"Tuning, William - Terro-Human - Fuzzy 04 - Fuzzy Bones 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuning William)

"The way I see it," Rainsford continued, "We should establish a central records and dispatch agency right here in Mallorysport-a Colonial Investigation Bureau-and put all our law enforcement records and mission requests through it. That way, if the CZC swears out a warrant for some veldbeest herder who stole a company aircar on Beta, you won't have to send your own men on a ten-hour round trip to get them where the crook is. The Bureau can just put out a want on him to the local agency-Constabulary, ZNPF, whatever. Someone can bring the miscreant along when they come over to Alpha Continent on other business. You see?"

"And," Grego said, nodding agreement, "if someone holds up a planter or a prospector on Beta, then hightails it for Junktown, the Constabulary can have our people here pick him up and hold him. Yes, I can see where that would be more efficient-now that we have law enforcement almost everywhere on the planet."

"Exactly," Rainsford said. "But it won't work unless all the agencies involved agree to co-operate. The big advantage, as I see it, will be to get the officers who are fooling around in offices out of administrative work and into the field. Why, that ought to give us a twenty percent increase right there in people who are actually out chasing crooks- without hiring any more people or paying any more salaries."

"I'm convinced," Grego said. "What do you want me to do about this, Bennett?"

Rainsford snatched his pipe and tobacco pouch from his jacket pocket and reared back on the couch. "Why, talk to Harry Steefer about it-see what he thinks. I've talked to Colonel Ferguson, and I'll talk to George Lunt when I 'm over on Beta in a week or so. I've already talked to Captain Khadra about it. It was his idea, by the way. We'll set up a meeting with all the force commandants. Ought to have Gus Brannhard in on it, too, I suppose."

"Luncheon would be a good time," Grego said. "I 'd like to attend, myself, if that's all right."

"Why, of course, Victor," Rainsford said. "I was hoping you'd say that. I may be the Colonial Governor General, but that's only been for a year. If both of us tell all of them it's a good idea, I'm sure they'll all go for it."

After Ben Rainsford had left with Flora and Fauna, Diamond yawned and stretched in the foyer, then climbed up into Grego's lap. "What you talk with Unka Ben, Pappy Vic?" he asked.

"Business, Diamond," Grego answered. "About ways to do a better job of catching bad Big Ones."

"Tosh-Id-Hagga?" Diamond asked, "like the Big Ones who brought me here from the big woods?"

"That's right," Grego said. "It's an awfully big job."

Diamond squirmed around until he was comfortable on Grego's ample lap. "Not so bad-the way it work out," he said sleepily.

Grego thought about the way Diamond had been kidnapped by Herckerd and Novaes and held prisoner until he escaped. "So-noho~ald dovov tosk-ki," Grego said. You tell me how not bad.

Diamond yawned, again. "If not come here, no find Pappy Vic," he said. "No find you hoksu-hagga- wonderful big one."

Grego scratched the back of Diamond's head, between his ears. In a moment he set down his brandy snifter and brushed something out of the corner of his left eye.

Chapter 9

They were in Jack's living room, and it looked almost exactly as it had the first night Gerd van Riebeek had seen it, when he and Ruth and Juan Jimenez had come out to see the Fuzzies, without the least idea that the validity of the Company's charter would be involved.

All the office equipment and supplies and files that had cluttered Jack Holloway's home right after the Pendarvis Decisions were long since cleared out into the Administration Office buildings. Now there was just the sturdy, comfortable furniture, which Jack had built himself, the damnthing and bush-goblin and veldbeest skins on the floor, and the gun-rack with a tangle of bedding under it where his own family of Fuzzies slept. The other Fuzzies didn't intrude here-they understood it was private to Pappy Jack's Fuzzies.

There were only four people present-soon to be joined by another: Jack and the van Riebeeks as before; and Lynne Andrews, slender and blonde and sitting on the couch where Juan Jimenez and Ben Rainsford had sat that first night. Jack sat in the armchair at his table-desk, trying to keep Baby Fuzzy, on his lap, from climbing up to sit on his head.

"We 're getting closer, but there's an enormous amount of information we don't have yet," Gerd was saying. "The Fuzzy infant mortality rate is running something like ninety percent. The NFMp hormone inhibits normal development of the fetus every time-" He pointed to the example of Baby Fuzzy. "-except when the NFMp production cycle is out of phase with the mother's fertility cycle."

"How many viable infants are there in Fuzzy-shelter, now?" Jack asked.

"Seven, "Ruth answered. "Since we set up the lab, we've had sixty-two deliveries. Fifty-five of those have been stillbirths, live births that die within hours, or preemies who aren't strong enough to stay alive, even in incubators. The mothers with healthy babies have been kept here, so we can study their kids-even if there aren't enough of them for a decent sample group."

Jack nodded as he arranged the information in his mind. "Good-actually, not good. What I mean is that it's good you're retaining the Fuzzies with viable offspring, instead of letting them disappear into the adoption pool. Do you have an infant experimental group getting large doses of hokfusine, as well as the adult sample?"

"Yes," Lynne said, "but it's too soon yet to measure any differences in development." Lynne had been shanghaied from the hospital in Mallorysport, where her practicing M.D. was in pediatrics. She still hadn't completely shaken off the notion of equating Fuzzies with human children about one year of age; they were much the same size. Some of them, of course, were older than she was, but the present state-of-the-art Fuzzyology didn't include any method of age-determination. And Fuzzies had a very cavalier attitude about numbers: they counted to five on the fingers of one hand, using the other hand to count with. Then they counted past that to a "hand of hands"-twenty-five. After that it was "many," and somewhere beyond that it was simply "many-many." "Many-many summers" of age wasn't very satisfying to a scientist trying to set up research records.

"Hell, Jack," Gerd said. "We're not even real sure what the gestation period is for Fuzzies, much less what their growth rates and mental development schedules are. We have some adolescent Fuzzies. We have some pubescent Fuzzies. And we have adult Fuzzies. But we have no Fuzzies who can give us precise elapsed-time information about their own life cycles. We'll just have to skull it out for ourselves by observation of experimental groups. We've got a long job ahead of us, here."