Horses!

by Gardner Dozois

  When I got home I took Ben aside. "Ben," I said, "every cow horse has to carry more than a hundred and seventy pounds."

  "Yeah, but a cow horse don't run a mile in just over a minute."

  "Nevertheless," I said, "he'll run as fast as he can carrying that weight and it doesn't hurt him."

  "But a cow horse has pasterns and joints like a work horse. They just ain't built like a thoroughbred."

  "Neither is Red Eagle," I answered.

  "What's this all about? You already arranged for him not to carry any weight."

  "That's for the first race."

  "First race! You ain't thinkin' of runnin' in both of them?" "Yes, and that second one will be his last race. I'll never ask you to ride him carrying that kind of weight again."

  "You ought to be ashamed to ask me to ride him carrying it at all." Then what I had said sun in. "Last race! How do you know it'll be his last race?"

  "I forgot to tell you I had a talk with Carvelliers."

  "So you had a talk with Carvelliers. So what?"

  "Ben," I pleaded, "trust me. See what the Eagle can do with a hundred and seventy."

  "All right," said Ben grudgingly, "but I ain't going to turn him on."

  "Turn him on!" I snorted. "You ain't ever been able to turn him off."

  Ben was surprised but I wasn't when Red Eagle galloped easily under the weight. Ben rode him for a week before he got up the nerve to let him run. Eagle was still way ahead of every record except his own. He stayed sound.

  When we entered him in the second race all but five owners withdrew their horses. These five knew their animals were the best of that season, barring our colt. And they believed that the Eagle after a plane ride, a run the day before, and carrying a hundred and seventy pounds was fair competition.

  At the first track Eagle ran unweighted before a packed stand. The people jumped and shouted with excitement as the red streak flowed around the track, racing the second hand of the huge clock that had been erected in front of the odds board. Ben was worried about the coming race and only let him cut a second off his previous record. But that was enough. The crowd went mad. And I had the last ammunition I needed.

  The next day dawned clear and sunny. The track was fast. Every seat in the stand was sold and the infield was packed. The press boxes overflowed with writers, anxiously writing to report to the world what the wonder horse would do. The crowd that day didn't have to be told. They bet their last dollar on him to win.

  Well, it's all history now. Red Eagle, carrying one hundred and seventy pounds, beat the next fastest horse five lengths. All the fences in front of the stands were torn down by the crowd trying to get a close look at the Eagle. The track lost a fortune and three officials had heart attacks.

  A meeting was called and they pleaded with us to remove our horse from competition.

  "Gentlemen," I said, "we'll make you a proposition. You noticed yesterday that the gate for Eagle's exhibition was the largest that track ever had. Do you understand? People will pay to watch Eagle run against time. If you'll guarantee us two exhibitions a season at each major track and give us sixty per cent of the gate, we'll agree never to run the Eagle in competition."

  It was such a logical move that they wondered they hadn't thought of it themselves. It worked out beautifully. Owners of ordinary horses could run them with the conviction that they would at least be somewhere in the stretch when the race finished. The officials were happy, because not only was racing secure again, but they made money out of their forty per cent of the gates of Eagle's exhibitions. And we were happy, because we made even more money. Everything has been serene for three seasons. But I'm a little concerned about next year.

  I forgot to tell you the arrangement Carvelliers and I had made. First, we had discussed a little-known aspect of mutations: namely, that they pass on to their offspring their new characteristics. Carvelliers has fifty brood mares on his breeding farm, and Red Eagle proved so sure at stud that next season fifty carbon copies of him will be hitting the tracks. You'd never believe it, but they run just like their sire, and Ben and I own fifty per cent of each of them. Ben feels somewhat badly about it, but, as I pointed out, we only promised not to run the Eagle.

  On the Gem Planet

  by

  Cordwainer Smith

  The late Cordwainer Smith—in "real" life Dr. Paul M.A. Linebarger, scholar and statesman—created a science fiction cosmology unique in its scope and complexity: a millennia-spanning future history, logically outlandish and elegantly strange, set against a vivid, richly colored, mythically intense universe where animals assume the shape of men, vast plano-form ships whisper through multidimensional space, immortality can be bought, and the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality rule a haunted Earth too old for history.

  "On the Gem Planet" is a slice of that universe, one with an immortal horse at its heart: an adventure on the strange planet Pontoppidan, an airless world made of rubies and emeralds and amethysts, where the really valuable things are flowers and earthworms (which cost eight carats of diamond per worm), and nothing is more precious than dirt . . . except, perhaps, life itself.

  I

  When Casher O'Neill came to Pontoppidan, he found that the capital city was appropriately called Andersen.

  This was the second century of the Rediscovery of Man. People everywhere had taken up old names, old languages, old customs, as fast as the robots and the underpeople could retrieve the data from the rubbish of forgotten starlanes or the subsurface ruins of Manhome itself.

  Casher knew this very well, to his bitter cost. Re-acculturation had brought him revolution and exile. He came from the dry, beautiful planet of Mizzer. He was himself the nephew of the ruined ex-ruler, Kuraf, whose collection of objectionable books had at one time been unmatched in the settled galaxy; he had stood aside, half-assenting, when the colonels Gibna and Wedder took over the planet in the name of reform; he had implored the Instrumentality, vainly, for help when Wedder became a tyrant; and now he traveled among the stars, looking for men or weapons who might destroy Wedder and make Kaheer again the luxurious, happy city which it once had been.

  He felt that his cause was hopeless when he landed on Pontoppidan. The people were warm-hearted, friendly, intelligent, but they had no motives to fight for, no weapons to fight with, no enemies to fight against. They had little public spirit, such as Casher O'Neill had seen back on his native planet of Mizzer. They were concerned about little things.

  Indeed, at the time of his arrival, the Pontoppidans were wildly excited about a horse.

  A horse! Who worries about one horse?

  Casher O'Neill himself said so. "Why bother about a horse? We have lots of them on Mizzer. They are four-handed beings, eight times the weight of a man, with only one finger on each of the four hands. The fingernail is very heavy and permits them to run fast. That's why our people have them, for running."

  "Why run?" said the Hereditary Dictator of Pontoppidan. "Why run, when you can fly? Don't you have ornithopters?"

  "We don't run with them," said Casher indignantly. "We make them run against each other and then we pay prizes to the one which runs fastest."

  "But then," said Philip Vincent, the Hereditary Dictator, "you get a very illogical situation. When you have tried out these four-fingered beings, you know how fast each one goes. So what? Why bother?"

  His niece interrupted. She was a fragile little thing, smaller than Casher O'Neill liked women to be. She had clear gray eyes, well-marked eyebrows, a very artificial coiffure of silver-blonde hair and the most sensitive little mouth he had ever seen. She conformed to the local fashion by wearing some kind of powder or face cream which was flesh-pink in color but which had overtones of lilac. On a woman as old as twenty-two, such a coloration would have made the wearer look like an old hag, but on Genevieve it was pleasant, if rather startling. It gave the effect of a happy child playing grown-up and doing the job joyfully and well. Casher knew that it was hard to tell ages in these off
-trail planets. Genevieve might be a grand dame in her third or fourth rejuvenation.

  He doubted it, on second glance. What she said was sensible, young, and pert:

  "But uncle, they're animals!"

  "I know that," he rumbled.

  "But uncle, don't you see it?"

  "Stop saying `but uncle' and tell me what you mean," growled the Dictator, very fondly.

  "Animals are always uncertain."

  "Of course," said the uncle.

  "That makes it a game, uncle," said Genevieve. "They're never sure that any one of them would do the same thing twice. Imagine the excitement—the beautiful big beings from earth running around and around on their four middle fingers, the big fingernails making the gems jump loose from the ground."

  "I'm not at all sure it's that way. Besides, Mizzer may be covered with something valuable, such as earth or sand, instead of gemstones like the ones we have here on Pontoppidan. You know your flowerpots with their rich, warm, wet, soft earth?"

  "Of course I do, uncle. And I know what you paid for them. You were very generous. And still are," she added diplomatically, glancing quickly at Casher O'Neill to see how the familial piety went across with the visitor.

  "We're not that rich on Mizzer. It's mostly sand, with farmland along the Twelve Niles, our big rivers."

  "I've seen pictures of rivers," said Genevieve. "Imagine living on a whole world full of flowerpot stuff!"

  "You're getting off the subject, darling. We were wondering why anyone would bring one horse, just one horse, to Pontoppidan. I suppose you could race a horse against himself, if you had a stopwatch. But would it be fun? Would you do that, young man?"

  Casher O'Neill tried to be respectful. "In my home we used to have a lot of horses. I've seen my uncle time them one by one."

  "Your uncle?" said the Dictator interestedly. "Who was your uncle that he had all these four-fingered `horses' running around? They're all Earth animals and very expensive."

  Casher felt the coming of the low, slow blow he had met so many times before, right from the whole outside world into the pit of his stomach. "My uncle"—he stammered—"my uncle—I thought you knew—was the old Dictator of Mizzer, Kuraf."

  Philip Vincent jumped to his feet, very lightly for so well-fleshed a man. The young mistress, Genevieve, clutched at the throat of her dress.

  "Kuraf!" cried the old Dictator. "Kuraf! We know about him, even here. But you were supposed to be a Mizzer patriot, not one of Kuraf's people."

  "He doesn't have any children—" Casher began to explain.

  "I should think not, not with those habits!" snapped the old man.

  "—so I'm his nephew and his heir. But I'm not trying to put the Dictatorship back, even though I should be dictator. I just want to get rid of Colonel Wedder. He has ruined my people, and I am looking for money or weapons or help to make my home-world free." This was the point, Casher O'Neill knew, at which people either started believing him or did not. If they did not, there was not much he could do about it. If they did, he was sure to get some sympathy. So far, no help. Just sympathy.

  But the Instrumentality, while refusing to take action against Colonel Wedder, had given young Casher O'Neill an all-world travel pass—something which a hundred lifetimes of savings could not have purchased for the ordinary man. (His obscene old uncle had gone off to Sunvale, on Ttiollé, the resort planet, to live out his years between the casino and the beach.) Casher O'Neill held the conscience of Mizzer in his hand. Only he, among the star travelers, cared enough to fight for the freedom of the Twelve Niles. Here, now, in this room, there was a turning point.

  "I won't give you anything," said the Hereditary Dictator, but he said it in a friendly voice. His niece started tugging at his sleeve.

  The older man went on. "Stop it, girl. I won't give you anything, not if you're part of that rotten lot of Kuraf's, not unless—"

  "Anything, sir, anything, just so that I get help or weapons to go home to the Twelve Niles!"

  "All right, then. Unless you open your mind to me. I'm a good telepath myself."

  "Open my mind! Whatever for?" The incongruous indecency of it shocked Casher O'Neill. He'd had men and women and governments ask a lot of strange things from him, but no one before had had the cold impudence to ask him to open his mind. "And why you?" he went on. "What would you get out of it? There's nothing much in my mind."

  "To make sure," said the Hereditary Dictator, "that you are not too honest and sharp in your beliefs. If you're positive that you know what to do, you might be another Colonel Wedder, putting your people through a dozen torments for a Utopia which never quite comes true. If you don't care at all, you might be like your uncle. He did no real harm. He just stole his planet blind and he had some extraordinary habits which got him talked about between the stars. He never killed a man in his life, did he?"

  "No, sir," said Casher O'Neill, "he never did." It relieved him to tell the one little good thing about his uncle; there was so very, very little which could be said in Kuraf's favor.

  "I don't like slobbering old libertines like your uncle," said Philip Vincent, "but I don't hate them either. They don't hurt other people much. As a matter of actual fact, they don't hurt anyone but themselves. They waste property, though. Like these horses you have on Mizzen. We'd never bring living beings to this world of Pontoppidan, just to play games with. And you know we're not poor. We're no Old North Australia, but we have a good income here."

  That, thought Casher O'Neill, is the understatement of the year, but he was a careful young man with a great deal at stake, so he said nothing.

  The Dictator looked at him shrewdly. He appreciated the value of Casher's tactful silence. Genevieve tugged at his sleeve, but he frowned her interruption away.

  "If," said the Hereditary Dictator, "if," he repeated, "you pass two tests, I will give you a green ruby as big as my head. If my Committee will allow me to do so. But I think I can talk them around. One test is that you let me peep all over your mind, to make sure that I am not dealing with one more honest fool. If you're too honest, you're a fool and a danger to mankind. I'll give you a dinner and ship you off-planet as fast as I can. And the other test is—solve the puzzle of this horse. The one horse on Pontoppidan. Why is the animal here? What should we do with it? If it's good to eat, how should we cook it? Or can we trade it to some other world, like your planet Mizzer, which seems to set a value on horses?"

  "Thank you, sir—" said Casher O'Neill.

  "But, uncle—" said Genevieve.

  "Keep quiet, my darling, and let the young man speak," said the Dictator.

  "—all I was going to ask, is," said Casher O'Neill, "what's a green ruby good for? I didn't even know they came green."

  "That, young man, is a Pontoppidan specialty. We have a geology based on ultra-heavy chemistry. This planet was once a fragment from a giant planet which imploded. The use is simple. With a green ruby you can make a laser beam which will boil away your city of Kaheer in a single sweep. We don't have weapons here and we don't believe in them, so I won't give you a weapon. You'll have to travel further to find a ship and to get the apparatus for mounting your green ruby. if I give it to you. But you will be one more step along in your fight with Colonel Wedder."

  "Thank you, thank you, most honorable sir!" cried Casher O'Neill.

  "But uncle," said Genevieve, "you shouldn't have picked those two things because I know the answers."

  "You know all about him," said the Hereditary Dictator, "by some means of your own?"

  Genevieve flushed under her lilac-hued foundation cream. "I know enough for us to know."

  "How do you know it, my darling?"

  "I just know," said Genevieve.

  Her uncle made no comment, but he smiled widely and indulgently as if he had heard that particular phrase before.

  She stamped her foot. "And I know about the horse, too. All about it."

  "Have you seen it?"

  "No."

  "Have you ta
lked to it?"

  "Horses don't talk, uncle."

  "Most underpeople do," he said.

  "This isn't an underperson, uncle. It's a plain unmodified old Earth animal. It never did talk."

  "Then what do you know, my honey?" The uncle was affectionate, but there was the crackle of impatience under his voice.

  "I taped it. The whole thing. The story of the horse of Pontoppidan. And I've edited it, too. I was going to show it to you this morning, but your staff sent that young man in."

  Casher O'Neill looked his apologies at Genevieve.

  She did not notice him. Her eyes were on her uncle.

  "Since you've done this much, we might as well see it." He turned to the attendants. "Bring chairs. And drinks. You know mine. The young lady will take tea with lemon. Real tea. Will you have coffee, young man?"

  "You have coffee!" cried Casher O'Neill. As soon as he said it, he felt like a fool. Pontoppidan was a rich planet. On most worlds' exchanges, coffee came out to about two man-years per kilo. Here halftracks crunched their way through gems as they went to load up the frequent trading vessels.

  The chairs were put in place. The drinks arrived. The Hereditary Dictator had been momentarily lost in a brown study, as though he were wondering about his promise to Casher O'Neill. He had even murmured to the young man, "Our bargain stands? Never mind what my niece says." Casher had nodded vigorously. The old man had gone back to frowning at the servants and did not relax until a tiger-man bounded into the room, carrying a tray with acrobatic precision. The chairs were already in place.

  The uncle held his niece's chair for her as a command that she sit down. He nodded Casher O'Neill into a chair on the other side of himself.

  He commanded, "Dim the lights . . .

  The room plunged into semi-darkness.

  Without being told, the people took their places immediately behind the three main seats and the underpeople perched or sat on benches and tables behind them. Very little was spoken. Casher O'Neill could sense that Pontoppidan was a well-run place. He began to wonder if the Hereditary Dictator had much real work left to do, if he could fuss that much over a single horse. Perhaps all he did was boss his niece and watch the robots load truckloads of gems into sacks while the underpeople weighed them, listed them and wrote out the bills for the customers.