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.