Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

"Good morning, Mr. Commissioner," Napier said to Holloway. "I was wondering if you could tell me just what it is that you have found on North Beta."

"No," Jack said flatly. "In the first place, we don't know. In the second place, I don't care to discuss it over a communication screen. And-" His mustache twitched like a tiger's whiskers. "-in the final place, it is entirely inside the Fuzzy Reservation, so it's really none of your affair, Commodore."

Napier knocked ash from his pipe and re-tamped the tobacco. "Only time will tell that, Mr. Holloway," he said.

"My question," Jack said, "is just how you know we 'found something,' and how in Nifflheim you came to know it this quickly."

The Commodore smiled with genuine good humor. "I don't believe TFN regulations require me to discuss my intelligence network with you, Commissioner Holloway-and if they did, I wouldn't do it via open communication screen."

"Well, it still belongs to the Fuzzies," Jack insisted, "because it is on Fuzzy lands."

Napier relaxed his formal manner a bit. "Come on, Jack," he said, "I'm not trying to ruffle your feathers or make any official fuss about this. May I have your permission to send three of my own people down to the site?"

"I can't think of any reason to refuse that," Holloway said, "as long as it is clear that they are not present in any official capacity and will conduct themselves under my authority."

"The Navy can live with that, I think," Napier said.

"Names, please?" Holloway said, his hand poised over a note pad.

"I have a couple of ordnance officers," Napier said, "with experience in xeno-geology and archeology- Commander Nelson Bates and Lieutenant Frank Gaperski. They both have some academic credits in those subjects, and have been interested enough to pursue them as a sideline to their Navy careers."

"Yes?" Holloway inquired.

"Also," Napier added, "I am sending down a Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant who is here to audit our readiness and weapons systems. Philip Helton is his name."

"Does he have a hobby, too?" Jack asked.

Napier chuckled. "As a matter of fact, he does. I don't think it will be of much use to you, though, on this job; his hobby is literature. However, his knowledge of his own field is nothing short of awesome. I daresay he could look at a piece of military hardware that no human creature had ever before seen, and tell you instantly what it was designed to do."

"I met a Master Gunnie on Hathor, once," Jack said, "and I'm inclined to believe what you say."

"Excellent, then," Napier said. "What are the coordinates?"

Holloway glowered. "Have you lost your mind, Commodore? " he said. "I will write down the chart co-ordinates on a slip of paper, and leave it in a sealed envelope at ZNPF Headquarters-to be released to your Master Gunnie on verification of his thumbprint only. Then, your people can join us at the site. It's hard enough to keep all these jackleg prospectors out of the Fuzzy Reservation, without having to police sightseers who happen to hear this transmission, as well."

"I see your point, Jack," Napier said. "Agreed."

"By the way, Alex," Jack said, dropping his own stiff formality, now that he felt he had some control of the conversation, "why in blazes is the Navy so interested in this?"

"There are-ah-anomalies in the information. My people will talk to you about it all when they arrive."

Chapter 20

Hugo Ingermann smiled and puffed his pink cheeks as he regarded the man across the desk from him. Best, really, to keep the desk between himself and such a

man as Raul Laporte. Aside from the obvious fact that a certain ritual formality was necessary to mitigate against as much familiarity as might blur the distinction of who was working for whom, the truth of the matter was that Ingermann was afraid of Laporte. Oh, not that he considered Laporte to be any threat to the carefully constructed hierarchy of crime that he had constructed with himself at the pinnacle of control. It was more a matter of recognizing that Laporte was the kind of man whose self-control might snap at any moment.

If and when it did, someone was bound to die. Ingermann preferred that the warm corpse in such a situation should not be his own.

" 'Course I'm sure of it, Mr. Ingermann," Laporte was saying. "Y'see, there's these two halfwit Marines what owe me a lot of money. I been encouraging them that I'll write off part of their debt if they bring me any useful information."

Ingermann fitted the tips of his fingers together and flexed his hands. "I see. Go on."

"Well, yesterday," Laporte said, "they come to me with this story. Seems the ZNPF has shuffled all the duty assignments around, and the platoon of Marines that's over there helping them out is soon to be joined by the rest of the company it was originally detached from."

Ingermann smiled. "And you see this minor alteration of work schedules as something of great importance," he said, flatly and without emotion.

"Well," Laporte defended, "it ain't like it was all that minor. They've pulled all the Marines off patrol duty over North Beta. You gotta look at the big picture, Mr. Inger-mann. Why would they all-of-a-sudden move the Marines to patrolling the sugarplant plantations-all the Marines? An' then, bring in more Marines?"

"Mmmmm," Ingermann murmured. "And what importance do you attach to all this, Mr. Laporte? A good deal, apparently; otherwise you would not take the trouble to visit my office. In short, sir, what does it mean?"

"Why, I think it means they've hit another big sunstone strike up on the Fuzzy Reservation; that's what I think. They move out the troops who've been patrolling that area, and bring in more troops . . . Sunstones is really all that's going on on Beta. What else could it be?"

What else, indeed? Sunstones were an obsession with Hugo Ingermann. He pursed his lips. "And what, Mr. Laporte, did you pay these two-persons-for this information?"

Laporte knew what Ingermann was paying the spies he sent over to Beta. "Five hundred sols, each, Mr. Ingermann," he said. "That's a thousand, all told. I cancelled a thousand on their debt."

The slight hesitation before specifying the amount told Ingermann that Laporte was lying. "I can only see five hundred sols' worth of information there, Mr.

Laporte," he said.

Laporte looked uncomfortable. He couldn't decide how far to go in haggling over Ingermann's offered price of five hundred-which was really two hundred more than he had credited to Diehl and Spelvin.

Ingermann smiled. "However, I have some brokerage work for you, Mr. Laporte, and I'll make you a flat offer of three thousand for the lot." He reached in a desk drawer and drew out a folio wallet, from which he extracted three

pre-counted sheaves of currency. "I want you to hire four more operatives and send them over to Beta to prowl around and see what this is all about-this whatever-it-is that the Navy and the ZNPF are being so coy about keeping quiet." He tossed two of the sheaves of currency across the desk and, with a flourish, tucked the third back into the wallet. "I don't care what your financial arrangements are with these four people, nor who they may be.

However, you don't get the third thousand until I receive some definite information about what I want to know. Deal?"

"Deal," Laporte said, wistfully eyeing the wallet that had swallowed his profit into escrow.

They watched Fuzzy Divide slide under the nose of the airboat from five thousand feet, and the suddenly dry look of North Beta replace the lush forests south of the transverse mountain range.

"Listen, Gerd," Jack said, "I'm sorry I growled at you yesterday the way I did. It was just that those Upland Fuzzies were so damned pathetic. They're starving up here, but they're still determined to tough it out-come hell or high water. I'm-you well know-not an emotional man, but the look on that headman's face just got to me all of a sudden. Ghu!, he's a tough little guy.