Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

Grego stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet. He brushed at his eyelid with one hand. There seemed to be something in his eye.

"And now, it's come to this," she said. "If Gwen hadn't been trying to help me, she wouldn't have gotten herself shot." She turned back and looked at Grego; an anguished, a tormented look. "Oh, Victor," she whispered. "What have I done? What have I done-just because I want you-just because I was so terrified of losing you, without even knowing how you feel. Gwennie is the only and closest friend I have on Zarathustra," she said. "Can you imagine how I'll feel if she-if she doesn't pull through?" '

She stared at Grego, and he stared back at her. They both knew there was something that should be said, but neither of them could think what it was.

Finally, Grego held out both his arms. "Not the only friend," he said. "Not the only one."

She rushed into his embrace and buried her face against his shoulder, shuddering and sobbing.

He folded his arms around her, rather clumsily at first, then with more assurance, and a warm, wonderful feeling of rightness. He patted the small of her back, and ran the flat of his hand up and down her spine until she stopped shaking.

He stroked her hair, gently brushing it back from her ears, then ran his fingers over one ear. It felt hot and feverish to his touch. "My love," he said softly, "if I know everything there is to know about you, then there's nothing they can blackmail you with-nothing they can put between us. Besides,"

he said, "I love you for what you are now; I don't despise you for something you might have been in the past-a past that's over and done with and gone, now. You are who you are right now. That's the person I love."

She reached up and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, then hid her face against his shoulder again. "I love you," she mumbled into the left lapel of his robe.

He lifted her head and looked at her. "How's that again?" he asked.

"I love you," she said, and made an enormous sniffing sound.

He brushed the fresh tears out of her eyes with his index finger. "And I love you," he said. He looked down at the floor and flexed his bare toes into the carpet. "I've just been trying to figure out some way to tell you without sounding like an old fool."

She smiled at him, rather wanly. "Oh, Victor," she said, "you could never be a fool. You're the finest man I've ever known."

They looked at each other for a long time, each studying every detail of the other's face. Finally, he kissed her, gently at first, and then with increasing conviction.

She kissed him back, fiercely pressing her entire body against his, her arms locked around his neck. No one had ever forgiven her for anything before, and now here was the poignant deliverance from guilt and fear coming from the only man she had ever desired to forgive her her blind and foolish terror and just accept her for herself.

Grego turned, with his arm about her waist. She turned, with her arm around his waist, and took a step forward. She began to walk, never taking her gaze from his face, smiling, adoring him.

Very slowly, they left the living room and Grego turned off the lights.

In the hours before dawn, a gentle breeze comes up the valley below Mallorysport, blowing in from the sea. This night it was warm and moist and came in through the still-open terrace doors, making the curtains ripple and furl into the room. A little gust puffed in from the south terrace, caught the pile of tissues on the coffee table, and blew them off onto the floor.

Chapter 39

Alex Napier's slumber was troubled.

He awakened in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep. He lay on his right side and thought; then he lay on his left side and thought, but sleep did not come to Commodore Alex Napier. He thought that in his heart he must have divined what the answers were going to be within the xenology workup that would begin tomorrow. He thought that this extraction and decording of the alien equipment was going to be much like the extraction of a tooth, so far as the Federation itself would be concerned. No more smug immunity from decay; no more snug assurances of the superiority of Terran civilization-that idea of mastering the galaxy, which Terran humans could pull on like a comfortable pair of warm gloves.

And he was going to be the one who would carry the news to the home planet. He was going to be the one who pointed out that the emperor was not wearing clothes at all. It wasn't fair. Someone senior should have to carry that load.

He rolled over on his back and smiled, thinking of what he had told Pancho Ybarra. The then-Chief Psychologist had protested that he was only a lieutenant and it was a preposterous presumption for him to have to decide whether or not Fuzzies were sapient, when the best psychological brains in the Federation-Napier had cut him off, pointing out that those best psychological brains in the Federation "Aren't on Zarathustra, Pancho. They're on Terra, five hundred light-years away, six months' ship voyage each way."

Now here he was, gored by his own ox, whatever that meant. There wasn't anybody senior to him within five hundred light-years, and it was time to pay the rent on that large, comfortable office with the built-in wet bar and the genuine wood paneling on the bulkheads, and the spacious private cabin.

Napien sat up and looked at the faintly lighted readout on the bulkhead of his cabin. 0238. This was getting nowhere at hyperspeed. He reached over and turned on the bedside light, got up, and shrugged on his robe-dark blue with white piping. As he was scuffing into his slippers, he took a sidelong look at the nine-millimeter service automatic on the lamp table. Why in Nifflheim had he taken to packing a pistol around his own ship? Was he expecting a mutiny-a surprise strike attack by alien battle cruisers-a bloodthirsty boarding party?

No; none of those. For the past week or so it just made him feel better to be armed. He made a noncommital movement of his head. If it makes you feel better, do it, and worry about why later on. He dropped the pistol into his robe pocket and opened the hatch into the passageway. Once before, he had been unable to sleep; and insurrection erupted the next day.

Go with your instincts, Napier, he told himself. They haven't steered you off course yet, a dim voice from the past told him. He stepped into the eerie red-lighted passageway.

... break, break, net. PC, this is white scout five. I have eyeball contact with planetary surface. Dropping down for a closer look. . .

Napier stepped into the lift. His hand played over the control and it started to descend.

. . . four kliks and closing. Steady. Steady. Keep the slideback straight. . .

Whip ' em with the daisy chain on my mark--------Mark!

He didn't know exactly why-instinct was as good a term of description as any-but he felt he was going to have to intervene-again-in the civil government's affairs on Zarathustra. Dammit! He didn't want to intervene. No Space Navy C.O. did. It was against Service Doctrine, and it had to be impartially justified after the fact; that always meant a Board of Inquiry.

. . . stand by, killer; I got a little situation to fix here. Get back to you when-Look out, Red! Three on you in a draw spread. Take a rack heading; I'II flank for you . . .

Napier stepped out of the red-lighted lift into another passageway. He strolled down it to the Communications Center and let himself in.

. . . you fellers are as safe as a pit in a prune; they near missed Luna with that one . . .

"What's the commo traffic?" he asked the Petty Officer who came hurrying up to him. It didn't happen very often, but when Napier couldn't sleep he always shambled up and down the passageways in his robe and slippers and eventually went down to the Commo Center. His question was always the same. "What's the commo traffic?" he repeated.