"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy Sapiens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Then he remembered that Fuzzies were most meticulous about their sanitary habits. Going back inside, he entered the big room behind the kitchenette which served the chef as a pantry, the houseboy for equipment storage, the gardener as a seed house and tool shed, and all of them as a general junkroom. He hadn’t been inside the place, himself, for some time. He swore disgustedly when he saw it, then began rummaging for something the Fuzzy could use as a digging tool.
Selecting a stout-handled basting spoon, he took it out into the garden and dug a hole in a flower bed, sticking the spoon in the ground beside it. The Fuzzy knew what the hole was for, and used it, and then filled it in and stuck the spoon back where he found it. He made some ultrasonic remarks, audible as yeeks, in gratification at finding that human-type people had civilized notions about sanitation too.
Find him something better tomorrow, a miniature spade. And fix up a real place for him to sleep, and put in a little fountain, and... 
It suddenly occurred to him that he was assuming that the Fuzzy would want to stay with him permanently, and also to wonder whether he wanted a Fuzzy living with him. Of course he did. A Fuzzy was fun, and fun was something he ought to have more of. And a Fuzzy would be a friend. A Fuzzy wouldn’t care whether he was manager-in-chief of the Charterless Zarathustra Company or not, and friends like that were hard to come by, once you’d gotten to the top.
Except for Leslie Coombes, he didn’t have any friends like that.
Some time during the night, he was awakened by something soft and warm squirming against his shoulder.
“Hey; I thought I fixed you a bed of your own.”
“Yeek?”
“Oh, you want to bunk with Pappy Vic. All right.”
They both went back to sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS FUN having company for breakfast, especially company small enough to sit on the table. The Fuzzy tasted Grego’s coffee; he didn’t care for it. He liked fruit juice and sipped some. Then he nibbled Extee-Three, and watched quite calmly while Grego lit a cigarette, but manifested no desire to try one. He’d probably seen humans smoking, and may have picked up a lighted cigarette and either burned himself or hadn’t liked it.
Grego poured more coffee, and then put on the screen. The Fuzzy turned to look at it. Screens were fun: interesting things happened in them. He was fascinated by the kaleidoscopic jumble of color. Then it cleared, and Myra Fallada appeared in it.
“Good morning, Mr. Grego,” she started. Then she choked. Her mouth stayed open, and her eyes bulged as though she had just swallowed a glass of hundred-and-fifty-proof rum thinking it iced tea. Her hand rose falteringly to point.
“Mr. Grego! That... Is that a Fuzzy?”
The Fuzzy was delighted; this was a lot more fun than the man in the blue clothes, last night.
“That’s right. I found him making himself at home, here, last evening.” He wondered how many more times he’d have to go over that. “All I can get out of him is yeeks. For all I know, he may be a big stockholder.”
After consideration, Myra decided this was a joke. A sacrilegious joke; Mr. Grego oughtn’t to make jokes like that about the Company.
“Well, what are you going to do with it?”
“Him? Why, if he wants to stay, fix up a place for him here.”
“But... But it’s a Fuzzy!”
The Company lost its charter because of Fuzzies. Fuzzies were the enemy, and loyal Company people oughtn’t to fraternize with them, least of all Mr. Grego.
“Miss Fallada, the Fuzzies were on this planet for a hundred thousand years before the Company was ever thought of.” Pity he hadn’t taken that attitude from the start. “This Fuzzy is a very nice little fellow, who wants to be friends with me. If he wants to stay with me, I’ll be very happy to have him.” He closed the subject by asking what had come in so far this morning.
“Well, the girls have most of the morning reports from last night processed; they’ll be on your desk when you come down. And then...”
And then, the usual budget of gripes and queries. He thought most of them had been settled the day before.
“All right; pile it up on me. Has Mr. Coombes called yet?”
Yes. He was going to be busy all day. He would call again before noon, and would be around at cocktail time. That was all right. Leslie knew what he had to do and how to do it. When he got Myra off the screen, he called Chief Steefer.
Harry Steefer didn’t have to zip up his tunic or try to look wide awake; he looked that way already. He was a retired Federation Army officer and had a triple row of ribbon on his left breast to prove it.
“Good morning, Mr. Grego.” Then he smiled and nodded at the other person in view in his screen. “I see you still have the trespasser.”
“Guest, Chief. What’s been learned about him?”
“Well, not too much, yet. I have what you gave Captain Lansky last night; he’s tabulated all the reports and complaints on this wave of ransackings and petty thefts. A rather imposing list, by the way. Shall I give it to you in full?”
“No; just summarize it.”
“Well, it started, apparently, with ransacking in a couple of offices and a ladies’ lounge on the eighth level down. No valuables taken, but things tossed around and left in disorder, and candy and other edibles taken. It’s been going on like that ever since, on progressively higher levels. There were reports that somebody was in a couple of cafeteria supply rooms, without evidence of entrance.”
“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.