Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

tomorrow morning be all right to start?" he asked.

Sandra rolled her eyes heavenward. "Anything. Yes, that will be just fine.

Now, will you let me get on with my wedding night?"

"Oh, of course," Grego said irritably. "By the way, in all the excitement I never did get your name." "Stone," she said. "Christiana Stone."

Chapter 14

It was hot for that time of the morning, windless, and the Zarathustran sun hung motionless in a hard, brassy sky. Ahmed Khadra stepped down from the airjeep and kicked at the dry, barren earth with the toe of his boot. He squinted up at the sky.

"Going to be another dry year, George," he said.

"Not the first for this valley, either," George Lunt replied. He pointed off into the middle distance. "Y'see over there-where there used to be a creek winding down from that saddle, and then spreading out into a marshy area on the valley floor? See all those little hummocks? They used to be tiny islands a few meters across, covered with lush vegetation. "

"Yes," Ahmed said, "you still see stalks and scorched plants, but nothing has grown down here for at least three years. What of it?"

"Why d'you suppose that is?" George asked.

Ahmed thought for a moment. "Why, I guess it's the dry weather we've been having on this part of Beta. Yes, that would be about right. The CZC started the Big Blackwater Project-drained half a million acres of swamp for farming.

It cut off the moist air that caused rainfall on the Piedmont. That was about three years ago. Again, so what?"

"Well," George said, "those dry years let an abnormally high crop of land-prawns hatch out each spring. It was too dry in the uplands for them to find enough food, so they moved over the divide and down into the big woods where there was plenty of that forest moss they 're fond of."

"And the Fuzzies followed the migration," Ahmed added. "What's with the guessing game, George?"

"Take it easy," George said. "I 'm just giving you the data a piece at a time-the way I got it-to see if you come to the same conclusions I did."

"Sort of air-checking your own reasoning?"

"Yes."

Ahmed put his hands on his hips and looked out over the valley floor. "Nothing wrong with that. What's next? By the way, George, how did you get interested in this place to begin with?"

"Survey readouts," George said. "The data kept showing up that there's a lot of titanium in the ground up here-in several different compound forms. Didn't make sense. At first, I thought the equipment was out of whack, so I had it re-flown with different, vehicles. Kept getting the same answers. Still didn't make sense. Titanium's scarce all over Zarathustra. Why should there be a concentration of it up here?"

Ahmed pointed across the valley. "Maybe it belched out of that big mountain over there. It looks like a dead volcano."

"I wondered about that at first," George said. "The way this valley's topography is laid out, the whole thing could be what's left of a very large,

very old caldera. But, geology isn't my long suit, so I decided to go ahead and do all the snooping any good cop would do before I started jabbering a lot of brilliant deductions at anyone."

"So you came up here and poked around on your own," Ahmed said.

"That's why I wasn't at the wedding," George said. "Sorry about that, but it couldn't be helped. You'll see why in a few minutes."

"You're already forgiven," Ahmed said. "Lead on."

"This is about the same place where I first landed my jeep," George said, pointing to pad-marks in the loose soil, "when I first came up here."

"So you're reconstructing your movements for me," Ahmed said.

"Very good." George's square, muscular face broke into a grin. "I knew what I was doing when I appointed you Chief of Detectives for the ZNPF."

"Okay," Ahmed said. "What came next?"

"I wanted a closer look at the dried-up marsh, there, and around that big patch of weirthorn that spreads back against the bench, there, below the saddle." George hitched up his pistol belt and started walking, the arid soil crunching under his boots. "Let me show you what I found."

Harry Steefer looked at the communication screen as he spoke, trying to read the reactions in Victor Grego's face. "Mr. Grego," he said, "I have the papers right here in front of me." He held up a thin folder, as though to prove he was telling the truth. "The fact of the matter is that we just don't know anything about the girl. She came in on the City of Asgard a little less than a month ago and went to work for the CZC on the twenty-first. Beyond that, there's nothing I can check unless I send her packet back to Company headquarters on Terra-and that would take a year. I can't issue a Restricted-Areas pass on this kind of information."

Victor Grego was becoming annoyed. He always became annoyed when he didn 't get his own way. He compressed his mouth into a hard line. "Well, Harry, "he said, "whyinhell does my personal Fuzzy-Sitter have to have a Restricted-Areas pass, anyway?"

Steefer sighed. "Because anyone who has free access to your private residence has to have one. Mr. Grego, we decided on this almost a year ago-after we found that Herckerd and Novaes had hidden a bunch of kidnapped Fuzzies on an unfinished floor right here in Company House. To say nothing of every other Tom, Dick, and Harry in Mallorysport coming and going through the landing stages in the unused levels. I don't even like to talk about it. I'm still embarrassed by how slack I'd let things get." Chief Steefer took a deep breath and waited to see if he had sold his point to Grego. He had a hunch that he hadn't.

Grego scratched his head and lit a cigarette. "I'm certain that she's all right, Harry. Diamond is crazy about her. Fuzzies have an instinct for that sort of thing, you know. They just don't take to people who aren 't on the square." He paused, waiting for Steefer to suggest a way around the regulation.

Steefer wasn't going to do it. "It's an Executive Ops Order-S.O.P.-you signed it yourself, sir. If I make an exception for you, I'll have technicians in Computer Center wanting the same thing so Aunt Minnie can bring them their lunch, and statisticians in the Sensitive Records Section who want their girl

friends to pick them up from work, and Ghu knows where it will all end."

Grego thought for a moment. Damn it all to Nifflheim! Who's running this company-me or the damned Operations Manual? "Here's what you do, Harry," he said. "Issue the pass. Stamp it 'temporary,' with an expiration date that will let you get the packet to Terra and back. Attach a memo inside the packet to the effect that this personnel action is done on my personal authority, and put out a supplement to that Ops Order to the effect that exceptions will be authorized only on my personal, signed approval. When that's done, send a man up to my office with the pass and the memo for my signature. Will that serve everyone's best interests?"

"Yes, sir. That will be fine. No one is apt to ask for an exception if they have to personally justify it to you."

"Excellent," Grego said. "I can't keep escorting her to the landing stage and meeting her there every time she comes and goes, just to get her past one of your cops. Thank you." Grego blanked the screen. That should get the job done, while at the same time tacitly explaining to Harry Steefer an object lesson about why people don't ordinarily resist the decisions of the Manager-in-Chief. The Company was not a god, after all. It was a machine, and there could only be room for one person in the driver's seat.

It had been Tuesday morning about 0830 when Ahmed and Sandra arrived at Holloway Station, as promised with a metric ton of luggage and gear. George Lunt had whisked Ahmed away immediately. Ruth and Lynne had dropped everything to help Sandra get situated. They had borrowed Jack's manipulator to re-arrange some logs and boulders left around the bungalow into "something more attractive. "Jack didn't understand that, but he had said, "Sure. Go ahead." That left him without a vehicle, but he and Little Fuzzy walked across the footbridge over the creek and borrowed Gerd's airboat.