IV
The Fuzzies took the manipulator quite calmly the next morning. Thatwasn't any horrible monster, that was just something Pappy Jack took ridesin. He found one rather indifferent sunstone in the morning and two goodones in the afternoon. He came home early and found the family in theliving room; they had dumped the wastebasket and were putting things backinto it. Another land-prawn seemed to have gotten into the house; itspicked shell was with the other rubbish in the basket. They had dinnerearly, and he loaded the lot of them into the airjeep and took them for along ride to the south and west.
The following day, he located the flint vein on the other side of thegorge and spent most of the morning blasting away the sandstone above it.The next time he went into Mallorysport, he decided, he was going to shoparound for a good power-shovel. He had to blast a channel to keep thelittle stream from damming up on him. He didn't get any flint cracked atall that day. There was another harpy circling around the camp when he gotback; he chased it with the manipulator and shot it down with his pistol.Harpies probably found Fuzzies as tasty as Fuzzies found land-prawns. Thefamily were all sitting under the gunrack when he entered the living room.
The next day he cracked flint, and found three more stones. It reallylooked as though he had found the Dying Place of the Jellyfish at that. Heknocked off early that afternoon, and when he came in sight of the camp,he saw an airjeep grounded on the lawn and a small man with a red beard ina faded Khaki bush-jacket sitting on the bench by the kitchen door,surrounded by Fuzzies. There was a camera and some other equipment laid upwhere the Fuzzies couldn't get at it. Baby Fuzzy, of course, was sittingon his head. He looked up and waved, and then handed Baby to his motherand rose to his feet.
"Well, what do you think of them, Ben?" Jack called down, as he groundedthe manipulator.
"My God, don't start me on that now!" Ben Rainsford replied, and thenlaughed. "I stopped at the constabulary post on the way home. I thoughtGeorge Lunt had turned into the biggest liar in the known galaxy. Then Iwent home, and found your call on the recorder, so I came over here."
"Been waiting long?"
The Fuzzies had all abandoned Rainsford and come trooping over as soon asthe manipulator was off contragravity. He climbed down among them, andthey followed him across the grass, catching at his trouser legs andyeeking happily.
"Not so long." Rainsford looked at his watch. "Good Lord, three and halfhours is all. Well, the time passed quickly. You know, your little fellowshave good ears. They heard you coming a long time before I did."
"Did you see them killing any prawns?"
"I should say! I got a lot of movies of it." He shook his head slowly."Jack, this is almost incredible."
"You're staying for dinner, of course?"
"You try and chase me away. I want to hear all about this. Want you tomake a tape about them, if you're willing."
"Glad to. We'll do that after we eat." He sat down on the bench, and theFuzzies began climbing upon and beside him. "This is the original, LittleFuzzy. He brought the rest in a couple of days later. Mamma Fuzzy, andBaby Fuzzy. And these are Mike and Mitzi. I call this one Ko-Ko, becauseof the ceremonious way he beheads land-prawns."
"George says you call them all Fuzzies. Want that for the officialdesignation?"
"Sure. That's what they are, isn't it?"
"Well, let's call the order Hollowayans," Rainsford said. "Family,Fuzzies; genus, Fuzzy. Species, Holloway's Fuzzy--_Fuzzy fuzzy holloway_.How'll that be?"
That would be all right, he supposed. At least, they didn't try toLatinize things in extraterrestrial zoology any more.
"I suppose our bumper crop of land-prawns is what brought them into thissection?"
"Yes, of course. George was telling me you thought they'd come down fromthe north; about the only place they could have come from. This isprobably just the advance guard; we'll be having Fuzzies all over theplace before long. I wonder how fast they breed."
"Not very fast. Three males and two females in this crowd, and only oneyoung one." He set Mike and Mitzi off his lap and got to his feet. "I'llgo start dinner now. While I'm doing that, you can look at the stuff theybrought in with them."
When he had placed the dinner in the oven and taken a couple of highballsinto the living room, Rainsford was still sitting at the desk, looking atthe artifacts. He accepted his drink and sipped it absently, then raisedhis head.
"Jack, this stuff is absolutely amazing," he said.
"It's better than that. It's unique. Only collection of native weapons andimplements on Zarathustra."
Ben Rainsford looked up sharply. "You mean what I think you mean?" heasked. "Yes; you do." He drank some of his highball, set down the glassand picked up the polished-horn prawn-killer. "Anything--pardon,anybody--who does this kind of work is good enough native for me." Hehesitated briefly. "Why, Jack this tape you said you'd make. Can Itransmit a copy to Juan Jimenez? He's chief mammalogist with the Companyscience division; we exchange information. And there's another Company manI'd like to have hear it. Gerd van Riebeek. He's a generalxeno-naturalist, like me, but he's especially interested in animalevolution."
"Why not? The Fuzzies are a scientific discovery. Discoveries ought to bereported."
Little Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzi strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzyjumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen. Fiddling withthe selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning. Mike and Mitzishrieked delightedly, like a couple of kids watching a horror show. Theyknew, by now, that nothing in the screen could get out and hurt them.
"Would you mind if they came out here and saw the Fuzzies?"
"Why, the Fuzzies would love that. They like company."
Mamma and Baby and Ko-Ko came in, seemed to approve what was on the screenand sat down to watch it. When the bell on the stove rang, they all gotup, and Ko-Ko jumped onto the chair and snapped the screen off. BenRainsford looked at him for a moment.
"You know, I have married friends with children who have a hell of a timeteaching eight-year-olds to turn off screens when they're through watchingthem," he commented.
* * * * *
It took an hour, after dinner, to get the whole story, from the firstlittle yeek in the shower stall, on tape. When he had finished, BenRainsford made a few remarks and shut off the recorder, then looked at hiswatch.
"Twenty hundred; it'll be seventeen hundred in Mallorysport," he said. "Icould catch Jimenez at Science Center if I called now. He usually works alittle late."
"Go ahead. Want to show him some Fuzzies?" He moved his pistol and someother impedimenta off the table and set Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy andBaby upon it, then drew up a chair beside it, in range of thecommunication screen, and sat down with Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko.Rainsford punched out a wavelength combination. Then he picked up BabyFuzzy and set him on his head.
In a moment, the screen flickered and cleared, and a young man looked outof it, with the momentary upward glance of one who wants to make sure hispublic face is on straight. It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted,group-integrated sort of face--the face turned out in thousands of copiesevery year by the educational production lines on Terra.
"Why, Bennett, this is a pleasant surprise," he began. "I never expec--"Then he choked; at least, he emitted a sound of surprise. "What in thename of Dai-Butsu are those things on the table in front of you?" hedemanded. "I never saw anything--_And what is that on your head?_"
"Family group of Fuzzies," Rainsford said. "Mature male, mature female,immature male." He lifted Baby Fuzzy down and put him in Mamma's arms."Species _Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra_. The gentleman on my left isJack Holloway, the sunstone operator, who is the original discoverer.Jack, Juan Jimenez."
They shook their own hands at one another in the ancient Terran-Chinesegesture that was used on communication screens, and assured eachother--Jimenez rather absently--that it was a pleasure. He couldn't takehis eyes off the Fuzzies.
"Where did they come from?" he
wanted to know. "Are you sure they'reindigenous?"
"They're not quite up to spaceships, yet, Dr. Jimenez. Fairly earlyPaleolithic, I'd say."
Jimenez thought he was joking, and laughed. The sort of a laugh that couldbe turned on and off, like a light. Rainsford assured him that the Fuzzieswere really indigenous.
"We have everything that's known about them on tape," he said. "About anhour of it. Can you take sixty-speed?" He was making adjustments on therecorder as he spoke. "All right, set and we'll transmit to you. And canyou get hold of Gerd van Riebeek? I'd like him to hear it too; it's asmuch up his alley as anybody's."
When Jimenez was ready, Rainsford pressed the play-off button, and for aminute the recorder gave a high, wavering squeak. The Fuzzies all lookedstartled. Then it ended.
"I think, when you hear this, that you and Gerd will both want to come outand see these little people. If you can, bring somebody who's a qualifiedpsychologist, somebody capable of evaluating the Fuzzies' mentation. Jackwasn't kidding about early Paleolithic. If they're not sapient, they onlymiss it by about one atomic diameter."
Jimenez looked almost as startled as the Fuzzies had. "You surely don'tmean that?" He looked from Rainsford to Jack Holloway and back. "Well,I'll call you back, when we've both heard the tape. You're three timezones west of us, aren't you? Then we'll try to make it before yourmidnight--that'll be twenty-one hundred."
He called back half an hour short of that. This time, it was from theliving room of an apartment instead of an office. There was a portablerecord player in the foreground and a low table with snacks and drinks,and two other people were with him. One was a man of about Jimenez's agewith a good-humored, non-life-adjusted, non-group-integrated and slightlyweather-beaten face. The other was a woman with glossy black hair and aMona Lisa-ish smile. The Fuzzies had gotten sleepy, and had been bribedwith Extee Three to stay up a little longer. Immediately, they registeredinterest. This was more fun than the viewscreen.
Jimenez introduced his companions as Gerd van Riebeek and Ruth Ortheris."Ruth is with Dr. Mallin's section; she's been working with the schooldepartment and the juvenile court. She can probably do as well with yourFuzzies as a regular xeno-psychologist."
"Well, I have worked with extraterrestrials," the woman said. "I've beenon Loki and Thor and Shesha."
Jack nodded. "Been on the same planets myself. Are you people coming outhere?"
"Oh, yes," van Riebeek said. "We'll be out by noon tomorrow. We may stay acouple of days, but that won't put you to any trouble; I have a boatthat's big enough for the three of us to camp on. Now, how do we get toyour place?"
Jack told him, and gave map coordinates. Van Riebeek noted them down.
"There's one thing, though, I'm going to have to get firm about. I don'twant to have to speak about it again. These little people are to betreated with consideration, and not as laboratory animals. You will nothurt them, or annoy them, or force them to do anything they don't want todo."
"We understand that. We won't do anything with the Fuzzies without yourapproval. Is there anything you'd want us to bring out?"
"Yes. A few things for the camp that I'm short of; I'll pay you for themwhen you get here. And about three cases of Extee Three. And some toys.Dr. Ortheris, you heard the tape, didn't you? Well, just think what you'dlike to have if you were a Fuzzy, and bring it."