“I agree with Jordy,” Holderman said. “You get in a fistfight with Ingermann and bust his nose—then you can expect him to send a couple gunmen after you personally. Otherwise, he’s so busy with his real imagined grudges that he won’t have time for fancied imagined grudges. It is clear, though, that he paid these two slobs to do some snooping around over here.” Holderman sighed. “That’s why I wish you hadn’t blown up both of them, Jack. It would be so much easier to just sweat a guy down than to do all this deductive reasoning.”
“Oh, stow it, Joe,” Nunez said. “The important thing is that Jack’s still kicking and that we know Ingermann has dumped a bunch of snoops on our turf. We’ll snag a live one pretty soon now, then proceed to scare the pants off him and find out all kinds of wonderful stuff.”
As soon as the last of the other guests had departed, George and Ahmed simultaneously drew up chairs across the coffee table from where Jack was sitting. With no one else there but George, the Khadras, the van Riebeeks, and Lynne Andrews, it was perfectly safe to discuss the confidential aspects of Fuzzy Valley. Jack’s eyes grew large as George and Ahmed related their findings.
“So, I want to take you back up there, Jack, and let you have a look around,” George finished. “I want the whole thing kept strictly on the quiet, though, until we know more about what’s what.”
“I’ll second that,” Jack said. “In fact, just try to keep me away.”
“Good,” George said. “How about first thing in the morning?”
Jack nodded.
“Let’s take along your microray scanner, too—find out how homogeneous the geology is and what’s under the surface. You’ll know more about that than I will. I could check one out from the equipment stores, but I’d rather not leave any paperwork tracks that might arouse someone’s curiosity.”
“We can take Gerd along and detour over to fix his airboat on the way—then go on up there in ZNPF vehicles,” Ahmed said.
“How about taking old Gerd all the way along?” Gerd said. “Old Gerd is pretty curious about this thing, too.”
“He’s right,” Jack said. “Good idea not to make too much of a ZNPF parade out of all this.”
“I see what you mean,” George said.
“We ought to take Little Fuzzy and some of the other Fuzzies along, too, “Jack said. “If there are Fuzzies up there who are not moving south and who won’t come near a Hagga, then we’ll have to make contact with them via Fuzzy emissaries sooner or later. So, let’s make that the ‘official’ reason for the trip.”
“I don’t get it,” Sandra said. “If titanium is practically non-existent in the crust of Zarathustra, why should there be one spot where it’s plentiful?”
“Might be more than one spot,” Gerd said, “but it’s just that we haven’t found any others yet. That is an area of some active vulcanism—recently active volcanoes, hot springs, geothermal areas, that sort of thing. Maybe volcanic activity encourages the formation of titanium.”
“Phooey on that,” Jack said. “Distribution is the question. Titanium is distributed all sorts of ways, none of them very exclusive. When it gets hot, it will combine with just about anything. No, there’s something definitely unusual about Fuzzy Valley.”
“I still don’t get it,” Sandra insisted. “If titanium is so scarce in the general composition of Zarathustra, how did Fuzzies ever evolve here at all—if it’s such an important component of their morphology?”
“Gcrd’s theory is that they’re living fossils,” Ruth said, “that there used to be a large order of Zarathustran primates. The rest died off. The Fuzzies have survived this far, because they’re the smartest of the bunch, but NFMp is whittling them down.”
Lynne had finished up some things in the kitchen and then joined the group. “The xeno-paleontologists haven’t found any bones yet to hang that theory on,” she said.
“Well, we’ve only been here a quarter century,” Gerd protested. “We know nothing about the history of Fuzzies, and almost nothing about the history of the planet. The xeno-paleontologists haven’t found any really ancient Fuzzy bones, either, but the existence of Fuzzies is self-evident.”
Sandra stuck to her point. “I’m not attacking your theory, Gerd, but if it’s correct wouldn’t that mean there used to be more titanium on Zarathustra? In order for Fuzzies to develop this critical need for it in their diet? Are you saying there used to be more titanium on Zarathustra than there is now? Isn’t there a rule or something about that?”
Gerd thought for a moment, smiling as he felt around for the governing principle Sandra was referring to. “Oh, no,” he said. “Titanium is too heavy to be carried off as the planet developed. That wouldn’t apply to Zarathustra—the gravity is almost the same as Terra.” Suddenly, he realized what he was saying. “Great galloping holy Dai-Butsu!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been digging up the wrong rabbit hole all along! All the titanium ever formed on Zarathustra is still here, in its crust, and that’s damned little. That point was established very early in comparative extraterrestrial planetography by—what’s his name?—MacKenzie’s Law.”
“You mean it’s constant on all planets?” Sandra asked.
“Sure it is,” Jack said.
“Do you remember it, Jack?” Gerd asked. “You’re the closest thing here to a geologist.”
“I can’t state it mathematically,” Jack said, “but I know it. That tells us beforehand something of what a planet’s geology is likely to be all about. Let’s see now—‘The rate of escape of a substance from a planetary mass will vary inversely with the gravity of that mass, varies directly with its temperature, and—” He scratched his head. “—and varies indirectly with the boiling or sublimation point of the substance in question.’ That’s the gist of it.”
“All right, then,” Sandra said. “If there’s so little titanium on Zarathustra, how did Fuzzies come to have such a specific need for it in their metabolism?”
“Now, you’re getting back toward my specialty,” Gerd said. “That point is only theoretically defined in xeno-biology. Remember Garrett’s Theorem? It states that ‘A need for an element does not arise in evolution unless the element is available in reasonable amounts and in assimilable form.’ In other words—in soluble form.” Gerd thought about that for a moment, too, then shook his head. “That doesn’t get me out of the woods, either, does it? There’s still the possibility that Fuzzies might not have evolved here at all.”
“Pish-tush,” Lynne said. “That’s along the line of crackpot theories from the First Century that man was not native to Terra—none of which were ever taken seriously by the scientific community.”
“That makes sense to me,” George said. “How would a low Paleolithic people get to Zarathustra from another planet? Somebody take them for a joy-ride?”
“Which ones?” Ahmed asked. “The low Paleolithic Fuzzies living in the woods, or the agricultural, house-building Fuzzies that are still in the Uplands of North Beta?”
“Or,” Jack chimed in, “the reading-and-writing, communication-screen-watching, machinery-operating Fuzzies that are living at Holloway Station and Mallorysport?”
Chapter Seventeen
“Charming,” The Rev muttered as he opened the shop door. A tiny bell, suspended on a piece of spring steel so that the door would brush it into action when opened, jingled brightly. I’ve never seen one of those things outside a period-piece screenplay, he thought, but one might expect it here.
The white haired proprietor appeared, coming from a well-equipped back room that was many times the size of the tiny front portion of the shop. He smiled in sudden recognition. “Why, Tom,” he said, “it is you. From the descriptions I’ve heard about the Junktown Rescue Mission, I rather thought you might be on Zarathustra.”
They shook hands warmly. “It is myself, Henry. It has been a while, indeed, since I saw you. Fenris, I think— wasn’t it? After a while all colony worlds begin to look alike.”
“I believe it was Fenris, Tom,�
�� Henry Stenson said, “although I couldn’t begin to tell you how long ago it was. I do recall it was during that squabble when the Couperin Cartel had bought up the old, original colonial company’s charter—for about six-and-a-half sols and a bag of jelly beans—and tried to start running the planet. Nasty business, that one.”
The Rev smiled. “I remember. The colonists and the Hunters’ Cooperative; both a little unhappy about that. They captured the port authority docks and were going to blow up the City of Malverton on her stand if the Federation Resident-General and the new company Manager-in-Chief tried to disembark.”
“I must say, Henry,” The Rev continued, “You don’t seem to have aged a day in the years since.”
Stenson chuckled. “At my age, Tom, there’s simply nothing left to wrinkle or go gray. One reaches a kind of optimum state of deterioration and stays there.”
Henry Stenson was the finest instrument-maker on Zarathustra—by definition, since he was the only instrument-maker on Zarathustra. However, he would still have been the finest, even if the town was crawling with them. To call Henry Stenson an instrument-maker was about the same thing as calling Michelangelo Buonarroti an interior decorator.
Elderly and thin, with a tight mouth and a face that was a spider web of wrinkles, he was the last man one would think of as being a Federation agent. He was, though, and had figured pivotally in the great upheaval following the discovery of Fuzzies—the Fuzzy Flap, as local historians now called it.
He was also the only person to ever successfully bug Victor Grego’s private office.
“And what brings you to my humble establishment, Tom?” Stenson asked.
The Rev produced a thin sheaf of folded papers, covered with engineering sketches. “Are you familiar with the Ballard Diagnostic Reader?”
“I am,” Stenson said.
“Well, I need one,” The Rev said, “and there isn’t one to be had on the whole planet—and I can’t afford to wait a year to get one out here from Terra.”
“That’s a pretty exotic piece of medical gear for a rescue mission, Tom.”
The Rev shook his head. “I know, Henry, but I’ve got to have one. I just don’t have the time or the trained workers to run medical checks on all these poor souls down here using multiple-station methods—even with good quality manual electronic sensing and metering equipment. Blood pressure here, coronary profile there, hematology somewhere else—it just takes too bloody long. Why, do you know there are people in Junktown who have never seen a doctor in their entire adult lives?”
“Shocking,” Stenson said. “Shocking thing for the Seventh Century. I thought we had excellent public health programs, here.”
“We do,” the Rev said. “That’s the hell of it. The health care is there, all right, but the people won’t use it because experience has taught them that the less contact they have with the government the less trouble the government can make for them. That’s what’s shocking.”
“Well, don’t make too much of it, Tom,” Stenson said. “The way people are pouring into Mallorysport for the so-called great land boom, you’ve got to expect that most of them will be the kind that doesn’t trust the government.”
“And why should they, Henry?” the Rev asked. “For the most part they’re the disillusioned and disadvantaged. If a man is prosperous, he’s more apt to stay home. That’s what makes any immigration movement a built-in heartbreaker. Most of these people wind up broke and hungry when they find the streets aren’t paved with sunstones—and where a lot of them wind up is at my mission. So, I dispense porridge and medical care, and try to patch up their souls enough for them to climb back in the ring for another round.”
“I’ve been watching it, too,” Stenson said, “and things are beginning to show signs of strain.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” the Rev said, “give them a little hope, a little help, and keep them from becoming desperate.”
“It’s a dangerous situation, Tom,” Stenson said. “Yes, dangerous enough—even without Hugo Ingermann and his gang of thugs constantly haranguing the mob. There’s an old proverb, Tom: ‘A hungry man is like a wolf in the forest; he’ll go where you tell him when his belly is empty.’”
“We’ve both seen it before,” the Rev said. “When hope goes out the airlock, men get desperate. They’ve got nothing left to lose, so they’ll try most anything—things they would never think of doing if they didn’t have their backs to the wall. They’re easy marks for manipulation by people like this bastard Ingermann. I can see it coming in Junktown. Unless something happens to take the pressure off, the whole place is going to blow up one of these days.”
The little bell rang as someone entered the shop.
Henry Stenson tidied up the sheaf of papers. “Yes, I can build one of these for you, Father. The contact plate will have to be a breadboard rig, but it will sense out all the data you want. Otherwise, it will work just like any Ballard Reader in the best hospital on Terra.”
Judge Frederic Pendarvis laid down the sheaf of papers, moved the ashtray a few inches to the right, and took a slender cigar out of the silver box on his desk. After he had lighted it, he leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. Then he turned his attention to the bearded giant and the small, bristly-looking man who sat across the desk from him. “I see nothing wrong with this at all. Your assessment is quite correct, Gus. For my part, I agree that we are on solid ground with respect to the Federation Constitution and the body of colonial case law.”
“Colonial Investigations Bureau,” the Chief Justice said reflectively. He flicked a quarter-inch of ash from his panetella and smiled. “I must congratulate you both on putting this together. The very idea of getting all those different cops to pull together on something like this is nothing short of astounding. I’ve been dealing with all of the law enforcement agencies on the planet for the past fifteen years, and, I can tell you, they can be the damnedest bunch of fools—squabbling like fishwives over jurisdiction, proof of claim, interrogation priority, previous wants and warrants, perquisites and privilege—you name it. There isn’t a one of them I haven’t wanted to take a horsewhip to over the years, usually for clogging up the courts while they prove to one and all that their uniform is more righteous than the next guy’s.”
Ben Rainsford frowned and looked at the floor. “Only one thing I’m unhappy about,” he said.
“What’s that, Ben?” Judge Pendarvis asked.
“That young fella, Khadra. I wanted him to head up the CIB. Why’d he have to go and get married and run off to Beta?”
“I strongly suspect it’s because he was in love,” Pendarvis remarked drily.
Rainsford waved his hand impatiently and began fishing for his pipe in the pocket of his bush jacket.
The way he throws that pipe in and out of his jacket, Pendarvis thought, I’ll bet the inside of that pocket looks as black as a Hathor wolfram-miner’s lungs.
“Will this help any,” Rainsford said around his pipestem as he touched flame to the bowl, “to slow up the congestion in your criminal courts docket?”
“No,” Pendarvis sighed. “It will only make it more orderly.”
“Well, I can’t give you the extra judgeships you asked for in either department,” Rainsford said, almost defensively. “There’s just no money for it. The fact of the matter is that the CZC is financing this government at the moment—until we can get a constitution out of those lame-brained delegates, elect a proper legislature, and levy taxes. And the CZC is going to expect its money back one of these days. It’s a hell of a way to start out a government—in debt—but it can’t be helped, I suppose. Is there anything you and Gus can come up with to reduce the load on the criminal side?” Rainsford looked anxiously at both of them in turn. “I’ll go along with anything that makes sense.”
Pendarvis’ eyes narrowed slightly. “Not much, unless you want to do it at the expense of fair and equal justice under the law,” he said evenly.
Gus
knew that Rainsford had hit a sensitive spot. “I could encourage my prosecutors to be a little more open to plea-bargaining,” he offered. “A lot of these criminal cases are pretty cut and dried, but they stagger on through the system with a long trial—often because the defense attorney loves to hear the pure, spellbinding eloquence of his own courtroom oratory.”
“And just as often is practicing his planned future political speeches on the jury,” Pendarvis added. “I would have no objection to that, Gus—as long as we veridicate the accused in open court regarding any pressure than might have been brought on him to plead guilty to a lesser charge.”
“What will that get us in terms of man-days saved?” Rainsford asked, “—or whatever measure of increased efficiency is applicable.”
“Not much,” Pendarvis said, “but being able to get one more preliminary hearing a day on each judge’s docket will do more than it sounds like.”
“The civil side isn’t going to get any better, though,” Gus said, “and there’s nothing I can do about that—out of my jurisdiction.”
“Yes,” Pendarvis said, almost wistfully. “There’s the real rub. We have more criminal cases, but they are simpler than before. Our civil cases—which we also have a great deal more of—are getting more complex.”
Rainsford jabbed his pipestem at the air. “It’s that Ingermann s.o.b.,” he said. “He’s behind this caseload problem that’s starting to clog up the courts. Overloading the legal system is a fine first step toward bringing down the government. It helps frustrate people. Frustration generates lack of inclination to depend on the legal systems of redress, and that generates more and more lawlessness.”
“If that’s his purpose,” Pendarvis said, “I can see how what you suggest would suit his purpose admirably. But I question that the soi disant geopolitician Hugo Ingermann has an organization that is quite so efficient.”
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