Fuzzy Bones (v1.1)

by William Tuning (v1. 1) (html)

  “I am a parish priest,” The Rev said, “looking for a place to set up a neighborhood mission. Now why have you brought me to this decaying firetrap?”

  O’Gorman winced. “Economy, Father, economy. You stated the need for economy.”

  The conversation was taking place in the large, high-ceilinged main workroom of what had once been a bakery. “Economy is one thing, Mr. O’Gorman,” The Rev said. “This—this cistern is something else.” He carefully stepped around a puddle of rainwater which had entered through the hole in the roof.

  “But, Reverend Sir,” O’Gorman protested. “Rental buildings are in very scarce supply. This is the only building of the size you describe which is on my lists for rent.” He wrung his hands.

  “Then I shall have to go to another broker, Mr. O’Gorman,” The Rev said. “My superiors expect me to produce results, not the refurbishment of some drafty old barn like this. Why, if I send my bishop the bills to rebuild this rickety mess, he’ll have me clapped in a mental institution.”

  O’Gorman waved his hands with massaging motions. “I assure you, Reverend Father, it will be no problem to put the place in very fine shape. The owner is a kinsman of mine—an honest, Christian person like myself. I shall speak to him personally, and all will be well. You’ll see. Take my word for it; there is no other place in all Mallorysport that can be assembled for the size and the price you are able to pay.”

  “Perhaps when he learns the purpose of your tenancy, my cousin will even reduce the rent—to the Glory of God, you understand.”

  “It would be tax-deductable,” The Rev said.

  “Oh, an excellent point, sir,” O’Gorman replied. “I shall bring it up to him at the first opportunity.”

  “We are settled, then. This must be the place for your mission. Let us return to my office and settle everything at once. My other cousin, Nima Bactrian, shall supervise all the repairing. You will be saving heathen within the week, Father.”

  “At least we can bake our own bread,” The Rev said, eyeing the row of ovens along the back wall. “You’ll put in new power converters and see that those ovens are operational?”

  O ‘Gorman waved his hands once more, as they walked out through the remains of the old bakery’s storefront and onto the esplanade. “All will be taken care of. We will make notes for the lease and agree upon everything right after we have some tea and sweet rolls from the bakery of my cousin Stoudhj—he sends them to my office fresh every morning, bless him.”

  “Tea?” The Rev said.

  Hiram Mustaphah O’Gorman blinked at him in the Zarathustran sunlight. “Of course,” he said. “The mullah himself tells us that the most satisfactory deal is never struck before the third cup of tea.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Dammit, Sandra!” Victor Grego pounded his cigarette into the ashtray so hard he almost burned his thumb. “You can’t just up-and-flat leave me without a sitter for Diamond. I know you and Ahmed want to get married, but you’ve got to give me a chance to select someone who is appropriate and qualified to be your successor.”

  The tall redhead smiled at him from across the coffee table in the living room of the penthouse on top of the Company House building. She smiled broadly enough to make wrinkles at the corners of her green eyes. “Why, Mr. Grego,” she said. “You’ve been saying that for over seven months, now. Ahmed is beginning to think you’re after me yourself. He’s getting quite jealous.”

  “Faugh!” Grego snorted. He waved his hand as though to dismiss the entire discussion. “It’s not a bad idea,” he said, “but I never stand in the way of young lust, or poach in another man’s pasture—especially not when the man is a police captain and carries a pistol.”

  “And, as for the careful selection part of your argument.” Sandra continued, “I remember exactly how careful and scientific you were about that. You said, ‘… you’ve just been appointed Fuzzy-Sitter-in-Chief. You start immediately; ten percent raise as of this morning.’”

  Grego leaned back in his chair and tried to look stern. “That was different,” he said. “I could tell right away that Diamond liked you and trusted you. Fuzzies have an instinct for that sort of thing.”

  “Governess would be a better term, anyway, Mr. Grego,” Sandra Glenn said. “I think he’s smarter than I am; either that or he learns faster than any Fuzzy I’ve seen. I just can’t stay ahead of him any more.”

  “Ah-ha!” Grego cried triumphantly. “That’s exactly why I must be very choosy about who takes over your job—and there has to be an overlap period while whoever it is learns everything you know about Fuzzies and about Diamond. Why, we can’t just switch Fuzzy-sitters on him without any notice, like that. It would break his little heart. He’s very fond of you, you know.”

  “But, Mr. Grego; really! Ahmed and I have been engaged so long, the ring is starting to grow to my finger.” Sandra had stepped into another Grego-trap and she knew it. It was not any great surprise, either. The Manager-in-Chief of a Colonial Company might be expected to be a fairly good, fast-talking negotiator.

  “We could compromise,” Grego added quickly.

  “How?” she said, half-dreading the answer.

  Grego warmed to the deal. “You and Ahmed could get married right away—something simple and private—and get a little place right here in Mallorysport until we can break in a new sitter. You could cut your hours back to whatever meshes with Ahmed’s schedule—at the same wages you get now, of course—and I would take up whatever slack that caused.”

  “But what about the honeymoon?” she said in a rising voice.

  “Oh, faugh!” Grego replied. “Plenty of time for that after the two of you move out into the sticks, there, at Holloway Station.”

  “But, that might be a year!” She almost wailed.

  Grego snorted. “No such thing! You go along with me on this, and help me interview candidates for your job, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Well—I’m going to do it anyway, but—” Grego stopped short.

  Sandra sniffed. “Do what?”

  “Throw the wedding reception,” he said. “Right here on top of Company House. There’s enough room here to properly entertain and feed a couple hundred people.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the soft chiming of the entrance door.

  “That must be Leslie,” Grego said. “I forgot to tell you; no need to go and fetch Diamond home. Leslie told me he would pick him up on his way back from Government House.”

  Company Chief Counsel Leslie Coombes entered the foyer, preceded by an energetic ball of bounding fur which jumped up onto the arm of Grego’s chair. “Heyo, Pappy Vic,” Diamond shouted from the chair arm, then leaped on Grego’s chest, danced around on his lap, pummeled his stomach playfully, and hugged him as hard as his little arms could manage.

  Grego laughed heartily and scuffled a bit with Diamond. “There’s Extee-Three on the kitchen counter, if you want,” he said. “You know where the can opener is.”

  Leslie Coombes frowned. “Shouldn’t you—?” he began.

  “—work the can opener for him?” Grego finished.

  “He might hurt himself.” Coombes said.

  Grego shook his head. “Yes, Leslie,” he said, “and you might fall in the bathtub and fracture your skull, too. But I don’t see that’s a good reason why your Mommy should still bathe you.”

  Coombes’ face reddened as Sandra Glenn chuckled over the mental image of a grown Leslie Coombes splashing the bath water with his rubber duckie while a gray-haired matron scrubbed him down with soap and a wash cloth.

  Grego smiled. “The Fuzzies are people. We can’t go on forever treating them like little china dolls, much as it might please us to have someone around who is going to be eternally ten years old, always stay with us, always depend on us, and never grow up.”

  Coombes sighed. “I see your point, Victor. Most folks cherish Fuzzies like their own kids, and no one ever wants his own children to grow up and leave home.”

  “An
d we’re not going to have that luxury with Fuzzies, either,” Grego said, “so we might as well get used to the idea.”

  “They learn like a house on fire,” Sandra said. “The people over at Science Center are beginning to wonder if they are smarter than we are.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Coombes said gloomily. “You don’t see Fuzzies wearing themselves out trying to keep a charterless colonial company in the black. That’s what I came to see you about, Victor. Do you know we’ve had seventy-six aircars stolen in the past two months, mostly by veldbeest herders who take off to make their fortune and take a Company vehicle along to speed the process?”

  “I already told you,” Grego said, “swear out warrants for their arrest.”

  “Warrants are one thing,” Coombes replied. “Arrests are another. We’ve got to expand the Company Police and we can’t afford it. The more vehicles they steal the more sols it costs us, and the equipment loss cuts into budgets that ought to be going for more cops. It’s a vicious circle.”

  Grego chuckled. “Spiteful, perhaps.” He wagged a finger in the air. “You must be resourceful, Leslie. Creative. For example Sandra, here, is going to get married, leave me flat without a Fuzzy sitter; but you don’t hear me complaining, do you?”

  “Hah!” Sandra said.

  “Stick around a while, Leslie,” Grego went on, “until Gus Brannhard gets here. Ben Rainsford came up with a plan to increase police efficiency all over the planet. I’d like to knock it around with both of you—see what you think of it.”

  George Lunt snapped the cover back on the separator and closed the printer’s paper-feed. Nothing wrong that he could see, and certainly nothing that would explain the soil readouts in that valley. George was a methodical man and he didn’t like loose ends. This was a loose end.

  George jumped lightly to the ground from the aircar’s open hatch. No point in taking it out of service for maintenance, he thought, unless the readouts continue to be screwed up for some other piece of geography. No; we’ll just re-fly that sector with a different vehicle—see what we come up with for comparison.

  As he finished punching in the assignment change to the roster, George straightened and turned to the watch sergeant. “Log that change, Sarge, so it’ll be highlighted at the watch briefing. That section of the Cordilleras will just have to wait a little longer for survey mapping.”

  “Right-o,” the sergeant said. He leaned out of his chair and made a notation on a clipboard, as Major Lunt walked back out in front of the duty desk.

  George stopped for a moment, then turned back. “And, change the assigned vehicle to the command boat. I think I’ll go along for the ride.”

  Ben Rainsford opened the front door of his apartments in Government House, then stepped back in astonishment. “Gus!” he said sharply. “What in hell is the matter with you? Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

  Gus Brannhard was dancing in the hallway. Dancing was not the precise word, perhaps, but Colonial Attorney General Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard was shuffling about briskly, rather like an amiable bear, swinging his arms vigorously. Periodically, his enormous frame would seem to float up off the floor slightly, and he would click his heels together.

  “Stop grinning like an idiot and tell me what this is all about,” Rainsford said. “You want people to think the planet is being run by a bunch of lunatics?”

  Gus stopped dancing and came inside the foyer, but he couldn’t stop grinning. A double row of white teeth glittered through his tousled gray-brown beard like a hedgehog that had swallowed a piano.

  “We got him disbarred,” he guffawed. “Totally, completely, and altogether disbarred.”

  “Who?” Rainsford shouted. “Who did you get disbarred? And why would one shyster be glad to see another shyster get disbarred?”

  Brannhard became suddenly serious. “Why, Hugo Ingermann, of course. Who the hell else have I been trying to get disbarred for the past year and a half? I was just now at Grego’s smoothing the way for this police streamlining of yours and Leslie Coombes told me he had seen the Order in this afternoon’s recordings. Hugo Ingermann is still a bona fide attorney, but he’s mala fide in all the courts on Zarathustra—no longer admitted to practice before them.”

  He clapped his hands together. “Maybe he’ll be so disgusted he’ll leave the planet.”

  “Fat chance,” Rainsford said.

  “Well,” Brannhard said, “then I can get to work on some way to have the bastard deported. Man’s got to have a hobby, you know.”

  Gus sat and leaned back in his chair. The chair creaked. “Yes, sir, “he said. “I’m a happy man. Ingermann has been a thorn in the side of the government, the Company, the military, and a stench in the nostrils of every honest lawyer on Zarathustra.”

  “I’m not real sure,” Rainsford said quietly, “that there are any honest lawyers, but I’m glad to get the news that we’ve pulled a couple of his teeth.” Rainsford glanced up at the time readout. “Max Fane will be just as happy as you are, Gus. Why not stick around and tell him yourself, since you seem to enjoy the story so much.”

  Brannhard nodded. As though he had signaled it, the door chimed.

  If Brannhard had been overjoyed when he arrived, Colonel Marshal Max Fane was in a black rage.

  Gus looked perplexed. “What’s eating you, Max?” he asked.

  Fane paced a few quick steps up and down the room, then spun his rotund body on one heel. “Some sonofabitch took a shot at me!” he roared. “In town!”

  Gus leaped to his feet. “What?”

  “Right here!” Fane jabbed his finger toward the floor. “On the esplanade, as I was coming over from the Central Courts complex.”

  “Did you get him?” Rainsford asked.

  Fane scowled. “Naw. He was too far away to chase— probably why he missed me. But there weren’t any people around so I got a couple rounds off at him.” As though it reminded him, Max Fane pulled out his automatic and palmed the magazine.

  “Well? Did you hit him?” Brannhard asked impatiently.

  Fane laughed as he thumbed two fresh cartridges into the magazine. “Nooooo. But close.” He looked up as he smacked the magazine back in and holstered the weapon. “I bet he’s deaf in his left ear, though.”

  Marshal Fane listened approvingly to Brannhard’s joyous account of the disbarment of Hugo Ingermann. Ingermann had the irritating habit of springing thugs and Junktown rats on a writ almost faster than Fane could round them up and jail them on warrants. He was likewise pleased about Rainsford’s plans to consolidate police services while preserving the autonomy of the various agencies. That would put more men in the field, and that was what he needed—what every cop on the planet needed, what with the population influx and the burden on the legal system generated by the sudden availability of free land.

  “It seems a little odd,” Rainsford was saying. “Anybody ever take a shot at you before, Max?”

  Fane reared back in his chair. “Out in the bush, yes. On pavement, never!”

  “That’s the odd part,” Rainsford said. “A unique occurrence that occurs less than five hours after Ingermann is disbarred. What do you think, Gus?”

  “Nothing odd about it,” Gus said. “Ingermann is behind it, and it’s what I expected. This makes him raw as hell, and he’s going to be Out-To-Get-Us, in capital letters, from now on—until something busts loose. I don’t know about you, Ben, but I plan to start packing a gun in town.”

  “Some citizens are already doing that after dark,” Fane remarked. “Perfectly legal. There’s no way to make ‘em stop.”

  Rainsford sighed. He got up and walked to the window, then stood there, with his hands behind his back for a moment, looking out at Mallorysport. Then he said matter-of-factly, “That’s the way it always starts to break down. Thugs, bums, and animals—they scare honest citizens into exercising their constitutional right of self-defense. Next thing you know, the town’s full of bullet-holes.”

  He returned to his ch
air. “Get out your scratchpads, gents. The Governor General is about to make some specific suggestions and you may want to take notes.”

  Fane exchanged puzzled looks with Gus as he began fishing in his hip pocket for the notebook that every cop in the universe carried there.

  Rainsford re-lit his pipe, then leaned forward in his chair. “First, this government has got to do everything it can to keep the Zarathustra Company afloat.” He raised one hand, palm outward. “I know, I know. When Commodore Napier railroaded me into this job I wanted to take Grego and everyone on his payroll and hang ‘em high, but a strong colonial company is all that’s going to hold this place together for a while—at least till we can get a legislature seated. Otherwise, a civilized colony on Zarathustra is going to be out the airlock. The trade that’s been built up over twenty-five years will go to hell, and Ghu knows what will happen to the Fuzzies—whose welfare our government has taken responsibility for.”

  “Oh, now,” Fane said, “I don’t think it’s that bad. You really serious about this?”

  “Damn tootin’ I am!” Rainsford barked. “What’s bad about it is that we’re flying blind. Gus, as Attorney General it’s up to you to set the itinerary and run this meeting about consolidating police records. As we go ahead with that, I want the information from each police agency as to what kind of intelligence operatives they have working under cover, what they’re doing, where they’re doing it, and what they find out.”

  Brannhard made a face. “They’re going to be pretty touchy about that, Ben.”

  “I know they are,” Rainsford said. “Let them know in a gentle kind of way that we’re prepared to subpoena the records if we have to.”

  “Max, I want you to draw up a table of organization for an Intelligence Section within your office, where we will consolidate police espionage information separately from the operations records. After all, the Company, the Federation, the military, and Ghu knows who all, constantly use spies to keep them informed. Why, I’m willing to bet Ingermann does the same thing. The only way we’re ever going to bust him and his consortium of hoodlums is to out-G-2 them.”