Leo Thaxter was the biggest, and the most respectably fronted, of the four. L. Thaxter, Loan Broker Private Financier. He loaned money publicly at a righteously legal seven percent; he also loaned, at much higher rates, to all the shylocks in town, who, in turn, loaned it at six-for-five to people who could not borrow elsewhere, including suckers who went broke in Spike Hennan’s crap-games, and he used Raul Laporte’s hoodlums to do his collecting.
And, notoriously but unprovably, behind them stood Hugo Ingermann, Mallorysport’s unconvicted underworld generalissimo.
Maybe they were just before proving it, now. Leslie Coombes’s investigators had established that all four of them, and especially Thaxter, were the dummy owners behind whom Ingermann controlled most of the land the company had unwisely sold eight years ago, the section north of Mallorysport that was now dotted with abandoned factories and commercial buildings. And it was pretty well established that those four had been the John Doe, Richard Roe, et alii, who had been represented in court by Ingermann just after the Pendarvis Decisions.
Strains of music were now coming from the Fuzzy-room; the melodrama was evidently over. He opened his eyes, lit another cigarette, and began going over what he knew about Ingermann’s four chief henchmen. Thaxter; he’d come to Zarathustra a few years before Ingermann. Small-time racketeer, at first, and then he’d tried to organize labor unions, but labor unions organized by outsiders had been frowned upon by the company, and he’d been shown the wisdom of stopping that. Then he’d organized an independent planters’ marketing cooperative, and from that he’d gotten into shylocking. There’d been some woman with him, at first, wife or reasonable facsimile. Maybe she was still around; have Coombes look into that. She might be willing to talk.
Diamond strolled in from the Fuzzy-room.
“Pappy Vic! Make talk with Diamond, plis. “
LIEUTENANT FITZ MORTLAKE, acting-in-charge of company detective bureau for the 1800-2400 shift, yawned. Twenty more minutes; less than that if Bert Eggers got in early to relieve him. He riffled through the stack of complaint sheet copies on the desk and put a paperweight on them. In the squadroom outside the mechanical noises of card-machines and teleprinters and the occasional howl of a sixty-speed audiovisual transmission were being replaced by human sounds, voices and laughter and the scraping of chairs, as the midnight-to-six shift began filtering in. He was wondering whether to go home and read till he became sleepy, or drift around the bars to see if he could pick up a girl, when Bert Eggers pushed past a couple of sergeants at the door and entered.
“Hi, Fitz; how’s it going?”
“Oh, quiet. We found out where Jayser hid that stuff; we have all of it, now. And Millman and Nogahara caught those kids who were stealing engine parts out of Warehouse Ten. We have them in detention; we haven’t questioned them yet.”
“We’ll take care of that. They work for the Company?”
“Two of them do. The third is just a kid, seventeen. Juvenile Court can have him. We think they were selling the stuff to Honest Hymie.”
“Uhuh. I’ll suspect anybody they all call Honest Anybody or anything,” Eggers said, sitting down as he vacated the chair.
He took off his coat, pulled his shoulder holster and pistol from the bottom drawer and put it on, resuming the coat. He gathered up his lighter and tobacco pouch, and then discovered that his pipe was missing, and hunted the desk-top for it, unearthing it from under some teleprinted photographs.
“What are these?” Eggers asked, looking at them.
“Herckerd and Novaes, false alarm number ’steen thousand. A couple of woods-tramps who turned up on Epsilon.”
Eggers made a sour face. “Those damn Fuzzies have made more work for us,” he began. “And now, my kids are after me to get them one. So’s my wife. You know what? Fuzzies are a status-symbol, now. If you don’t have a Fuzzy, you might as well move to Junktown with the rest of the bums.”
“I don’t have a Fuzzy, and I haven’t moved to Junktown yet.”
“You don’t have kids in high school.”
“No, thank God!”
“Bet he doesn’t have finance-company trouble, either,” one of the sergeants in the doorway said.
Bert was going to make some retort to that. Before he could, another voice spoke up:
“Yeeek! “
“Speak of the devil,” somebody said.
“You have that Fuzzy in here, Fitz?” Eggers demanded. “Where the hell… ?”
“There he is,” one of the men in the doorway said, pointing.
The Fuzzy, who had been behind the desk-chair, came out into view. He pulled the bottom of Eggers’s coat, yeeking again. He looked like a hunchback Fuzzy.
“What’s he got on his back?” Eggers reached down. “Whatta you got there, anyhow?”
It was a little rucksack, with leather shoulder-straps and a drawstring top. As soon as Eggers displayed an interest in it, the Fuzzy climbed out of it as though glad to be rid of it. Mortlake picked it up and put it on the desk; over ten pounds, must weigh almost as much as the Fuzzy. Eggers opened the drawstrings and put his hand into it.
“It’s full of gravel,” he said, and brought out a handful.
The gravel was glowing faintly. Eggers let go of it as though it were as hot as it looked.
“Holy God!” It was the first time he ever heard anybody screaming in baritone. “The damn things are sunstones!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“BUT WHAT FOR?” Diamond was insisting. “What for Big Ones first, bang, bang, make dead? Not good. What for not make friend, make help, have fun?”
“Well, some Big Ones bad, make trouble. Other Big Ones fight to stop trouble.”
“But what for Big Ones be bad? Why not everybody make friend, have fun, make help, be good?”
Now how in Nifflheim could you answer a question like that? Maybe that was what Ernst Mallin meant when he said Fuzzies were the sanest people he’d ever seen. Maybe they were too sane to be bad, and how could a non-sane human explain to them?
“Pappy Vic not know. Maybe Unka Ernst, Unka Panko, know.”
The bell of the private communication screen began its slow tolling. Diamond looked around; this was something that didn’t happen often. He rose, taking Diamond from his lap and setting him on the chair, then went to the wall and put the screen on. It was Captain Morgan Lansky, at Chief Steefer’s desk. He looked as though a planet buster had just dropped in front of him and hadn’t exploded yet.
“Mr. Grego; the gem-vault! Fuzzies in it, robbing it!”
He conquered the impulse to ask Lansky if he were drunk or crazy. Lansky was neither; he was just frightened.
“Take it easy, Morgan. Tell me about it. First, what you know’s happened, and then what you think is happening.”
“Yes, sir.” Lansky got hold of himself; for an instant he was silent. “Ten minutes ago, in the captain’s office at detective bureau; the shifts were changing, and both lieutenants were there. A Fuzzy came out of a storeroom in back of the office; he had a little knapsack on his back, with about twelve pounds of sunstones in it. The Fuzzy’s here now, so are the sunstones. Do you want to see them?”
“Later; go ahead.” Then, before Lansky could speak, he asked: “Sure he came out of this storeroom?”
“Yes, sir. There was five-six men in the doorway to the squadroom, he couldn’t of come through that way. And the only way he could of got into this storeroom was out a ventilation duct there. The grating over it was open.”
“That sounds reasonable. He could have gotten into the gem-vault through the ventilation system too.”
The entrance to the gem-vault stairway was on the same floor as the detective bureau. The inlet and outlet screens were hinged, and the latch worked from either side to allow any outlet screen to be put on anywhere. And the sunstones couldn’t have come from anywhere else; just yesterday he’d had to go down and let Evins in to put away what had accumulated in his office safe.
“Ten minutes; what�
��s been done since?”
“Carlos Hurtado’s here, he hadn’t gone home. He’s staying, and so are most of the pre-midnight men. We put out a quiet alert to all the police in the building. We’re blocking off everything from the top of the fourteenth level down, and a second block around the fifteenth. I called the Chief; he’s coming in. Hurtado’s calling the Constabulary and the Mallorysport police for men and vehicles to blockade the building from the outside. I’ve sent calls out for Dr. Mallin, and for Mr. E. Evins, and I’ve sent out for as many hearing aids as I can get.”
“That was good. Now, have a jeep or something up here for me right away; I’ll have to open the gem-vault. And have men there to meet me. With sono-stunners; there may be more Fuzzies inside. And get hold of the building superintendent and the ventilation engineer, and get plans of the ventilation system.”
“Right. Anything else, Mr. Grego?”
“Not that I can think of now. Be seeing you.”
He blanked the screen. Diamond, in the chair, was looking at him wide-eyed.
“Pappy Vic; what make do?”
He looked at Diamond for a moment. “Diamond, you remember when bad Big Ones bring you, other Fuzzies, here?” he asked. “You know other Fuzzies again, you see them?”
“Yeh, ’tsure. Good friend; know again.”
“Hokay. Stay put; Pappy Vic be back.”
He ran into the kitchenette and gathered a couple of tins of Extee-Three. Returning, he found a hearing aid — Diamond was using his Fuzzyphone, and he hadn’t needed it — and pocketed it. Then, swinging Diamond to his shoulder, he went outside. Just as he emerged onto the terrace, a silver-trimmed maroon company airjeep, lettered police, lifted above the edge of the terrace, turned, and glided down. He thought, again, that police vehicles should have some distinctive color-scheme to distinguish them from ordinary Company cars. Talk about that with Harry Steefer, some time. Then the jeep was down and the pilot had opened the door. He climbed in and held Diamond on his lap, while the pilot reported him aboard. Then he took the radio handphone himself.
“Grego; who’s there?” he asked.
“Hurtado. We have everything from the fourteenth level down to the sixteenth sealed off, inside and out. Captain Lansky and Lieutenant Eggers have gone to meet you at the gem vault. Dr. Mallin’s coming in; so’s Miss Glenn and Captain Khadra of the ZNPF. Maybe they can get something out of this Fuzzy.” He muttered something bitterly. “Questioning Fuzzies; what’s police work coming to next?”
“Teaching Fuzzies to crack safes; what’s crime coming to next? You get the ventilation system plans yet?”
“They’re coming up; so’s the ventilation engineer. You think there’s more Fuzzies than this one?”
“Four more. And two men, named Phil Novaes and Moses Herckerd.”
Hurtado was silent for a moment, then cursed. “Now why in Nifflheim didn’t I think of that?” he demanded. “Sure!”
They went inside from a landing-stage on the third level down. There were police there, with portable machine guns, and a couple of cars. Work was going on in some of the offices along the horizontal vehicle-way, but no excitement. They encountered a police car in the vertical shaft just above the fourteenth level down; the jeep pilot put on his red-and-white blinker and picked up the handphone of his loudspeaker, saying, “Mr. Grego here; please don’t delay us.” The car moved out of the way.
The fifteenth level down was police country. Everything was superficially quiet, but a number of vehicles were concentrated around the horizontal ways from the vertical shaft. The pilot set the jeep down at the entrance to the gem-buyer’s offices. Morgan Lansky and a detective were waiting there. He got out, holding Diamond, and the pilot handed the tins of Extee-Three to the detective. Lansky, who seemed to have recovered his aplomb, grinned.
“Interpreter, Mr. Grego?” he asked.
“Yes, and maybe he can make identification. I think he knows these Fuzzies.”
It took Lansky two seconds to get that. Then he nodded.
“Sure. That would explain everything.”
They went through the door, and, inside, it was immediately evident that the security regulation book had gone out the airlock. The portcullis was raised, though a couple of submachine-gunners loitered watchfully in front of it. Half a dozen men, all carrying sono-stunners, short carbines with flaring muzzles like ancient blunderbusses, fell in behind them. The door at the end of the short hall was open, too, and nobody was bothering with identity checks.
Nobody was supposed to be within sight of him when he opened the vault, but he ignored that, too. Lansky, Eggers, the man who was carrying the two tins of Extee-Three, and the men with the stunners all crowded down the stairway after him. Quickly he punched the nonsense sentence out on the keyboard. Ten seconds later the door receded and slid aside.
Inside, the lights were on, as always; bright as they were, they could not dim the many colored glow on the black velvet tabletop, where two Fuzzies were playing concentratedly with a thousand or so sunstones. A little rope ladder, just big enough for a Fuzzy, dangled past the light-shade from the air-outlet above.
Both Fuzzies looked up, startled. One said in accusing complaint, “You not say stones make shine; you say just stones, like always.” His companion looked at them for a moment, and then cried: “Not know these Big Ones! How come this place?”
Lansky, who had been holding Diamond while he had been using the keyboard, followed him in. Diamond saw the two on the table and jabbered in excited recognition. He took Diamond and set him on the table with the others.
“Not be afraid,” he said. “I not hurt. He friend; show him pretty things.”
Recognition was mutual; the other Fuzzies were hugging Diamond and talking rapidly. Lansky had gone to a communication screen and was punching a call-number.
“You get away from bad Big Ones, too?” Diamond was asking. “How you come this place?”
“Big Ones bring us. Make us go through long little hole. Tell us, get stones, like at other place.”
What other place, he wondered. The other strange Fuzzy was saying:
“All-time, Big Ones make us go through long little holes, get stones. We get stones, Big Ones give us good things to eat. Not get stones, Big Ones angry. Make hurt, put us in dark place, not give anything to eat, make us do again.”
“Who has the Extee-Three?” he asked. “Open a tin for me.”
“Estee-fee!” Diamond, hearing him, repeated. “Pappy Vic give Estee-fee; hoksu-fusso.”
Lansky had Hurtado in the screen; he was standing aside to allow the latter to see what was going on in the gem-vault. Hurtado was swearing.
“Now, we gotta make everything in the building Fuzzy-proof,” he was saying. “The Chief’s just come in.” He turned. “Hey, Chief, come and look at this!”
Eggers had the Extee-Three; he got the tin open. Taking the cake from him, he broke it in three, then shoved a couple of million sols in sunstones out of the way and gave a piece to each of the Fuzzies. The two little jewel-thieves knew just what it was, and began eating at once. Telling Eggers to keep an eye on them, he went to the screen. In it, Harry Steefer was cursing even more fluently than Hurtado. He broke off and greeted:
“Hello, Mr. Grego. Beside what’s on the table, are there any sunstones left?”
“I haven’t checked, yet.”
He looked around. All the drawers had been pulled out of the cabinet; the Fuzzies had evidently gotten at the upper rows by stacking and standing on the ones from below. Lansky was examining a couple of small canvas rucksacks he had found.
“What’s it look like, Captain?”
“Don’t come around the table, anybody,” Lansky warned. “The floor’s all over stones, here.”
“Then we have some left. Has Conrad Evins come in yet?”
“We’re still trying to contact him,” Steefer said. “Dr. Mallin’s here, and Captain Khadra and Miss Glenn are on the way here. I’m going over to operation-command room, now;
I’ll leave somebody here.”
“Suppose you leave the Fuzzy in your office, too. I’ll bring this pair up, and Diamond can help question them all.”
Steefer assented, then excused himself to talk to somebody in the room with him. One of the detectives, who had gone out, returned with a broom and dustpan; he held the pan while Lansky swept the scattered sunstones up. There were more than he had expected, perhaps as many as half of them. He poured them into drawers, regardless of size or grade; they could be sorted out later. All the Fuzzies protested strenuously when he began gathering up the ones on the table; even Diamond wanted to play with them. He consoled them with the other cake of Extee-Three, and assured Diamond, who assured his friends, that Pappy Vic would provide other pretties.
“Captain, you and Lieutenant Eggers and a couple of men stay here,” he said. “I think we have two more Fuzzies, and they may be back for more stones. Catch them by hand if you can, stun them if you have to. Try not to hurt them, but get them, and bring them to the Chief’s office. That’s where I’m going now.”
“CHRIST, I WISH they’d hurry! What do you think’s keeping them?”
That was the tenth or twelfth time Phil Novaes had said that in the last twenty minutes. Phil was getting on edge. Been on edge ever since they’d come here, and getting edgier every minute. Moses Herckerd was beginning to worry just a little about that. Losing your nerve was the surest way to disaster in a spot like this, and it would be disaster to both of them. Phil had been a little overconfident, at the beginning; that had been bad, too.
Getting the car hidden, on the unoccupied ninth level down, had been easy enough; they’d stowed it in one of the unfinished main office rooms close to where they’d kept the Fuzzies, two months ago. He knew the company police had started patrolling the unoccupied levels after that one damned Fuzzy had gotten away from them and, of all places, into Victor Grego’s own apartment. Still, the place where they’d left the car was safe enough.
The long descent, nearly a thousand feet, among the water mains and ventilation mains to the fifteenth level down, had been hard and dangerous, clinging to the contragravity lifter with the Fuzzies jostling about in the box. Once this was over, he hoped he’d never see another damned Fuzzy as long as he lived. Phil had been all right then; he’d had to keep his mind on what he was doing, keep the lifter from swinging out and carrying them away from the hand-holds. It had been after they had gotten onto this ledge at the ventilation duct outlet that Phil’s nerves had begun to get away from him.
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