Fuzzy Sapiens

CHAPTER TEN

KNOWING HENRY STENSON’S part in the dischartering of the Zarathustra Company, Pancho Ybarra was mildly surprised to find him in the Fuzzyroom Grego had fitted up back of the kitchenette of his apartment, when Ernst Mallin, who met him on the landing stage, ushered him in. Grego’s Fuzzy-sitter, Sandra Glenn, was there, and so, although in the middle of business hours, was Grego himself. And, of course, Diamond.

“Mr. Stenson,” he greeted noncommittally. “This is a pleasure.”

Stenson laughed. “We needn’t pretend to distant acquaintance, Lieutenant,” he said. “Mr. Grego is quite aware of my, er, other profession. He doesn’t hold it against me; he just insists that I no longer practice it on him.”

“Mr. Stenson has something here that’ll interest you,” Grego said, picking up something that looked like a small nuclear-electric razor. “Turn off your hearing aid, if you please, Lieutenant. Thank you. Now, Diamond, make talk for Unka Panko.”

“Heyo, Unka Panko.” Diamond said, when Grego held the thing to his mouth, very clearly and audibly. “You hear Diamond make talk like Hagga?”

“I sure do, Diamond! That’s wonderful.”

“How make do?” Diamond asked. “Make talk with talk-thing, talk like Hagga. Not have talk-thing, no can talk like Fuzzy, Hagga no hear. How make do?”

Fuzzies could hear all through the human-audibility range; the race wouldn’t have survived the dangers of the woods if they hadn’t been able to. They could hear beyond that, to about 40,000 cycles. None of the other Zarathustran mammals could; that supported Gerd van Riebeek’s theory that Fuzzies were living fossils, the sole survivors of a large and otherwise extinct order of Zarathustran quasi-primates. Gerd thought they had developed ultrasonic hearing to meet some ancient survival-problem long before they had developed the power of symbolizing ideas in speech, and had always conversed ultrasonically with one another, probably to avoid betraying themselves to their natural enemies.

“Fuzzies hear Big Ones talk. Fuzzies little, Hagga big, make big talk. Hagga not hear Fuzzy talk, Fuzzies little, make little talk. So, Big Ones make ear-things, make Fuzzy talk big in ears, can hear. Now, Hagga make talk-things, so Fuzzies make big talk like Hagga, everybody hear, have ear-things, not have ear-things.”

That wasn’t the question. Diamond had gotten that far, himself, already. The question, which he repeated, was, “How make do?”

Grego was grinning at him. “You’re doing fine, Lieutenant. Now, go ahead and give him a lecture on ultrasonics and electronics and acoustics.”

“Has your Chief Fuzzyologist done anything on that yet?”

“I haven’t even tried,” Mallin said. “You know much more of the language than I do; what Fuzzy words would you use to explain anything like that?”

That was right. Any race — Homo sapiens terra, or Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra — thought just as far as their verbal symbolism went, and no further. And they could only comprehend ideas for which they had words.

“Just tell him it’s Terran black magic,” Sandra Glenn suggested.

That would work on planets like Loki or Thor or Yggdrasil; on Shesha or Uller, you could also mention the mysterious ways of the gods. The Fuzzies had just about as much conception of magic or religion as they had of electronics or nucleonics or the Abbot life-and-drive.

He stooped forward and held out his hand. “So-josso-aki, Diamond. So-pokko Unka Panko.”

The Fuzzy gave him the thing, which he had been holding in both hands. The resemblance to an electric razor was more than coincidental; the mechanism was enclosed in the plastic case of one. The end that would have done the shaving was open; the Fuzzy talked into that. There was a circular screened opening on the side from which the transformed sound emerged. It still had the original thumb-switch.

“Still has the original power-unit, too,” Stenson said. That would be a little capsule the size of a 6-mm short pistol cartridge. “A lot of the parts are worked over from ultrasonic hearing-aid parts. I’m going to have to do something better than that switch, too. A little handle, maybe like a pistol grip, with a grip-squeeze switch, so that the Fuzzy will turn it on when he takes hold of it, and turn it off when he lets go. And it’ll have to be a lot lighter and a lot smaller.” He gestured toward some sheets of paper on which he had been making diagrams and schematics and notes. “I have some people at my shop working on that now. We’ll have production prototypes in about a week. The Company’s factory will start production as soon as they can tool up for it.”

“We’re getting a patent,” Grego said. “We’re calling it the Stenson Fuzzyphone.”

“Grego-Stenson; it was your original idea.”

“Hell, I just told you what I wanted; you invented it,” Grego argued. “As soon as we have all the bugs chased out, we’ll be in production. We don’t know how much we’ll have to ask for them. Not more than twenty sols, I don’t suppose.”

Flora and Fauna were puzzled. They sat on the floor at Pappy Ben’s feet, looking up at the funny people that came and went in the picture-thing on the wall and spoke out of it. Long ago they had found out that nothing in the screen could get out of it, and they couldn’t get in. It was just one of the strange things the Big Ones had, and they couldn’t understand it, but it was fun.

But then, all of a sudden, there was Pappy Ben, right in the screen. They looked around, startled, thinking he had left them, but no, there he was, still in the chair smoking his pipe. They both felt him to make sure he was really there, then they both climbed onto his lap and pointed at the Pappy Ben in the screen.

Flora and Fauna didn’t know about audiovisual recordings; they couldn’t understand how Pappy Ben could be in two places at the same time. That bothered them. It just couldn’t happen.

“It’s all right, kids,” he assured them. “I’m really here. That isn’t me, there.”

“Is,” Flora contradicted. “I see it.”

“Is not,” Fauna told her. “Pappy Ben here.”

Maybe Pancho Ybarra or Ruth van Riebeek could explain it; he couldn’t.

“Of course I’m here,” he said, hugging both of them. “That is just not-real look-like.”

“It will be illegal,” the Pappy Ben in the screen was saying, “to capture any Fuzzy in habitat by any other means, including the use of intoxicants, narcotics, sleepgas, sono-stunners or traps. This will constitute kidnapping. It will be illegal to keep any Fuzzy chained, tied or otherwise physically restrained. It will be illegal to transport any Fuzzy from Beta Continent to any other part of this planet without a permit from the Native Affairs Commission, each permit to bear the fingerprints of the Fuzzy for whom it is issued. It will be illegal knowingly to deliver any Fuzzy to anybody intending to so transport him. This will constitute kidnapping, also, and will be punished accordingly.”

The Pappy Ben in the screen was scowling menacingly. Flora and Fauna looked quickly around to see if the real Pappy Ben was mad about something too.

Flora said: “Make talk about Fuzzy.”

“Yes. Talk about what Big Ones do to bad Big Ones who hurt Fuzzies,” he told her.

“Make dead, like bad Big One who make Goldilocks dead?” Fauna asked.

“Something like that.”

That was what all the Fuzzies who had been in court during the trial thought had happened. Suicide while of unsound mind due to remorse of conscience was a little too complicated to explain to a Fuzzy, at least at present.

All the Fuzzies who knew what had happened to Goldilocks thought that had been no more than the bad Big One deserved.

Captain Ahmed Khadra, chief of detectives, ZNPF, and Colonel Ian Ferguson, Commandant, Colonial Constabulary, were listening to the telecast with Max Fane, the Colonial Marshal, in the latter’s office. In the screen, Governor Rainsford was saying:

“And any person capturing or illegally transporting or illegally holding in restraint any Fuzzy for purposes of sale will be guilty of enslavement.”

“Aah!” Max Fane set a stiffly extended index finger against the base of his skull, cocked his thumb and clicked his tongue. “Death’s mandatory; no discretion-of-the-court about it.”

“Yves Janiver’ll try all the Fuzzy cases. He likes Fuzzies,” Ferguson said. “He won’t like people who mistreat them.”

“I know Janiver’s attitude on death penalties,” Fane said. “He doesn’t think people should be shot for committing crimes; he thinks they should be shot for being the kind of people who commit them. He thinks shooting criminals is like shooting diseased veldbeest. A sanitation measure. So do I.”

“If Herckerd and Novaes are smart, they’ll come in and surrender now,” Ferguson said. “You think they still have the other five?”

Khadra shook his head. “I think they sold them to somebody in Mallorysport as soon as they moved them out of Company House. If we could find out who that is…”

“I could name a dozen possibilities,” Max Fane told him. “And back of each one of them is Hugo Ingermann.”

“I wish we could haul Ingermann in and veridicate him,” Ferguson said.

“Well, you can’t. Ingermann’s a lawyer, and the only way you can question a lawyer under veridication is catch him standing over a corpse with a bloody knife in his hand. And you have a Nifflheim of a time doing it, even then.”

“A GREAT MANY people want Fuzzies; we know that,” the Governor was saying. “Many of them should have them; they would make Fuzzies happy, and would be made happy by them. We are not going to deny such people an opportunity to adopt these charming little persons. An adoption bureau has been set up already; Mrs. Frederic Pendarvis, the wife of the Chief Justice, will be in charge of it, and the offices have already been set up in the Central Courts Building, and will open tomorrow morning…”

“Oh, Daddy; Mother!” the little girl cried. “You hear that, now. The Governor says people can have Fuzzies of their own. Won’t you get me a Fuzzy? I’ll be as good as good to it — him, I mean, or her, whichever.”

The parents looked at one another, and then at their twelve-year-old daughter.

“What do you think, Bob?”

“You’ll have to take care of it, Marjory, and that will be a lot of work. You’ll have to feed it, and give it baths, and…”

“Oh, I will; I’ll do anything, just if I can have one. And people mustn’t call Fuzzies ‘it,’ Daddy; Fuzzies are people, too, like us. You didn’t call me ‘it,’ when I was a little baby, did you?”

“I’m afraid your father did, my dear. Just at first. And you’ll have to study and learn the language, so you can talk to the Fuzzy, because Fuzzies don’t speak Lingua Terra. You know, Bob, I think I’d enjoy having a Fuzzy around, myself.”

“You know, I believe I would, too. Well, let’s get around to this adoption bureau the first thing tomorrow…”