“Well, that just has to be done once in a while, Ray—” George said, “—the way I want things run. I don’t want people getting too comfy and routine about their work. When the ground is all so familiar that they get to screening in their report automatically, it’s time to change the scenery. Keeps everybody awake.”
“Sure,” Pendleton said, “and makes your officers old and gray before their time.”
George grinned. “But, you were old and gray when I appointed you, Ray.”
“I was old and gray when I was born,” Pendleton said. “That’s how I was smart enough to live this long.”
“And sweetly, too,” George said. “Your disposition is the most loveable part of you. I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or not.” He continued quickly, so as not to leave space for a rebuttal. “I am going off duty shift at the moment. I will be at Mr. Commissioner Holloway’s residence for cocktails.”
Pendleton made a face. “I will be here slaving over all this damned paperwork,” George heard him say as the screen door slammed behind him.
“Jack,” George said, “we can quarantine the whole area. I’ve already changed the patrol assignments all around—you should hear how the watch captains are howling about that—and we can keep everyone else out on the grounds that the Upland Fuzzies are just too nervous about Hagga and it will take some time for them to become accustomed to Terrans. It’s all inside the Fuzzy Reservation, anyway, so the only legal niceties involved would be a written order from you. That will give us enough breathing-time to find out what the titanium thing is and decide how we’re going to handle it. We don’t want any curiosity for a while.”
Jack nodded. “I agree, George. There are lots of questions to be answered, and the only chance we have of keeping control—short of asking for armed troops from Commodore Napier—is to stay one or two jumps ahead of everyone else with the answers.”
“Questions?” George said. “There are nothing but questions, and I don’t see any answers yet. To start with, why have Fuzzies built there in Fuzzy Valley and nowhere else?”
“Nowhere else that we know about,” Ahmed corrected.
“Point well taken,” Jack said. “It’s the plants, of course, that pick up the titanium; that’s what keeps them there. We could fly a one-item scan map of the planet from, say, fifty thousand feet, and probably depend on finding Fuzzies wherever we got a high concentration of titanium in the soil.”
“Why is there so much titanium up there, anyway?” George asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “It’s contrary to everything in the current body of data about extraterrestrial geology.” He shrugged. “But, there are a lot of things on a lot of planets that are contrary data.”
“You think there could be other concentrations of titanium like this one?” Ahmed asked.
Jack shrugged again. “Don’t know.”
“Well, what do you think that big hunk of it up in Fuzzy Valley is?” Ahmed asked.
“Don’t know,” Jack said, again.
“Could it be something the Fuzzies built a long time ago? I mean, archeological remains from their civilization?”
“Fuzzy archeology?” George said. “That’s nuts.”
“George is likely right,” Jack said. “People who don’t make any ancillary tools more refined than a low Paleolithic coup de poing axe and wooden shoppo-diggo are not too likely to have built pyramids or anything.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Khadra said. “They could have once been a very high culture—which slowly slipped back and declined to minimum survival levels. That would answer a lot of questions about what we’ve found.”
“What you say is possible,” George said, “but it raises just as many new questions as old ones it lays to rest.”
“I know. I know,” Jack said. “That’s why I haven’t been sleeping too well.”
The communication screen image shattered, shimmered, and stabilized into a replica of Jack Holloway’s face.
“Jack! By Ghu, it’s good to see someone who’s still sane,” Ben Rainsford said. “What can I do for you?”
“How about coming on over here to Beta tomorrow morning,” Jack said.
Outside his bungalow on Beta, dusk was just falling. George and Ahmed were still there, but staying out of range of the screen pickup. In Mallorysport it was full night, somewhere just after the dinner hour, depending on one’s eating habits.
“What the hell for?” Rainsford demanded. “I don’t have the time to go tripping around visiting my friends—much as I’d like to.”
Jack looked uncomfortable, hoping to convey the impression that he didn’t want to discuss it on screen. “Aw, it’s something scientific, Ben,” he said. “We sure would like to have you over here tomorrow. It’s going to be kind of special.”
“Scientific, you say?” Rainsford said. “Jack, I can’t go over to Beta for something that’s scientific. I’m up to my ass in alligators over here. The only way I can get this constitutional convention moving is to make a cattle drive out of it. I can’t afford the luxury of science any more. Not just now, anyway.”
Jack was aggravated, and didn’t make any attempt to conceal the fact. “Ben, do you remember about a year ago—when you were on your way back from a field trip— and you stopped at the Constabulary post, Beta 15, at Red Hill? George Lunt told you a story that made you think he was the biggest liar in the known galaxy. Then, when you got home, you found a message from me on your screen recorder, and beat it straight over to my camp to see for yourself?”
“Well, of course I remember it, Jack. I’m not getting senile, or anything, you know. This job is driving me nuts, but I still got all my marbles. “
George Lunt came into the arc covered by the screen pickup and spoke to the Governor General. “This is just as crazy, Governor Rainsford—and it could be just as important.”
“All right. I see it, now,” Rainsford growled. “You fellas have turned up something that’s really big. You don’t want to talk about it on screen, but you want my opinion about it. That it?”
“To say nothing,” Jack remarked, “of the glory of your illustrious gubernatorial presence.”
“Don’t lay it on too thick, Jack,” Rainsford grumped. “I got people over here in Mallorysport who do that for a living. What time and where shall I meet you?”
“Could your royal princeliness manage to be at Holloway Station at 0800?” Jack asked.
“0800!” Rainsford roared. “That means I have to get up at 0400 in order to leave here by 0500!”
“Love will find a way,” Holloway said. “Seriously, Ben; this is very important.”
Ben Rainsford hopped out of his aircar, looking a bit more rumpled than usual, and strode briskly into Jack Holloway’s bungalow without knocking. He confronted Jack, George, and Ahmed in the living room. “You better have the damned coffee pot on!” he snapped. Abruptly, he relaxed, stretched his arms over his head, and stifled a yawn.
“I would think you’d be awake by now,” Holloway said.
“I slept all the way over,” Rainsford said.
“And operated the aircar while unconscious?” George asked.
Rainsford took the cup of coffee Jack handed him and blew on it “I am the Governor General,” he said. “I am authorized to have my own driver. He operated the aircar. I stretched out in the aft compartment and slept.”
“You slept in your clothes?” Jack asked.
“Of course,” Rainsford said. “What’s wrong with that?”
He didn’t understand why the other three looked back and forth at each other and nodded their heads.
Ben Rainsford might have solved that one if they had not been interrupted by the chiming of the communication screen.
The image steadied down into that of Space Commodore Alex Napier. He was speaking from his office on Xerxes. In the background, they could see the harsh, angular landscape of that Zarathustran moon through the open sun-screen segments of Napier’s domed office.
“No,” Jack said flatly. “In the first place, we don’t know. In the second place, I don’t care to discuss it over a communication screen. And—” His mustache twitched like a tiger’s whiskers. “—in the final place, it is entirely inside the Fuzzy Reservation, so it’s really none of your affair, Commodore.”
Napier knocked ash from his pipe and re-tamped the tobacco. “Only time will tell that, Mr. Holloway,” he said.
“My question,” Jack said, “is just how you know we ‘found something,’ and how in Nifflheim you came to know it this quickly.”
The Commodore smiled with genuine good humor. “I don’t believe TFN regulations require me to discuss my intelligence network with you, Commissioner Holloway— and if they did, I wouldn’t do it via open communication screen.”
“Well, it still belongs to the Fuzzies,” Jack insisted, “because it is on Fuzzy lands.”
Napier relaxed his formal manner a bit. “Come on, Jack,” he said, “I’m not trying to ruffle your feathers or make any official fuss about this. May I have your permission to send three of my own people down to the site?”
“I can’t think of any reason to refuse that,” Holloway said, “as long as it is clear that they are not present in any official capacity and will conduct themselves under my authority.”
“The Navy can live with that, I think,” Napier said.
“Names, please?” Holloway said, his hand poised over a note pad.
“I have a couple of ordnance officers,” Napier said, “with experience in xeno-geology and archeology— Commander Nelson Bates and Lieutenant Frank Gaperski. They both have some academic credits in those subjects, and have been interested enough to pursue them as a sideline to their Navy careers.”
“Yes?” Holloway inquired.
“Also,” Napier added, “I am sending down a Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant who is here to audit our readiness and weapons systems. Philip Helton is his name.”
“Does he have a hobby, too?” Jack asked.
Napier chuckled. “As a matter of fact, he does. I don’t think it will be of much use to you, though, on this job; his hobby is literature. However, his knowledge of his own field is nothing short of awesome. I daresay he could look at a piece of military hardware that no human creature had ever before seen, and tell you instantly what it was designed to do.”
“I met a Master Gunnie on Hathor, once,” Jack said, “and I’m inclined to believe what you say.”
“Excellent, then,” Napier said. “What are the coordinates?”
Holloway glowered. “Have you lost your mind, Commodore?” he said. “I will write down the chart coordinates on a slip of paper, and leave it in a sealed envelope at ZNPF Headquarters—to be released to your Master Gunnie on verification of his thumbprint only. Then, your people can join us at the site. It’s hard enough to keep all these jackleg prospectors out of the Fuzzy Reservation, without having to police sightseers who happen to hear this transmission, as well.”
“I see your point, Jack,” Napier said. “Agreed.”
“By the way, Alex,” Jack said, dropping his own stiff formality, now that he felt he had some control of the conversation, “why in blazes is the Navy so interested in this?”
“There are—ah—anomalies in the information. My people will talk to you about it all when they arrive.”
Chapter Twenty
Hugo Ingermann smiled and puffed his pink cheeks as he regarded the man across the desk from him. Best, really, to keep the desk between himself and such a man as Raul Laporte. Aside from the obvious fact that a certain ritual formality was necessary to mitigate against as much familiarity as might blur the distinction of who was working for whom, the truth of the matter was that Ingermann was afraid of Laporte. Oh, not that he considered Laporte to be any threat to the carefully constructed hierarchy of crime that he had constructed with himself at the pinnacle of control. It was more a matter of recognizing that Laporte was the kind of man whose self-control might snap at any moment. If and when it did, someone was bound to die. Ingermann preferred that the warm corpse in such a situation should not be his own.
” ‘Course I’m sure of it, Mr. Ingermann,” Laporte was saying. “Y’see, there’s these two halfwit Marines what owe me a lot of money. I been encouraging them that I’ll write off part of their debt if they bring me any useful information.”
Ingermann fitted the tips of his fingers together and flexed his hands. “I see. Go on.”
“Well, yesterday,” Laporte said, “they come to me with this story. Seems the ZNPF has shuffled all the duty assignments around, and the platoon of Marines that’s over there helping them out is soon to be joined by the rest of the company it was originally detached from.”
Ingermann smiled. “And you see this minor alteration of work schedules as something of great importance,” he said, flatly and without emotion.
“Well,” Laporte defended, “it ain’t like it was all that minor. They’ve pulled all the Marines off patrol duty over North Beta. You gotta look at the big picture, Mr. Ingermann. Why would they all-of-a-sudden move the Marines to patrolling the sugarplant plantations—all the Marines? An’ then, bring in more Marines?”
“Mmmmm,” Ingermann murmured. “And what importance do you attach to all this, Mr. Laporte? A good deal, apparently; otherwise you would not take the trouble to visit my office. In short, sir, what does it mean?”
“Why, I think it means they’ve hit another big sunstone strike up on the Fuzzy Reservation; that’s what I think. They move out the troops who’ve been patrolling that area, and bring in more troops… Sunstones is really all that’s going on on Beta. What else could it be?”
What else, indeed? Sunstones were an obsession with Hugo Ingermann. He pursed his lips. “And what, Mr. Laporte, did you pay these two—persons—for this information?”
Laporte knew what Ingermann was paying the spies he sent over to Beta. “Five hundred sols, each, Mr. Ingermann,” he said. “That’s a thousand, all told. I cancelled a thousand on their debt.”
The slight hesitation before specifying the amount told Ingermann that Laporte was lying. “I can only see five hundred sols’ worth of information there, Mr. Laporte,” he said.
Laporte looked uncomfortable. He couldn’t decide how far to go in haggling over Ingermann’s offered price of five hundred—which was really two hundred more than he had credited to Diehl and Spelvin.
Ingermann smiled. “However, I have some brokerage work for you, Mr. Laporte, and I’ll make you a flat offer of three thousand for the lot.” He reached in a desk drawer and drew out a folio wallet, from which he extracted three pre-counted sheaves of currency. “I want you to hire four more operatives and send them over to Beta to prowl around and see what this is all about—this whatever-it-is that the Navy and the ZNPF are being so coy about keeping quiet.” He tossed two of the sheaves of currency across the desk and, with a flourish, tucked the third back into the wallet. “I don’t care what your financial arrangements are with these four people, nor who they may be. However, you don’t get the third thousand until I receive some definite information about what I want to know. Deal?”
“Deal,” Laporte said, wistfully eyeing the wallet that had swallowed his profit into escrow.
They watched Fuzzy Divide slide under the nose of the airboat from five thousand feet, and the suddenly dry look of North Beta replace the lush forests south of the transverse mountain range.
“Listen, Gerd,” Jack said, “I’m sorry I growled at you yesterday the way I did. It was just that those Upland Fuzzies were so damned pathetic. They’re starving up here, but they’re still determined to tough it out—come hell or high water. I’m—you well know—not an emotional man, but the look on that headman’s face just got to me all of a sudden. Ghu!, he’s a tough little guy. What was it that our ga
ng said his name was?”
“Starwatcher,” Gerd said. “Another piece of data that doesn’t conform. The woods Fuzzies don’t have any names beyond ‘Hey, you,’ but the Uplanders all have very specific handles—Starwatcher, Fireburner, Song, Dream-maker, Mark, Striker… It makes no sense to me, but they’ll correct you in a minute if you make a mistake with a name.”
The Rev became aware that eyes were fixed upon him. He peered over the edge of the desk and encountered a fixed stare from a skinny kid of about eleven or twelve. She had stringy brown hair and wide eyes. Like a lot of the kids in Junktown, she wasn’t getting enough to eat.
“You got my Uncle Charley?” she asked.
“Hi, there,” the Rev said. “What’s your name?”
“Lurkin,” the girl replied in a monotone. “Lolita Lurkin. You got my Uncle Charley?”
“Well, I don’t know,” the Rev said. “What’s the rest of Uncle Charley’s name?”
“Walker,” the kid said. “He’s my Uncle Charley Walker.”
“Where are your parents?” the Rev said, making conversation while he had his data terminal run a name check for any Charley Walker that might be in the medical center or the infirmary.
“Ain’t got no parents no more,” the girl said. “My Ma died. My Pa kep’ gettin’ drunk and beatin’ me up, so the judge sent me to live with Uncle Charley.”
“Is he really your uncle?” the Rev asked as he watched the “searching” signal blink on and off on his screen.
The girl shrugged. “I dunno. He don’t beat me up, though.”
“Does he take good care of you?” the Rev asked.
The girl shrugged. “He does the best he can, I reckon. He ain’t workin’, but I get more to eat than I did with Pa.” She thought for a moment. “But I gotta keep house better for Uncle Charley. Pa didn’t care about that so much, but Uncle Charley likes everything to be kep’ clean.”
The elusive Uncle Charley was eventually located in the dispensary where he was getting medication for a persistent cough. The Rev recognized his face immediately as a parishioner.
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