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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 Com-pany, 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."
"WeH, 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. What
do you think?"
'Yell, 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 Bratinhard 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 inno-cent."
"Well, innocent of the Fuzzy business and the attempt on the com-pany
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 scotfree."
Brannhard took a drink from his glass, and Coombes shuddered inwardly; the man
must have a collapsium-plated digestive tract. "While we were inter-rogating
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this one and that one about the
Fuzzy-sunstone business, we got a lot of evidence, all veridicated, to connect
him with Thaxter's shylocking and Bowlby's call-girl agency and Heenan's
prize-fight fixing and Laporte's strong-arm mob.
I'm after him with a shotgun; I'm just filling the air all around him with
indictments, and some of them are sure to hit. And even if I can't get him
convicted of any-thing, he'll be disbarred, that's for sure. And this
Planetary Prosper-itY Party of his is catching fire, leaking radiation,
blowing up and fall-ing apart all around. Everybody's calling it the
Fuzzy-Fagin Party, and everybody who had anything to do with it is getting out
as fast as he can."
"If we work together, we'll get a good Constitution adopted and a good
Legislature elected. Or can we expect Governor Rainsford to agree with Victor
Grego on what a 'good' Constitution and a 'good'
Legislature are?"
'Ye can," Brannhard said. 'Ye only have a few months before the ofl-planet
land-grabbers begin coming in, and Ben Rainsford's as much worried about that
as Victor Grego. Leslie, if you go into court and make claim to all the
unseated land the company has mapped and surveyed, I am instructed by the
Governor not to oppose you. What does that sound like?"
"That sounds like getting back about everything we lost, with the sunstone
lease on top of it. I am going to propose the election of Little Fuzzy as an
honorary member of the board of directors, with the title of
Company Benefactor Number One."
Little Fuzzy climbed up on Pappy Jack's lap, squirmed a little, and cuddled
himself comfortably. He was happy to be back. He had had so much fun in the
Big House Place, he and Mamma Fuzzy and Ko-Ko and Cinderella and Syndrome and
Id and Ned Kelly and Dr. Crippen and Calamity Jane. They had met so many
Fuzzies who had been here and gone away to live with Big Ones of their own,
and they had a place where they all met and played together. And he had met
the two lovers, now they had names of their own, Pierrot and Colum-bine, and
he had met Diamond, about whom Unka Panko had told him, and Diamond's Pappy
Vic.
It had been to meet Diamond that Unka Panko and Auntie Lynne had taken them
all in the sky-thing to the Big House Place, because Diamond had found out how
to talk like a Big One without using one of the talk-things, and Diamond had
taught all of them how to do it. It had been hard, very hard; Diamond was very
smart to have found it out for himself, but after a while they had all found
that they could do it, too. And now Mike and Mitzi and Complex and Superego
and Dillinger and Lizzie Borden had gone to the Big House Place with Pappy
Gerd and Mummy Woof, and they would learn to talk so that the Big
Ones could hear them. And Baby Fuzzy was learning from Manuna Fuzzy, and
tomorrow they would all start teaching the others here at Hoksu-Mitto.
"Pretty soon, all Fuzzy learn to talk like Big Ones," he said. "Not need
talk-thing, Big One not need ear-thing; just talk, like I do now."
"That's right," Pappy Jack said. "Big Ones, Fuzzies, allmake talk together.
All be good friends."
"And Fuzzy learn how to help Big Ones? Many things Fuzzy can do to help, if
Big Ones tell what."
"Best thing Fuzzy do to help Big Ones is just be Fuzzies," Pappy Jack told
him.
But what else could they be? Fuzzies were what they were, just as Big Ones
were Big Ones.
"And beside," Pappy Jack went on talking, "the Fuzzies are all rich, now."
"Rich? What is? Something good?"
'Well, most people think it is. When you're rich, you have money.~3
"Is something good to eat?" he asked. "Like esteefee?"
He wondered why Pappy Jack laughed. Maybe he was just laugh-ing because he was
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happy. Or maybe
Pappy Jack thought it was funny that he didn't know what money was.
There were still so many things Fuzzies had to learn.
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