Fuzzy Ergo Sum

by Diehr Wolfgang

  Everybody was quiet for a moment before Jack spoke up. “Ben, is this going to cause any trouble as far as Gus’s position as Colonial Prosecutor?”

  “I don’t see why it should. Mr. Coombes?”

  “Well, legally Gus has never been charged or convicted with a crime. Moreover, nobody even swore out a complaint against him, as far as we know. As I recall, there is no law on this planet stating that a criminal suspect cannot hold office.”

  “Only convicted felons are barred from public service,” Gus added. “However, if this gets out, I’ll resign my position and leave Zarathustra to save the Colonial Government any embarrassment.” Gus focused on the screen. “Leslie, would you mind prosecuting my abductors? Obviously, as the victim of the crime, I can’t be directly involved in the legal proceedings.”

  “With your permission,” Leslie Coombes replied.

  “You have it, Leslie,” Grego said. “Ben?”

  “Works for me. Leslie, you’ve been doing a fine job in Gus’s absence. No point in rocking the boat.” Ben had a thought. “Hey, is that where the shrapnel in your liver came from?”

  “That? Naw, I was in a courtroom on Odin when somebody set off a bomb. We never learned who or why, but the suspicion was that somebody was out to get the judge. They pulled so much metal out of me the doc called it iron mining. No wonder he missed such a small piece. I was off-planet a month later or he might have found it on a follow-up visit.”

  The six men spoke for a while bringing Gus up-to-date on what he had missed, then Jack asked to speak with him privately. Grego graciously vacated his office while Coombes, Rainsford and Fane screened-off.

  “Gus, I’ve been challenged to a duel,” Jack said without preamble. Gus smiled and asked who the future corpse was. “My son.”

  “What?”

  Jack explained about John Morgan challenging him and why.

  “Mugawd, Jack! I didn’t even know you had any children. Why did you sign the permit?”

  “Freyan tradition,” Jack explained. “Frankly, I didn’t know I was a father, but I have to face him or he’ll never have any standing in Freyan society. Besides, I have it coming. I should have gone back to Freya and seen for myself whether he was alive or dead.”

  “Freyan standing, hell! One of you won’t be standing at all after the duel. “Who’s your second?”

  “You.”

  “Ahh. With me missing you bought some time. Sorry I got found so fast….”

  “Don’t talk like a fool, Gus! You were my only choice, regardless. Ben can’t be involved in something like this as Colonial Governor. I doubt that Harry Steefer would allow Victor to get involved, even if it wasn’t a conflict of interest. Gerd has to watch things back on the Rez while I’m gone and none of my friends in law enforcement can be involved. And besides, I’ve known you the longest of anybody on this planet.”

  “Fair enough.” Gus nodded thoughtfully. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “I don’t know if that will even be possible. I saw how he handled my 12.7. I hear the kid is good with a pistol, too. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow after I bring your kids and dogs back over. But before then there’s a few things we need to do.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Like most services on Zarathustra, satellite control was run mostly by the Charterless Zarathustra Company, save for the military satellites operated by the Terran Federation Naval base on Xerxes. Communications, broadcast entertainment, non-military police surveillance and planetary security all filtered through the command center in Science Division.

  Several hours earlier, Jason Cosby had noticed a sizable release of energy in the far northeast of Beta Continent. Lacking in imagination, Cosby simply noted the event and wrote a report, which eventually found its way to Sub-Division Chief M’Bato san Giacomo. Giacomo saw the report and immediately contacted Xerxes Base.

  “No, Mr. Giacomo, we haven’t had any mishaps with explosive ordnance,” Yeoman Perry replied. “We would have contacted the colonial government if we had. Could you give me the coordinates, please?”

  Giacomo did so.

  “That’s at the far northeast edge of the Fuzzy Reservation.” The Yeoman spoke to somebody off-screen then returned. “We have a satellite scanning the area. It looks like a baby-nuke or an M/E converter exploded. I suggest you speak with your superiors at Science Division while we contact the colonial governor. Could be something serious. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  The screen went dark. Giacomo put in a call to Juan Jimenez. He had a feeling there was going to be hell to pay for somebody.

  * * * * * * * * *

  “As the Native Affairs Commissioner, this falls into your court, Jack.”

  Jack Holloway swore up a blue streak at the viewscreen. “That’s what Little Fuzzy, Allan and Natty were trying to tell me about. This damn fool dueling business is distracting me from my job. I’ll have to send Gerd out, Ben. I’m already on my way over to Alpha with Allan and Natty. George Lunt and his gang should be able to handle everything, anyway. That’s what a native protection force is for.”

  “I would have thought you’d be more concerned, Jack.”

  “I am, but I have to let my people do their jobs. I suspect it was illegal prospectors or more Fuzzy slavers. If I had paid better attention to Little Fuzzy, I would have already been out there. Either way the explosion likely killed whomever was fooling around up there. I’ll just have to hope no Fuzzies were hurt in the process. When I came across those slavers the other day I was ready to kill the lot of them. I might have if John Morgan hadn’t taken my gun when I wasn’t looking. That’s no way for me to do my job. So, I’ll let other people do theirs and try to keep my perspective. I do have a few other things on my mind, just now.”

  The duel, Rainsford thought. “You’re going through with it?”

  “I have to. And I don’t want you interfering, either. As Morgan sees it, he has good cause to want me dead.”

  “As he sees it,” Rainsford repeated. “Does he, in fact?”

  Jack grew silent and broke the connection.

  * * * * * * * * *

  “Why can’t you just talk to him?” Akira pleaded. “Maybe it’s not what you think.”

  Morgan said nothing. All the way from Beta he had been silent while she tried to convince him not to go through with the duel. When Chief Steefer announced that Gus Brannhard had been found, alive and well, Morgan had just nodded. After docking at Company House, Morgan went to his quarters, barely aware that Akira followed him. Without a word he stepped into the bathroom.

  Akira could hear the shower running as she sat in an overstuffed chair. She looked around the tastefully decorated room until her eyes settled on a file folder sitting on a desk. She went over to the desk and quickly flipped through the folder. There were numerous hand-written notes in a language she didn’t recognize. She decided it had to be Sosti, the Freyan language. There were also typed pages and photos of some aliens she wasn’t familiar with. One of the pages was a document relating the effects of radiation on Ullerians and possible treatments to restore fertility. The document went into detail about treatments, fertility drugs and even attempts at cloning. All with little or no success.

  There were more reports on Terran animals suffering from similar reproductive failings. The conclusions were much the same; exposure to excessive background radiation damaged the DNA.

  Akira heard the shower cut off. She quickly restored the papers to the folder and returned to the over-stuffed chair. John Morgan stepped out wearing a towel around his waist and using another to dry his hair. It would seem that Freyans had yet to embrace the hot-air drying system popular with Terrans. She noticed a large bruise on his chest near his right arm.

  “John, please talk to me.”

  “I can’t, Akira. Not about the duel.”

  “Do you have to kill him? Isn’t there another way?”

  Morgan looked down and into her eyes. After a few moments he explained that once the challenge is
given, it must be followed through. By facing his father he would gain proper recognition in Freyan society, but to make the challenge and flee would leave him forever a pariah, or even worse, a coward.

  “But do you have to kill him?” Akira repeated. “Many duels are settled by ‘first blood.’ You could just wound Jack…”

  “Damnation, woman! Were you a Freyan we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Fine! Yes, it is true, that first blood would satisfy Freyan honor, but it could also get me killed. I know all about Jack Holloway and his reputation on this planet. From the moment I suspected him, I dug into every piece of information I could find. Victor was only too ready to tell me about how Holloway beat Leonard Kellogg half-to-death, then spun and shot Kurt Borch all the way dead. I can’t hold back in the hopes that he won’t kill me. If by some miracle we both survive, then I’ll be happy to discuss things with him in a more civil matter. But the duel must come first. It is the Freyan way.”

  “You already knew he was your father before you went out to Beta, didn’t you?”

  “I suspected.”

  “Why?”

  Morgan sighed. “I have been looking for him for fifteen years. All I could really go by, to be sure I had the right man, was his DNA. Names and faces can be changed easily, though he did still look a lot like his photograph. But his name caught my attention the second I saw his birth certificate on the company computer. It was too much of a coincidence not to be him.”

  “What? Why his name? Jack is a pretty common name….”

  “It is also a nickname, I think that’s the term, for ‘John,’ Akira. On his birth certificate he is named John Morgan Holloway. I was named for my father, though my uncle hid that from me. Morgan is actually my middle name. I have no last name until I face my father and claim his.”

  Akira didn’t know what to say. She knew Jack Holloway only by reputation. But from everything she ever heard about him he seemed like a decent man. Even Victor Grego liked him and Holloway had played a big part in the Chartered Zarathustra Company losing its charter. She didn’t want to see him killed. Moreover, she had strong feelings for John Morgan and didn’t want to see him killed, either.

  The viewscreen beeping interrupted her thoughts. It was a CZC operator. “Mr. Morgan? There is a call from a Mr. Holloway. Shall I patch him through?”

  “Yes, please.” The screen exploded in Technicolor fragments and reformed to show Jack Holloway’s grim visage. “Mr. Holloway. How may I be of service?”

  “Mr. Morgan, as per our agreement, my second is now available and I am prepared to settle our business. Will tomorrow at noon be satisfactory?”

  He nodded.

  “Then tomorrow it is. I choose the place to be the Goldilocks Memorial Park. The weapon of my choice is the Baldurtec 8mm revolver.”

  “I would have expected you to choose something heavier, Mr. Holloway.”

  “The Baldurs are lethal enough to satisfy the Freyan rules, and won’t make as much of a mess to clean-up afterwards. Besides, either one of us is good enough that it won’t matter.”

  “Very true, Mr. Holloway. Tomorrow at noon, then.” Morgan cut the connection.

  “You may die, tomorrow,” Akira said in a soft whisper.

  “Or I may finally live.”

  Akira thought for a moment about how she felt towards John Morgan. She knew she loved him, and that he might die facing Jack Holloway. There was something she wanted to do and this might be her last opportunity.

  “I did a little research on Freya. One of your traditions is to, um, spend time with a woman the night before a duel or marching off to war. Well, John Morgan, tonight you are going to really live,”Akira said, as her skirt and blouse fell to the floor.

  XXV

  Colonial Marshal Max Fane was not happy. This had been his normal state since the disappearance of Gus Brannhard, and the chief Prosecutor’s return only slightly elevated his mood. While he was glad Brannhard was found alive and well, it was CZC security that did it. That, in and of itself, was a minor annoyance. The way he was found pretty much guaranteed only a CZC employee could find him.

  Brannhard had somehow figured out he was inside of the CZC building, so, he dumped everything he could into the sanitary closet. The M/E converter performed its function transforming matter into energy. Energy that had to be diverted back to the company power plant where Peter Davis noticed the reversed power flow.

  Damned clever of Brannhard. And it was a good catch by Davis, too.

  What stuck in his craw was his inability to extract any information whatsoever from Brannhard’s abductors. They both refused to so much as give their names. Not that it mattered. Fane had a doctor extract blood from each man and ran the DNA. The men were Anthony Nicholovich Anderson and Duncan Rippolone aka Ripper. They were suspected hit men from Terra, but with no convictions. Both were known to have worked for various crime families, but kidnapping was a bit out of their usual routine.

  “Let me spell this out for you, Ripper,” Fane said in his most reasonable voice. “We have eye witnesses to the abduction. You were captured with Brannhard in your company. You can stay mute all you want. You both still get a bullet in the head after you are convicted. And believe me, the twelve lowest IQs on the planet can’t help but convict you. Your only chance to stay alive is to cooperate. Tell me who sent you, and who set you up in that hideout. Then I’ll be able to help you. Life in prison is a long time, but you’ll be dead a whole lot longer.”

  Ripper stayed as silent as the grave. A cop walked in, handed Fane a piece of paper and walked out.

  “Well, it looks like your friend is a bit more cooperative. He says that the Campanili crime family on Terra hired you both. Oh, look, it says here that Raul Laporte set you up with the hideout. Loyalty is a wonderful thing, don’t you think?”

  Rippolone stayed silent.

  “That’s right. You just sit still and stay quiet. We don’t need your help anymore.” Fane left the interrogation room and walked into the adjoining one. There, he met up with Leslie Coombes. Coombes had watched the questioning from behind a hidden window.

  “Do you think he bought it?” Coombes inquired.

  “Nah,” Fane grunted. “He never even twitched. The globe didn’t so much as flicker on the veridicator. This guy’s a pro. He knows that Mr. Brannhard told us who he thinks set-up the grab. And on a world with so small a population, the list of suspects capable of acting as middleman for a job this big is damned short. That phony note didn’t fool him for a second.”

  “Too bad. Getting Laporte would have been a nice bonus. I’m more worried about the Campanilis sending another team that won’t bother grabbing Gus. They’ll just shoot him and catch the next ship off-world.”

  “Well, that’s at least a year away. We might be able to shake these mutts up before then.” Fane watched Rippolone through the glass. “It’s easy to act tough when somebody is only shooting questions at you. It’s a different story when there is an actual gun pointed at your head.”

  Coombes nodded. “Keep them separated. If their lawyer wants to talk to them, he can talk to them one at a time. I don’t want any collusion between them.”

  “You got it, Mr. Coombes.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Deputy Commissioner of Native Affairs Gerd van Riebeek, Major George Lunt and a squad of police waited patiently while the science team scanned the area for radiation. After several tense minutes Juan Jimenez, wearing a white radiation suit with a CZC logo on the chest and back, approached and removed his protective headgear.

  “All clear, Gerd,” Juan Jimenez said. “Looks like an M/E converter ruptured. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say they overloaded it… whoever they were.”

  “No baby nuke, then,” Gerd said. “That’s a relief, but what were these vaporized idiots doing out here in the first place?”

  “Mining would be my guess,” George Lunt observed. “That hole doesn’t look like any blast crater I ever saw.”

  “Go
od guess, George.” Juan pointed at one of his crewmen. “Francoise West over there figures the blast went straight up. There was a relatively minor shockwave at ground level, but the bulk of the force went up like a Roman Candle.”

  “Minor?” George pointed at a tree near the ridge. “That tree is a pile of toothpicks.”

  “From about six feet on up,” agreed Juan, “but a man crouching behind it would have had a good chance of surviving.”

  “Did you see any evidence of Fuzzies being killed?” Gerd said.

  “I’m not sure that’s even possible, this close to the blast. But there are no signs of metal cages.” Jimenez, like most people who watched the news, had heard about the Fuzzy slavers.

  “Those idiots that Jack and that Morgan fella caught claimed they were the only team live-trapping Fuzzies on the Rez,” George said. “The veridicator backed them up.”

  “Okay. Illegal sunstone or gold or whatever miners, then.” Gerd looked at the hole and the metal scrap. “This had to be a pretty big operation. How did they stay hidden?”

  “Military grade fibroid weave would be my guess,” George Lunt said. “We use it on stake-outs in the bush when we suspect poachers or prospectors are trespassing on the reservation. It blocks almost everything except loud noises up close. Plus, this is a pretty isolated area. Very little chance of somebody tripping over them out here.”

  Jimenez’s radio beeped. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Jimenez, you need to see this,” said the voice from the radio. “I think you’d better bring your friends, too.”

  Juan, Gerd, George and the rest all hustled over to the dig site. There, a man in a radiation suit, though bare-headed, pointed down into the hole with a high-powered flashlight. Something metallic glinted in the light.

  “I’m running a tachyon scanner to get an idea of what that is,” the man said. “Whatever it is, it’s big and artificial.”