H. Beam Piper Fuzzy Papers

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furnish them a lap to sit on.
"I've been worrying about just that," he said, when he was back in his chair,
with the Fuzzies climbing up onto him. "A lot of the older planets are
beginning to overpopulate, and there's never room enough for everybody on
Terra. There'll be a rush here in about a year. If I can only get things
stabilized before then.
. ."
Grego was silent for a moment. "If you're worried about all those
public-health and welfare and service functions, forget about them for a
while," he said. "I know, I said the company would discontinue them in ninety
days, but that was right after the Pendarvis Decisions, and nobody knew what
the situation was going to be. We can keep them going for a year, at least."
"The Government won't have any more money a year from now," he said. "And
you'll expect compensation."
"Of course we will, but we won't demand gold or Federation notes. Tax-script,
bonds, land-script . . ."
Land-script, of course; the law required a Colonial Government to make land
available to Federation citizens, but it did not require such land to be given
free. That might be one way to finance the
Govern-ment.
It could also be a way for the Zarathustra Company, having gotten the
Government deeply into debt, to regain what had been lost in the aftermath of
the Fuzzy Trial.
"Suppose you have Gus Brannhard talk it over with Leslie Coombes," Grego was
suggesting. "You can trust Gus not to stick the Government's foot into any
beartrap, can't you?"
"Why, of course, Mr. Grego. I want to thank you, very much, for this. That
public services takeover was worrying me more than any-thing else."
Yet he couldn't feel relieved, and he couldn't feel grateful at all. He felt
discomfited, and angry at himself more than at Grego.
19
GERD VAN RIEBEEK crouched at the edge of the low cliff, slowly twisting the
selector-knob of a small screen in front of him. The view changed; this time
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he was looking through the eye of a pickup fifty feet below and five hundred
yards to the left. Nothing in it moved ex-cept a wind-stirred branch that
jiggled a spray of ragged leaves in the foreground. The only thing from the
sound-outlet was a soft drone of insects, and the tweet-twonk, tweet-twonk of
a presumably love-hungry banjo-bird. Then something just out of sight scuffled
softly among the dead leaves. He turned up the sound-volume slightly.
"What do you think it is?"
Jack Holloway, beside him, rose to one knee, raising his binocu-lars.
'I can't see anything. Try the next one."
Gerd twisted the knob again. This pickup was closer the ground; it showed a
vista of woods lit by shafts of sunlight falling between trees. Now he could
hear rustling and scampering, and with ultrasonic ear-phone, Fuzzy voices:
"This way. Not far. Find hatta-zosa."
Jack was looking down at the open slope below the cliff.
'T that's what they call goofers, I see six of them from here," he said.
"Probably a dozen more I can't see." He watched, listening. "Here they come,
now."
The Fuzzies had stopped talking and were making very little noise; then they
came into view; eight of them, in single file. The weapons they carried were
longer and heavier than the prawn-killers of the southern Fuzzies, knobbed
instead of paddle-shaped, and sharp-pointed on the other end. All of them had
picked up stones which they carried in their free hands. They all stopped,
then three of them backed away into the brush again. The other five spread out
in a skir-mish line and waited. He shut off the screen and crawled over beside
Jack to peep over the edge of the cliff.
There were seven goofers, now; rodent-looking things with dark gray fur, a
foot and a half long and six inches high at the shoulder, all industriously
tearing off bark and digging at the roots of young trees. No wonder the woods
were so thin, around here; if there were any number of them it was a wonder
there were any trees at all. He picked up a camera and aimed it, getting some
shots of them.
"Something else figuring on getting some lunch here," Jack said, sweeping the
sky with his glasses.
"Harpy, a couple of miles off. Ah, another one. We'll stick around a while; we
may have to help our friends out."
The five Fuzzies at the edge of the brush stood waiting. The goofers hadn't
heard them, and were still tearing and chewing at the bark and digging at the
roots. Then, having circled around, the other three burst out suddenly,
hurling their stones and running forward with their clubs. One stone hit a
goofer and knocked it down; in-stantly, one of the Fuzzies ran forward and
brained it with his club. The other two rushed a second goofer, felling and
dispatching it with their clubs. The other fled, into the skirmish line on the
other side. Two were hit with stones, and finished off on the ground. The
others got away. The eight
Fuzzies gathered in a clump, seemed to debate pursuit for a moment, and then
abandoned the idea. They had four goofers, a half-goofer apiece. That was a
good meal for them.
They dragged their game together and began tearing the carcasses apart, using
teeth and fingers, helping one another dismember them, tearing oil skin and
pulling meat loose, using stones to break bones. Gerd kept his camera going,
filming the feast.
"Our gang's got better table-manners," he commented.
"Our gang have the knives we make for them. Beside, our gang mostly eat zatku,
and they break oft the mandibles and make little lobster-picks out of them.
They're ahead of our gang in one way, though. The
Fuzzies south of the Divide don't hunt cooperatively," Jack said.
The two dots in the sky were larger and closer; a third had ap-peared.
"We better do something about that," he advised, reaching for his rifle.
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"Yes." Jack put down the binoculars and secured his own rifle, checking it.
"Let them eat as long as they can; they'll get a big surprise in a minute or
so."
The Fuzzies seemed to be aware of the presence of the harpies. Maybe there
were ultrasonic wing-vibration sounds they could hear; he couldn't be sure,
even with the hearing aid. There was so much
-ul-trasonic noise in the woods, and he hadn't learned, yet, to distinguish.
The Fuzzies were eating more rapidly. Finally, one pointed and cried, "Gotza
bizzo!" Gotza was another native zoological name he had learned, though the
Fuzzies at Holloway's Camp mostly said, "Hah'py," now. The diners grabbed
their weapons and what meat they could carry and dashed into the woods. One of
the big pterodac-tyl-things was almost overhead, another was within a few
hundred yards, and the third was coming in behind him.
Jack sat up, put his left arm through his rifle-sling, cuddled the butt to his
cheek and propped his elbows on his knees. The nearest harpy must have caught [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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