H Beam Piper - [Fuzzy Papers 04] Read online

  “Remarkable,” The Rev said. “I used to think people were exaggerating the humanity of Fuzzies." He made a quick, noncommital gesture. “But, then. I've always thought they exaggerated the humanity.of Terrans, too."

  "They aren’t exactly like us," Rainsford said. "Nature never makes exact duplications—even in character. However, Fuzzies are a totally sane race. And, they cannot be driven insane. They know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad—and their ethical system is highly developed, more highly developed than ours, I'm bound to think. For example, they have no concept at all of crime or doing hurt to another in any premeditated way.”

  “It's strange,” The Rev said reflectively. "Beings that are totally good; the Vision finally realized. And we had to come this far through space and time to find it.”

  “Little Fuzzy" is one of the most beloved characters in science fiction. Now, at last, the story of the Fuzzies continues. . .

  Fuzzy boneS

  Be sure to read the original “Fuzzy ” adventures by H. Beam Piper,

  available from Ace Science Fiction:

  LITTLE FUZZY

  FUZZY SAPIENS

  FUZZY BONES

  A novel by William Tuning Based

  on works by H. Beam Piper

  A Division of Charter Communications Inc

  A GROSSET & DUNLAP COMPANY

  51 Madison Avenue

  New York, New York 10010

  Contents:-

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FUZZY REDUX

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  FUZZY BONES

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  IXL

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  XLV

  XLVI

  XLVII

  fuzzy bones

  Copyright © 1981 by Charter Communications Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  An ACE Book

  First Ace printing: December 1981

  Published Simultaneously in Canada

  2 4 6 8 0 9 7 5 3 1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to

  ANUBIS,

  the guide from the first life to the second life.

  (Also the Egyptian god of embalming, but there’s no need to dwell on that.)

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Being, myself, something of an utter fool about science— among other things, 1 ’m told—I should like to publicly thank those persons who have given valuable technical advice and assistance, and those who have air-checked my head from time to time as I wrote this novel. They are, alphabetically:

  James Patrick Baen, Chev. G.S.B. Csillaghegyi, K.S.J.,

  Dr. Robert L. Forward, Randall Garrett, Frank Gasperik,

  Robert A. Heinlein, Sherry L. Pogorzelski, Stan Strong,

  and

  Antoinette Symons

  FUZZY REDUX

  I

  ” ‘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 prostie, 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 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.”

  II

  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 knowledge of his destination and wasn’t much obliged to answer to anyone below the rank of Fleet Admiral or Force-General.

  “Is our fellow passenger about, this morning?” Christiana asked.

  “I didn’t see him at breakfast,” Helton replied, “but then I never see him at breakfast.” He looked at the readout on the wall. “Nearly ten hundred, galactic standard, though. The bar will open in a few minutes and that should fetch him out.”

  I rarely see you at breakfast, either, he thought, but I suppose you’re in the habit of sleeping late in the morning.

  III

  At the first rattle of ice into the bin as the barman began to open up, the third passenger appeared in the companion way as though answering a mysterious call to nature. He was sporting a Zarathustran sunstone in the neckcloth below his clerical collar. At the start of the trip he had introduced himself—rather grandiloquently—as “The Right Reverend Father Thomas Aquinas Gordon,” but allowed as how he would answer just as readily to “Rev,” ‘Tom.”

  “Father G, “or “Thursday.”

  “Thursday?” Christiana had said, falling for it.

  “I certainly am!” The Rev boomed. “Let’s have a drink!”

  “Good morning, children,” The Rev said, without breaking stride as he headed for his favorite bars tool. He clapped his hands together and rubbed the palms against each other vigorously. “Sustenance, Harry,” he said to the barman, “sustenance.”

  Phil Helton was a bit youngish—early forties—to be a Master Gunnery Sergeant, but he didn’t mink of himself as “children” in any sense of the word. To The Rev, though, maybe I am, he thought. But, then, when he talks about “gathering his flock” on Zarathustra, I don’t reckon he means herding sheep, either.

  The Rev himself was some indeterminate age which could fall anywhere between thirty and sixty, even allowing for a good deal of hyperspace travel. His hair was gray at the temples, but thick and healthy. He was a little on the fat side, but had the fast, light-footed movements of a young man. There were wrinkles around his eyes but the eyes themselves were an alert and piercing dark blue.

  He took a respectful swig of his first drink and shuddered violently for several seconds. “Ahhhhhhhh he said. “Like blood to a vampire.”

  While The Rev swapped pleasantries with the barman— and gambled him out of the next two drinks playing Double-O—Helton and Christiana drifted around the rim of the lounge toward the bar, drinking in the different views in the observation screens.

  Helton had been on Zarathustra before, but not recently, so his replies to Christiana’s barrage of questions about the planet were less than informative. Everything would be changed by the current land rush, in any case.

  The two of them had drifted over to The Rev’s roost at the bar.

  “Only a couple more hours,” Helton said, nodding toward the image of the Zarathustran moon. “Then the last leg down to Mallorysport for you and the shuttle to Xerxes for me. What’s the name of the place where you’ll be setting up your mission, Rev? I may get down and see you.”

  The Rev shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s called or where it is. But I know Mallorysport is the largest city on the planet—seventy-five thousand or so. Might be double or triple that by now, with all this immigration. So there’s bound to be a slum section for me to work in—some place that’s crying for a soup kitchen and medical mission.”

  “A slum? “Christiana said. ” Already? Zarathustra’s only been settled for a little more than twenty-five years.”

  “Oh, it’s there, all right,” The Rev said, tapping his index finger alongside his nose as though he could smell the place already. “Wherever Terrans go, vice and squalor are in hot pursuit and soon pitch camp with t
he rest of the pilgrims.”

  IV

  He was right, of course. The slum of Mallorysport had the name Junktown and in it teemed the throngs of the unwashed and the unfortunate—losers, thieves, gamblers, cutthroats, prostitutes, dope-runners, racketeers, hoodlums, the impoverished, and the eternally down-on-their-luck.

  Though there were only the three in the first-class lounge, the economy-class decks of the City of Asgard were crammed with a fresh crop of immigrants to be deposited in Mallorysport. As soon as the word of the Pendarvis Decisions reached Terra, colonists had stampeded toward Zarathustra. A Class-IV, inhabited, planet. No more Company monopoly. Free land. A chance to make your fortune. A chance to get away from Terra—where no one ever had enough room.

  When they discovered that it might take longer than a couple of standard galactic days to become deliriously rich, their grubstakes would start running out.

  The people who scraped together every sol they could lay hands on to migrate to a colony world weren’t just worthless bums, though; they all had skills, knowledge, and abilities that were needed. The Chartered Zarathustra Company had carved out the modern city of Mallorysport with such people and with the intelligent management of their talents.