Little Fuzzy

by Henry Beam Piper

This time Jack cursed, not Kellogg but himself.

  “I am a senile old dotard! Good Lord, I know colonial law; I’ve been skating on the edge of it on more planets than you’re years old. And I never thought of that; why, of course it would. Where are you now, with the Company, by the way?”

  “Out, but I couldn’t care less. I have enough in the bank for the trip back to Terra, not counting what I can raise on my boat and some other things. Xeno-naturalists don’t need to worry about finding jobs. There’s Ben’s outfit, for instance. And, brother, when I get back to Terra, what I’ll spill about this deal!”

  “If you get back. If you don’t have an accident before you get on the ship.” He thought for a moment. “Know anything about geology?”

  “Why, some; I have to work with fossils. I’m as much a paleontologist as a zoologist. Why?”

  “How’d you like to stay here with me and hunt fossil jellyfish for a while? We won’t make twice as much, together, as I’m making now, but you can look one way while I’m looking the other, and we may both stay alive longer that way.”

  “You mean that, Jack?”

  “I said it, didn’t I?”

  Van Riebeek rose and held out his hand; Jack came around the table and shook it. Then he reached back and picked up his belt, putting it on.

  “Better put yours on, too, partner. Borch is probably the only one we’ll need a gun for, but—”

  Van Riebeek buckled on his belt, then drew his pistol and worked the slide to load the chamber. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “Well, we’re going to try to handle it legally. Fact is, I’m even going to call the cops.”

  He punched out a combination on the communication screen. It lighted and opened a window into the constabulary post. The sergeant who looked out of it recognized him and grinned.

  “Hi, Jack. How’s the family?” he asked. “I’m coming up, one of these evenings, to see them.”

  “You can see some now.” Ko-Ko and Goldilocks and Cinderella were coming out of the hall from the bedroom; he gathered them up and put them on the table. The sergeant was fascinated. Then he must have noticed that both Jack and Gerd were wearing their guns in the house. His eyes narrowed slightly.

  “You got problems, Jack?” he asked.

  “Little ones; they may grow, though. I have some guests here who have outstayed their welcome. For the record, better make it that I have squatters I want evicted. If there were a couple of blue uniforms around, maybe it might save me the price of a few cartridges.”

  “I read you. George was mentioning that you might regret inviting that gang to camp on you.” He picked up a handphone. “Calderon to Car Three,” he said. “Do you read me, Three? Well, Jack Holloway’s got a little squatter trouble. Yeah; that’s it. He’s ordering them off his grant, and he thinks they might try to give him an argument. Yeah, sure, Peace Lovin’ Jack Holloway, that’s him. Well, go chase his squatters for him, and if they give you anything about being Company big wheels, we don’t care what kind of wheels they are, just so’s they start rolling.” He replaced the phone. “Look for them in about an hour, Jack.”

  “Why, thanks, Phil. Drop in some evening when you can hang up your gun and stay awhile.”

  He blanked the screen and began punching again. This time he got a girl, and then the Company construction boss at Red Hill.

  “Oh, hello, Jack; is Dr. Kellogg comfortable?”

  “Not very. He’s moving out this afternoon. I wish you’d have your gang come up with those scows and get that stuff out of my back yard.”

  “Well, he told us he was staying for a couple of weeks.”

  “He got his mind changed for him. He’s to be off my land by sunset.”

  The Company man looked troubled. “Jack, you haven’t been having trouble with Dr. Kellogg, have you?” he asked. “He’s a big man with the Company.”

  “That’s what he tells me. You’ll still have to come and get that stuff, though.”

  He blanked the screen. “You know,” he said, “I think it would be no more than fair to let Kellogg in on this. What’s his screen combination?”

  Gerd supplied it, and he punched it out. One of those tricky special Company combinations. Kurt Borch appeared in the screen immediately.

  “I want to talk to Kellogg.”

  “Doctor Kellogg is very busy, at present.”

  “He’s going to be a damned sight busier; this is moving day. The whole gang of you have till eighteen hundred to get off my grant.”

  Borch was shoved aside, and Kellogg appeared. “What’s this nonsense?” he demanded angrily.

  “You’re ordered to move. You want to know why? I can let Gerd van Riebeek talk to you; I think there are a few things he’s forgotten to call you.”

  “You can’t order us out like this. Why, you gave us permission—”

  “Permission cancelled. I’ve called Mike Hennen in Red Hill; he’s sending his scows back for the stuff he brought here. Lieutenant Lunt will have a couple of troopers here, too. I’ll expect you to have your personal things aboard your airboat when they arrive.”

  He blanked the screen while Kellogg was trying to tell him that it was all a misunderstanding.

  “I think that’s everything. It’s quite a while till sundown,” he added, “but I move for suspension of rules while we pour a small libation to sprinkle our new partnership. Then we can go outside and observe the enemy.”

  There was no observable enemy action when they went out and sat down on the bench by the kitchen door. Kellogg would be screening Mike Hennen and the constabulary post for verification, and there would be a lot of gathering up and packing to do. Finally, Kurt Borch emerged with a contragravity lifter piled with boxes and luggage, and Jimenez walking beside to steady the load. Jimenez climbed up onto the airboat and Borch floated the load up to him and then went back into the huts. This was repeated several times. In the meantime, Kellogg and Mallin seemed to be having some sort of exchange of recriminations in front. Ruth Ortheris came out, carrying a briefcase, and sat down on the edge of a table under the awning.

  Neither of them had been watching the Fuzzies, until they saw one of them start down the path toward the footbridge, a glint of silver at the throat identifying Goldilocks.

  “Look at that fool kid; you stay put, Gerd, and I’ll bring her back.”

  He started down the path; by the time he had reached the bridge, Goldilocks was across and had vanished behind one of the airjeeps parked in front of the Kellogg camp. When he was across and within twenty feet of the vehicle, he heard a sound across and within twenty feet of the vehicle, he heard a sound he had never heard before—a shrill, thin shriek, like a file on saw teeth. At the same time, Ruth’s voice screamed.

  “Don’t! Leonard, stop that!”

  As he ran around the jeep, the shrieking broke off suddenly. Goldilocks was on the ground, her fur reddened. Kellogg stood over her, one foot raised. He was wearing white shoes, and they were both spotted with blood. He stamped the foot down on the little bleeding body, and then Jack was within reach of him, and something crunched under the fist he drove into Kellogg’s face. Kellogg staggered and tried to raise his hands; he made a strangled noise, and for an instant the idiotic thought crossed Jack’s mind that he was trying to say, “Now, please don’t misunderstand me.” He caught Kellogg’s shirt front in his left hand, and punched him again in the face, and again, and again. He didn’t know how many times he punched Kellogg before he heard Ruth Ortheris’ voice:

  “Jack! Watch out! Behind you!”

  He let go of Kellogg’s shirt and jumped aside, turning and reaching for his gun. Kurt Borch, twenty feet away, had a pistol drawn and pointed at him.

  His first shot went off as soon as the pistol was clear of the holster. He fired the second while it was still recoiling; there was a spot of red on Borch’s shirt that gave him an aiming point for the third. Borch dropped the pistol he hadn’t been able to fire, and started folding at the knees and then at
the waist. He went down in a heap on his face.

  Behind him, Gerd van Riebeek’s voice was saying, “Hold it, all of you; get your hands up. You, too, Kellogg.”

  Kellogg, who had fallen, pushed himself erect. Blood was gushing from his nose, and he tried to stanch it on the sleeve of his jacket. As he stumbled toward his companions, he blundered into Ruth Ortheris, who pushed him angrily away from her. Then she went to the little crushed body, dropping to her knees beside it and touching it. The silver charm bell on the neck chain jingled faintly. Ruth began to cry.

  Juan Jimenez had climbed down from the airboat; he was looking at the body of Kurt Borch in horror.

  “You killed him!” he accused. A moment later, he changed that to “murdered.” Then he started to run toward the living hut.

  Gerd van Riebeek fired a bullet into the ground ahead of him, bringing him up short.

  “You’ll stop the next one, Juan,” he said. “Go help Dr. Kellogg; he got himself hurt.”

  “Call the constabulary,” Mallin was saying. “Ruth, you go; they won’t shoot at you.”

  “Don’t bother. I called them. Remember?”

  Jimenez had gotten a wad of handkerchief tissue out of his pocket and was trying to stop his superior’s nosebleed. Through it, Kellogg was trying to tell Mallin that he hadn’t been able to help it.

  “The little beast attacked me; it cut me with that spear it was carrying.”

  Ruth Ortheris looked up. The other Fuzzies were with her by the body of Goldilocks; they must have come as soon as they had heard the screaming.

  “She came up to him and pulled at his trouser leg, the way they all do when they want to attract your attention,” she said. “She wanted him to look at her new jingle.” Her voice broke, and it was a moment before she could recover it. “And he kicked her, and then stamped her to death.”

  “Ruth, keep your mouth shut!” Mallin ordered. “The thing attacked Leonard; it might have given him a serious wound.”

  “It did!” Still holding the wad of tissue to his nose with one hand, Kellogg pulled up his trouser leg with the other and showed a scar on his shin. It looked like a briar scratch. “You saw it yourself.”

  “Yes, I saw it. I saw you kick her and jump on her. And all she wanted was to show you her new jingle.”

  Jack was beginning to regret that he hadn’t shot Kellogg as soon as he saw what was going on. The other Fuzzies had been trying to get Goldilocks onto her feet. When they realized that it was no use, they let the body down again and crouched in a circle around it, making soft, lamenting sounds.

  “Well, when the constabulary get here, you keep quiet,” Mallin was saying. “Let me do the talking.”

  “Intimidating witnesses, Mallin?” Gerd inquired. “Don’t you know everybody’ll have to testify at the constabulary post under veridication? And you’re drawing pay for being a psychologist, too.” Then he saw some of the Fuzzies raise their heads and look toward the southeastern horizon. “Here come the cops, now.”

  However, it was Ben Rainsford’s airjeep, with a zebralope carcass lashed along one side. It circled the Kellogg camp and then let down quickly; Rainsford jumped out as soon as it was grounded, his pistol drawn.

  “What happened, Jack?” he asked, then glanced around, from Goldilocks to Kellogg to Borch to the pistol beside Borch’s body. “I get it. Last time anybody pulled a gun on you, they called it suicide.”

  “That’s what this was, more or less. You have a movie camera in your jeep? Well, get some shots of Borch, and some of Goldilocks. Then stand by, and if the Fuzzies start doing anything different, get it all. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

  Rainsford looked puzzled, but he holstered his pistol and went back to his jeep, returning with a camera. Mallin began insisting that, as a licensed M.D., he had a right to treat Kellogg’s injuries. Gerd van Riebeek followed him into the living hut for a first-aid kit. They were just emerging, van Riebeek’s automatic in the small of Mallin’s back, when a constabulary car grounded beside Rainsford’s airjeep. It wasn’t Car Three. George Lunt jumped out, unsnapping the flap of his holster, while Ahmed Khadra was talking into the radio.

  “What’s happened, Jack? Why didn’t you wait till we got here?”

  “This maniac assaulted me and murdered that man over there!” Kellogg began vociferating.

  “Is your name Jack too?” Lunt demanded.

  “My name’s Leonard Kellogg, and I’m a chief of division with the Company—”

  “Then keep quiet till I ask you something. Ahmed, call the post; get Knabber and Yorimitsu, with investigative equipment, and find out what’s tying up Car Three.”

  Mallin had opened the first-aid kit by now; Gerd, on seeing the constabulary, had holstered his pistol. Kellogg, still holding the sodden tissues to his nose, was wanting to know what there was to investigate.

  “There’s the murderer; you have him red-handed. Why don’t you arrest him?”

  “Jack, let’s get over where we can watch these people without having to listen to them,” Lunt said. He glanced toward the body of Goldilocks. “That happen first?”

  “Watch out, Lieutenant! He still has his pistol!” Mallin shouted warningly.

  They went over and sat down on the contragravity-field generator housing one of the rented airjeeps. Jack started with Gerd van Riebeek’s visit immediately after noon.

  “Yes, I thought of that angle myself,” Lunt said disgustedly. “I didn’t think of it till this morning, though, and I didn’t think things would blow up as fast as this. Hell, I just didn’t think! Well, go on.”

  He interrupted a little later to ask: “Kellogg was stamping on the Fuzzy when you hit him. You were trying to stop him?”

  “That’s right. You can veridicate me on that if you want to.”

  “I will; I’ll veridicate this whole damn gang. And this guy Borch had his heater out when you turned around? Nothing to it, Jack. We’ll have to have some kind of a hearing, but it’s just plain self-defense. Think any of this gang will tell the truth here, without taking them in and putting them under veridication?”

  “Ruth Ortheris will, I think.”

  “Send her over here, will you.”

  She was still with the Fuzzies, and Ben Rainsford was standing beside her, his camera ready. The Fuzzies were still swaying and yeeking plaintively. She nodded and rose without speaking, going over to where Lunt waited.

  “Just what did happen, Jack?” Rainsford wanted to know. “And whose side is he on?” He nodded toward van Riebeek, standing guard over Kellogg and Mallin, his thumbs in his pistol belt.

  “Ours. He’s quit the Company.”

  Just as he was finishing, Car Three put in an appearance; he had to tell the same story over again. The area in front of the Kellogg camp was getting congested; he hoped Mike Hennen’s labor gang would stay away for a while. Lunt talked to van Riebeek when he had finished with Ruth, and then with Jimenez and Mallin and Kellogg. Then he and one of the men from Car Three came over to where Jack and Rainsford were standing. Gerd van Riebeek joined them just as Lunt was saying:

  “Jack, Kellogg’s made a murder complaint against you. I told him it was self-defense, but he wouldn’t listen. So, according to the book, I have to arrest you.”

  “All right.” He unbuckled his gun and handed it over. “Now, George, I herewith make complaint and accusation against Leonard Kellogg, charging him with the unlawful and unjustified killing of a sapient being, to wit, an aboriginal native of the planet of Zarathustra commonly known as Goldilocks.”

  Lunt looked at the small battered body and the six mourners around it.

  “But, Jack, they aren’t legally sapient beings.”

  “There is no such thing. A sapient being is a being on the mental level of sapience, not a being that has been declared sapient.”

  “Fuzzies are sapient beings,” Rainsford said. “That’s the opinion of a qualified xeno-naturalist.”

  “Two of them,” Gerd van Riebeek said
. “That is the body of a sapient being. There’s the man who killed her. Go ahead, Lieutenant, make your pinch.”

  “Hey! Wait a minute!”

  The Fuzzies were rising, sliding their chopper-diggers under the body of Goldilocks and lifting it on the steel shafts. Ben Rainsford was aiming his camera as Cinderella picked up her sister’s weapon and followed, carrying it; the others carried the body toward the far corner of the clearing, away from the camp. Rainsford kept just behind them, pausing to photograph and then hurrying to keep up with them.

  They set the body down. Mike and Mitzi and Cinderella began digging; the others scattered to hunt for stones. Coming up behind them, George Lunt took off his beret and stood holding it in both hands; he bowed his head as the grass-wrapped body was placed in the little grave and covered.

  Then, when the cairn was finished, he replaced it, drew his pistol and checked the chamber.

  “That does it, Jack,” he said. “I am now going to arrest Leonard Kellogg for the murder of a sapient being.”

  Chapter8

  Jack Holloway had been out on bail before, but never for quite so much. It was almost worth it, though, to see Leslie Coombes’s eyes widen and Mohammed Ali O’Brien’s jaw drop when he dumped the bag of sunstones, blazing with the heat of the day and of his body, on George Lunt’s magisterial bench and invited George to pick out twenty-five thousand sols’ worth. Especially after the production Coombes had made of posting Kellogg’s bail with one of those precertified Company checks.

  He looked at the whisky bottle in his hand, and then reached into the cupboard for another one. One for Gus Brannhard, and one for the rest of them. There was a widespread belief that that was why Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard was practicing sporadic law out here in the boon docks of a boon-dock planet, defending gun fighters and veldbeest rustlers. It wasn’t. Nobody on Zarathustra knew the reason, but it wasn’t whisky. Whisky was only the weapon with which Gus Brannhard fought off the memory of the reason.

  He was in the biggest chair in the living room, which was none too ample for him; a mountain of a man with tousled gray-brown hair, his broad face masked in a tangle of gray-brown beard. He wore a faded and grimy bush jacket with clips of rifle cartridges on the breast, no shirt and a torn undershirt over a shag of gray-brown chest hair. Between the bottoms of his shorts and the tops of his ragged hose and muddy boots, his legs were covered with hair. Baby Fuzzy was sitting on his head, and Mamma Fuzzy was on his lap. Mike and Mitzi sat one on either knee. The Fuzzies had taken instantly to Gus. Bet they thought he was a Big Fuzzy.