Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

From the stage, Gwen saw them come out into the main room. Each had a piece of paper-about receipt size-in his hand. They compared them for a moment, smiled some more, shook hands, and folded up the receipts and put them in a pocket.

Strange, she thought. What business could those two have had with Laporte?

They certainly didn't have enough sols together to pay off their gaming debts, but they sure are acting like it.

Laporte emerged from his office, said a few hurried words to his bar manager, then pushed hastily through the crowd, toward the back door.

"Take a long break," Gwen said to the lead musician. She darted toward the rear of The Bitter End, threw on a wrap, and was soon out the door-just in time to see Laporte disappear around the corner on foot. There's only one place he can be going this time of night without an aircar. The only place that close is Hugo Ingermann's office, and Ingermann is always there at night.

Chapter 37

It had been a long and exhausting evening. Victor Grego loosened his neckcloth as he crossed the landing stage, with Diamond tagging along with him. His private aircar would take Christiana on to her place. He was just too tired to see her home.

She understood that perfectly well, and had suggested it. What a marvel she had been tonight. So many ruffled feathers to be smoothed down; she pitched right in and just charmed the pants off those old bull zebralopes who were swinging the biggest hammers in the Constitutional Convention. And Bill

Zeckendorf; he had bought up a large chunk of Mortgageville from the banks that had foreclosed all those one and two-mile-square parcels when the last immigration boom had fallen apart. Let's see-when was that-must be about nine years ago, now. He was itching to develop the place, huffing and puffing about unfair competition from the Company, and was making ugly noises about a Restraint-of-Trade suit. Could turn nasty. Christiana had him eating out of her hand like a tame tilbra in less than thirty minutes.

What a remarkable young woman.

Grego let himself in the back door of his penthouse and turned to close it.

"Do you want anything before the sleep-time, Diamond?" he asked.

Diamond stretched and yawned, then patted his little belly. "No, Pappy Vic,"

he said. "Diamond too'fit now." Yes, supper at Alfredo's after the reception had been a rather exceptional affair, too. Walter seemed to have outdone himself again.

"You run along, then, Diamond," Grego said. "Pappy Vic has some thinking to do."

Grego stopped in the kitchen and poured a generous helping of brandy into the snifter. He paused for a moment, thinking of the racing wheels that spun inside his brain, decided it would take a bit more to put him to sleep, and sloshed in some more brandy. No point in going to bed- even at this point of fatigue-if your mind refuses to stop running scenarios, making lists, and cross-indexing information. Tossing and turning for hours is worse than staying up.

He brushed the switch as he entered the living room, bringing the lights around the ceiling-edges to a soft glow. Comfortably situated in his favorite chair, he absently reached into the bowl of nibblements he kept on the coffee table and his mind went back to the first time he had seen Diamond. There had been a Fuzzy loose in Company House-one who had escaped from the group Herckard and Novaes kidnapped on Beta-who had gradually worked his way up to Grego's penthouse and eaten all the salted snacks out of the nibblements bowl.

Then Diamond looked about for a soft, warm place to go to sleep and that's where Grego had found him-curled up on his own bed. At first he had been outraged; Fuzzies were the enemy; Fuzzies had cost the Company its charter.

But no one who is sane can dislike a Fuzzy. In the abstract perhaps it is possible, but in person there is no Terran human who wouldn't want a little friend like that.

Grego turned on the communications screen. Perhaps something to take his mind off all the things he was responsible for, all the things he alone could keep control of, was in order.

The swirls of colored light dissolved into an image as the audio came up.

"... And it is this grasping conspiracy between the criminal lunatics running the colonial government, the banking cartels, and the blackest lot of thieves among all of them-The Zarathustra Company-that seeks to rob you; yes, you, the common people of this planet of your birthright. Not a birthright made in a series of shady deals on Terra and in the lofty salons of exploiters located at the top of Company House, but the birthright earned by the farmers, the frontiersmen, the colonists who have made this planet what it is today, who have shaped it from the mud made by its soil and your own sweat-that is your rightful share of all the good and glorious things of Zarathustra. Your blood has fallen on this soil! You have bought and paid for it!" Ingermann thumped

his fist on the lectern in front of him. "It is . . ." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Zarathustra is . . . YOURS!" He spread his arms wide in benediction.

The announcer's smooth voice segued over the fading picture. "The preceding was recorded at an earlier time for broadcast at this hour."

Grego wiped his forehead. "Ghu!" he said. "Just what I need to calm me down!"

He inhaled deeply from the snifter and leaned forward to change the channel.

"Surely there must be some mindless, nonsensical screenplay I can watch."

George Lunt took his feet off his desk and turned toward his Chief of Detectives. "Ahmed," he said, "you realize that we're going to have to turn him loose."

Ahmed Khadra nodded. "Let me bake him and baste him for a while. We can hold him seventy-two hours while we verify his identity and check for wants and warrants."

A grin crept over George Lunt's square face. "You 're sure there's nothing personal about this?"

Ahmed snorted. "Well, the discovery that the CZC has planted a man right under our nose in the ZNPF does rub me the wrong v/nyjust a bit."

"How did you turn him?" George asked.

"Bardini was in Red Hill and overheard the guy making a screen call to Harry Steefer in Mallorysport," Ahmed said.

"Did he hear any of the conversation?" George asked.

"No," Ahmed replied, "but they weren't talking about the ball game."

George frowned. "Has this guy had duty on anything but routine patrol?" He frowned more deeply. "I mean, has he ever been assigned to the detachment in Fuzzy Valley?"

Ahmed nodded affirmatively.

George let his hand fall on the desk. "That tears it," he said. "Okay, put him on the griddle and see what he really knows. We may not have been compromised too badly. We still have to turn him loose, though. He hasn't committed a crime he can be charged with."

"Industrial espionage-" Ahmed began.

"-is not against the law-unfortunately," George finished.

"Could we hang him with fraudulent enlistment?" Ahmed inquired thoughtfully.

George's mouth drew down into a hard line. "I haven't written the regulation covering that, yet," he said.

"Hmmmm," Ahmed said. "Well, there isn't much more we can do tonight." He looked at the wall readout. "The mess is closed down by now. Why don't you take pot luck with Sandra and me?"

"I don't know," George said. "You sure she won't mind?"

"I'll give her a screen call right now," he said. "Besides, if I don't go home

right away, I might as well not go at all."

Grego leaned back in his chair and took a sip of brandy.

An austere, rather shaggy gentleman of middle years "peered soulfully from the screen. "This is your host, again, Holger Wachinski," he said sonorously,

"inviting you to join us for this, our last selection in tonight's concert by the Mallorysport Symphony Orchestra. The Spellbound Concerto is notable as one of the earliest pieces of serious music to utilize an electronic instrument in the solo capacity. Distilled from the sound track music of the screenplay of the same name, composer Miklos Rozsa performed a masterful fusing of the delicate tonal quality of the Theremin with the richness of the then-traditional orchestra.