“Tell him that makes two of us. So am I.”
“Have Steefer’s men found out anything yet?”
“Not that he’s reported. I’m going to talk to him shortly. The way things are, he’s spread out pretty thin.”
“It would help a lot if we could explain that. Would you be willing to make a veridicated statement of what you know?”
“With adequate safeguards. Not for anybody to pump me about business matters.”
“Naturally. How about Mallin and Jimenez?”
“They will if they want to keep on working for the company.” It surprised him that Coombes would even ask such a question. “You think it’s necessary?”
“I think it very advisable. Rainsford will certainly oppose your application; possibly Holloway. How about getting a statement from the Fuzzy?”
“Mallin and I tried, last evening. I don’t know any of the language, and he only has a few tapes he got from Lieutenant Ybarra at the time of the trial. We have hearing aids, now. It’s a hell of a language; sounds like Old Terran Japanese more than anything else. The Fuzzy was trying to tell us something, but we couldn’t make out what. We have it all on tape.
“And we showed him audiovisual portraits of those two Survey rangers who were helping Jimenez. He made both of them; I doubt if he likes them very much. We’re looking for them. We are also looking for a Company scout car that vanished along with them.”
“Vehicle theft’s a felony; that will do to hold and interrogate them on,” Coombes mentioned. “Well, shall I see you for cocktails?”
“Yes. You’d better call me, say every half-hour. If Rainsford gets nasty about this, I may need you before then.”
After that, he called Chief Steefer. Steefer greeted him with:
“Mr. Grego, how red is my face?”
“Not noticeably so. Should it be?”
Steefer swore. “Mr. Grego, I want your authorization to make an inch-by-inch search of this whole building.”
“Good God, Harry!” He was thinking of how many millions on millions of inches that was. “Have you found something?”
“Not about the Fuzzy, but — You have no idea what’s been going on here, on these unoccupied levels. We found places where people had been camping for weeks. We found one place where there must have been a nonstop party going on for a month; there was almost a lifter scow full of empty bottles. And we found a tea pad.”
“Yes? What was that like?”
“Nothing much; lot of mattresses thrown around, and the floor covered with butts — mostly chuckleweed or opiate-impregnated tobacco. I don’t think that was any of our people; everybody and his girlfriend in Mallorysport seems to have been sneaking in here. We have men at all the landing stages, of course, but there aren’t enough to…” His face hardened. “I’ve just gone slack on the job. That’s the only explanation I can make.”
“We’ve all gone slack, Harry.” He thought of the mess in his pantry; that was symptomatic. “You know, we may owe the Fuzzies a debt of gratitude, if what’s happened to us will make us start acting like a business concern instead of a bunch of kids in fairyland. All right; go ahead. Finding out how the Fuzzy got in here is still of top importance, but clean house generally while you’re at it and see that it stays cleaned up.”
Then he called Juan Jimenez at Science Center. Jimenez had gotten a new suit since yesterday, less casual, more executive. His public face had been done over too, to emphasize efficiency rather than agreeableness.
“Good morning, Victor.” He stumbled a little over the first name, which was a prerogative of a division chief but to which he was not yet accustomed.
“Good morning, Juan. I know you haven’t forgotten we’re lunching together, but I wondered if you could make it a little early. There are a couple of things we want to go over first. In twenty minutes?”
“Easily; sooner than that if you wish.”
“As soon as you can make it. Just come in the back way.”
Then he made another screen call. This was an outside call, for which he had to look up the combination. When the screen cleared, a thin-faced, elderly man with white hair looked out of it. He wore a gray work smock, the breast pockets full of small tools and calibrating instruments. His name was Henry Stenson, and he might have been called an instrument maker, just as Benvenuto Cellini might have been called a jeweler.
“Why, Mr. Grego,” he greeted, in pleased surprise, or reasonable facsimile. “I haven’t heard from you for some time.”
“No. Not since that gadget you planted in my globe stopped broadcasting. Incidentally, the globe’s about thirty seconds slow, and both moons are impossibly out of synchronization. We had to stop it to take out that thing you built into it, and none of my people has your fine touch.”
Stenson grimaced slightly. “I suppose you know for whom I did that?”
“Well, I’m not certain whether you’re Navy Intelligence, like our former employee, Ruth Ortheris, or Colonial Office Investigative Bureau; but that’s minor. Whoever, they’re to be congratulated on an excellent operative. You know, I could get quite nasty about that; planting radio-transmitted microphones in people’s offices is a felony. I don’t intend doing anything, but I definitely want no more of it. You can understand my attitude.”
“Well, naturally, Mr. Grego. You know,” he added, “I thought that thing was detection proof.”
“Instrumentally, yes. My people were awed when they saw the detection baffles on that thing. Have you patented them? If you have, we owe you some money, because we’re copying them. But nothing is proof against physical search, and we practically tore my office apart as soon as it became evident that anything said in it was known almost immediately on Xerxes Base.”
Stenson nodded gravely. “You didn’t call me just to tell me you’d caught me out? I knew that as soon as the radio went dead.”
“No. I want you to put the globe back in synchronization, as soon as possible. And there’s another thing. You helped the people on Xerxes design those ultrasonic hearing aids, didn’t you? Well, could you attack the problem from the other side, Mr. Stenson? I mean, design a little self-powered hand-phone, small enough for a Fuzzy to carry, that would transform the Fuzzy’s voice to audible frequencies?”
Stenson was silent for all of five seconds. “Yes, of course, Mr. Grego. If anything, it should be simpler. Of course, teaching the Fuzzy to carry and use it would be a problem, but not in my line of work.”
“Well, try and get an experimental model done as soon as possible. I have a Fuzzy available to try it. And if there’s anything patentable about it, get it protected. Talk to Leslie Coombes. This may be of commercial value to both of us.”
“You think there’ll be a demand?” Stenson asked. “How much do you think a Fuzzy would pay for one?”
“I think the Native Affairs Commission would pay ten to fifteen sols apiece for them, and I’m sure our electronics plant could turn them out to sell profitably for that.”
Somebody had entered the office; in one of the strategically placed mirrors, he saw that it was Juan Jimenez keeping out of the field of the screen-pickup. He nodded to him and went on talking to Stenson, who would be around the next morning to look at the globe. When they finished the conversation and blanked screens, he motioned Jimenez to his deskside chair.
“How much of that did you hear?” he asked.
“Well, I heard that white-haired old Iscariot say he’d be around tomorrow to fix the globe…”
“Henry Stenson is no Iscariot, Juan. He is a Terran Federation secret agent, and the Federation is to be congratulated on his loyalty and ability. Now that I know just what he is, and now that he knows I know it, we can do business on a friendly basis of mutual respect and distrust. He’s going to work up a gadget by which the Fuzzies can speak audibly to us.
“Now, about Fuzzies,” he continued. “We’re sure that your two helpers, Herckerd and Novaes, brought this Fuzzy of mine here to Mallorysport. You say they didn’t
have him when they came back with you?”
“Absolutely not, Mr. Grego.”
“Would you veridicate that?”
Jimenez didn’t want to, that was plain. But he did want to work for the Company, especially now that he had just been promoted to chief of Scientific Study and Research. He was as close to the top of the Company House hierarchy as he could get, and he wanted to stay there.
“Yes, of course. I’d hoped, though, that my word would be good enough…”
“Nobody’s word’s going to be good enough. I’m going to veridicate what I know about it, myself; so’s Ernst Mallin. There will be quite a few veridicated statements taken in the next few days. Now, I want you to meet this Fuzzy. See if you know him, or if he knows you.”
They went out to the private lift and up to the penthouse. In the living room, Sandra Glenn was lounging in his favorite chair, listening to something from a record player with an earphone, and smoking. As they entered, she shut off the player and closed her eyes. “Sojosso-aki; you give me,” she said. “Aki-jossoso; I give you. So-noho-aki dokko; you tell me how many.”
They tiptoed past her and out onto the terrace. Ernst Mallin was sitting on a low hassock, with his hearing aid on; Diamond was squatting in front of him, tying knots in a length of twine. An audiovisual recorder was set up to cover both of them. Diamond sprang to his feet and ran to meet them, crying out: “Pappy Vic! Heeta!” and holding up the cord to show the knots he had been learning to tie.
“Hello, Diamond. Those are very fine knots. You are a smart Fuzzy. How do I say that, Ernst?” Mallin said something, haltingly; he repeated it, patting the Fuzzy’s head. “Now, how do I ask him if he’s ever seen this Big One with me before?”
Mallin asked the question himself. Diamond said something; he caught “Vov,” a couple of times. That was negative.
“He doesn’t know you, Juan. What I’m sure happened is that Herckerd and Novaes came in with you, just before the trial, then went back to Beta, probably in the aircar they stole from us, and picked up this Fuzzy. We won’t know why till we catch them and question them.” He turned to Mallin. “Get anything more out of him?”
Mallin shook his head. “I’m picking up a few more words, but I still can’t be sure. He says two Hagga, the ones we showed him the films of, brought him here. I think they brought some other Fuzzies with him; I can’t be sure. There doesn’t seem to be any way of pluralizing in his language. He says they were tosh-ki gashta, bad people. They put him in a bad place.”
“We’ll put them in a bad place. Penitentiary place. I don’t suppose you can find out how long ago this was? During or right after the trial, I suppose.”
Sandra Glenn came out onto the terrace.
“Mr. Grego; Miss Fallada’s on screen. She says representatives of all the press-services are here. They’ve heard about Diamond; they want the story, and pictures of him.”
“That was all we needed! All right, tell her to have a policeman show them up. I’m afraid our lunch’ll have to wait till we get through with them, Juan.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
COMING OUT OF the lift, Jack Holloway advanced to let the others follow and halted, looking at the three men waiting to meet them in the foyer of Victor Grego’s apartment. Two he had met already: Ernst Mallin, under uniformly unpleasant circumstances culminating in the murder of Goldilocks, the beating of Leonard Kellogg, and the shooting of Kurt Borch, at his camp, and Leslie Coombes, first at George Lunt’s complaint court at Beta Fifteen and then in Judge Pendarvis’s court during the Fuzzy Trial. As the trial had dragged out, the frigid politeness with which he and Coombes had first met had thawed into something like mutual cordiality.
But, except for news-screen appearances, he had never seen Victor Grego before. Enemy generals rarely met while the fighting was going on. It struck him that, meeting Grego for the first time as a complete stranger, he would have instantly liked him. He had to remember that Grego was the man who had wanted to treat Fuzzies as fur-bearing animals and exterminate the whole race. Well, Grego hadn’t known any Fuzzies, then. It was easy enough to plan atrocities against verbal labels.
They paused for an instant, ten feet apart, Mallin and Coombes flanking Grego, and Gus Brannhard, Pancho Ybarra, Ahmed Khadra, and Flora and Fauna behind him, like two gangs waiting for somebody to pull a gun. Then Grego stepped forward, extending his hand.
“Mr. Holloway? Happy to meet you.” They shook hands. “You’ve met Mr. Coombes and Dr. Mallin. It was good of you to warn us you were coming.”
Ben Rainsford hadn’t thought so. He’d wanted them to descend on Company House by surprise, probably with drawn pistols, and catch Grego red-handed at whatever villainy he was up to. Brannhard and Coombes were shaking hands, so were Ybarra and Mallin. He introduced Ahmed Khadra.
“And these other people are Flora and Fauna,” he added. “I brought them along to meet Diamond.”
Grego stopped, and they came forward. He said, “Hello, Flora; hello, Fauna. Aki-gazza heeta-so.”
The accent was reasonably good, but he had to think between words. The two Fuzzies replied politely. Grego started to say that Diamond was out on the terrace, then laughed when he saw the Fuzzy peeping through the door from the living room. An instant later, Diamond saw Flora and Fauna and rushed forward, and they ran to meet him, all jabbering excitedly. A tall girl with red hair entered behind him; Grego introduced her as Sandra Glenn. And behind her came Juan Jimenez; regular Old Home Week.
“Shall we go in the living room, or out on the terrace?” Grego asked. “I’d advise the terrace; the living room might be a little crowded, with three Fuzzies getting acquainted. Sometimes it seems a trifle crowded with just one Fuzzy.”
They went through the living room; the quiet and tasteful luxury of its furnishings had suffered somewhat. There was an audiovisual recorder set up, and an extra reading screen and an audiovisual screen and a tape player; they looked more like office equipment than domestic furnishings. Evidently Fuzzies did the same things to living rooms everywhere. And another piece of furniture, surprising in any living room; a thing like an old-fashioned electric chair, with a bright metal helmet and a big translucent globe mounted above it. A polyencephalographic veridicator; Grego wasn’t expecting anybody to take his unsupported word about anything. They all affected not to notice it, and passed out onto the terrace.
This had evidently been Grego’s private garden; now it seemed to be mostly the Fuzzy’s. An awful lot of men must have been working awfully hard up here recently. There was a lot of playground equipment — swing, slide, skeletal construction of jointed pipe for climbing-bars. A little Fuzzy-sized drinking fountain, and a bathing pool. Grego seemed to have just thought of everything he’d like if he were a Fuzzy and gotten it. Diamond led Flora and Fauna to the slide, ran up the ladder, and came shooting down. They both ran after him and tried it, too, and then ran up to try it again. Have to get some playground stuff like that for the camp. Bet Flora and Fauna would start pestering Pappy Ben to get them some things like this, as soon as they got home.
According to plan, Ahmed Khadra and Pancho Ybarra stayed on the terrace with the Fuzzies; he and Gus and Grego and Mallin and Coombes went back inside. For a while, they chatted about Fuzzies in general and Diamond in particular. One thing was obvious: Grego liked Fuzzies, and was devoted to his own.
The Fuzzies had done him all the damage they could. Now he could be friends with them.
“I suppose you want to hear how he turned up here? If you don’t mind, I’d prefer veridicating what I have to tell you, so there won’t be any argument about it. Do you want to test the machine first, Mr. Brannhard?”
“It would be a good idea. Jack, you want to be the test witness?”
“If you do the questioning.”
A veridicator operated by identifying and registering the distinctive electromagnetic brainwave pattern involved in suppression of a true statement and substitution of a false one. You didn’t have to do that aloud; a
mere intention to falsify would turn the blue light in the globe red, and even a yogi adept couldn’t control his thoughts enough to prevent it. He took his place in the chair, and Brannhard clipped on the electrodes and lowered the helmet over his head.
“What is your name?”
He answered that truthfully, and Gus nodded and asked him his place of residence.
“How old are you?”
He lied ten years off his age. The veridicator caught that at once; Gus wanted to know how old he really was.
“Seventy-four: I was born in 580. I couldn’t even estimate how much to allow for on time-differential for hyperspace trips.”
“That’s the truth,” Gus said. “I didn’t think you were much over sixty.”
Then he asked about the planets he’d been on. Jack named them, including one he’d never been within fifty light-years of, and the veridicator caught that. He ended in a crimson blaze of mendacity by claiming to be a teetotaler, a Gandhian pacifist, and the illegitimate son of a Satanist archbishop. Brannhard was satisfied; the veridicator worked. He unfastened Jack, and Grego took his place.
The globe stayed blue all through Grego’s account of how he had found Diamond in his bedroom; it was the same story they had already gotten from newscasts while coming in from Beta. Then Grego gave place to Mallin, and Mallin to Jimenez. They were all uninvolved in bringing the Fuzzy to Mallorysport, and the veridicator supported them. They all agreed that Diamond had recognized Herckerd and Novaes as the men who had brought him and possibly other Fuzzies there.
“What do you think?” Coombes asked, when they were all back in their chairs. “Do you think they brought those Fuzzies in to sell as pets?”
“I can’t see any other reason. I’ve been expecting something like this. Why would they bring them to Company House, though? I don’t quite see the sense in that.”
“I do.” Grego was angry about something. What he was angry about emerged immediately; he spoke bitterly about what had been going on among the unoccupied rooms of Company House. “Chief Steefer’s on the warpath, starting with his own department. We have wants out for Herckerd and Novaes, on a stolen-vehicle charge…”
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