SNAPPING OFF THE shiny new stenomemophone, Jack Holloway relit
his pipe and pushed back his chair, looking around what had been
the living room of his camp before it had become the office of the
Commissioner of Native Affairs for the Class-IV Colonial Planet of
Zarathustra. It had been a pleasant room, a place where a man could
spread out by himself, or entertain the infrequent visitors who
came this far into the wilderness. The hardwood floor was scattered
with rugs made from the skins of animals he had shot; the deep
armchairs and the couch were covered with smaller pelts. Like the
big table at which he worked, he had built them himself. There was
a reading screen, a metal-cased library of microbooks; the gunrack
reflected soft gleams from polished stocks and barrels. And now
look at the damn place!
Two extra viewscreens, another communication screen, a
vocowriter, a teleprint machine, all jammed together. An improvised
table on trestles at right angles to the one at which he sat, its
top littered with plans and blueprints and things; mostly things.
And this red-upholstered swivel chair; he hated that worst of all.
Forty years ago, he’d left Terra to get the seat of his pants
off the seat of a chair like that, and here he was in the evening
of life—well, late afternoon, call it around second cocktail
time—trapped in one.
It wasn’t just this room, either. Through the open door he
could hear what was happening outside. The thud of axes, and the
howl of chain-saws; he was going to miss all those big feathered
trees from around the house. The machine-gun banging of
power-hammers, the clanking and grunting of bulldozers. A sudden
warning cry, followed by a falling crash and a multivoiced burst of
blasphemy. He hoped none of the Fuzzies had been close enough to
whatever had happened to get hurt.
Something tugged gently at his trouser-leg, and a small voice
said, “Yeek?” His hands went to his throat, snapping on
the ultrasonic hearing-aid and inserting the earplug. Immediately,
he began to hear a number of small sounds that had been previously
inaudible, and the voice was saying, “Pappy Jack?”
He looked down at the Zarathustran native whose affairs he had
been commissioned to administer. He was an erect biped, two feet
tall, with a wide-eyed humanoid face, his body covered with soft
golden fur. He wore a green canvas pouch lettered TFMC, and a
two-inch silver disc on a chain about his neck, and nothing else.
The disc was lettered LITTLE FUZZY, and Jack Holloway, Cold Creek
Valley, Beta Continent, and the numeral I. He was the first
Zarathustra aborigine he or any other Terran human had ever
seen.
He reached down and stroked his small friend’s head.
“Hello, Little Fuzzy. You want to visit with Pappy Jack
for a while?”
Little Fuzzy pointed to the open door. Five other Fuzzies were
peeping bashfully into the room, making comments among
themselves.
“Fuzzee no shu do-bizzo do-mitto zat-hakko,” Little
Fuzzy informed him. “Heeva so si domitto.”
Some Fuzzies who hadn’t been here before had just come;
they wanted to stay. At least, that was what he thought Little
Fuzzy was saying; it had only been ten days since he had known that
Fuzzies could talk at all. He pressed a button to start the
audiovisual recorder; it was adjusted to transform their ultrasonic
voices to audible frequencies.
“Make talk.” He picked his way through his
hundred-word Fuzzy vocabulary. “Pappy Jack friend. Not hurt,
be good to them. Give good things.”
“Josso shoddabag?” Little Fuzzy asked. “Josso
shoppo-diggo? Josso t’heet? Estee-fee?”
“Yes. Give shoulder-bags and chopper-diggers and
treats,” he said. “Give Extee-Three.”
Friendly natives; distribution of presents to. Function of the
Commissioner of Native Affairs. Little Fuzzy began a speech. This
was Pappy Jack, the greatest and wisest of all the Big Ones, the
Hagga, the friend of all the People, the Gashta, only the Big Ones
called the Gashta Fuzzies. He would give wonderful things.
Shoddabag, in which things could be carried, leaving the hands
free. He displayed his own. And weapons so hard that they never
wore out. He ran to the jumbled pile of bedding under the gunrack
and came back with a six-inch leaf shaped blade on a twelve-inch
shaft. And Pappy Jack would give the Hoksu-Fusso, the Wonderful
Food, Estee-fee.
Rising, he went out to what had been his kitchen before it had
been crammed with supplies. There were plenty of chopper-diggers;
he’d had a couple of hundred made up before he left
Mallorysport. Shoulder-bags were in shorter supply. They were all
either Navy black or Marine Corps green, first-aid pouches and
tool-kit pouches and belt pouches for submachine gun and auto-rifle
magazines, all fitted with shoulder straps. He hung five of them
over his arm, then unlocked a cupboard and got out two rectangular
tins with blue labels marked emergency field ration,
extraterrestrial service type three. All Fuzzies were crazy about
Extee-Three, which demonstrated that, while sapient beings, they
were definitely not human. Only a completely starving human would
eat the damn stuff.
When he returned, the five newcomers were squatting in a circle
inside the door with Little Fuzzy, examining his steel weapon and
comparing it with the paddle-shaped hardwood sticks they had made
for themselves. The word zatku was being frequently used.
It was an important word to Fuzzies, their name for a big
pseudo-crustacean Terrans called a land-prawn. Fuzzies hunted zatku
avidly, and, until they had tasted Extee-Three, preferred them to
any other food. If it hadn’t been for the zatku, the Fuzzies
would have stayed in the unexplored country of northern Beta
Continent, and it would have been years before any Terran would
have seen one.
Quite a few Terrans, especially Victor Grego, the Zarathustra
Company manager-in-chief, were wishing the Fuzzies had stayed
permanently undiscovered. Zarathustra had been listed as a
Class-III planet, inhabitable by Terran humans but uninhabited by
any native race of sapient beings, and on that misunderstanding the
Zarathustra Company had been chartered to colonize and exploit it
and had been granted outright ownership of the planet and one of
the two moons, Darius. The other moon, Xerxes, had been retained as
a Federation Navy base, which had been fortunate, because suddenly
Zarathustra had turned into a Class-IV planet, with a native
population.
The members of the native population here present looked up
expectantly as he opened one of the tins and cut the
gingerbread-colored cake into six equal portions. The five
newcomers sniffed at theirs and waited until Little Fuzzy began to
eat. Then, after a tentative nibble, they gobbled avidly, with
full-mouthed sounds of delight.
From the first, he had suspected that they weren’t just
cute little animals, but people—sapient beings, like himself and
like the eight other sapient races discovered since Terrans had
gone out to the stars. When Bennett Rainsford, then a field
naturalist for the Institute of Xeno-Sciences, had seen them, he
had agreed, and had named the species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway. They
had both been excited, and very proud of the discovery, and neither
of them had thought, until it was brought forcibly to their
attention, of the effect on the Zarathustra Company’s
charter.
Victor Grego had thought of that at once; he had fought
desperately, viciously, and with all the resources of the company,
to prevent the recognition of the Fuzzies as sapient beings and the
invalidation of the company’s charter. The battle had ended
in court, with Jack Holloway charged with murder for shooting a
company gunman and a company executive name Leonard Kellogg
similarly charged for kicking to death a Fuzzy named Goldilocks.
The two cases, tried as one, had hinged on the question of the
sapience of the Fuzzies. On the docket, it had been People of the
Colony of Zarathustra versus Holloway and Kellogg. His lawyer, Gus
Brannhard, had insisted on referring to it as Friends of Little
Fuzzy versus The Chartered Zarathustra Company.
Little Fuzzy and his friends had won, and with their sapience
recognized, the company’s charter was out the airlock, and so
was the old Class-III Colonial Government, and Space Commodore
Napier, the commandant of Xerxes Base, had been compelled, since
Zarathustra was without legal government, to proclaim martial rule
and supervise the establishment of a new Class-IV Government. He
had appointed Bennett Rainsford Governor.
And just who do you suppose Ben Rainsford appointed as
Commissioner of Native Affairs?
Well, somebody had to take it, and who’d started all this
Fuzzy business, anyhow?
The five newcomers had finished their Extee-Three, and been
given their shoulder-bags and their steel chopper-diggers, and were
trying the balance of the latter and beheading imaginary
land-prawns with them. He opened the other tin of Extee-Three and
divided it. This time, they nibbled slowly, with appreciative
comments. Little Fuzzy gathered up the two empty tins and put them
in the wastebasket.
“How you come this place?” he asked, when Little
Fuzzy had rejoined the circle.
They all began talking at once; with Little Fuzzy’s help,
he got the general sense of it. They had heard strange noises and
had come to the edge of the woods, and seen frightening things. But
Fuzzies were people; they investigated, even if they were
frightened. Then they had seen other people. Hagga-gashta, big
people, and shi-mosh-gashta, people like us.
Little Fuzzy instantly corrected the speaker. Hagga-gashta were
just Hagga, Big Ones, and shi-mosh-gashta were Fuzzies. Why were
the Gashta called Fuzzies? Because Pappy Jack said so, that was
why. That seemed to settle it.
“But why come this place? You come from another place, far
away. Why come here?”
More argument. Little Fuzzy was explaining what he meant, and
the newcomers were answering.
“Tell them here are many-many zatku. They come, many
lights and darks. Many-many.”
Fuzzies could count up to five, the fingers of one hand. The
other hand had to be used to count with. They could count in
multiples of five to a hand of hands, and after that it was many,
and then many-many. Somewhere in the mass of Fuzzy study notes that
were piling up was a suggestion to see what Fuzzies could do with
an abacus.
So, maybe three months ago and six or eight hundred miles north
of here, this gang had heard that the country to the south was
teeming with zatku, and they had joined the volkerwanderung. Little
Fuzzy and his family had been in the advance-guard; the big rush
was still coming. He tried to find out how they had learned of it.
Other Fuzzies had told them: that was as far as he could get.
Anyhow, they had gotten into the pass to the north and come down
into Cold Creek Valley, and here they were. They had come to the
edge of the woods, seen the activity at the camp, and decided, from
the presence of other Fuzzies, that there was nothing to hurt them,
and had come in.
“Many things to hurt!” Little Fuzzy contradicted,
instantly and vehemently. “Must watch all-time. Not go in
front of things that move. Not go under things that go up off
ground. Not touch strange things. Ask Big Ones what will hurt. Big
Ones try not to hurt Fuzzies, Fuzzies must help.”
He continued at length; the newcomers exchanged apprehensive
glances and low-voiced comments. Finally, he picked up his
chopper-digger and rose.
“Bizzo,” he said. “Aki-pokko-so.”
Come; I show you. He got that easily enough. “First, show
police place,” he advised. “Make marks with fingers;
get bright things for necks.”
“Hokay,” Little Fuzzy agreed. Go polis, make
fin-gap’int, get idee-disko.”
About the time Terrans had mastered classical native Fuzzy, the
Fuzzies would all be talking pidgin-Fuzzy. The newcomers made way
for Little Fuzzy, and trooped outside after him, like tourists
following a guide. He watched them cross the open space in front of
the house and turn left toward the bridge over the little stream.
Then he went back to his desk and made a screen-call to prod up the
tentmaker in Red Hill on the order of shoulder-bags—“Maybe
tomorrow, Mr. Holloway; we’re doing all we can.”—and
then made a stenomemo about finding more Extee-Three. Then he went
back to doodling and scribbling notes on the table of organization
and operation-scheme for the Commission of Native Affairs, on which
he seemed to be getting nowhere at a terrific speed.
“Hello, Jack. Another gang joined up?”
He raised his head. The speaker was coming in the door, a
stocky, square-faced man in blue. There was a lighter oval on the
side of his beret, where something had been removed, and the collar
of his tunic showed that his major’s single star had quite
recently replaced a first lieutenant’s double bars. He wore a
band on his left arm hand-lettered ZNPF, otherwise his uniform was
Colonial Constabulary.
“Hello, George. Come in and rest your feet. You look as
though they need it.”
Major George Lunt, Commandant, Zarathustra Native Protection
Force, agreed wearily and profanely, taking off his beret and his
pistol-belt and dropping them on the makeshift table. Then, looking
around, he went to a chair and lifted from it four loose-leaf books
and a fiberboard carton full of papers, marked old atomic-bomb
bourbon, and set them on the floor. Then he unzipped his tunic, sat
down, and got out his cigarettes.
“Office hut’s all up, now,” he reported.
“They’re waiting on a scow-load of flooring for
it.”
“I was talking on screen about that an hour ago.
It’ll be here by this evening.” By this time tomorrow,
all this junk could be moved out, and the place would be home
again. “Any men coming out on the afternoon boat?”
“Three. They only got the recruiting office opened
yesterday, and there isn’t any big rush of recruits. Captain
Casagra says he’ll lend us fifty Marines and some vehicles,
temporarily. How many Fuzzies have we, now, with this new
bunch?”
He counted mentally. His own family: Little Fuzzy and Mamma
Fuzzy and Baby Fuzzy and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and Cinderella.
George Lunt’s Fuzzies. Dr. Crippen and Dillinger and Ned
Kelly and Lizzie Borden and Calamity Jane. The nine whom they had
found at the camp when they returned from Mallorysport after the
trial, and the six who came in day before yesterday, and four
yesterday morning, and the two last evening, and now this gang.
“Thirty-eight, counting Baby. That’s a lot of
Fuzzies,” he observed.
“You just think it is,” Lunt told him. “The
patrols we’ve had out north of here say they’re still
coming. This time next week, we’ll have a couple of
hundred.”
And before then, the ones who were here would begin to feel
overcrowded, and lot of nice new shoppo-diggo would get bloodied.
He said so, adding:
“You have a tactical plan for dealing with a native
uprising, Major?”
“I’ve been worrying about it. You know, we could get
rid of a lot of them,” Lunt said. “Just mention on
telecast that we have more Fuzzies than we know what to do with,
and we’d have to start rationing them.”
They’d have to do that, anyhow. With all the publicity
since the trial, everybody was Fuzzy crazy. Everybody wanted
Fuzzies of their own, and where there’s a demand, there are
suppliers, legitimate or otherwise. It was a wonder the woods
weren’t full of people catching Fuzzies to sell now. For all
he knew, maybe they were.
And a lot of people shouldn’t be allowed to have Fuzzies.
Not just sadists and perverts, either. People who’d want
Fuzzies because the Joneses had them, and then neglect them. People
who would get tired of them after a while and dump them outside
town. People who couldn’t get it through their moronic heads
that Fuzzies were people too. So they’d have to set up some
regular system of Fuzzy adoption.
He’d thought, at first, of Ruth Ortheris, Ruth van Riebeek
she was, now, for that, but she and her husband were needed too
urgently here at the camp on the Fuzzy-study program. There were
just too many things about Fuzzies neither he nor anybody else
knew, yet, and he’d have to find out what was good for them
and what wasn’t.
He looked at the clock; 0935; that would be 0635 in
Mallorysport. After lunch, which would be mid-morning there,
he’d call her and find out how soon she’d be coming
out.
SNAPPING OFF THE shiny new stenomemophone, Jack Holloway relit
his pipe and pushed back his chair, looking around what had been
the living room of his camp before it had become the office of the
Commissioner of Native Affairs for the Class-IV Colonial Planet of
Zarathustra. It had been a pleasant room, a place where a man could
spread out by himself, or entertain the infrequent visitors who
came this far into the wilderness. The hardwood floor was scattered
with rugs made from the skins of animals he had shot; the deep
armchairs and the couch were covered with smaller pelts. Like the
big table at which he worked, he had built them himself. There was
a reading screen, a metal-cased library of microbooks; the gunrack
reflected soft gleams from polished stocks and barrels. And now
look at the damn place!
Two extra viewscreens, another communication screen, a
vocowriter, a teleprint machine, all jammed together. An improvised
table on trestles at right angles to the one at which he sat, its
top littered with plans and blueprints and things; mostly things.
And this red-upholstered swivel chair; he hated that worst of all.
Forty years ago, he’d left Terra to get the seat of his pants
off the seat of a chair like that, and here he was in the evening
of life—well, late afternoon, call it around second cocktail
time—trapped in one.
It wasn’t just this room, either. Through the open door he
could hear what was happening outside. The thud of axes, and the
howl of chain-saws; he was going to miss all those big feathered
trees from around the house. The machine-gun banging of
power-hammers, the clanking and grunting of bulldozers. A sudden
warning cry, followed by a falling crash and a multivoiced burst of
blasphemy. He hoped none of the Fuzzies had been close enough to
whatever had happened to get hurt.
Something tugged gently at his trouser-leg, and a small voice
said, “Yeek?” His hands went to his throat, snapping on
the ultrasonic hearing-aid and inserting the earplug. Immediately,
he began to hear a number of small sounds that had been previously
inaudible, and the voice was saying, “Pappy Jack?”
He looked down at the Zarathustran native whose affairs he had
been commissioned to administer. He was an erect biped, two feet
tall, with a wide-eyed humanoid face, his body covered with soft
golden fur. He wore a green canvas pouch lettered TFMC, and a
two-inch silver disc on a chain about his neck, and nothing else.
The disc was lettered LITTLE FUZZY, and Jack Holloway, Cold Creek
Valley, Beta Continent, and the numeral I. He was the first
Zarathustra aborigine he or any other Terran human had ever
seen.
He reached down and stroked his small friend’s head.
“Hello, Little Fuzzy. You want to visit with Pappy Jack
for a while?”
Little Fuzzy pointed to the open door. Five other Fuzzies were
peeping bashfully into the room, making comments among
themselves.
“Fuzzee no shu do-bizzo do-mitto zat-hakko,” Little
Fuzzy informed him. “Heeva so si domitto.”
Some Fuzzies who hadn’t been here before had just come;
they wanted to stay. At least, that was what he thought Little
Fuzzy was saying; it had only been ten days since he had known that
Fuzzies could talk at all. He pressed a button to start the
audiovisual recorder; it was adjusted to transform their ultrasonic
voices to audible frequencies.
“Make talk.” He picked his way through his
hundred-word Fuzzy vocabulary. “Pappy Jack friend. Not hurt,
be good to them. Give good things.”
“Josso shoddabag?” Little Fuzzy asked. “Josso
shoppo-diggo? Josso t’heet? Estee-fee?”
“Yes. Give shoulder-bags and chopper-diggers and
treats,” he said. “Give Extee-Three.”
Friendly natives; distribution of presents to. Function of the
Commissioner of Native Affairs. Little Fuzzy began a speech. This
was Pappy Jack, the greatest and wisest of all the Big Ones, the
Hagga, the friend of all the People, the Gashta, only the Big Ones
called the Gashta Fuzzies. He would give wonderful things.
Shoddabag, in which things could be carried, leaving the hands
free. He displayed his own. And weapons so hard that they never
wore out. He ran to the jumbled pile of bedding under the gunrack
and came back with a six-inch leaf shaped blade on a twelve-inch
shaft. And Pappy Jack would give the Hoksu-Fusso, the Wonderful
Food, Estee-fee.
Rising, he went out to what had been his kitchen before it had
been crammed with supplies. There were plenty of chopper-diggers;
he’d had a couple of hundred made up before he left
Mallorysport. Shoulder-bags were in shorter supply. They were all
either Navy black or Marine Corps green, first-aid pouches and
tool-kit pouches and belt pouches for submachine gun and auto-rifle
magazines, all fitted with shoulder straps. He hung five of them
over his arm, then unlocked a cupboard and got out two rectangular
tins with blue labels marked emergency field ration,
extraterrestrial service type three. All Fuzzies were crazy about
Extee-Three, which demonstrated that, while sapient beings, they
were definitely not human. Only a completely starving human would
eat the damn stuff.
When he returned, the five newcomers were squatting in a circle
inside the door with Little Fuzzy, examining his steel weapon and
comparing it with the paddle-shaped hardwood sticks they had made
for themselves. The word zatku was being frequently used.
It was an important word to Fuzzies, their name for a big
pseudo-crustacean Terrans called a land-prawn. Fuzzies hunted zatku
avidly, and, until they had tasted Extee-Three, preferred them to
any other food. If it hadn’t been for the zatku, the Fuzzies
would have stayed in the unexplored country of northern Beta
Continent, and it would have been years before any Terran would
have seen one.
Quite a few Terrans, especially Victor Grego, the Zarathustra
Company manager-in-chief, were wishing the Fuzzies had stayed
permanently undiscovered. Zarathustra had been listed as a
Class-III planet, inhabitable by Terran humans but uninhabited by
any native race of sapient beings, and on that misunderstanding the
Zarathustra Company had been chartered to colonize and exploit it
and had been granted outright ownership of the planet and one of
the two moons, Darius. The other moon, Xerxes, had been retained as
a Federation Navy base, which had been fortunate, because suddenly
Zarathustra had turned into a Class-IV planet, with a native
population.
The members of the native population here present looked up
expectantly as he opened one of the tins and cut the
gingerbread-colored cake into six equal portions. The five
newcomers sniffed at theirs and waited until Little Fuzzy began to
eat. Then, after a tentative nibble, they gobbled avidly, with
full-mouthed sounds of delight.
From the first, he had suspected that they weren’t just
cute little animals, but people—sapient beings, like himself and
like the eight other sapient races discovered since Terrans had
gone out to the stars. When Bennett Rainsford, then a field
naturalist for the Institute of Xeno-Sciences, had seen them, he
had agreed, and had named the species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway. They
had both been excited, and very proud of the discovery, and neither
of them had thought, until it was brought forcibly to their
attention, of the effect on the Zarathustra Company’s
charter.
Victor Grego had thought of that at once; he had fought
desperately, viciously, and with all the resources of the company,
to prevent the recognition of the Fuzzies as sapient beings and the
invalidation of the company’s charter. The battle had ended
in court, with Jack Holloway charged with murder for shooting a
company gunman and a company executive name Leonard Kellogg
similarly charged for kicking to death a Fuzzy named Goldilocks.
The two cases, tried as one, had hinged on the question of the
sapience of the Fuzzies. On the docket, it had been People of the
Colony of Zarathustra versus Holloway and Kellogg. His lawyer, Gus
Brannhard, had insisted on referring to it as Friends of Little
Fuzzy versus The Chartered Zarathustra Company.
Little Fuzzy and his friends had won, and with their sapience
recognized, the company’s charter was out the airlock, and so
was the old Class-III Colonial Government, and Space Commodore
Napier, the commandant of Xerxes Base, had been compelled, since
Zarathustra was without legal government, to proclaim martial rule
and supervise the establishment of a new Class-IV Government. He
had appointed Bennett Rainsford Governor.
And just who do you suppose Ben Rainsford appointed as
Commissioner of Native Affairs?
Well, somebody had to take it, and who’d started all this
Fuzzy business, anyhow?
The five newcomers had finished their Extee-Three, and been
given their shoulder-bags and their steel chopper-diggers, and were
trying the balance of the latter and beheading imaginary
land-prawns with them. He opened the other tin of Extee-Three and
divided it. This time, they nibbled slowly, with appreciative
comments. Little Fuzzy gathered up the two empty tins and put them
in the wastebasket.
“How you come this place?” he asked, when Little
Fuzzy had rejoined the circle.
They all began talking at once; with Little Fuzzy’s help,
he got the general sense of it. They had heard strange noises and
had come to the edge of the woods, and seen frightening things. But
Fuzzies were people; they investigated, even if they were
frightened. Then they had seen other people. Hagga-gashta, big
people, and shi-mosh-gashta, people like us.
Little Fuzzy instantly corrected the speaker. Hagga-gashta were
just Hagga, Big Ones, and shi-mosh-gashta were Fuzzies. Why were
the Gashta called Fuzzies? Because Pappy Jack said so, that was
why. That seemed to settle it.
“But why come this place? You come from another place, far
away. Why come here?”
More argument. Little Fuzzy was explaining what he meant, and
the newcomers were answering.
“Tell them here are many-many zatku. They come, many
lights and darks. Many-many.”
Fuzzies could count up to five, the fingers of one hand. The
other hand had to be used to count with. They could count in
multiples of five to a hand of hands, and after that it was many,
and then many-many. Somewhere in the mass of Fuzzy study notes that
were piling up was a suggestion to see what Fuzzies could do with
an abacus.
So, maybe three months ago and six or eight hundred miles north
of here, this gang had heard that the country to the south was
teeming with zatku, and they had joined the volkerwanderung. Little
Fuzzy and his family had been in the advance-guard; the big rush
was still coming. He tried to find out how they had learned of it.
Other Fuzzies had told them: that was as far as he could get.
Anyhow, they had gotten into the pass to the north and come down
into Cold Creek Valley, and here they were. They had come to the
edge of the woods, seen the activity at the camp, and decided, from
the presence of other Fuzzies, that there was nothing to hurt them,
and had come in.
“Many things to hurt!” Little Fuzzy contradicted,
instantly and vehemently. “Must watch all-time. Not go in
front of things that move. Not go under things that go up off
ground. Not touch strange things. Ask Big Ones what will hurt. Big
Ones try not to hurt Fuzzies, Fuzzies must help.”
He continued at length; the newcomers exchanged apprehensive
glances and low-voiced comments. Finally, he picked up his
chopper-digger and rose.
“Bizzo,” he said. “Aki-pokko-so.”
Come; I show you. He got that easily enough. “First, show
police place,” he advised. “Make marks with fingers;
get bright things for necks.”
“Hokay,” Little Fuzzy agreed. Go polis, make
fin-gap’int, get idee-disko.”
About the time Terrans had mastered classical native Fuzzy, the
Fuzzies would all be talking pidgin-Fuzzy. The newcomers made way
for Little Fuzzy, and trooped outside after him, like tourists
following a guide. He watched them cross the open space in front of
the house and turn left toward the bridge over the little stream.
Then he went back to his desk and made a screen-call to prod up the
tentmaker in Red Hill on the order of shoulder-bags—“Maybe
tomorrow, Mr. Holloway; we’re doing all we can.”—and
then made a stenomemo about finding more Extee-Three. Then he went
back to doodling and scribbling notes on the table of organization
and operation-scheme for the Commission of Native Affairs, on which
he seemed to be getting nowhere at a terrific speed.
“Hello, Jack. Another gang joined up?”
He raised his head. The speaker was coming in the door, a
stocky, square-faced man in blue. There was a lighter oval on the
side of his beret, where something had been removed, and the collar
of his tunic showed that his major’s single star had quite
recently replaced a first lieutenant’s double bars. He wore a
band on his left arm hand-lettered ZNPF, otherwise his uniform was
Colonial Constabulary.
“Hello, George. Come in and rest your feet. You look as
though they need it.”
Major George Lunt, Commandant, Zarathustra Native Protection
Force, agreed wearily and profanely, taking off his beret and his
pistol-belt and dropping them on the makeshift table. Then, looking
around, he went to a chair and lifted from it four loose-leaf books
and a fiberboard carton full of papers, marked old atomic-bomb
bourbon, and set them on the floor. Then he unzipped his tunic, sat
down, and got out his cigarettes.
“Office hut’s all up, now,” he reported.
“They’re waiting on a scow-load of flooring for
it.”
“I was talking on screen about that an hour ago.
It’ll be here by this evening.” By this time tomorrow,
all this junk could be moved out, and the place would be home
again. “Any men coming out on the afternoon boat?”
“Three. They only got the recruiting office opened
yesterday, and there isn’t any big rush of recruits. Captain
Casagra says he’ll lend us fifty Marines and some vehicles,
temporarily. How many Fuzzies have we, now, with this new
bunch?”
He counted mentally. His own family: Little Fuzzy and Mamma
Fuzzy and Baby Fuzzy and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and Cinderella.
George Lunt’s Fuzzies. Dr. Crippen and Dillinger and Ned
Kelly and Lizzie Borden and Calamity Jane. The nine whom they had
found at the camp when they returned from Mallorysport after the
trial, and the six who came in day before yesterday, and four
yesterday morning, and the two last evening, and now this gang.
“Thirty-eight, counting Baby. That’s a lot of
Fuzzies,” he observed.
“You just think it is,” Lunt told him. “The
patrols we’ve had out north of here say they’re still
coming. This time next week, we’ll have a couple of
hundred.”
And before then, the ones who were here would begin to feel
overcrowded, and lot of nice new shoppo-diggo would get bloodied.
He said so, adding:
“You have a tactical plan for dealing with a native
uprising, Major?”
“I’ve been worrying about it. You know, we could get
rid of a lot of them,” Lunt said. “Just mention on
telecast that we have more Fuzzies than we know what to do with,
and we’d have to start rationing them.”
They’d have to do that, anyhow. With all the publicity
since the trial, everybody was Fuzzy crazy. Everybody wanted
Fuzzies of their own, and where there’s a demand, there are
suppliers, legitimate or otherwise. It was a wonder the woods
weren’t full of people catching Fuzzies to sell now. For all
he knew, maybe they were.
And a lot of people shouldn’t be allowed to have Fuzzies.
Not just sadists and perverts, either. People who’d want
Fuzzies because the Joneses had them, and then neglect them. People
who would get tired of them after a while and dump them outside
town. People who couldn’t get it through their moronic heads
that Fuzzies were people too. So they’d have to set up some
regular system of Fuzzy adoption.
He’d thought, at first, of Ruth Ortheris, Ruth van Riebeek
she was, now, for that, but she and her husband were needed too
urgently here at the camp on the Fuzzy-study program. There were
just too many things about Fuzzies neither he nor anybody else
knew, yet, and he’d have to find out what was good for them
and what wasn’t.
He looked at the clock; 0935; that would be 0635 in
Mallorysport. After lunch, which would be mid-morning there,
he’d call her and find out how soon she’d be coming
out.