“YOU THINK FOUR-FIFTY a carat would be all right?”
Victor Grego was asking.
Bennett Rainsford picked up the lighter from the table in front
of him and carefully relit a pipe that didn’t need
relighting. Now that he’d come to know him, he found that he
liked Victor Grego. But he still had to watch him. Grego was the
Charterless Zarathustra Company, and the company was definitely not
a philanthropic institution.
“Sounds all right to me,” Jack Holloway agreed.
“You didn’t pay me any more than that when I was
prospecting, and I had to dig them myself.”
“But four-fifty, Jack. The Terra market price is over a
thousand sols a carat.”
“This isn’t Terra, Ben. Terra’s five hundred
light-years, six months ship-time, away. I think Mr. Grego’s
making us a good offer. All we need to do is bank the money; the
company’ll do the rest.”
“Well, how much do you think the Fuzzies will get out of
it, a month?”
Grego shrugged. “I haven’t seen it, myself.
I’ll take Jack’s word for it. What do you
think?”
“Well, it depends on how much equipment you use, and what
kind. If it’s anything like the diggings I used to work,
you’ll get about a sunstone to the ton.”
“We can move and process an awful lot of tons of flint in
a month, and from Jack’s description I’d say
we’ll be working that deposit for longer than any of
us’ll be around. You know, Governor, instead of the Fuzzies
getting handouts from the Government, they’ll be paying the
Government’s bills before long.”
And that would have to be watched, too; it mustn’t be
allowed to become a source of political graft. Inside a month, now,
the elections for delegates to the Constitutional Convention would
be held. Make sure the right men were elected, men who would write
a Constitution which would safeguard the Fuzzies’ rights for
all time.
Victor Grego, he was beginning to think, could be counted on to
help in that.
LESLIE COOMBES HELD his glass while Gus Brannhard poured from
the bottle, and said, quickly, “That’s enough,
please,” when about fifty or sixty cc of whisky had been
added to the ice. He filled the glass the rest of the way with
soda, himself.
“And Hugo Ingermann,” he said, disgustedly,
“is completely innocent.”
“Well, innocent of the Fuzzy business and the attempt on
the company gem-vault,” Brannhard conceded, pouring into his
own glass. When Gus mixed a highball, he always left out both the
ice and the soda. “It’s probably the only thing he ever
was innocent of, in his whole life. But he isn’t getting away
scot-free.” Brannhard took a drink from his glass, and
Coombes shuddered inwardly; the man must have a collapsium-plated
digestive tract. “While we were interrogating this one and
that one about the Fuzzy-sunstone business, we got a lot of
evidence, all veridicated, to connect him with Thaxter’s
shylocking and Bowlby’s call-girl agency and Heenan’s
prize-fight fixing and Laporte’s strong-arm mob. I’m
after him with a shotgun; I’m just filling the air all around
him with indictments, and some of them are sure to hit. And even if
I can’t get him convicted of anything, he’ll be
disbarred, that’s for sure. And this Planetary Prosperity
Party of his is catching fire, leaking radiation, blowing up and
falling apart all around. Everybody’s calling it the
Fuzzy-Fagin Party, and everybody who had anything to do with it is
getting out as fast as he can.”
“If we work together, we’ll get a good Constitution
adopted and a good Legislature elected. Or can we expect Governor
Rainsford to agree with Victor Grego on what a ‘good’
Constitution and a ‘good’ Legislature are?”
“We can,” Brannhard said. “We only have a few
months before the off-planet land-grabbers begin coming in, and Ben
Rainsford’s as much worried about that as Victor Grego.
Leslie, if you go into court and make claim to all the unseated
land the company has mapped and surveyed, I am instructed by the
Governor not to oppose you. What does that sound like?”
“That sounds like getting back about everything we lost,
with the sunstone lease on top of it. I am going to propose the
election of Little Fuzzy as an honorary member of the board of
directors, with the title of Company Benefactor Number
One.”
LITTLE FUZZY CLIMBED up on Pappy Jack’s lap, squirmed a
little, and cuddled himself comfortably. He was happy to be back.
He had had so much fun in the Big House Place, he and Mamma Fuzzy
and Ko-Ko and Cinderella and Syndrome and Id and Ned Kelly and Dr.
Crippen and Calamity Jane. They had met so many Fuzzies who had
been here and gone away to live with Big Ones of their own, and
they had a place where they all met and played together. And he had
met the two lovers, now they had names of their own, Pierrot and
Columbine, and he had met Diamond, about whom Unka Panko had told
him, and Diamond’s Pappy Vic.
It had been to meet Diamond that Unka Panko and Auntie Lynne had
taken them all in the sky-thing to the Big House Place, because
Diamond had found out how to talk like a Big One without using one
of the talk-things, and Diamond had taught all of them how to do
it. It had been hard, very hard; Diamond was very smart to have
found it out for himself, but after a while they had all found that
they could do it, too. And now Mike and Mitzi and Complex and
Superego and Dillinger and Lizzie Borden had gone to the Big House
Place with Pappy Gerd and Mummy Woof, and they would learn to talk
so that the Big Ones could hear them. And Baby Fuzzy was learning
from Mamma Fuzzy, and tomorrow they would all start teaching the
others here at Hoksu-Mitto.
“Pretty soon, all Fuzzy learn to talk like Big
Ones,” he said. “Not need talk-thing, Big One not need
ear-thing; just talk, like I do now.”
“That’s right,” Pappy Jack said. “Big
Ones, Fuzzies, all make talk together. All be good
friends.”
“And Fuzzy learn how to help Big Ones? Many things Fuzzy
can do to help, if Big Ones tell what.”
“Best thing Fuzzy do to help Big Ones is just be
Fuzzies,” Pappy Jack told him.
But what else could they be? Fuzzies were what they were, just
as Big Ones were Big Ones.
“And beside,” Pappy Jack went on talking, “the
Fuzzies are all rich, now.”
“Rich? What is? Something good?”
“Well, most people think it is. When you’re rich,
you have money.”
“Is something good to eat?” he asked. “Like
Estee-fee?”
He wondered why Pappy Jack laughed. Maybe he was just laughing
because he was happy. Or maybe Pappy Jack thought it was funny that
he didn’t know what money was.
There were still so many things Fuzzies had to learn.
“YOU THINK FOUR-FIFTY a carat would be all right?”
Victor Grego was asking.
Bennett Rainsford picked up the lighter from the table in front
of him and carefully relit a pipe that didn’t need
relighting. Now that he’d come to know him, he found that he
liked Victor Grego. But he still had to watch him. Grego was the
Charterless Zarathustra Company, and the company was definitely not
a philanthropic institution.
“Sounds all right to me,” Jack Holloway agreed.
“You didn’t pay me any more than that when I was
prospecting, and I had to dig them myself.”
“But four-fifty, Jack. The Terra market price is over a
thousand sols a carat.”
“This isn’t Terra, Ben. Terra’s five hundred
light-years, six months ship-time, away. I think Mr. Grego’s
making us a good offer. All we need to do is bank the money; the
company’ll do the rest.”
“Well, how much do you think the Fuzzies will get out of
it, a month?”
Grego shrugged. “I haven’t seen it, myself.
I’ll take Jack’s word for it. What do you
think?”
“Well, it depends on how much equipment you use, and what
kind. If it’s anything like the diggings I used to work,
you’ll get about a sunstone to the ton.”
“We can move and process an awful lot of tons of flint in
a month, and from Jack’s description I’d say
we’ll be working that deposit for longer than any of
us’ll be around. You know, Governor, instead of the Fuzzies
getting handouts from the Government, they’ll be paying the
Government’s bills before long.”
And that would have to be watched, too; it mustn’t be
allowed to become a source of political graft. Inside a month, now,
the elections for delegates to the Constitutional Convention would
be held. Make sure the right men were elected, men who would write
a Constitution which would safeguard the Fuzzies’ rights for
all time.
Victor Grego, he was beginning to think, could be counted on to
help in that.
LESLIE COOMBES HELD his glass while Gus Brannhard poured from
the bottle, and said, quickly, “That’s enough,
please,” when about fifty or sixty cc of whisky had been
added to the ice. He filled the glass the rest of the way with
soda, himself.
“And Hugo Ingermann,” he said, disgustedly,
“is completely innocent.”
“Well, innocent of the Fuzzy business and the attempt on
the company gem-vault,” Brannhard conceded, pouring into his
own glass. When Gus mixed a highball, he always left out both the
ice and the soda. “It’s probably the only thing he ever
was innocent of, in his whole life. But he isn’t getting away
scot-free.” Brannhard took a drink from his glass, and
Coombes shuddered inwardly; the man must have a collapsium-plated
digestive tract. “While we were interrogating this one and
that one about the Fuzzy-sunstone business, we got a lot of
evidence, all veridicated, to connect him with Thaxter’s
shylocking and Bowlby’s call-girl agency and Heenan’s
prize-fight fixing and Laporte’s strong-arm mob. I’m
after him with a shotgun; I’m just filling the air all around
him with indictments, and some of them are sure to hit. And even if
I can’t get him convicted of anything, he’ll be
disbarred, that’s for sure. And this Planetary Prosperity
Party of his is catching fire, leaking radiation, blowing up and
falling apart all around. Everybody’s calling it the
Fuzzy-Fagin Party, and everybody who had anything to do with it is
getting out as fast as he can.”
“If we work together, we’ll get a good Constitution
adopted and a good Legislature elected. Or can we expect Governor
Rainsford to agree with Victor Grego on what a ‘good’
Constitution and a ‘good’ Legislature are?”
“We can,” Brannhard said. “We only have a few
months before the off-planet land-grabbers begin coming in, and Ben
Rainsford’s as much worried about that as Victor Grego.
Leslie, if you go into court and make claim to all the unseated
land the company has mapped and surveyed, I am instructed by the
Governor not to oppose you. What does that sound like?”
“That sounds like getting back about everything we lost,
with the sunstone lease on top of it. I am going to propose the
election of Little Fuzzy as an honorary member of the board of
directors, with the title of Company Benefactor Number
One.”
LITTLE FUZZY CLIMBED up on Pappy Jack’s lap, squirmed a
little, and cuddled himself comfortably. He was happy to be back.
He had had so much fun in the Big House Place, he and Mamma Fuzzy
and Ko-Ko and Cinderella and Syndrome and Id and Ned Kelly and Dr.
Crippen and Calamity Jane. They had met so many Fuzzies who had
been here and gone away to live with Big Ones of their own, and
they had a place where they all met and played together. And he had
met the two lovers, now they had names of their own, Pierrot and
Columbine, and he had met Diamond, about whom Unka Panko had told
him, and Diamond’s Pappy Vic.
It had been to meet Diamond that Unka Panko and Auntie Lynne had
taken them all in the sky-thing to the Big House Place, because
Diamond had found out how to talk like a Big One without using one
of the talk-things, and Diamond had taught all of them how to do
it. It had been hard, very hard; Diamond was very smart to have
found it out for himself, but after a while they had all found that
they could do it, too. And now Mike and Mitzi and Complex and
Superego and Dillinger and Lizzie Borden had gone to the Big House
Place with Pappy Gerd and Mummy Woof, and they would learn to talk
so that the Big Ones could hear them. And Baby Fuzzy was learning
from Mamma Fuzzy, and tomorrow they would all start teaching the
others here at Hoksu-Mitto.
“Pretty soon, all Fuzzy learn to talk like Big
Ones,” he said. “Not need talk-thing, Big One not need
ear-thing; just talk, like I do now.”
“That’s right,” Pappy Jack said. “Big
Ones, Fuzzies, all make talk together. All be good
friends.”
“And Fuzzy learn how to help Big Ones? Many things Fuzzy
can do to help, if Big Ones tell what.”
“Best thing Fuzzy do to help Big Ones is just be
Fuzzies,” Pappy Jack told him.
But what else could they be? Fuzzies were what they were, just
as Big Ones were Big Ones.
“And beside,” Pappy Jack went on talking, “the
Fuzzies are all rich, now.”
“Rich? What is? Something good?”
“Well, most people think it is. When you’re rich,
you have money.”
“Is something good to eat?” he asked. “Like
Estee-fee?”
He wondered why Pappy Jack laughed. Maybe he was just laughing
because he was happy. Or maybe Pappy Jack thought it was funny that
he didn’t know what money was.
There were still so many things Fuzzies had to learn.