“That’s not why we’re here, Clancy.” Gus leaned forward conspiratorially and said, “We need your help.”
“My help? Well, sure. Anything I can do. You name it.” Clancy waved a sweeping hand. “Here, everybody have a seat. Anybody want a beer, or a cuppa joe?”
Max took the end of the couch and Piet took the other end while Coombes parked in the center. Gus took the settee and Clancy flopped into his easy chair. Max noticed that the furniture all looked new, including the viewscreen console, which was currently tuned in to a B.I.N. news program showing pictures of some alien-looking skeletons. The room was tastefully appointed while not overly lavish. Clancy’s wife had been doing some shopping, Max guessed, either with Clancy’s first paycheck or, more likely, the hush money from the kidnappers.
“We’re on duty, but I never say no to coffee,” Max said.
Clancy called his wife out of the bedroom, introduced everybody, and then asked her to make some coffee. Marie hurried back to the kitchen while Annabelle peeked around the corner. “We picked up this brand from Gimli that beats anything I ever had from Terra. It’s hard-vacuum sealed so it’s all still fresh.”
“Sounds good,” Gus said. While they waited Gus explained about the cabin and locker. “It’s all in your name, so by any legal definition you are the owner. To be on the safe side, we double checked to see if there was another Clancy Slade on Zarathustra. There is not. You are currently the only one. So, we would like for you to give us permission to enter and search the cabin, and inspect the contents of the locker at the spaceport.”
“I can do that? Even though these things ain’t really mine?” Clancy thought it over. If everything was in his name, did he really own it? And was he on the hook if there was anything illegal in the cabin or locker?
“Legally, they are,” Coombes repeated. Guessing at the thoughts going through Clancy’s mind, he added, “And let me assure you that you will not be held accountable for any contraband we may find.”
Marie served the coffee with a new set of cups and placed them on coasters on the new hardwood coffee table while Clancy digested the situation. Annabelle, possibly attracted to Gus’s thick beard which was much like Clancy’s, walked in and climbed up on his lap. She was running her fingers through the prosecutor’s facial hair while Clancy reached a decision. “Marie, I’m gonna go with these guys for a couple of hours. We’ll hit the town when I get back, okay?”
Marie was so relieved that their guests weren’t hired killers she agreed without argument. “I’ll lay out your good suit while you’re gone. Don’t be late or I’ll trade you in for a Fuzzy.”
Gus set Annabelle on the settee as he stood up with the other men. The girl reminded him a bit of the daughter he lost on Terra so long ago.
Clancy gave his wife a “Yes, Ma’am” and a kiss on the cheek and was out the door before she could change her mind. “Okay, let’s go take a look at my cabin.”
Gus grumbled to himself that the coffee really was good and he hated to leave it unfinished. He waved bye-bye to the little girl on the way out. He considered making a joke about how he might want to snatch her up himself, then realized that it would be in extremely poor taste under the circumstances and stayed silent.
“Oh, wait,” exclaimed Clancy. “Spaceport locker. That explains the receipts.” Clancy spun around and rushed back into the apartment, startling Marie, and then returned with some papers in his meaty fists. “I’ve gotten three of these in the last few months. I was gonna go down there tomorrow and straighten it out.” He handed the papers over to Max.
The Marshal examined the papers. Receipts for payment on a locker rental at the spaceport. “Hey, look Piet. Clancy has a locker in Mallorysport. You must have missed that while you were looking around on the Net.”
Piet smiled. “Yes, sir. Guess that one got by me. I’ll be more careful in the future, Marshal.”
Clancy was confused for a moment. Didn’t Max just tell him about the spaceport locker? He shrugged and decided it was some sort of cop in-joke.
Five minutes later the first unmarked aircar was settling down behind a grove of featherleaf trees. A second unmarked aircar set down next to it. Everybody except Max Fane was in civilian clothes, so he had to wait in the car so as not to give anything away. He used that time to monitor the police band and watch for incoming traffic on the skycam. Gus, Clancy and Coombes intended to wait with him by the aircars until the cops in mufti gave the all clear.
Piet, in charge of the squad, elected to try the subtle approach. Grabbing a clipboard and his briefcase, he and Corporal Winslow, both in civilian suits, walked up to the door and knocked. After a polite half a minute, Piet knocked again. No response.
“So much for playing a census taker. Now we do this the hard way,” Piet said. The newly christened inspector pulled a device from his briefcase called a ‘skeletron key’ by the cops. It was an all-purpose electronic lock-override that was illegal for anyone other than police and emergency service personnel to use. Naturally, some had found their way onto the black market, into the hands of private investigators and, of course, locksmiths.
Home burglary was a rare crime on worlds where personal surveillance equipment was widely available, especially since the advent of models that could capture the heat signature, pulse and respiratory rates of the intruders. A ski-mask was worthless to the modern criminal. While there were devices that would defeat most surveillance equipment, they were obscenely expensive and beyond the reach of simple burglars. Companies that produced the electronic locks ignored the facts of home security cameras and claimed that their locks defeated the criminals. Piet knew better.
Piet fiddled with the device until he heard the tell-tale click of the door’s locking mechanism disengaging. Smiling, the inspector entered the cabin. Once inside, he and Corporal Winslow drew their side arms from shoulder holsters and went through each room systematically. Once satisfied that the cabin was empty, they signaled for the rest to come in. Clancy, as the owner of record, accompanied by several officers, went in while Gus and Coombes remained outside.
“Mr. Slade, please wait by the door and don’t touch anything,” instructed Piet. Then, as an afterthought, he asked permission to inspect the cabin. “Purely as a formality, sir.”
“Hell, rip it apart if you gotta,” said Clancy. “I want to see that bastard back in prison as much as you do.”
Piet nodded and went to work.
* * * * * * * * *
Prof. Darloss took one last look in the mirror and nodded at the young woman behind him. She had done an excellent job on his hair and make-up. He stood up and walked purposefully out of the dressing room and headed for the television studio. Spin Wheeler was going to interview him on Spinning Wheels, giving him a chance to support his previous interview on Tuning In With Tuning. Even Hoenveld wouldn’t be able to counter his conclusions this time.
Hoenveld, humph.
He wasn’t even an anthropologist. It couldn’t be denied that the man was brilliant, especially in the fields of biology, biochemistry, chemistry and a plethora of other scientific disciplines, but he was no anthropologist, physical or cultural.
Darloss fumed as he recalled how Hoenveld’s counterargument in that interview with Tuning ripped him to shreds. Not this time. Darloss had access to data even Hoenveld didn’t have and he was going to use it to destroy the Charterless Zarathustra Company’s lead scientist.
As was the case with Tuning In With Tuning, Spinning Wheels was a live broadcast. The show would follow the evening news which, by no coincidence, was showing photographic images of the giant Fuzzy fossils currently being studied at the CZC’s Science Division. The viewing audience would be primed for more information and scientific conjecture about the so-called Fuzzy Bones.
After Spinning Wheels would come an editorial by Ivan Dane blasting the Company and the colonial government for not making the fossils available for scrutiny by non-Company scientists. Next, there would be oblique suggestions tha
t the two were in collusion and the intimation that they were trying to maintain the status quo at the people’s expense; if the CZC and the colonial government were brought down there would be free land for all.
Darloss didn’t care, really, who ran the planet. He just wanted his fifteen minutes of fame and to make Hoenveld look like an idiot. As an academician he had no interest in land or politics. Darloss was interested only in being recognized in his field, making lots of money, and occasionally dallying with a young co-ed. Just the basics.
Darloss was escorted to the edge of the studio where he could see Spin Wheeler giving his monologue to his audience. He told a few jokes about Governor Rainsfield; something to the effect that the Fuzzies were really running things. He followed up with another joke about Victor Grego being in bed with the Governor making sense since it seemed to be the only company he ever got there.
The audience members laughed, cheered and applauded. They should have; they were paid enough. Unlike the audience of the CZCN talk show, Tuning In With Tuning, where the audience members consisted of tourists and people taking time from their busy schedules, B.I.N. hired people in from Junktown to fill seats and look like they were having a good time while Wheeler trashed the government and the CZC on his show. Initially, the studio simply offered free admission to anyone who was interested in participating. Unfortunately, the subject matter didn’t sit well with the more affluent or educated public resulting in a rapidly dwindling body count. Paying the out-of-work denizens of Junktown to fill seats created the illusion of support for the show and the politics it promoted.
Wheeler wrapped up his monologue and announced his first guest of the evening: “With us tonight is the noted anthropologist and xenobiologist Professor Thomas Darloss.” Wheeler paused while the audience applauded. Some of the applause came from a recording to make the audience sound much larger. “Professor Darloss, everybody!”
Darloss came in from the side, where he had been suffering through the monologue, waving at the audience and the cameras. The two men took their seats: Wheeler on the right, Darloss on the left.
“Professor Darloss,” Wheeler said in his interview voice, “I understand you took the opportunity to examine the photographs of the Fuzzy bones shown on the B.I.N. news. What did you think?”
“Well, I did more than just look at the photographs, Mr. Wheeler.”
“Please, call me Spin.”
“Ah, sure. As I was saying, I did more than simply look at the photos,” Darloss said. “I compared them to a full body X-ray of a Fuzzy at its current state of development.” A picture of a Fuzzy X-ray went up on a screen off the studio stage. On televisions across the planet the pictures briefly replaced the image of Wheeler and Darloss. A moment later it was shown side-by-side with the fossil image of one of the skeletons at the CZC. “Notice the overall shape and structure of the two skeletons. Aside from the additional thickness of the bones associated with supporting greater mass, they are almost identical.”
Wheeler made a show of looking at the screen and nodding thoughtfully. “Except for the skulls they are almost exactly alike.”
“Ah, most people are fixated on the skulls, operating on the assumption that the brainpan explains all. It does not.” Darloss explained about brain size and shape as demonstrated by the Yggdrasil Khooghra, Neanderthal Man and even trotted out the Einstein example. “No, the thing to watch for is the development of the hands and feet. Notice that the lower limbs are designed purely for locomotion and the upper limbs for manipulation. It takes intelligence to manipulate one’s environment.”
“Interesting, Prof,” Wheeler said, not sounding very interested. “I have to admit I wasn’t much of a student back at university, but I seem to recall a rule about advancing sapient species that said they tended to grow larger, not shrink, as they developed. Current representatives of fuzzy sapiens zarathustra are roughly half the size of their ancient equivalents. What would cause them to shrink like that?”
“Many things, Spin. Primarily, nutrition. Insufficient food sources would limit the growth of the Fuzzies. The larger ones would die of starvation, likely before reaching reproductive maturity, while the smaller Fuzzies could thrive on the limited food supplies. It could also be environmental. There is an island off the coast of Beta where indigenous animals are about one-fourth the size of their continental cousins. This adaptation has also occurred in Terra’s primordial past.
“The animals require a certain population density to survive as a species but are limited in space, so they simply adapted by becoming smaller over generations. Then, of course, there is the NFMp hormone that severely limits their viable reproduction unless neutralized. It could have a secondary effect of stunting physical development in the offspring when removed from their native habitat.”
“Native habitat.” Wheeler seized on the phrase. “Isn’t Northern Beta their native habitat.”
Darloss had a sly look on his face. “I wouldn’t be at all sure about that. Setting aside the discovery of the rocket ship, consider the culture of the Fuzzies. Firstly, they have no religion, or even legends or folk tales. Everything is either new or on an ‘everybody knows thing’ basis.” Darloss made air quotes with his forefingers to accent the point. “Primitive people create myths to explain the world around them. Thor, Shesha, Gimli, Uller, Yggdrasil, and even the Freyan natives possess numerous religions, myths and legends. The more primitive the society the less sophisticated the religions, but they do exist. On Terra, home of the most advanced species in the known universe, the inhabitants have had thousands of religions and myths.
“Yet the Fuzzies have none. They are logical and analytical in the extreme…”
* * * * * * * * *
Victor Grego watched the broadcast and grew angrier with each minute. Ordinarily, nothing could have forced him to watch a B.I.N. program, let alone Spinning Wheels. However, he’d heard that Professor Darloss would be appearing on the show, which had prompted him to watch, just to see what idiotic and dangerous nonsense the professor would be spouting.
Grego rushed over to his viewscreen and punched out Miguel Kourland’s code. After getting past a secretary, Kourland’s face appeared on the screen.
“Miguel, I want you to set up another interview with Hoenveld on Tuning’s show.”
“Already in the works, Victor.” Kourland routinely looked in on rival networks’ programming and had caught the interview. Anticipating Grego’s reaction, he called Tuning and told him to be ready to bring Hoenveld back on the show. “If you can talk to Juan and have him arrange things with—”
“One second, Miguel. I have another call.” Grego placed Kourland on hold and his image shrank to the upper left of the screen. Juan Jimenez appeared in the main screen. “Juan! Speak of the devil.”
“Victor, Hoenveld is going nuts over that Darloss interview on B.I.N. and is demanding air time….”
Sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways, Grego thought.
“He’s got it. Let me switch to conference mode.” Grego tapped a few buttons, allowing Kourland and Jimenez to appear side-by-side on the viewscreen. “Okay, we all want the same thing. Juan, tell Chris to show up at the studio…”
“Tomorrow at 1900,” Kourland said.
“Good,” Jimenez said. “He’ll be there.”
“Great. Put him in a new suit and let him wear his lab coat over it if he wants, just make sure it’s clean.”
The three men discussed the details for a couple of minutes, then screened-off. Diamond, who had been watching the interview and Grego’s reaction, spoke up.
“Funny man talked about Fuzzies?”
“Yes, Diamond. He says you all came from space.”
Diamond understood space in the way most human children did and laughed. Big Ones had such strange ideas, sometimes.
That gave Grego an idea. He quickly called Kourland and Jimenez back.
XVI
“Why did Piet go in with just one man and Clancy?” Coombes asked
.
Gus reminded himself that Coombes was a corporate attorney, though he had the chops for a criminal prosecutor. “Same reason the cops are in mufti. We’re trying to keep this all hush-hush. Granted, the nearest neighbor is about a mile away, but you never know who might stroll by or fly over. Besides, Piet and Winslow can call for help if they need it.”
“Clancy could invite us in, you know,” Coombes said as he stood with Gus near the aircars. He knew better but wanted to see what Gus would say about it.
Gus shook his head. “We’re on pretty thin ice as it is, Leslie. If we catch Thaxter and haul his ass back into court, I don’t want to give whatever shyster he digs up any more ammunition than necessary.”
This time it was Coombes who shook his head. “I really don’t see what difference it makes. In eighteen years he will be duly executed by the State for crimes he has practically been convicted for already. And get to sit in prison while he waits for that sentence to be carried out, assuming he gets caught and not killed in the process. Prison. Death. That’s all Thaxter has to look forward to.”
“You’ve been working the corporate system for too long, Leslie. I can’t think of a precedent at the moment, but I’ll bet there’s one for getting an escaped convict’s conviction overturned. Mental anguish, maybe. You can find a precedent for almost anything in colonial law. So we wait out here while Piet does his job without any interference or advice,”—Gus put two fingers in the air and made quotations around “advice,”—“from us. More cases have been tossed due to prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tampering than actual innocence.”
Coombes nodded. He was more than lawyer enough to understand that. In fact, he even got a client or two off on that basis in his early days as a defense attorney. “I’ll have to admit that I hadn’t been in an actual courtroom for about fifteen years before The Friends of Little Fuzzy vs. the Chartered Zarathustra Company.”
Gus stifled a chuckle. “So you’re calling it that now, too?”
Caveat Fuzzy Page 15