“One second, gentlemen.” The dark-haired man extracted a pen from a jacket pocket, depressed the end quickly five times, then set it in the middle of the table. “Now we may speak without being overheard.”
“Fine. Now, who the hell are you?” demanded Rippolone.
The dark-haired man leaned forward. “Mr. Campanili sends his regards, Ripper. I was supposed to be your back-up if you ran into any problems. Well, clearly things have not gone well for you.” The darkhaired man waved a hand indicating the interrogation room. “Not well at all.”
Anderson spoke before Rippolone could respond. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Mister—?”
“Guido will do, Tony.” Guido leaned back as though at ease with his surroundings. “You did a pretty good job grabbing up Banner—, excuse me, Brannhard, but you got sloppy and got pinched. All I need to know is this: what have you told the local police?”
“We ain’t said nuthin’,” Rippolone said belligerently.
Guido shook his head and held up an index finger that he wagged side-to-side. “That is a double negative, Ripper, which means you said something.”
“We have been steadfastly silent since our arrest, Mr. Guido,” Anderson supplied. “We know better than to speak out of school.”
Guido sighed dramatically. “I wish I could believe that, Tony.”
“Who do you think you are, anyway? We don’t know you from Adam,” Rippolone argued. “I’ll bet you’re some cop tryin’ ta sucker us.”
“Ripper, look at his face,” Anderson cautioned. “Don’t you recognize him? He came in on the same ship from Terra that we did. He had that fancy private room in First Class.”
The color drained from Rippolone’s face. “Waitasec…Guido? The Guido?”
“You have heard of me, then.” It was not a question. “I came to make sure you didn’t botch the job, and to make sure you couldn’t talk if you were caught. Ideally, I would try to get you off-planet. Regrettably, that is not an option as I lack the resources to extract you from these accommodations. I am very sorry, gentlemen, but I hope you understand that this is nothing personal.” Guido reached a hand into his jacket.
“Nothing pers—, hey! Waitasec, we got a guy here that can help you get us out,” blurted Rippolone. “Ain’t that right, Tony?”
Anderson considered his options before speaking. He didn’t have any. “Raul Laporte. He set us up with the hideout, aircar and weapons. He even gave us the directions to find Brannhard’s home. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had a few cops on his payroll. If anybody could get us out of here, he’s the man.”
Guido slowly withdrew his hand and sat quietly for several seconds before speaking. “This Laporte…where can I find him?”
“He owns The Bitter End over in Junktown,” Rippolone said, then he did a double take. “Wait-a-sec, how come you don’t know Laporte? Mr. Campanili gave us the lowdown on him before we left Terra….”
“I was given a different contact,” Guido interrupted. “As it turns out, my information was not as good as yours. I was told to contact a Leo Thaxter, only to find that he was incarcerated long before my arrival on this world.” Guido drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Gentlemen, eliminating you would be relatively easy. In fact, you wouldn’t feel a thing when you suddenly expired two days from now.” Guido patted his jacket where the two men suspected he had some sort of drug injection device in an inner pocket. “However, I am under orders to bring you back in one piece if at all possible. Mr. Campanili may want to deal with you personally, or simply question you. I neither know nor care which.
“I will have a talk with this Mr. Laporte. Beyond that, I can make no promises. I trust I can count on your continued discretion?” Guido picked up the pen, depressed the end five more times, and returned it to his pocket. “Good day, gentlemen.”
* * * * * * * * *
“Guido? Seriously? That was the only name you could think of?” Max Fane was holding his sides as he laughed. “I can’t believe these mutts fell for that! Oh, and I liked that trick with the pen.”
“I saw something like that in an old spy thriller movie,” Morgan admitted. “Is there something like that in reality?”
“White noise generators,” supplied Max. “It sets up a static sound in the normal and hypersonic ranges. I never heard of one small enough to be disguised as a pen, though.”
“These are hitmen, Max, not collapsium engineers,” Gus Brannhard said. He turned to Morgan. “But still, ‘Guido?’ I should have prepped you better.”
Morgan looked a little sheepish as he admitted that he heard the name from a gangster movie. “It sounded authentic to me. The only other name I could think of was Utgareles, a particularly nasty murderer who was executed on Freya twenty T-years ago. They seemed impressed enough. Is there an enforcer by the name of Guido working for the Campanili Family?”
“Not that I ever heard of, but they don’t exactly advertise,” Gus admitted. “You watch a lot of old Terran movies, don’t you?”
“It helped me to learn a lot of Terran idioms and cultural details,” Morgan said. “It also caused me to make a number of social faux pas in college since most of the movies were outdated.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Leslie Coombes said. “We got the whole thing on tape. This will be enough to bring Laporte in and have him questioned under veridication. We’ll have the warrant in about an hour and then we can go pay him a little visit.”
“We?” Max asked.
“I’m prosecuting everybody involved with Gus’s abduction, remember? That means I’m involved in prosecuting Laporte, too.” Coombes turned to Gus. “I’m beginning to see the appeal of working your side of the street, Gus. By the way, that was a good prep job you did on Morgan, name notwithstanding. And Morgan, you missed your calling as an actor.”
Morgan winked. “I couldn’t fit it into my busy schedule. I did take part in some theatrical productions back in college, though.”
“What really sold it, Mr. Holloway,” Max Fane added, “is the fact they remembered you from the voyage in from Terra. Good thing we had these mutts in segregation with no television, radio or newspapers. That business with the duel was all over the news for quite a while.”
“Call me Morgan, Marshal. Mr. Holloway is my father.”
X
Gerd entered his old living quarters in Company House and plopped down into his overstuffed sofa chair. He hadn’t realized how much he missed some of the things he had left behind when he quit the company.
He had made the chair himself in the employees’ workshop, from featherleaf lumber and animal hides that he had hunted himself. The stuffing came from the feathers of banjo birds he had shot and eaten during some of his field trips. As a naturalist, he would never hunt for sport. Still, a man had to eat and there was no point wasting the hides and feathers.
Back when the Fuzzies were first discovered by Jack Holloway, he quit the company when it became clear that they were trying to keep the Fuzzies’ sapience from being recognized. Gerd smiled when he recalled how he had told off Leonard Kellogg. Had his mother been there she would have washed his mouth out with soap.
Once out of the company, Gerd jumped at Jack’s offer to become his partner as a sunstone prospector. The idea was that they had a better chance of staying alive if they worked together. After the Pendarvis Decision, Gerd stayed on with Jack as his deputy commissioner of native affairs. Then, he and Ruth got married.
Things had been going pretty well, though there were times when the money was tight. Gerd wasn’t making quite as much as deputy commissioner as he had with the Company, and Ruth was no longer employed at all though she did still volunteer with Social Services. Add four active Fuzzies, Superego, Id, Syndrome and Complex, and the money barely stretched from week to week.
Ruth had talked about taking on a full-time position with Social Services, but that was on Alpha. They would only get to see each other on the weekends.
Victor Grego’s of
fer was a damned good one. Even without Ruth getting her position back, their financial troubles would be under control. They could even start planning on having children who weren’t Fuzzies.
Gerd decided he would talk to Ruth, then Jack, and see what they had to say about it. The worst of it, after leaving Jack hanging, was moving back to Alpha Continent. He liked Beta and working directly with Fuzzies.
* * * * * * * * *
Jack Holloway strolled around the homestead without the contragravity chair. Akira was getting familiar with the office and Betty had chased him out of his own cabin to cook something up for dinner. Real take charge woman that Betty. She reminded him of his mother that way. He just hoped she was as good a cook as she was attractive. Morgan’s mother, Adonitia, had been.
For now Jack just wanted some exercise while Morgan was over on Alpha. His chest had stopped itching and his new lung seemed to be working well enough that he didn’t feel winded while walking. He also noticed his joints were less stiff. Jack had to admit that he felt better than he had in years.
Gus confessed that Morgan flipped for the full body treatment while he was incapacitated. Jack glanced at his reflection in a window as he walked passed. At least they left his hair and crow’s feet alone. He regarded his wrinkles and white hair as trophies of a life well lived. Had Morgan interfered with those, well, full-grown man or not, he would have gone over Jack’s knee.
Something flew passed Jack’s head and he instinctively reached for his pistol, even though he hadn’t worn it around camp since the res was created. Just as well; it was that silly Frisbee. Little Fuzzy, Baby Fuzzy and two of the dogs came running after it.
“Pappy Jack! You play Friz-bee with us,” Little Fuzzy asked.
Jack thought about it and decided he needed the exercise. “Hokay. Just don’t make me run for it, too much.
They moved away from the house and Jack sent the disc for a long low spin towards Little Fuzzy. The Fuzzy snatched it out of the air and shot it to Baby Fuzzy, who leaped twice his height into the air to catch it. Baby spun and launched it at the nearest dog, Trigger, before he hit ground. Trigger snapped it up and took it back to Little Fuzzy, who in turn sent it back to Jack. Jack didn’t have to move an inch; the disc sailed straight to him with impressive accuracy.
Jack threw the Frisbee to the other dog, Bullet, and started thinking about a Fuzzy Olympics. Almost any sport a human could do, a Fuzzy could do better, with the exception of team sports. Fuzzies had no concept of competition with each other. But running, jumping, pole vaulting, shot put, all these and more were workable. And it could be a tourist attraction. Ben was sweating bullets trying to come up with new sources of revenue in case the sunstone market collapsed. There was always taxation, but the simple fact was that Zarathustra simply didn’t have the population to support a planetary government and public services through tax revenues.
After ten minutes of playing, Jack felt pleasantly tired and decided to quit before he pushed himself too hard. Tossing the Frisbee around had been more fun than he expected and the Fuzzies were dead accurate with the disc when they wanted to be. Jack barely moved a step from his initial throwing position the entire time. That started him thinking of making some throwing stars for the Fuzzies. A goofer or zarabunny would likely drop dead with a single hit. Not as deadly as a bullet or arrow, but easy to carry.
Jack’s chain of thought stopped as Lolita Lurkin shouted his name.
“Mistah Holloway! There’s a call for ya on da screen. Somethin’ ’bout a dig site?”
That would be the crowd up where that rocket was discovered. Jack hoped there wasn’t another problem up there, like somebody finding a mummified Fuzzy in a space suit. Wouldn’t that play Nifflheim in the news.
“Little Fuzzy, why don’t you take some of your friends out and do some hunting. We could use some fresh meat.”
“Hokay, Pappy Jack,” Little Fuzzy said. He and Baby scampered off, yeeking for some hunting partners.
Jack walked quickly to the office where Akira was talking to somebody in a prison guard uniform on the viewscreen.
“Here he is now, sir.” Akira stood up to make room for Jack to take the seat.
Jack sat and noticed the man on the screen was agitated. “What can I do for you, son?”
“Well, we had a con break the perimeter…and um….”
“And he made a mess,” finished Jack. He knew all about the collar and pole security system. “He didn’t hurt any Fuzzies in the process, did he?”
“Not that we saw. Um, can I ask you keep this quiet? What I’m about to tell you, that is.”
“As long as it isn’t something illegal, Mr.—”
“Call me Ismet. No, sir, not illegal, just embarrassing.” Ismet explained about where they found the body and the grass wrapping.
“That’s standard Fuzzy procedure for preparing a body for burial,” Jack replied. “No stone cairn?”
“Negative, sir. We had to stun a zarawulf that was mauling the corpse, though. Think maybe the Fuzzies were scared away before they were finished?”
That was possible. “Did you see a collection of rock nearby? Something that might have been dropped in a hurry?” Ismet admitted that he hadn’t seen any. “Then the body may have been left for you to find.”
Ismet accepted that, then asked why the Fuzzies hadn’t come out when he and Niyol found the body. Jack explained that Fuzzies in the wild tended to avoid anything they didn’t understand. “If you saw anything at all, it would likely be backsides disappearing into the brush.” A thought struck Jack. “You stunned the zarawulf? Did you use sono-stunners?”
Ismet nodded.
“Fuzzies have hypersonic hearing. That sonic blast might have sent them running. Tell you what, I’ll come up in a few days and see if I can get a dialogue going with your neighbors. I have a few questions of my own.”
“We look forward to your visit, Commissioner.”
The screen blanked out. Jack sat and considered what he knew of the Fuzzies in general. The burial wrapping was standard for every Fuzzy tribe he had ever come across, and he’d come across a lot. So the northern Fuzzies recognized that the dead convict was a person, not an animal, which was a generous conclusion given that the man was a convicted felon. Too bad the law only allowed for the shooting of people who commit crimes instead of shooting the kind of people who commit them. The odd thing was the lack of a stone cairn. The Fuzzies left the body out where it could be found.
Maybe the Fuzzies up there didn’t want any direct contact with humans. The big explosion might account for that, or maybe the illegal prospectors committed a few atrocities on the locals and now the Fuzzies didn’t trust Big Ones in general. Fuzzies were smart enough to stay away from anything dangerous once they knew it could hurt them. Unfortunately, they could also generalize.
Damnthings would make you dead and eat you, so all damnthings were bad. Big Ones made a big boom that maybe hurt some Fuzzies, or some other thing the humans did hurt some Fuzzies, so all Big Ones were bad. That would explain their timidity. They would also be stuck with the dead Big One whose head went boom. It would be too big to bury, too much like people to eat. So, they wrapped it up and left it for other Big Ones to find and, hopefully, take away before it made bad smells.
Jack smiled as he considered the likelihood that some Fuzzies might have hid in the brush to watch and see what the Big Ones would do when they found the body. Jack was still lost in conjecture when the viewscreen came back on. It was Victor Grego. Jack pressed the ACCEPT CALL button a second time.
“Victor,” Jack shook his hands together and the image on the viewscreen reciprocated. “How is Gerd doing on that rocket?”
Grego grimaced. “About how you would expect. It isn’t Gerd’s area of expertise, but he’s the best we got. Actually, Gerd’s the reason I called.”
“Oh?”
“I offered him his old job back, plus a raise and promotion. He turned me down.”
“What? Why? You wou
ld pay him a damn sight more than he makes as my deputy, and the work is far less dangerous. He has a wife to think about.”
Grego nodded. “I pointed that out. But he’s too loyal to you and the Fuzzies to leave you in the lurch.”
Now there was a little piece of irony. At the moment Gerd was over on Alpha Continent working for the Company while Jack was being buried in paperwork. He’d already left Jack in the lurch.
“Well, if you recall, he quit after Kellogg mishandled the Fuzzy situation and came to work with me as my partner prospecting sunstones, ideally so we could keep each other alive.”
Grego winced. “Actually, killing you or Gerd was never an option in my book. Discrediting you both, I’m sorry to say, was.”
Jack waved it away. “Water under the bridge, Victor. The thing is, Gerd should take the job…he gets his seniority back, too, right?” Grego agreed. “Then we’ll just have to find a new deputy commissioner of native affairs. I’ll miss having him here, but a man has to do what’s right for himself and his family.”
Grego looked visibly relieved. “I’m very pleased to hear that, Jack. Now we just need to convince Gerd of that.”
That will be tough, Jack thought. “Well, I could always fire him.”
Grego thought that would cause too many hard feelings and Jack agreed. They discussed it until another call came in. Jack made an apology and put Grego on hold to accept the other call and wondered how he got to be so popular all of a sudden.
It was Betty. “Jack, you better round up the gang and get them over here for dinner before I feed it to the river pigs.”
Yup. Just like his mother in a lot of ways.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, then switched back over to Grego. “Gotta go, Victor. Betty just rang the dinner bell. We’ll discuss this later.”
Grego agreed and Jack signed off and headed back to his cabin.
Back at Company House Victor Grego idly wondered who Betty was and why she was cooking dinner for Jack.
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