Fuzzy Bones (v1.1)

by William Tuning (v1. 1) (html)

  Grego listened attentively, silently, except for lighting an occasional cigarette. Once, he refilled Christiana’s brandy.

  By now, most of the tissues were not in the box, but in a pile on the coffee table. “… and that’s why I let that horrible man blackmail me,” she concluded. “And now I’m here, in the middle of the night.” She paused. “I didn’t tell him anything very important, but I would have done anything—anything—just to hang on a little longer.” She hesitated, at first turning to pace some more, then stopping and turning away, looking in the other direction, her back to Grego. She suddenly shuddered, as though from a hard chill that quickly passed.

  Victor Grego was not a man to be understanding toward a Company employee who disaffected, but suddenly this woman was more important to him than the Company. That frightened him, because he had drained his very life into the Company for nearly twenty years. Every last scrap of energy, loyalty, and cunning that he possessed had been willingly and eagerly yielded up to the Company. Now, here was something—a mere Terran human creature, assailable by the frailties and failure of the zeal that renders the human spirit brittle and fragile—which, at least for the moment, meant more to him than all the grinding labor he had poured out to make the monolith of the Company impregnable. His entire body ached with the sensation of it, and it ached with the pain he knew Christiana must be going through at the telling of these things to him—unbidden and somehow unashamed.

  Grego stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet. He brushed at his eyelid with one hand. There seemed to be something in his eye.

  “And now, it’s come to this,” she said. “If Gwen hadn’t been trying to help me, she wouldn’t have gotten herself shot.” She turned back and looked at Grego; an anguished, a tormented look. “Oh, Victor,” she whispered. “What have I done? What have I done—just because I want you—just because I was so terrified of losing you, without even knowing how you feel. Gwennie is the only and closest friend I have on Zarathustra,” she said. “Can you imagine how I’ll feel if she—if she doesn’t pull through?”

  She stared at Grego, and he stared back at her. They both knew there was something that should be said, but neither of them could think what it was. Finally, Grego held out both his arms. “Not the only friend,” he said. “Not the only one.”

  She rushed into his embrace and buried her face against his shoulder, shuddering and sobbing.

  He folded his arms around her, rather clumsily at first, then with more assurance, and a warm, wonderful feeling of tightness. He patted the small of her back, and ran the flat of his hand up and down her spine until she stopped shaking.

  He stroked her hair, gently brushing it back from her ears, then ran his fingers over one ear. It felt hot and feverish to his touch. “My love,” he said softly, “if I know everything there is to know about you, then there’s nothing they can blackmail you with—nothing they can put between us. Besides,” he said, “I love you for what you are now; I don’t despise you for something you might have been in the past—a past that’s over and done with and gone, now. You are who you are right now. That’s the person I love.”

  She reached up and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, then hid her face against his shoulder again. “I love you,” she mumbled into the left lapel of his robe.

  He lifted her head and looked at her. “How’s that again?” he asked.

  “I love you,” she said, and made an enormous sniffing sound.

  He brushed the fresh tears out of her eyes with his index finger. “And I love you,” he said. He looked down at the floor and flexed his bare toes into the carpet. “I’ve just been trying to figure out some way to tell you without sounding like an old fool.”

  She smiled at him, rather wanly. “Oh, Victor,” she said, “you could never be a fool. You’re the finest man I’ve ever known.”

  They looked at each other for a long time, each studying every detail of the other’s face. Finally, he kissed her, gently at first, and then with increasing conviction.

  She kissed him back, fiercely pressing her entire body against his, her arms locked around his neck. No one had ever forgiven her for anything before, and now here was the poignant deliverance from guilt and fear coming from the only man she had ever desired to forgive her her blind and foolish terror and just accept her for herself.

  Grego turned, with his arm about her waist. She turned, with her arm around his waist, and took a step forward. She began to walk, never taking her gaze from his face, smiling, adoring him.

  Very slowly, they left the living room and Grego turned off the lights.

  In the hours before dawn, a gentle breeze comes up the valley below Mallorysport, blowing in from the sea. This night it was warm and moist and came in through the still-open terrace doors, making the curtains ripple and furl into the room. A little gust puffed in from the south terrace, caught the pile of tissues on the coffee table, and blew them off onto the floor.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Alex Napier’s slumber was troubled.

  He awakened in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep. He lay on his right side and thought; then he lay on his left side and thought, but sleep did not come to Commodore Alex Napier. He thought that in his heart he must have divined what the answers were going to be within the xenology workup that would begin tomorrow. He thought that this extraction and decoding of the alien equipment was going to be much like the extraction of a tooth, so far as the Federation itself would be concerned. No more smug immunity from decay; no more snug assurances of the superiority of Terran civilization—that idea of mastering the galaxy, which Terran humans could pull on like a comfortable pair of warm gloves.

  And he was going to be the one who would carry the news to the home planet. He was going to be the one who pointed out that the emperor was not wearing clothes at all. It wasn’t fair. Someone senior should have to carry that load.

  He rolled over on his back and smiled, thinking of what he had told Pancho Ybarra. The then-Chief Psychologist had protested that he was only a lieutenant and it was a preposterous presumption for him to have to decide whether or not Fuzzies were sapient, when the best psychological brains in the Federation—

  Napier had cut him off, pointing out that those best psychological brains in the Federation “Aren’t on Zarathustra, Pancho. They’re on Terra, five hundred light-years away, six months’ ship voyage each way.”

  Now here he was, gored by his own ox, whatever that meant. There wasn’t anybody senior to him within five hundred light-years, and it was time to pay the rent on that large, comfortable office with the built-in wet bar and the genuine wood paneling on the bulkheads, and the spacious private cabin.

  Napier sat up and looked at the faintly lighted readout on the bulkhead of his cabin. 0238. This was getting nowhere at hyperspeed. He reached over and turned on the bedside light, got up, and shrugged on his robe—dark blue with white piping. As he was scuffing into his slippers, he took a sidelong look at the nine-millimeter service automatic on the lamp table. Why in Nifflheim had he taken to packing a pistol around his own ship? Was he expecting a mutiny—a surprise strike attack by alien battle cruisers—a bloodthirsty boarding party? No; none of those. For the past week or so it just made him feel better to be armed. He made a noncommital movement of his head. If it makes you feel better, do it, and worry about why later on. He dropped the pistol into his robe pocket and opened the hatch into the passageway. Once before, he had been unable to sleep; and insurrection erupted the next day.

  Go with your instincts, Napier, he told himself. They haven’t steered you off course yet, a dim voice from the past told him. He stepped into the eerie red-lighted passageway.

  … break, break, net. PC, this is white scout five. I have eyeball contact with planetary surface. Dropping down for a closer look…

  Napier stepped into the lift. His hand played over the control and it started to descend.

  … four kliks and closing. Steady. St
eady. Keep the slideback straight… Whip ‘em with the daisy chain on my mark————Mark!

  He didn’t know exactly why—instinct was as good a term of description as any—but he felt he was going to have to intervene—again—in the civil government’s affairs on Zarathustra. Dammit! He didn’t want to intervene. No Space Navy C.O. did. It was against Service Doctrine, and it had to be impartially justified after the fact; that always meant a Board of Inquiry.

  … stand by, killer; I got a little situation to fix here. Get back to you when—Look out, Red! Three on you in a draw spread. Take a rack heading; I’ll flank for you…

  Napier stepped out of the red-lighted lift into another passageway. He strolled down it to the Communications Center and let himself in.

  … you fellers are as safe as a pit in a prune; they near missed Luna with that one…

  “What’s the commo traffic?” he asked the Petty Officer who came hurrying up to him. It didn’t happen very often, but when Napier couldn’t sleep he always shambled up and down the passageways in his robe and slippers and eventually went down to the Commo Center. His question was always the same. “What’s the commo traffic?” he repeated.

  … SORRY TO GET YOU UP, BUT I KNEW YOU’D WANT TO SIGN THIS WARRANT YOURSELF…

  The P.O. was Leonard Dickey, sharp as they made them, and Napier knew he could rely on his situation estimate. “It’s pretty quiet, sir,” Dickey said.

  Napier had his hands clasped behind his back and was looking at the opposite bulkhead, covered with communications screens in groups of twenty, each group monitored by a yeoman who played the sound in and out on all of them constantly and absorbed, by some process of osmosis that Napier didn’t understand, what was going on on all twenty at once.

  … AND ASK YOURSELF, WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?…

  “Go on, son,” Napier said. “I’m listening.”

  “Except for Mallorysport, Commodore. Sounds like they’re getting ready for a war or somethin’ down there.”

  “Which bay is that on?” Napier asked.

  “Five and part of six, sir,” Dickey replied.

  “How so?” Napier asked. “You mean there’s an unusual flurry of traffic?”

  “Yes, sir.” Dickey said.

  Napier had drifted over to stand behind the yeoman’s station on bay five. Almost all the screens had active transmissions instead of the usual static scenic views from pickups on top of the tallest buildings that prevailed at this time of night. “How do you sense this out, Dickey?” Napier asked.

  … ZEBRA FIVE—CHECKING WANTS AND WARRANTS, WE JUST FILED ONE FOR SUSPICION OF ASSAULTING AN OFFICER. SUBJECT CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. GO IN AND PICK HIM UP. YOUR BACKUP IS IN THE AIR AND CLOSING ON YOUR LOCATION…

  “Well, sir,” Dickey said. “There was a shooting along toward the end of the Evening Watch, before I came on. Somebody plugged a girl down in Junk town. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t amount to a hoot on Nifflheim. It’s nothing unusual in that part of Mallorysport. But this time! The whole damned town blew up. Both police chiefs went down to their offices in the middle of the night—and they’re still there. The Attorney General jumped out of bed, woke up the Colonel Marshal, and started cranking out warrants. The Colonial Constabulary surrounded the city and are checking papers on everyone that tries to leave. I never saw anything like it, Commodore.”

  “Hmmmmm,” Napier said. “Anything specific on the shooting?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dickey replied. “They found the girl and she’s still alive. They put out an attempted murder want on—uh—” Dickey peered over the yeoman’s shoulder at a log sheet. “Hugo Ingermann. Some kind of fat cat in the local underworld.”

  “Hmmmmmm,” Napier said again. “I think I’ll sit in on this station for a while and get the feel of this. Where’s your commo chief, by the way?”

  “Uhhhh, I think he went down to the Chief’s messroom for a sandwich, sir.” Dickey said. “Shall I go check?”

  “Please do,” Napier said, as he tapped the yeoman on the shoulder and slid into the control chair at the console. With some effort, Napier kept a straight face. He knew perfectly well where the commo chief was. He was in the time-honored location occupied by commo chiefs on the Mid-watch for as long as there had been modern navies. He was asleep on his bunk with his clothes on, his senior Petty Officer instructed to wake him if anything developed that looked like it might shake the foundations of the universe— or draw a senior officer to the Communications Center.

  Napier began playing the keyboard. Dickey was right, all right. It sounded like every cop in Mallorysport was busier than a Fuzzy with the trots and a dull chopper-digger. They were rounding up shady characters by the platoon, and scouring the city for this Ingermann guy. Of course, from what Napier had been able to gather, they had been after Ingermann’s pelt for years, now, and they finally had him on an airtight charge. But the whole Mallorysport underworld, headquartered in Junktown, was starting to blow up and leak radiation all over the place. The ratcatchers were looking for business; the rats were all scurrying to find a hole to hide in.

  Presently, Chief Petty Officer Dave Thoss arrived, and seemed thoroughly conversant with the situation—as indeed he was, because Dickey had briefed him on it while he washed his face, combed his hair, and slipped his shoes on.

  “Screwy, isn’t it?” Chief Thoss said. “What do you make of it. Commodore?”

  “I don’t like it, Chief,” Napier said. “Don’t like it a bit. This is more like a combat zone than a normal, rowdy honky-tonk part of town where the principal commerce is the separation of military personnel from their pay.”

  An open communications screen, previously silent, erupted into activity. COLCON CAR FORTY-EIGHT— COME TO NEW VECTOR HEADING TWO-SEVEN-N1NER—DEPRESS TWELVE DEGREES—PUT A SHOT ACROSS THAT GUY’S BOW—GREEN AIRBOAT, NUMBER ONE-SEVEN-ZERO-ONE STROKE PAUL VICTOR. FAILURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE HAIL.

  “They really mean business,” Dickey said.

  “Seems to me they’re trying to keep the town buttoned up tight,” Chief Thoss said. “The City of Houston just dropped out of hyperspace. She’s due to dock on Darius at 1100, and I imagine they’re afraid their man might slip on board and get away.”

  “Hmmmmin,” Napier said. “What’s our vessel on standby status tonight?”

  “Just a moment, sir,” Chief Thoss said. He consulted a clipboard hanging on the bulkhead behind them, then turned and stepped back over to the station. “It’s the San Pablo, sir,” he said. “Light cruiser, she is. Commander Akerblad commanding.”

  “Good man, Akerblad,” Napier said. “Put her on full alert right now—and load a company of Marines right after morning chow—full combat gear. I’ll talk to Tom McGraw a little later on.” After he’s spirited whichever female ensign he’s currently fooling around with out of his quarters, he added silently. “But you go ahead and send the order down through channels to the brigade operations officer at 0730, and log the action on my V.O.C.O.”

  “Yes, sir,” Chief Thoss said. “Sounds like you’re expecting trouble, Commodore.”

  Napier leaned back in the control chair and laced his fingers together across the back of his head. “Not necessarily , Chief, not necessarily. I just have a dreadful dislike of the idea that trouble might come calling and find me with my britches down around my ankles.”

  Victor Grego stood in his robe on the south terrace of his penthouse apartment on the roof of Company House, sipped from a mug of hot coffee, and wiggled his bare toes in the grass—real grass, not artificial. He was fond of saying that he lived on his own real turf. He made a mental note to get after the gardener about more frequent feeding and watering of the terrace lawn. It still hadn’t come back up to snuff from the mobs of people marching around on it during Ahmed and Sandra’s wedding reception.

  Ghu! but he felt rested. He hadn’t slept so well in years. The timer chimed on his public ‘screen and he turned from the early morning sunlight and brisk, invigorating fresh air to go
inside and watch the news ‘cast.

  He made a detour through the kitchen, where he stopped, nuzzled under the ear of the strawberry blonde, and patted her bottom.

  “Victor!” she said. “Stop that. You’ll make me cut myself.”

  “Well, my goodness, Christiana,” he said, shaking a fresh cigarette out of the pack on the counter and lighting it, “we can’t have that. Wouldn’t do to damage that splendid carcass.”

  She stopped what she was doing and turned toward him. “Don’t you think,” she said, “under the circumstances, that you could start calling me ‘Chris,’ like everyone else does?”

  “Nope,” Grego said airily. “I dislike diminutives. I am, however, fond of nicknames, and shall proceed to think about one for you.” He swept out of the kitchen. “Something appropriate,” he said. “‘Punkin,’ perhaps.”

  “Punkin!” she shrilled, and hurled a mushroom at his receding back.

  Now, then—he opened the key on the communications screen—to see just what the newshounds have sniffed out about this shooting business.

  “. . .and so, today, local police agencies are seeking the arrest of Hugo Ingermann on a charge of attempted murder. Now, for a live report, we switch to news director Franklin Young at the scene of the crime.”

  “… Thank you, Hal. With me this morning here at Pequod Plaza is police Public Information Officer, Lieutenant Grisha Kodoulian. We are standing directly in front of a public screen kiosk where a young woman was gunned down late last night. Lieutenant Kodoulian, how can the police be certain that this crime was actually committed by Hugo Ingermann?”

  ” We have,” said a rather rumpled-looking young man in plain clothes, “a statement from the victim, who is alive, but still in critical condition, and we have an eyewitness to the actual shooting itself.”

  “And who might that be?” Young asked, although he knew perfectly well what the answer would be.