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.
The Fuzzies had done him all the damage they could. Now he could be friends with them.
“I suppose you want to hear how he turned up here? If you don’t mind, I’d prefer veridicating what I have to tell you, so there won’t be any argument about it. Do you want to test the machine first, Mr. Brannhard?”
“It would be a good idea. Jack, you want to be the test witness?”
“If you do the questioning.”
A veridicator operated by identifying and registering the distinctive electromagnetic brainwave pattern involved in suppression of a true statement and substitution of a false one. You didn’t have to do that aloud; a mere intention to falsify would turn the blue light in the globe red, and even a yogi adept couldn’t control his thoughts enough to prevent it. He took his place in the chair, and Brannhard clipped on the electrodes and lowered the helmet over his head.
“What is your name?”
He answered that truthfully, and Gus nodded and asked him his place of residence.
“How old are you?”
He lied ten years off his age. The veridicator caught that at once; Gus wanted to know how old he really was.
“Seventy-four: I was born in 580. I couldn’t even estimate how much to allow for on time-differential for hyperspace trips.”
“That’s the truth,” Gus said. “I didn’t think you were much over sixty.”
Then he asked about the planets he’d been on. Jack named them, including one he’d never been within fifty light-years of, and the veridicator caught that. He ended in a crimson blaze of mendacity by claiming to be a teetotaler, a Gandhian pacifist, and the illegitimate son of a Satanist archbishop. Brannhard was satisfied; the veridicator worked. He unfastened Jack, and Grego took his place.
The globe stayed blue all through Grego’s account of how he had found Diamond in his bedroom; it was the same story they had already gotten from newscasts while coming in from Beta. Then Grego gave place to Mallin, and Mallin to Jimenez. They were all uninvolved in bringing the Fuzzy to Mallorysport, and the veridicator supported them. They all agreed that Diamond had recognized Herckerd and Novaes as the men who had brought him and possibly other Fuzzies there.
“What do you think?” Coombes asked, when they were all back in their chairs. “Do you think they brought those Fuzzies in to sell as pets?”
“I can’t see any other reason. I’ve been expecting something like this. Why would they bring them to Company House, though? I don’t quite see the sense in that.”
“I do.” Grego was angry about something. What he was angry about emerged immediately; he spoke bitterly about what had been going on among the unoccupied rooms of Company House. “Chief Steefer’s on the warpath, starting with his own department. We have wants out for Herckerd and Novaes, on a stolen-vehicle charge…”
“Forget about that,” Brannhard advised. “That’s petty larcency to what I’m going to charge them with.”
Khadra came in from outside; he took off his beret, but left his pistol on.
“Well, there were six of them,” he said. “Diamond, and five others. Herckerd and Novaes — he’s positive about the identification — brought them in and kept them for a couple of days in a dark room somewhere in this building. Then the others were taken away; Diamond made a break and got away from the two tosh-ki Hagga while they were being put in the aircar. He doesn’t know how long ago it was — three sleeps, he says. He found things to eat, and he found water to drink, and then Pappy Vic found him and gave him wonderful-food. He doesn’t know what happened to his friends; he hopes they got away too.”
“They didn’t in here,” Grego said. “Are you going to hunt for them?”
“We certainly are.”
“And if anything’s happened to them, we’ll hunt for Herckerd and Novaes till they die of old age if we don’t catch them first,” Brannhard added.
“How’s Diamond like it here, Ahmed?”
“Oh, wonderful. He’s the happiest Fuzzy I ever saw, and I never saw any real melancholy Fuzzies. You have a mighty nice Fuzzy, Mr. Grego.”
“Well, that’s if I’ll be allowed to keep him,” Grego said.
“My report’s going to be very favorable,” Khadra told him.
“Of course you will, Mr. Grego. You like the Fuzzy, and he likes you, and he’s happy here. That’s all I’m interested in.”
“I’m afraid Governor Rainsford isn’t going to see it like that, Mr. Holloway.”
“Governor Rainsford isn’t Commissioner of Native Affairs. And he isn’t the Federation Courts. The way Judge Pendarvis told me a week ago, the court will accept the advice of the Commission on Fuzzy questions.”
“The Attorney-General has a little influence with the court, too,” Brannhard said. “The Attorney-General will recommend granting your application for adoption.” He rose to his feet. “We don’t have anything more to talk about, do we? Then let’s go out and see how the Fuzzies are doing.”
CHAPTER NINE
GUS BRANNHARD POURED coffee into a cup already half full of brandy, brushed his beard out of the way with his left hand, and tasted it. It was good, but he still thought it would be better out of a tin pannikin beside a campfire on Beta. It was time to get down to business; after the bare report while hustling indecently through cocktails, they had talked all around the subject at dinner.
“Well, I can and will bring criminal charges,” he assured the others who were having coffee in the drawing room at Government House. “Forcible overpowering and transportation under restraint; if that isn’t kidnapping what is it?”
“Try your damnedest to make enslavement out of it, Gus,” Jack Holloway said. “If you get a conviction, we can have the pair of them shot. And telecast the executions; a real memorable public example is what we want, right now.”
“Well, I got the whole story out of Diamond,” Pancho Ybarra said. “He and another Fuzzy met four others; the six of them went down a little stream past a waterfall, and then came to a place where there were two Hagga, the ones he was shown audiovisuals of. The Hagga gave them Extee-Three, and then gave them something out of a bottle. They all woke up with hangovers in what sounds like one of the unfinished rooms in Company House. Diamond got away from them; the two bad Big Ones took the rest away.”
“So now we have five Fuzzies to hunt,” Holloway said. “That’ll be your job, Ahmed. You’ll stay here in Mallorysport. We’ll promote you to captain and chief of detectives; that’ll give you a little status equality with the other enforcement heads around here. If they’re trapping Fuzzies for sale, that’s not just Native Commission business; that’s Federation stuff.”
“They probably caught them for Mallin to experiment with,” Ben Rainsford said.
Jack swore. “Ben, you haven’t been paying attention. All this stuff we got from them was veridicated. They don’t know anything about any Fuzzies but those four Gerd and Ruth have.”
“Mr. Grego has been cooperating very satisfactorily, Governor,” Ahmed Khadra said, stiffly formal. “He has the whole Company police working on it, and told me to call on Chief Steefer for anything, and tomorrow Dr. Jimenez is going out to Beta to show some of our people where he was camping. From the Fuzzy’s description, we think Herckerd and Novaes went back there.”
“Well, what are you going to do about that Fuzzy at Company House?” he asked Jack, ignoring Khadra’s words. “You aren’t going to let him stay with Grego, are you?”