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"I thought of something else, too. If this gang can make a deal with some
tramp freighter captain, they could ship Fuzzies off-planet and make terrific
profits on it. You wait till the news about the Fuz-zies gets around. There'll
be a sale for them everywhere-Terra, Odin, Freya, Marduk, Aton, Baldur,
planets like
that. Anybody can bring a ship into orbit on this planet, now, if he has his
own landing-craft and doesn't use the CZC spaceport. In a month, word will
have gotten to GimE, that's the nearest planet, and in two more months a ship
can get here from there."
"Spaceport. That could be why Ingermann's been harping on this nefarious CZC
space-terminal monopoly. If he had a little spaceport of his own, now. . ."
"Any kind of smuggling you can think of," Khadra said. "Hot sun-stones.
Narcotics. Or Fuzzies."
Rainsford and Sandra Glenn were approaching; Sandra carried Di-amond, Pierrot
and Columbine ran beside her, and Flora and Fauna were trundling the ball
ahead of them. He wanted to talk to Rains-ford about this. They needed more
laws, to prohibit shipping Fuzzies off-planet; nobody'd thought of that
possibility before. And talk to Grego; the company controlled the only
existing egress from the planet.
Lynne Andrews straightened and removed the binocular loop and laid it down,
blinking. The others, four men and two women in lab-smocks, were pushing aside
the spotlights and magnifiers and cam-eras on their swinging arms and laying
down instruments.
"That thing wouldn't have lived thirty seconds, even it if hadn't been
premature," one man said. "And it doesn't add a thing to what we don't know
about Fuzzy embryology." He was an embryologist, human-type, himself. "I have
dissected over five hundred aborted fe-tuses and I never saw one in worse
shape than that."
"It was so tiny," one of the women said. She was an obstetrician. "I can't
believe that that's human six-months equivalent."
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"Well, I can," somebody else said. "I know what a young Fuzzy looks like; I
spent a lot of time with Jack
Holloway's Baby Fuzzy, during the trial. And I don't suppose a fertilized
Fuzzy ovum is much different from one of ours. Between the two, there has to
be a regular progressive development. I say this one is two-thirds developed.
Mis-developed, I should say."
'Msdeveloped is correct, Doctor. Have you any idea why this one misdeveloped
as it did?"
"No, Doctor, I haven't."
"They come from northern Beta; that country's never been more than
air-scouted. Does anybody know what radioactivity conditions are, up there?
I've seen pictures of worse things than this from nu-clear bomb radiations on
Terra during and after the Third and Fourth World Wars, at the beginning of
the First
Federation."
"The country hasn't been explored, but it's been scanned. Any natural
radioactivity strong enough to do that would be detectable from Xerxes."
"Oh, Nifilheim; that fetus could have been conceived on a patch of pitchblende
no bigger than this table. .
."
"Well, couldn't it be chemical? Something in the pregnant female's diet?" the
other woman asked.
"The Thalidomide BabiesP' somebody exclaimed. "First Century, between the
Second and Third World
Wars. That was due to chemi-cals taken orally by pregnant women."
"All right; let's get the biochemists in on this, thenY
"Chris Hoenveld," somebody else said. "It's not too late to call him now."
Fuzzies didn't have Cocktail Hour; that was for the Big Ones, to sit together
and make Big One talk.
Fuzzies just came stringing in before dinner, more or less interested in food
depending on how the hunting had been, and after they ate they romped and
played until they were tired, and then sat in groups, talking idly until they
became sleepy.
In the woods, it had not been like that. When the sun began to go to bed, they
had found safe places, where the big animals couldn't get at them, and they
had snuggled together and slept, one staying awake all the time. But here the
Big Ones kept the animals away, and killed them with thunder-things when they
came too close, and it was safe. And the Big Ones had things that made light
even when the sky was dark, and there were places where it was always bright
as day. So here, there was more fun, because there was less danger, and many
new things to talk about. This was the Hoksu-Mitto, the Wonderful
Place.
And today, they were even happier, because today Pappy Jack had come back.
Little Fuzzy got out his pipe, the new one Pappy Jack had brought from the Big
House Place, and stuffed it with tobacco, and got out the little fire-maker.
Some of the Fuzzies around him, who had just come in from the woods, were
frightened. They were not used to fire; when fire happened in the woods, it
was bad. That was wild fire, though. The Big Ones had tamed fire, and if a
person were careful not to touch it or let it get loose, fire was nothing to
be afraid of.
We go other places, and all have Big Ones, tomorrow?" one asked. "Big Ones for
us, like Pappy Jack for you.
"Not tomorrow. Not next day. Day after that." He held up three fingers. "Then
go in high-up-thing, to place like this. Big Ones come, make talk. You like
Big One, Big One like you, you go with Big One, you live in Big One place."
"Nice place, like this?"
"Nice place. Not like this. Different place."
"Not want to go. Nice place here, much fun."
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"Then you not go. Pappy Jack not make you go. You want to go, Pappy Jack find
nice Big One for you, be good to you."
'Suppose not good. Suppose bad to us?"
"Then Pappy Jack come, Pappy Jorj, Unka Ahmed, Pappy Ge'hd, Unka Panko; make
much trouble for bad Big One, bang, bang, bang!"
14
MYRA was vexed. "It's Mr. Dunbar. The chief chemist at Synthetic Foods," she
added, as though he didn't know that. "He is here him-self; he has something
he insists he must give to you personally."
"That's what I told him to do, Myra. Send him in."
Malcolm Dunbar pushed through the door from Myra's office with an open
fiberboard carton under his arm. That had probably helped vex Myra; Dunbar was
an executive, and executives ought not to carry their own parcels; it was
infra dignitatem. He set it on the corner of the desk.
'Were it is, Mr. Grego; this is the first batch. We just finished the chemical
tests on it. Identical with both the Navy stuff and the stuff we imported
ourselves."
He rose and went around the desk, reaching into the carton and taking out a
light brown slab, breaking ofi a corner and tasting it. It had the same
slightly rancid, slightly oily and slightly sweetish flavor as the regular
product. It tasted as though it had been compounded according to the best
scientific principles of dietetics, by somebody who thought there was
something sinful about eating for pleasure. He yielded to no one in his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]