“Now, about Fuzzies,” he continued. “We’re sure that your two helpers, Herckerd and Novaes, brought this Fuzzy of mine here to Mallorysport. You say they didn’t have him when they came back with you?”
“Absolutely not, Mr. Grego.”
“Would you veridicate that?”
Jimenez didn’t want to, that was plain. But he did want to work for the Company, especially now that he had just been promoted to chief of Scientific Study and Research. He was as close to the top of the Company House hierarchy as he could get, and he wanted to stay there.
“Yes, of course. I’d hoped, though, that my word would be good enough…”
“Nobody’s word’s going to be good enough. I’m going to veridicate what I know about it, myself; so’s Ernst Mallin. There will be quite a few veridicated statements taken in the next few days. Now, I want you to meet this Fuzzy. See if you know him, or if he knows you.”
They went out to the private lift and up to the penthouse. In the living room, Sandra Glenn was lounging in his favorite chair, listening to something from a record player with an earphone, and smoking. As they entered, she shut off the player and closed her eyes. “Sojosso-aki; you give me,” she said. “Aki-jossoso; I give you. So-noho-aki dokko; you tell me how many.”
They tiptoed past her and out onto the terrace. Ernst Mallin was sitting on a low hassock, with his hearing aid on; Diamond was squatting in front of him, tying knots in a length of twine. An audiovisual recorder was set up to cover both of them. Diamond sprang to his feet and ran to meet them, crying out: “Pappy Vic! Heeta!” and holding up the cord to show the knots he had been learning to tie.
“Hello, Diamond. Those are very fine knots. You are a smart Fuzzy. How do I say that, Ernst?” Mallin said something, haltingly; he repeated it, patting the Fuzzy’s head. “Now, how do I ask him if he’s ever seen this Big One with me before?”
Mallin asked the question himself. Diamond said something; he caught “Vov,” a couple of times. That was negative.
“He doesn’t know you, Juan. What I’m sure happened is that Herckerd and Novaes came in with you, just before the trial, then went back to Beta, probably in the aircar they stole from us, and picked up this Fuzzy. We won’t know why till we catch them and question them.” He turned to Mallin. “Get anything more out of him?”
Mallin shook his head. “I’m picking up a few more words, but I still can’t be sure. He says two Hagga, the ones we showed him the films of, brought him here. I think they brought some other Fuzzies with him; I can’t be sure. There doesn’t seem to be any way of pluralizing in his language. He says they were tosh-ki gashta, bad people. They put him in a bad place.”
“We’ll put them in a bad place. Penitentiary place. I don’t suppose you can find out how long ago this was? During or right after the trial, I suppose.”
Sandra Glenn came out onto the terrace.
“Mr. Grego; Miss Fallada’s on screen. She says representatives of all the press-services are here. They’ve heard about Diamond; they want the story, and pictures of him.”
“That was all we needed! All right, tell her to have a policeman show them up. I’m afraid our lunch’ll have to wait till we get through with them, Juan.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
COMING OUT OF the lift, Jack Holloway advanced to let the others follow and halted, looking at the three men waiting to meet them in the foyer of Victor Grego’s apartment. Two he had met already: Ernst Mallin, under uniformly unpleasant circumstances culminating in the murder of Goldilocks, the beating of Leonard Kellogg, and the shooting of Kurt Borch, at his camp, and Leslie Coombes, first at George Lunt’s complaint court at Beta Fifteen and then in Judge Pendarvis’s court during the Fuzzy Trial. As the trial had dragged out, the frigid politeness with which he and Coombes had first met had thawed into something like mutual cordiality.
But, except for news-screen appearances, he had never seen Victor Grego before. Enemy generals rarely met while the fighting was going on. It struck him that, meeting Grego for the first time as a complete stranger, he would have instantly liked him. He had to remember that Grego was the man who had wanted to treat Fuzzies as fur-bearing animals and exterminate the whole race. Well, Grego hadn’t known any Fuzzies, then. It was easy enough to plan atrocities against verbal labels.
They paused for an instant, ten feet apart, Mallin and Coombes flanking Grego, and Gus Brannhard, Pancho Ybarra, Ahmed Khadra, and Flora and Fauna behind him, like two gangs waiting for somebody to pull a gun. Then Grego stepped forward, extending his hand.
“Mr. Holloway? Happy to meet you.” They shook hands. “You’ve met Mr. Coombes and Dr. Mallin. It was good of you to warn us you were coming.”
Ben Rainsford hadn’t thought so. He’d wanted them to descend on Company House by surprise, probably with drawn pistols, and catch Grego red-handed at whatever villainy he was up to. Brannhard and Coombes were shaking hands, so were Ybarra and Mallin. He introduced Ahmed Khadra.
“And these other people are Flora and Fauna,” he added. “I brought them along to meet Diamond.”
Grego stopped, and they came forward. He said, “Hello, Flora; hello, Fauna. Aki-gazza heeta-so.”
The accent was reasonably good, but he had to think between words. The two Fuzzies replied politely. Grego started to say that Diamond was out on the terrace, then laughed when he saw the Fuzzy peeping through the door from the living room. An instant later, Diamond saw Flora and Fauna and rushed forward, and they ran to meet him, all jabbering excitedly. A tall girl with red hair entered behind him; Grego introduced her as Sandra Glenn. And behind her came Juan Jimenez; regular Old Home Week.
“Shall we go in the living room, or out on the terrace?” Grego asked. “I’d advise the terrace; the living room might be a little crowded, with three Fuzzies getting acquainted. Sometimes it seems a trifle crowded with just one Fuzzy.”
They went through the living room; the quiet and tasteful luxury of its furnishings had suffered somewhat. There was an audiovisual recorder set up, and an extra reading screen and an audiovisual screen and a tape player; they looked more like office equipment than domestic furnishings. Evidently Fuzzies did the same things to living rooms everywhere. And another piece of furniture, surprising in any living room; a thing like an old-fashioned electric chair, with a bright metal helmet and a big translucent globe mounted above it. A polyencephalographic veridicator; Grego wasn’t expecting anybody to take his unsupported word about anything. They all affected not to notice it, and passed out onto the terrace.
This had evidently been Grego’s private garden; now it seemed to be mostly the Fuzzy’s. An awful lot of men must have been working awfully hard up here recently. There was a lot of playground equipment — swing, slide, skeletal construction of jointed pipe for climbing-bars. A little Fuzzy-sized drinking fountain, and a bathing pool. Grego seemed to have just thought of everything he’d like if he were a Fuzzy and gotten it. Diamond led Flora and Fauna to the slide, ran up the ladder, and came shooting down. They both ran after him and tried it, too, and then ran up to try it again. Have to get some playground stuff like that for the camp. Bet Flora and Fauna would start pestering Pappy Ben to get them some things like this, as soon as they got home.
According to plan, Ahmed Khadra and Pancho Ybarra stayed on the terrace with the Fuzzies; he and Gus and Grego and Mallin and Coombes went back inside. For a while, they chatted about Fuzzies in general and Diamond in particular. One thing was obvious: Grego liked Fuzzies, and was devoted to his own.