“What? You could have lost everything.”
“It was a chance, but I was betting on Mr. Grego pulling a zarabunny out of a hat. I bought the shares right after I heard he was making extee-three for the Fuzzies. Besides, the CZC is the largest employer on the planet. If the Company went down, the local economy would go with it. I was banking that the new colonial government wouldn’t let that happen. When the CZC signed the mining agreement with the government and got back almost all of the unseated lands, the stock rebounded and even went up an extra eighty points. If I wasn’t rolling the dividends back into the company, I would be making more money from the stock than my regular paycheck.”
“Really? I never signed on for the stock option. I think I’ll do that today. But, wait, if you have all this money, why do that Freyan servant thing? You have the dowry already.”
Akira rolled her eyes. Betty was smart in a lot of ways, but at other times she was clueless. “I just said that I don’t think that this is about that. Even if it was, it isn’t about the dowry, it’s about getting Morgan’s father to see me as a suitable prospect for his son. Anyway, Jack Holloway is still recovering from his surgeries and needs some help in the office. He is a friend of Mr. Grego’s and is the father of a major stockholder. I suspect there is a company angle that the boss is working to keep things running smoothly, too. I don’t mind. I’m really looking forward to it.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Betty winked. “If things don’t work out with Morgan, you can take a shot at Jack.”
“Actually, I thought you might like a shot at him,” Akira countered with a laugh.
Betty giggled, then became thoughtful. “You know what? I might at that. Older guys know things. I dated this one guy on Terra in his fifties. He really knew how to treat a girl. Too bad I found out about his wife.”
“Wife?” Akira pretended to be shocked, though she knew Betty too well to be surprised at anything she was involved in.
“Yeah, a real old-money battle-axe who had it in for me when she found out. Now you know why I moved to Zarathustra. So, do you think I would make a good stepmother for your future husband?”
“I told you, he hasn’t asked me,” Akira said. Then she added, “Yet.”
* * * * * * * * *
Things were coming together for Clancy Slade. His beard was back in place to reduce his resemblance to that mutt Leo Thaxter; he even had a good job with the Charterless Zarathustra Company, working security under Major Lansky. His daughter was safe at home and he was out of Prison House. He had to talk to the police about how he had been forced to take Thaxter’s place whenever they thought up a new question, but he was able to keep the money Thaxter’s friends paid him to do the job—not that he had a choice with his daughter kidnapped. He didn’t like the way he earned it, but twenty-five thousand sols was a windfall he was only too happy to have. He was already looking into a house outside of Mallorysport where his daughter would have room to run around.
Clancy was just returning home from work. All new hires got the night shift until they proved themselves and a day slot opened up. He didn’t mind. He was paid better working for the CZC security section than any job he held previously on Zarathustra or Gimli, and the other guys were easy to get along with for the most part. They did rib him a bit about his resemblance to Leo Thaxter at first, hence the return of the beard, but it was all good-natured and nobody went so far as to call him a Fuzzy fagan.
There was one co-worker who needed to be set straight, though. That was Kristoff Hoffa, the practical joker. No gag was too old or too infantile for him to pull. Whoopee cushions, joy buzzers, rubber chickens, itching powder…Hoffa used them all. Then he went too far and posted a mocked-up wanted poster with Leo Thaxter’s face on Clancy’s locker, then shouted, “There he is! Get him!”
Nobody twitched a muscle or cracked a grin. Clancy simply walked up to the laughing Hoffa and punched him dead in the nose. For the rest of the shift everybody walked around or over Hoffa’s unconscious body until Major Lansky tripped over him. Literally. Lansky took in the black eyes and bloody nose, saw the torn wanted poster in the trash and put two and two together instantly. Hoffa was dragged off to medical with no questions asked.
Clancy checked the mail port as soon as he entered his apartment. One of the benefits of living in Mallorysport was the near instantaneous delivery of letter mail. Letters and small packages were sent through a complicated network of pneumatic tubing. It was the one planetary service not administered by the CZC, though the company had installed it during the early days of planetary development. Mail was under Federation Colonial Office jurisdiction and could not be privatized.
Clancy extracted the letter and returned the pneumatic cartridge to the portal. It was another receipt for payment for a locker rental at the spaceport. This was the third one he had received in the last two months, despite his not having rented a locker. Clancy decided to go down to the spaceport and straighten things out on his next day off. Right now he needed to get his sleep if he was going to spend any time with his daughter after school let out.
* * * * * * * * *
Leo Thaxter placed the package inside the locker, and then shut it. After locking and double checking to be sure it was secure, he inspected his face in the mirror finish of the door. Grey hair, strong jaw, dark eyes, good teeth, full beard and a slight tan. As a whole the face was pleasant, a face that could go unnoticed on any world. Until he smiled. Leo stared at his reflection; it showed a forced, unnatural smile, as though it had been brought out of a dark place and plastered on his face. Even the eyes were likely to draw attention as they had a menacing quality about them, and Thaxter knew it.
I just won’t smile, then, he decided.
Leo walked out of the spaceport to his aircar. The aircar still had that new vehicle smell of freshly installed plastic and ionized metal. He flew to the outskirts of the city to a ranch cabin. The cabin was a simple four-bedroom affair with a power cartridge similar to that of the aircar, much like most dwellings outside of the city’s power grid. Or so it appeared. In truth, there was a small M/E converter unit in place of a septic system. The unit was capable of sustaining several much larger buildings and was abusively expensive, making it an extravagance most residents of Zarathustra could not afford, especially when the CZC power grid was more than sufficient for their energy needs at very reasonable rates.
The cabin was purchased under the name of Clancy Slade. Leo Thaxter decided to make good use of his look-alike’s identity. On most planets such a subterfuge would be caught by tax offices while collecting property taxes, but Zarathustra was a tax-free planet. As long as Leo didn’t come into direct confrontation with the local police—something he planned to avoid anyway—and didn’t create any red flags with the credit agencies, he could comfortably pass himself off as Clancy without anybody getting wise. He even rented the spaceport locker in Clancy’s name and paid in advance. To avoid giving away his hideout, he used Clancy’s real home address and checked the box that indicated he wanted paperless billing. That would keep the real Clancy from finding out his doppelganger was still on Zarathustra.
It had been a dicey maneuver. Two months earlier Leo Thaxter had taken great pains to be seen leaving the planet. He’d over-tipped the cabbie, made a fuss about getting first-class accommodations on the shuttle and even looked directly at as many surveillance cameras as he could find at the spaceport. The hard part had been sneaking back off the shuttle without anybody noticing. Fortunately for the escaped convict, security was designed to keep people from sneaking onto the shuttle, not off.
Leo had given his first-class ticket to a large man in coach and even slipped him two hundred sols to use Clancy’s name until he reached Gimli. The man happily accepted the upgrade and the conditions by which he got them. Once off the shuttle, Leo had gone underground. He had money enough to live for years without resorting to robbery or, worst of all, wage earning. He’d bought the cabin outside of the city where he wouldn’t have a
ny close neighbors to bother him, and acquired his furnishings on the sly from fences he knew only by reputation, not from anybody who would know him personally.
The inside of the cabin was comfortably appointed, if a bit Spartan; the furniture, a fully stocked bar, a television screen and a state of the art computer. Everything the atomic-era colonist in hiding needed, but without any curios, knickknacks or even hunting trophies which were a decorating staple on newly colonized worlds. No zarabuck hides decorated the walls nor did damnthing-skin rugs cover the floor. It was just the bare necessities.
Leo poured himself a tall drink, then sat down and turned on the viewscreen setting the channel to B.I.N. The morning news was just ending with an editorial. The station owner, Ivan Dane, was railing against the Charterless Zarathustra Company and the Colonial Government. He didn’t come right out and say that the two were in a conspiracy to keep the ‘Fuzzy Rocket’ away from the public, but he came close enough that people would automatically draw that conclusion. Next, he wondered why the Federation representative in the form of Commodore Napier wasn’t taking an active role in the disposition of the artifact. Or was he? Dane ranted a while longer before thanking the viewing audience and signing off, with the intimation that if he were running things the public wouldn’t be kept in the dark.
So that’s it, you little bastard, Leo said to himself. You’re trying to take over the whole damned planet. Leo smiled. Sweet racket if you can pull it off.
Leo sat and thought about it for a while. Running a whole planet. He would have liked to get in on the caper, but he was a known and wanted felon. He wouldn’t even be able to pull the strings behind the scenes; sooner or later somebody would rat him out for the reward or just to get him out of the way. If not for the fact that Dane and Murdock had conspired to kill him, he would have simply left the planet to them. No, Dane and Murdock had to pay. Leo didn’t care about the rest of their little group; they could have the planet if they could take it, but nobody plans a hit on Leo Thaxter and lives to laugh about it.
V
“…and the big bright thing in the sky is called the sun.”
“Sun?”
Joseph Aaron Quigley, or just Joe, smiled at the Fuzzy, though he made an effort not to show his teeth. Baring teeth was a sign of aggression among these Fuzzies, unlike the ones on the res who understood man showed his teeth in friendship. Usually.
“You are doing very well speaking my language, Red Fur,” the human said.
Bal’f ’ke, or Red Fur, as Joe called him, nodded. He had been teaching the Koo-wen, Big One, the language of the Jin-f ’ke.
Joe had quickly learned that the language was different from that of the Fuzzy language tapes. Fuzzies, it seemed, possessed more than one tongue. In the two months since Joe had been taken prisoner, he had managed to learn over two hundred words and communicate effectively with his captors. In return, he had taught several Fuzzies some basic Lingua Terra terms. Initially he concentrated on words like food, water, hungry, thirsty, that sort of thing. Now he was working on things that didn’t immediately impact on Red Fur’s comfort and survival, like the names of astral bodies.
Bal-f ’ke appeared to be the most intelligent of his students, which made sense as he also appeared to be the grand marshal of the Fuzzies that had gathered together in the last two months. Of course, as any former military man could tell you, leaders aren’t always the sharpest knives in the drawer. Many a lieutenant ended up the victim of a fatal accident when he proved mentally under-equipped to lead his men effectively in combat.
Joe had decided some weeks back that he would have to escape and turn himself in to the authorities the first chance he got. Anything was better than being the prisoner of a bunch of very angry Fuzzies. He laughed at the thought. Ordinarily, a Fuzzy, or even a small group of Fuzzies, would be no match for one unarmed man. However, even without the incredible numbers he was surrounded by, these Fuzzies had atlatls, slings, spears, stone axes and, worst of all, a new bunch came in the day before with bow and arrow technology. The bows were crude and the range limited as they were made from the wood of a featherleaf tree, until one Fuzzy got the idea to use zaraoak, a wood comparable to blackthorn in hardness and resilience.
While very few Fuzzies were strong enough to pull a bow that strong, the ones that did displayed surprising accuracy and the numbers were growing. Escaping became less likely all the time. It would be like an elephant trying to hide from the great white hunter. There were trees enough around him to hide behind, but two hundred plus Fuzzies could cover a lot of area in a hurry. Joe would never make it with those odds. Even considering the greater speed a healthy human could run at, he couldn’t outrun spears and arrows. At least these Fuzzies didn’t have dogs to ride on like the domestic ones in the south. The breed they used on the res, the Curtys, was often used to protect children and livestock on other planets. A one hundred and twenty pound Curtys could kill a two-hundred pound man with very little trouble. Yet they were gentle with children, provided they grew up with them or were well trained. No, Joe was very glad he didn’t have to worry about the dogs on top of everything else.
“Why big moon called Dar-y-us and little moon called Zerk-zees?” asked one Fuzzy. Climber was her name, Joe recalled.
“Why you called Climber, and him called Red Fur? To make important things easy to understand,” Joe explained.
Another Fuzzy picked up two rocks and held them up to Joe. “These rocks, yes? Not have different names?”
Joe examined the rocks. One was basalt and the other feldspar. Now how did one explain the difference to a Fuzzy? “Yes, have different names, but also called rocks. Darius and Xerxes both have different names, but both are also called moons. Understand? This rock is also called basalt, and this rock is also called feldspar.”
He went on to explain that basalt was a common extrusive volcanic rock with fine grains while feldspar came in many different varieties. As Joe expected, the Fuzzies constantly interrupted him to explain what this or that meant, and why it mattered that they were different when they were just rocks. Joe tried to explain that if you knew what each thing was and how it was different from other things, you would know how to use those things better.
“Okay, look at, um, Spearsender’s bow. It is made of the wood Big Ones call zaraoak. But he used to have a bow made from a weaker wood my people call featherleaf. Which throws the arrow, or little spear, farther?”
Everybody agreed that zaraoak was better.
“Good, now if I said ‘go run fast and get me zaraoak to make bow with,’ you would know which kind of wood I wanted, yes?”
That got the point across.
Red Fur called for a break to eat. While the other Fuzzies scampered off for some raw goofer, Red Fur turned to Joe.
“Your people very wise,” he said.
Joe nodded, then shrugged. “Sometimes we are not so wise. Our world was much like yours, once, and we ruined it. Now, we go to other worlds and sometimes ruin them. The Big Ones who came to this world want to keep it safe, but there are always a few bad people who do not care about such things. They just take what they want.”
“Are you bad Big One?”
Joe was taken aback by the forwardness of the question. Then he answered as honestly as he could. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Red Fur nodded, a gesture he picked up from the human. “That why you kill Sun Fur?”
Joe expected that question to come up sooner or later, and decided to tell the truth. “I didn’t kill her. That was one of the other Big Ones, and it was an accident. But I gave the order, so I am responsible.”
Red Fur said nothing for several heartbeats. When he spoke, there was controlled anger in his voice. “Jin-f ’ke not kill Jin-f ’ke. This thing you name ‘murder’ new to us. You say Big Ones murder each other. When caught, they too, killed. You say to teach others not to murder. How can killing teach others not to kill? This a strange thing to us. Yet, many in tribe want make you dead, kill you for deat
h of Sun Fur. I want you to make dead, to die when I saw her body. Now, I not know how I feel, but afraid what will happen if my people kill you. I afraid we may become like you. Do not think that a good thing.”
Red Fur turned away from the human, then looked back over his shoulder. “Our People will decide what to be done with you. Most will listen to me, but not all. When I have decided what we will do, I will tell you.”
As Red Fur walked away, Joe considered his possible fate. He didn’t want to die, but he wasn’t certain if he didn’t deserve to. He would have to think hard on how he would escape, and if he still wanted to do so.
* * * * * * * * *
Bal-f ’ke watched in fascination as the strange Koo-wen in the yellow not-fur used made-things to dig into the dirt. Unlike the previous Koo-wen who had made a great burrow to live in, these Big Ones lived and worked in the open.
Did that mean that these Big Ones were different from the ones that killed Sun Fur? They acted different, and they came in all sizes and colors. One was very big compared to the others with dark skin and darker fur on head. Like the Jin-f ’ke, the fur came in different colors though the skin varied wildly. Would these Big Ones try to hurt his people?
Joe said that killing was an accident, but how did one make an accident with a weapon he knew could bring down a shima-kato, what Joe called a ‘damnthing.’ It was a killing weapon, wasn’t it? These new Big Ones…would they make friends with the Jin-f ’ke? Not all Jin-f ’ke were alike, so maybe the Koo-wen were different, too. Red Fur decided to wait and see what the new Big Ones did before passing judgment. There was still so much he didn’t know.
* * * * * * * * *
The Bitter End was in full swing for the 1600 crowd. The doors had opened mere minutes earlier and the lounge was already packed. People in their late teens to early thirties filed onto the floor and started dancing. Some did the latest dance adapted from a Thoran religious rite, others were doing “the Khooghra” and the rest did various dances popular on Terra six months earlier. On the dance floor the music was nearly deafening. Directional sonics spared the people sitting at tables and the bar the brunt of the music allowing them to converse among themselves without raising their voices.
Caveat Fuzzy Page 5