Little Fuzzy, H. Beam Piper [rainbow fish read aloud txt] 📗

“I’ve seen Terran monkeys and Freyan Kholphs that liked to watch screens and could turn them on and work the selector,” Lunt said. It sounded like the token last salvo before the surrender.

“Kholphs are smart,” Khadra agreed. “They use tools.”

“Do they make tools? Or tools to make tools with, like that saw?” There was no argument on that. “No. Nobody does that except people like us and the Fuzzies.”

It was the first time he had come right out and said that; the first time he had even consciously thought it. He realized that he had been convinced of it all along, though. It startled the constabulary lieutenant and trooper.

“You mean you think—?” Lunt began.

“They don’t talk, and they don’t build fires,” Ahmed Khadra said, as though that settled it.

“Ahmed, you know better than that. That talk-and-build-a-fire rule isn’t any scientific test at all.”

“It’s a legal test.” Lunt supported his subordinate.

“It’s a rule-of-thumb that was set up so that settlers on new planets couldn’t get away with murdering and enslaving the natives by claiming they thought they were only hunting and domesticating wild animals,” he said. “Anything that talks and builds a fire is a sapient being, yes. That’s the law. But that doesn’t mean that anything that doesn’t isn’t. I haven’t seen any of this gang building fires, and as I don’t want to come home sometime and find myself burned out, I’m not going to teach them. But I’m sure they have means of communication among themselves.”

“Has Ben Rainsford seen them yet?” Lunt asked.

“Ben’s off on a trip somewhere. I called him as soon as Little Fuzzy, over there, showed up here. He won’t be back till Friday.”

“Yes, that’s right; I did know that.” Lunt was still looking dubiously at the Fuzzies. “I’d like to hear what he thinks about them.”

If Ben said they were safe, Lunt would accept that. Ben was an expert, and Lunt respected expert testimony. Until then, he wasn’t sure. He’d probably order a medical check-up for himself and Khadra the first thing tomorrow, to make sure they hadn’t picked up some kind of bug.

The Fuzzies took the manipulator quite calmly the next morning. That wasn’t any horrible monster, that was just something Pappy Jack took rides in. He found one rather indifferent sunstone in the morning and two good ones in the afternoon. He came home early and found the family in the living room; they had dumped the wastebasket and were putting things back into it. Another land-prawn seemed to have gotten into the house; its picked shell was with the other rubbish in the basket. They had dinner early, and he loaded the lot of them into the airjeep and took them for a long ride to the south and west.

The following day, he located the flint vein on the other side of the gorge 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 shop around for a good power-shovel. He had to blast a channel to keep the little stream from damming up on him. He didn’t get any flint cracked at all that day. There was another harpy circling around the camp when he got back; he chased it with the manipulator and shot it down with his pistol. Harpies probably found Fuzzies as tasty as Fuzzies found land-prawns. The family were all sitting under the gunrack when he entered the living room.

The next day he cracked flint, and found three more stones. It really looked as though he had found the Dying Place of the Jellyfish at that. He knocked 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 in a faded Khaki bush-jacket sitting on the bench by the kitchen door, surrounded by Fuzzies. There was a camera and some other equipment laid up where the Fuzzies couldn’t get at it. Baby Fuzzy, of course, was sitting on his head. He looked up and waved, and then handed Baby to his mother and rose to his feet.

“Well, what do you think of them, Ben?” Jack called down, as he grounded the manipulator.

“My God, don’t start me on that now!” Ben Rainsford replied, and then laughed. “I stopped at the constabulary post on the way home. I thought George Lunt had turned into the biggest liar in the known galaxy. Then I went 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 as the manipulator was off contragravity. He climbed down among them, and they followed him across the grass, catching at his trouser legs and yeeking happily.

“Not so long.” Rainsford looked at his watch. “Good Lord, three and half hours is all. Well, the time passed quickly. You know, your little fellows have 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 to make a tape about them, if you’re willing.”

“Glad to. We’ll do that after we eat.” He sat down on the bench, and the Fuzzies began climbing upon and beside him. “This is the original, Little Fuzzy. He brought the rest in a couple of days later. Mamma Fuzzy, and Baby Fuzzy. And these are Mike and Mitzi. I call this one Ko-Ko, because of the ceremonious way he beheads land-prawns.”

“George says you call them all Fuzzies. Want that for the official designation?”

“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 to Latinize things in extraterrestrial zoology any more.

“I suppose our bumper crop of land-prawns is what brought them into this section?”

“Yes, of course. George was telling me you thought they’d come down from the north; about the only place they could have come from. This is probably just the advance guard; we’ll be having Fuzzies all over the place before long. I wonder how fast they breed.”

“Not very fast. Three males and two females in this crowd, and only one young one.” He set Mike and Mitzi off his lap and got to his feet. “I’ll go start dinner now. While I’m doing that, you can look at the stuff they brought in with them.”

When he had placed the dinner in the oven and taken a couple of highballs into the living room, Rainsford was still sitting at the desk, looking at the artifacts. He accepted his drink and sipped it absently, then raised his head.

“Jack, this stuff is absolutely amazing,” he said.

“It’s better than that. It’s unique. Only collection of native weapons and implements on Zarathustra.”

Ben Rainsford looked up sharply. “You mean what I think you mean?” he asked. “Yes; you do.” He drank some of his highball, set down the glass and picked up the polished-horn prawn-killer. “Anything—pardon, anybody—who does this kind of work is good enough native for me.” He hesitated briefly. “Why, Jack this tape you said you’d make. Can I transmit a copy to Juan Jimenez? He’s chief mammalogist with the Company science division; we exchange information. And there’s another Company man I’d like to have hear it. Gerd van Riebeek. He’s a general xeno-naturalist, like me, but he’s especially interested in animal evolution.”

“Why not? The Fuzzies are a scientific discovery. Discoveries ought to be reported.”

Little Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzi strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzy jumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen. Fiddling with the selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning. Mike and Mitzi shrieked delightedly, like a couple of kids watching a horror show. They knew, 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 screen and sat down to watch it. When the bell on the stove rang, they all got up, and Ko-Ko jumped onto the chair and snapped the screen off. Ben Rainsford looked at him for a moment.

“You know, I have married friends with children who have a hell of a time teaching eight-year-olds to turn off screens when they’re through watching them,” he commented.

It took an hour, after dinner, to get the whole story, from the first little yeek in the shower stall, on tape. When he had finished, Ben Rainsford made a few remarks and shut off the recorder, then looked at his watch.

“Twenty hundred; it’ll be seventeen hundred in Mallorysport,” he said. “I could catch Jimenez at Science Center if I called now. He usually works a little late.”

“Go ahead. Want to show him some Fuzzies?” He moved his pistol and some other impedimenta off the table and set Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and Baby upon it, then drew up a chair beside it, in range of the communication screen, and sat down with Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko. Rainsford punched out a wavelength combination. Then he picked up Baby Fuzzy and set him on his head.

In a moment, the screen flickered and cleared, and a young man looked out of it, with the momentary upward glance of one who wants to make sure his public face is on straight. It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face—the face turned out in thousands of copies every 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 the name of Dai-Butsu are those things on the table in front of you?” he demanded. “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 is Jack Holloway, the sunstone operator, who is the original discoverer. Jack, Juan Jimenez.”

They shook their own hands at one another in the ancient Terran-Chinese gesture that was used on communication screens, and assured each other—Jimenez rather absently—that it was a pleasure. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Fuzzies.

“Where did they come from?” he wanted to know.