“Human entrance, that is.”
“Yes. Lansky had a couple of detectives look those places over last night; he says that a Fuzzy could have squirmed into all of them. I had reports on all of it as it happened. Incidentally, there was nothing reported for last night, which confirms the supposition that your Fuzzy was responsible for all of it.”
“Regular little vest-pocket crime wave, aren’t you.” He pummeled the Fuzzy gently. “And there was nothing before the night of the sixteenth or below the eighth level down?”
“That’s right, Mr. Grego. I wanted to talk to you before I did anything, but there may be a chance that either Dr. Mallin or Dr. Jimenez may know something about it.”
“I’ll talk to both of them, myself. Dr. Jimenez was over on Beta until a day or so before the trial; after he’d trapped the four Dr. Mallin was studying, he stayed on to study the Fuzzies in habitat. He had a couple of men helping him, paid hunters or rangers or something of the sort.”
“I’ll find out who they were,” Steefer said. “And, of course, almost anybody who works out of Company House on Beta Continent may have picked the Fuzzy up and brought him back and let him get away. We’ll do all we can to find out about this, Mr. Grego.”
He thanked Steefer and blanked the screen, and punched out the call combination of Leslie Coombes’s apartment. Coombes, in a dressing gown, answered at once; he was in his library, with a coffee service and a stack of papers in front of him. He smiled and greeted Grego; then his eyes shifted, and the smile broadened.
“Well! Touching scene; Victor Grego and his Fuzzy. If you can’t lick them, join them,” he commented. “When and where did you pick him up?”
“I didn’t; he joined me.” He told Coombes about it. “What I want to find out now is who brought him here.”
“My advice is, have him flown back to Beta and turned loose in the woods where he came from. Rainsford agreed not to prosecute us for what we did before the trial, but if he finds you’re keeping a Fuzzy at Company House now, he’ll throw the book at you.”
“But he likes it here. He wants to stay with Pappy Vic. Don’t you, kid?” he asked. The Fuzzy said something that sounded like agreement. “Suppose you go to Pendarvis and make application for papers of guardianship for me, like the ones he gave Holloway and George Lunt and Rainsford.”
A gleam began to creep into Leslie Coombes’s eyes. He’d like nothing better than a chance at a return bout with Gus Brannhard, with a not-completely-hopeless case.
“I believe I could…” Then he banished temptation. “No; we have too much on our hands now, without another Fuzzy trial. Get rid of him, Victor.” He held up a hand to forestall a protest. “I’ll be around for cocktails, about 1730-ish,” he said, “You think it over till then.”
Well, maybe Leslie was right. He agreed, and for a while they talked about the political situation. The Fuzzy became bored and jumped down from the table. After they blanked their screens he looked around and couldn’t see him.
The door to the pantry-storeroom-toolroom-junkroom was open; maybe he was in there investigating things. That was all right; he couldn’t make the existing mess any worse. Grego poured more coffee and lit another cigarette.
There was a loud crash from beyond the open door, and an alarmed yeek, followed by more crashing and thumping and Fuzzy cries of distress. Jumping to his feet, he ran to the door and looked inside.
The Fuzzy was in the middle of a puddle of brownish gunk that had spilled from an open five gallon can which seemed to have fallen from a shelf. Sniffing, he recognized it — a glaze for baked meats, mostly molasses, that the chef had mixed from a recipe of his own. It took about a pint to glaze a whole ham, so the damned fool had mixed five gallons of it. Most of it had gone on the Fuzzy, and in attempting to get away from the deluge he had upset a lot of jars of spices and herbs, samples of which were sticking to his fur. Then he had put his foot on a sheet of paper, and it had stuck; trying to pull it loose, it had stuck to his hands, too. As soon as he saw Pappy Vic, he gave a desperate yeek of appeal.
“Yes, yeek yourself.” He caught the Fuzzy, who flung both adhesive arms around his neck. “Come on, here; let’s get you cleaned up.”
Carrying the Fuzzy into the bathroom, he dumped him into the tub, then tore off the hopelessly ruined shirt. Trousers all spotted with the stuff, too; change them when he finished the job. He brought a jar of shampoo soap from the closet and turned on the hot water, tempering it to what he estimated the Fuzzy could stand.
Now, wasn’t this a Nifflheim of a business? As if he hadn’t anything to do but wash Fuzzies.
He rubbed the soap into the Fuzzy’s fur; the Fuzzy first resented and then decided he liked it, shrieked in pleasure, and grabbed a handful of the soap and tried to shampoo Grego. Finally, they got finished with it. The Fuzzy liked the hot-air dryer, too. He’d never had a shampoo before.
His fur clean and dry and fluffy, he sat on the bed and watched Pappy Vic change clothes. It was amazing the way the Big Ones could change their outer skins; must be very convenient. He made remarks, from time to time, and Grego carried on a conversation with him.
After he had dressed, Grego recorded a message for the houseboy, to be passed on to the chef and the gardener, to get everything to Nifflheim out of that back room that didn’t belong there, and to keep what little did in some kind of decent order. If that place could be kept in order, now, the Fuzzy had one positive accomplishment to his credit.
They took the lift down to the top executive level — lifts appeared to be a new experience for the Fuzzy, too — and into his private office. The Fuzzy looked around in wonder, especially at the big globe of Zarathustra, floating six feet off the floor on its own built-in contragravity unit, spotlighted from above to simulate Zarathustra’s KO-class sun, its two satellites circling around it. Finally, for a better view, he jumped up on a chair.
“If I had any idea you’d stay there…” He flipped the screen switch and got Myra on it. “I had a few things to clean up before I could come down,” he told her, with literal truthfulness. “How many girls have we in the front office, this morning?”
There were eight, and they were all busy. Myra started to tell him what with; maybe four could handle it at a pinch, and six without undue strain. That was another thing the Charterless Zarathustra Company would have to economize on.
“Well, they can look after the Fuzzy, too,” he said. “Take turns with him. He’s in here, trying to make up his mind what kind of deviltry to get into next. Come get him, and take him out and tell the girls to keep him innocently amused.”
“But, Mr. Grego; they have work…”
“This is more work. We’ll find out which one gets along best with him, and promote her to chief Fuzzy-sitter. Are we going to let one Fuzzy disrupt our whole organization?”
Myra started to remind him of what the Fuzzies had done to the company already, then said, “Yes, Mr. Grego,” and blanked the screen. A moment later she entered.
She and the Fuzzy looked at one another in mutual hostility and suspicion. She took a hesitant step forward; the Fuzzy yeeked angrily, dodged when she reached for him, and ran to Grego, jumping onto his lap.
“She won’t hurt you,” he soothed. “This is Myra; she likes Fuzzies. Don’t you, Myra?” “He stroked the Fuzzy. “I’m afraid he doesn’t like you.”
“Well, that makes it mutual,” Myra said. “Mr. Grego, I am your secretary. I am not an animal keeper.”