And he brought out, of all things, a big sunstone. It’d run about twenty to twenty-five carats. He rubbed it till it glowed.
“Look! Pretty!”
Grego set Diamond on the floor and came over to look; so did Diamond. Steefer and Durrante had also left their chairs.
“Where you get, Little Fuzzy?” Grego asked.
Steefer and Durrante were just swearing. People’d have to stop swearing around Fuzzies; Little Fuzzy was beginning to curse like a spaceport labor-boss already.
“Up little moving-water, run, come into lake where we make camp to make raft.”
“You sure you didn’t get this here at Yellowsand?”
“I tell you where I get. I not tell you not-so thing.”
No, they could depend on that; Fuzzies didn’t tell not-so things. Damnit!
“Good God! You know what’ll happen if this gets out,” Grego said. “Every son of a Khooghra and his brother who can scare up air-vehicles will be swarming in there. We can keep them off Yellowsand, but there’s too much country up there. Need an army to police it.”
“Why don’t you operate it?”
Grego’s language became as lurid as the forest-fire.
“We need more sunstone-diggings like we need a hole in the head. If our lease is upheld, we’ll cut work here to about twenty percent of the present rate. What do you want us to do, flood the market? Get enough sunstones out and they won’t be worth the S-450 royalty the Fuzzies are getting.”
That was true. They’d had that same trouble with diamonds on Terra, back Pre-Atomic.
“Little Fuzzy,” he said, “you found shining-stone like you tell. Is yours.”
“My God, Jack!” Harry Steefer almost howled. “That thing’s worth twenty-five grand!”
“That doesn’t make a damn’s worth of difference. Little Fuzzy found it, it’s his. Now listen, Little Fuzzy. You keep, you not lose, not give to anybody. You keep safe, all time. Savvy?”
“Yes, sure. Is pretty. Always want shining-stone.”
“You not show to people you not know. Anybody see, maybe be bad Big One, try to take. And anybody ask where you get, you say, Pappy Vic give you, because you find here at Yellowsand.”
“But not find here. Find in hard-stone, in little moving-water…”
“I know, I know!” This was what Leslie Coombes and Ernst Mallin always ran into. “Is not-so thing. But you can say.”
Little Fuzzy looked puzzled. Then he gave a laugh.
“Sure! Can say not-so thing! Wise One say not-so thing once. Say he see damnthing; was no damnthing at all. Tell rest of band, they all think is so.”
“Huh?” Victor Grego looked at Little Fuzzy, and then at the Fuzzy with the whistle hung around his neck and the bandage-turban on his head. “Tell about, Wise One.”
Wise One shrugged; an Old Terran Frenchman couldn’t have done it better.
“Others want to stay in place, once. I want to go on, hunt for Big One Place, make friends with Big Ones. They not want. They afraid, want to stay in same place all time. So, I tell them big dam’fing come, chase me, chase Stabber, come eat everybody up. They all frightened. All jump up, make run away up mountain, go down other side. Then, forget about place they want to stay, go on to sun’s left — to south, like I want.”
One of the females howled like a miniature police-siren, and not so miniature, either. With his ultrasonic hearing aid on, it almost shattered Victor’s ear.
“You make talk you see hesh-nazza, hesh-nazza come eat us all up, and no hesh-nazza at all?” She was dumbfounded with horrified indignation. “You make us run away from nice-place, good-to-eat things… ?”
“Jeeze-krise sunnabish!” Wise One shouted at her. He’d only been around Little Fuzzy a week, and listen to him. “You think this not nice-place? We stay where you want, we never see nice-place like this. You make talk about good-to-eat things; you think we get estee-fee in place you want to stay? You think we get smokko? You think we find Big Ones, make friends? You make bloody-hell talk like big fool!”
“You mean, you told these other Fuzzies you saw a damnthing and you knew you hadn’t at all?” Grego demanded. “Well, hallelujah, praise Saint Beelzebub! You talk to the kids, Jack; I’m going to call Leslie Coombes right away!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HUGO INGERMANN LOOKED up at the big screen above the empty bench, which showed, like a double-reflecting mirror, a view of the courtroom behind him, filling with spectators. It was jammed, even the balcony above. Well, he’d be playing to a good house, anyhow.
He had nothing to worry about, he told himself. Either way it came out, he’d be safe. If he got his clients acquitted by the faginy and enslavement charges — even a collaboration of Blackstone, Daniel Webster and Clarence Darrow couldn’t do anything with the burglary and larceny charges — that would be that. Of course, he’d be the most execrated man on Zarathustra, with all this publicity about Little Fuzzy and the forest-fire and the rescue, but that wouldn’t last. It wouldn’t alter the fact that he’d accomplished a courtroom masterpiece, and it would bring clients in droves. Well, maybe he’s a crooked son of a Khooghra, but he’s a smart lawyer, you gotta give him that. And people forgot soon; he knew people. It would bring back a lot of his People’s Prosperity Party followers who had defected after he’d been smeared with the gem vault job. And in a few months, the rush of immigrants would come in, all hoping to get rich on what the CZC had lost, and all sore as hell when they found there was nothing to grab. When they heard that he was the man who dared buck Rainsford and Victor Grego together, they’d rally to him, and a year after they landed they’d all be eligible to vote.
If things went sour, he had a line of retreat open. He congratulated himself on the timing that had accomplished that. He didn’t want to have to use it, he wanted to win here in court, but if anything went wrong…
Still, he was tense and jumpy. He wondered if he oughtn’t to take another tranquilizer. No, he’d been eating those damn things like candy. He started to straighten the papers on the table in front of him, then forced his hands to be still. Mustn’t let people see him fidgeting.
A stir in front to the left of the bench; door opened, jury filing in to take their seats. Now there were twelve good cretins and true, total IQ around 250. He’d fought to the death to exclude anybody with brains enough to pour sand out of a boot with printed directions on the bottom of the heel. He looked over to the table where Gus Brannhard was fluffing his whiskers with his left hand and smiling happily at the ceiling, wondering if Brannhard had any idea why he’d dragged out the jury selection for four days.
The other door opened. In came Colonial Marshal Fane, preceded by his rotund tummy, and then Leo Thaxter and Conrad and Rose Evins and Phil Novaes, followed by two uniformed deputies, one of them fondling his pistol-butt hopefully. They were all dressed in the courtroom outfits he had selected: Thaxter in light gray — as long as he kept his mouth shut anybody would take him for a pillar of the community; Conrad Evins in black, with a dark blue neckcloth; Rose Evins also in black, relieved by a few touches of pale blue; Phil Novaes in dark gray, smart but ultraconservative. Who’d think four respectables like this were a bunch of fagins and slavers? He got them seated at the table with him. Thaxter was scowling at the jury.
“Smile, you stupid ape!” he hissed. “Those people have a 10-mm against the back of your head. Don’t make them want to pull the trigger.”
He beamed affectionately at Thaxter. Thaxter’s scowl deepened, then he tried, not too successfully, to beam back. He didn’t have the face for it.
“You know what’s against that back of yours,” he whispered.
Yes, and he wished he hadn’t put himself in front of it in the first place. Ought to have refused to have anything to do with this case, but, my God… !