Diamond stretched and yawned, then patted his little belly. “No, Pappy Vic,” he said. “Diamond too’ fu now.” Yes, supper at Alfredo’s after the reception had been a rather exceptional affair, too. Walter seemed to have outdone himself again.
“You run along, then, Diamond,” Grego said. “Pappy Vic has some thinking to do.”
Grego stopped in the kitchen and poured a generous helping of brandy into the snifter. He paused for a moment, thinking of the racing wheels that spun inside his brain, decided it would take a bit more to put him to sleep, and sloshed in some more brandy. No point in going to bed— even at this point of fatigue—if your mind refuses to stop running scenarios, making lists, and cross-indexing information. Tossing and turning for hours is worse than staying up.
He brushed the switch as he entered the living room, bringing the lights around the ceiling-edges to a soft glow. Comfortably situated in his favorite chair, he absently reached into the bowl of nibblements he kept on the coffee table and his mind went back to the first time he had seen Diamond. There had been a Fuzzy loose in Company House—one who had escaped from the group Herckard and Novaes kidnapped on Beta—who had gradually worked his way up to Grego’s penthouse and eaten all the salted snacks out of the nibblements bowl.
Then Diamond looked about for a soft, warm place to go to sleep and that’s where Grego had found him—curled up on his own bed. At first he had been outraged; Fuzzies were the enemy; Fuzzies had cost the Company its charter. But no one who is sane can dislike a Fuzzy. In the abstract perhaps it is possible, but in person there is no Terran human who wouldn’t want a little friend like that.
Grego turned on the communications screen. Perhaps something to take his mind off all the things he was responsible for, all the things he alone could keep control of, was in order.
The swirls of colored light dissolved into an image as the audio came up.
“… And it is this grasping conspiracy between the criminal lunatics running the colonial government, the banking cartels, and the blackest lot of thieves among all of them—The Zarathustra Company—that seeks to rob you; yes. you, the common people of this planet of your birthright. Not a birthright made in a series of shady deals on Terra and in the lofty salons of exploiters located at the top of Company House, but the birthright earned by the farmers, the frontiersmen, the colonists who have made this planet what it is today, who have shaped it from the mud made by its soil and your own sweat—that is your rightful share of all the good and glorious things of Zarathustra. Your blood has fallen on this soil! You have bought and paid for it!” Ingermann thumped his fist on the lectern in front of him. “It is…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Zarathustra is… YOURS!” He spread his arms wide in benediction.
The announcer’s smooth voice segued over the fading picture. “The preceding was recorded at an earlier time for broadcast at this hour.”
Grego wiped his forehead. “Ghu!” he said. “Just what I need to calm me down!” He inhaled deeply from the snifter and leaned forward to change the channel. “Surely there must be some mindless, nonsensical screenplay I can watch.”
George Lunt took his feet off his desk and turned toward his Chief of Detectives. “Ahmed,” he said, “you realize that we’re going to have to turn him loose.”
Ahmed Khadra nodded. “Let me bake him and baste him for a while. We can hold him seventy-two hours while we verify his identity and check for wants and warrants.”
A grin crept over George Lunt’s square face. “You’re sure there’s nothing personal about this?”
Ahmed snorted. “Well, the discovery that the CZC has planted a man right under our nose in the ZNPF does rub me the wrong way just a bit.”
“How did you turn him?” George asked.
“Bardini was in Red Hill and overheard the guy making a screen call to Harry Steefer in Mallorysport,” Ahmed said.
“Did he hear any of the conversation?” George asked.
“No,” Ahmed replied, “but they weren’t talking about the ball game.”
George frowned. “Has this guy had duty on anything but routine patrol?” He frowned more deeply. “I mean, has he ever been assigned to the detachment in Fuzzy Valley?”
Ahmed nodded affirmatively.
George let his hand fall on the desk. “That tears it,” he said. “Okay, put him on the griddle and see what he really knows. We may not have been compromised too badly. We still have to turn him loose, though. He hasn’t committed a crime he can be charged with.”
“Industrial espionage—” Ahmed began.
“—is not against the law—unfortunately,” George finished.
“Could we hang him with fraudulent enlistment?” Ahmed inquired thoughtfully.
George’s mouth drew down into a hard line. “I haven’t written the regulation covering that, yet,” he said.
“Hmmmm,” Ahmed said. “Well, there isn’t much more we can do tonight.” He looked at the wall readout. “The mess is closed down by now. Why don’t you take pot luck with Sandra and me?”
“I don’t know,” George said. “You sure she won’t mind?”
“I’ll give her a screen call right now,” he said. “Besides, if I don’t go home right away, I might as well not go at all.”
Grego leaned back in his chair and took a sip of brandy.
An austere, rather shaggy gentleman of middle years “peered soulfully from the screen. “This is your host, again, Holger Wachinski,” he said sonorously, “inviting you to join us for this, our last selection in tonight’s concert by the Mallorysport Symphony Orchestra. The Spellbound Concerto is notable as one of the earliest pieces of serious music to utilize an electronic instrument in the solo capacity. Distilled from the sound track music of the screenplay of the same name, composer Miklos Rozsa performed a masterful fusing of the delicate tonal quality of the Theremin with the richness of the then—traditional orchestra.
“Coinciding almost exactly with the beginning of the Atomic Era, this exquisite concerto immediately received many awards, and remains a durable and lasting piece of work on its own merits—” Wachinski turned. “Ah! Soloist John Kvassny has just come on stage to enthusiastic applause. And now, Maestro Cascora is approaching the podium… Ladies and gentlemen—Spellbound.”
Grego was beginning to relax, now. He was, after all, accustomed to the public slanders of Hugo Ingermann, but not after a fourteen-hour day of bargaining and dealing to get this cattle drive of a Constitutional Convention going the direction he wanted. What with the Company loaning vast sums to the Colonial Government to keep it on its feet until a Legislature was seated in accordance with a soon-to-be-adopted-it-was-fervently-hoped Constitution, Grego couldn’t afford to sit around and let the new government pay him back with money it taxed away from the Company. The Company had to get some breaks in the tax laws, and the best way to do that was for the Company to have its fingers into writing those tax laws. A majority of the stalwart old pioneers on the convention would also be sitting in the Legislature. Now was the time to get them on the Company’s side—while it wasn’t too obvious to them that the Company had an axe to grind. If Jimenez and his eggheads could raise just one reasonable doubt about Fuzzies being native to Zarathustra, then they could take it all to court and possibly get the Company Charter back—or a reasonable facsimile of it. Might have to live with a duplex version—a re-chartered Company and a Colonial Legislature. In any case, it couldn’t do any harm to make some influential friends for the Company while the opportunity presented itself.
Grego took a deep breath and let it out slowly at the first soaring notes of the Spellbound Concerto. Spellbound. He was going to have to do something about Christiana, too. She was on his mind more and more these days, and not in her capacity as Chief Fuzzy-Sitter either. Things were going on inside him that he didn’t even want to identify, much less actually deal with. But he was going to have to deal with them, and he knew it.
Gwennie’s eyes were the size of saucers as
she listened outside Hugo Ingermann’s office door. She was certain that the thumping of her heart could be heard all over the building.
She could only catch a phrase once in a while as Laporte and Ingermann talked, but it was still the most astonishing conversation she had ever heard. An entire cave, full of sunstones! That’s the news that Ev and Jim brought to Laporte, which sent him streaking to Ingermann’s office. It couldn’t be true. It was just—impossible. Surely those two jarheads knew better than to tell a lie to Raul Laporte, just to get out from under their gambling debts. He’d cut their throats and leave them in the street for that. Maybe they were getting ready to ship out and hadn’t told her. No, that made no sense. If their unit was leaving Zarathustra, they could just run out on the gambling debts—without risking the wrath of Laporte. So, it must be true; yet it was unbelievable.
She started as she heard a chair scrape on the floor in the office. Did she have time to get down the corridor and out of sight—before Laporte came out? She tugged at the doors on a couple of offices. Locked. She tugged at another one. It swung toward her. It was a janitor’s closet. She darted inside and pulled the door almost shut behind her, peeping out through the narrow crack, into the corridor—like a mouse hiding in its hole.
Presently, Laporte came out of Ingermann’s office, looked up and down the corridor, and sauntered away with his hands in his pockets.
Gwennie jumped out of the closet as soon as Laporte was out of sight around the corner of the corridor. The problem now, was to beat him back to The Bitter End so he wouldn’t miss her when he returned. Somewhere along the way, she’d stop and give Chris a screen call.
Hugo Ingermann was just buttoning his jacket over the automatic pistol he had tucked in his waistband as he came out of his office. He stood there a moment, looking at the back of the short blonde who was scurrying away down the corridor. Now, that was odd. There was never anyone in the building at this hour except himself, his callers, and the cleaning help—and he had never seen the cleaning help move that fast. He frowned, then his eyebrows shot up. He quickly locked his office door and moved off after Gwennie with a speed that was surprising for a man of his bulk.
Gwennie hurried down the esplanade, figuring to go back into The Bitter End by the front door, as was her habit after a fresh-air break outdoors. That would be faster than the twisting route Laporte would have to follow down the back alleys. Besides, Laporte wasn’t in a hurry—she hoped.
There was a public screen up ahead, under the light. She stopped there, cleared a channel with her card and punched out a call-number combination. She didn’t bother to pull the hush-hood. This part of the esplanade was deserted, with the single exception of a grimy old man who was sitting on a bench and swigging reflectively from a bottle.
No answer. She punched it out again. Still no answer. Chris wasn’t at home. She must be at Grego’s penthouse, then. Gwennie hesitated a moment, feeling a little awkward, then punched out that combination.
The music and the brandy were unwinding Victor Grego very nicely from the crushing tension of the thousand things he had been thinking about. Naturally, he grimaced irritably and cursed profanely under his breath when his private communications screen chimed softly.
He savagely punched the access key. The colors swirled and burst, dissolving into the image of a short blonde with tousled, cascading curly hair. “What is it?” he asked brusquely.
Gwen was still out of breath from half-running for several hundred meters along the esplanade. “Is Chris there?” she asked.
“Chris?” Grego said querulously. The only person he called Chris was Dr. Jan Christiaan Hoenveld, and he could not for the life of him even begin to speculate why this rather disheveled and breathless young woman should expect the Company’s chief biochemist to be at his residence at this time. “Chris?” he repeated. “Are you sure you have the right screen combination?”
Gwen saw that he did not understand. “Yes, Chris,” she said. “Chris Stone. You don’t know me; I’m her friend, Gwen.”
“Oh,” Grego said, suddenly catching on. “Christiana. No,” he said abruptly, still irritated by the interruption. “No, she is not.”
“Mr. Grego,” Gwen said, “I apologize for calling you at this hour, but I have to get hold of Chris at once.”
Grego looked at the readout above the screen. Why, it was past 2200 hours. But there was a wildness in Gwen’s eyes that was unmistakeable. He softened his voice. “Have you tried her apartment?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” Gwen said. “She’s not there. That’s why I thought she might still be at your place.”
Not there? Grego thought. She must have stopped to pick up some things on the way home. “Well,” he said, “I just had my driver take her home a short time ago. Why don’t you try again in a little while.”
“I don’t have a little while,” Gwen pleaded. “I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to call. Look, will you do something for me?”
Grego hesitated.
“It’s very important,” Gwen said intensely.
“What is it?” Grego asked.
“Try to get hold of Chris and tell her I’ve got to talk to her—tonight. It’s about the sunstones on Beta.”
Grego’s ears pricked up instantly. Sunstones on Beta? “What about the sunstones on Beta?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” Gwen said, a look of sick terror coming over her face. “No, please. Please. Please don’t—”
Grego was momentarily confused. Then he saw that Gwen was looking at something beyond the angle of the screen’s pickup range. There was the sound of two gunshots. Gwen spun off to one side, out of the pickup’s transmission frame.
“Gwen!” Grego barked. “Gwen! Are you all right?”
She reappeared on Grego’s screen, leaning against the left wing of the Kiosk, with her arms folded across her chest. Her face was contorted with pain.
“Gwen!” Grego said again. There was no point in asking if she was all right. The grayness of her face and the gasping, labored breathing made it plain she was not. “Where are you?” Grego asked. “I’ll get an ambulance car there at once. What happened?”
Her eyes rolled back and she began to slowly slide down the kiosk’s baffle panel.
“Gwen!” Grego said, loudly and sharply. “Don’t pass out on me! Tell me where you are!” He felt so damned helpless, but he knew he had to keep her attention focused on his voice.
She reached out with her right hand and, with a snatching motion, grabbed the hush-hood bar on the other wing of the kiosk. Blood was soaking through her dress just above the right breast. She pulled herself back into a full standing position and braced herself between the two wings of the kiosk. Her face was contorted with pain, and then she coughed uncontrollably for a moment. She shook her head, as if to clear her vision, spat something at her feet, and leaned close to the pickup. “Ingermann,” she rasped hoarsely, “it’s INGERMANN!” Then her grip on the hush-hood bar loosened and she slid down out of the pickup’s range.
“Gwen!” Grego shouted. “Owen!” No answer, no sound of movement. His mind was racing. As long as the circuit was open, he could have the call traced. He sprang to his feet to do just that, then stopped.
From one side of the pickup area, a hand reached into the transmission frame. The screen went blank.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It was quiet in the conference room that adjoined Alex Napier’s office. It was quiet because Commodore Napier liked it that way. He liked for everything to be quiet. He did not always get his way.
Regardless of what time it was anywhere else in the cosmology, it was 2000 hours on Xerxes. Xerxes ran on Fleet Standard Time, which was the same as Galactic Standard Time, in universal use by all mariners.
Colonel Tom McGraw was the last officer to come in from the passageway. He shut the hatch behind him and folded his lanky frame into his chair. He was tall, rail-thin, with close-cut gray hair, and commanded the Marine brigade that was attached to Xerxes B
ase. There was a small spot on his chin where a lipstick smudge had not been totally scrubbed off—hardly noticeable. Alex Napier noticed it.
Napier spoke from the head of the long oval table. “Gentlemen, you have probably been hearing some scuttlebutt to the effect that electronic gear of presently unknown origin has been found on Northern Beta Continent in conjunction with the wrecked hypership we are excavating there. For once, the scuttlebutt is correct.”
Everyone chuckled obligingly.
“This material,” Napier went on, “has been impounded under Priority One and is being brought to Xerxes by Jim O’Bannon and Master Gunnie Helton on The Ranger. That vessel will arrive early tomorrow afternoon, our time. Accompanying them will be Dr. van Riebeek and his wife— Liana -the other Dr. van Riebeek, who have been studying the Fuzzies for something over a year now. Pancho Ybarra is coming up from Mallorysport and is due to arrive tomorrow morning. There will also be a couple of Fuzzies in the van Riebeek party. Liaison Officer—Commander Ybarra—the Navy’s only official Fuzzy Watcher, as some say— will divide the escort duties for the civilians and the Fuzzies between himself and my special aide, Lieutenant Gilbert.” He waved his hand to identify Moshe Gilbert in the event someone might not know who he was.
“You will notice,” Napier continued, “that several staff officers are not here. That is because the work to be done has nothing to do with their sections. I want the entire matter kept as quiet as possible until we know pretty well what we have, here. I’m not imposing any security restrictions on this, but neither do I expect any one of you, or your subordinates, to engage in social conversation on the subject until I pass the word. Captain Greibenfeld will conduct the balance of the briefing. Connie…”
The Exec picked up a file folder and a yellow, ruled note pad and got to his feet. He moved to the lectern in one corner of the room. Moshe Gilbert sat down at the projection console in the corner facing him and threw a map of North Beta onto the screen. Greibenfeld harrumphed politely and began.
Fuzzy Bones (v1.1) Page 30