"Why don't we take in the matinee performance at the Auditorium then. Admission, like everything else in Utopia, is free. The performances are quite hair-raising, something on the order of the Roman Circus, I'm told."
The new citizen raised an eye-brow. "In Utopia?"
"It's a healthy outlet for our small aggressions."
They walked up the marble staircase to the Grand Circle.
"Would you wait for me a few minutes in my box? I have some things to attend to."
The visitor entered the box through a great door, heavily crusted with gold. His seat afforded him an excellent view of the arena. All the Utopians in the tiers above and across from his box stopped chattering and turned, as one man, to gaze at him. The new citizen recognized several women of recent acquaintance and waved to them. They waved back. One kissed her sheer gobbler-fleece scarf and threw it toward him. It billowed in the warm air of the auditorium and sank gracefully to the floor of the arena. There was restrained applause.
The lights dimmed. The entrance-gates at the far end of the arena opened with a clank. The gobblers bounded out with that curious, lithe motion so strange in creatures of their bulk. They circled the arena and came to a stop underneath the new citizen's box, where, lips pressed back from their terrible fangs, they mewled softly.
With an almost imperceptible click, the box was disengaged from its moorings and swung free over the arena. Then with slow, pendular motions it descended to the floor.
The audience cheered wildly as the gobblers leaped, like great-maned antelopes, over the railing of the box and tore the new citizen of Utopia into shreds. Even as they gulped down the huge chunks of fatty tissue, the spectator could see their fleece change from a tone of drab nickel to a sheen something between the glint of polished steel and the shimmer of watered silk.