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The Coelura
by: Anne McCaffrey
“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.
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

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