VICTOR GREGO HAD Leslie Coombes on screen; the lawyer was saying:
“The Chief Justice is not hostile. Hospitable, I’d say. I think he’s trying to be careful not to establish any precedent that might embarrass the Native Affairs Commission later. He was rather curious about how the Fuzzy got into Company House, though.”
“Tell him that makes two of us. So am I.”
“Have Steefer’s men found out anything yet?”
“Not that he’s reported. I’m going to talk to him shortly. The way things are, he’s spread out pretty thin.”
“It would help a lot if we could explain that. Would you be willing to make a veridicated statement of what you know?”
“With adequate safeguards. Not for anybody to pump me about business matters.”
“Naturally. How about Mallin and Jimenez?”
“They will if they want to keep on working for the company.” It surprised him that Coombes would even ask such a question. “You think it’s necessary?”
“I think it very advisable. Rainsford will certainly oppose your application; possibly Holloway. How about getting a statement from the Fuzzy?”
“Mallin and I tried, last evening. I don’t know any of the language, and he only has a few tapes he got from Lieutenant Ybarra at the time of the trial. We have hearing aids, now. It’s a hell of a language; sounds like Old Terran Japanese more than anything else. The Fuzzy was trying to tell us something, but we couldn’t make out what. We have it all on tape.
“And we showed him audiovisual portraits of those two Survey rangers who were helping Jimenez. He made both of them; I doubt if he likes them very much. We’re looking for them. We are also looking for a Company scout car that vanished along with them.”
“Vehicle theft’s a felony; that will do to hold and interrogate them on,” Coombes mentioned. “Well, shall I see you for cocktails?”
“Yes. You’d better call me, say every half-hour. If Rainsford gets nasty about this, I may need you before then.”
After that, he called Chief Steefer. Steefer greeted him with:
“Mr. Grego, how red is my face?”
“Not noticeably so. Should it be?”
Steefer swore. “Mr. Grego, I want your authorization to make an inch-by-inch search of this whole building.”
“Good God, Harry!” He was thinking of how many millions on millions of inches that was. “Have you found something?”
“Not about the Fuzzy, but — You have no idea what’s been going on here, on these unoccupied levels. We found places where people had been camping for weeks. We found one place where there must have been a nonstop party going on for a month; there was almost a lifter scow full of empty bottles. And we found a tea pad.”
“Yes? What was that like?”
“Nothing much; lot of mattresses thrown around, and the floor covered with butts — mostly chuckleweed or opiate-impregnated tobacco. I don’t think that was any of our people; everybody and his girlfriend in Mallorysport seems to have been sneaking in here. We have men at all the landing stages, of course, but there aren’t enough to…” His face hardened. “I’ve just gone slack on the job. That’s the only explanation I can make.”
“We’ve all gone slack, Harry.” He thought of the mess in his pantry; that was symptomatic. “You know, we may owe the Fuzzies a debt of gratitude, if what’s happened to us will make us start acting like a business concern instead of a bunch of kids in fairyland. All right; go ahead. Finding out how the Fuzzy got in here is still of top importance, but clean house generally while you’re at it and see that it stays cleaned up.”
Then he called Juan Jimenez at Science Center. Jimenez had gotten a new suit since yesterday, less casual, more executive. His public face had been done over too, to emphasize efficiency rather than agreeableness.
“Good morning, Victor.” He stumbled a little over the first name, which was a prerogative of a division chief but to which he was not yet accustomed.
“Good morning, Juan. I know you haven’t forgotten we’re lunching together, but I wondered if you could make it a little early. There are a couple of things we want to go over first. In twenty minutes?”
“Easily; sooner than that if you wish.”
“As soon as you can make it. Just come in the back way.”
Then he made another screen call. This was an outside call, for which he had to look up the combination. When the screen cleared, a thin-faced, elderly man with white hair looked out of it. He wore a gray work smock, the breast pockets full of small tools and calibrating instruments. His name was Henry Stenson, and he might have been called an instrument maker, just as Benvenuto Cellini might have been called a jeweler.
“Why, Mr. Grego,” he greeted, in pleased surprise, or reasonable facsimile. “I haven’t heard from you for some time.”
“No. Not since that gadget you planted in my globe stopped broadcasting. Incidentally, the globe’s about thirty seconds slow, and both moons are impossibly out of synchronization. We had to stop it to take out that thing you built into it, and none of my people has your fine touch.”
Stenson grimaced slightly. “I suppose you know for whom I did that?”
“Well, I’m not certain whether you’re Navy Intelligence, like our former employee, Ruth Ortheris, or Colonial Office Investigative Bureau; but that’s minor. Whoever, they’re to be congratulated on an excellent operative. You know, I could get quite nasty about that; planting radio-transmitted microphones in people’s offices is a felony. I don’t intend doing anything, but I definitely want no more of it. You can understand my attitude.”
“Well, naturally, Mr. Grego. You know,” he added, “I thought that thing was detection proof.”
“Instrumentally, yes. My people were awed when they saw the detection baffles on that thing. Have you patented them? If you have, we owe you some money, because we’re copying them. But nothing is proof against physical search, and we practically tore my office apart as soon as it became evident that anything said in it was known almost immediately on Xerxes Base.”
Stenson nodded gravely. “You didn’t call me just to tell me you’d caught me out? I knew that as soon as the radio went dead.”
“No. I want you to put the globe back in synchronization, as soon as possible. And there’s another thing. You helped the people on Xerxes design those ultrasonic hearing aids, didn’t you? Well, could you attack the problem from the other side, Mr. Stenson? I mean, design a little self-powered hand-phone, small enough for a Fuzzy to carry, that would transform the Fuzzy’s voice to audible frequencies?”
Stenson was silent for all of five seconds. “Yes, of course, Mr. Grego. If anything, it should be simpler. Of course, teaching the Fuzzy to carry and use it would be a problem, but not in my line of work.”
“Well, try and get an experimental model done as soon as possible. I have a Fuzzy available to try it. And if there’s anything patentable about it, get it protected. Talk to Leslie Coombes. This may be of commercial value to both of us.”
“You think there’ll be a demand?” Stenson asked. “How much do you think a Fuzzy would pay for one?”
“I think the Native Affairs Commission would pay ten to fifteen sols apiece for them, and I’m sure our electronics plant could turn them out to sell profitably for that.”
Somebody had entered the office; in one of the strategically placed mirrors, he saw that it was Juan Jimenez keeping out of the field of the screen-pickup. He nodded to him and went on talking to Stenson, who would be around the next morning to look at the globe. When they finished the conversation and blanked screens, he motioned Jimenez to his deskside chair.
“How much of that did you hear?” he asked.
“Well, I heard that white-haired old Iscariot say he’d be around tomorrow to fix the globe…”