H. Piper - Fuzzy Sapiens

“Ben, drop me down there, will you?” he said. “I feel like a good Fuzzy-romp, right now.”

“So do I,” Rainsford said. “Will, set us down, if you please.”

The pilot circled downward, holding the car a few inches above the grass while they climbed out. The Fuzzies had seen the car descend and came pelting over. At first, he thought they were carrying pistols; at least, they wore belts and small holsters. The things in the holsters had pistol-grips, but when they drew them, he saw that they were three-inch black discs, which the Fuzzies held to their mouths.

“Pappy Ben; Pappy Jack!” they were all yelling. “Listen; we talk like Big Ones, now!”

He snapped off his hearing-aid. It was true; they were all speaking audibly.

“Pappy Vic make,” Diamond said proudly.

“Actually, Henry Stenson made them,” the girl said. “At least, he invented them. All Mr. Grego did was tell him what he wanted. They are Fuzzyphones.”

“Heeta, Pappy Jack.” Diamond held his up. “Yeek-yeek. Yeeek!” He was exasperated, and then remembered he’d taken it away from his mouth. “Fuzzy-talk go in here, this side. Inside, grow big. Come out this side, big like Hagga-talk,” he said, holding the device to his mouth.

“That good, Diamond. Good-good,” he commended. “What do you think of this, Ben?”

Rainsford squatted in front of his own Fuzzies, holding out a hand. “So-pokko-aki, Flora,” he said, and the Fuzzy handed him hers, first saying, “Keffu, Pappy Ben; do’ brek. “

“I won’t.” Rainsford looked at it curiously, and handed it back. “That thing’s good. Little switch on the grip, and it looks as though the frequency transformer’s in the middle and they can talk into either side of it.”

It would have to work that way; Fuzzies were ambidextrous. Gerd had a theory about that. Fuzzies weren’t anatomists, mainly because they didn’t produce fire and didn’t cut up the small animals they killed for cooking, and only races who had learned the location and importance of the heart fought with their hearts turned away from the enemy. Homo sapiens terra’s ancestors in the same culture-stage were probably ambidextrous too. Like most of Gerd’s theories, it made sense.

“Who makes these things?” he asked. “Stenson?”

“He made these, in his shop. The CZC electronics equipment plant is going to manufacture them,” the girl said, adding: “Advertisement.”

“You tell Mr. Grego to tell his electronics plant to get cracking on them. The Native Affairs Commission wants a lot of them.”

“You staying for dinner with us, Miss Glenn?” Rainsford asked.

“Thank you, Governor, but I have to take Diamond home.”

“I have to take Pierrot and Columbine home, too,” Khadra said. “What are you doing this evening?”

“I have my homework to do. Fuzzy language lessons.”

“Well, why can’t I help you with your homework?” Khadra wanted to know. “I speak Fuzzy like a native, myself.”

“Well, if it won’t be too much trouble…” she began.

Holloway laughed. “Who are you trying to kid, Miss Glenn? Look in the mirror if you think teaching you Fuzzy would be too much trouble for anybody Ahmed’s age. If I was about ten years younger, I’d pull rank on him and leave him with the Fuzzies.”

Pierrot and Columbine thought all this conversation boring and irrelevant. They trundled the ball over in front of Khadra and commanded: “Mek kikko!”

Khadra kicked the ball, lifting it from the ground and sending it soaring away. The Fuzzies ran after it.

“Dr. Mallin says you were looking at the sanatorium,” Sandra said.

“Yes. That’s going to be a good place. You know about it?” he asked Khadra.

“Well, it’s a big place,” Khadra said. “I’ve seen it from the air, of course. They only use about ten percent of it, now.”

“Yes. We’re taking a building, intended for a mental ward; about a half square mile of park around it, with a good fence, so the Fuzzies won’t stray off and get lost. We could put five-six hundred Fuzzies in there, and they wouldn’t be crowded a bit. And it’ll be some time before we get that many there at one time. I expect there’ll be about a hundred to a hundred and fifty this time next week.”

“There were precisely eight hundred and seventy-two applications in when the office closed this evening,” Khadra said. “When are you going back, Jack?”

“Day after tomorrow. I want to make sure the work’s started on the reception center, and I’m still trying to locate some Extee-Three. I think a bunch of damn speculators have cornered the market and are holding it for high prices.”

The Fuzzies had pushed the ball into some shrubbery and were having trouble dislodging it. Sandra Glenn started off to help them, Ben Rainsford walking along with her. Khadra said:

“That’ll probably be some of Hugo Ingermann’s crowd, too.”

“Speaking about Ingermann; how are you making out about Herckerd and Novaes?” he asked. “And the five Fuzzies.”

“Jack, I swear. I’m beginning to think Herckerd and Novaes and those Fuzzies all walked into a mass-energy converter together. That’s how completely all of them have vanished.”

“They hadn’t sold them before Ben’s telecast, evening before last. After that, with the Adoption Bureau opening all that talk about kidnapping and enslavement and so on, nobody would buy a bootleg Fuzzy. So they couldn’t sell them, so they got rid of them.” How? That was what bothered him. If they’d used sense, they’d have flown them back to Beta and turned them loose. He was afraid, though, that they’d killed them. By this time everybody knew that live Fuzzies could tell tales. “I think those Fuzzies are dead.”

“I don’t know. Eight hundred and seventy-two applications, and a hundred and fifty Fuzzies at most,” Khadra said. “There’ll be a market for bootleg Fuzzies. Jack, you know what I think? I think those Fuzzies weren’t brought in for sale. I think this gang — Herckerd and Novaes and whoever else is in with them — are training those Fuzzies to help catch other Fuzzies. Do you think a Fuzzy could be trained to do that?”

“Sure. To all intents and purposes, that’s what our Fuzzies are doing out at the camp. You know how Fuzzies think? Big Ones are a Good Thing. Any Fuzzy who has a Big One doesn’t need to worry about anything. All Fuzzies ought to have Big Ones. That’s what Little Fuzzy has been telling the ones from the woods, out at camp. Ahmed, I think you have something.”

“I thought of something else, too. If this gang can make a deal with some tramp freighter captain, they could ship Fuzzies off-planet and make terrific profits on it. You wait till the news about the Fuzzies gets around. There’ll be a sale for them everywhere — Terra, Odin, Freya, Marduk, Aton, Baldur, planets like that. Anybody can bring a ship into orbit on this planet, now, if he has his own landing-craft and doesn’t use the CZC spaceport. In a month, word will have gotten to Gimli, that’s the nearest planet, and in two more months a ship can get here from there.”

“Spaceport. That could be why Ingermann’s been harping on this nefarious CZC space terminal monopoly. If he had a little spaceport of his own, now…”

“Any kind of smuggling you can think of,” Khadra said. “Hot sunstones. Narcotics. Or Fuzzies.”

Rainsford and Sandra Glenn were approaching; Sandra carried Diamond, Pierrot and Columbine ran beside her, and Flora and Fauna were trundling the ball ahead of them. He wanted to talk to Rainsford about this. They needed more laws, to prohibit shipping Fuzzies off-planet; nobody’d thought of that possibility before. And talk to Grego; the Company controlled the only existing egress from the planet.