Caveat Fuzzy

by Wolfgang Diehr

  “Unless asked,” finished Thor. “I take it one of these Fuzzies requested assistance?”

  “Little Fuzzy did.” Morgan looked about trying to spot the Fuzzy in question to no avail. The sea of fur made each Fuzzy and dog almost impossible to tell one from another. “Since Little Fuzzy lives and works with the Native Affairs Commissioner—”

  “Works?”

  “He teaches some classes for the other Fuzzies,” Akira supplied.

  “Right,” Morgan said. “I figure that makes him an authority figure, so when he asked me for help, I was happy to oblige.”

  “The fact that Jack is your father didn’t enter into it, of course,” Thor observed ironically.

  “Of course not,” Morgan replied airily. “Now let’s go get him back.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  “We have him.”

  Gus had just walked into his office after a meeting with a defense lawyer over a stolen zaragoat case. Normally, he didn’t bother with the smaller infractions. The fact that the accused was a former client was the only reason he agreed to a sit-down. He had to explain that, as a prosecutor, he did not make special deals with former clients. He ended the meeting and assigned the case to Tanaka Webster. He was a little put out that Leslie Coombes was appointed interim chief prosecutor and not him, so Webster would be looking to do a good job without considering Gus’s past relationship with the defendant.

  Gus reached for a cigar just as his secretary, Nikita, appeared in his viewscreen informing him that Marshal Fane was waiting on line one.

  “Put him through, Nikita.” The secretary’s face vanished in a colorful display of light and was replaced by the less pleasant, though smiling face of Max Fane. “Marshal, what can I do you for?”

  “We have him,” Max said without preamble.

  “To which ‘him’ do you refer, Max?” asked Gus.

  The Marshal’s smile got even wider. “Leo Thaxter.”

  Gus put down the unlit cigar and stared at the screen. “Leo Thaxter? The Leo Thaxter, accept no substitutes, and by substitutes I mean Clancy Slade.”

  “Printed and DNA-checked.” Max tried to look sober but couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “In fact, it was Clancy Slade who sent Thaxter on to his final judgment.” Max relayed the events that took place in front of the B.I.N. building. “Dropped Leo, went to help Piet, who had been shot by Thaxter, then calmly allowed himself to be taken into custody. I may have to make Clancy a cop after this.”

  “I’ll bet the CZC is paying him better,” observed Gus. He put the cigar away and pulled out a Thoran import. This was a special occasion, after all. “Clancy is smart, I’ll give him that. He knew better than to argue with your men wearing that face. Hey, by any chance did one of your men get a sample of this Ivan Dane’s blood at the scene?”

  “You better believe it. Unfortunately, no matches to any known criminals.”

  Gus grunted his disappointment; finding something to arrest Ivan Dane on would have been a good way to get him off his soapbox. “Well, hang on to it. We might get lucky.”

  “I never…hold on, I have an incoming call.” Max’s image froze for a minute, then jumped when he came back. “Gus, Jack is a prisoner of those Northern Fuzzies.”

  “Prisoner?” Gus couldn’t believe his ears. “Of Fuzzies!”

  “George Lunt just called in to apprise me of the situation.”

  After a string of colorful metaphors, Gus asked what George was doing about it.

  “Nothing. Jack said not to interfere no matter what just before he surrendered to the Fuzzies.”

  That sounded like Jack. He didn’t want a war with the Fuzzies, which would wipe them out in about ten minutes, so he’d surrendered hoping to negotiate a peace treaty. And, if anybody tried to rescue him, there was a good chance they’d undo everything Jack was trying to accomplish. Gus wanted a drink.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it so we’ll just wait and see what happens. Have you told Ben, yet?”

  Max looked horrified at the suggestion. “Great Ghu, no! After the way he tore this planet apart looking for you? Besides, between his love of Fuzzies and his loyalty to Jack, he’s likely to have a stroke. I’ll bring him in if and when I have to, and not a second sooner.”

  “I endorse and support that plan,” Gus said. “Now we just need to keep it out of the news. What say we sic the reporters on Clancy. We can build him up as a hero. The media will eat it up. I’ll make it up to him later.”

  “Ah, hero of the day and all that.” Max agreed. “It’s a good idea. With all the cameras around the shooting scene somebody will have either gotten footage of Thaxter shooting, or Clancy shooting back—or both. Better to let Clancy clear himself to the public before somebody takes a shot at him thinking he’s Thaxter.”

  “Exactly. In fact, I’ll talk to Ben and see if we can’t pin a citizen’s medal of some type on him before the press. That will give Ben a chance to look good on camera, too.”

  Max agreed, then his face went dark. “Want to bet this Dane fella won’t try to spin the shooting into a law-and-order issue for the recall vote he is trying to get?”

  “No bet. Just keep plugging away at that DNA and see if we can’t get him on something before he has the chance.”

  “Damn,” Max said. “Something just occurred to me. As far as the public knows Leo Thaxter is still in Prison House. How are we going to spin this?”

  Gus thought for a second. It wouldn’t do to have Ben Rainsford implicated in a cover-up, especially with the recall petition floating around. “We’ll say the shooter was an immigrant with a history of mental illness. Invent a name for him. Thaxter committed suicide in solitary confinement. Warden Redford made up the solitary story when he released Clancy Slade. People who remember seeing Thaxter as the shooter shouldn’t be hard to convince that they confused him with Clancy.”

  Max looked dubious on the screen. “You think that’ll fly?”

  Gus shrugged. “Well, there will be a few people who will scream conspiracy or something, but with a live Clancy and a dead Thaxter they should be ignored by the hoi polloi.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Max said as he screened off.

  XXVII

  Affanita sat in the climate-controlled office sweating bullets. She had brought in the sunstones to be sold at one of the Company outlets only to be grabbed up by two CZC security men and hauled off to Company house. Now, sitting in Victor Grego’s office, she wondered if she would be turned over to the police or stuffed into an M/E converter. There were stories going around that made her think the latter was more likely than the former.

  Affanita jumped when Grego entered the room and took a seat behind his desk. She looked around and saw that the security guards had left the room. Not that they were needed; there was no way out. She faced Grego and waited for what was to come.

  A moment later a tiny man with Asiatic features entered the room carrying two small leather bags. He poured out one, then the other, keeping the contents separate.

  “Is that all, Dr. Geronimo?” Grego asked.

  “From this woman’s offerings, sir.” Geronimo indicated the stones at his left. “These are the mildly radioactive stones….”

  “Radioactive!” Affanita blurted.

  “…indicating that they are the counterfeits.” Geronimo finished as though Affanita had said nothing.

  Grego picked up one of the stones from the left and rolled it in his hand until it glowed brightly. “You’re certain?”

  “Very much so. In fact, I have succeeded in duplicating the process and created a number of fine specimens for you to inspect.” Dr. Geronimo reached into his lab coat and extracted six more sunstones. “I have measured the rate of luminescent decay in each stone and determined that it depends on the strength and duration of the dirty gamma exposure.”

  “Really? Is it possible to make the stones permanent? So they don’t decay?”

  “Possibly. I would recommend against it, though,” Geronimo sai
d. “The stronger the dose of dirty gamma, the higher the residual radiation. A stone that would glow for one hundred years or more would emit a potentially dangerous level of radiation.”

  Grego nodded and leaned back in his chair. “This amount is safe, though?”

  Geronimo scooped up the ersatz sunstones and rolled them between his hands.

  “Yes. It is a geometric progression of exposure to increase the thermoflorescent properties of the stones.” Dr. Geronimo went into exhaustive detail explaining that each time unit, two weeks, required twice as much exposure as the previous time unit. If two weeks required a five-second dose of dirty-gamma rays, four weeks would require a twenty second dose and so on. The longest a stone could be made effectively thermofluorescent without harming the owner was two years.

  Affanita found herself becoming more bored than frightened. She noticed that Grego didn’t seem to be following the explanation any better than she was.

  “In other words, aside from the radiation hazard, the cost of creating the faux sunstones with an eye towards permanence would exceed that of mining the real thing,” the scientist concluded, “And subject whoever carried it to harmful levels of radiation.”

  “If he has to explain that again, I would rather you just tossed me into an M/E converter,” Affanita muttered a little too loudly.

  Grego had to fight to keep his expression neutral. He would lose intimidation points if he started laughing. “Thank you, Dr. Geronimo. Madam, do you understand why you are here?”

  “I passed you some bad stones.” Affanita saw no point in playing dumb. “I didn’t know that at the time, but I should have figured something was off about them.” She explained about Richard “last name unknown” and how she was hired to act as the go-between for the gem buyers. “I checked the stones out and they all seemed fine to me. I don’t have any equipment for measuring radioactivity, though.”

  Grego nodded thoughtfully. He was inclined to believe the woman. Still….

  “I am afraid you will have to be interrogated under veridication,” he informed her. “If you cooperate and work with us, you will be released and even paid for the genuine sunstones. I will also expect your assistance in finding this Richard person. He and I need to have a rather long discussion. I am even prepared to pay a reward for his apprehension.”

  Affanita couldn’t believe her luck. “You got it, Tiger. I’ll even giftwrap him if you want.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  “Mr. Morgan, I can’t…”

  “Holloway.”

  George Lunt, Commandant of the Native Protection Force stopped at the seeming non-sequitur. “Beg pardon?”

  “The name is Holloway, just like my father whom I intend to rescue,” Morgan explained. Now that he successfully claimed the family name he was somewhat touchy about it being ignored.

  George let out a sigh and apologized, then started again. “Mr. Holloway, I don’t care whose son you are, how much of a bigwig you may be with the CZC or even how much money you have. You are still a civilian and you are not entering a hostile environment under my jurisdiction. Hell, I would have stopped Jack, too, if he hadn’t snuck in while I was rounding up my men.”

  Morgan started to argue, then stopped himself. Arguing would only waste more time. Major Lunt was only doing his job, which he had to be good at for Jack to have hired him in the first place. Bullying the man would be a waste of time, too. The only way in was to use the rules against him.

  “One second, Major.” Morgan went over to his desk and accessed the viewscreen. When he arrived in Northern Beta in his yacht, he had invited George Lunt and Ismet Runako aboard to plan how they could work together to retrieve Jack. He hadn’t counted on Lunt being a stickler for regulations. “Okay, fine. Let’s see what the regs say in this instance.” Morgan punched in a code and a moment later Leslie Coombes appeared on screen. “Mr. Coombes, Jack Holloway is being held by some hostile Fuzzies on the Reservation. Major Lunt here says I can’t go in and rescue him. Is that right?”

  Coombes didn’t look at all surprised at the news. He shouldn’t, as Ismet had relayed the situation through his chain of command at the top of which was Victor Grego. Grego, in turn, went to Coombes with the same question. “I am afraid the Major is within his purview to prevent you from acting. Only the NPF has the right to go into Fuzzy territory to deal with hostile natives.”

  Morgan swore luridly. He picked up a few new phrases from Jack and used them. “What about the military?”

  “Only at the NPF’s request. Or the Commissioner’s.”

  “So nobody can go in except the NPF, and they won’t go because they were ordered not to.”

  “That would be correct. Only the Fuzzies can come and go as they please,” Coombes added. “After all, it is their real estate.”

  Morgan smiled like a very large cat that had gotten the better of a particularly meaty canary. “Thank you, Mr. Coombes. That will do very nicely.” Morgan broke the connection before Coombes could ask what he meant.

  “You heard him, Major. The Fuzzies can go in and get Jack.”

  “What? No! This is a dangerous situation and I won’t let any Fuzzies get hurt.”

  Morgan and George went back and forth for a few minutes while Little Fuzzy, who had been quietly observing the entire thing, slipped out of Morgan’s office and back to the docks. There, Little Fuzzy wasted no time in organizing the Fuzzy teams and their mounts.

  “We go save Pappy Jack,” Little Fuzzy said in his hypersonic voice; partly to keep Big Ones from overhearing and interfering, and partly because the ultrasonic pitch carried better allowing all the Fuzzies to catch what was being said across the spacious bay. Little Fuzzy quickly outlined his plan and the Fuzzies formed up in ranks at the cargo-bay door.

  The yacht was hovering a mere two meters above the planet’s surface with a platform reaching to the ground. Morgan had planned on leading the charge to rescue his father when George Lunt demanded that he stand down. Though the Fuzzies liked and respected George and the rest of the NPF cops, Pappy Jack was too important and loved not to be helped, no matter what.

  Little Fuzzy, the de facto boss of his people when Pappy Jack wasn’t around, led the Fuzzies down the ramp. That was when they hit their first snag; they didn’t know which way to go. None of them had ever seen the other Fuzzies’ camp. Little Fuzzy thought hard as he looked around, then spotted Pappy Jack’s aircar. He hopped off of Trigger and ran over to the vehicle and went inside. A few heartbeats later, he emerged with a handkerchief. When he returned to his dog mount, he remounted, then held the cloth to Trigger’s nose.

  “Trigger, find Pappy Jack,” Little Fuzzy ordered.

  Trigger sniffed at the ground, ran over to the aircar where he sniffed the ground some more. After a moment, the dog barked loudly and ran towards the ridge face, the other mounted Fuzzies hot on his tail.

  * * * * * * * * *

  “You have to trust Morgan, Betty. He’s very capable and trustworthy, especially in a situation like this. Don’t forget, he saved Jack’s life before when that Fuzzy slaver tried to attack him from behind.”

  Betty, still on the viewscreen, was upset about Jack Holloway’s imprisonment by the Northern Fuzzies. Akira knew that Betty was infatuated with the older man, and had even managed to get him into bed with her, but her current reaction was out of character.

  “What is Morgan going to do?”

  That was a good question. He left with hundreds of Fuzzies and their dogs in that ship of his. Presumably, Morgan was planning on a show of force. Akira said so to Betty.

  “You’ll have to excuse me if I am less inclined to trust in the man who shot Jack in the first place,” Betty said, referring to the duel two months earlier.

  Akira rolled her eyes at the screen. “That was a matter of Freyan honor. He had to challenge Jack to claim his name.”

  “Freyan honor my shapely backside,” Betty said in disgust. “Freyan honor got Jack shot in the first place.”

  “M
organ also took a Blood Oath to protect Jack,” Akira added. “If he doesn’t do his best to recover Jack in one piece, his life is forfeit under the terms of the oath…if I understand it correctly.”

  That caught Betty’s attention. “Oh, Ghu, Akira! I don’t want anything to happen to Morgan, either. Uh, who would kill him, anyway?”

  “Either Little Fuzzy or Gus Brannhard, I think. I have to admit that I didn’t follow the details very well.”

  The two women were silent for a moment. Betty spoke first.

  “Does Morgan know that you’re pregnant?”

  Akira was stunned. “What? How…what makes you say that?”

  “Oh, pu-leeze. I’ve known you since the day you arrived on planet. In the last few weeks you’ve avoided alcohol, put on a few pounds and jumped at the chance to move to Beta. Either you’re pregnant or you’re going through a mid-life crisis thirty years ahead of schedule and in the wrong gender.”

  Akira decided not to bluff it out. Betty acted flighty and wild at times, but she was as sharp as they came when it mattered. “I’ll tell him when and if he proposes. Not one second sooner. I don’t want him to think that I am trying to trap him. Besides, if he does ask, I want it to be because he wants to, not to satisfy some rule of Freyan society.”

  Betty pursed her lips and nodded. She more than understood Akira’s position and agreed. Betty had had several chances to land a rich husband herself and passed on them because they were after a trophy wife. Betty was nobody’s status symbol. She wanted a real man who wanted her for her. Which got her thinking about Jack Holloway again and she felt a lump in her chest as she choked back her sobs.

  * * * * * * * * *

  “We’ve got something, Chief.”

  Those were the words that Chief Carr had been praying to hear. Two days before, he had asked Colonial Marshal Max Fane to back off and let him run the constabulary. After all, wasn’t that the job of a police chief? The Marshal agreed that he had taken too much of Carr’s job for himself and backed off. Then the prisoners lost their heads in a thoroughly literal way. So far the Marshal wasn’t butting in on the investigation, but that wouldn’t last long. Carr needed suspects and he needed them now.