Fuzzy Bones (v1.1)

by William Tuning (v1. 1) (html)

  Charley started breathing again, straightened out the airboat and eased the velocity up.

  Laporte brooded.

  Hugo Ingermann often worked late at night. It was a matter of convenience more than habit. The kind of people he frequently dealt with were creatures of the night. It was their natural environment, since that side of human nature is a being of the darkness.

  Spread out on the desk before him were scanner readings and infraslides delivered to him earlier by one of Laporte’s men. It was disgusting. All that information and not one scrap of it corroborated his theory. Therefore, the information must be somehow in error. And now, Laporte was coming to collect, if he could believe the screen call he had just had from The Bitter End—and there was no reason not to.

  There was a rap on the office door.

  Laporte entered, smiling and amiable; yet menace oozed from every pore of his body. “Good evening, Mr. Ingermann,” he said, and sat down on the opposite side of the desk.

  “Good evening, Raul,” Ingermann replied. Just the right amount of deference, to show who worked for whom. Ingermann puffed out his round, pink cheeks and spread his hands in mock helplessness. “Raul, these data just don’t show a damned thing about the sunstone strike.”

  “That’s because there is no sunstone strike, Mr. Ingermann. I’ve had men over there on the ground and I’ve had overflights made at night—like this one. There is only a big hole in the ground where they’re digging something up.”

  “I can see that!” Ingermann snapped. “What do you think the thing in the hole is?” he asked in a more even tone.

  Laporte’s voice dropped about three tones. “I don’t know what it is. It looks to be just what my people say has leaked out about it—the buried wreck of some kind of spaceship. It’s been there a long time. So far, no word about any sunstones.”

  Ingermann laughed, shrilly and high-pitched. There was a rather odd look on his face that Laporte did not like at all. He decided it was time to start cleaning his fingernails.

  “All that digging?” Ingermann said. “All those people? Coded messages flying back and forth, like featherleaf pods in a high wind? And all you can tell me is that crackbrained rumor about a buried spaceship?” He laughed again. “I thought you had better sense, Raul.”

  Laporte shrugged and went on cleaning his fingernails with a huge clasp knife.

  “These idiots in the Colonial Government,” Ingermann chuckled. “The richest deposit of sunstones yet is practically within spitting distance of this spot.” He pounded a pudgy finger on one of the infraslides. “And all they can come up with is a cover story about a—a spaceship wreck!” He spat out the words.

  “I came for the other thousand sols you owe me,” Laporte said in a very quiet voice.

  Ingermann wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “Oh, Raul, you’re going to have to do better than this before that thousand ever sees daylight.”

  “The deal was ‘definite information,’” Laporte said. “You have your definite information. Now, I’ll have my money.”

  “Not until you find the sunstone strike, you won’t!” Ingermann leaned forward suddenly, slapping the palms of both hands flat on the desk.

  In the absolute silence that followed, Laporte raised his head from the preoccupation with fingernails and looked Ingermann in the face.

  When he sprang from the chair, he landed on his knees, on top of the desk, with a knee on each of Ingermann’s hands. Printout stacks and infraslides cascaded off onto the floor. With a snatching motion of his left hand, he grabbed Ingermann by the neckcloth, pulling him a little closer.

  Slowly, Laporte placed the point of the knife against Ingermann’s left carotid artery, just below the jawbone. Ingermann’s round, pink cheeks turned chalky white. “The money,” Laporte said.

  Ingermann inclined his eyes to indicate the appropriate desk drawer.

  Laporte lifted his left knee. “You get it,” he said. Ingermann opened the drawer with the released hand, opened the wallet, and shook out the sheaf of currency.

  When Laporte was again standing on the floor and some of the color was returning to Ingermann’s face, Laporte said, “I don’t think you have the nerve, sir, to try anything what wouldn’t be smart. Y’see, there’s one of my men out in the hall with a submachine gun. If I don’t come out of here with a smile on my face, his orders is to come in here and turn you into dog meat.”

  Ingermann cleared his throat and adjusted his neckcloth. “I understand,” he said.

  Laporte nodded. “Good. I hope this don’t have any bad effect on our business dealings in the future, Mr. Ingermann, but we are gonna have to be more specific about what the deal is.”

  Outside Ingermann’s office, Laporte closed the door quietly, put away his knife, and walked off down the empty corridor.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  An austere but rather shaggy gentleman of middle years peered out of the screen. “Surely you jest, Governor,” he said. “Why, we’ve been a fixture in Mallorysport—to say nothing of bringing a tiny scrap of culture to the rest of the planet—for almost ten years, now. You are going to dissolve it; just like that? Preposterous!”

  Ben Rainsford glowered into the pickup at his end of the conversation. “I didn’t say I was going to dissolve it, Mr. Wachinski. I said there’s no money for it.”

  Holger Wachinski was the director of the Mallorysport Civic Opera Association, an annoying—to Ben Rainsford— leftover from Nick Emmert’s administration as Resident General, before the CZC charter had been revoked. He was quite naturally in high dudgeon to discover that his budget had been chopped off.

  “I must say, that’s pretty mundane of you, Governor. As bread feeds the body, art feeds the soul, even if you—” Wachinski stopped, realizing he was not helping his case.

  Rainsford chuffed on his pipe. “It don’t make a damn whether I like opera or not, Mr. Wachinski. I’m in a position of having to make bricks without straw, here. If it comes down to a choice between opera and having citizens robbed on the esplanade, I have to can the opera and hire more cops—except I’ve not got enough money for that, either.”

  “You realize,” Wachinski said, with what he hoped was an oracular tone, “that you’re just contributing to the unemployment problem?”

  Better yours than mine. Rainsford thought, but he decided not to say it. He rubbed his eyes. “Look, Wachinski; how much of your budget do you raise by private subscription?”

  Wachinski looked at the ceiling for a moment. “About half—enough to cover the opera company. But that’s useless without the symphony.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Wachinski,” Rainsford said. “You get off your butt and raise enough more to pay for half the symphony, and the Colonial Government will match-fund you on that part for the rest of the season. If the opera company caves in, you’ll still have the orchestra. Deal?”

  Deal, Wachinski thought, a decree. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “we’ll try to make do.”

  The Navy cruiser, at that altitude, looked about the size of a pool-ball fruit from the ground when it began to turn out its cargo of men and vehicles.

  There is a certain precision and grace in the sight of a line battalion turning out of a ship. It is as much of an aerial ballet as a convoy movement from ship to ground. An enormous quantity of vehicles are involved for several hundred men—or so it seems. All of these particular vehicles were of a squatty, ungainly appearance, built to withstand incredible punishment and still operate. The center was an almost solid skirt of service equipment for ordnance, maintenance, vehicle recovery, field kitchens, supply boats, communication centers, and operations centers. Ranged around these were squad buses in neat platoon lines, with the four companies positioned port, starboard, aloft, and below. Casagra’s men were already on the ground, sweating and cursing with the dig. Spiraling gracefully away from the main body, the scout cars skimmed and darted like airborne sheepdogs.

  Holloway and his group were s
till at the site; in fact had been waiting for the battalion to arrive. There were a few things Holloway wanted to get clearly understood with the battalion commander before he went back to Holloway Station, and George Lunt had a few points he wanted to pick over, as well. Rainsford had departed well before dawn, ranting and raving about the exigencies of being Governor General.

  As the battalion vehicles encamped, the commander’s car grounded about a hundred meters from the waiting group of officials.

  Lieutenant Colonel James O ‘Bannon and his exec., Major Richard Stagwell, dismounted and crunched across the dry soil of Fuzzy Valley toward them. Ordinarily, it would have been the other way around, but officials of the civil government were in the waiting party, so deference was being observed.

  Introductions were exchanged all around, which took an inordinate amount of time, since ten people were involved.

  Holloway looked over O’Bannon and Stagwell, figuring out the best way to handle them.

  O’Bannon was a little shorter than average, and was one of those men who could spend three weeks in the field and never put a wrinkle in his impeccable field greens. He had a handsome, almost boyish face, contradicted by the tinge of gray in the regimental beard and mustache which framed his jaw. His eyes were slightly hooded, like a cobra’s, of an indeterminate color, and never betrayed expression, even though he smiled obligingly from time to time.

  Stagwell was tall, raw-boned, and agile-looking. He grinned a lot, and had the look about him of a man who could run five miles with a machine gun under each arm and not even be breathing hard.

  “One thing I want to get straight,” O’Bannon. said, “while there’s just us here—including the civilians. Helton, you’re in charge of the dig. I’m giving you Casagra’s company to handle that, but you work through him. Don’t go off on any vast projects without clearing with him. Somebody gets injured down there; he’s the commander and he’ll have to answer for it—not you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Helton said.

  “Another thing, Gunnie,” O ‘Bannon continued, “if you mess into my security and scanning operations without my say-so, I’ll fry you. Do we see eye-to-eye?”

  “Yes, sir,” Helton repeated.

  O’Bannon turned to the civilians. “I want Commissioner Holloway to brief my staff and commanders on matters regarding the Fuzzies. I want Major Lunt to do the same with respect to ZNPF operations. As to what we may have found here, the fewer people having specific knowledge of that, the happier I’ll be about it. That means I want Casagra’s men to continue to camp and mess away from the rest of the battalion and have minimum contact.” He sighed and paused for a moment. “… Not that it will do much good, the way Marines gossip, but we can try.”

  “Questions? Okay. There will be Officers Call in twenty minutes.” He pointed back over his shoulder, without looking, to where tents were already blossoming from the ground. “I’ll see you all then.” He turned and left.

  “Gruff little fella, isn’t he?” Gerd asked.

  ” ‘Businesslike’ is the word I’d use,” George Lunt remarked.

  “I’ve noticed,” Holloway said to Helton, “that you don’t ‘sir’ very many people, Phil.”

  “Only the ones I respect a lot—sir,” Helton said.

  After the briefing, Helton took Major Telemann over to Casagra’s company area, where it had been decided he should be assigned, since they were handling the most sensitive part of the operation. They went in Telemann’s aircar, fitted out for Public Information Operation, which is to say crammed with electronic gear to monitor news agencies’ activities.

  Telemann was the only Marine on site in khakis instead of field greens. Best foot forward with the public, and all.

  Vidal Beltrán watched from the back hatch of his kitchen scow as they set up. He knew instinctively what it all meant.

  “Another damned mouth to feed,” he said disgustedly.

  An entire corner of Victor Grego’s private office was occupied by one of his most cherished possessions—a large globe of Zarathustra, suspended on its own contragravity unit, with the moons Xerxes and Darius, to scale, circling it as it rotated; the entire affair illuminated by a fixed orange spotlight representing the KØ star that gave life to the planet. At mid-morning in Mallorysport, the terminator line had crossed the coast of Beta.

  “Victor?” the voice from the communications screen said. “Are you listening?” It was a bold thing for a lesser big wheel to say, even if he was the lesser big wheel that was in charge of Company Science Center.

  “Uh?” Grego said, looking back at the screen. “I was just checking something on the map, Juan. It’s early morning on Beta, now. Where is your archeologist?”

  “He says he just spent the night in the best hotel in Red Hill, but that it was still ghastly. Wants to know if he should come home, or what. I thought we might have him hang around over there a day or so and see what the gossip is.”

  Grego frowned. “I’m not gainsaying your staff, Juan, but I don’t recall that we have an archeologist on the payroll. What would the Company have wanted with an archeologist on an uninhabited planet?”

  “He’s not really an archeologist,” Juan said. “He’s an analytical geologist with a master’s in archeology. It’s the closest we could come to the real thing.”

  Grego lit a cigarette and absently scratched his Adam’s apple as he took the first puff. “So, we have a ‘routine archeological dig’ on a planet where there is no archeology, and they won’t let the CZC archeologist on the site. What do you make of it, Juan?”

  “Just that,” Juan said, “plus the fact that the place is swarming with Marines. Apparently Napier has sent down a large patrol force and they’ve cordoned off a large area of the Fuzzy Reservation.”

  Grego frowned. “Well, then, it must be something pretty big. Old Man Holloway wouldn’t sit still for that otherwise. Yes, Juan, I like your suggestion. Tell our man to hang around town a couple days. Tell him too bad about the crummy hotel, but that it’s above and beyond the call of duty, or something. In the meantime, I’ll get hold of Harry Steefer and see what he can come up with. When your man gets back from Beta, I want to see him instantly.”

  “I’ll keep you posted, Victor.”

  They broke connection.

  Grego leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. He wasn’t thinking about archeology, though. In fact it was difficult for him to concentrate, so he decided to clear the block from his mind.

  What a remarkable young woman, he thought, as he punched out a screen combination.

  A mass of bright colors swirled across the communication screen and exploded into the image of Christiana Stone.

  “Yes?” she said. “Oh. Mr. Grego.”

  “Good morning, Christiana,” he said. “I have a suggestion. Tell me what you think of it.” Without waiting for an answer, he continued. “When you bring Diamond back from Government House, you could stop off at your place and change into a dinner dress. Then we’ll take Diamond out to dinner at—oh—say, Alfredo’s. He can show off his table manners in public. Be good for him, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, he’d love it, Mr. Grego,” she said.

  “That wouldn’t interfere with your plans, any, would it?” Grego asked.

  “Not a bit,” Christiana replied. “I think it would be delightful.”

  “Good,” Grego said. “We’ll want to get there early, though, so we don’t keep him up later than he’s accustomed. I’ll meet you at the penthouse about six.”

  About 0600 at Holloway Station the group that had gone to North Beta were sitting around the Khadra’s living room with Sandra, Ruth, and Lynne Andrews.

  “I think,” Ruth van Riebeek said to her husband, “that to say this thing they’ve found up there has ‘vast implications’ ought to insure your place in history, Gerd—not as a scientist, but as making the understatement of the century.”

  “Hmph!” Gerd said.

  “But they’re not certain that it�
��s the remains of a hyperdrive ship, are they?” Lynne Andrews asked.

  “No,” Jack said, “but given the judgment of a man like Phil Helton, I’d say it’s about a ninety percent shot.”

  Ruth looked at the other two women. “Well, I suppose it’s our turn to raise your eyebrows, now. Gerd was right about the titanium content of the plants from Fuzzy Valley. They differ in content and amount from one kind of plant to another, of course.”

  “That’s not so eyebrow-raising,” Gerd said. “What did you find out?”

  “The titanium compounds are all similar to hokfusine,” Ruth said. “Given something to compare hokfusine with, it won’t be so much of a job; to finger its functions in Fuzzy metabolism will be much easier.”

  “All these compounds,” Lynne said, ticking off imaginary numbers on her fingers, “for example, have degradation fractions that are piperidine.”

  “Hmmm,” Gerd said. “That’s an organic compound already known on Terra. So, with enough vitamins like hokfusine, that can inhibit NFMp production, the Fuzzy birthrate can work itself back to normal—if the work we’ve done so far is right.”

  “You mean it might not be right?” Jack said.

  “I mean,” Gerd said, “that there are many and varied times when I wish it wasn’t right.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Jack said. “If you can solve the NFMp/anti-NFMp problem in Fuzzy metabolism, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Well,” Gerd said, exhaling noisily, “the irritating aspect of what we might rather grandiosely call ‘The van Riebeek Theory,’ is that the observations and deductions involved in its formulation keep coming back to Garrett’s Theorem—that the need for an element does not arise in evolution unless the element is readily available. If you admit the applicability of Garrett’s Theorem to Fuzzy biochemistry—which, by the way, I never tumbled to until Sandra raised the question—you keep landing back on square one, where resides that alarming idea that Fuzzies did not evolve on Zarathustra. It just doesn’t make sense, but it keeps haunting the data we’ve developed.”