Fuzzy Ergo Sum

by Diehr Wolfgang

  “Oh, hell, Pancho, call me Ben. Still in a coma, Pancho, but the docs are doing everything humanly possible. Oh, and I want to thank-you all again for sending that APC to transport Thaxter to and from Prison House…”

  “Wait. What?” Ybarra spoke to somebody off-screen. “Ben, when was this?” Rainsford told him. “Sir, we had a communications snafu that day. No APC or personnel were dispatched to Prison House. Who did you speak to?”

  “A Captain Bjork,” Rainsford replied. “What seems to be….”

  Pancho spoke with somebody out of camera shot of the vid, then said, “Ben, we don’t have a Bjork on Zarathustra or Xerxes base, captain or otherwise.” Ybarra barked a series of orders at somebody off-screen. “Ben, we’ve been hacked. I suggest you get your people to work on it there and we’ll check our end. I’ll be in touch as soon as I have something. Ybarra out.” The screen went dark.

  Rainsford turned and noticed Max Fane. “Max, you heard all that? What the Nifflheim is going on?”

  “I have to admit it makes no sense to me,” Fane said. “If somebody went to all the trouble of passing themselves off as military personnel, which is a hanging offence, by the way, why pick up Thaxter, let us question him, then take him back to prison?”

  “Maybe we should ask him,” Rainsford said, as he tapped in a combination for the viewscreen.

  “Ask who? Thaxter?” Marshal Fane thought it over. It makes sense to talk to the prisoner who had been schlepped back and forth by the imposters. Whoever it was, they didn’t want him dead. Or did they? Who knows what had gone on in the back of the APC while he rode in front? Fane realized he should have stayed with the prisoner. There would be hell to pay for that lapse, he knew.

  “Warden Redford,” the Governor said, as he clasped and shook his own hands by way of greeting.

  “Governor. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I need you to do something for me….”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Leo Thaxter was ready to skip planet. He had his beard, dark glasses, off-world ticket, money and forged papers. All he needed was to get on the next shuttle and he was free. It was unfortunate that the ship out was headed to Gimli, but he could sit around in the spaceport there until the next ship came in. The only thing that bothered him was that he had to leave Rose behind. At least he managed to arrange to have her death sentence rescinded. She does her twenty and gets out without worrying about being tried on the faginy charge. Her husband, Conrad Evins, was on his own, of course. Well, Rose would understand.

  Thaxter walked to the street corner and pressed the button for a taxi. The days of hailing a cab by whistling and waving were long past on any world where aircars were the norm, which was the vast majority of Federation planets. A cab came down and the door retracted into the frame. Thaxter tossed his two bags in then took a seat.

  “Where to, Bubba?”

  “Spaceport,” Thaxter said tersely.

  “Getting out of Dodge, eh?” The cab rose up into the air and spun in place a full 180 degrees before moving off. “Headed out for business or pleasure?”

  “A little of both, I guess.” Why were taxi pilots always so chatty?

  “Good for you.” The cabbie glanced into the mirror situated for looking at passengers, partly for sociability and partly to watch for trouble. “Say, haven’t I seen you before? Let me think a sec….”

  The mobster broke out in a cold sweat. If the cabbie recognized him, there was nothing Thaxter could do to stop him from just flying over to the police station. Taxis had been equipped with bulletproof partitions for centuries.

  “Now I remember! I picked you up from the spaceport, what, nine months ago? Clancy, right? I remembered because you looked a lot like that Leo Thaxter guy that was all over the news a couple of years ago. Yeah, you had that pretty little wife and cute little girl with you. How are they doing?”

  “Uh…fine.” Thaxter breathed a mental sigh of relief. “Real good. The wife has a job working for the…CZC. I’m just going off-world to settle some business back on, uh…Gimli. No use dragging the girl out of school, y’know.”

  “Yeah. Kids don’t take to hyperspace travel all that well,” the cabbie said. “I remember when I first came over from Loki with my family. The kids were bored stupid….”

  The cabbie regaled Thaxter with the story of his life on Zarathustra until they arrived at the spaceport. Thaxter was happy to let him ramble—it saved him from trying to make up any more stories about Clancy’s family. At the spaceport Thaxter tipped the cabbie fifty sols. He wanted to make sure the pilot remembered ‘the guy who looked like that Thaxter guy’ and who left the planet.

  Once inside, Thaxter quickly went to his rented locker, pressed his thumb to the pad next to the locking mechanism, and extracted the duffle with his money. He had over one million sols in cash plus a fistful of sunstones from Laporte plus the money from his stash. Laporte had been generous with the buyout of Thaxter’s underground enterprises. It was worth it, though. Laporte was now positioned to take control of the entire Zarathustran underworld.

  The loudspeakers announced that the shuttle for The City of Port Sandor was now boarding. Thaxter filed out with the other passengers. The steward accepted his ticket without comment and Thaxter went directly to his seat. Gimli was a two month space normal flight. Less than a week in hyperspace relative time. Just a few days then he would be safe. He considered staying to help Rose, but he didn’t have the resources. Plus he would be in constant danger of being captured. He kept telling himself that his sister would be fine, that he had no choice. He had given up telling himself that an hour later when the ship entered hyperspace.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Colonial Governor Bennett Rainsford stared at his viewscreen with a mounting sense of dread. In calling the warden of Prison House his worse fears were realized.

  “Clancy Slade? This was verified by the veridicator?”

  “Yes, Governor,” Warden Redford said on the viewscreen. “A group of men threatened his family if he didn’t cooperate. They even forced him to have cosmetic surgery.

  Ben Rainsford leaned back in his chair. “Great Ghu on a goat. The worst felon on the planet just escaped on my watch. Warden, we need to keep this quiet. Make sure your men keep this quiet, too. We have a better chance of catching Thaxter if he thinks we don’t know he’s on the loose.”

  “Will do, Governor. I should report this to Mr. Grego. Prison House is a CZC property—”

  “I’ll take care of that, Warden.”

  Redford nodded. “What do we do with Mr. Slade? Technically, he shouldn’t be here.”

  Rainsford turned and looked at Max Fane, then back to the screen. “I’ll send the Colonial Marshal over to collect him. Make it look like another prisoner transfer.” Redford agreed with him and screened-off.

  “Governor, that prisoner transfer was my responsibility. My letter of resignation will—”

  “Will be refused, Max.” Rainsford stood up and came around the desk. “I set up the transfer. That makes me as culpable as anyone. No. I plan on laying the blame squarely where it belongs; on the bastards that pulled the wool over our eyes. I want their asses nailed to that wall.” Rainsford pointed at the west wall for dramatic effect. “Go collect this Clancy Slade and bring him right back here. First get your people looking for Thaxter… quietly. I…we don’t need this getting into the newscasts. Once we have him, we can look for those Khooghras that got him out.”

  Fane scooted out as fast as his considerable bulk would allow him. Rainsford returned to his desk and punched out the combination for Grego’s office. Victor Grego appeared on the screen with his toothy grin.

  “Ben! Have you heard about the—”

  Rainsford cut Grego off. “Victor, I have some bad news…”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Raul Laporte was worried. It was a feeling he didn’t like, to be sure, but it came with his career choice. One of his hidden cameras at the Last Chance Bar transmitted the im
age of CZC security and regular cops tearing the place apart. That meant either they were looking for the secret passage into Company House, or they already found it and were looking for other passages or evidence in general. Either way, the Last Chance bar was blown as a front.

  Laporte opened a panel in the wall behind him and pressed several buttons. That will take care of the cameras. The manager of the bar had no idea who he was working for and the title of the establishment was filed under the name of a former associate, now deceased. When the cops investigated they would find that the bar was registered in Ivan Bowlby’s name, though the late entertainment mogul never knew it. A trick like that wouldn’t have worked on most other planets, but the CZC deal with the colonial government meant no taxation, hence Bowlby never had to explain the property he never filed for.

  Laporte hated losing his secret entrance into the CZC and the hideout it provided, but that was secondary to the fact that it also meant Anderson and Rippolone had to have been caught and arrested. No official announcement had been made to that effect, but there were rumors that someone who looked like Brannhard, though somewhat thinner, had acted as a second in the duel between Holloway and some rich off-worlder.

  Brannhard didn’t concern him, though the mobster wouldn’t have minded had he stayed missing. The problem was Tony and Ripper. Could they be trusted to keep their mouths shut with a gun to their heads? So far, they had to either be dead, unconscious, keeping mum or the cops would already be swarming all over the place. Kidnapping in general was a capitol crime. Grabbing up a government official was a guaranteed bullet in the head, no discretion of the court about it. Their only out was a plea deal that served up somebody higher in the food chain, like Raul Laporte. As a facilitator to the abduction, he would be just as dead as the kidnappers.

  Laporte considered his options. He had been handsomely paid by Dane for his help in getting Thaxter out of prison, in sunstones, no less, and Thaxter signed over all of his extra-legal concerns to Laporte in exchange for some money, papers and a safe hideout. Fortunately, he used a different safe house than the one Brannhard was being held in. Laporte finally had it all; Thaxter’s business, minus the front operation that went to Dane, his own lucrative businesses, legal and not, plus he moved in on Bowlby’s gambling, drugs and prostitution. He would have gone for Bowlby’s studios and television business, but somebody beat him to the stock exchange. Only Spike Heenan was left and Laporte would quickly bring ol’ Spike to heel and run the entire Zarathustran underworld.

  Provided Tony and Ripper kept their mouths shut.

  It was coming together. It was also one thread away from coming apart at the seams. One good tug by the prosecution and it all comes unraveled. Unless the thread was cut by the right tailor. Laporte smiled for a moment as he considered the metaphor. The problem in this case was finding the right set of scissors to do the job…if it wasn’t already too late.

  Or, he could sign everything over to Richard LaRue and quietly disappear. Laporte had always planned for that eventuality from the day he boarded the ship for Zarathustra. Laporte turned and regarded himself in the mirror. He couldn’t help thinking that the years had been kinder to him than he deserved. Still, maybe it was time for Richard to take over.

  XXIX

  The heavy-duty contra-gravity lifters slowly rose up into the air gently pulling the load out of the earth. As soon as the load cleared the surface, the operator smoothly shifted location and lowered it onto the barge. Several men swarmed over it and secured the load with nylon straps.

  “Damned if it doesn’t look like an old style rocket ship,” George Lunt observed. “Like the ones used to get to the moon back in the early days of interplanetary exploration.”

  “More like the ones initially used on the early Mars missions,” Gerd said. “This one is a single unit, not multi-stage like the early Apollo crafts.”

  “Sure it isn’t an unexploded missile?” Jimenez asked. “Like the planetbuster models used on rogue asteroids.”

  “I’ve sent Ahmed Khadra a photo image and he’s running a comparison against all known spacecraft and ordnance back at the station,” Lunt said. “So far there’s no match.”

  “I sent the depth analysis back to Science Division. According to geology it was buried for somewhere between 50,000 and 85,000 years, give or take a millennia. Of course that assumes it didn’t dig down on impact,” Jimenez said.

  “You don’t sound like you buy the impact theory.”

  “Easy to see how you became a cop, Major.” Jimenez extracted a metal shard from a box at his feet. “This is an alloy, to be sure, but not a very strong one, at least compared to poly-steel or collapsium. Any impact forceful enough to bury this…missile, for lack of a better word…would have destroyed it and spread it all over the countryside. I’ll run some analysis when I get it back to Science Division, but for now I’ll stake my reputation that this artifact is at least 50,000 years or more old.” His radio beeped and he walked a few feet away to talk.

  George whistled. “That would mean somebody was tooling around the galaxy when we were still pounding on each other with wooden clubs and stone axes.”

  “This is huge,” Gerd said. “Too bad we don’t have the pilots.”

  “Ah…actually, we might,” Jimenez said. “Come this way.”

  Juan escorted the two men to the barge where three men in CZC fatigues were arranging some bones. The skulls looked more than a little familiar.

  “Good God!” Gerd exclaimed. “Those are Fuzzy skulls.”

  George Lunt looked and rubbed his jaw absently. “Well, is that really strange? Fuzzies have been stomping around this area for oomphty-thousand years. What’s so special about these?”

  “Look how big they are,” Gerd said. “Here, let me help with those bones…”

  The men looked at Jimenez, who nodded slightly, and made room for the xenonaturalist. Gerd quickly and carefully separated the skeletons and arranged them on the tarp.

  “There’s a lot of pieces missing, and some of these bones appear to be from different skeletons. Notice the length of the femur, here, and the tibia and fibula below it. This femur is too long. No animal on any planet I have ever studied has a leg design like that. It would make them a very slow runner. From the teeth in the skull we can tell that this was an omnivore. The eye sockets are set forward and close enough together to create stereoscopic vision…useful for gauging the distance between itself and its prey. Hunting omnivores tend to be good runners or they starve.”

  Jimenez looked at the bones and nodded. “Yeah, the lower leg must have come from a smaller body…possibly a female. Look at the skulls. I’m not as up on Fuzzy physiology as you, Gerd, but these both look like males. Note the thicker brow ridge.”

  “Right. Fuzzies are a lot like Terrans in that respect.”

  George Lunt looked at the bones and mentally measured them. “No way are these Fuzzies. These bones belonged to something at least four feet 6tall. That’s twice the size of any Fuzzy I ever saw, and in my job, brother, I see a lot of Fuzzies.”

  “Major Lunt makes a good point, Gerd.” Jimenez looked closer at the skull. “I’ll have to admit that it looks like a Fuzzy skull, though. Does the brain pan seem a little smaller, in proportion, compared to current Fuzzy physiology?”

  “Yes, it does. Good eye, Juan. It could be another species of Fuzzy… call it Fuzzy Gigantus or something like that…on Terra there was a superape, for lack of a better term, that stood around ten to twelve feet tall, depending on the specie.”

  “Right, the gigantopithecus,” Jimenez said.

  George Lunt looked blankly at him.

  “It existed from about 300,000 to 1,000,000 years ago in lower Asia. We still don’t know all that much about it beyond the fact that it existed and was big. These bones might be from the Zarathustran equivalent to the gigantopithecus.”

  “You mean like Bigfoot?”

  “The Sasquatch was never scientifically proven to actually exist, George,�
� Gerd said. “Though a lot of crackpots back in the first century A.E. held up the Gigantopithecus as proof it was possible. Don’t even get me started on the Yeti.”

  “Or these bones could have belonged to the pilots of that rocket,” one of the men suggested with a short laugh. “This here is Captain Fuzzy, Lieutenant Hairy and Yeoman Furry.”

  Gerd and Jimenez both swore, then Jimenez said, “Do not repeat that joke to anybody, Kendle. That’s how rumors get started. Next thing you know, that Professor Darloss is back on the news yelling, ‘see, I told you!’ Bag up the bones for transport to Science Division. We’ll see what Dr. Hoenveld makes of them. With your permission, Gerd.” Gerd nodded and Juan glanced at his watch. “Excuse me, gentlemen, while I make a call.”

  “I’d better call Jack, too. Oh, damn…I hope he’s out of the hospital. He might still be in a coma, for that matter,” Gerd started for his aircar and added, “I’m also calling in more cops. Maybe ask for some more Marines. I have a feeling things are going to get very complicated real soon.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Ivan Dane was having a good day. Leo Thaxter was out of his hair without having to go through the messy business of killing him. Murdock had tracked Thaxter to the spaceport and watched him board the shuttle. It took a little time, but Dane soothed Murdock’s fears that Thaxter might get caught and spill what he knew.

  “Don’t let his looks fool you,” Dane added. “Leo is a lot smarter than he looks and likely had an escape plan of his own in place long before he was busted and sent to Prison House. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had a stash of money hidden away for just this sort of thing. We’ve seen the last of him.”

  “What about Clancy Slade? We leave him in the pokey or what?”

  “Hmm. He can’t identify us, so he isn’t a threat.” Dane shrugged. “Send his wife the money we told him he’d get if he stayed quiet. He’s done his part; we have Thaxter’s brokerage company and Clancy no longer needs to sit where he is. Still, there is no point in risking exposure by trying to communicate with him. Let him earn the money we promised him. He can sit tight until either the warden finds out on his own that he’s a fake or Clancy screams his head off at the end of the month. I never counted on his long-term cooperation, anyway.”