Fuzzy Sapiens

by H. Beam Piper

  As soon as he had Jimenez off the screen he got Harry Steefer onto it.

  “Mallin says he knows nothing about it, and so does Juan Jimenez. I have the names of two men who were helping Jimenez on Beta... ”

  Steefer grinned. “Phil Novaes and Moses Herckerd; they both worked for the Survey Division. Herckerd’s a geologist, and Novaes is a hunter and wildlife man. They came in along with Jimenez the day before the trial, and then they vanished. A company aircar vanished along with them. My guess is they either went prospecting or down into the veldbeest country to do a little rustling. Want me to put out a wanted for them?”

  “Yes, do that, Chief, about the car. Too many company vehicles have been vanishing along with employees since this turned into a Class-IV planet. And I still want to know who brought that Fuzzy here—and why.”

  “We’re working on it,” Steefer said. “There are close to a hundred people in half a dozen divisions who might have been over on Beta, in Fuzzy country, and picked up a Fuzzy for a pet. Then, say the Fuzzy got away here in Company House. Whoever was responsible would keep quiet about it afterward. I’m trying to find out, but you said you wanted it done discreetly.”

  “As discreetly as possible; I want it done, though. And you might start a search on some of the unoccupied floors on the eighth and ninth levels down, for evidence of where the Fuzzy was kept before he got away.”

  Steefer nodded. “We haven’t any more men than we need,” he mentioned. “Well, I’ll do the best I can.”

  On past performance, Harry Steefer’s best was likely to be pretty good. He nodded, satisfied, and went back to work, trying to figure what sort of a cargo could be scraped up for the Terra-Baldur-Marduk liner City of Kapstaad, which would be getting in, in a week. He was still at it, calculating values on the Terra market against cubic feet of hold-space, when the door from the computer room opened behind him.

  He turned, to see Sandra Glenn in the doorway. Her red hair and lipstick and her green eyes were vivid against a face that was white as paper.

  “Mr. Grego.” It was a barely audible whisper, shocked and frightened. “Were you doing anything with the board?”

  “Good God, no!” He shoved his chair back and came to his feet. “I keep my ignorant fingers off that. What’s been done to it?”

  She stepped forward and aside and pointed. When he looked he saw the middle of the board a blaze of many-colored lights; not the random-looking pattern that would make sense only to a computer or a computerman, but a studied design, symmetrical and harmonious. A beautiful design. But God, Allah to Zeus, take your pick—only knew what gibbering nonsense it was putting into the trusting innards of that computer. Sandra was close to the screaming meemies; she had some idea of what kind of a computation would emerge.

  “That,” he said, “was our little friend Fuzzy fuzzy holloway. He came in here and saw the lights and found out they could be pulled out and shifted around, and he decided to make a real pretty thing. Weren’t you, or any of the other girls, watching him?”

  “Well, I had some work, and Gertrude was watching him, and then he lay down for a nap after lunch, and somebody called Gertrude to the screen... ”

  “All right. You’re not the first one to be fooled by a Fuzzy, and neither’s Gertrude. They fooled a guy named Grego pretty badly a few times. Has anything been done about this?”

  “No; I just saw it a moment ago... ”

  “All right. Call Joe Verganno. No; I’ll do it, his screen girl won’t try to argue with me. You go find that Fuzzy.”

  He crossed in two long steps to the communication screen and punched a combination from the card taped up beside it. The girl who answered started to say, “Master computerman’s office,” and then saw who she had on screen. “Why, Mr. Grego!”

  “Give me Verganno, quick.”

  Her hand moved; the screen exploded into a shatter of light and cleared with the computerman looking out of it.

  “Joe, hell’s to pay,” he said, before Verganno could speak. “Somebody shoved a lot of plugs into the input board here and bitched everything up. Here.” He reached under the screen and grabbed something that looked vaguely like a pistol, with a wide-angle lens where the muzzle should be, connected with the screen by a length of minicable. Aiming at the colored pattern on the board, he squeezed the trigger switch. Behind him, Joe Verganno’s voice howled:

  “Good God! Who did that?”

  “A Fuzzy. No, I’m not kidding; that’s right. You got it?”

  “Just a sec. Yeah, turn it off.” In the screen, Verganno grabbed a handphone. “General warning, all computer outlets. False data has been added affecting Executive One and Executive Two; no reliance is to be placed on computations from Executive One or Two until further notice. All right, Mr. Grego, I’ll be right up. You mean there’s a Fuzzy loose in your office?”

  “Yes, he’s been here all day. I don’t think,” he added, “that he’ll be here much longer.”

  One of the girls looked into the room from operation-center.

  “We can’t find him anywhere, Mr. Grego!” she almost wailed. “And it’s all my fault; I was supposed to be watching him!”

  “Hell with whose fault it is; find him. If it’s anybody’s fault it’s mine for bringing him here.”

  That was a fault that would be rectified directly. He saw Myra dithering in the door of her office.

  “Get Ernst Mallin. Tell him to come here and get that damned Fuzzy to Nifflheim out of here.”

  Argue about the legal aspects later; if Mallin wanted a Fuzzy to study, he could have one. Myra said something about better late than never, and retracted into her office. The door from the outside hall opened cautiously, and a couple of police and three mechanics from one of the aircar hangars entered; somebody’s had sense enough to call for reinforcements. One of the mechanics had a blanket over his arm; that was smart, too. The girls were searching the big room, and keeping watch on the doors. The hall door opened again, and Joe Verganno and one of his technicians came in with a hand lifter loaded with tools.

  “Anything been done to the board yet?” he asked.

  “Nifflheim, no! We’re not making a bad matter worse than it is. See if you can figure out what’s happening in the computer.”

  “A couple of my men are going to find that out down below. Lemme see this screen, now.” He went into the room, followed by the technician with the lifter. The technician said something obscenely blasphemous a moment later.

  He went back to the big room; through the open door of her office, he could hear Myra talking to somebody. “Come and get him, right away. No, we don’t know where he is... Eeeeeeh! Get away from me, you little monster! Mr. Grego, here he is!”

  “Grab him and hold him,” he ordered. “Go help her,” he told one of the cops. “Don’t hurt the Fuzzy; just get hold of him.”

  Then he turned and ran through the computer room almost colliding with Verganno’s helper, and ran into his own office. As he skidded around his desk, the Fuzzy dashed through the door of Myra’s office. The blanket the aircar mechanic had been carrying sailed after him, missing him. Myra, the cop, and the mechanic came running after it; the mechanic caught his feet in it and went down. The cop tripped over him, and Myra tripped over the cop. The cop was cursing. Myra was screaming. The mechanic, knocked breathless under both of them, was merely gasping. The Fuzzy landed on top of the desk, saw Grego, and took off from there, landing against his chest and throwing his arms around Grego’s neck. One of the girls, coming through from Myra’s office and avoiding the struggling heap in front of the door, whooped, “Come on, everybody! Mr. Grego’s caught him!”

  The cop, who had gotten to his feet, said, “I’ll take him, Mr. Grego,” and reached for the Fuzzy. The Fuzzy yeeked loudly, and clung tighter to Grego.

  “No, I’ll hold him. He isn’t afraid of me.” He sat down in his desk chair, holding the Fuzzy and stroking him. “It’s all right, kid. Nobody’s going to hurt you. And we’re going to take y
ou out of here, to a nice place where you can have fun, and people’ll be good to you... ”

  The words meant nothing to the Fuzzy; the voice, and the stroking hands, were comforting and reassuring. He snuggled closer, making happy little sounds. He was safe, now.

  “What are you gonna do with him, Mr. Grego?” the cop asked.

  Grego hugged the Fuzzy to him. “I’m not going to do anything with him. Look at him; he trusts me; he thinks I won’t let anybody do anything to him. Well, I won’t. I never let anybody who trusted me down yet, and be damned if I’ll start now, with a Fuzzy.”

  “You mean, you’re going to keep him?” Myra demanded. “After what he did?”

  “He didn’t mean to do anything bad, Myra. He just wanted to make a pretty thing with the lights. I’ll bet he’s as proud as anything of it. It’s just going to be up to me to see that he doesn’t get at anything else he can make trouble with.”

  “Dr. Mallin said he was coming right away. He’ll be disappointed.”

  “He’ll have to be disappointed, then. He can study the Fuzzy here. And get the building superintendent and the chief decorator; tell them I want them to start putting in a Fuzzy garden up on my terrace. Tell both of them to come up to my suite personally; tell them I want work started immediately, and I’ll authorize double time for overtime till it’s finished.”

  The Fuzzy wasn’t scared, anymore. Pappy Vic was taking care of him. And all these other Big Ones were listening to Pappy Vic; they wouldn’t hurt him or chase him anymore.

  “And call Tregaskis at Electronics Equipment; ask him what’s holding up those hearing-aids he was going to send me. And I’ll need somebody to help look after the kid. Sandra, do you do anything we can’t replace you at? Then you’ve just been appointed Fuzzy-Sitter in Chief. You start immediately; ten percent raise as of this morning.”

  Sandra was happy. “I’ll love that, Mr. Grego. What’s his name?”

  “Name? I don’t have a name for him, yet. Anybody have any ideas?”

  “I have a few!” Myra said savagely.

  “Call him Diamond,” Joe Verganno, in the doorway of the computer room, suggested.

  “Because he’s so small and precious? I like that. But don’t be a piker. Call him Sunstone.”

  “No; that was probably why the original Diamond was named, but I was thinking of calling him after a little dog that belonged to Sir Isaac Newton,” Verganno said. “It seems Diamond got hold of a manuscript Sir Isaac had just finished and was going to send to his publisher. Mostly math, all done with a quill pen, no carbons of course. So Diamond got this manuscript down on the floor and he tore hell out of it, which meant about three months’ work to do over. When Newton saw it, he just looked at it, and then sat down with the dog on his lap, and said, ‘Oh, Diamond, poor Diamond; how little you know what mischief you have done!’ ”

  “That’s a nice little story, Joe. It’s something I’ll want to remind myself of, now and then. Bet you’ll give a lot of reasons to, won’t you, Diamond?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JACK HOLLOWAY LEANED back in his chair, resting one ankle across the corner of the desk and propping the other foot on a partly open bottom drawer. If he had to work in an office, it was nice working in a real one, and it was a big improvement to be able to use his living quarters exclusively for living in again. The wide doors at either end of the arched prefab hut were open and a little breeze was drawing through, just enough to keep the place cool and carry off his pipe smoke. There wasn’t so much noise outside anymore; most of the new buildings were up now. He could hear a distant popping of small arms as the dozen and a half ZNPF recruits fired for qualification.

  A hundred yards away, at the other end, Sergeant Yorimitsu was monitoring screen-views transmitted in from a couple of cars up on patrol, and Lieutenant Ahmed Khadra and Sergeant Knabber were taking the fingerprints of a couple of Fuzzies that had come in an hour ago. Little Fuzzy, resting the point of his chopper-digger on the floor with his hands on the knob pommel, watched boredly. Fingerprinting was old stuff, now. The space between was mostly vacant; a few unoccupied desks and idle business machines scattered about. Some of these days they’d have a real office force, and then he’d be able to get out and move around among the natives, the way a Commissioner ought to.

  One thing, they had the Fuzzy Reservation question settled, at least for now. Ben Rainsford was closing everything north of the Little Blackwater and the East Fork of the Snake to settlement; that country all belonged to the Fuzzies and nobody else. Now if the Fuzzies could only be persuaded to stay there. And Gerd and Ruth and Pancho Ybarra and the Andrews girl were here, now, and set up. Maybe they’d begin to find out a few of the things they had to know.

  The stamp machine banged twice, putting numbers on the ID discs for the two newcomers. Khadra brought the discs back and squatted to put them on the two Fuzzies.

  “How many is that, now, Ahmed?” he called down the hut.

  “These are Fifty-eight and Fifty-nine,” Khadra called back. “Deduct three, two for Rainsford’s, and one for Goldilocks.”

  Poor little Goldilocks; she’d have loved having an ID disc. She’d been so proud of the little jingle-charm Ruth had given her, just before she’d been killed. Fifty-six Fuzzies; getting quite a population here.

  The communication screen buzzed. He flipped a switch on the edge of his desk and dropped his feet to the floor, turning. It was Ben Rainsford, and he was furiously angry about something. His red whiskers bristled as though electrically charged, and his blue eyes were almost shooting sparks.

  “Jack,” he began indignantly, “I’ve just found out that Victor Grego has a Fuzzy cooped up at Company House. What’s more, he’s had the effrontery to have Leslie Coombes apply to Judge Pendarvis to have him appointed guardian.”

  That surprised him slightly. To date, Grego hadn’t exactly established himself as one of the Friends of Little Fuzzy.

  “How did he get him, do you know?”

  Rainsford gobbled in rage for a moment, then said:

  “He claims he found this Fuzzy in his apartment, night before last, up at the top of Company House. Now isn’t that one Nifflheim of a story; does he think anybody’s silly enough to believe that?”

  “Well, it is a funny place for a Fuzzy to be,” he admitted. “You suppose it might be one that was live-trapped for Mallin to study, before the trial? Ruth says there were only four, and they were all turned loose the night of the Lurkin business.”

  “I don’t know. All I know is what Gus Brannhard told me that Pendarvis’s secretary told him, that Pendarvis told her, that Coombes told Pendarvis.” That sounded pretty roundabout, but he supposed that was the way Colonial Governors had to get things. “Gus says Coombes claims Grego says he doesn’t know where the Fuzzy came from or how he got into Company House. That is probably a thumping big lie.”

  “It’s probably the truth. Victor Grego’s too smart to lie to his lawyer, and Coombes is too smart to lie to the Chief Justice. Judges are funny about that; they want statements veridicated, and after what you saw happen to Mallin in court, you don’t suppose any of that crowd would try to lie under veridication.”

  Rainsford snorted scornfully. Grego was lying; if the veridicator backed him up, the veridicator was as big a liar as he was.

  “Well, I don’t care how he got the Fuzzy; what I’m concerned with is what he’s doing to him,” Rainsford replied. “And Ernst Mallin; Coombes admitted to Pendarvis that Mallin was helping Grego look after the Fuzzy. Look after him! They’re probably torturing the poor thing, Grego and that sadistic quack head-shrinker. Jack, you’ve got to get that Fuzzy away from Grego!”

  “Oh, I doubt that. Grego wouldn’t mistreat the Fuzzy, and if he was, he wouldn’t apply for papers of guardianship and make himself legally responsible. What do you want me to do?”

  “Well, I told Gus to get a court order; Gus told me you were the Native Commissioner, that it was your job to act to protect the Fuzzy...”
<
br />   Gus didn’t think the Fuzzy needed any protecting; he thought Grego was treating him well, and ought to be allowed to keep him. So he’d passed the buck. He nodded.

  “All right. I’m coming in to Mallorysport now. You’re three hours behind us here, and if I use Gerd’s boat I can make it in three hours. I’ll be at Government House at 1530, your time. I’ll bring either Pancho or Ruth along. You have Gus meet us when we get in. And I’ll want to borrow your Flora and Fauna.”

  “What for?”

  “Interpreters, and to interrogate Grego’s Fuzzy. And I want them instead of any of our crowd here because they may have to testify in court and they won’t have to travel back and forth. And tell Gus to get all the papers we’ll need to crash Company House with. This is the first time anything like this has come up. We’re going to give it the full treatment.”

  He blanked the screen, scribbled on a notepad and tore off the sheet, then looked around. Ko-Ko and Cinderella and Mamma Fuzzy and a couple of the Constabulary Fuzzies were working on a jigsaw puzzle on the floor near his desk.

  “Ko-Ko,” he called. “Do-bizzo.” When Ko-Ko got to his feet and came over, he handed him the note. “Give to Unka Panko,” he said. “Make run fast.”

  VICTOR GREGO HAD Leslie Coombes on screen; the lawyer was saying:

  “The Chief Justice is not hostile. Hospitable, I’d say. I think he’s trying to be careful not to establish any precedent that might embarrass the Native Affairs Commission later. He was rather curious about how the Fuzzy got into Company House, though.”

  “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.”