Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

George had wangled Ahmed and Sandra to let him throw the party in their new bungalow on the grounds that his quarters were certainly too small, that it would be against regulations-which he was still busily writing-to use ZNPF

facilities, and, finally, that the bride and groom would inherit all the leftovers, which would ". . . keep them both alive until one of them learns how to cook."

The other ZNPF officers had been invited-as etiquette required on the marriage of a fellow officer. The lieutenants were starting to drift away toward their own social circle. The three off-duty captains were holding their own-Jordan Nunez, Joseph Holderman, and Ray Pendleton-and Bruce Presley would come by to pay his respects when he closed off his shift at 2330.

Nunez was sitting across from Jack in the group, with his tunic collar unbuttoned and one leg thrown over the arm of the big wooden armchair that had once been part of a pool-ball tree. "Hell, Jack, "he said, " why'd you have to kill 'em both? If you could just have winged one of those guys, we could be sweating a thousand names out of him right now." "That's the truth," Holderman agreed. "You know-tell him they 're going to have to operate on his leg, but we won't let them put him under till he answers our questions." He winked.

"And if they have to wait till the leg swells up like a banjo-bird's chest in mating season, they '11 probably have to cut it off. Not that they didn't need killing-kidnap a Fuzzy and sell him on Omega, indeed-but couldn't you have been a little less final with one of them?"

"Wasn't time, Joe," Jack said to Holderman. "As it was, I let that first son of a Khooghra nick me. It's been a long time since that's happened. Maybe this Commissioner of Native Affairs job is just right for me. Maybe I should be flying a desk-if I'm getting so old and slow that I can't chop down two bush rats in a simple-minded ambush without getting scratched up."

"Oh, Jack," Nunez said, "stop running yourself down. You're not quite tired old folks, yet. I'll tell you the truth- I'd hate to run up against you in a shooting scrape, and I'm about half your age."

' "Thank you, Jordy," Jack said. ' "That honestly makes me feel better. Do we know anything about them yet?"

Nunez fished his notebook out of his hip pocket. "Let's see," he said, leafing through the pages, "I was just going off duty when we heard the call. Your co-ordinates weren't actually inside the Fuzzy Reservation, so Colonial Constabulary had jurisdiction. But I went scooting over to Red Hill, anyway, and helped young Catlin catalog the deceaseds' possessions. They were, J.J.

Roberts-we don't know what the J.J. stands for, but we think 'J.J.' is his actual first name-and one Curtis Hansson. They both had five hundred sols on them-separate from a little other money, and in each case tucked into a small

white envelope. I checked in with Bruce, just before I came to the party, to see what he had gotten out of the big computer. Y'see, both these guys had a screen combination on a slip of paper tucked in those envelopes. Turns out that combination is for Hugo Ingermann's private screen in Mallorysport." He snapped the notebook shut and tucked it back in his hip pocket. "Isn't that interesting?" he said. "Both these grubby bums having fresh money on them as well as Ingermann's unlisted screen combination?"

"Anh-hanh," Holderman said. "I've been figuring that Ingermann must have some scouts out over here-ever since the sunstone claim on Fuzzy Divide was leased back to the CZC."

"Do you think it could have been a snuff job?" Jack asked.

"No," Nunez said, "I don't think so. Ingermann doesn't see you as the big snarl in his rope. He's sunstone happy-his past actions prove that-so he's going to have a bunch of cheerful dummies over here trying to figure out bigger and better ways to steal sunstones."

"I agree with Jordy," Holderman said. "You get in a fistfight with Ingermann and bust his nose-then you can expect him to send a couple gunmen after you personally. Otherwise, he's so busy with his real imagined grudges that he won't have time for fancied imagined grudges. It is clear, though, that he paid these two slobs to do some snooping around over here." Holderman sighed.

"That's why I wish you hadn't blown up both of them, Jack. It would be so much easier to just sweat a guy down than to do all this deductive reasoning."

"Oh, stow it, Joe," Nunez said. "The important thing is that Jack's still kicking and that we know Ingermann has dumped a bunch of snoops on our turf.

We '11 snag a live one pretty soon now, then proceed to scare the pants off him and find out all kinds of wonderful stuff."

As soon as the last of the other guests had departed, George and Ahmed simultaneously drew up chairs across the coffee table from where Jack was sitting. With no one else there but George, the Khadras, the van Riebeeks, and Lynne Andrews , it was perfectly safe to discuss the confidential aspects of Fuzzy Valley. Jack's eyes grew large as George and Ahmed related their findings.

"So, I want to take you back up there, Jack, and let you have a look around,"

George finished. "I want the whole thing kept strictly on the quiet, though, until we know more about what's what."

"I'll second that," Jack said. "In fact, just try to keep me away."

"Good," George said. "How about first thing in the morning?"

Jack nodded.

"Let's take along your microray scanner, too-find out how homogeneous the geology is and what's under the surface. You'll know more about that than I will. I could check one out from the equipment stores, but I'd rather not leave any paperwork tracks that might arouse someone's curiosity."

"We can take Gerd along and detour over to fix his airboat on the way-then go on up there in ZNPF vehicles," Ahmed said.

"How about taking old Gerd all the way along?" Gerd said. "Old Gerd is pretty curious about this thing, too."

"He's right," Jack said. "Good idea not to make too much of a ZNPF parade out of all this."

"I see what you mean," George said.

"We ought to take Little Fuzzy and some of the other Fuzzies along, too," Jack said. "If there are Fuzzies up there who are not moving south and who won't come near a Hagga, then we '11 have to make contact with them via Fuzzy emissaries sooner or later. So, let's make that the 'official' reason for the trip."

"I don't get it," Sandra said. "If titanium is practically non-existent in the crust of Zarathustra, why should there be one spot where it's plentiful?"

"Might be more than one spot," Gerd said, "but it's just that we haven't found any others yet. That is an area of some active vulcanism-recently active volcanoes, hot springs, geothermal areas, that sort of thing. Maybe volcanic activity encourages the formation of titanium."

"Phooey on that," Jack said. "Distribution is the question. Titanium is distributed all sorts of ways, none of them very exclusive. When it gets hot.

It will combine with just about anything. No, there's something definitely unusual about Fuzzy Valley."

"I still don't get it," Sandra insisted. "If titanium is so scarce in the general composition of Zarathustra, how did Fuzzies ever evolve here at all-if it's such an important component of their morphology?"

"Gerd's theory is that they're living fossils," Ruth said, "that there used to be a large order of Zarathustran primates. The rest died off. The Fuzzies have survived this far, because they're the smartest of the bunch, but NFMp is whittling them down."

Lynne had finished up some things in the kitchen and then joined the group.

"The xeno-paleontologists haven't found any bones yet to hang that theory on,"

she said.

"Well, we've only been here a quarter century," Gerd protested. "We know nothing about the history of Fuzzies, and almost nothing about the history of the planet. The xeno-paleontologists haven't found any really ancient Fuzzy bones, either, but the existence of Fuzzies is self-evident."