Fuzzy Sapiens

by H. Beam Piper

  “Any kind of smuggling you can think of,” Khadra said. “Hot sunstones. Narcotics. Or Fuzzies.”

  Rainsford and Sandra Glenn were approaching; Sandra carried Diamond, Pierrot and Columbine ran beside her, and Flora and Fauna were trundling the ball ahead of them. He wanted to talk to Rainsford about this. They needed more laws, to prohibit shipping Fuzzies off-planet; nobody’d thought of that possibility before. And talk to Grego; the Company controlled the only existing egress from the planet.

  LYNNE ANDREWS STRAIGHTENED and removed the binocular loop and laid it down, blinking. The others, four men and two women in lab-smocks, were pushing aside the spotlights and magnifiers and cameras on their swinging arms and laying down instruments.

  “That thing wouldn’t have lived thirty seconds, even if it hadn’t been premature,” one man said. “And it doesn’t add a thing to what we don’t know about Fuzzy embryology.” He was an embryologist, human-type, himself. “I have dissected over five hundred aborted fetuses and I never saw one in worse shape than that.”

  “It was so tiny,” one of the women said. She was an obstetrician. “I can’t believe that that’s human six-months equivalent.”

  “Well, I can,” somebody else said. “I know what a young Fuzzy looks like; I spent a lot of time with Jack Holloway’s Baby Fuzzy, during the trial. And I don’t suppose a fertilized Fuzzy ovum is much different from one of ours. Between the two, there has to be a regular progressive development. I say this one is two-thirds developed. Misdeveloped, I should say.”

  “Misdeveloped is correct, Doctor. Have you any idea why this one misdeveloped as it did?”

  “No, Doctor, I haven’t.”

  “They come from northern Beta; that country’s never been more than air-scouted. Does anybody know what radioactivity conditions are, up there? I’ve seen pictures of worse things than this from nuclear bomb radiations on Terra during and after the Third and Fourth World Wars, at the beginning of the First Federation.”

  “The country hasn’t been explored, but it’s been scanned. Any natural radioactivity strong enough to do that would be detectable from Xerxes.”

  “Oh, Nifflheim; that fetus could have been conceived on a patch of pitchblende no bigger than this table... ”

  “Well, couldn’t it be chemical? Something in the pregnant female’s diet?” the other woman asked.

  “The Thaladomide Babies!” somebody exclaimed. “First Century, between the Second and Third World Wars. That was due to chemicals taken orally by pregnant women.”

  “All right; let’s get the biochemists in on this, then.”

  “Chris Hoenveld,” somebody else said. “It’s not too late to call him now.”

  FUZZIES DIDN’T HAVE Cocktail Hour; that was for the Big Ones, to sit together and make Big One talk. Fuzzies just came stringing in before dinner, more or less interested in food depending on how the hunting had been, and after they ate they romped and played until they were tired, and then sat in groups, talking idly until they became sleepy.

  In the woods, it had not been like that. When the sun began to go to bed, they had found safe places, where the big animals couldn’t get at them, and they had snuggled together and slept, one staying awake all the time. But here the Big Ones kept the animals away, and killed them with thunder-things when they came too close, and it was safe. And the Big Ones had things that made light even when the sky was dark, and there were places where it was always bright as day. So here, there was more fun, because there was less danger, and many new things to talk about. This was the Hoksu-Mitto, the Wonderful Place.

  And today, they were even happier, because today Pappy Jack had come back.

  Little Fuzzy got out his pipe, the new one Pappy Jack had brought from the Big House Place, and stuffed it with tobacco, and got out the little fire-maker. Some of the Fuzzies around him, who had just come in from the woods, were frightened. They were not used to fire; when fire happened in the woods, it was bad. That was wild fire, though. The Big Ones had tamed fire, and if a person were careful not to touch it or let it get loose, fire was nothing to be afraid of.

  “We go other places, and all have Big Ones, tomorrow?” one asked. “Big Ones for us, like Pappy Jack for you?”

  “Not tomorrow. Not next day. Day after that.” He held up three fingers.

  “Then go in high-up-thing, to place like this. Big Ones come, make talk. You like Big One, Big One like you, you go with Big One, you live in Big One place.”

  “Nice place, like this?”

  “Nice place. Not like this. Different place.”

  “Not want to go. Nice place here, much fun.”

  “Then you not go. Pappy Jack not make you go. You want to go, Pappy Jack find nice Big One for you, be good to you.”

  “Suppose not good. Suppose bad to us?”

  “Then Pappy Jack come, Pappy Jorj, Unka Ahmed, Pappy Ge’hd, Unka Panko; make much trouble for bad Big One, bang, bang, bang!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MYRA WAS VEXED. “It’s Mr. Dunbar. The chief chemist at Synthetic Foods,” she added, as though he didn’t know that. “He is here himself; he has something he insists he must give to you personally.”

  “That’s what I told him to do, Myra. Send him in.”

  Malcolm Dunbar pushed through the door from Myra’s office with an open fiberboard carton under his arm. That had probably helped vex Myra; Dunbar was an executive, and executives ought not to carry their own parcels; it was infra dignitatem. He set it on the corner of the desk.

  “Here it is, Mr. Grego; this is the first batch. We just finished the chemical tests on it. Identical with both the Navy stuff and the stuff we imported ourselves.”

  He rose and went around the desk, reaching into the carton and taking out a light brown slab, breaking off a corner and tasting it. It had the same slightly rancid, slightly oily and slightly sweetish flavor as the regular product. It tasted as though it had been compounded according to the best scientific principles of dietetics, by somebody who thought there was something sinful about eating for pleasure. He yielded to no one in his admiration of Fuzzy fuzzy holloway, but anybody who liked this stuff was nuts.

  “You’re sure it’s safe?”

  Dunbar was outraged. “My God, would I bring it here for you to feed your Fuzzy if I didn’t know it was? In the first place, it’s made strictly according to Terran Federation Armed Forces specifications. The bulk-matter is pure wheat farina, the same as Argentine Syntho-Foods and Odin Dietetics use. The rest is chemically pure synthetic nutrients. We have a man at the plant who used to be a chemical engineer at Odin Dietetics; he checked all the processes and they’re identical. And we tried it on all the standard lab animals; Terran hamsters and Thoran tilbras, and then on Freyan kholphs and Terran rhesus monkeys. The kholphs,” he footnoted, “didn’t like it worth a damn. It harmed none of them. And I ate a cake of the damned stuff myself, and it took a couple of hours and a pint of bourbon to get rid of the taste,” the martyr to science added.

  “All right. I will accept that it is fit for Fuzzy consumption. Fortunately, the whole Fuzzy population of Mallorysport, all five of them, are up on my terrace now. Let’s go.”

  Ben Rainsford’s Flora and Fauna, and Mrs. Pendarvis’s Pierrot and Columbine were with Diamond in the Fuzzy-room. Outside on the terrace it was raw and rainy, one of Mallorysport’s rare unpleasant days. They had a lot of colored triangular tiles on the floor, and were making patterns with them. Sandra Glenn was watching them with one eye and reading with the other. They all sprang to their feet and began yeeking, then remembered the Fuzzy phones on their belts, whipped them out, and began shouting, “Heyo, Pappy Vic!” He’d tried to explain that he was Diamond’s Pappy Vic, and just Uncle Vic to the rest, but they refused to make the distinction. Pappy to one Fuzzy, pappy to all.

  “Pappy Vic give Estee-fee, “ he told them. “New estefee, very good.” He set the box down and got out one of the slabs, breaking and distributing it. The Fuzzies had nice manners
; the two most recent guests, Pierrot and Columbine, served first, held theirs till the others were served. Then they all nibbled together.

  They each took one nibble and stopped.

  “Not good,” Diamond declared. “Not Estee-fee. Want Estee-fee. “

  “Bad,” Flora pronounced it, spitting out what she had in her mouth and carrying the rest to the trash-bin. “Estee-fee good; this not.”

  “Estee-fee for look; not Estee-fee in mouth,” Pierrot said.

  “What are they saying?” Dunbar wanted to know.

  “They say it isn’t Extee-Three at all, and they want to know how dumb I am to think it is.”

  “But look, Mr. Grego; this is Extee-Three. It is chemically identical with the stuff they’ve been eating all along.”

  “The Fuzzies aren’t chemists. They only know what it tastes like, and it doesn’t taste like Extee-Three to them.”

  “It tastes like Extee-Three to me... ”

  “You,” Sandra told him, “are not a Fuzzy.” She switched languages and explained that Pappy Vic and the other Big One really thought it was Estee-fee.

  “Pappy Vic feel bad,” he told them. “Pappy Vic want to give real Estee-fee.”

  He gathered up the offending carton and carried it into the kitchenette, going to one of the cupboards and getting out a tin of the genuine article. Only a dozen left; he’d have to start rationing it himself. He cut it into six pieces, put by a piece for Diamond after the company was gone, and distributed the rest.

  Dunbar was still arguing with Sandra that the stuff he’d brought was chemically Extee-Three.

  “All right, Malcolm, I believe you. The point is, these Fuzzies don’t give a hoot on Nifflheim what the chemical composition is.” He looked at the label on the tin. “The man you have at the plant worked for Odin Dietetics, didn’t he? Well, this stuff was made on Terra by Argentine Syntho-Foods. What do they use for cereal bulk-matter at Odin Dietetics, some native grain?”

  “No, introduced Terran wheat, and Argentine uses wheat from the pampas and from the Mississippi Valley in North America.”

  “Different soil-chemicals, different bacteria; hell, man, look at tobacco. We’ve introduced it on every planet we’ve ever colonized, and no tobacco tastes just like the tobacco from anywhere else.”

  “Do we have any Odin Extee-Three?” Sandra asked.

  “Smart girl; a triple A for good thinking. Do we?”

  “Yes. The stuff we import’s Argentine, and the stuff the Navy has on Xerxes is Odin.”

  “And the Fuzzies can’t tell the difference? No, of course they can’t. Jack Holloway bought his Extee-Three from us and gave it to his Fuzzies, and when they got on Xerxes, the Navy fed them theirs. What did you use in this stuff, local wheat?”

  “Introduced wheat; seed came from South America. Grown on Gamma Continent.”

  “Well, Mal, we’re going to find out what’s the matter with this stuff. Real all-out study, tear it apart molecule by molecule. Who’s our best biochemist?”

  “Hoenveld.”

  “Well, put him to work on it. There’s some difference, and the Fuzzies know it. You say this stuff’s Government specification standard?”

  “It meets the Government tests.”

  “Well; Napier has a lot of Extee-Three on Xerxes he won’t release because it’s regulation required emergency stores. We’ll see if we can trade this for it... ”

  “WELL, YOU GOOFED on it somehow!” the superintendent of the synthetics plant was insisting. “The Fuzzies eat regular Extee-Three; they’re crazy about it. If they won’t eat your stuff, it isn’t Extee-Three.”

  “Listen, Abe, goddamit, I know it is Extee-Three! We followed the formula exactly. Ask Joe Vespi, here; he used to work at Odin Dietetics... ”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Fitch; every step of the process is exactly as I remember it from Odin—”

  “As you remembered it!” Fitch pounced triumphantly. “What did you remember wrong?”

  “Why, nothing, Mr. Fitch. Look, here’s the schematic. The farina, that’s the bulk-matter, comes in here, to these pressure-cookers... ”

  DR. JAN CHRISTIAAN Hoenveld was annoyed, and because he was an eminent scientist and Victor Grego was only a businessman, he was at no pains to hide it.

  “Mr. Grego, do you realize how much work is piled up on me now? Dr. Andrews and Dr. Reynier and Dr. Dosihara are at me to find out whether there is any biochemical cause of premature and defective births among Fuzzies. And now you want me to drop that and find out why one batch of Extee-Three tastes differently to a Fuzzy from another. There is a gunsmith here in town who has a sign in his shop, There are only twenty four hours in a day and there is only one of me. I have often considered copying that sign in my laboratory.” He sat frowning into his screen from Science Center, across the city, for a moment. “Mr. Grego, has it occurred to you or any of your master-minds at Synthetics that difference may be in the Fuzzies’ taste-perception?”

  “It has occurred to me that Fuzzies must have a sense of taste that would shame the most famous wine-taster in the Galaxy. But I question if it is more accurate than your chemical analysis. If those Fuzzies tasted a difference between our Extee-Three and Argentine SynthoFood’s, the difference must be detectable. I don’t know anybody better able to detect it than you, Doctor; that’s why I’m asking you to find out what it is.”

  Dr. Jan Christiaan Hoenveld said, “Hunnh!” ungraciously. Flattered, and didn’t want to show it.

  “Well, I’ll do what I can, Mr. Grego... ”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I MUST BE very nice to Dr. Ernst Mallin. I must be very nice to Dr. Ernst Mallin. I must be... Ruth van Riebeek repeated it silently, as though writing it a hundred times on a mental blackboard, as an airboat lost altitude and came slanting down across the city, past the high crag of Company House, with the lower, broader, butte of Central Courts Building in the distance to the left. Ahead, the sanatorium area drew closer, wide parklands scattered with low white buildings. She hadn’t seen Mallin since the trial, and even then she had avoided speaking to him as much as possible. Part of it was because of the things he had done with the four Fuzzies; Pancho Ybarra said she also had a guilt-complex because of the way she’d fifth columned the company. Rubbish! That had been intelligence work; that had been why she’d taken a job with the CZC in the first place. She had nothing at all to feel guilty about...

  “I must be very nice to Dr. Ernst Mallin,” she said, aloud. “And I’m going to have one Nifflheim of a time doing it.”

  “So am I,” her husband, standing beside her, said. “He’ll have to make an effort to be nice to us, too. He’ll still remember my pistol shoved into his back out at Holloway’s the day Goldilocks was killed. I wonder if he knows how little it would have taken to make me squeeze the trigger.”

  “Pancho says he is a reformed character.”

  “Pancho’s seen him since we have. He could be right. Anyhow, he’s helping us, and we need all the help we can get. And he won’t hurt the Fuzzies, not with Ahmed Khadra and Mrs. Pendarvis keeping an eye on him.”

  The Fuzzies, crowded on the cargo-deck below, were becoming excited. There was a forward view screen rigged where they could see it, and they could probably sense as well as see that the boat was descending. And this place ahead must be the place Pappy Jack and Pappy Gerd and Unka Panko and Little Fuzzy had been telling them about, where the Big Ones would come and take them away to nice places of their own.

  She hoped too many of them wouldn’t be too badly disappointed. She hoped this adoption deal wouldn’t be too much of a failure.

  The airboat grounded on the vitrified stone apron beside the building. It looked like a good place; Jack said it had been intended for but never used as a mental ward-unit; four stories high, each with its own terrace, and a flat garden-planted roof. High mesh fences around each level; the Fuzzies wouldn’t fall off. Plenty of trees and bushes; the Fuzzies would like that.

  They got the Fuzzies off
and into the building, helped by the small crowd who were waiting for them. Mrs. Pendarvis; she and the Chief Justice’s wife were old friends. And a tall, red haired girl, Grego’s Fuzzy-sitter, Sandra Glenn. And Ahmed Khadra, in a new suit of civvies but bulging slightly under the left arm. And half a dozen other people whom she had met now and then—school department and company public health section. And Ernst Mallin, pompous and black-suited and pedantic-looking. I must be very nice... She extended a hand to him.

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Mallin.”

  Maybe Gerd was right; maybe she did feel guilty about the way she’d tricked him. She was, she found, being counter-offensively defensive.

  “Good afternoon, Ruth. Dr. van Riebeek,” he corrected himself. “Can you bring your people down this way?” he asked, nodding to the hundred and fifty Fuzzies milling about in the hall, yeeking excitedly. People, he called them. He must be making an effort, too. “We have refreshments for them. Extee-Three. And things for them to play with.”

  “Where do you get the Extee-Three?” she asked. “We haven’t been able to get any for almost a week, now.”

  Mallin gave one of his little secretive smiles, the sort he gave when he was one up on somebody.

  “We got it from Xerxes. The Company’s started producing it, but unfortunately, the Fuzzies don’t like it. We still can’t find out why; it’s made on exactly the same formula. And as it’s entirely up to Government specifications, Mr. Grego was able to talk Commodore Napier into accepting it in exchange for what he has on hand. We have about five tons of it. How much do you need at Holloway’s Camp? Will a couple of tons help you any?”

  Would a couple of tons help them any? “Why, I don’t know how to thank you, Dr. Mallin! Of course it will; we’ve been giving it to our Fuzzies a quarter-cake apiece on alternate days.” I must be very, VERY, nice to Dr Mallin! “Why don’t they like the stuff you people have been making? What’s wrong with it?”

  “We don’t know. Mr. Grego has been raging at everybody to find out; it’s made in exactly the same way... ”