Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

knowledge of his destination and wasn't much obliged to answer to anyone below the rank of Fleet Admiral or Force-General.

"Is our fellow passenger about, this morning?" Christiana asked.

"I didn't see him at breakfast," Helton replied, "but then I never see him at breakfast." He looked at the readout on the wall. "Nearly ten hundred, galactic standard, though. The bar will open in a few minutes and that should fetch him out."

I rarely see you at breakfast, either, he thought, but I suppose you're in the habit of sleeping late in the morning.

Chapter 3

At the first rattle of ice into the bin as the barman began to open up, the third passenger appeared in the companionway as though answering a mysterious call to nature. He was sporting a Zarathustran sunstone in the neckcloth below his clerical collar. At the start of the trip he had introduced himself-rather grandiloquently-as "The Right Reverend Father Thomas Aquinas Gordon," but allowed as how he would answer just as readily to "Rev," "Tom," "Father G,"or

"Thursday."

"Thursday?" Christiana had said, falling for it.

"I certainly am!" The Rev boomed. "Let's have a drink!"

"Good morning, children," The Rev said, without breaking stride as he headed for his favorite barstool. He clapped his hands together and rubbed the palms against each other vigorously. "Sustenance, Harry," he said to the barman,

"sustenance."

Phil Helton was a bit youngish-early forties-to be a Master Gunnery Sergeant, but he didn't think of himself as "children" in any sense of the word. To The Rev, though, maybe I am, he thought. But, then, when he talks about "gathering his flock" on Zarathustra, I don't reckon he means herding sheep, either.

The Rev himself was some indeterminate age which could fall anywhere between thirty and sixty, even allowing for a good deal of hyperspace travel. His hair was gray at the temples, but thick and healthy. He was a little on the fat side, but had the fast, light-footed movements of a young man. There were wrinkles around his eyes but the eyes themselves were an alert and piercing dark blue.

He took a respectful swig of his first drink and shuddered violently for several seconds. "Ahhhhhhhh," he said. "Like blood to a vampire."

While The Rev swapped pleasantries with the barman- and gambled him out of the next two drinks playing Double-O-Helton and Christiana drifted around the rim of the lounge toward the bar, drinking in the different views in the observation screens.

Helton had been on Zarathustra before, but not recently, so his replies to Christiana's barrage of questions about the planet were less than informative.

Everything would be changed by the current land rush, in any case.

The two of them had drifted over to The Rev's roost at the bar.

"Only a couple more hours," Helton said, nodding toward the image of the Zarathustran moon. "Then the last leg down to Mallorysport for you and the

shuttle to Xerxes for me. What's the name of the place where you'll be setting up your mission, Rev? I may get down and see you."

The Rev shrugged. "I don't know what it's called or where it is. But I know Mallorysport is the largest city on the planet-seventy-five thousand or so.

Might be double or triple that by now, with all this immigration. So there's bound to be a slum section for me to work in-some place that's crying for a soup kitchen and medical mission."

"A slum?" Christiana said. "Already? Zarathustra's only been settled for a little more than twenty-five years."

"Oh, it's there, all right," The Rev said, tapping his index finger alongside his nose as though he could smell the place already. "Wherever Terrans go, vice and squalor are in hot pursuit and soon pitch camp with the rest of the pilgrims."

Chapter 4

He was right, of course. The slum of Mallorysport had the name Junktown and in it teemed the throngs of the unwashed and the unfortunate-losers, thieves, gamblers, cut-throats, prostitutes, dope-runners, racketeers, hoodlums, the impoverished, and the eternally down-on-their-luck.

Though there were only the three in the first-class lounge, the economy-class decks of the City of Asgard were crammed with a fresh crop of immigrants to be deposited in Mallorysport. As soon as the word of the Pendarvis Decisions reached Terra, colonists had stampeded toward Zarathustra. A Class-IV, inhabited, planet. No more Company monopoly. Free land. A chance to make your fortune. A chance to get away from Terra-where no one ever had enough room.

When they discovered that it might take longer than a couple of standard galactic days to become deliriously rich, their grubstakes would start running out.

The people who scraped together every sol they could lay hands on to migrate to a colony world weren't just worthless bums, though; they all had skills, knowledge, and abilities that were needed. The Chartered Zarathustra Company had carved out the modern city of Mallorysport with such people and with the intelligent management of their talents.

Sixteen years earlier, Mallorysport had been a cluster of log and prefab huts beside an improvised landing field. The town had not grown up out of the ground like a tree. People had built it. And, it was built, for the most part, by people like those who were now crowded into the lower decks of the City of Asgard-people who were betting every last centisol they had that they could make a go of it on a new world.

Some, though, would wind up in Junktown when they found the streets of Mallorysport were not actually paved with sunstones.

The Rev ran his finger around his throat, between the cleric's collar and his neck. The warmth of his hand, brushing across the sunstone in his neckcloth, caused the gem to flare brighter, which cast a glossy light against the ring on his right little finger.

"You figure there are a lot of souls to save in Mallorysport, then?" Helton said conversationally.

The Rev pulled his finger out from under his collar with a disdainful gesture.

"I told you I don't save souls," he said. "Leave that for the Orthodox-Monophysites. I just help God look out for people who can't look out for themselves- temporarily or permanently. Theology has to pay its own freight; I don't preach."

"What about the souls of the Furries?" Christiana put in. "Don't-"

"Fuzzies," Helton interrupted irritably. "You mean Fuzzies."

"Sure," she said. "Fuzzies. What about the souls of the Fuzzies. Don't they need saving?"

"Don't know," The Rev said. "Their souls may be in better shape than ours are.

On the other hand they might not be what people think they are, these Fuzzies.

I make up my mind about such things when I've seen for myself."

"Sounds odd coming from a priest," Christiana said.

"So it might," The Rev agreed, "so it might. I don't worry too much about this intellectual stuff. We have priests in my order who sit around with computers and try to mathematically calculate the ages of the prophets and the angels.

That's swell for them; I just go to where there are people who are hurting and try to put something in their bellies and keep them from catching the polka-dot plague."

She smiled. "Is that why they sent you to such a helluva-such a Nifflheim of a place? According to my packet, there isn't a religious congregation on Zarathustra."

The Rev took a long, noisy suck at his drink, then smacked his lips. "Don't be particular about cussing around me, daughter," he said. "I don't give a damn one way or the other."

He paused, staring at the observation screen. "If my superior had his way-or wanted to spend that much more money-I suppose he would have sent me even further into the celestial boondocks. Someplace like the Gartner Trisys-tem. I hear that's real rough-and-ready country since crazy old Genji Gartner died at Storisende. Everyone's been wearing out holsters to see who's going to control Poictesme."