H. Piper - Fuzzy Sapiens

George Lunt poured more coffee into his cup and blew on it automatically. Somewhere, maybe Constabulary School, the coffee had always been too hot to drink right away. Across the messhall, half a dozen Fuzzies tagged behind a robot, watching it clear the tables.

“It sure to Nifflheim isn’t any population explosion,” he said.

“Race extinction, George. I don’t know what the normal life expectancy is in the woods, but I’d say four out of five of them die by violence. When the birthrate curve drops below the deathrate curve, a race is dying out.”

“A hundred and two Fuzzies, and four children. Hey, you said five of the girls were pregnant, didn’t you? And you admit that’s not complete, if Doc Andrews has to use a stethoscope for a pregnancy test.”

“I wondered if you’d notice that. That’s not a bad ratio, for females who have a monthly cycle instead of an annual mating season. And these four children; we don’t know anything about the maturation period, but in the three months we’ve been checking on him, Baby Fuzzy’s only gained six ounces and an inch. I’d make it about fifteen years, ten at very least.”

“Then,” Lunt said, “it isn’t birthrate at all. It’s infant mortality. They just don’t live.”

“That’s it, George. That’s what I’m worried about. And Ruth and Lynne, too. If we don’t find out what causes it, and how to stop it, there won’t be any Fuzzies after a while.”

“THIS IS LIKE old times, Victor,” Coombes said, stretching in one of the chairs. “Nobody here but us humans.”

“That’s right.” He brought the jug and the two glasses over and put them on the low table, careful not to disturb a pattern of colored tiles laid on one end of it. “That thing there is a Fuzzy work of art. It is unfinished, but just see the deep symbolic significance.”

“You see it. I can’t.” Coombes accepted his glass with mechanical thanks and sipped. “Where is everybody?”

“Diamond is a guest, at a place where I’m not welcome. Government House. He and Flora and Fauna are meeting Pierrot and Columbine, Judge and Mrs. Pendarvis’s Fuzzies. Sandra is chaperoning the affair, and Ernst is conferring with Mrs. Pendarvis about quarters for a couple of hundred Fuzzies who are coming to town in about a week to be adopted.”

“I’ll say this: your Fuzzy and Fuzzyologists are getting in with the right people. Did you hear Hugo Ingermann’s telecast this afternoon?”

“I did not. I pay people to do that kind of work for me. I went over a semantically correct summary, with a symbolic-logic study. As nearly as I can interpret it, it reduces to the propositions that, A) Ben Rainsford is a bigger crook than Victor Grego, and, B) Victor Grego is a bigger crook than Ben Rainsford, and, C) between them, they are conspiring to rob and enslave everybody on the planet, Fuzzies included.”

“I listened to it very carefully, and recorded it, in the hope that he might forget himself and say something actionable. He didn’t; he’s lawyer enough to know what’s libel and what isn’t. Sometimes I dream of being able to sue that bastard for something, so that I can get him in the stand under veridication, but…” He shrugged.

“I noticed one thing. He’s attacking the Company, and he’s attacking Rainsford, but at the same time he’s trying to drive wedges between us, so we don’t gang up on him.”

“Yes. That spaceport proposition. ‘Why doesn’t our honest and upright Governor do something to end this infamous space-transport monopoly of the Company’s, which is strangling the economy of the planet?’ ”

“Well, why doesn’t he? Because it would cost about fifty million sols, and ships using it would have to load and unload from orbit. But that sounds like a real live issue to the people who don’t think and have nothing to think with, which means a large majority of the voters. You know what I’m worried about, Leslie? Ingermann attacking Rainsford for collusion with the Company. He hammers at that point long enough, and Rainsford’s going to do something to prove he isn’t, and whatever it is, it’ll hurt us.”

“That’s the way it looks to me, too,” Coombes agreed. “You know, among the many benefits of the Pendarvis Decisions, we now have a democratic government on Zarathustra. That means, we now have politics here. Ingermann controls all the other rackets, and politics is the biggest racket there is. Hugo Ingermann is running himself for political boss of Zarathustra.”

THE AIRCAR SETTLED to the ground; the Marine sergeant at the controls, who had been expecting to smash a dozen or so Fuzzies getting down, gave a whoosh of relief. Pancho Ybarra opened the door and motioned his companion, in Marine field-greens, to precede him, then stepped to the ground. George Lunt, still in his slightly altered Constabulary uniform, and Gerd van Riebeek, in bush-jacket and field-boots, advanced to meet them, accompanied by a swarm of Fuzzies. They all greeted him enthusiastically, and then wanted to know where Pappy Jack was.

“Pappy Jack in Big House Place; not come this place with Unka Panko. Pappy Jack come this place soon; two lights-and-darks,” he told them. “Pappy Jack have to make much talk with other Big Ones.”

“Make talk about Fuzzies?” Little Fuzzy wanted to know. “Find Big Ones for all Fuzzies?”

“That’s right. Find place for Fuzzies to go in Big House Place,” he said.

“He’s been on that ever since Jack went away,” Gerd said. “All the Fuzzies are going to have Big Ones of their own, now.”

“Well, Jack’s working on it,” he said. “You’ve both met Captain Casagra, haven’t you? Gerd van Riebeek; Major Lunt. The captain’s staying with us a couple of days; tomorrow Lieutenant Paine and some reinforcements are coming out; fifty men and fifteen combat-cars, to help out with the patrolling till we can get men and vehicles of our own.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Captain!” Lunt said. “We’re very short of both.”

“You have a lot of country to patrol, too,” Casagra said. “As Navy Lieutenant Ybarra says, I’ll only stay a few days, to get the feel of the situation. Marine-Lieutenant Paine will stay till you can get your own force recruited up and trained. That is, if things don’t blow up again in the veldbeest country.”

“Well, I hope they don’t,” Lunt said. “The vehicles are as welcome as the men; we have very few of our own.”

“The Company’s making some available,” he said. “And along with his other work, Ahmed Khadra’s starting a ZNPF recruiting drive.”

“Has Jack been able to get his hands on any more Extee-Three?” Gerd wanted to know.

He shook his head. “He hasn’t even been able to get any for the reception center, when the Fuzzies start coming in to town. The Company’s going to start producing it, but that’ll take time. After they get the plant set up, they’ll probably be running off test batches for a couple of weeks before they get one right.”

“The formula’s very simple,” Casagra said.

“Some of the processes aren’t; I was talking to Victor Grego. His synthetics people aren’t optimistic, but Grego’s whip-cracking at them to get it done yesterday morning.”

“Isn’t that something?” Gerd asked. “Victor Grego, Fuzzy-lover. And Jimenez, and Mallin; you ought to have heard the language my refined and delicate wife used when she heard about that.”

“Last war’s enemies, next war’s allies,” Casagra laughed. “I spent a couple of years on Thor; clans that’d be shooting us on sight one season would be our bosom friends the next, and planning to double-cross us the one after.”

An aircar rose from behind the ZNPF barracks across the run and started south; another, which had been circling the camp five miles out, was coming in.