around him. These past few weeks he had most often been seen riding in a small three-wheeled cart down the thirty-kilometer length of the seedship’s huge central shaft, a green duck-billed cap perched atop his head, a small long-haired gray cat in his lap. He took only scant and perfunctory notice of the S’uthlamese workers, but at intervals he would pull over to recalibrate instrumentation at scattered random work stations or check the endless series of vats, large and small, that lined those towering walls. The cybertechs noticed that certain cloning programs were up and running, and that the chronowarp had been engaged, drawing off enormous amounts of energy. Forty-seven days passed with Tuf in near seclusion, companioned only by Chaos, working.
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