Mallin gave one of his tight little smiles. “For that, I believe I can condone a linguistic barbarism.”

Diamond seemed, he couldn’t be sure, to be wanting to know why not touch; would it hurt?

“And how do you explain that he mustn’t spill ashes on the floor, in his own language? What are the Fuzzy words for ‘floor,’ and ‘ashes’?” He leaned forward and dropped the ash from his cigarette into the tray. “Ashtray,” he said.

Diamond repeated it as well as he could. Then he strolled over to where Mallin sat. Mallin regarded smoking as an act of infantile oralism; his ashtray was empty.

“Asht’ay?” he asked. “Diamond vov ninta?”

“You see. He knows that ashtray is a class-word, not just the name of a specific object,” Mallin said. “And I tried so hard to prove that Fuzzies couldn’t generalize. This one is empty; let’s see how we can explain the difference. If we give him the word ‘ashes,’ and then…”

A bell began ringing softly; Diamond turned quickly to see what it was. It was the bell for the private communication screen, and only half a dozen people knew the call-combination. He rose and put it on. Harry Steefer looked out of it.

“We found it, sir; ninth level down.” That was the one below the first reported thefts and ransackings. “The Fuzzies were penned in a small room that looks as though it had been intended for a general toilet and washroom. It’s right off a main hall, and somebody’s had an aircar in and out and set it down recently. I’d say half a dozen Fuzzies for two or three days.”

“Good. I want to see it. I want Diamond to see it, too. Send somebody who knows where it is up to my private stage with a car small enough to get into it.”

He blanked the screen and turned to Mallin. “You heard that. Well, let’s all three of us go down and look at it.”

Jack Holloway stopped at the head of the long escalator and looked down into the garden, now double-lighted by Darius, almost full, and Xerxes, past full and just rising. After a moment he saw Ben Rainsford reclining in a lawn-chair, with Flora and Fauna snuggled together on his lap. As he started toward them, after descending, he thought they were all asleep. Then one of the Fuzzies stirred and yeeked, and Rainsford turned his head.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Jack. Have you been here all evening?”

“Yes, all three of us,” Rainsford said. “I think it’s time for Fuzzies to go to bed, now.”

“Ben, we just had a screen call from Company House. They found where those Fuzzies had been kept, an empty room on one of the unfinished floors. They showed us with a portable pickup; dark, filthy place. The Company police are working on it for physical evidence to corroborate Diamond’s story. And they’ve put out a general want for those two Company rangers, Herckerd and Novaes; kidnapping and suspicion of enslavement.”

“Who called you? Steefer?”

“Grego. He says we can count on him for anything. He’s really sore about this.”

The Fuzzies had jumped to the ground and were trying to attract his attention. Ben shifted in his chair, and began stuffing tobacco into his pipe.

“Jack.” His voice was soft; he spoke hesitantly. “I’ve been talking to the kids, out here, till they got sleepy. They had a big time at Company House with Diamond. They say he’s lonesome for other Fuzzies. They’d like him to come here and visit them, and they’d like to go back and visit him again.”

“Well, a Fuzzy would get lonesome by himself. It didn’t take Little Fuzzy long to go and bring the rest of his family into my place.”

“And they say that outside that he’s happy. They told me about all the nice things he had, and the garden, and the room that was fixed up for him. They say everybody’s good to him, and Pappy Vic loves him. That’s what they call Grego; Pappy Vic, just like they call us Pappy Ben and Pappy Jack.” His lighter flared, showing a puzzled face above the pipe bowl. “I can’t understand it, Jack. I thought Grego would hate Fuzzies.”

“Why should he? The Fuzzies didn’t know anything about the Company’s charter; they don’t know a Class-IV planet from Nifflheim. He doesn’t even hate us; he’d have done the same thing in our place. Ben, he’s willing to call the war off; why can’t you?”

Rainsford puffed slowly, the smoke drifting and changing color in the double moonlight.

“Do you honestly believe that Fuzzy wants to stay with Grego?” he asked.

“It’d break Diamond’s heart if you took him away from Pappy Vic. Ben, why don’t you invite Diamond over to play with your two? You wouldn’t have to meet Grego; the girl he has helping with Diamond could bring him.”

“Maybe I will. You’re on speaking terms with Grego; why don’t you?”

“I will, tomorrow.” The Fuzzies hadn’t wanted to play; they’d just wanted to be noticed. He picked Flora up and gave her to Ben, then took Fauna in his own arms. “Let’s go put them to bed, and then go inside. We have a lot of things to do, in a hurry, and we need your authorization.”

“Well, what?”

“Ahmed’s staying here; he and Harry Steefer and Ian Ferguson and some others are having a conference tomorrow on this case and on general Fuzzy protection. And I’m setting up an Adoption Bureau; Judge Pendarvis’s wife’s agreed to take charge of that. We need laws, and till there’s some kind of a legislature, you have to do that by decree.”

“Well, all right. But there’s one thing, Jack. Just because Grego’s with us on this doesn’t mean I’m going to let him grab back control of this planet, the way he had it before the Pendarvis Decisions. It took the Fuzzies to break the Company’s monopoly; well, I’m going to see it stays broken.”

CHAPTER TEN

KNOWING HENRY STENSON’S part in the dischartering of the Zarathustra Company, Pancho Ybarra was mildly surprised to find him in the Fuzzyroom Grego had fitted up back of the kitchenette of his apartment, when Ernst Mallin, who met him on the landing stage, ushered him in. Grego’s Fuzzy-sitter, Sandra Glenn, was there, and so, although in the middle of business hours, was Grego himself. And, of course, Diamond.

“Mr. Stenson,” he greeted noncommittally. “This is a pleasure.”

Stenson laughed. “We needn’t pretend to distant acquaintance, Lieutenant,” he said. “Mr. Grego is quite aware of my, er, other profession. He doesn’t hold it against me; he just insists that I no longer practice it on him.”

“Mr. Stenson has something here that’ll interest you,” Grego said, picking up something that looked like a small nuclear-electric razor. “Turn off your hearing aid, if you please, Lieutenant. Thank you. Now, Diamond, make talk for Unka Panko.”

“Heyo, Unka Panko.” Diamond said, when Grego held the thing to his mouth, very clearly and audibly. “You hear Diamond make talk like Hagga?”

“I sure do, Diamond! That’s wonderful.”

“How make do?” Diamond asked. “Make talk with talk-thing, talk like Hagga. Not have talk-thing, no can talk like Fuzzy, Hagga no hear. How make do?”

Fuzzies could hear all through the human-audibility range; the race wouldn’t have survived the dangers of the woods if they hadn’t been able to. They could hear beyond that, to about 40,000 cycles. None of the other Zarathustran mammals could; that supported Gerd van Riebeek’s theory that Fuzzies were living fossils, the sole survivors of a large and otherwise extinct order of Zarathustran quasi-primates. Gerd thought they had developed ultrasonic hearing to meet some ancient survival-problem long before they had developed the power of symbolizing ideas in speech, and had always conversed ultrasonically with one another, probably to avoid betraying themselves to their natural enemies.

“Fuzzies hear Big Ones talk. Fuzzies little, Hagga big, make big talk. Hagga not hear Fuzzy talk, Fuzzies little, make little talk. So, Big Ones make ear-things, make Fuzzy talk big in ears, can hear. Now, Hagga make talk-things, so Fuzzies make big talk like Hagga, everybody hear, have ear-things, not have ear-things.”