Fuzzy Sapiens

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…”

“Forget about that,” Brannhard advised. “That’s petty larcency to what I’m going to charge them with.”

Khadra came in from outside; he took off his beret, but left his pistol on.

“Well, there were six of them,” he said. “Diamond, and five others. Herckerd and Novaes — he’s positive about the identification — brought them in and kept them for a couple of days in a dark room somewhere in this building. Then the others were taken away; Diamond made a break and got away from the two tosh-ki Hagga while they were being put in the aircar. He doesn’t know how long ago it was — three sleeps, he says. He found things to eat, and he found water to drink, and then Pappy Vic found him and gave him wonderful-food. He doesn’t know what happened to his friends; he hopes they got away too.”

“They didn’t in here,” Grego said. “Are you going to hunt for them?”

“We certainly are.”

“And if anything’s happened to them, we’ll hunt for Herckerd and Novaes till they die of old age if we don’t catch them first,” Brannhard added.

“How’s Diamond like it here, Ahmed?”

“Oh, wonderful. He’s the happiest Fuzzy I ever saw, and I never saw any real melancholy Fuzzies. You have a mighty nice Fuzzy, Mr. Grego.”

“Well, that’s if I’ll be allowed to keep him,” Grego said.

“My report’s going to be very favorable,” Khadra told him.

“Of course you will, Mr. Grego. You like the Fuzzy, and he likes you, and he’s happy here. That’s all I’m interested in.”

“I’m afraid Governor Rainsford isn’t going to see it like that, Mr. Holloway.”

“Governor Rainsford isn’t Commissioner of Native Affairs. And he isn’t the Federation Courts. The way Judge Pendarvis told me a week ago, the court will accept the advice of the Commission on Fuzzy questions.”

“The Attorney-General has a little influence with the court, too,” Brannhard said. “The Attorney-General will recommend granting your application for adoption.” He rose to his feet. “We don’t have anything more to talk about, do we? Then let’s go out and see how the Fuzzies are doing.”