Fuzzies and Other People Read online

  They came to where Lake-Chain River joined Yellow-sand. At its mouth, it was larger than the stream it fed, and it came in from almost due south, while the Yellow-sand, which rose in the Divide, curved in from the east. Beyond this, there weren’t any sandbars. The current was more rapid, and the water foamed whitely around bare rocks. The wall of the Divide began looming on the horizon. Finally they could see the cleft of the canyon. There was a circling dot in the sky ahead, but it wasn’t a harpy. It was one of the CZC air-survey cars, photomapping and measuring with radar, and scanning. He looked at his watch. Almost 1700, getting on to cocktail time. He wondered how many Fuzzies Lieutenant Bjornsen had seen on his sweep south of the Divide, and how many harpies he’d shot.

  vi

  The Fuzzies had been excited all the way from Hoksu-Mitto; Pappy Jack was taking them on a trip to Big House Place. By the time Mallorysport came up on the horizon, tall buildings towering out of green interspaces, they were all shrieking in delight, some even forgetting to “make talk in back of mouth,” like Big Ones. They came in over the city at five thousand feet, the car slanting downward, and Little Fuzzy recognized Company House at once.

  “Look! Diamond Place! Pappy Jack, we go there, see Diamond, Pappy Vic?”

  “No, we go Pappy Ben Place,” he told them. “Pappy Vic, Diamond, come there. Have big party; everybody come. Pappy Ben, Flora, Fauna, Pappy Vic, Diamond…” The Fuzzies all added more names of friends they would see. “And look.” He pointed to Central Courts Building, on the right. “You know that place?”

  They did; that was Big-Room Talk-Place. They’d had a lot of fun there, turning a court trial into a three-ring circus. He still had to laugh when he remembered that. The aircar circled in toward Government House. Unlike the other important buildings of Mallorysport, it sprawled instead of towering, terraced on top, with gardens spread around it. On the north lower lawn a crowd of Fuzzies and others were gathered in the loose concentration of an outdoor cocktail party. Then the car was landing and the Fuzzies were all trying to get out as soon as it was off contragravity.

  There was a group at the foot of the north escalator. Most of them were small people with golden fur—Ben Rainsford’s Flora and Fauna, Victor Grego’s Diamond, Judge and Mrs. Pendarvis’s Pierrot and Columbine, and five Fuzzies whose names were Allan Pinkerton and Arsene Lupin and Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler and Mata Hari. They were members of the Company Police Detective Bureau, and they were all reformed criminals. At least, they had been apprehended while trying to clean out the gem-vault at Company House and had turned people’s evidence on the gang who had trained them to be burglars.

  With them was a tall girl with coppery hair, and a dark-faced man whose smartly tailored jacket bulged slightly under the left arm. The man was Ahmed Kha-dra, Detective-Captain, in charge of the Native Protection Force, Investigation Division. The girl was Sandra Glenn, Victor Grego’s Fuzzy-sitter. Grego was just losing her to Khadra, if the sunstone on her left hand meant anything.

  His own Fuzzies had dashed down the escalator ahead of him; the ones below ran forward to greet them. He managed to get through the crowd to Ahmed and Sandra, and had a few words with them before all the Fuzzies came pelting up, Diamond and Flora and Fauna and the others tugging at his trouser-legs and wanting to be noticed, and his own Fuzzies wanting Unka Ahmed and Auntie Sandra to notice them. He squatted among them, petting them and saying hello. Baby Fuzzy promptly climbed onto Ahmed Khadra’s shoulder. At least they’d broken him of trying to sit on people’s heads, which was something. Between talking to the Fuzzies, all of whom wanted to be talked to, he managed to get a few more words with Ahmed and Sandra, mostly about the Fuzzy Club she was going to manage.

  “It’s going to be just one big nonstop Fuzzy party all the time,” she said. “I hope we don’t get too tired of it.”

  It was Victor Grego’s idea; he was putting up the money and providing the lower floors and surrounding parkland of one of the Company buildings. People who’d adopted Fuzzies couldn’t be expected to give them their exclusive attention, and Fuzzies living with human families would want to talk to and play with other Fuzzies. The Fuzzy Club would be a place where they could get together and be kept out of danger and/ or mischief.

  “When’s the grand opening? I’ll have to come in for it.”

  “Oh, not for a few weeks. After Ahmed and I are married. We still have a lot of fixing up to do, and I want the girl who’s taking my place with Diamond to get better acquainted with him, and vice versa, before I leave her to cope with him alone.”

  “You need much coping with?” he asked Diamond, rumpling his fur and then smoothing it again.

  “Actually, no; he’s very good. The girl will have to learn more about him, is all. He’s being a big help with the Fuzzy Club; gives all sorts of advice, some of it excellent.”

  Diamond had been telling Little Fuzzy and the others about the new Fuzzy Place. The five ex-jewel-thieves had gotten Baby Fuzzy away from Khadra and were making a great to-do over him, to Mamma’s proud pleasure. Ko-Ko and Cinderella and Mike and Mitzi had wandered away somewhere with Pierrot and Columbine. Little Fuzzy was tugging at him.

  “Pappy Jack? Little Fuzzy go with Flora, Fauna?” he asked.

  “Sure. Run along and have fun. Pappy Jack go make talk with other Big Ones.” He turned to Ahmed and Sandra. “Don’t you folks want koktel-drinko?’

  “We had,” Ahmed said. Sandra added, “We have to see about dinner for Fuzzy-people pretty soon.”

  He said he’d see them around, and strolled away, filling his pipe, toward the crowd around the bartending robot. Diamond accompanied him, mostly in short dashes ahead and waits for him to catch up; what was the matter with Big Ones, anyhow, always poking along? There was an approaching bedlam, and three Fuzzies burst into sight, blowing horns. Behind them, in single file, came three small wheelbarrows, a Fuzzy pushing and another riding in each, with more Fuzzies dashing along behind.

  “Look, Pappy Jack! Whee’barrow!” Diamond called. “Pappy Ben give. Fun. Unka Ahmed, Auntie Sandra, they have whee'barrow at new Fuzzy Place.” The procession came to a disorderly halt a hundred yards beyond; the Fuzzies pushing dropped the shafts and took the places of the three who had been riding; three more picked up the wheelbarrows, and the whole cavalcade dashed away again.

  “Good little fellows,” somebody behind him said. “Everybody takes his fair turn.”

  The speaker was Associate-Justice Yves Janiver, with silver-gray hair and a dramatically black mustache; he was now presiding judge of Native Cases court. One of his companions was big and ruddy, Clyde Garrick, head cashier of the Bank of Mallorysport. The other, thin and elderly, with a fringe of white hair under a black beret, was Henry Stenson, the instrument-maker. Holloway greeted and shook hands with them.

  “Those were my three who just jumped off,” Stenson said.

  He’d gotten them on loan from the Adoption Bureau, to help test the voice-transformer he and Grego had invented. Then the Fuzzies had refused to go back, and he’d had to adopt them; they’d adopted him already.

  Their names were Microvolt and Roentgen and Angstrom. Damned names some people gave Fuzzies. He asked how they were getting along.

  “Oh, they’re having a wonderful time, Mr. Holloway,” Stenson laughed. “I’ve fixed them up a little workshop of their own, to keep them out of everybody’s way in my shop. They want to help everybody do everything; I never saw anybody as helpful as those Fuzzies. You know,” he added, “they are a help, too. They have almost microscopic vision, and they’re wonderfully clever with their hands.” From Henry Stenson, that was high praise. “Well, they’re small people; they live on a smaller scale than we do. If only they didn’t lose interest so quickly. When they do, of course, it’s no use expecting them to go on.”

  “No, it isn’t fun anymore. Besides, they don’t understand what you want them to do, or why.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” Stenson agreed. “Explaining a micromass detector or a radiation counter to a Fuzzy…” He thought for a moment. “I think I’ll start them on jewelry work. They like pretty things, and they’d make wonderful jewelers.”

  That was an idea. Maybe, about a year from now, an exhibition of Fuzzy arts and handcrafts. Talk that over with Gerd and Ruth; talk it over with Little Fuzzy and Dr. Crippen, too.

  A dozen Fuzzies rushed past—the five Company Police Fuzzies and Mamma Fuzzy with Baby running beside her, and some others he felt he ought to know but didn’t. They were all swirling around a big red-and-gold ball, rolling it rapidly on the grass. Diamond took off after them.

  “Why don’t you teach them some real ball games, Jack?” Clyde Garrick asked. He was a sports enthusiast. “Football, now; a Fuzzy football game would be something to watch.” A Fuzzy directly in front of the rolling ball leaped over it, coming down among those who were pushing it. “Basketball; did you see the jump that one made? I wish I could get a team of human kids who could jump like that together.”

  Holloway shook his head. “Some of the marines out at Hoksu-Mitto tried to teach them soccer,” he said. “Didn’t work, at all. They couldn’t see the sense of the rules, and they couldn’t understand why all of them couldn’t play on both teams. If a Fuzzy sees somebody trying to do something, all he wants to do is help.”

  That shocked Garrick. He didn’t think people who lacked competitive spirit were people at all. Stenson nodded.

  “What I was saying. They want to help everybody. You could interest them in the sort of sports in which one really competes with oneself. If you teach a Fuzzy something new, he isn’t satisfied till he can do it again better.”

  “Rifle shooting,” Garrick grudged. He didn’t consider shooting a sport at all. Not an athletic sport, at any rate. “I know
shooters who claim they get just as much fun shooting alone as in a match.”

  “I don’t know about that. A Fuzzy would need an awfully light rifle and awfully light loads. Mind, they only weigh fifteen or twenty pounds. A .22 light enough for a Fuzzy to handle would kick him as hard as my 12.7 express kicks me. But archery’d be all right. We’ve been teaching them to make bows and arrows and shoot them. You’d be surprised; most of them can pull a twenty-pound bow; and for them that’s heavier than a hundred-pound bow for a man.”

  “Huh!” Garrick looked at the swirl of golden bodies around the bright-colored ball. Anybody who weighed so little and could pull a twenty-pound bow deserved respect, team spirit or no team spirit. “Tell you what, Jack. I’ll put up cups for regional archery matches and for a world’s championship match, and we can start having matches and organizing teams. Say, in a year, we could hold a match for the world’s title.”

  What a Fuzzy would do with a trophy cup now!

  “But what I’d really like to see,” Garrick continued, “would be a real live Fuzzy football league. Don’t you think you could get some interest stirred up?”

  No, and a damned good thing. Start Fuzzy football, and the gamblers would be onto it like a Fuzzy after a land-prawn. And from what he knew about Fuzzies, any Fuzzy could be fixed to throw a game for half a cake of Extee Three; and everybody on both teams would help, just to do what some Big One wanted. No, no Fuzzy football.

  While he had been talking he had been edging and nudging the others toward the bartending robot. Yves Janiver, whose glass was empty, was aiding and abetting. As soon as they were close enough, he and the Native Court judge stepped in to get drinks. He was being supplied with his when he was greeted by Claudette Pendarvis, who asked if he had just arrived.

  “Practically. I saw your two; they’re off somewhere with some of mine,” he said. “Is the judge here yet?” No; he wasn’t. She asked Janiver if he knew where the Chief Justice was. In conference, in chambers—he and Gus Brannhard and some other lawyers. Pendarvis and Brannhard would be arriving a little later. Mrs. Pendarvis wanted to know if he was going to visit Adoption Bureau while he was in town.

  “Yes, surely, Mrs. Pendarvis. Tomorrow morning be all right?”

  Tomorrow morning would be fine. He asked her how things were going. Adoptions, she said, had fallen off somewhat; that was what he’d been expecting.

  “But the hospital wants some more Fuzzies, to entertain the patients. They have some now; they want more. And Dr. Mallin says they are a wonderful influence on some of the mental patients.”

  “Well, we can use some more at school,” a woman who had just come up said—Mrs. Hawkwood, principal of the kindergarten and primary schools. “We have a couple already, in the preliterate classes. Do you know, the Fuzzies are actually teaching the human children?” Age-group four to six; yes, he could believe that. “Why just preliterates, Mrs. Hawkwood?” he asked. “Put some of them into the c-a-t-spells-cat class and see how fast they pick it up. Bet they do better than the human six year olds.”

  “You mean, try to teach Fuzzies to read?”

  The idea had never occurred to him before; it seemed like a good one. Evidently it hadn’t occurred to Mrs. Hawkwood, either, and now that it was presented to her, he could almost watch her thoughts chase one another across her face. Teach Fuzzies to read? Ridiculous; only people could read. But Fuzzies were people; there was scientific authority for that. But they were Fuzzies-, that was different. But then…

  At that point, Beri Rainsford came up, apologetic for not having greeted him earlier and asking if his family had come in with him. While he was talking to Ben, Holloway saw Chief Justice Pendarvis and Gus Brann-hard approach. The Chief Justice got a glass of wine for himself and a cocktail for his wife; they stepped aside together. Brannhard, big and bearded and giving the impression, in spite of his meticulous courtroom black, of being in hunting clothes, secured a tumbler of straight whiskey. Victor Grego and Leslie Coombes came up and spoke. Then somebody pulled Rainsford aside to talk to him.

  That was the trouble with these cocktail parties. You met everybody and never had a chance to talk to anybody. It was getting almost that bad at cocktail time out at Hoksu-Mitto now. Out of the corner of his eye, Holloway saw Mrs. Hawkwood fasten upon Ernst Mallin. Mallin was a real authority on Fuzzy psychology; if he told her Fuzzies could be taught to read, she’d have to believe it. He wanted to talk to Ernst himself about that, and about a lot of other things, but not in this donny-brook.

  The wheelbarrow parade came by, more slowly and less noisily, and a little later the crowd that had been chasing the big ball came pushing it along, Baby Fuzzy jumping onto it and tumbling off it. Dinnertime for Fuzzies—putting back all the playthings where they belonged. He was in favor of using Fuzzies in schools for human children; maybe they’d have a civilizing influence. After a while, the Fuzzies came stringing back, mostly talking about food.

  Dinnertime for Big Ones, too. It took longer to get them mobilized than it had the Fuzzies, and then, of course, they had to stop on the upper terrace where Sandra Glenn and Ahmed Khadra and some of the Government House staff had set up a Fuzzy-type smorgasbord on a big revolving table. The Fuzzies all thought that was fun. So did the human-people watching them. Eventually, they all got into the dining room. There weren’t enough ladies to pair off the guests, male and female after their kind like the passengers on the Ark. They placed Jack Holloway between Ben Rainsford and Leslie Coombes, with Victor Grego and Gus Brannhard on the other side.

  By the time the robo-service in the middle of the table had taken away the dessert dishes and brought in coffee and liqueurs, Fuzzies were beginning to filter in. They’d finished their own dinner long ago; it was getting dark outside, and they wanted to be where the Big Ones were. Couldn’t blame them; it was their party, wasn’t it? They came in diffidently, like well-brought-up children, looking but not touching anything, saying hello to people.

  Diamond came over to Grego, who picked him up and set him on the. edge of the table. Rainsford pushed back his chair, and Flora and Fauna climbed onto his lap. Gus Brannhard had four or five trying to clamber over him. Little Fuzzy wanted up on the table, too, and promptly unzipped his pouch, got out his little pipe, and lighted it. Several came to Leslie Coombes, begging, “Unka Less’ee, plis give smokko?” and Coombes lit cigarettes for them. Coombes liked Fuzzies, and treated them with the same grave courtesy he showed his human friends, but he didn’t want them climbing over him, and they knew it.

  “Ben, let’s get these agreements signed,” Grego said. “Then we can give the kids some attention.”

  “Where’ll we sign them, in your office?” he asked Rainsford.

  “No, sign them right here at the table where everybody can watch. That’s what the party’s about, isn’t it?” Rainsford said.

  They cleared a space in front of the Governor-General, putting Fuzzies on the floor or handing them to people farther down on either side. The scrolls, three copies of each agreement, were brought; Rainsford had one of his secretaries read them aloud. The first was the general agreement, by which the Colonial Government agreed to lease, for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, all unseated public lands to the Charterless Zarathustra Company, Ltd., of Zarathustra, excepting the area on Beta Continent set aside as a Fuzzy Reservation, in return for which the said Charterless Zarathustra Company, Ltd., agreed to carry on all the nonprofit public services previously performed by the Chartered Zarathustra Company, and, in addition, to conduct researches and studies for the benefit of the race known as Fuzzy sapiens zarathustra at Science Center. Except for the northern part of Beta Continent, the new Company was getting back, as lessees, everything it had lost as owner by the Pendarvis Decisions.

  Rainsford and Grego signed it, with Gus Brannhard and Leslie Coombes as cosigners, with a few witnesses chosen at random from around the table. Then the Yellowsand Canyon agreement was read; as commissioner of Native affairs, Holloway had an interest in that. The Company leased, also for nine hundred ninety-nine years, a tract fifty miles square around the head of Yellowsand Canyon, with rights to mine, quarry, erect buildings, and remove from the tract sunstones and other materials. The Government agreed to lease other tracts to the Company, subject to the consent of the Native Commission, and to lease land on the Fuzzy Reservation to nobody else without consent of the Company. The Company agreed to pay royalties on all sun-stones removed, at the rate of four hundred fifty sols per carat, said moneys to be held in trust for the Fuzzies as a race by the Colonial Government and invested with the Banking Cartel, the interest accruing to the Government as an administration fee. Well, that put the Government in the black, and made the Fuzzies rich, and gave the Charterless Zarathustra Company more than the Chartered Zarathustra Company had lost. Everybody ought to be happy.