Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

What was it that our gang said his name was?"

"Starwatcher," Gerd said. "Another piece of data that doesn't conform. The woods Fuzzies don't have any names beyond 'Hey, you,' but the Uplanders all have very specific handles-Starwatcher, Fireburner, Song, Dream-maker, Mark, Striker ... It makes no sense to me, but they'll correct you in a minute if you make a mistake with a name."

The Rev became aware that eyes were fixed upon him. He peered over the edge of the desk and encountered a fixed stare from a skinny kid of about eleven or twelve. She had stringy brown hair and wide eyes. Like a lot of the kids in Junktown, she wasn't getting enough to eat.

"You got my Uncle Charley?" she asked.

"Hi, there," the Rev said. "What's your name?"

"Lurkin," the girl replied in a monotone. "Lolita Lurkin. You got my Uncle Charley?"

"Well, I don't know," the Rev said. "What's the rest of Uncle Charley's name?"

"Walker," the kid said. "He's my Uncle Charley Walker."

"Where are your parents?" the Rev said, making conversation while he had his data terminal run a name check for any Charley Walker that might be in the medical center or the infirmary.

"Ain't got no parents no more," the girl said. "My Ma died. My Pa kep' gettin'

drunk and beatin' me up, so the judge sent me to live with Uncle Charley."

"Is he really your uncle?" the Rev asked as he watched the "searching" signal blink on and off on his screen.

The girl shrugged. "I dunno. He don't beat me up, though."

"Does he take good care of you?" the Rev asked. The girl shrugged. "He does the best he can, I reckon. He ain't workin', but I get more to eat than I did with Pa." She thought for a moment. "But I gotta keep house better for Uncle

Charley. Pa didn't care about that so much, but Uncle Charley likes everything to be kep' clean."

The elusive Uncle Charley was eventually located in the dispensary where he was getting medication for a persistent cough. The Rev recognized his face immediately as a parishioner.

"I hope the girl didn't bother you none, Father," he said. "I told her to meet me here after school. She ain 't been in the way, has she?"

"Not at all," the Rev assured. "We've had a nice chat."

"I got a job now," Uncle Charley said, abruptly changing the subject and anxious to let the Rev know he was employed.

"That's wonderful, Charley," the Rev said. "What kind of job is it?"

Uncle Charley frowned slightly. "I don't just exactly know, but Mr. Laporte gave me some money in advance. That shows he trusts me to report for work."

"Raul Laporte?" the Rev asked. "That's right," Uncle Charley said. "You know him, hunh?"

"Heard of him," the Rev said.

"He hired a whole bunch of men yesterday-and I was one of "em," Uncle Charley said. "Things are a-lookin' up down here in Junktown. Lotsa guys got jobs now that didn't have none before-" He paused. "-before you came here, Father.

You've been good luck for Junktown, an' I want you to know that I appreciate what you done for us."

"That's what I'm here for, Charley," the Rev said, "to help people."

Uncle Charley bid his farewell and the Rev watched from his office door as Uncle Charley and the Lurkin girl went out the front door. Uncle Charley stopped to slip five sols into the poor box before he opened the front door onto the esplanade.

Poor bugger, the Rev thought. He's so bad off he's got to go to work for Laporte-and con himself into believing it's a good deal. The Rev smacked his right fist into his left palm with frustration. It's not right, God. Dammit, it's not right!

By late afternoon the newly-arrived remainder of Captain Casagra's company of Marines had worked out a wide trench around the big titanium "it" on the side of Mount Fuzzy, using manipulators and power shovels.

The entire scene in Fuzzy Valley looked more like a country market fair than a serious attempt to uncover an ancient artifact-or meteorite-or metallic concentration- or whatever.

There were so many aircars grounded on the valley floor that several Marines had been detailed as traffic cops to keep the vehicles neatly parked in rows and make screen contact with incoming and outgoing traffic to keep people from running into each other.

Combat cars drifted overhead at four hundred feet, with orders to fire on any vehicle that did not acknowledge screen contact and obey orders to sheer away from the area and reamin outside the air space above Fuzzy Reservation.

This was all too much for the Upland Fuzzies. They had conferred briefly with

Commissioner Holloway, expressed gratitude for the additional supply of Extee-Three he gave them, and disappeared when the traffic began to get thick.

Little Fuzzy had flatly stated that the Uplanders would be back around sundown for a romp with Holloway's Fuzzies.

"How can you be sure?" Jack asked him.

Little Fuzzy tilted his head and blew a plume of smoke from his tiny smoking-pipe. He pointed to his own chest. "Fuzzy," he said. He reversed the hand so it pointed toward the woods at the south end of the valley. "FUzzies,"

he said. "Be back when sun go down." He pointed to Mount Fuzzy. "When shadow come dis far-" He drew a line in the dirt with his shoppo-diggo. "-Fuzzies come back; see how you make do."

Before lunch-time the power shovels had skinned off the surface soil from an area about the size of two football fields-some one thousand feet on each side-bigger than a square containing four city blocks.

Commander Bates and Lieutenant Gaperski in their khaki duty-uniforms, Sergeant Helton in Marine field greens and ankle boots; they were already on a first-name basis with Holloway's group by the time the Marines grounded their vehicles and began to line up for lunch at the field kitchen scow.

Bates pointed to the excavation and moved his finger around its perimeter to describe the area. "You see what they've opened up there," he said. "There was a rockfall from up the mountain slope-oh, several hundred years ago, judging by the depth of sedimentary material that's washed down over it. Also, we can see the same rock specimens on the upper slopes."

"I judge," Gaperski interjected, "from the appearance of recently broken faces, there on the scarp, compared with the rockfall that's been protected from weathering by silt deposits, and those compared with the weathered rock faces on the east slope, that the rockfall-a big one, too-must have come down about seven hundred years ago give or take a century."

"That's reasonable," Bates agreed. "We don't know what the weather has been like, except for the past quarter-century."

Phil Helton grinned at Jack-when Bates and Gaperski weren't looking-and winked. Jack caught it and winked back. These Navy guys had never cracked rock with a vi-brohammer, but they sure knew their geology. Jack had been earning his living with geology for longer than Gaperski had been alive, and here they were-with a crease in their pants-"explaining" it all to him.

Jack decided that he and Helton were going to get along.

The excavation went fast enough until the trench began to grow very close to the titanium "it." There was a lot of geothermal heat in the ground on Mount Fuzzy. That was fine as long as the Marines were sitting in the engineer's air-conditioned cab of a power-shovel, and the rest of the Marines were working on the surface. The slight breeze carried away the heat. But when it came time to get down in the trench with shovels and clear away the dirt and rock from "it" by hand-tossing it back to where the heavy equipment could pick it up without risk of damage-then the work became slow and unpleasant. It was hot and sticky down in the hole where the air didn't circulate well.

Painstakingly, the diggers uncovered a long object, shaped rather like a capital letter "A" that had laid over on its face. As its shape was slowly