Slangsby twinkled at her, but she distrusted that twinkle. Marcia and Poots said nothing, and simply led her out into the aisle of the great barn. Cecelia looked up. Marcia’s pigheadedness about Buccinator aside, she had excellent judgment elsewhere, and this barn proved it. Local wood, used as logs, so that even the most irate equine couldn’t kick through the walls. Good insulation, too. Wide aisles, perfect ventilation for this climate, utilities laid safely underground—no exposed pipes or wiring—and kept immaculate by the workers Slangsby supervised. Tools properly hung out of traffic, the only barrow in sight in active use . . . and down the long aisle, one sleek head after another looking over the stall doors. The horses were under roof in the daytime to avoid the assaults of local insectlike parasites, who lived lives too short to learn that horse blood wouldn’t nourish them. The bites—otherwise harmless—were painful and made horses nervous.
“The oldest live-bred Singularity daughter,” Marcia said proudly. Cecelia had seen the mare before; her infallible memory for horses overlaid her memory of the four-year-old being shown in the ring with this matronly mare only a month from foaling. Star, crooked stripe, snip, all against a background of seal brown. Common coloring for Singularity offspring, because Marcia (like too many people) had a fancy for color. Predictably, she now said, “We sell the loud-colored ones.” Buccinator’s gorgeous copper color had been one of the things she didn’t like about him, Cecelia knew. She also knew that basic coat color was the easiest thing to tweak in the equine genome; if Marcia had wanted all dark foals she could have had them. But other people wanted variety, and she produced brighter ones in order to increase her sales.
“Lovely,” Cecelia murmured. She was, too, a good solid mare who had produced both ova and live foals. “I’m surprised you’re still using her to produce live—isn’t it a bit risky at her age?”
Marcia’s face creased in a real grin. “I keep telling you genetic wizard types that if you breed live, you get real soundness, long-term soundness. Of course we’ve stripped her ova a few times, because it’s so hard to transport the mature horses, but the proof of the value of live breeding is right there: an eighteen-year-old mare who can withstand pregnancy and deliver a live foal.”
Cecelia kept her face straight with an effort. Given the right pelvic conformation and good legs, any mare could do that. And any mare could get in trouble in any foaling, too. She preferred to use nurse mares of larger breeds for any of her own bloodstock. She moved to the next stall, and the next. Marcia’s idea of perfect conformation hadn’t changed since her last visit. Sound, yes, but sacrificing elegance for it. They all looked a bit stubby to her, heavier in the neck and chunkier in the body than necessary.
“And this is our pride,” Marcia said. They had passed under the dome at the crossing of the aisles, and were now in the stallion end of the barn. Marcia’s pride was, of course, the closest thing to Singularity she had been able to produce. He certainly looked like his famous grandsire, Cecelia thought. Dark brown with the merest whisker of white on his brow, a powerful, well-muscled body, and the arrogance of any stallion who comes first in the barn hierarchy.
“Very much like,” Cecelia said.
“He’s double-line bred,” Marcia said.
“What’s his outcross line?” Cecelia asked. She thought she could guess, but waited.
“Consequential,” Marcia said, and Cecelia congratulated herself. Consequential had passed a curious whorl on the neck to his progeny, and this stallion had it. And trust Marcia to talk about the stallion side of the outcross line.
“He’s a real bargain,” Marcia said, and named a price per straw of frozen semen that Cecelia didn’t think was a bargain at all. Not for an inbred chunk with all his grandsire’s faults and probably few of his virtues.
To check that, she asked, “What’s his speed?”
Not to her surprise, Marcia’s smile vanished again. “He’s far too valuable to risk on the track, Cecelia. His breeding alone, his conformation, show his quality. We wouldn’t take the chance of injury.” Of proving him racing sound, of proving that his grandsire’s unlikely speed and agility had come through along with a pretty brown coat and a thick neck. Cecelia couldn’t tell for sure, but even from this angle she suspected that his hocks were not sufficient for his build.
“What’s your price for Singularity straws?” Cecelia asked. “They must be getting rare now.”
“Well, they are, of course. And we must reserve a certain supply for our own program.” As if they didn’t already have all that influence they needed. “But I could let you have fifty straws for forty thousand. Each, of course.”
Cecelia bit back the “Nonsense!” that wanted to burst out. That was only the asking price, which no one dealing in horses ever paid unless they were novices, in which case it was the price of their education. “Umm,” she said instead. It meant she wasn’t stupid enough to take the asking price, but might bargain later.
“So you see what a bargain this one is,” Marcia went on. “Sixty-two percent Singularity—”
Cecelia had run into this before, the ardent preserver of ancient breeds convinced that concentrating bloodlines would somehow overcome the limitations of time and restore the glories of Terran genetics. Cecelia doubted they had been glories anyway (well, perhaps those pretty beasts with the odd number of vertebrae). From the remaining video chips, most of the breeds had been minor variations on a few themes—large and massive, tall and fast, short and hardy—with serious improvement written out of possibility by restrictive breed registries. Half a dozen breeds supposedly intended for racing, for instance, never raced each other and weren’t allowed to interbreed . . . stupid.
“Perhaps I could see this fellow moving a bit?” Cecelia said.
Marcia’s smile returned. “Of course. Slangsby, put him in the front ring.”
Cecelia stepped back to watch. Disposition mattered, as far as she was concerned. Slangsby clipped a lead to the stallion’s halter before he opened the stall door, and ran the chain over the nose and back through the mouth. So. Not a quiet one. With that restraint, however, the dark horse stepped demurely from his stall with an air of innocence that Cecelia didn’t believe for a moment. He did not dance, which might have been considered unmannerly, but he walked as if on eggs, as if any moment he might dance. Marcia urged Cecelia on, but Cecelia hung back. She wanted to see those hocks close up.
“He can be a bit fresh, when he’s been in the stall this long,” Marcia said, now pulling Cecelia back. Cecelia ignored this; she was farther back than the longest-legged horse could strike. She closed her ears to Marcia’s earnest twaddle, and watched the hocks closely. The stallion swaggered a bit; stallions did that. So the sway of the rump might be swagger, and there would be, from swagger alone, a slight sideways jut of the hock as the weight came over it. But here, as she’d expected, was the real problem. From footfall to footlift, the hock described a crooked circle as weight came onto that leg, and the leg pushed the weight forward. She had seen—had even owned—lanky horses whose hocks moved like that, and they’d been sound. But the chunky, muscley horses, those were the ones to watch; those were the ones who needed rock-solid hocks.
The joint narrowed too quickly, too, more trapezoidal than rectangular, flowing into the lower leg too smoothly. Cecelia liked a hock that resembled a box, flat on either side and cleanly marked off above and below. In action, with weight on, it should flex in one plane only, not wobble like this one. She knew she wouldn’t buy a straw of this one’s semen; she might as well tell Marcia now . . . but that wasn’t how the game was played. She strolled on, and took one of the comfortable padded seats just outside the display ring.