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said. There ought to be quite a little, by now. He glanced up at the screen
from Steefer s office; half a dozen people were there now, and he was
surprised to see Jack Holloway among them. He couldn t have flown in from Beta
Continent since this had started. I ll call back, or have somebody call,
later.
Crossing the hall, he joined the group who were interviewing the five
Herckerd-Novaes-Evins-Thaxter Fuzzies. Juan Jimenez was there, so were a
couple of doctors who had been working with Fuzzies at the reception center.
So was Claudette Pendarvis. Jack Holloway met him as he entered, and they
shook hands.
I thought there might be something I could do to help, he said. Listen,
Mr. Grego, you re not going to bring any charges against these Fuzzies, are
you?
Good Lord, no!
Well, they re sapient beings, and they broke the law, Holloway said.
They are legally ten-year-old children, Judge Pendarvis s wife said. They
are not morally responsible; they were taught to do this by humans.
Yes, faginy, along with enslavement, Ahmed Khadra said. Mandatory death by
shooting for that, too.
And I hope they shoot that Evins woman first of all; she s the worst of the
lot, Sandra Glenn said. She s the one who used the electric shock-rod on
them when they made mistakes.
Mr. Grego, Ernst Mallin interrupted. I don t understand this. These
Fuzzyphones are simple enough for any Fuzzy to operate; all they need to do is
hold the little pistol-grip and the switch works automatically. Diamond can
talk audibly, but he simply cannot teach any of these other Fuzzies to use it.
You don t have your hearing aid on, do you? Well, listen to this.
Diamond used his Fuzzyphone; he spoke quite audibly. When he gave it to any
of the others, all they produced was, Yeek.
Let me see that thing. He took it from Diamond and carried it over to the
desk; rummaging in the top middle drawer, he found a little screwdriver and
took it apart. The mechanism seemed to be all right. He removed the tiny
power-unit and exchanged it for a similar one from a flashlight he found in
the Chief s desk. The flashlight wouldn t light. He handed the Fuzzyphone to
Mallin.
Give this to one of the others, not Diamond. Have him say something.
Mallin handed the Fuzzyphone to one of the pair whom Lansky and Eggers had
captured in the vault, and asked him a question. Holding the Fuzzyphone to his
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mouth, the Fuzzy answered quite audibly. Three or four of the humans said,
What the hell? or words to that effect.
Diamond, you not need talk-thing to make talk like Big One, he said. You
make talk like Big One any time. You make talk like Big One now.
Like this? Diamond asked.
How does he do it? Mrs. Pendarvis demanded. Their voices aren t audible,
at all.
You think the power-unit gave out, and he just went on copying the sounds he
was accustomed to make with the Fuzzyphone? Mallin asked.
That s right. He heard himself speak in the audible range, and he just
learned to pitch his voice to imitate his own transformed voice. I ll bet he s
been talking audibly for weeks, and we never knew it.
Bet he didn t know it, either, Jack Holloway said. Mr. Grego, do you think
he could teach other Fuzzies to do that?
That would be kind of hard, wouldn t it? Mallin asked. Does he really
know, himself, how he does it?
Mr. Grego! the police sergeant, who was still keeping half an eye on the
communication screen, broke in. The Chief wants to know if you want to go to
the gem-vault and check the contents of that suitcase.
Has anybody else checked it?
Well, Captain Lansky has, but...
Then lock it up in the vault; I don t have to do that. The Nifflheim with
it. I ll check it tomorrow. I m busy, now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
YOU THINK FOUR-FIFTY a carat would be all right? Victor Grego was asking.
Bennett Rainsford picked up the lighter from the table in front of him and
carefully relit a pipe that didn t need relighting. Now that he d come to know
him, he found that he liked Victor Grego. But he still had to watch him. Grego
was the Charterless Zarathustra Company, and the company was definitely not a
philanthropic institution.
Sounds all right to me, Jack Holloway agreed. You didn t pay me any more
than that when I was prospecting, and I had to dig them myself.
But four-fifty, Jack. The Terra market price is over a thousand sols a
carat.
This isn t Terra, Ben. Terra s five hundred light-years, six months
ship-time, away. I think Mr. Grego s making us a good offer. All we need to do
is bank the money; the company ll do the rest.
Well, how much do you think the Fuzzies will get out of it, a month?
Grego shrugged. I haven t seen it, myself. I ll take Jack s word for it.
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What do you think?
Well, it depends on how much equipment you use, and what kind. If it s
anything like the diggings I used to work, you ll get about a sunstone to the
ton.
We can move and process an awful lot of tons of flint in a month, and from
Jack s description I d say we ll be working that deposit for longer than any
of us ll be around. You know, Governor, instead of the Fuzzies getting
handouts from the Government, they ll be paying the Government s bills before
long.
And that would have to be watched, too; it mustn t be allowed to become a
source of political graft. Inside a month, now, the elections for delegates to
the Constitutional Convention would be held. Make sure the right men were
elected, men who would write a Constitution which would safeguard the Fuzzies
rights for all time.
Victor Grego, he was beginning to think, could be counted on to help in that.
LESLIE COOMBES HELD his glass while Gus Brannhard poured from the bottle, and
said, quickly, That s enough, please, when about fifty or sixty cc of whisky
had been added to the ice. He filled the glass the rest of the way with soda,
himself.
And Hugo Ingermann, he said, disgustedly, is completely innocent.
Well, innocent of the Fuzzy business and the attempt on the company
gem-vault, Brannhard conceded, pouring into his own glass. When Gus mixed a
highball, he always left out both the ice and the soda. It s probably the
only thing he ever was innocent of, in his whole life. But he isn t getting
away scot-free. Brannhard took a drink from his glass, and Coombes shuddered
inwardly; the man must have a collapsium-plated digestive tract. While we
were interrogating this one and that one about the Fuzzy-sunstone business, we
got a lot of evidence, all veridicated, to connect him with Thaxter s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]