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The Zarathustra Company took care of this planet, when it was their property,
but now nine-tenths of it is public domain, and people will be coming in from
all over the Federation, scrambling to get rich overnight. You'll know how to
control things."
"Yes, as Commissioner of Conservation, or something I'm qualified for."
"As Governor General. Your job will be to make policy. You can appoint the
administrators."
"Well, who, for instance?"
"Well, you're going to need an Attorney General right away. Who will you
appoint for that position?"
"Gus Brannhard," Rainsford said instantly.
"Good. And who-this question is purely rhetorical-will you ap-point as
Commissioner of Native Affairs?"
Jack Holloway was going back to Beta Continent on the constab-ulary airboat.
Official passenger: Mr.
Commissioner Jack Holloway. And his staff: Little Fuzzy, Mamma Fuzzy, Baby
Fuzzy, Mike, Mitzi, Ko-Ko and Cinderella. Bet they didn't know they had
official posi-tions!
Somehow he wished he didn't have one himself.
"Want a good job, George?" he asked Lunt.
'I have a good job."
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"This'll be a better one. Rank of major, eighteen thousand a year. Commandant,
Native Protection
Force. And you won't lose seniority in the constabulary; Colonel Ferguson'll
give you indefinite leave."
"Well, cripes, Jack, I'd like to, but I don't want to leave the kids. And I
can't take them away from the rest of the gang."
"Bring the rest of the gang along. I'm authorized to borrow twenty men from
the constabulary as a training cadre, and you only have sixteen. Your
sergeants'll get commissions, and all your men will be sergeants.
I'm going to have a force of a hundred and fifty for a start."
"You must think the Fuzzies are going to need a lot of protec-tion."
"They will. The whole country between the Cordilleras and the West Coast Range
will be Fuzzy
Reservation and that'll have to be policed. Then the Fuzzies outside that will
have to be protected. You know what's going to happen. Everybody wants
Fuzzies; why, even Judge Pendarvis approached me about getting a pair for his
wife. There'll be gangs hunting them to sell, using stun-bombs and sleep-gas
and everything. I'm going to have to set up an adoption bureau; Ruth will be
in charge of that. And that'll mean a lot of investigators-"
Oh, it was going to be one hell of a job! Fifty thousand a year would be
chicken feed to what he'd lose by not working his diggings. But somebody would
have to do it, and the Fuzzies were his respon-sibility.
Hadn't he gone to law to prove their sapience?
They were going home, home to the Wonderful Place. They had seen many
wonderful places, since the night they had been put in the bags: the place
where everything had been light and they had been able to jump so high and
land so gently, and the place where they had met all the others of their
people and had so much fun. But now they were going back to the old Wonderful
Place in the woods, where it had all started.
And they had met so many Big Ones, too. Some Big Ones were bad, but only a
few; most Big Ones were good. Even the one who had done the killing had felt
sorry for what he had done; they were all sure of that. And the other Big Ones
had taken him away, and they had never seen him again.
He had talked about that with the others-with Flora and Fauna, and Dr.
Crippen, and Complex, and
Superego, and Dillinger and Lizzie Borden. Now that they were all going to
live with the Big Ones, they would have to use those funny names. Some day
they would find out what they meant, and that would be fun, too. And they
could; now the Big Ones could put things in their ears and hear what they were
saying, and Pappy Jack was learning some of their words, and teaching them
some of his.
And soon all the people would find Big Ones to live with, who would take care
of them and have fun with them and love them, and give them the Wonderful
Food. And with the Big Ones taking care of them, maybe more of their babies
would live and not die so soon. And they would pay the Big Ones back. First
they would give their love and make them happy. Later, when they learned how,
they would give their help, too.
THE OTHER, HUMAN RACE
1
VICTOR GREGO finished the chilled fruit juice and pushed the glass aside, then
lit a cigarette and poured hot coffee into the half-filled cup that had been
cooling. This was going to be another Niffiheim of a day, and the night's
sleep had barely rested him from the last one and the ones before that. He
sipped the coffee, and began to feel himself rejoining the human race.
Staff conferences, all day, of course, with everybody bickering and
recriminating. He hoped, not too optimistically, that this would be the end of
it. By this evening all the division chiefs ought to know what
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had to be done. If only they wouldn't come running back to him for decisions
they ought to make themselves, or bother him with a lot of nit-picking
details. Great God, wasn't a staff supposed to handle staff work?
The trouble was that for the last fifteen years, twelve at least, all the
decisions had been made in advance, and the staff work had all been routine,
but that had been when Zarathustra had been a Class-HI planet and the company
had owned it outright. In the Chartered Zarathustra Company, emergencies had
simply not been permitted to arise. Not, that was, until old Jack Holloway had
met a small person whom he had named Little Fuzzy.
Then everybody had lost their heads. He'd lost his own a few times, and done
some things he now wished he hadn't done. Most of his subordinates hadn't
recovered theirs, yet, and the Charterless
Zarathustra Company was operating, if that were the word for it, in a state of
total and permanent emergency.
The cup was half empty, again; he filled it to the top and lit a fresh
cigarette from the old one before crushing it out. Might as well get it
started. He reached to the switch and flicked on the communication screen
across the breakfast table.
In a moment, Myra Fallada appeared in it. She had elaborately curled white
hair, faintly yellowish, a round face, protuberant blue eyes, and a lower lip
of the sort associated with the ancient Hapsburg family. She had been his
secretary ever since he had come to Zarathustra, and she thought that what had
happened a week ago in Judge Pendarvis' court had been the end of the world.
"Good morning, Mr. Grego." She was eyeing his dressing gown and counting the
cigarette butts in the ashtray, trying to estimate how soon he'd be down at
his desk. "An awful lot of business has come in this morning."
"Good morning, Myra. What kind of business?"
"Well, things are getting much worse in the cattle country. The veldbeest
herders are all quitting their jobs; [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]