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

passenger showed him the "R" voucher, but that steward had long-since switched
over to an inbound ship at some intermediate port.

There was a way, of course, to dig out the information from the other end, on
Terra, but it would take a year just to get the inquiry back to his source and
receive a reply. Easier, really, to just knock them in the head one at a time
here in Mallorysport and steal their ticket copies-if they hadn't already been
tossed in the trash converter.

It might not amount to anything, but Ingermann made a stenomemophone note of
it, anyway. If any one of these three people began to take an interest in
things within his sphere of influence, it might warrant some further digging.

Chapter 7

When Major Lunt returned to his office, there was a slender gentleman sitting
at his desk-with his feet propped up on it-and puffing on the short pipe that
had yellowed the corners of his white moustache.

At the sound of boots scraping behind him, he bounded to his feet and turned.
"Hi, George," he said.

"Good morning, Jack. What's up?"

Holloway leaned on the corner of the desk. "Well, I need to get something
worked up on paper for the mining reserve that we 're leasing to the
Zarathustra Company up there in the Fuzzy Reservation."

When they were just getting this thing together, Holloway hadn't thought of
himself as the Commissioner of Native Affairs, and he hadn't thought of the
ZNPF as his private police force, although it was. There was a job to be done
looking out for the Fuzzies' interests and it was too important to entrust to
anyone else. In the early days he and George Lunt had shared a makeshift hut
and called it an office, communicating by shouting back and forth from their
desks. Now they had to hike through a hundred-twenty-foot stretch of desks and
office machines and roboclerks and human secretaries to get to each other's
offices.

"When I put this deal together in my head," Jack said, "Ben Rainsford was very
busy being the new Governor General and very busy hating Victor Grego and the
CZC as the unscrupulous enemy. Now that I've finally got them doing business
with each other, the royalties we'll get from the Company for mining that rich
patch of sunstones Gerd and I found in Fuzzy territory just might be enough to
keep everything afloat until after the constitutional elections. The
government can't levy taxes till then. In the meantime, I want to get the
mining operation underway."

"Might be more than we can chew, Jack," George said. "I'm stretched pretty
thin, now. We'll have to monitor that operation mighty close; make sure nobody
goes sneaking off on his own inside the Reservation. Have to keep track of