Tuning William - Fuzzy Bones

Scanned by Highroller. Proofed more or less by Highroller.

FUZZY REDUX

Chapter 1

"Tis a pity she's a whore," the Marine said.

"Don't bet your ass or your pension on it," the priest said.

The two of them were perched at the bar of the first-class passengers' lounge on the City of Asgard, outbound for Zarathustra. They sipped their drinks and chatted while the rest of the first-class passengers "ooohed" and "ahhhed" at the ever-changing panoramas of space that were presented in the observation screens around the edge of the lounge deck.

The Marine nodded toward the object of the conversation, a strawberry blonde named-correction-calling herself Christiana Stone. "That might be your first convert on Zarathustra," he said.

The Marine was Master Gunnery Sergeant of Fleet Marines Philip Helton. The priest preferred to be called The Rev.

They had hit it off immediately. The Rev was dressed like a priest-collar and all-but thought like a Marine-one who had been able to take the time to absorb and appreciate some of the galaxy's variety of culture.

You can take the boy out of the Marines, Helton had thought when he met him, but you can't take the Marine out of the boy. Retired, perhaps. Officer, maybe. Tough, yes.

The Rev snorted derisively. "Do the old Magdalene caper? Not a chance."

"Why not?" Helton said. "Souls are where you find 'em."

"Several reasons," The Rev replied, as he chewed noisily on an ice cube from his drink. "First, it's not my style. Round the souls up every spring, put The Brand on them, and drive them to market? That's a mug's game. Second; unnecessary. If that young thing is a pros tie, then I'm the Archbishop of Nifflheim."

"You sound pretty sure of yourself," Helton said.

The Rev snorted again. "My lad, I daresay you've observed just about as many whores in your profession as I have in mine. What the lady says she is and what she is don't have to come to the same thing." He wagged his finger as Helton started to interrupt. "She may, however, intend to become one when we get to Zarathustra."

"But you don't think she's a-ummmmmm- journeyman," Helton said.

The Rev slapped his hand lightly on the bar and leaned forward slightly. "Of course not! " he said quietly. "Otherwise she would have been working the ship. Lots of lonely business types in the first-class. A young lady with her looks and just the slightest amount of enterprise could rack up quite a bundle during a six-month hypertrip."

"That's where you've missed," Helton said with a chuckle. "You don't have all the data to draw a conclusion."

The Rev's face took on an expression of mock menace. "Well, son, you get to be pretty damned observant in my trade."

"And in my trade," Helton said, "I travel quite a bit of the time by commercial carrier."

"So?" The Rev was not impressed.

"So I happen to know the ship captain on this trip. His name is Hermann Kaltenbrunner and he makes the Orthodox-Monophysites look like a bunch of reckless hedonists. I was on the City of Malverton once-when the old boy was stalking his quarterdeck-and I saw him put a professional gambler out the airlock for starting up a card game on Sunday."

"Great Ghu!" The Rev gasped. "He does sound to be just a trifle on the puritanical side. Uh-what happened to the rest of the players?"

"Nothing," Helton said flatly. "They were not professional card-players. Oh, they got a sermon about evil-doing that would set fire to your underwear, but that was about it."

"So someone tipped her off mighty quick," The Rev said, "perhaps in hopes of receiving some-ahhhh-non-professional thanks."

Helton smiled. "Oh, I don't know. There are people who just have that old soft spot in them."

"Hunh!" The Rev grumped. "I 'd hate to have to hold my breath between meeting the first one and the next one."

"Now that you've muffed your first great deduction," Helton said, "what do you think her game is?"

The Rev shrugged and swigged from his drink. "She might be a spoiled rich kid who's out to get even with Mommy and Daddy-come home from Zarathustra with a 1

bundle of money and rub their noses in how it was earned. Or, she might have a decrepit old Mum back home on Terra, and this is the only way she can earn enough sols fast enough to let the old lady live out her last years in style and respectability."

"Sadie Thompson, and all that," Helton mused.

"Star-travel makes strange bedfellows," The Rev said. He rapped his knuckles on the bar for two more drinks. "Who was that you were quoting a minute ago?"

"You mean, 'Tis a pity . . .'?" Helton asked.

The Rev nodded.

"John Ford," Helton said.

The Rev stroked his chin a moment. "John Ford the First Century screenplay director?"

Helton smiled. "John Ford the obscure Elizabethan dramatist; Fourth Century Pre-Atomic."

The Rev's eyebrows shot up. "Pretty exotic reading for a Gunnie."

Helton looked at him levelly. "I get a lot of time for reading," he said.

"So do I," The Rev said, "so do I."

Chapter 2

Helton smiled as he recalled the conversation, which took place only a few days out from Terra.

He stood, now, with his feet apart, his hands clasped behind his back, and rocked up and down on the balls of his feet. It was a habit of his which tended to cause nervousness in units and commands he was auditing; one of the principal assets in his trade was the ability to keep people just a little bit off balance.

At one point in his life he had owned a pair of boots which squeaked softly as he rocked on the balls of his feet. They had been among his most favored possessions, because with them he could, at will, cause others to be visibly disturbed in his presence.

There was no one to audit at the moment. There was not even another Terran human on the first-class lounge deck; only Philip Helton standing in front of the armor-glass observation screen, auditing the star-pinioned darkness of space beyond the vessel-and rocking slightly on the balls of his feet.

One of the moons of Zarathustra was slowly traversing the screen, but at this distance Helton couldn't tell which one. It might be Xerxes, the site of his next assignment at the huge Navy base that occupied all of it; or it might be Darius, where Terra-Baldur-Marduk Spacelines maintained Zarathustra's commercial port.

The City of Asgard would dock on Darius in about two hours-just in time to disrupt everyone's lunch schedule.

Helton turned toward the small noise behind him.

"Good morning, Sergeant," Christiana Stone said, as she walked across the carpeted deck toward him.

"I would think," he said, "that after six months of travel in hyperspace, you might not find it improper to call me by my first name."

The dim starlight from the observation screen reflected on her reddish-blond hair as she smiled good-naturedly. "I suppose so-Phil," she replied. "I find it difficult to be informal with people, though. It's a business habit."

During the trip, Helton began to suspect The Rev was right; Christiana didn't likely know much more about the oldest profession than one might learn in a steamy romance novel. But there was a big boom happening on Zarathustra, with fortunes to be made by all sorts of means; if Christiana said she was going there to clean up on the influx of population generated by the Pendarvis Decisions, Helton was willing to go along with it.

It made little difference to him, anyway. He was just as glad to be by himself as around others. He was used to operating alone. There were very few Master Gunnery Sergeants of Fleet Marines, so it was not the usual thing for him to settle in with his peer group at cocktail hour and talk shop. Maybe once every year or two he would run into another Master Gunnie. Mostly he just did his job, auditing weapons systems, gunnery performance, and readiness levels. Most often he traveled by civilian transportation to avoid excessively widespread