Tuf Voyaging

by George R.R. Martin

Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices

“You know what I meant,” Celise Waan said in a shrill tone. “I want meat.” “Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. “I myself want wealth beyond measure. Such fantasies are easily dreamed, and less easily made real.”

“If,” said Haviland Tuf. “A most difficult word. So short, and so often fraught with disappointment and frustration.”

“I refuse to live in a pressure suit for two years,” Celise Waan said forcefully. “Excellent,” said Tuf. “As I have only four suits, and we are six in number, this will be of help. Your noble self-sacrifice will be long remembered, madam.

standard procedure to store weaponry near the landing deck, for ground parties and such.

“Such are the vicissitudes of life,” Tuf said, “that each of us must sometimes accept that which he does not like.”

Power corrupts, after all. Maybe she should keep it, run it. She was corrupt enough already, she ought to be immune.

we had the damndest mess; some brain-damaged fly lost his puling pet at the same time this alien envoy was visiting, and our security crews mistook one for the other. You wouldn’t believe how upset everyone got.”

The S’uthlamese currency was the calorie;

S’uthlamese had no room to spare for luxuries like parks. Tuf did not disapprove; he had always thought parks to be a perverse institution, designed principally to remind civilized humanity how raw and crude and uncomfortable life had been when they had been forced to live it in nature.

A truly civilized world preserves a place for felines,

“A tape of a cat and a cat, however, are somewhat different things, and require different treatment. Tapes can be stored on a shelf. Cats cannot.”

shall name you Suspicion,” he said to it, “to commemorate my reception here. Your siblings shall be Doubt, Hostility, Ingratitude and Foolishness.”

“You do not appreciate cats sufficiently, Guardian. They are the most civilized of creatures. No world can be considered truly cultured without cats.

Shrugging out of his wet, muddy greatcoat, Tuf looked about for a place to put it, and finally hung it from the laser rifle of one of his escort.

“Tuf and Mune,” Haviland Tuf repeated, his voice without expression. The second inspector sat down next to the first. “The Pirate and the Portmaster,” she said. “He was the ruthless lord of life and death, in a ship as large as the sun. She was the spider queen, torn between love and loyalty. Together they changed the world,” the first said. “You can rent it in Spiderhome if you like that sort of thing,” the second told him. “It’s got a cat in it.”

When he disembarked, it was as if the car had decided to vomit out the overabundance of humanity it had ingested.

Portmaster Tolly Mune grinned. “Look at us, Tuf. A damned unlikely pair of star-crossed lovers. But you’ve got to admit, it makes a better story.” Tuf’s long face was still and expressionless. “Surely you do not defend this grossly inaccurate vidshow,” he said flatly. The Portmaster laughed again. “Defend it? Puling hell, I wrote it!” Haviland Tuf blinked six times

“The intelligent and efficient politician is a species virtually unknown in the galaxy,”

you and I have become the stuff of legends, Tuf, the most celebrated lovers since, oh, puling hell, since all those famous romantic couples from ancient times—you know, Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Delilah, Sodom and Gomorrah, Marx and Lenin.”

A culture with cats is richer and more humane than one deprived of their unique companionship.”

The sad truth of history has always been that the unreasoning masses follow the powerful, and not the wise.”

Kindly do not belabor the obvious with statements that convey no meaningful information.

Moses and Noah were brothers, perhaps. The details escape me. In any event, both of them were among the earliest practitioners of ecological warfare,

you are by training a bureaucrat, and thus good for virtually nothing.”

“They’ll fire at my command,” Ober said. “If you insist, I’ll count down the final seconds of your life. Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen …” “Seldom have I heard such vigorous counting,” said Tuf. “Please do not lose track on account of my distressing news.”

“Nine,” announced Tuf. “A fine number. It is customarily followed by eight, thence seven.”

“What is the current estimate?” Tuf asked bluntly. “Twelve years,” said Tolly Mune. Tuf raised a finger. “To dramatize your plight, perhaps you ought to assign Commander Wald Ober to count down the remaining time over the vidnets.

The light was flashing. “Perhaps it is Commander Wald Ober,” Tuf suggested. “I suggest you take his call before he begins counting backwards.”

Make no choice, and you have chosen. Failure to decide, because you lack the right, is itself a decision, First Councilor. In abstaining, you vote.”

Her name was Tolly Mune, but in the stories they call her all sorts of things.