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.