Caveat Fuzzy

by Wolfgang Diehr

  “This is…I…what do you want me to do?” Affanita grew suspicious. Nobody tossed around this kind of loot in a bar, especially in a hole like the Xerxes. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

  “Sell these for me.” Richard took another hit from his drink. “I don’t have a prospector’s license.”

  She took another drink. “You can get a PL for twenty sols, Tiger. I’ll bet that’s less than what this drink you bought me costs. Now, what’s the scam?”

  Richard shrugged. “Okay, my acquisition of these stones was less than completely on the up-and-up. I need to sell them through a third party to avoid unwanted attention. I haven’t been on planet long enough to explain hitting such a rich deposit.”

  “Forget it.” Affanita handed the pouch back and started to back away, leaving her drink behind on the bar. “I won’t have any truck with somebody who robbed another prospector….”

  “I did no such thing,” interrupted Richard. “I can’t tell you where I got these, but you may be assured I robbed nobody in your profession.”

  She stopped, held onto the rail to get her balance, then returned to her seat next to her drink. Despite herself, she was very curious. “Then where…?”

  “I know people with vast connections. Trust me; these stones are unregistered and untraceable.”

  Affanita looked at the bag. If she even got five percent of their value, she would be set for a couple of months, maybe more. Still—“I don’t know…?”

  Richard tossed the bag next to Affanita’s drink. “Tell you what. I’ll just let you take these, free and clear. Inspect them, test them, sell them, do whatever you like. They’re yours. Later we can talk about a percentages on future stones.”

  “What? Wait. What?” Affanita was starting to feel the effects of the brandy and doubted what she was hearing. “You’re just givin’ me these, um, these stones? How do you know I won’t just run off with ’em?”

  “You are perfectly free to do so if you wish, Affanita. But I think you will be back for more. And I will be back with more. Much more.” Richard sized up the woman and realized the Thoran brandy he bought for her hit her a bit too hard. Since he needed her, he decided to make sure she stayed healthy. A place like the Xerxes Tavern was not the place where that could be counted on. There was a serial rapist on the loose and he needed the woman safe and healthy for his plans. “I think we should call you a cab and get you home before somebody takes advantage of you.”

  “I’m not a cab, ‘m a woman.” Affanita giggled. She was barely conscious at this point.

  “Hey!” the bartender called out. “You better not have slipped her anything.”

  “Nah, nothing like that,” Richard said. “I think she may have been a little too primed to deal with a good Thoran brandy. That’s all. I’ll just call her a taxi.”

  “I’m not a tazi, ei’der,” mumbled the woman.

  “I better not find out different, pal,” the barman warned. Under the bar he tapped a command on a keyboard and a screen lit up showing the exterior of the bar. If the geek did anything other than put Affanita in a cab, he would be out there with a sawed-off pool cue in a heartbeat. For all he knew the skinny geek could be that rapist he read about on the data stream. The Xerxes might be a dive, but it was a dive where women weren’t molested.

  Richard dropped fifty sols on the bar, collected the tipsy woman and eased her out to the street, where he pressed the taxi call button. Thirty seconds later a cab floated down and Richard deposited Affanita in the back.

  “Where to, Bubba?” the cabbie asked.

  Richard started when he saw the cabbie, then quickly recovered. “Take the young lady to…” Richard took out the woman’s wallet and opened it. “…8486 Featherleaf Lane. Here’s ten to cover the fare and an extra fifty to make sure she makes it there in one piece. And get her into her place. No funny business or….”

  “Hey, Bubba, I do this sort of thing all the time. The lady’ll be safe with me. Besides, what my wife would do to me beats any threat you have on tap.”

  “That’s good for both of us. There’s an overprotective bartender in there I would hate for either of us to upset.”

  “You mean, Antonio? Yeah, he’s a real mean one to cross, but a good guy to have at your back.”

  Richard smiled and tossed another fifty at the driver. The cabbie soared away with his fare and Richard called for another taxi. As he rode away, a large bearded man wearing a hat and sunglasses stepped out of the bar to watch him go.

  IX

  Gerd carefully applied the mildly caustic acid to the metal plate and used a specialized brush designed to withstand the acid to gently wipe away the loosened rust and grime. The metal plate had been painstakingly removed from the rocket with a combination of sonic vibrations to loosen the corroded bolts from the wall, and a magnetic extractor to gently pull and hold the plate. The belief was that it might be the ship’s registry, or some alien equivalent. Unfortunately, the characters that Gerd had managed to uncover made no sense to him. A linguist would need to be brought in, and there were none on the planet as far as he knew.

  With the first coat of corrosion removed, Gerd inspected his work. It would be a long time before anything useful could be gleaned from it. The rocket itself was older than any metal artifact in human history. Older than anything found on other planets, in fact. Except for Mars. Mars was lousy with artifacts a hundred thousand years old and older. Still, the rocket was a monumental find.

  What they really needed were a few experienced archaeologists. Gerd was a xenonaturalist and anthropologist. He had taken a few courses in archaeology and paleontology back in his university days to fill a few electives, but had never been on a real dig before. Then again, what could an archaeologist bring to the party? Nobody had ever dug up a millennia-old rocket, before. Not even on Mars. Aside from being better suited to collecting and cleaning the artifact fragments, an archaeologist would likely be just as clueless as everybody else in this case.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be home with your wife, by now?”

  Gerd turned and saw Victor Grego and Pancho Ybarra with Diamond trailing behind them. Everybody else was gone. “I guess I didn’t hear the harpy on the pole telling me it was quitting time, Mr. Slate.”

  Grego looked confused.

  “A reference to another old cartoon I used to watch as a child.”

  “Oh, right, the Flagstones or something like that, wasn’t it?”

  “The Flintstones, Mr. Grego,” Pancho supplied. “Harpy. Good one, Gerd.”

  Grego nodded and continued, “Anyway, Ruth is here with Id, Syndrome, Superego and Complex. I didn’t want too many people, Big Ones or Fuzzies, coming in here so I promised to corral you myself.” Grego glanced at the plate Gerd was working on. “Getting anywhere?”

  “Well, as a metal polisher, I make a good naturalist,” Gerd said wryly. “I never had to clean a metal artifact before. Frankly, I should be working on those skeletons we found at the dig.”

  “Juan Jimenez is on top of that, and a herd of damnthings couldn’t pull him away,” Grego said. “This is the first real opportunity he’s had to work at something other than administration since I promoted him.”

  “Humph. I guess I know how he feels,” Gerd said. “Say, any luck finding a linguist, Mr. Grego?”

  “I’m afraid not. When I selected the teams for this world it was with an eye towards exploitation and development. Since we believed this was a Class III uninhabited world, I didn’t bother with linguists, archaeologists or anthropologists. Even you were hired on your primary vocation. I did send word out that we needed people in those areas as soon as the rocket was discovered, but it will take at least another two months, assuming there are any on Gimli, before we can expect anything on that front.” He glanced at Lt. Commander Ybarra. “Anything the Navy could do?”

  “No, sir. We fell into the same trap you did in staffing the base. We put out some feelers with the last ship, and we’re hoping somebody will come in f
rom Gimli in a couple of months.”

  Gerd nodded. “It could be longer than that, really, since we’ve known about Fuzzies for years and nobody from Gimli, expert in those disciplines, has dropped by for a chat with them. The rocket might spark some interest. Still, we might have to wait for somebody from Thor or Yggdrasil or even Freya to pop over. That means another four months, minimum. Frankly, I would have thought the Fuzzies themselves would have attracted more attention from that community.”

  “Good point,” Grego said. “In fact, some might even be headed here, now. It takes a while for the news to travel by hyperspace and longer to get funding and relocate. We could be in for a whole flock of ‘-ists’ and ‘-ologists’ by year end.”

  “I hate to admit it, but the Space Navy dropped the ball on this one, too,” Pancho added. “It’s been more than two years since the discovery of the Fuzzies. They should have had some people brought in by now.”

  “Mummy Woof waiting, Pappy Vic,” Diamond pointed out.

  “So she is, Diamond. Come along, Gerd. We don’t want your wife to get mad at us.”

  Grego walked with Gerd and Pancho to the elevator. “Um, Pancho, would you mind if Gerd and I speak privately?”

  Pancho nodded once and moved to a different elevator far enough away to give Grego and Gerd some space.

  “Gerd, I understand Ruth spends a lot of time going back and forth between here and Beta Continent, what with her social work and you working on the artifact.” Grego refused to call it ‘The Fuzzy Rocket.’ “Why not just have her move in with you here in Company House? Your old apartment is certainly roomy enough for the six of you, and I would even be willing to arrange a second suite if you feel you need the space.”

  Gerd rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, then said, “We talked about doing something like that, but with Lolita Lurkin staying with us while she works for Jack…well, I don’t see how we can get around that.”

  “Doesn’t Jack have an extra room?”

  “I think Akira O’Barre will be staying in it, according to Ruth. She was there when Akira moved in.”

  Grego mentally slapped his forehead. Of course Akira was staying there. “Tell you what, I’ll have a Quonset hut sent out to Jack’s land grant, and the women can bunk in together. I think an old rooster like Jack will feel more comfortable with the hens out from underfoot, and Ruth can move back in with you, here.” Grego omitted the fact that Jack had already ordered the hut for his guests earlier that day; plus another two, one to be filled with physical therapy and weight training equipment, some human sized, some downscaled for Fuzzy use, and the other for extra storage.

  Gerd was skeptical. “What’s the catch?”

  Grego played innocent. He was surprisingly convincing. “Catch?”

  “Mr. Grego, I worked for you long enough to know that even your most magnanimous gestures come back to profit you one way or another. Shall I list them? We can start with the extee-three you had the Company supply and ended up with the Yellowsand charter.”

  Juan told me Gerd was shrewd, damn-it. “Hey, that was just lucky. I had no idea that there would even be a Yellowsand mining operation at that time. Okay, I’ll admit that I am hoping to win you and Ruth back to the company. You were both very good at your jobs, especially Ruth, and I hate to lose qualified people. Yes, I made some…unfortunate choices when the Fuzzies were first discovered, and Ruth did quite the hatchet job on me as a Terran Federation Naval operative. But I like to think that the past is the past. Me, Ben and the Fuzzies are all good friends, now. Right, Diamond?”

  “Yes, Pappy Vic. Pappy Ben, Pappy Jack, Unka Panko…” Diamond went on at some length naming all of the Big Ones and Fuzzies who were friends.

  “See, Gerd? One big happy family. If you come back it will be to an assistant Division Head position with a substantial bump to your old salary. Ruth would be working with Ernst Mallin as his chief assistant.” Grego noticed that Gerd was silent on the subject as they walked. “One more thing; you two could keep an eye on us evil profiteers and keep us honest. Think about it.”

  “I can’t promise anything, Mr. Grego. And I can’t just leave Jack in the lurch, especially while he’s recovering.” Gerd mentally winced when he realized that he had pretty much already done that by working on the rocket.

  “The job offer is open-ended. You and Ruth talk it over. Talk it over with Jack, too.”

  Gerd stepped into the elevator while he considered the offer. Granted, it was a good, no, a great opportunity, but he hated to leave Jack and the Fuzzies. Then another thought struck him. “Does Juan Jimenez know about this?”

  Grego laughed. “Who do you think suggested it?”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Juan Jimenez looked over the arrangement of bones for the umpteenth time, then scribbled some notes on his pad. With him were Dr. Hoenveld and Dr. Mallin, plus a team of lab techs and interns.

  “How does it look to you, Chris?” Juan asked Hoenveld.

  “I’d say this is the correct arrangement, Dr. Jimenez.” Hoenveld pointed to a left femur and a number of smaller bones set off to the side. “These do not belong to any of these fossilized skeletons. We don’t have three sets of bones, but four incomplete sets. This one here,” Hoenveld indicated the female skeleton on the fourth gurney, “is the closest one to completion of the bunch. Still, we have far more to work with than would typically be the case. Back on Old Terra, anthropologists would conjure up an entire hominid out of a single tooth, which made for some very embarrassing scientific faux pas. Still, archaeology and anthropology are outside my fields of expertise.”

  “Mine, as well,” Dr. Mallin admitted. “Even though I took the requisite classes back at the university, which was well over thirty years ago.”

  “I know, doctor,” Juan agreed. “We are all working outside of our fields on this. Still, you two are the best available on the planet for this job.”

  “Not true,” Hoenveld argued. “Gerd van Riebeek is far more knowledgeable in this area than we are.”

  That Dr. Hoenveld would admit anybody was better at anything science related than himself was amazing. It also underscored how much they needed more qualified people to work on the project. Juan was a naturalist, like Gerd, but he lacked Gerd’s background and experience. If he hadn’t quit the company when the Fuzzies were first discovered, Juan had no doubt Gerd would be the division head instead of him.

  “Ernst, nobody on the planet knows more about the brain and sapient mentation than you,” Juan said. He wasn’t just buttering Mallin up. Dr. Mallin was the authority in those fields on Zarathustra. “Judging by these skulls, do you think these are the fossils of sapient beings?”

  Dr. Mallin screwed up his face as he considered his answer. “I just can’t be sure, Dr. Jimenez. These bones look very much like oversized Fuzzy fossils. The skull cavity suggests a smaller brain-to-body ratio than that exhibited by the current existing population, but that wouldn’t preclude sapience in and of itself. Fuzzies break a lot of rules in that regard. The average human brain is about three pounds. It was once believed that two pounds of brain mass was the minimum requirement to achieve functional sapience. Then we discovered the Yggdrasil Khooghra. Their brain masses are around three point nine pounds, and we all know what they are like. Neanderthal man had a larger cranial capacity than Homo sapiens, but I very much doubt that they were smarter than us.

  “Now along come the Fuzzies with a brain mass of one pound, give or take, yet they are easily ten times smarter than a Khooghra. How the brain is arranged would account for much of that, of course. These fossilized skulls possess the capacity for a two and a half pound brain. Albert Einstein’s brain was only two pounds or so. However, Einstein’s neural density was far greater than average, which is also the case with Fuzzies. Khooghras, by the way, possess the lowest neural density of any sapient species.”

  “So you are saying,” Hoenveld said, “that these skulls might have held a brain that could have rivaled that of Albert Einstein, or
just that of an oversized Zarathustran primate.”

  “I’m afraid so, yes. It is interesting that the cranial cavity leaves very little room for the frontal lobes which, on Terra, would be an indication of low intelligence. However, Ullerans and Lokians also have small frontal lobes. A Freyan kholph possesses larger frontal lobes than a Fuzzy, yet is clearly non-sapient, though very intelligent as primates go. I just can’t narrow it down from this little bit of evidence. Not yet.”

  Juan expected something like that. Current Fuzzy physiology allowed for larger frontal lobes, but there was no way of knowing whether or not that was the only marker for sapience on Zarathustra, yet. A lot more testing would be needed before any ruling could be justified.

  Juan stood up straight and stretched. It seemed like he had been hunched over the fossils for hours. He glanced at his wrist chronometer and realized that he had been hunched over for a good long while. “Guys, let’s call it a night and try this with fresh eyes in the morning. Maybe that work detail at the dig will have found something useful by then.”

  “A clay pot would be nice,” Hoenveld observed, as they moved out the door. That brought on a lecture from Mallin about how Fuzzies only made weapons, not crockery. Crockery would suggest cooking of some sort and Fuzzies in the wild ate their food raw.

  After the room was empty of all but a few of the night staff, one person looked over the bones and took a series of photographs, then left the building.

  * * * * * * * * *

  The sound of a heated argument filtered through the door of the visitor’s room where Anderson and Rippolone sat. They couldn’t catch everything being said through the door, but the gist seemed to be that Leslie Coombes didn’t want the prisoners to have a visitor, while Marshal Fane said that even these sons-of-Khooghras had rights. After a few minutes the noise died down and a dark-haired man was escorted into the room by Officer Chang who inspected the prisoners’ shackles before exiting and closing the door behind him.

  The two prisoners eyed the newcomer for a few seconds. Finally, Rippolone broke the silence. “Who’re you supposed ta be?”