Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

Outside Jack Holloway's bungalow, the Zarathustran sunset was blazing orange and red in the western sky. The slanting, ferruginous sunlight cast a coppery glow on the stocky man with a square face who was walking across the footbridge over the creek toward Holloway's house; and silhouetted the five little figures who followed behind him, tinting the soft, golden fur which covered their bodies to a russet red in the falling twilight.

They were erect bipeds, about two feet tall, with round, humanoid faces, little snub noses, big ears, and wide eyes that were very large and appealing.

They all wore green canvas pouches made of TFMC ammunition pouches-

"'shodda-bags"-on a shoulder-strap, two-inch silver I.D. discs on a chain about their necks, and nothing else. Each of them had a weapon in one hand-a

six-inch, leaf-shaped blade on a foot-long steel shaft, with a steel ball welded to the butt end for balance. They were the Fuzzies adopted by George and his men at Constabulary Station Beta Fifteen. The silver discs around their necks were each engraved with the name of the bearer: Dillinger, Dr.

Crippen, Ned Kelley, Lizzie Borden, and Calamity Jane.

Just like a bunch of cops, to hang names like that on innocent Fuzzies. But Fuzzies didn't care much what names the Terrans gave them. Fuzzies were glad to be with the Big Ones-the Hagga-and have fun with them, and be protected, and be loved, and to love the Hagga and make them happy. Plenty of time later to find out what all those names meant. There was still a lot for Fuzzies to learn-so many things to learn from the Big Ones.

Jack's Fuzzies heard George Lunt and his family of Fuzzies approaching the house before the Terran humans did, as always. They all jumped up and ran out through the little spring-loaded doorway Jack had built for them.

The Fuzzies went pelting across the open space in front of the house to greet the visitors. They lapsed into their own ultrasonic speaking range, which was inaudible to Terrans except as an occasional "Yeek." There were a lot of

"yeeks," with different inflections, as all eleven adult Fuzzies frolicked and pushed and rolled on the ground with their friends.

After the Fuzzy-romp had spent itself, the whole spectacle was repeated, at a lesser intensity, as the Fuzzies greeted their Terran friends : "Heyo Unka Jack. Heyo, Unka Gerd, Auntie Woof, Auntie Win," all garbled together in a brief, delightful jumble of controlled bedlam.

When that was all over, George Lunt said anticlimactically, "I thought the kids might like to have a visit." He took off his pistol and beret and hung them on a peg near the door, signifying that he considered himself off duty.

He laid a slender sheaf of papers on Jack's desk-table.

George's Fuzzies were looking over the complex multiple design on the floor, walking respectfully around it, squatting down to view it from different angles, and asking questions of Jack's Fuzzies about the composition.

That had been one of the first things to tip off Jack Holloway and Ben Rainsford that Fuzzies might be sapient; they had color perception and artistic sense, and made useless things just because they were pretty to look at.

Jack bent down and spoke to the group. "Ati-josso-so t'heet? How about esteefee?" Yes, they would love a treat, especially Extee-Three.

"What about you, George?" Jack asked. "Aki-josso-so whiskey?"

"Hokay," George said. "Hoksu. Do-bizzo." He flopped down in a chair and exchanged greetings with the others in the room, all of whom he knew quite well by now.

Jack went into the kitchen and got two of the blue labeled tins down from a cabinet. He divided the Extee-Three into twelve equal portions, cutting up the moist, gingerbread-colored cake with a knife, then laid out the pieces on a plate. With the plate in one hand and George's drink in the other, he returned to the living room, handed the glass to George, and set the plate down on the floor among the Fuzzies.

Each Fuzzy picked up a piece and began to munch on it appreciatively-although Baby Fuzzy was making rather more crumbs than was necessary as he maneuvered

his small mouth around a chunk. Mamma Fuzzy gave him a smack and reminded him of good manners.

"What I still can't figure out," George was saying, "is, if Fuzzies are so smart-maybe smarter than we are, like Gerd says-why is it they never discovered fire?"

Lynne Andrews smiled. "Still stuck on applying the priorities of Homo s. terra as a criterion for sapience, George?" she said, almost tauntingly.

George looked annoyed. "Well how else can you measure things except by a universal body of rules?"

"Oh, George," Gerd said, "that talk-and-build-a-fire rule isn't a real test for sapience at all. It's something they cooked up to slow down colonists on frontier planets who would exploit hell out of the natives and then claim afterward that they didn't know the natives were really sapient."

"Came out of the Loki enslavements, didn't it?" Jack asked. He squinted at the ceiling. "Fourth century. Thereabouts, anyway."

Lynne Andrews nodded. "What you have to understand," she said to George, "is that Fuzzies don't think the same way we do. What's important to us isn't necessarily important to them. Counting and numbers, for instance."

"Records, for another," Ruth said. "Even after a year or so of intense study, what we know about Fuzzies is just a tiny spot of light, surrounded by a dim twilight area of what we think we know-and most of that is probably wrong.

Beyond that there is still a vast darkness, filled with things that will surprise us when we stumble up against them."

"I suppose you're right," George said. "I have a cop's mind; it likes there to be square holes for all the square pegs."

Gerd chuckled. "Well, Fuzzies certainly don't do that; they're more like a jigsaw puzzle. This is the ninth sapient race we've found in about five centuries of star travel. I've had direct experience with seven of them; and Fuzzies are like no primitive people I've ever seen." He motioned toward the group in the center of the floor, who were just now polishing up all the crumbs from their esteefee treat. "You'll never hear any gobbledygook from this gang about a demon eating the sun during an eclipse.

"You know, maybe, that Victor Grego has models of the planet and the moons in his office that are suspended in the air and revolve on their own individual Abbott lift-and-drive contra-gravs. Well, the sun is represented by a fixed spotlight. When there was an eclipse of the sun, Diamond watched the umbra shadow move across the planet model for a while. Then he went over and felt it. Then he looked back over his shoulder and took a few sample sightings of the alignments and started to laugh."

"He laughed?" Lynne said.

"Sure," Gerd replied. "He knew what it was right away. 'Just like in the big woods,' he said, 'when moon mix up light and dark.'

"Any of you ever run across low paleolithic people who understand the mechanics of a solar eclipse?"

No one had.

Chapter 10

"So when the goddamn dog looked like it was going to jump me," the First Marine said, "I whipped out my nine-millimeter and shot a big hole in him."

The second Marine shook his head. "You should've called in the E.G.D., Ev-laid the old 'danger to life and property' on him, and then shot the damned dog."

"I didn't have time to think, Jim," the first Marine said.

"So what happened?" Jim asked.

Ev made a sour face. "Well, the guy what owned the dog made a big stink about it-said he paid a fortune to bring it out from Terra-and the Old Man suspended me to quarters for thirty days."

Everett Diehl was a corporal and James Spelvin was a junior sergeant.

Apparently neither one of them ever had "time to think," because they both had more hash marks than chevrons. That made sense, for otherwise they would not now be sitting in a Junktown dive called "The Bitter End,' waiting for Raul Laporte to collect the regular vigorish on the money they owed him-money borrowed from Laporte and lost back to him at his own gaming tables.