The Company lawyer nodded. “That’s right. Got the adoptions fixed up Saturday. I am now Pappy Less’ee, with papers to prove it.” He finished his cocktail. “You know, I never realized till I brought that gang in last Monday what I was missing.” He looked around, at Pappy Vic and Pappy Jack and Pappy Ben and Pappy Gus. “You all know what I mean.”
“But you’re going to Terra after the general election; you’ll be gone for a couple of years. Who’ll take care of them while you’re gone?”
“I will. I am taking my family with me,” Coombes said.
The idea of taking Fuzzies off Zarathustra hadn’t occurred to Jack Holloway, and he was automatically against it.
“It’ll be all right, Jack. Juan Jimenez’s people tell me that a Fuzzy will be perfectly able to adapt to Terran conditions; won’t even need to adapt. They’ll be as healthy there as they are here.”
That much was right. Conditions were practically identical on both planets.
“And they’ll be happy, Jack,” Coombes was saying. “They just want to be with Pappy Less’ee. You know, I never had anybody love me the way those Fuzzies do. And everybody on Terra will be crazy about them.”
That was it. That was what Fuzzies wanted, more than chopper-diggers and shoulder bags, more than rifles and things to play with and learning about the Big Ones’ talk-marks, more even than Extee-Three: affection. It had been the need for that, he knew now, that had brought Little Fuzzy to him out of the woods, and the others after him. More than anything he could give, it was Little Fuzzy’s promise that all Fuzzies would have Big Ones of their own to love them and take care of them and be good to them that appealed to the Fuzzies at Hoksu-Mitto. They needed affection as they needed air and water, just as all children did.
That was what they were — permanent children. The race would mature, sometime in the far future. But meanwhile, these dear, happy, loving little golden-furred children would never grow up. He picked up his glass and finished it, then sat holding it, looking at the ice in it, and felt a great happiness relaxing him. He hadn’t anything to worry about. The Fuzzies wouldn’t ever turn into anything else. They’d just stay Fuzzies: active, intelligent children, who loved to hunt and romp and make things and find things out, but children who would always have to be watched over and taken care of and loved. He must have realized that, subconsciously, from the beginning when he’d started Little Fuzzy to calling him Pappy Jack.
And gosh! Eight Fuzzies going for a big-big trip with Pappy Less’ee. New things to see, and Pappy Less’ee to show them everything and tell them about it. And after a few years, they’d come back… and all the wonderful things they’d have to tell.
He let Grego take his glass and mix him another highball, then picked it up and relighted the pipe that had gone out.
Damned if he didn’t wish sometimes that he was a Fuzzy!