GUS BRANNHARD POURED coffee into a cup already half full of
brandy, brushed his beard out of the way with his left hand, and
tasted it. It was good, but he still thought it would be better out
of a tin pannikin beside a campfire on Beta. It was time to get
down to business; after the bare report while hustling indecently
through cocktails, they had talked all around the subject at
dinner.
“Well, I can and will bring criminal charges,” he
assured the others who were having coffee in the drawing room at
Government House. “Forcible overpowering and transportation
under restraint; if that isn’t kidnapping what is
it?”
“Try your damnedest to make enslavement out of it,
Gus,” Jack Holloway said. “If you get a conviction, we
can have the pair of them shot. And telecast the executions; a real
memorable public example is what we want, right now.”
“Well, I got the whole story out of Diamond,” Pancho
Ybarra said. “He and another Fuzzy met four others; the six
of them went down a little stream past a waterfall, and then came
to a place where there were two Hagga, the ones he was shown
audiovisuals of. The Hagga gave them Extee-Three, and then gave
them something out of a bottle. They all woke up with hangovers in
what sounds like one of the unfinished rooms in Company House.
Diamond got away from them; the two bad Big Ones took the rest
away.”
“So now we have five Fuzzies to hunt,” Holloway
said. “That’ll be your job, Ahmed. You’ll stay
here in Mallorysport. We’ll promote you to captain and chief
of detectives; that’ll give you a little status equality with
the other enforcement heads around here. If they’re trapping
Fuzzies for sale, that’s not just Native Commission business;
that’s Federation stuff.”
“They probably caught them for Mallin to experiment
with,” Ben Rainsford said.
Jack swore. “Ben, you haven’t been paying attention.
All this stuff we got from them was veridicated. They don’t
know anything about any Fuzzies but those four Gerd and Ruth
have.”
“Mr. Grego has been cooperating very satisfactorily,
Governor,” Ahmed Khadra said, stiffly formal. “He has
the whole Company police working on it, and told me to call on
Chief Steefer for anything, and tomorrow Dr. Jimenez is going out
to Beta to show some of our people where he was camping. From the
Fuzzy’s description, we think Herckerd and Novaes went back
there.”
“Well, what are you going to do about that Fuzzy at
Company House?” he asked Jack, ignoring Khadra’s words.
“You aren’t going to let him stay with Grego, are
you?”
“Of course we are. Diamond’s happy, and
Grego’s taking good care of him. I’m going to recommend
that Judge Pendarvis issue papers of guardianship to
him.”
“But it isn’t right! Not after all Grego did,”
Rainsford insisted. “Why, he was going to have all the
Fuzzies trapped off for their furs. He took your own Fuzzies away
from you. He had Jimenez trap those other four, and let Mallin
torture them, ask Ruth about that, and then started the story about
the Lurkin girl and turned them loose for the mob to kill. And look
how he was trying to make out that you’d just taught your
Fuzzies a few tricks and then got me to back up your claim that
they were sapient beings . . . ”
There, at last and obliquely, Ben had let the cat out. What he
meant was that Grego had tried to accuse him of deliberately
engineering a scientific fraud. Well, a scientist would have
trouble forgiving that. It was like accusing a soldier of treason
or a doctor of malpractice.
“Well, it’s my professional opinion,” Pancho
Ybarra said, “that Grego and Diamond are much attached to
each other, and that it would be injustice to both to separate
them, and probably psychologically harmful to the Fuzzy. I shall so
advise Judge Pendarvis.”
“I think that’ll be official policy,” Holloway
said. “When we find Fuzzies and humans living happily
together, we have no right to separate them, and we
won’t.”
Rainsford, who had started to fill his pipe, looked up
angrily.
“Maybe you forget I’m the Governor; I make the
policy. I appointed you . . . ”
Jack’s white mustache was twitching at the tips; his eyes
narrowed. He looked like an elderly and irascible tiger.
“That’s right,” he said. “You appointed
me Commissioner of Native Affairs. Any time you don’t like
the way I do my job, get yourself a new Commissioner.”
“Get yourself a new Attorney-General, too. I’m with
Jack on this.”
Rainsford dropped his pipe into the tobacco pouch.
“You mean you’re all against me? What are you doing,
bucking for jobs with the CZC?”
After a crack like that, there were those who would have
insisted on continuing the discussion by correspondence and through
seconds. With anybody but Ben Rainsford, he would have, himself. He
turned to Pancho Ybarra.
“Doctor, as a psychiatrist what is your opinion of that
outburst?” he asked.
“I’m not entitled to express an opinion,” the
Navy psychologist replied. “Governor Rainsford is not my
patient.”
“You mean, I ought to be somebody’s?”
Rainsford demanded.
“Well, now that you ask, you’re not exactly
psychotic, but you’re certainly not displaying much sanity on
the subject of Victor Grego.”
“You think we ought to just sit back and let him do
anything he pleases; run the planet the way he did before the
Pendarvis Decisions?”
“He didn’t do such a bad job, Ben,” he said.
“I’m beginning to think he did a damn sight better job
than you’ll do unless you stop playing Hatfields and McCoys
and start governing. You have to arrange for elections for
delegates, and a constitutional convention. You have to take over
and operate all these public services the Company’s been
relieved of responsibility for when their charter was invalidated.
And you’ll have to stop this cattle rustling on Beta and
Delta Continents, or you’ll have a couple of first-class
range wars on your hands. And you’d better start thinking
about the immigrant rush that’s going to hit this planet when
the news of the Pendarvis Decisions gets around.”
Rainsford, his pipe and tobacco shoved into his side pocket, was
on his feet. He’d tried to interrupt a couple of times.
“Oh, to Nifflheim with you!” he cried.
“I’m going out and talk to my Fuzzies.”
With that, he flung out of the room. For a moment, nobody said
anything, then Jack Holloway swore.
“I hope the Fuzzies talk some sense into him. Be damned if
I can.”
They probably would, if he’d listen to them. They had more
sense than he had, at the moment. Ahmed Khadra, who had sat motionless through the upper-echelon brawl, clattered his cup and
saucer.
“Jack, you think we ought to go check in at the
hotel?” he asked.
“Nifflheim, no! This isn’t Ben Rainsford’s
private camp, this is Government House,” Holloway said.
“We work for the Government, too. We have work to do
now.”
“We’ll have to talk to him again.” He
wasn’t looking forward to it with any pleasure. “We
have to get some kind of a Fuzzy Code scotch-taped together, and
he’ll have to okay it. We need special legislation, and till
we can get a Colonial Legislature, that’ll have to be by
executive decree. And you’ll have to figure out a way to make
Fuzzies available for adoption. You can’t break up a black
market by shooting a few people for enslavement; you’ll have
to make it possible for people to get Fuzzies legally, with
controls and safeguards, instead of buying them from
racketeers.”
“I know it, Gus,” Jack said. “I’ve been
thinking about it; a regular adoption bureau. But who can I get to
handle it? I don’t know anybody.”
“Well, I know everybody around Central Courts
Building.” That ought to be enough; Central Courts was like a
village, in which everybody knew everybody else. “Maybe
Leslie Coombes would help me.”
“My God, Gus; don’t let Ben hear you say
that,” Jack implored. “He’d blow up about a
hundred megatons. You might just as well talk about getting
V-dash-R G-dash-O to help.”
“He could help a lot. If we ask him, he would.”
“Ruth did a lot of work with juvenile court, on her
cover-job,” Ybarra mentioned. “There’s some kind
of a Juvenile Welfare Association . . . ”
“Claudette Pendarvis. The Chief Justice’s wife. She
does a lot about Juvenile Welfare.”
“Yes,” Ybarra agreed instantly. “I’ve
heard Ruth talk about her. Very favorably, too, and Ruth has a
galloping allergy for volunteer do-gooders as a rule.”
“She likes Fuzzies,” Jack said. “She
couldn’t stay away from them during the trial. I promised her
a pair as soon as I got a nice couple.” He got to his feet.
“Let’s move into one of the offices, where we have a
table to work on, and some communication screens. I’ll call
her now and ask her about it.”
“FREDERIC, MAY I interrupt?”
Pendarvis turned from the reading-screen and started to lay
aside his cigar and rise. Claudette, entering the room, motioned
him to keep his seat and advanced to take the low cushion-stool,
clasping her hands about her knees and tilting her head back in the
same girlish pose he remembered from the long ago days on Baldur
when he had been courting her.
“I want to tell you something lovely, Frederic,” she
began. “Mr. Holloway just called me. He says he has two
Fuzzies for me, a boy Fuzzy and a girl Fuzzy; he’s going to
have them brought in tomorrow or the next day.”
“Well, that is lovely.” Claudette was crazy about
Fuzzies. Had been ever since the first telecasts of them, and she
had watched them in court and visited them at the Hotel Mallory
during the trial. Now that he considered, he would like a pair of
Fuzzies, too. “I think I’ll enjoy having them here as
much as you will. I like Fuzzies, as long as they stay out of my
courtroom.”
They both laughed, remembering what seventeen Fuzzies and a Baby
Fuzzy had done to the dignity of the court while their sapience was
being debated.
“I hope this won’t be regarded as special privilege
though,” he added. “A great many people want Fuzzies,
and . . . ”
“But other people can have Fuzzies, too. That was what Mr.
Holloway was calling me about. They’ll be made available for
adoption, and he wants me to supervise it, to make sure they
don’t get into wrong hands and aren’t
mistreated.”
That was something else. They’d both have to think about
that carefully.
“You think it would be proper for you to have an official
position like that?” he asked.
“I can’t see why not. I’m doing the same kind
of work with Juvenile Welfare.”
“You’ll be making decisions on who should and who
should not be allowed to adopt Fuzzies. When I get a Native Cases
Court set up—I think Yves Janiver, for that—your decisions will be
accepted.”
“Whose decisions do you think Adolphe Ruiz’s
Juvenile Court accepts now?”
“That’s right,” he agreed. And she
couldn’t accept the Fuzzies and refuse to help with the
adoption bureau; that wouldn’t be right, at all. And she
wanted Fuzzies so badly. “Well, go ahead, darling; do it.
Whoever takes that position will have to be somebody who really
loves Fuzzies. What did you tell Mr. Holloway?”
“That I’d talk to you, and then call him back.
He’s at Government House now.”
“Well, call him and tell him you accept. I’ll call
Yves and talk to him about the Native Cases Court . . . ”
She had left the low seat while he was speaking; she stopped to
kiss him on the way out. She’d be so happy. He hoped he
wouldn’t be too severely criticized. Well, he’d been
criticized before and survived it.
VICTOR GREGO WATCHED Diamond investigating the articles on top
of the low cocktail table. He took a couple of salted nuts from the
glass bowl, nibbled one, and put the rest back. He looked at the
half-full coffee cup and the liqueur glass, and left both alone.
Then he started to pick up the ashtray.
“No, Diamond. Vov. Don’t touch.”
“Vov ninta, Diamond,” Ernst Mallin, who was a
slightly more advanced Fuzzy linguist, said. “We ought to
learn their language, instead of making them learn ours.”
“We ought to teach them our language, so they can speak to
anybody, and not just Fuzzyologists.”
“I deplore that term, Mr. Grego. The suffix is Greek, from
logos. Fuzzy is not a Greek word, and should not be combined with
it.”
“Oh, rubbish, Ernst. We’re not speaking Greek;
we’re speaking Lingua Terra. You know what Lingua Terra is?
An indiscriminate mixture of English, Spanish, Portuguese, and
Afrikaans, mostly English. And you know what English is? The result
of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon
barmaids in the Ninth Century Pre-Atomic, and no more legitimate
than any of the other results. If a little Greek suffix gets into a
mess like that, it’ll have to take care of itself the best
way it can. And you’d better learn to like the term, because
it’s your new title. Chief Fuzzyologist; fifteen percent
salary increase.”
Mallin gave one of his tight little smiles. “For that, I
believe I can condone a linguistic barbarism.”
Diamond seemed, he couldn’t be sure, to be wanting to know
why not touch; would it hurt?
“And how do you explain that he mustn’t spill ashes
on the floor, in his own language? What are the Fuzzy words for
‘floor,’ and ‘ashes’?” He leaned
forward and dropped the ash from his cigarette into the tray.
“Ashtray,” he said.
Diamond repeated it as well as he could. Then he strolled over
to where Mallin sat. Mallin regarded smoking as an act of infantile
oralism; his ashtray was empty.
“Asht’ay?” he asked. “Diamond vov
ninta?”
“You see. He knows that ashtray is a class-word, not just
the name of a specific object,” Mallin said. “And I
tried so hard to prove that Fuzzies couldn’t generalize. This
one is empty; let’s see how we can explain the difference. If
we give him the word ‘ashes,’ and then . . . ”
A bell began ringing softly; Diamond turned quickly to see what
it was. It was the bell for the private communication screen, and
only half a dozen people knew the call-combination. He rose and put
it on. Harry Steefer looked out of it.
“We found it, sir; ninth level down.” That was the
one below the first reported thefts and ransackings. “The
Fuzzies were penned in a small room that looks as though it had
been intended for a general toilet and washroom. It’s right
off a main hall, and somebody’s had an aircar in and out and
set it down recently. I’d say half a dozen Fuzzies for two or
three days.”
“Good. I want to see it. I want Diamond to see it, too.
Send somebody who knows where it is up to my private stage with a
car small enough to get into it.”
He blanked the screen and turned to Mallin. “You heard
that. Well, let’s all three of us go down and look at
it.”
Jack Holloway stopped at the head of the long escalator
and looked down into the garden, now double-lighted by Darius,
almost full, and Xerxes, past full and just rising. After a moment
he saw Ben Rainsford reclining in a lawn-chair, with Flora and
Fauna snuggled together on his lap. As he started toward them,
after descending, he thought they were all asleep. Then one of the
Fuzzies stirred and yeeked, and Rainsford turned his head.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Jack. Have you been here all evening?”
“Yes, all three of us,” Rainsford said. “I
think it’s time for Fuzzies to go to bed, now.”
“Ben, we just had a screen call from Company House. They
found where those Fuzzies had been kept, an empty room on one of
the unfinished floors. They showed us with a portable pickup; dark,
filthy place. The Company police are working on it for physical
evidence to corroborate Diamond’s story. And they’ve
put out a general want for those two Company rangers, Herckerd and
Novaes; kidnapping and suspicion of enslavement.”
“Who called you? Steefer?”
“Grego. He says we can count on him for anything.
He’s really sore about this.”
The Fuzzies had jumped to the ground and were trying to attract
his attention. Ben shifted in his chair, and began stuffing tobacco
into his pipe.
“Jack.” His voice was soft; he spoke hesitantly.
“I’ve been talking to the kids, out here, till they got
sleepy. They had a big time at Company House with Diamond. They say
he’s lonesome for other Fuzzies. They’d like him to
come here and visit them, and they’d like to go back and
visit him again.”
“Well, a Fuzzy would get lonesome by himself. It
didn’t take Little Fuzzy long to go and bring the rest of his
family into my place.”
“And they say that outside that he’s happy. They
told me about all the nice things he had, and the garden, and the
room that was fixed up for him. They say everybody’s good to
him, and Pappy Vic loves him. That’s what they call Grego;
Pappy Vic, just like they call us Pappy Ben and Pappy Jack.”
His lighter flared, showing a puzzled face above the pipe bowl.
“I can’t understand it, Jack. I thought Grego would
hate Fuzzies.”
“Why should he? The Fuzzies didn’t know anything
about the Company’s charter; they don’t know a Class-IV
planet from Nifflheim. He doesn’t even hate us; he’d
have done the same thing in our place. Ben, he’s willing to
call the war off; why can’t you?”
Rainsford puffed slowly, the smoke drifting and changing color
in the double moonlight.
“Do you honestly believe that Fuzzy wants to stay with
Grego?” he asked.
“It’d break Diamond’s heart if you took him
away from Pappy Vic. Ben, why don’t you invite Diamond over
to play with your two? You wouldn’t have to meet Grego; the
girl he has helping with Diamond could bring him.”
“Maybe I will. You’re on speaking terms with Grego;
why don’t you?”
“I will, tomorrow.” The Fuzzies hadn’t wanted
to play; they’d just wanted to be noticed. He picked Flora up
and gave her to Ben, then took Fauna in his own arms.
“Let’s go put them to bed, and then go inside. We have
a lot of things to do, in a hurry, and we need your
authorization.”
“Well, what?”
“Ahmed’s staying here; he and Harry Steefer and Ian
Ferguson and some others are having a conference tomorrow on this
case and on general Fuzzy protection. And I’m setting up an
Adoption Bureau; Judge Pendarvis’s wife’s agreed to
take charge of that. We need laws, and till there’s some kind
of a legislature, you have to do that by decree.”
“Well, all right. But there’s one thing, Jack. Just
because Grego’s with us on this doesn’t mean I’m
going to let him grab back control of this planet, the way he had
it before the Pendarvis Decisions. It took the Fuzzies to break the
Company’s monopoly; well, I’m going to see it stays
broken.”
GUS BRANNHARD POURED coffee into a cup already half full of
brandy, brushed his beard out of the way with his left hand, and
tasted it. It was good, but he still thought it would be better out
of a tin pannikin beside a campfire on Beta. It was time to get
down to business; after the bare report while hustling indecently
through cocktails, they had talked all around the subject at
dinner.
“Well, I can and will bring criminal charges,” he
assured the others who were having coffee in the drawing room at
Government House. “Forcible overpowering and transportation
under restraint; if that isn’t kidnapping what is
it?”
“Try your damnedest to make enslavement out of it,
Gus,” Jack Holloway said. “If you get a conviction, we
can have the pair of them shot. And telecast the executions; a real
memorable public example is what we want, right now.”
“Well, I got the whole story out of Diamond,” Pancho
Ybarra said. “He and another Fuzzy met four others; the six
of them went down a little stream past a waterfall, and then came
to a place where there were two Hagga, the ones he was shown
audiovisuals of. The Hagga gave them Extee-Three, and then gave
them something out of a bottle. They all woke up with hangovers in
what sounds like one of the unfinished rooms in Company House.
Diamond got away from them; the two bad Big Ones took the rest
away.”
“So now we have five Fuzzies to hunt,” Holloway
said. “That’ll be your job, Ahmed. You’ll stay
here in Mallorysport. We’ll promote you to captain and chief
of detectives; that’ll give you a little status equality with
the other enforcement heads around here. If they’re trapping
Fuzzies for sale, that’s not just Native Commission business;
that’s Federation stuff.”
“They probably caught them for Mallin to experiment
with,” Ben Rainsford said.
Jack swore. “Ben, you haven’t been paying attention.
All this stuff we got from them was veridicated. They don’t
know anything about any Fuzzies but those four Gerd and Ruth
have.”
“Mr. Grego has been cooperating very satisfactorily,
Governor,” Ahmed Khadra said, stiffly formal. “He has
the whole Company police working on it, and told me to call on
Chief Steefer for anything, and tomorrow Dr. Jimenez is going out
to Beta to show some of our people where he was camping. From the
Fuzzy’s description, we think Herckerd and Novaes went back
there.”
“Well, what are you going to do about that Fuzzy at
Company House?” he asked Jack, ignoring Khadra’s words.
“You aren’t going to let him stay with Grego, are
you?”
“Of course we are. Diamond’s happy, and
Grego’s taking good care of him. I’m going to recommend
that Judge Pendarvis issue papers of guardianship to
him.”
“But it isn’t right! Not after all Grego did,”
Rainsford insisted. “Why, he was going to have all the
Fuzzies trapped off for their furs. He took your own Fuzzies away
from you. He had Jimenez trap those other four, and let Mallin
torture them, ask Ruth about that, and then started the story about
the Lurkin girl and turned them loose for the mob to kill. And look
how he was trying to make out that you’d just taught your
Fuzzies a few tricks and then got me to back up your claim that
they were sapient beings . . . ”
There, at last and obliquely, Ben had let the cat out. What he
meant was that Grego had tried to accuse him of deliberately
engineering a scientific fraud. Well, a scientist would have
trouble forgiving that. It was like accusing a soldier of treason
or a doctor of malpractice.
“Well, it’s my professional opinion,” Pancho
Ybarra said, “that Grego and Diamond are much attached to
each other, and that it would be injustice to both to separate
them, and probably psychologically harmful to the Fuzzy. I shall so
advise Judge Pendarvis.”
“I think that’ll be official policy,” Holloway
said. “When we find Fuzzies and humans living happily
together, we have no right to separate them, and we
won’t.”
Rainsford, who had started to fill his pipe, looked up
angrily.
“Maybe you forget I’m the Governor; I make the
policy. I appointed you . . . ”
Jack’s white mustache was twitching at the tips; his eyes
narrowed. He looked like an elderly and irascible tiger.
“That’s right,” he said. “You appointed
me Commissioner of Native Affairs. Any time you don’t like
the way I do my job, get yourself a new Commissioner.”
“Get yourself a new Attorney-General, too. I’m with
Jack on this.”
Rainsford dropped his pipe into the tobacco pouch.
“You mean you’re all against me? What are you doing,
bucking for jobs with the CZC?”
After a crack like that, there were those who would have
insisted on continuing the discussion by correspondence and through
seconds. With anybody but Ben Rainsford, he would have, himself. He
turned to Pancho Ybarra.
“Doctor, as a psychiatrist what is your opinion of that
outburst?” he asked.
“I’m not entitled to express an opinion,” the
Navy psychologist replied. “Governor Rainsford is not my
patient.”
“You mean, I ought to be somebody’s?”
Rainsford demanded.
“Well, now that you ask, you’re not exactly
psychotic, but you’re certainly not displaying much sanity on
the subject of Victor Grego.”
“You think we ought to just sit back and let him do
anything he pleases; run the planet the way he did before the
Pendarvis Decisions?”
“He didn’t do such a bad job, Ben,” he said.
“I’m beginning to think he did a damn sight better job
than you’ll do unless you stop playing Hatfields and McCoys
and start governing. You have to arrange for elections for
delegates, and a constitutional convention. You have to take over
and operate all these public services the Company’s been
relieved of responsibility for when their charter was invalidated.
And you’ll have to stop this cattle rustling on Beta and
Delta Continents, or you’ll have a couple of first-class
range wars on your hands. And you’d better start thinking
about the immigrant rush that’s going to hit this planet when
the news of the Pendarvis Decisions gets around.”
Rainsford, his pipe and tobacco shoved into his side pocket, was
on his feet. He’d tried to interrupt a couple of times.
“Oh, to Nifflheim with you!” he cried.
“I’m going out and talk to my Fuzzies.”
With that, he flung out of the room. For a moment, nobody said
anything, then Jack Holloway swore.
“I hope the Fuzzies talk some sense into him. Be damned if
I can.”
They probably would, if he’d listen to them. They had more
sense than he had, at the moment. Ahmed Khadra, who had sat motionless through the upper-echelon brawl, clattered his cup and
saucer.
“Jack, you think we ought to go check in at the
hotel?” he asked.
“Nifflheim, no! This isn’t Ben Rainsford’s
private camp, this is Government House,” Holloway said.
“We work for the Government, too. We have work to do
now.”
“We’ll have to talk to him again.” He
wasn’t looking forward to it with any pleasure. “We
have to get some kind of a Fuzzy Code scotch-taped together, and
he’ll have to okay it. We need special legislation, and till
we can get a Colonial Legislature, that’ll have to be by
executive decree. And you’ll have to figure out a way to make
Fuzzies available for adoption. You can’t break up a black
market by shooting a few people for enslavement; you’ll have
to make it possible for people to get Fuzzies legally, with
controls and safeguards, instead of buying them from
racketeers.”
“I know it, Gus,” Jack said. “I’ve been
thinking about it; a regular adoption bureau. But who can I get to
handle it? I don’t know anybody.”
“Well, I know everybody around Central Courts
Building.” That ought to be enough; Central Courts was like a
village, in which everybody knew everybody else. “Maybe
Leslie Coombes would help me.”
“My God, Gus; don’t let Ben hear you say
that,” Jack implored. “He’d blow up about a
hundred megatons. You might just as well talk about getting
V-dash-R G-dash-O to help.”
“He could help a lot. If we ask him, he would.”
“Ruth did a lot of work with juvenile court, on her
cover-job,” Ybarra mentioned. “There’s some kind
of a Juvenile Welfare Association . . . ”
“Claudette Pendarvis. The Chief Justice’s wife. She
does a lot about Juvenile Welfare.”
“Yes,” Ybarra agreed instantly. “I’ve
heard Ruth talk about her. Very favorably, too, and Ruth has a
galloping allergy for volunteer do-gooders as a rule.”
“She likes Fuzzies,” Jack said. “She
couldn’t stay away from them during the trial. I promised her
a pair as soon as I got a nice couple.” He got to his feet.
“Let’s move into one of the offices, where we have a
table to work on, and some communication screens. I’ll call
her now and ask her about it.”
“FREDERIC, MAY I interrupt?”
Pendarvis turned from the reading-screen and started to lay
aside his cigar and rise. Claudette, entering the room, motioned
him to keep his seat and advanced to take the low cushion-stool,
clasping her hands about her knees and tilting her head back in the
same girlish pose he remembered from the long ago days on Baldur
when he had been courting her.
“I want to tell you something lovely, Frederic,” she
began. “Mr. Holloway just called me. He says he has two
Fuzzies for me, a boy Fuzzy and a girl Fuzzy; he’s going to
have them brought in tomorrow or the next day.”
“Well, that is lovely.” Claudette was crazy about
Fuzzies. Had been ever since the first telecasts of them, and she
had watched them in court and visited them at the Hotel Mallory
during the trial. Now that he considered, he would like a pair of
Fuzzies, too. “I think I’ll enjoy having them here as
much as you will. I like Fuzzies, as long as they stay out of my
courtroom.”
They both laughed, remembering what seventeen Fuzzies and a Baby
Fuzzy had done to the dignity of the court while their sapience was
being debated.
“I hope this won’t be regarded as special privilege
though,” he added. “A great many people want Fuzzies,
and . . . ”
“But other people can have Fuzzies, too. That was what Mr.
Holloway was calling me about. They’ll be made available for
adoption, and he wants me to supervise it, to make sure they
don’t get into wrong hands and aren’t
mistreated.”
That was something else. They’d both have to think about
that carefully.
“You think it would be proper for you to have an official
position like that?” he asked.
“I can’t see why not. I’m doing the same kind
of work with Juvenile Welfare.”
“You’ll be making decisions on who should and who
should not be allowed to adopt Fuzzies. When I get a Native Cases
Court set up—I think Yves Janiver, for that—your decisions will be
accepted.”
“Whose decisions do you think Adolphe Ruiz’s
Juvenile Court accepts now?”
“That’s right,” he agreed. And she
couldn’t accept the Fuzzies and refuse to help with the
adoption bureau; that wouldn’t be right, at all. And she
wanted Fuzzies so badly. “Well, go ahead, darling; do it.
Whoever takes that position will have to be somebody who really
loves Fuzzies. What did you tell Mr. Holloway?”
“That I’d talk to you, and then call him back.
He’s at Government House now.”
“Well, call him and tell him you accept. I’ll call
Yves and talk to him about the Native Cases Court . . . ”
She had left the low seat while he was speaking; she stopped to
kiss him on the way out. She’d be so happy. He hoped he
wouldn’t be too severely criticized. Well, he’d been
criticized before and survived it.
VICTOR GREGO WATCHED Diamond investigating the articles on top
of the low cocktail table. He took a couple of salted nuts from the
glass bowl, nibbled one, and put the rest back. He looked at the
half-full coffee cup and the liqueur glass, and left both alone.
Then he started to pick up the ashtray.
“No, Diamond. Vov. Don’t touch.”
“Vov ninta, Diamond,” Ernst Mallin, who was a
slightly more advanced Fuzzy linguist, said. “We ought to
learn their language, instead of making them learn ours.”
“We ought to teach them our language, so they can speak to
anybody, and not just Fuzzyologists.”
“I deplore that term, Mr. Grego. The suffix is Greek, from
logos. Fuzzy is not a Greek word, and should not be combined with
it.”
“Oh, rubbish, Ernst. We’re not speaking Greek;
we’re speaking Lingua Terra. You know what Lingua Terra is?
An indiscriminate mixture of English, Spanish, Portuguese, and
Afrikaans, mostly English. And you know what English is? The result
of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon
barmaids in the Ninth Century Pre-Atomic, and no more legitimate
than any of the other results. If a little Greek suffix gets into a
mess like that, it’ll have to take care of itself the best
way it can. And you’d better learn to like the term, because
it’s your new title. Chief Fuzzyologist; fifteen percent
salary increase.”
Mallin gave one of his tight little smiles. “For that, I
believe I can condone a linguistic barbarism.”
Diamond seemed, he couldn’t be sure, to be wanting to know
why not touch; would it hurt?
“And how do you explain that he mustn’t spill ashes
on the floor, in his own language? What are the Fuzzy words for
‘floor,’ and ‘ashes’?” He leaned
forward and dropped the ash from his cigarette into the tray.
“Ashtray,” he said.
Diamond repeated it as well as he could. Then he strolled over
to where Mallin sat. Mallin regarded smoking as an act of infantile
oralism; his ashtray was empty.
“Asht’ay?” he asked. “Diamond vov
ninta?”
“You see. He knows that ashtray is a class-word, not just
the name of a specific object,” Mallin said. “And I
tried so hard to prove that Fuzzies couldn’t generalize. This
one is empty; let’s see how we can explain the difference. If
we give him the word ‘ashes,’ and then . . . ”
A bell began ringing softly; Diamond turned quickly to see what
it was. It was the bell for the private communication screen, and
only half a dozen people knew the call-combination. He rose and put
it on. Harry Steefer looked out of it.
“We found it, sir; ninth level down.” That was the
one below the first reported thefts and ransackings. “The
Fuzzies were penned in a small room that looks as though it had
been intended for a general toilet and washroom. It’s right
off a main hall, and somebody’s had an aircar in and out and
set it down recently. I’d say half a dozen Fuzzies for two or
three days.”
“Good. I want to see it. I want Diamond to see it, too.
Send somebody who knows where it is up to my private stage with a
car small enough to get into it.”
He blanked the screen and turned to Mallin. “You heard
that. Well, let’s all three of us go down and look at
it.”
Jack Holloway stopped at the head of the long escalator
and looked down into the garden, now double-lighted by Darius,
almost full, and Xerxes, past full and just rising. After a moment
he saw Ben Rainsford reclining in a lawn-chair, with Flora and
Fauna snuggled together on his lap. As he started toward them,
after descending, he thought they were all asleep. Then one of the
Fuzzies stirred and yeeked, and Rainsford turned his head.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Jack. Have you been here all evening?”
“Yes, all three of us,” Rainsford said. “I
think it’s time for Fuzzies to go to bed, now.”
“Ben, we just had a screen call from Company House. They
found where those Fuzzies had been kept, an empty room on one of
the unfinished floors. They showed us with a portable pickup; dark,
filthy place. The Company police are working on it for physical
evidence to corroborate Diamond’s story. And they’ve
put out a general want for those two Company rangers, Herckerd and
Novaes; kidnapping and suspicion of enslavement.”
“Who called you? Steefer?”
“Grego. He says we can count on him for anything.
He’s really sore about this.”
The Fuzzies had jumped to the ground and were trying to attract
his attention. Ben shifted in his chair, and began stuffing tobacco
into his pipe.
“Jack.” His voice was soft; he spoke hesitantly.
“I’ve been talking to the kids, out here, till they got
sleepy. They had a big time at Company House with Diamond. They say
he’s lonesome for other Fuzzies. They’d like him to
come here and visit them, and they’d like to go back and
visit him again.”
“Well, a Fuzzy would get lonesome by himself. It
didn’t take Little Fuzzy long to go and bring the rest of his
family into my place.”
“And they say that outside that he’s happy. They
told me about all the nice things he had, and the garden, and the
room that was fixed up for him. They say everybody’s good to
him, and Pappy Vic loves him. That’s what they call Grego;
Pappy Vic, just like they call us Pappy Ben and Pappy Jack.”
His lighter flared, showing a puzzled face above the pipe bowl.
“I can’t understand it, Jack. I thought Grego would
hate Fuzzies.”
“Why should he? The Fuzzies didn’t know anything
about the Company’s charter; they don’t know a Class-IV
planet from Nifflheim. He doesn’t even hate us; he’d
have done the same thing in our place. Ben, he’s willing to
call the war off; why can’t you?”
Rainsford puffed slowly, the smoke drifting and changing color
in the double moonlight.
“Do you honestly believe that Fuzzy wants to stay with
Grego?” he asked.
“It’d break Diamond’s heart if you took him
away from Pappy Vic. Ben, why don’t you invite Diamond over
to play with your two? You wouldn’t have to meet Grego; the
girl he has helping with Diamond could bring him.”
“Maybe I will. You’re on speaking terms with Grego;
why don’t you?”
“I will, tomorrow.” The Fuzzies hadn’t wanted
to play; they’d just wanted to be noticed. He picked Flora up
and gave her to Ben, then took Fauna in his own arms.
“Let’s go put them to bed, and then go inside. We have
a lot of things to do, in a hurry, and we need your
authorization.”
“Well, what?”
“Ahmed’s staying here; he and Harry Steefer and Ian
Ferguson and some others are having a conference tomorrow on this
case and on general Fuzzy protection. And I’m setting up an
Adoption Bureau; Judge Pendarvis’s wife’s agreed to
take charge of that. We need laws, and till there’s some kind
of a legislature, you have to do that by decree.”
“Well, all right. But there’s one thing, Jack. Just
because Grego’s with us on this doesn’t mean I’m
going to let him grab back control of this planet, the way he had
it before the Pendarvis Decisions. It took the Fuzzies to break the
Company’s monopoly; well, I’m going to see it stays
broken.”