Fuzzy Bones (v1.1)

by William Tuning (v1. 1) (html)

  Stagwell stood up. There were flat, splatting sounds and little geysers of dirt shot up around his feet. They picked up Holloway and carried him over behind the vehicle where Miller had been. Stagwell still had his pipe in his mouth.

  “Better get a medic over here,” Stagwell said to Miller. Miller was already talking into his pocket net radio.

  Blood was soaking Jack’s left sleeve. Stagwell reached into his hip pocket and got out a wireman’s clasp knife. He slit the sleeve from wrist to shoulder and pulled the fabric away. “Hold your arm over your head, Jack, “he said. “It’ll slow up the bleeding.”

  “I can’t move it,” Jack said.

  Stagwell wiped the knife blade on his pants leg and folded it up. “Mmmmm.” he said. “It’s probably busted, then.”

  He sat back on his haunches and re-lighted his pipe. “Well—medic’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Where’s Ingermann?” Jack asked through gritted teeth.

  Stagwell put the knife back in his hip pocket. “When they started to charge, he disappeared in the crowd,” he said. “They just enveloped him.”

  Holloway made several unsavory remarks of along the lines of hoping Ingermann was among the people in the front who had been shot.

  A medic came to a sliding stop on his knees. He was festooned with pouches and packs of supplies and equipment.

  “Take a look at the Commissioner, Corey,” Miller said. “He copped one.”

  Corey got out an osteo-sono-scan and jacked one end of a wire into it. He ran the sensor head up and down Jack’s upper arm. “Bullet’s not in him,” he said in a businesslike way, “but I get an interruption in the pattern. I think it broke the bone and ricocheted back out. Let’s see.” He put the sono-scan away, then dug a wrap-scope out of his musette bag. He fixed the lensatic cuff around Jack’s arm at the wound site and energized the field. In the direct view the flesh appeared to melt away from the bone, showing a ragged break much like a greenstick fracture, with little chips floating around it.

  Corey made some adjustments that weakened the field of the device, and a network of blood vessels and nerves appeared in a web around the bone. He sat back at watched it for a few seconds, then turned off the field. “You got a busted humerus, Mr. Commissioner,” he said as he began re-stowing the wrap-scope. “The fracture’s kinda nasty, because of the shattering, but it’s not completely separated— and none of your big vessels or nerves got clipped.” He wiped down the wound with an antiseptic/anesthetic solution and sprayed the entry and exit wounds with a fibrous aerosol that would make the blood cells web together and stop the bleeding. He put a cuff around Jack’s wrist and stapled it to the front of his shirt. “Come on,” he said, standing up and helping Jack to his feet. “We’ll get you over to the aid station and start to work on you.”

  Jack stood, weaving slightly on his feet. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Where’s m’rifle?”

  Stagwell got to his feet and looked out to where Jack and himself had been standing. “I see it,” he said. “Stand fast a minute.” He walked out into the open, puffing his pipe, and picked up Jack’s 6-mm Slecker. He blew the dust away from the bolt as he returned and handed the weapon to Jack. “I’ll be around and see you in a while,” he said. “Right now, I gotta mind the store.”

  The firing had died down to an occasional rattle of shots an hour later when it started to rain.

  The Marines had the mob pinned down among their vehicles. They made no attempt to flush them out, sleep gas them, or mount any kind of attack.

  Stagwell’s orders were to render assistance—if requested by Commissioner Holloway—make no offensive moves, use the minimum force necessary to protect his own men and keep the mob from the hypership wreck and the cavern, and, should the mob fail to disperse peaceably, keep it bottled up so no one got away. He had a canopy of combat cars overhead to see to the latter point. Occasionally, one of the mob’s vehicles nervously attempted to lift off; it was systematically disabled on the ground. Things were getting downright quiet.

  Stagwell looked up at the sky, letting the first big drops strike his face. “Wouldn’t you know it,” he said. “The whole damned place is drying up and blowing away for want of rainfall—but let us get into a little action and right away somebody sends us some mud. I swear, mud follows Marines around like fleas follow a dog.”

  The rain started coming down harder, steadily. Then, with his face still upturned, Stagwell saw the spherical shape settling toward them. Well, it was about time. He had begun to think the Navy had lost the bus schedule. That’s the way it was; the Marines get their work done while they’re waiting for the Navy. Stagwell turned his pipe upside down so it wouldn’t get put out with a wild raindrop.

  In the claim jumpers’ camp everyone was wet and nervous.

  They couldn’t make headway against the Marines and they couldn’t escape from where they were. And now it was raining.

  Thump. Thump, Thump. “Ingermann never told us about this part,” Harris said as he occupied himself with sticking his pocket knife into the wooden deck of the work scow— over and over again.

  “I wish to Nifflheim they’d just do something,” Joey said. Joey was Harris’ partner. “This waitin’ is gettin’ on my nerves something awful.”

  “Well, stick your head out and see if it’s still raining,” Harris said. “That’ll give you somethin’ to do.”

  Joey heaved a big, moist sigh and opened the side hatch of the scow. Miraculously, the rain seemed to have stopped. “Hey, Harris, “he said, “it ain’t rainin’ no more, but I can’t see any stars.”

  Harris came over to the hatch and stood beside him, looking upward. He held out his hand. “You’re right, Joey,” he said. “It’s stopped.”

  Suddenly, they were both blinded by an intense light.

  A two-thousand-foot diameter light cruiser hovering at one hundred feet will shed the rain from a rather large patch of ground, and that was exactly what the San Pablo was doing. She kicked on all her bottom lights at once, illuminating the scene as brightly as high noon on a sunny day. The loudhailer sounded like the crack of doom as the click of the pickup switch was transmitted over speakers powerful enough to carry sound for a mile.

  “CEASE FIRING—OR WE’LL VAPORIZE ALL OF YOU WHERE YOU STAND!”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “Vee-dahl, dammit! You’re gettin’ to be an old woman.” Helton stood with his feet apart and his arms folded across his chest.

  Sergeant Beltrán re-located his cigar in the exact mathematical center of his mouth. “Now, you listen here, Gunnie. My boys just swabbed down the deck of this mess tent, an’ now that we got this wet weather, there’s only two ways anybody comes in here—with clean boots or in their sock feet; an’ that goes for you, the Colonel, the Captain, an’ the corporal of the guard. So, you either go over to the water-point, there, and clean ‘em up with a stiff brush or you peel ‘em off and put ‘em back on when you leave.” He pointed to the pile of muddy boots under the tent fly in front of the inflatable dining tent.

  The rain was still drizzling on Hugo Ingermann. Mud and water had gotten inside his shoes and it gooshed rhythmically through his socks as he trotted into the deep woods. He was certain that he had contracted at least double pneumonia, from the way his lungs wheezed each time he took a breath, but he kept moving—because the only way to get away from the fiasco at Fuzzy Valley was to take off on foot and hope for the best, whatever it might be.

  He was momentarily frozen with fear when he saw the aircar hovering over him. But then he realized that it had no police markings—and there was no way to escape from it in any case. He stood there, dumbfounded, with his face turned toward the sky and the rain falling on him as the vehicle settled down toward him.

  Rain beaded on all the surfaces of the aircar as it hovered a few inches off the ground, so that Hugo Ingermann could not see who was inside at the controls, but the side hatch opened from the inside control and a friendly voice said, “Come in, sir, an
d out of the rain.”

  Hugo Ingermann would have climbed into that aircar with the devil himself, just to get in out of the rain—the rain that had been beating on his skull ever since he left Fuzzy Valley. In the dim light he could not make out the face of his benefactor, but the friendly voice said, “Climb over in back, there, and get out of those wet clothes. You’ll find some blankets in the locker.”

  Hugo Ingermann did just that, wringing the water out of his sopping clothes and he took them off and arranged them over the warm air inlet to dry. He curled up in a warm cocoon of blankets and slept.

  “Hey! You’re not supposed to be up and around,” Stagwell admonished.

  Jack Holloway gave him a haughty stare. “I’m the Commissioner,” he said. “It’s my job to be ‘up and around,’ as you put it.”

  George Lunt had set up a command post at the approximate spot where Stagwell drew his battle line and his ZNPF cops were systematically disarming and making arrest reports on the members of the mob that were still on their feet. George was wondering where in the world he was going to find detention space for all of them until he could turn them over to Max Fane and the Central Colonial Courts for arraignment.

  Holloway was squatting on his heels next to the field table where George Lunt was processing paperwork. “Did you find Ingermann yet?” he asked, for perhaps the hundredth time.

  Stagwell caught up with him there. “Jack, dammit, you’re under the care of my medical officer. Now, will you get back to the hospital tent and lie down?”

  “I will not!” Holloway said. “I feel fine—and I have things to do.” He waved his broken arm defiantly in the sling.

  “Oh, hell,” Stagwell said. “I wish Ingermann had shot you in the leg. At least we could take your crutches away.”

  Holloway turned back to Major Lunt. “Now, George,” he said, “what about Ingermann?”

  George Lunt spread his hands. “What can I say, Jack? He’s not among the dead. He’s not among the wounded; and he’s not among the prisoners. He’s copped out on foot and hit the woods. He’ll get hungry, sooner or later, and we’ll get him. Now, go lie down, like Dick says. You look all feverish to me.”

  “Dammit all to Nifflheim!” Holloway said. And he said some other things, more profane, as he tried to hold down the butt stock of his rifle with his forearm while trying to chamber a fresh round one-handed.

  “What are you trying to do, now?” George said. He took the rifle away from Jack and slammed the heavy bolt of the Stecker back, then forward, chambering a fresh round. He handed the weapon back to Holloway. “Now, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked again.

  Jack stood up. “I’m going to find that fat little son of a khooghra,” he said. “He’s bound to have left tracks in this mud, and I’m going to find him. He got a whole bunch of poor, dumb slobs killed—whose only crime was being out of work and hungry—and I’m going to find him.” He sloshed off over the muddy ground, in a still-slight drizzle of rain, toward the deep woods.

  George Lunt got to his feet and started to say something, then let it be. He knew Jack Holloway well enough to know that there wasn’t much point in reasoning with him when he was in this kind of mood.

  The dawn in Mallorysport was a dingy gray, partly from the overcast and the light rain, and partly from the pall of smoke that still hung in the heavy air after the fires in Mortgageville had been put out.

  There were puddles of water on the weed-infested esplanade where the aircar set down. Hugo Ingermann, wearing now-dry-but-wrinkled clothes hopped out of the side hatch, then leaned back into the aircar to profusely shake the hand of his rescuer. “I won’t forget you for this, “he said. “I promise you, I’ll see that you’re taken care of very well indeed—just as soon as this blows over. It’ll blow over, you know. These things always do. And when it does, you’ll be on my team—and on my payroll. I promise you that. Oh, yes. They’ve got Hugo Ingermann down right now, but he’s not out. You’ll see.”

  The man in the hat, behind the controls of the aircar, smiled cryptically, but his colorless eyes showed no emotion. “I wish you the very best, Mr. Ingermann,” the man in the hat said. “But please don’t feel that you’re obligated to me.”

  “Oh, but I am,” Ingermann said. “I never forget a debt of gratitude. That’s the way I am about gestures of friendship. You’ll see. I won’t forget this.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” the man in the hat said. “Be seeing you.” He pulled the side hatch shut and watched for a moment as Hugo Ingermann ran off through the puddles of rainwater on the esplanade.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Joe Holderman stood, again, looking out the window at the drill yard, sipping coffee from a white porcelain mug with no handle. He heard footsteps behind him. “Too many rats in the box, Jordy,” he said. “Too many rats in the box.”

  Jordan Nunez threw down a stack of printout on the watch commander’s desk. “Dammit to Nifflheim, Joe,” he said. “What are you doing back here? You’re not on duty station again till 1200 today.”

  Holderman didn’t move his gaze from the drill yard. “Can’t sleep, Jordy,” he said. “Too many rats in the box. I can see it coming. We’re going to have to cut down a lot of poor bastards whose only crime is that they can’t make a living. Too many rats in the box.”

  Nunez hooked his thumbs into his hip pockets. “You’re lettin’ this get to you, Joe,” he said. “Why don’t you just have a couple of stiff drinks and go to bed?”

  “Tried that,” Holderman said. “It doesn’t work any more. I’m never wrong. I don’t like what I see. Too many rats in the box.”

  “Oh, hell,” Nunez said irritably. “I’m going to call the Doc and have him give you a shot that’ll put you out for twenty-four hours. I’ll pull your shift. You’ve got to get off this.”

  “I wish to Ghu you would,” Holderman said. “I sure don’t want it on my record.”

  Nunez punched up a call combination on the screen.

  When it cleared he said, “Get Doctor Bob.” A pause. “I know you’ll have to wake him up. I’ve got an officer here that needs a sedative—I.V.—and I want it stat. What? I’m the watch commander. Now, get Bob Morton up and get him over here. I don’t want to file paperwork on this.”

  “Son,” Napier said, “you’ve got the whole bag in that portfolio.”

  Lieutenant Moshe Gilbert nodded.

  “Now,” Napier said, “I want you to take seriously what I told you. You keep that packet on your lap. You take it with you when you go to the head. You sit on it when you eat, and you keep it tucked under your arm—with a pistol in your hand—when you sleep. You deliver it by hand to Admiral Peterson—nobody else—and you require him—on my authority—to verify thumbprint before you put it in his hands. And then you wait—a week, a month, however long he may take—for the instructions. And then you get those instructions back here—and you burn out the drives on The Ranger if you have to. Commander Hesser is at your disposal in that respect. The Ranger is powered up and ready to lift out. She’ll strain every rivet to get you—and that packet—to Terra in four months’ time—if that’s humanly possible. Do I make myself clear. Mister?”

  “You do, sir.” Gilbert saluted.

  “Understood, aye,” Napier said and returned the salute.

  The two men shook hands.

  “Ghu!—you smell good,” Victor Grego said as he pitched the file folder of work onto the dappled marble hall table in his penthouse foyer and slung his other arm around Christiana, pulling her close to him as he kissed her on the neck.

  “Victor!” she said in mock surprise. “Aren’t we ardent this evening.”

  Grego regarded her at arm’s length. “I know enough to grab onto a good thing when I find it. How do you think I became Manager-in-Chief, anyway?”

  “I love it, and you know it, you old dog,” she said.

  “I know it, and I know you love it,” he replied. “Cocktails before dinner? Where’s Diamond?”

 
; “Yes,” she said. “At Government House with Flora and Fauna—in that order. We’ll have a drink and then go over there to fetch him—and the Fuzzies will have their evening romp together, and we will dine with Governor Rainsford. He wants to talk to you about this Navy reception that’s coming off tomorrow.”

  “Ah,” Grego said, accepting the frosted glass she handed him. “Alex Napier is going to tell us all. Is that it?”

  “More or less,” Christiana said, “as I understand it. It’s to be done with a certain amount of pomp—and from what I have been able to pick up on the coffee-pot-and-water-cooler telegraph, there’s a good chance that you can get the Company’s fingers back into the operation of the planet.”

  “Oh-ho,” Grego said. He put his arm around her waist and walked her out onto the south terrace, from where they could view the Zarathustran sunset, blazing red and gold in the western sky. “So, this insurrection and gun battle thing over on North Beta is a little larger than the news media let on to the citizens, is it?”

  “It certainly looks that way to me,” she said.

  Grego patted her, just below the ribs. “Maybe I should fire Harry Steefer and put you in charge of the Company Police—the way about you that you have of ferreting things out and—oh—managing people—including me.”

  She giggled quietly and smacked Grego on the shoulder with her fist. “Ingermann got away, you know,” she said, turning suddenly serious.

  Grego raised his eyebrows. “No. I hadn’t heard that. It’ll be Nifflheim’s own job to dig him out and arrest him, now.”

  “That’s why I think we should send Gwen over to Holloway Station as soon as she’s ready to leave the hospital,” Christiana said. “She’s the star witness in the case, and where would she be safer than sitting in the middle of the entire ZNPF? Perhaps we can arrange for her to stay with Lynne Andrews—who is an M.D.—and who lives next door to the van Riebeeks—who are also both M.D.s. And I understand Gerd van Riebeek is experienced in the bush and a good hand with a gun.”