Fuzzy Ergo Sum

by Diehr Wolfgang

  “That only applies to high officials, judges and prosecuting attorneys,” Max Fane said. “That helps Gus if he chooses not to waive it. But, Mr. Holloway refused to let it be applied to him. He said if somebody had a problem with how he managed his office, they were welcome to discuss it with him through seconds and with witnesses.”

  Yeah, that was Jack, all right, Grego thought.

  “Too bad Jack isn’t a stockholder,” Jimenez said. “Company policy forbids top staff and stockholders from dueling. At least with each other.”

  “I’m afraid that only protects his Fuzzies,” Grego pointed out. Everybody stared and he explained. Shortly after the murder of Goldilocks, Leslie Coombes and Victor Grego arranged for Jack Holloway’s Fuzzies to be brought to Mallorysport under the guise of being held as evidence in the upcoming trial. While the Fuzzies had escaped and been secretly taken to Xerxes, Zarathustra’s outer moon, by a TFN agent, Gus Brannhard filed a lawsuit naming the CZC responsible for the illegal seizure and imprisonment of Little Fuzzy, Mama Fuzzy, Ko-Ko, Mike, Mitzi and Cinderella for seven million sols. After the Fuzzy Trial, Gus was appointed Colonial Chief Prosecutor and wanted to clear his old caseload, so he settled out of court for 140,000 sols and 60,000 shares of common stock. Jack paid Gus his fee and banked the rest in the Fuzzies’ names, then a few months ago he issued each of them debit cards with the plan of teaching them financial responsibility. “So the Fuzzies are stockholders and Jack isn’t. Gus also soaked me for Jack’s legal fees in the process, though I drew the line at his hotel bill.”

  Chief Steefer couldn’t suppress a grin. “You have to give Jack credit for style, too, and forward thinking on that one.” Then the grin ran away as he added, “It must run in the family.”

  “Government officials can’t own stock in a local company, anyway,” Fane added. “Conflict of interest. We nailed former Colonial Governor Nick Emmert on that charge. When Gerd van Riebeek was sworn in as Deputy Commissioner of Native Affairs, he had to divest himself of his Company holdings. Say, if stockholders aren’t allowed to duel, won’t that be the way to stop John Morgan?”

  “Not allowed to duel with other stockholders,” Jimenez explained. “They sign agreements to that effect. The idea is to keep anybody from applying pressure on other stockholders.”

  Marshal Fane grumbled how he knew it was too easy and then asked, “What did Jack say when you told him about John Morgan being his possible son?”

  “We haven’t, yet,” admitted Grego. “This all came out just now.”

  “Good God, man!” the Marshal roared. “Call him, already.” The screen went dark.

  Grego punched in the code for Jack, but only got a message stating he was out. “Chief, grab the yacht and get over there. Take anybody along that you think you might need, but get over there and warn Jack. Stop the duel if you can.”

  “There’s a storm out over the ocean, right now,” Juan Jimenez said. “It won’t clear for several hours. The yacht won’t be able to navigate it safely.”

  Grego swore under his breath. “And it will take just as long or longer to go around the storm or the other way around the planet. Damn! Chief, get as far as you safely can, then wait it out. No heroics! I don’t want to lose you or the crew.”

  Without a word Chief Steefer hotfooted out of the office, Akira O’Barre close on his heels. Grego almost called her back then refrained. She might be able to talk Morgan out of it, he thought.

  XXI

  “Look, he’s served his purpose. Now he’s a liability. We need to get rid of him.”

  “I already bought a ticket to Gimli and enough cash for him to start over or stay hiddin’.”

  Brandon Murdock sneered at the idea of wasting the money on Leo Thaxter. “It’s quicker, cheaper and safer just to kill him.”

  Dane shook his head as if frustrated with a small child. “It is also more permanent. Thaxter is useful as long as he is alive. Dead he ceases to be a source of useful intelligence. Never underestimate the value of information. And here at the B.E. studio we have plenty of room to hide him.”

  “Alive he is a dangerous liability,” Murdock countered. “Say he gets pinched on Yggdrasil or whatever rock he settles on? First thing he does is rat us out for a deal. And the former owner of these buildings was a known felon. It’s just a matter of time before that Coombes guy finagles a warrant to go through these places.”

  “Bowlby is dead, hence his crimes died with him,” Dane replied. “The only way they get a warrant on this place is if we give them an excuse, which we won’t.”

  The two men went back and forth until finally Dane agreed that Thaxter should be eliminated. Eventually. What the two men did not know was that the subject of their discussion was listening in through a secret video feed in Bowlby’s old office. Thaxter had come there many times before he was imprisoned and knew most, if not all of Ivan Bowlby’s little secrets.

  He wasn’t surprised that his liberators would also plan to become his executioners; he had been waiting for that shoe to drop since they busted him out of Prison House. For this reason he had taken some precautions of his own. He had contacted Raul Laporte earlier and arranged for some different accommodations. Laporte knew about the caper, of course; nothing happens in Mallorysport without the owner of The Bitter End hearing about it first.

  Laporte was only too happy to give Thaxter anything he needed; with the understanding he turned all of his less than legitimate enterprises over to the lounge owner. Thaxter neglected to mention the details of his interview with the police. He didn’t completely trust his old colleague, of course, and planned on getting the Nifflheim off of Zarathustra before Laporte came to the same conclusion as Dane and Murdock.

  Thaxter didn’t need the money that Dane and his goons were dangling in front of him though he wouldn’t have minded taking it. He had several hundred thousand sols stashed away before his arrest, plus the substantial amount of money he had just received from Raul Laporte. There was always the chance that he would have to skip planet and he had planned accordingly. Thaxter had also stopped shaving. A good beard and dark glasses went a long way towards a disguise. It helped that nobody was looking for him, either. Yet.

  When he had taken the chance of going out to see Laporte, a man on the street waved and called him ‘Clancy’ and even said growing the beard back was a good idea as ‘it made him look less like ‘that Fuzzy Fagan Thaxter.’ Thaxter had actually laughed out loud and shook the man’s hand. It also gave him the idea to get a forged identity card in Clancy’s name.

  Thaxter packed up his few belongings, mostly clothing given to him by Dane’s crew and the money he had stashed, then headed out to the hidey-hole Laporte provided for him. He made one stop along the way to the Mallorysport spaceport where he rented a storage locker under his alias of Clancy Slade to store a duffle bag full of most of his money. He took one other thing with him that he had also hidden away; his old .45.

  * * * * * * * * *

  “What the hell is that?” Bronson exclaimed.

  Hendrix came over to look at the tachyon scanner readout. According to the image, something roughly one hundred meters long and forty meters wide was twenty meters down from the lowest excavation point. It was some sort of metal alloy, at least partly iron.

  “It looks like a missile,” Bronson said. “I never saw one that big, though, short of a planet buster.”

  “Take a radiation reading,” Hendrix ordered. Granger flipped a few switches then manipulated a joystick. Radiation was nominally higher than normal background levels for Zarathustra. Well within safe levels, at least for Terro-humans. Hendrix exhaled slowly. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath. “Okay, let’s get an interior read and see if we can find out about this missile.”

  “Already done,” Bronson said. “It’s mostly hollow. There is some machinery, or something, but except for dirt and rock it’s mostly empty. I’m afraid that’s all we can determine without digging down to it.”

  “Granger,
can you construct a basic blueprint from the scans?”

  Granger typed on the keyboard with rapid steady strokes for several minutes. “That should do it.”

  “Crosscheck it with the database,” Hendrix said, “see if there are any matches.”

  Granger again attacked the keyboard. “No exact matches. Closest we can get is early interplanetary spacecrafts. Hey, Bronson, it looks like we got an old-fashioned rocket down there.”

  “I saw one in a museum on Terra once,” Bronson said. “I wasn’t impressed.”

  “What era would that depth indicate?” Hendrix asked. “How long has that ship been there?”

  Bronson checked the geological data. “Assuming it didn’t bury itself on impact, it would be about…ah…that can’t be right…according to the chart that thing has been buried for about 50,000 to 80,000 years.”

  Nobody spoke for several minutes. Finally Bronson spoke up. “You think maybe Fuzzies came to Zarathustra in that rocket? You know, like that Darlock said in the interview?”

  “Darloss,” Hendrix corrected. “Maybe. Or maybe some other species we know nothing about.”

  “Wait!” Granger became excited. “Those skeletons might be the original crew of that ship.”

  “Great Satan!” Hendrix reached for the short range radio. “Let’s get the boss in here and let him decide what to do next.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Allan Quatermain and Natty Bumppo were having fun. Though they missed their Pappy terribly, riding about Beta continent on their big dogs looking for Gus was keeping their spirits high. With them were Little Fuzzy and some as-yet unnamed Rez Fuzzies.

  Contrary to popular belief not all Fuzzies wanted to be adopted by Big Ones. The ones waiting to be adopted only accepted names from their new pappies or mummies. The ones that remained at the Rez or went into one of the Fuzzy villages took new names from the Big Ones that taught them so many new things. And, while rare, there were Fuzzies that came to learn new things that eventually left and returned to the wild, though they would visit to trade furs for Extee-Three and metal tools. Some groups of nomadic Fuzzies even traded only with other Fuzzies at the villages spread throughout Beta continent.

  Unlike most Fuzzies, Allan and Natty were armed with miniature 8.5 mm rifles. Gus Brannhard had them specially made by Mart Burgess, the preeminent gunsmith on Zarathustra, after he adopted the two of them. Burgess was to gunsmithing what Stradivarius was to violin making. The 8.5 mm would stop anything up to and including a zarabuck, but would be almost useless against anything as big as a veldbeest or, far more dangerous, a damnthing. Still, these were sapient beings that had survived uncountable centuries without the benefits of Terran technology. They knew what towatch for and what to avoid.

  On foot a Fuzzy being chased by a damnthing had little chance of escaping, but on the back of the Curtys, the powerful dogs used as mounts, escape was all but guaranteed. The average damnthing, a creature of significant bulk comparable to a Terran Bison, though several hundred pounds larger, had been clocked moving as fast as thirty miles per hour, somewhat slower than its Terran counterpart. The Curtys, unencumbered, could do thirty-eight. With Fuzzy and gear, the Curtys still managed better than thirty-four miles per hour over short distances and thirty at a steady trot. In addition to the speed advantage, the dogs enjoyed greater endurance and maneuverability than the 3,000-pound damnthing.

  Even if the giant beast caught up to the mounted Fuzzies, the dogs would run circles around it. While the 8.5 mms had little chance of doing serious damage, enough stings from them could possibly drive the damnthing away in search of easier prey. Short of flying over Beta in an aircar, the Fuzzies were as safe as they reasonably could be.

  A few days earlier, a large shipment of dogs was brought over from Alpha continent, including Allan and Natty’s personal mounts, Hottentot and Chingachgook. The Fuzzies with their dogs were dropped at various grid points, according to the probability that somebody could hide there from satellite surveillance, and equipped with a radio and GPS to track their movements. Each group consisted of six Fuzzies with dog mounts, or eight Fuzzies on foot, depending on terrain and dog availability. Since Allan and Natty were already trained with their own dogs, they were placed in charge of a group exploring high up on the Fuzzy Reservation.

  Along the way the search party met other Fuzzies. Unlike most other Fuzzies, these had never heard of the Big Ones and the wonderful things they gave to the people. These new Fuzzies were also different in other ways; they were taller and their fur was different colors instead of the uniform golden typical of the species. One had fur that was the color of the setting sun. Another was as dark as night. One was even the hue of the clouds. And their language had many words new to the Rez Fuzzies. Not like Big One words, but different from words known to them. Even more surprising was that some of them did not like the esteefee, the Wonderful Food.

  At first the wild Fuzzies were afraid of the dogs, and surprised to see the strange new things that Allan and Natty carried, like the shoulder bags and metal weapons. Little Fuzzy passed out some Extee-Three, which was accepted first with suspicion, then with delight by some of them. According to the new Fuzzies, there were strange noises coming from the land behind the tall hills where the sun rises. A few nights earlier a strange not-live thing that flew went toward the direction where the sun goes to sleep.

  Little Fuzzy, Natty Bumppo and Allan Quatermain discussed it and decided to see the place with the strange sounds. After they told the wild Fuzzies about the Rez and how to find it, they pointed their dogs towards the tall hills and raced off.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Everybody was busy when the leader walked into the operations room. Hendrix was scanning the buried rocket, a few men were cleaning and polishing sunstones and another was separating glowing rocks from what appeared to be ordinary gravel.

  “We have new instructions.” Everybody stopped what they were doing and turned to look at the leader. “It’s time to close shop. We are not to replace the dirt and debris back into the dig. Throw it all into the M/E converter after we get off the reservation.”

  “Why after?” Bronson asked.

  Hendrix spoke up. “That much mass conversion will light us up like a supernova on the satellite scanners. Off the Rez it won’t matter, but we don’t want to give away our position while we’re still here.” Hendrix turned to the leader. “I am curious why we went to so much trouble to hide our activities only to fly away with a big hole that screams ‘illegal miners were here’.”

  “Upstairs wants the artifact, missile, rocket or whatever, to get noticed by the legal authorities. And no, I don’t know why.” The leader walked over to the sorting station and picked up a small stone. “They also want us to send back these duds.” That created a stir among the men. “Again, I don’t know why, they just want them. Load ’em up with the sunstones and send them out, now. We break camp immediately afterwards. The last thing we want is to get caught with these sunstones in our possession.

  “Oh, one last thing; we need to get some samples from those Fuzzies that don’t like the Extee-Three. Hair, blood, anything we can get from them. Nichols. That will be your job while we get packed up here. Use stun-bombs or sono-stunners. I know I’ve said this before, but it merits repeating: trespassing gets us a fine, illegal mining gets us a few years jail time, but a dead Fuzzy buys us all a bullet in the head. Clear? Good. Let’s do this fast and get the Nifflheim out of Dodge.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Sun Fur was out hunting for hat-zu’ka on her own. She saw a land-prawn off to her left and ignored it. Like Red Fur she would only eat land-prawn if she was very hungry and nothing else was available. Hat-zu’ka, shikku or even wild berries or nuts were more to her taste. Shikku was much too dangerous for a single hunter, and all the wild berries and nuts had been eaten by the tribe since the Big Ones came and frightened away most of the game. But hat-zu’ka could still be found if one was careful and smart.

  Sun F
ur knew that Red Fur would be angry that she went hunting alone, but since he had convinced everybody not to eat the meat that the Big Ones left for them, there was less food for everybody. Some of the people wanted to move away in search of a new place where there were always good-to-eat things, but the others did not want to leave the Wonderful Food that the Big Ones left with the meat. That had caused much fighting and some almost left the tribe, but Red Fur managed to keep them together for a few more days.

  Off to her left Sun Fur heard a sound, like a large animal. It wasn’t a shimo-kato; they made more noise, and shikku tended to be much quieter when moving through the tall grass. Sun Fur hunched down behind a boulder and waited for whatever-it-was to pass by. The sound stopped for many heartbeats. After a while Sun Fur could not resist peeking around the boulder to see what was happening.

  It was a Big One. None of the tribe had ever seen a Big One so close before. This one had dark skin like the night, and fur on its face that was even darker. There was a strange made-thing on the Big One’s head that shaded its eyes. Maybe Big Ones didn’t like the sun, like the screamers that only came out at night, she thought. She didn’t know if the Big One was male or female as the strange outer coverings it wore disguised its gender, but she suspected that it was male…if the Big Ones had such distinctions.

  The Big One also carried two made-things in its hands. It looked at one while keeping the other pointed in front of its body. The made-thing emitted strange noises, like the chirping of birds. The noise got faster and louder as the Big One turned in Sun Fur’s direction. Sun Fur suddenly became very afraid; what if the made-thing was looking for her?

  She turned to run when a high pitched sound, like many-many people all screaming at once, hurt her ears. It was the worst pain she had ever felt. In a few heartbeats darkness overtook her.

  XXII

  Nichols returned to the camp and headed straight for the operations cabin. Bronson and Granger noticed the worried look in his eyes and Granger asked what was wrong.