H. Piper - Fuzzies and Other People

Some time after this, when he was close to the river, he saw through the fog where another river came into it from the east; it was a big river too. After that, the river he was following was less because it had not yet been joined by the other one. This was good, he thought. It looked not much bigger than it had when it had come out of the deep place in the mountain. He must be getting close to Yellowsand. He was sure that if it had not been for the fog he could have seen the big mountains ahead.

He made camp that night in a hollow tree which was big enough to sleep in, after cooking much of the goofer. He ate a lot of it; he was happy. Soon he would be back at Yellowsand and everybody would be happy to see him again. He smoked a second pipe before he went to sleep that night.

The next day was good. The rain had stopped and the fog was blowing away, and there was a glow in the sky to the east. Best of all, he could hear the sound of aircars very far away. That was good; Pappy Vic and his friends had missed him and were out hunting for him. The sound was from away down the river, though, and that wasn’t right. He knew what he would do; he would stay as close to the river as he could. If they saw him, they would come and pick him up; then he wouldn’t have to climb the high-steep mountain. Maybe, if he found a good no-woods place, he would build a big fire beside the river. They would be sure to see the smoke.

The sounds of the aircars grew fainter, and finally he couldn’t hear them at all. He found another land-prawn and ate it. This was the fourth day since he had been in this place, and he had only found two of them. He knew that land-prawns were more to the south, but he was surprised at how few there were here.

The wind blew, and then it began to rain some more. It often did this before the clouds all went away. But the rain came from in front of him and to the left, and before it had come from the right. The wind could have changed, but this troubled him. Finally, he looked at his compass, and saw that he was not going north at all, but west.

That wasn’t right. He got out his pipe; Pappy Jack always smoked his pipe when he wanted to think about something. At length, he walked over to the river and looked at it.

With all the sand from Yellowsand, it should be yellow, but it wasn’t; it was a dirty brown gray. He looked at it for a while, and then he remembered the other river he had seen coming in from the east. That was the river that came out of the mountain at Yellowsand, not this one.

“Sunnabish!” he almost yelled. “Jeeze-krise go-hell goddamn sunnabish!” That made him feel a little better, just as it did the Big Ones. “Now, must go back.” He thought for a moment. No, it was no use going back; he could not cross this river where it met the other one. He would have to go all the way up this go-hell river till he could find a place to cross, and then all the way down again. “Sunnabish!”

NONE OF THEM said anything much. Grego and Harry Steefer and the rest were the kind of people who always got sort of tongue-tied when it came to verbal sympathy. Come right down to it, there wasn’t a Nifflheim of a lot anybody could say. Jack shook Grego’s hand with especial warmth. “Thanks for everything, Victor. You all did everything you could.” He and Gerd van Riebeek turned away and went to the aircar.

“You want to fly her, Jack?” Gerd asked.

He nodded. “Might as well.” Gerd stood aside, and he got in at the controls. Gerd climbed in after him, slamming the door and dogging it shut, then said, “Secure.” He put the car on contragravity and fiddled with the radio compass; when he looked out, Yellowsand was far below and he could see out into the country beyond the Divide. The scarps of the smaller ranges to the south rose, one behind the other, on the other side.

“Maybe we ought to have stayed a little longer,” he said. “It’s starting to clear now; all blue sky to the south. Be clear up here by noon.”

“What could we do, Jack? The Company cops and survey-crews are ready to throw it in now. So’s George and Hirohito. If there’d been anything to find, they’d have found it.”

“You don’t think we’ll ever find him?”

“Do you, Jack?”

“Oh, Gerd, he might have gotten out again. The current could have carried him to the side…” He used an obscenity like an eraser on his previous words. “Who the hell do I think I’m kidding beside myself? If he isn’t in the North Marsh by now, it’s because his body’s caught on a snag and being sanded over.” He was silent again. “Just no more Little Fuzzy.” He repeated it again, after a moment: “No more Little Fuzzy.”

THEY WERE ALL angry with him, Stonebreaker and Lame One and Fruitfinder and Other She and Big She — especially Big She. Even Stabber and Carries-Bright-Things were not speaking for him.

“Look at place Wise One bring us!” Big She was railing. “Wise One tell us, to sun’s left hand is good place, always warm, always good-to-eat things. This is what Wise One say; Wise One not know. Wise One bring us to this place. Big moving-water, not cross. Rain make down, rain make down, make wet, all time cold. Not find good-to-eat things, everybody hungry. And look at moving-water; how we cross that?”

“Then we go up moving-water, find place to cross. And rain stop some time; rain always stop some time,” he said. “Is everybody-know thing.”

“You not know,” Lame One said. “This is different place. Maybe all time rain here.”

“You make fool-talk. Rain all time, water everywhere.”

“Much water here,” Other She said. “Big wide water-places. Maybe much rain here.”

“Sky look brighter,” Stabber remarked. “Wind blow, too. Maybe rain stop make down soon.”

And the gray not-see was gone, too; soon the rain would stop and the sun would come out again. But how to get across this big water? The moving-water was wide and deep, there were no stony places; it was a bad not-cross moving-water, and there were all the big wide-waters, and it would be far-far to where they would be able to cross over.

“Hungry, too,” Fruitfinder complained. “Not eat since long time before last dark-time.”

He was hungry himself. If he had been alone, he would have gone on, hoping to find something, until he was able to cross the moving-water. None of the others, not even Stabber, would do that, however. They wanted to eat now.

“Animals stay under things, stay out of rain, not move about,” he said. “Be where brush is thick. We go hunt different places. Anybody kill anything, bring back here, all eat.”

They nodded agreement. That was the way they did it when it was best not to hunt all together. He thought for a moment. He didn’t want Big She and Fruitfinder and Stonebreaker hunting together. They would all the time make talk against him, and when they came back they would make bad talk to the others.

“Stabber, you, Big She, go that way.” He pointed down the river. “Take care, not get in bad not-go-through place. Lame One, you, Other She, Stonebreaker, go up moving-water. Carries-Bright-Things, Fruitfinder, come with me. We go back in woods. Maybe find hatta-zosa.”

They were all angry with him because it had rained and because they had come to this big not-cross moving-water, and because they had found nothing to eat. They blamed him for all that. It was hard being Wise One and leading a band. They all praised Wise One when things went well, but when they didn’t they all blamed him. But when he told them how to hunt, they all agreed. They had to have somebody to tell them what to do, and nobody else would.

BEGINNING OF A new era for our planet, the smooth, ingratiating voice came out of thousands of telecast-speakers all over Zarathustra, in living rooms and cafes, in camp bunkhouses and cattle-town saloons. Already, Mallorysport assumes a festive air in preparation to greet the Honorable Delegates to the Constitutional Convention which will begin its work a week from today.