Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

His entertainment agency handled all her bookings. But she could not recall having ever seen the man in the hat before.

Jack Holloway could not recall having seen the tall brunette before, even after he had been introduced to her.

"Miss Bell is a sociologist from Company Science Center," Gerd was saying.

"She's doing a comparison study on Fuzzies."

All Jack could think of was that he had to talk to Gerd and Ruth privately, and he couldn 't think of any unobtrusive way to handle it, so far.

"I'm afraid I've just scratched the surface, here," Liana Bell was saying.

"Fuzzy social structures are, I feel, far more complex than we might have thought."

"How so, Miss Bell?" Jack asked. "We've been around Fuzzies for something over a year, now. I would think we'd have a pretty clear idea about such things."

They were sitting in a relaxed group around a gigantic wooden slab, sliced whole from the bole of a pool-ball tree, that served as a coffee table in the van Riebeek living room. Dinner had made Jack feel alive again; he hadn't realized how tired he was until he walked across Holloway's Run from his bungalow to the van Riebeeks'. He got out his pipe and began to fill it.

"Oh, Commissioner," Liana Bell said engagingly, "please call me Liana. Dr.

Mallin is always addressing me as 'Dr. Bell.' It makes me feel like I should be wearing flatheeled shoes and have my hair up in a bun."

Jack looked down at her feet, as if to punctuate the fact that she was wearing sturdy boots.

She giggled in an attractive way. "Field work is different," she. said.

Confound it! Jack lighted his pipe, interested in what Liana had to say, but with his mind still on the problem of telling Gerd and Ruth to clean up their work and pack for a short trip to Xerxes. Commodore Napier had been very insistent about having a couple of Fuzzyologists along to help his own people evaluate the equipment from Fuzzy Cavern.

"I wish I could spend a month over here, studying the Fuzzies," Liana said.

Oh, Ghu! Jack thought.

"But I can't, of course," she said."It's out of the question at this point.

Dr. Mallin would never stand for it. Juan should be in about the middle of the morning to take me back to Mallorysport."

Ah! Jack thought That tall brunette! He had met her at Ahmed and Sandra's wedding reception. Word was that Juan had been squiring her around Mallorysport ever since. It must be for real; it wasn't like Juan to date one of his own employees, even if Ernst Mallin was her immediate superior. Liana had been busily explaining to everyone what a fine and magnificent person Juan Jimenez was, but Jack had only been listening with one ear as he finally connected on where he had seen her before.

"Do you mean, Miss Bell-" Jack started to say. "Liana," she corrected.

"Do you mean, Liana, that you've been able to draw conclusions about Fuzzy society in a few days that have eluded qualified xeno-naturalists for more than a year?" "Oh, Commissioner Holloway-" she began. "Jack," he corrected.

"Yes," she said, "Jack. No, I don't mean that at all. It's only a matter of specialization. I look for things that are within a very narrow spectrum, really. And I haven't drawn any conclusions; I've only found a number of fascinating things about Fuzzies that raise unique questions in sociology.

They're an other human race, and yet the patterns in Fuzzy social systems are not at all what we might suspect by application of our own history as a comparison."

"The other human race," Gerd said, drawing reflectively on his cigarette.

"Good phrase."

"You see," Liana continued, "we 've always applied Ter-ran ethnology to other intelligent species which were at different levels of development. Eight times, now, we've been pretty much right. This time, I'm not so sure. I don't think we can stretch those comparisons far enough to make room for Fuzzies.

They just don't want to fit into our orderly explanations for our own

behavior. That's what's so exciting about it. With Fuzzies, we may have to start from scratch in order to unravel their sociology."

Jack nodded agreement. "What brings you to this idea- and so quickly?" he asked. With his pipe, he motioned for her to continue.

"Contradictions, "she said simply. She paused. "Let me see, now, how to put this non^technically.

"Fuzzies appear to be a paleolithic society," she said, "that is, according to the way we're used tb measuring such things. In a paleolithic civilization there are tradition structures which we normally expect to find and from which we can identify the development level of the culture. These have nothing to do with weapons, tool-making abilities, and those sorts of things. I mean, nuts and bolts are not in my speciality. A lot of these expected traditions are totally absent in Fuzzy society. They just don't fit with our established definition of an intelligent species that is in a primitive state of civilization."

Gerd nodded. "I've got to give you that," he said, "and I've been wondering about it from the beginning. Fuzzies have about as much concept of magic and religion, for example, as they do of nuclear physics and electronics. Yet, Little Fuzzy's catechism for explaining why something exists often operates on the grounds that it is so 'because Pappy Jack says it's so.' "

"And that certainly doesn't fit," Ruth said. "I've worked with extraterrestrials on Loki and Thor and Shesha. Everything functions as a result of how the gods feel that day to those people. Great Ghu, the Grandfather God of the Tho-rans, has so many helpers and minor gods keeping track of everything for him that-the last I heard-we still haven't completely cataloged the pantheon which the Thorans credit with running the planet-not to mention the rest of the universe."

"Exactly," Liana said. "And Fuzzies are supposed to be a primitive society; without any of the traditional nature gods and spirits that such peoples invent to explain natural phenomena."

"I've worked with the Khooghras on Yggsdrasil," Gerd said. "They have a vocabulary that consists of the grand total of eighty-two words, but they still have room for one, arooshta, that means supernatural. They use it quite a lot, since their level of sapience is so low that almost every mundane occurrence is quite mysterious to them."

Jack leaned forward in his chair. "By gum!" he said, "you know, you're right.

I've been on a lot of those planets, myself-plus a lot more-but I'd never looked at it quite that way. The Fuzzies are unique in those respects. Say on, Liana, say on. What other trees have we overlooked as a result of standing in the middle of the forest?"

Liana beamed. Jack Holloway was beginning to warm up to her. Without being fully aware of it, she wanted his approval because Juan Jimenez took a great deal of stock in Jack's opinions about things and people.

"Well," she said, "there are a lot of things that derive- or, in this case, fail to derive-from the primitive's attribution of natural occurrences to supernatural causes, and the vacancy seems uniform among Fuzzies." She ticked off several points on the long, slender fingers of her left hand. "They have no perceivable ritual practices, except for burying their own dead, and that could merely involve sanitation and the desirability of making it harder for predators to trail them. They have no Creation myths that I've been able to

find. There is no stereotyping of sex roles; females hunt alongside males, and males assist with child-rearing. They don't fight over territory or resources-like watering spots, for example. There is no tribal structure, unless you call temporary banding together in groups of five or six tribal. I don't. I can't find any concept of a hierarchy; no hereditary chiefs or medicine-men. I think, by the way, that Little Fuzzy's obvious leadership role is a very isolated occurrence. "And," she continued, "Fuzzies don't measure time in any sort of record-keeping way. Numbers and counting just don't seem to interest them. You all know about that, of course, but for a society composed of people with Fuzzy-level intelligence, such practices are completely unheard of."