"You Hall or West?" the man said, still flatly.
Colin turned in his seat to look full at the little man. "I'm Hall," he said and wondered why, with all the noise of the crowd around them, he should suddenly get the feeling of being in the midst of an apprehensive silence.
"Mrs. Bullitt wants to see you. Now."
Annoyance flared inside Colin and he didn't try to hide it.
"Friend," he said to the little man who might have once been a jockey, "I don't know who you arc, but…" Colin stopped, suddenly rehearing what the man had said. "Did you say Mrs. Bullitt wanted to see me?" The man nodded. "Now."
Colin was torn. The Commodore was important to him and Ed, and added to this was the fact that some question had been raised important enough for him to seek them out at what must be, for him, a busy moment. But Ed and he frankly needed their jobs at the University and the wife of the Dean's brother was known to be an impatient and irascible woman.
The Commodore settled Colin's quandary for him. He spoke to Colin, but his eyes were on the little man. "Mrs. Bullitt has raised a question about the validity of your entry's breeding qualifications. There will have to be a hearing, of course, but for now tell me this. Was your jumper a…"He groped for the expression. "… a test-tube animal all through his gestation period?"
"No," Colin said. puzzled. "He's a replant. Why?" There was certainly nothing new about the technique of removing a potential egg from the dam of a desired animal, starting its growth in an embryo tank and then replanting it in a mother animal to complete its development. He and Ed had used the technique with Ato's Pride for the one compelling reason of its economy. It would have coat a great deal for the battery of technicians and equipment needed if they'd used a full-span series of tanks to bring their stallion to homing size. But to feed and control one pregnant mare…?
"In other words," the Commodore said, "your entry was natural-born."
"Yes," Colin nodded.
The Commodore spoke to the little man directly, his voice sounding to Colin unnecessarily defiant.
"Ato's Pride stays. And you can tell that to your employer."
The little man shrugged. "I'll pass the word. Commodore," he said, "but you'll forgive me if I remind you that it's the association's rules committee and not the president who must pass on a thing like this."
Colin thought he saw the Commodore's eyes on the little man's waver. "Wait a minute," he said, half wildly. Someone, and from the sound of things it was Harrison Bullitt's intransigent wife. was trying to keep his and Ed's one hope out of competition. "You can't pull our entry now. His event is about to start."
The Commodore turned away from the little man. "He's right, you know," he said to Colin. "I don't have the authority for this, but I can call together the rules committee and I will."
"But the event, it's starting."
"Not yet it isn't, and I'll have it held off for as long as the crowd will allow. Meanwhile," he indicated the small man with his head, "we'd better go along with him."
"Let's go," the little man said, not seeming to be the least bit abashed by the Commodore's obvious dislike of him.
And half seething, half numb, Cotin let him lead them to the Owner's Suite four levels below the arena floor, and eight levels below the street.
The room he ushered them into was large and brightly lit.
Neoplast walls niched and hung with award ribbons, platters, trophy cups. Antique photos of horses and behind the stylishly narrow afra-wood desk, a fleshly-faced man in the customary bright-blue formal jacket. Behind him a huge vistaphoto of open fields, fences, white clustered buildings, pasturing animals. ABBY BULLITT HORSE FARMS cut very large into the gateside panels. The size of the establishment startled Colin fleetingly. He had no idea that Mrs. Bullitt's interest, and investment, in horses was so great.
And standing beside the desk, thumping its top with a hard-sounding finger, a short woman, thick-bodied and dumpylooking even in the smart green-and-white-striped riding coat and sleek boots of a Major Hunt.
Harrison Bullitt Colin knew from having seen him in the Dean's office at the University; the woman turning pale eyes and a querulous mouth toward them as they entered, he assumed to be Mrs. Bullitt.
"Why didn't you knock," she began without preamble.
"Martin, you know I don't like people walking in on me without knocking."
The little man beside Colin made no answer, but Harrison Bullitt put a hand on his wife's pudgy arm. "We're not at home, dear. This is an office. It's all right for Martin to walk io here without knocking."
Mrs. Bullitt shook off her husband's hand.**I don't like people to walk in on me without knocking. Martin?" And there was venom in her took, all out of proportion to the incident that had sparked it.
"Yes ma'am," the little man said and his voice sounded sincere.
There was a long silence while Mrs. Bullitt continued to stare at her hireling, long enough for Colin to become conscious of his own heavy breathing. In a reflex of discomfort he cleared his throat and the woman's eyes snapped to his face.
"You," and again she spoke without preamble, "and you."
And her eyes shifted to the space behind Colin where he knew Ed stood, and back to his with a darting motion of her head that somehow made him think of a lizard he'd once seen catching flies.
"You are the two young men who call yourselves Animals to Order?"
It was a question, but to Colin it somehow sounded like an accusation. "Yes, ma'am," he said.
"Speak up, speak up," she said. "I can't hear you. I like people to speak up when they talk to me."
"Yes, Mrs- Bullitt, we are," Colin said, louder, more than a tittle annoyed with himself at the way her sharp tone had put him off balance. Angry also that she could bring disaster to his and Ed's long-held hopes if her objection to their entry in the arena above should stand.
"Good," the small woman in the striped riding jacket said.
The word of approval startled Colin. "Good? 1… I don't understand."
"What is there to understand?" and her voice was impatient sounding. "You say you can make animals to order.
Very well, 1 want you to make one for me. A horse… a special horse… and after you make it I want you to smash the mold or whatever it is you use. I want it to be unique… mine alone and no one else ever to have another like it.'* The light that had come into Mrs. Bullitt's eyes as she spoke made Colin think shiveringly of medieval princelings who would have a craftsman's hands cut off after he'd provided a work of art for them so that he could not surpass it for another, of architects blinded and put to death so that they could not build for another prince, in another place, a palace, a castle greater, or even the match of, the one possessed by their executioner.
Ed's voice in his ear, low, urgent. "Hey, a contract for an exclusive animal with Bullitt Farms. It may not be NavAir, but from the look of that vistaphoto behind the old man, it's no small-stake operation either. Don't haggle, man- After all, it's quick money and we've already done a lot of the groundwork with Ato."
Harrison Bullitt leaned forward. Even sitting he was a big man, and, although he bore no apparent physical resemblance to his wife, there was a certain flatness about the expression in his eyes that made the thought skim the surface of Colin's mind that here, Harrison Bullitt and his wife Abby, were two of a very unpleasant kind.
"Animals to Order," Bullitt said. "What is it that you do?"
Colin had answered that question dozens of times. He did not need to grope for an analogy to tell of his and Ed's work with the living germ plasm of animals; of the fascination and the monotony of charting gene positions; of converting desired qualities into intricately interacting enzyme patterns; of eliminating genetic loads, the stores of harmful genes carried by all sexually reproducing species.