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 Government.

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 bear trap, 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 anything 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.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

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 he was looking through the eye of a pickup fifty feet below and five hundred yards to the left. Nothing in it moved except 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 binoculars.

“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 earphone, Fuzzy voices:

“This way. Not far. Find hatta-zosa.”

Jack was looking down at the open slope below the cliff.

“If 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 skirmish 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; instantly, 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 fleds, 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 off 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 eats zatku, and they break off the manibles 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 appeared.

“We better do something about that,” he advised, reaching for his rifle.

“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 ultrasonic 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 pterodactyl-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 a movement in the brush below; it banked and started to dive. Jack’s 9.7 magnum bellowed. The harpy made a graceless flop-over in the air and dropped. The one behind banked quickly and tried to gain altitude; Gerd shot it. Jack’s rifle thundered again, and the third harpy thrashed leathery wings and dropped.

From below, there was silence, and then a clamor of Fuzzy voices:

“Harpies dead; what make do?”

“Thunder; maybe kill harpies! Maybe kill us next!”

“Bad place, this! Bizzo, fazzu!”

Roughly, fazzu meant, “Scram.”

Jack was laughing. “Little Fuzzy took it a lot calmer the first time he saw me shoot a harpy,” he said. “By that time, though, he’d seen so much he wasn’t surprised at anything.” He replaced the two fired rounds in the magazine of his rifle. “Well, bizzo, fazzu; we won’t get any more movies around here.”

They went around with the car, collecting the pickups they had planted, then lifted out, turning south toward the horizon-line of the Divide, the mountain range that stretched like the cross-stroke of an H between the West Coast Range and the Eastern Cordilleras. Evidently the Fuzzies never crossed it much; the language of the northern Fuzzies, while comprehensible, differed distinguishably from that spoken by the ones who had come in to the camp. Apparently the news of the bumper crop of zatku hadn’t gotten up here at all.