Fuzzy Sapiens

CHAPTER TWENTY

“BUT WHAT FOR?” Diamond was insisting. “What for Big Ones first, bang, bang, make dead? Not good. What for not make friend, make help, have fun?”

“Well, some Big Ones bad, make trouble. Other Big Ones fight to stop trouble.”

“But what for Big Ones be bad? Why not everybody make friend, have fun, make help, be good?”

Now how in Nifflheim could you answer a question like that? Maybe that was what Ernst Mallin meant when he said Fuzzies were the sanest people he’d ever seen. Maybe they were too sane to be bad, and how could a non-sane human explain to them?

“Pappy Vic not know. Maybe Unka Ernst, Unka Panko, know.”

The bell of the private communication screen began its slow tolling. Diamond looked around; this was something that didn’t happen often. He rose, taking Diamond from his lap and setting him on the chair, then went to the wall and put the screen on. It was Captain Morgan Lansky, at Chief Steefer’s desk. He looked as though a planet buster had just dropped in front of him and hadn’t exploded yet.

“Mr. Grego; the gem-vault! Fuzzies in it, robbing it!”

He conquered the impulse to ask Lansky if he were drunk or crazy. Lansky was neither; he was just frightened.

“Take it easy, Morgan. Tell me about it. First, what you know’s happened, and then what you think is happening.”

“Yes, sir.” Lansky got hold of himself; for an instant he was silent. “Ten minutes ago, in the captain’s office at detective bureau; the shifts were changing, and both lieutenants were there. A Fuzzy came out of a storeroom in back of the office; he had a little knapsack on his back, with about twelve pounds of sunstones in it. The Fuzzy’s here now, so are the sunstones. Do you want to see them?”

“Later; go ahead.” Then, before Lansky could speak, he asked: “Sure he came out of this storeroom?”

“Yes, sir. There was five-six men in the doorway to the squadroom, he couldn’t of come through that way. And the only way he could of got into this storeroom was out a ventilation duct there. The grating over it was open.”

“That sounds reasonable. He could have gotten into the gem-vault through the ventilation system too.”

The entrance to the gem-vault stairway was on the same floor as the detective bureau. The inlet and outlet screens were hinged, and the latch worked from either side to allow any outlet screen to be put on anywhere. And the sunstones couldn’t have come from anywhere else; just yesterday he’d had to go down and let Evins in to put away what had accumulated in his office safe.

“Ten minutes; what’s been done since?”

“Carlos Hurtado’s here, he hadn’t gone home. He’s staying, and so are most of the pre-midnight men. We put out a quiet alert to all the police in the building. We’re blocking off everything from the top of the fourteenth level down, and a second block around the fifteenth. I called the Chief; he’s coming in. Hurtado’s calling the Constabulary and the Mallorysport police for men and vehicles to blockade the building from the outside. I’ve sent calls out for Dr. Mallin, and for Mr. E. Evins, and I’ve sent out for as many hearing aids as I can get.”

“That was good. Now, have a jeep or something up here for me right away; I’ll have to open the gem-vault. And have men there to meet me. With sono-stunners; there may be more Fuzzies inside. And get hold of the building superintendent and the ventilation engineer, and get plans of the ventilation system.”

“Right. Anything else, Mr. Grego?”

“Not that I can think of now. Be seeing you.”

He blanked the screen. Diamond, in the chair, was looking at him wide-eyed.

“Pappy Vic; what make do?”

He looked at Diamond for a moment. “Diamond, you remember when bad Big Ones bring you, other Fuzzies, here?” he asked. “You know other Fuzzies again, you see them?”

“Yeh, ’tsure. Good friend; know again.”

“Hokay. Stay put; Pappy Vic be back.”

He ran into the kitchenette and gathered a couple of tins of Extee-Three. Returning, he found a hearing aid — Diamond was using his Fuzzyphone, and he hadn’t needed it — and pocketed it. Then, swinging Diamond to his shoulder, he went outside. Just as he emerged onto the terrace, a silver-trimmed maroon company airjeep, lettered police, lifted above the edge of the terrace, turned, and glided down. He thought, again, that police vehicles should have some distinctive color-scheme to distinguish them from ordinary Company cars. Talk about that with Harry Steefer, some time. Then the jeep was down and the pilot had opened the door. He climbed in and held Diamond on his lap, while the pilot reported him aboard. Then he took the radio handphone himself.

“Grego; who’s there?” he asked.

“Hurtado. We have everything from the fourteenth level down to the sixteenth sealed off, inside and out. Captain Lansky and Lieutenant Eggers have gone to meet you at the gem vault. Dr. Mallin’s coming in; so’s Miss Glenn and Captain Khadra of the ZNPF. Maybe they can get something out of this Fuzzy.” He muttered something bitterly. “Questioning Fuzzies; what’s police work coming to next?”

“Teaching Fuzzies to crack safes; what’s crime coming to next? You get the ventilation system plans yet?”

“They’re coming up; so’s the ventilation engineer. You think there’s more Fuzzies than this one?”

“Four more. And two men, named Phil Novaes and Moses Herckerd.”

Hurtado was silent for a moment, then cursed. “Now why in Nifflheim didn’t I think of that?” he demanded. “Sure!”

They went inside from a landing-stage on the third level down. There were police there, with portable machine guns, and a couple of cars. Work was going on in some of the offices along the horizontal vehicle-way, but no excitement. They encountered a police car in the vertical shaft just above the fourteenth level down; the jeep pilot put on his red-and-white blinker and picked up the handphone of his loudspeaker, saying, “Mr. Grego here; please don’t delay us.” The car moved out of the way.

The fifteenth level down was police country. Everything was superficially quiet, but a number of vehicles were concentrated around the horizontal ways from the vertical shaft. The pilot set the jeep down at the entrance to the gem-buyer’s offices. Morgan Lansky and a detective were waiting there. He got out, holding Diamond, and the pilot handed the tins of Extee-Three to the detective. Lansky, who seemed to have recovered his aplomb, grinned.

“Interpreter, Mr. Grego?” he asked.

“Yes, and maybe he can make identification. I think he knows these Fuzzies.”

It took Lansky two seconds to get that. Then he nodded.

“Sure. That would explain everything.”

They went through the door, and, inside, it was immediately evident that the security regulation book had gone out the airlock. The portcullis was raised, though a couple of submachine-gunners loitered watchfully in front of it. Half a dozen men, all carrying sono-stunners, short carbines with flaring muzzles like ancient blunderbusses, fell in behind them. The door at the end of the short hall was open, too, and nobody was bothering with identity checks.

Nobody was supposed to be within sight of him when he opened the vault, but he ignored that, too. Lansky, Eggers, the man who was carrying the two tins of Extee-Three, and the men with the stunners all crowded down the stairway after him. Quickly he punched the nonsense sentence out on the keyboard. Ten seconds later the door receded and slid aside.

Inside, the lights were on, as always; bright as they were, they could not dim the many colored glow on the black velvet tabletop, where two Fuzzies were playing concentratedly with a thousand or so sunstones. A little rope ladder, just big enough for a Fuzzy, dangled past the light-shade from the air-outlet above.

Both Fuzzies looked up, startled. One said in accusing complaint, “You not say stones make shine; you say just stones, like always.” His companion looked at them for a moment, and then cried: “Not know these Big Ones! How come this place?”

Lansky, who had been holding Diamond while he had been using the keyboard, followed him in. Diamond saw the two on the table and jabbered in excited recognition. He took Diamond and set him on the table with the others.

“Not be afraid,” he said. “I not hurt. He friend; show him pretty things.”

Recognition was mutual; the other Fuzzies were hugging Diamond and talking rapidly. Lansky had gone to a communication screen and was punching a call-number.

“You get away from bad Big Ones, too?” Diamond was asking. “How you come this place?”

“Big Ones bring us. Make us go through long little hole. Tell us, get stones, like at other place.”

What other place, he wondered. The other strange Fuzzy was saying:

“All-time, Big Ones make us go through long little holes, get stones. We get stones, Big Ones give us good things to eat. Not get stones, Big Ones angry. Make hurt, put us in dark place, not give anything to eat, make us do again.”

“Who has the Extee-Three?” he asked. “Open a tin for me.”

“Estee-fee!” Diamond, hearing him, repeated. “Pappy Vic give Estee-fee; hoksu-fusso.”

Lansky had Hurtado in the screen; he was standing aside to allow the latter to see what was going on in the gem-vault. Hurtado was swearing.

“Now, we gotta make everything in the building Fuzzy-proof,” he was saying. “The Chief’s just come in.” He turned. “Hey, Chief, come and look at this!”

Eggers had the Extee-Three; he got the tin open. Taking the cake from him, he broke it in three, then shoved a couple of million sols in sunstones out of the way and gave a piece to each of the Fuzzies. The two little jewel-thieves knew just what it was, and began eating at once. Telling Eggers to keep an eye on them, he went to the screen. In it, Harry Steefer was cursing even more fluently than Hurtado. He broke off and greeted:

“Hello, Mr. Grego. Beside what’s on the table, are there any sunstones left?”

“I haven’t checked, yet.”

He looked around. All the drawers had been pulled out of the cabinet; the Fuzzies had evidently gotten at the upper rows by stacking and standing on the ones from below. Lansky was examining a couple of small canvas rucksacks he had found.

“What’s it look like, Captain?”

“Don’t come around the table, anybody,” Lansky warned. “The floor’s all over stones, here.”

“Then we have some left. Has Conrad Evins come in yet?”

“We’re still trying to contact him,” Steefer said. “Dr. Mallin’s here, and Captain Khadra and Miss Glenn are on the way here. I’m going over to operation-command room, now; I’ll leave somebody here.”

“Suppose you leave the Fuzzy in your office, too. I’ll bring this pair up, and Diamond can help question them all.”

Steefer assented, then excused himself to talk to somebody in the room with him. One of the detectives, who had gone out, returned with a broom and dustpan; he held the pan while Lansky swept the scattered sunstones up. There were more than he had expected, perhaps as many as half of them. He poured them into drawers, regardless of size or grade; they could be sorted out later. All the Fuzzies protested strenuously when he began gathering up the ones on the table; even Diamond wanted to play with them. He consoled them with the other cake of Extee-Three, and assured Diamond, who assured his friends, that Pappy Vic would provide other pretties.

“Captain, you and Lieutenant Eggers and a couple of men stay here,” he said. “I think we have two more Fuzzies, and they may be back for more stones. Catch them by hand if you can, stun them if you have to. Try not to hurt them, but get them, and bring them to the Chief’s office. That’s where I’m going now.”

“CHRIST, I WISH they’d hurry! What do you think’s keeping them?”

That was the tenth or twelfth time Phil Novaes had said that in the last twenty minutes. Phil was getting on edge. Been on edge ever since they’d come here, and getting edgier every minute. Moses Herckerd was beginning to worry just a little about that. Losing your nerve was the surest way to disaster in a spot like this, and it would be disaster to both of them. Phil had been a little overconfident, at the beginning; that had been bad, too.

Getting the car hidden, on the unoccupied ninth level down, had been easy enough; they’d stowed it in one of the unfinished main office rooms close to where they’d kept the Fuzzies, two months ago. He knew the company police had started patrolling the unoccupied levels after that one damned Fuzzy had gotten away from them and, of all places, into Victor Grego’s own apartment. Still, the place where they’d left the car was safe enough.

The long descent, nearly a thousand feet, among the water mains and ventilation mains to the fifteenth level down, had been hard and dangerous, clinging to the contragravity lifter with the Fuzzies jostling about in the box. Once this was over, he hoped he’d never see another damned Fuzzy as long as he lived. Phil had been all right then; he’d had to keep his mind on what he was doing, keep the lifter from swinging out and carrying them away from the hand-holds. It had been after they had gotten onto this ledge at the ventilation duct outlet that Phil’s nerves had begun to get away from him.

“Take it easy, Phil,” he whispered. “They have half a mile, coming and going, through those ducts. And they have to fill their packs in the vault, and they always poke around doing that. Never can teach the buggers to hurry.”

“Well, something could have happened. Maybe they took a wrong turn and got lost. That place is a lot more complicated than the practice setup.”

“Oh, they’ll get out all right. They all made three trips already without anything going wrong, didn’t they?” he said. “And don’t talk so damned loud.”

That was what he was worried about, as much as anything. The whole company police force was concentrated around the place where he and Novaes were waiting. They were outside the actual police zone, but all the other emergency services — fire protection, radiation safety, the first-aid dispensaries and the ambulance hangars — were all around them, and sound carried an incredible distance through these shafts and air ducts and conduits.

“We have enough, now,” Phil said. “Let’s just pick up and go, now. Why, we must have fifty million already.”

“Bug out and leave the Fuzzies?”

“Hell with the Fuzzies,” Phil said.

“Hell with the Fuzzies, hell! Haven’t you found out yet that Fuzzies can talk? We’ve spent two months, now, cooped up indoors, because that Fuzzy Grego found put the finger on us. We’ve got to get all five back, and we’ve got to finish them off. If we don’t and the police get hold of them, they’ll finish us.”

Phil, who was stooping by the rectangular outlet, looked up.

“I hear something. A couple of them, talking.”

He turned on his hearing aid and put his head to the opening beside Phil’s. Yes, a couple of Fuzzies talking; arguing about how far it was yet.

“As soon as they come out, let’s just shove them into the chute,” Phil argued, nodding toward the access-port to the trash-chute, that went seven hundred feet down to the mass-energy converters.

That was where the Fuzzies would go, all of them, when the sunstones were all out of the vault. But the sunstones weren’t all out. He doubted if they had more than half of them, yet.

“No, not yet. Here they come; grab the first one.”

Novaes caught the Fuzzy as he came out. He caught the second. They were both carrying loaded packs. He slipped the straps down over the Fuzzy’s arms and gave him to Novaes to hold, then loosened the drawstrings, emptying the stones into the open suitcase along with the other gems. Then he put the rucksack onto the Fuzzy’s back.

“All right. In with you. Go get stones.”

The Fuzzy said something, he wasn’t sure what, in a complaining tone. Fusso; that meant food, or eat. Important word to a Fuzzy.

“No. You get stone; then I give fusso.” He shoved the Fuzzy back into the ventilation duct. “Let’s unload yours and send him back. As long as there’s sunstones in there, we want them.”

A UNIFORMED SERGEANT was holding down Chief Steefer’s desk, smoking what was probably one of the Chief’s cigars and talking to a girl in another screen. Across the room, Ernst Mallin, Ahmed Khadra and Sandra Glenn were talking to a Fuzzy who sat on the edge of a table, contentedly munching Extee-Three. Khadra was in evening clothes, and Sandra was wearing something glamorous with a lot of black lace. She was also wearing a sunstone which he hadn’t noticed before, on the third finger of her left hand. Wanted, Fuzzy-Sitter. Apply Victor Grego.

They set Diamond and his friends on the floor; he thanked and dismissed the men who had helped him with them. As soon as they saw the Fuzzy on the table, they raised an outcry and ran forward; the Fuzzy on the table dropped to the floor and hurried to meet them.

“What did you get from him?” he asked.

“Herckerd and Novaes, natch,” Khadra said, disgustedly. “All the time I was looking for a black market that wasn’t there, they were right here in town somewhere, being taught to steal sunstones. Fagin-racket, by God!”

“Herckerd and Novaes and who else?”

“Two other men, and one woman. And just the five Fuzzies Herekerd and Novaes brought in along with Diamond. They were somewhere not more than fifteen minutes by air from Company House all the time. This gang taught them to go through ventilator ducts, and open the screen-covers on the inlets, and use rope ladders and get stones out of cabinets. They must have had a mockup of the gem-vault and the ventilation system. They had to practice all the time. If they cleaned out the cabinets and brought the stones, river-gravel, I suppose, out, they got Extee-Three. If they goofed, they were punished, electric shock, I suppose, and shoved in a dungeon with nothing to eat. You know, they could be shot for that.”

“They oughtn’t to be shot; they ought to be burned at the stake!” Sandra cried angrily.

Gentler sex, indeed! “Well, I’ll settle for shooting, if we can catch them. Done anything in aid of that yet?”

“Not too much,” Mallin regretted. “His vocabulary is limited, and he hasn’t words for much that he experienced. We’ve been trying to learn his route through the ventilation system. He knows how he went in to the gem-vault, but he simply can’t verbalize it.”

“Diamond; you help Pappy Vic. Make talk for Unka Ernst, Unka Ahmed, Auntie Sandra; help other Fuzzies make talk about bad Big Ones, about place where were, about what make do, about how go through long little holes.” He turned to Khadra. “Has he seen Herckerd and Novaes on screen?”

“Not yet; we’ve just been talking to him, so far.”

“Better let all three of them see those audiovisuals; get identifications made. And keep on about the ventilation ducts. See if any of them can tell which way they went toward the gem vault, and what kind of a place they went in at.”