H. Beam Piper Fuzzy Papers

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Study and Research. He was as close to the top of the
Company House hierarchy as he could get, and he wanted to stay there.
"Yes, of course. I'd hoped, though, that my word would be good enough . . ."
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"Nobody's word's going to be good enough. I'm going to veridicate what I know
about it, myself; so's
Ernst Mallin. There will be quite a few veridicated statements taken in the
next few days. Now, I want you to meet this Fuzzy. See if you know him, or if
he knows you."
They went out to the private lift and up to the penthouse. In the liv-ing
room, Sandra Glenn was lounging in his favorite chair, listening to something
from a record-player with an earphone and smoking. As they entered, she shut
off the player and closed her eyes. "So-josso-aki; you give me," she said.
"Aki-josso-so; I give you. So-noho-aki dokko; you tell me how many."
They tiptoed past her and out onto the terrace. Ernst Mallin was sitting on a
low hassock, with his hearing-aid on; Diamond was squatting in front of him,
tying knots in a length of twine. An audiovisual recorder was set up to cover
both of them. Diamond sprang to his feet and ran to meet them, crying out:
"Pappy Vic! Heeta!" and holding up the cord to show the knots he had been
learning to tie.
"Hello, Diamond. Those are very fine knots. You are a smart Fuzzy. How do I
say that, Ernst?" Maffin said something, haltingly; he repeated it, patting
the Fuzzy's head. "Now, how do I ask him if he's ever seen this Big One with
me before?"
Mallin asked the question himself. Diamond said something; he caught "Vov," a
couple of times. That was negative.
"He doesn't know you, Juan. What I'm sure happened is that Herckerd and Novaes
came in with you,
just before the trial, then went back to Beta, probably in the aircar they
stole from us, and Picked up this
Fuzzy. We won't know why till we catch them and question them." He turned to
Mallin. "Get anything more out of him?"
Mallin shook his head. "I'm picking up a few more words, but I still can't be
sure. He says two Hagga, the ones we showed him the films of, brought him
here. I think they brought some other Fuzzies with him;
I can't be sure. There doesn't seem to be any way of pluralizing in his
language. He says they were tosh-ki gashta, bad people. They put him in a bad
place."
"We'll put them in a bad place. Penitentiary place. I don't suppose you can
find out how long ago this was? During or right after the trial, I suppose."
Sandra Glenn came out onto the terrace.
"Mr. Grego; Miss Fallada's on screen. She says representatives of all the
press-services are here.
They've heard about Diamond; they want the story, and pictures of him."
"That was all we needed! All right; tell her to have a policeman show them up.
I'm afraid our lunch'll have to wait till we get through with them, Juan."
8
COMING OUT of the lift, Jack Holloway advanced to let the others fol-low 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 shoot-ing of Kurt Borch, at his camp, and Leshe
Coombes, first at George
Lunt's complaint court at Beta Fifteen and then in Judge Pendarvis' 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
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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 some-body 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 intro-duced Ahmed Khadra.
"And these other people are Flora and Fauna," he added. "I brought them along
to meet Diamond."
Grego stooped, 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 Di-amond was out on the terrace, then laughed when
he saw the Fuzzy peeping through the door from the living room. An instant
later, Dia-mond 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 re-corder set up, and an extra reading screen and an
audiovisual screen and a tapeplayer; they looked more like office equipment
than do-mestic 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 equip-ment-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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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