Little Fuzzy Page 2

  II

  Jack Holloway landed the manipulator in front of the cluster of prefabhuts. For a moment he sat still, realizing that he was tired, and then heclimbed down from the control cabin and crossed the open grass to the doorof the main living hut, opening it and reaching in to turn on the lights.Then he hesitated, looking up at Darius.

  There was a wide ring around it, and he remembered noticing the wisps ofcirrus clouds gathering overhead through the afternoon. Maybe it wouldrain tonight. This dry weather couldn't last forever. He'd been lettingthe manipulator stand out overnight lately. He decided to put it in thehangar. He went and opened the door of the vehicle shed, got back onto themachine and floated it inside. When he came back to the living hut, he sawthat he had left the door wide open.

  "Damn fool!" he rebuked himself. "Place could be crawling with prawns bynow."

  He looked quickly around the living room--under the big combination deskand library table, under the gunrack, under the chairs, back of thecommunication screen and the viewscreen, beyond the metal cabinet of themicrofilm library--and saw nothing. Then he hung up his hat, took off hispistol and laid it on the table, and went back to the bathroom to wash hishands.

  As soon as he put on the light, something inside the shower stall said,"_Yeeeek!_" in a startled voice.

  He turned quickly to see two wide eyes staring up at him out of a ball ofgolden fur. Whatever it was, it had a round head and big ears and avaguely humanoid face with a little snub nose. It was sitting on itshaunches, and in that position it was about a foot high. It had two tinyhands with opposing thumbs. He squatted to have a better look at it.

  "Hello there, little fellow," he greeted it. "I never saw anything likeyou before. What are you anyhow?"

  The small creature looked at him seriously and said, "Yeek," in a timidvoice.

  "Why, sure; you're a Little Fuzzy, that's what you are."

  He moved closer, careful to make no alarmingly sudden movements, and kepton talking to it.

  "Bet you slipped in while I left the door open. Well, if a Little Fuzzyfinds a door open, I'd like to know why he shouldn't come in and lookaround."

  He touched it gently. It started to draw back, then reached out a littlehand and felt the material of his shirt-sleeve. He stroked it, and told itthat it had the softest, silkiest fur ever. Then he took it on his lap. Ityeeked in pleasure, and stretched an arm up around his neck.

  "Why, sure; we're going to be good friends, aren't we? Would you likesomething to eat? Well, suppose you and I go see what we can find."

  He put one hand under it, to support it like a baby--at least, he seemedto recall having seen babies supported in that way; babies were things hedidn't fool with if he could help it--and straightened. It weighed betweenfifteen and twenty pounds. At first, it struggled in panic, then quietedand seemed to enjoy being carried. In the living room he sat down in hisfavorite armchair, under a standing lamp, and examined his newacquaintance.

  It was a mammal--there was a fairly large mammalian class onZarathustra--but beyond that he was stumped. It wasn't a primate, in theTerran sense. It wasn't like anything Terran, or anything else onZarathustra. Being a biped put it in a class by itself for this planet. Itwas just a Little Fuzzy, and that was the best he could do.

  That sort of nomenclature was the best anybody could do on a Class-IIIplanet. On a Class-IV planet, say Loki, or Shesha, or Thor, naming animalswas a cinch. You pointed to something and asked a native, and he'd garglea mouthful of syllables at you, which might only mean, "Whaddaya wannaknow for?" and you took it down in phonetic alphabet and the whatzit had aname. But on Zarathustra, there were no natives to ask. So this was aLittle Fuzzy.

  "What would you like to eat, Little Fuzzy?" he asked. "Open your mouth,and let Pappy Jack see what you have to chew with."

  Little Fuzzy's dental equipment, allowing for the fact that his jaw wasrounder, was very much like his own.

  "You're probably omnivorous. How would you like some nice TerranFederation Space Forces Emergency Ration, Extraterrestrial, Type Three?"he asked.

  Little Fuzzy made what sounded like an expression of willingness to tryit. It would be safe enough; Extee Three had been fed to a number ofZarathustran mammals without ill effects. He carried Little Fuzzy out intothe kitchen and put him on the floor, then got out a tin of the fieldration and opened it, breaking off a small piece and handing it down.Little Fuzzy took the piece of golden-brown cake, sniffed at it, gave adelighted yeek and crammed the whole piece in his mouth.

  "You never had to live on that stuff and nothing else for a month, that'sfor sure!"

  He broke the cake in half and broke one half into manageable pieces andput it down on a saucer. Maybe Little Fuzzy would want a drink, too. Hestarted to fill a pan with water, as he would for a dog, then looked athis visitor sitting on his haunches eating with both hands and changed hismind. He rinsed a plastic cup cap from an empty whisky bottle and put itdown beside a deep bowl of water. Little Fuzzy was thirsty, and he didn'thave to be shown what the cup was for.

  It was too late to get himself anything elaborate; he found some leftoversin the refrigerator and combined them into a stew. While it was heating,he sat down at the kitchen table and lit his pipe. The spurt of flame fromthe lighter opened Little Fuzzy's eyes, but what really awed him was PappyJack blowing smoke. He sat watching this phenomenon, until, a few minuteslater, the stew was hot and the pipe was laid aside; then Little Fuzzywent back to nibbling Extee Three.

  Suddenly he gave a yeek of petulance and scampered into the living room.In a moment, he was back with something elongated and metallic which helaid on the floor beside him.

  "What have you got there, Little Fuzzy? Let Pappy Jack see?"

  Then he recognized it as his own one-inch wood chisel. He rememberedleaving it in the outside shed after doing some work about a week ago, andnot being able to find it when he had gone to look for it. That hadworried him; people who got absent-minded about equipment didn't last longin the wilderness. After he finished eating and took the dishes to thesink, he went over and squatted beside his new friend.

  "Let Pappy Jack look at it, Little Fuzzy," he said. "Oh, I'm not going totake it away from you. I just want to see it."

  The edge was dulled and nicked; it had been used for a lot of things woodchisels oughtn't to be used for. Digging, and prying, and most likely, ithad been used as a weapon. It was a handy-sized, all-purpose tool for aLittle Fuzzy. He laid it on the floor where he had gotten it and startedwashing the dishes.

  Little Fuzzy watched him with interest for a while, and then he beganinvestigating the kitchen. Some of the things he wanted to investigate hadto be taken away from him; at first that angered him, but he soon learnedthat there were things he wasn't supposed to have. Eventually, the dishesgot washed.

  There were more things to investigate in the living room. One of them wasthe wastebasket. He found that it could be dumped, and promptly dumped it,pulling out everything that hadn't fallen out. He bit a corner off a sheetof paper, chewed on it and spat it out in disgust. Then he found thatcrumpled paper could be flattened out and so he flattened a few sheets,and then discovered that it could also be folded. Then he got himselfgleefully tangled in a snarl of wornout recording tape. Finally he lostinterest and started away. Jack caught him and brought him back.

  "No, Little Fuzzy," he said. "You do not dump wastebaskets and then walkaway from them. You put things back in." He touched the container andsaid, slowly and distinctly, "Waste ... basket." Then he righted it, doingit as Little Fuzzy would have to, and picked up a piece of paper, tossingit in from Little Fuzzy's shoulder height. Then he handed Little Fuzzy awad of paper and repeated, "Waste ... basket."

  Little Fuzzy looked at him and said something that sounded as though itmight be: "What's the matter with you, Pappy; you crazy or something?"After a couple more tries, however, he got it, and began throwing thingsin. In a few minutes, he had everything back in except a brightly coloredplastic cartridge box and a wide-mouthed bottle
with a screw cap. He heldthese up and said, "Yeek?"

  "Yes, you can have them. Here; let Pappy Jack show you something."

  He showed Little Fuzzy how the box could be opened and shut. Then, holdingit where Little Fuzzy could watch, he unscrewed the cap and then screwedit on again.

  "There, now. You try it."

  Little Fuzzy looked up inquiringly, then took the bottle, sitting down andholding it between his knees. Unfortunately, he tried twisting it thewrong way and only screwed the cap on tighter. He yeeked plaintively.

  "No, go ahead. You can do it."

  Little Fuzzy looked at the bottle again. Then he tried twisting the capthe other way, and it loosened. He gave a yeek that couldn't possibly beanything but "Eureka!" and promptly took it off, holding it up. Afterbeing commended, he examined both the bottle and the cap, feeling thethreads, and then screwed the cap back on again.

  "You know, you're a smart Little Fuzzy." It took a few seconds to realizejust how smart. Little Fuzzy had wondered why you twisted the cap one wayto take it off and the other way to put it on, and he had found out. Forpure reasoning ability, that topped anything in the way of animalintelligence he'd ever seen. "I'm going to tell Ben Rainsford about you."

  Going to the communication screen, he punched out the wave-lengthcombination of the naturalist's camp, seventy miles down Snake River fromthe mouth of Cold Creek. Rainsford's screen must have been on automatic;it lit as soon as he was through punching. There was a card set up infront of it, lettered: AWAY ON TRIP, BACK THE FIFTEENTH. RECORDER ON.

  "Ben, Jack Holloway," he said. "I just ran into something interesting." Heexplained briefly what it was. "I hope he stays around till you get back.He's totally unlike anything I've ever seen on this planet."

  Little Fuzzy was disappointed when Jack turned off the screen; that hadbeen interesting. He picked him up and carried him over to the armchair,taking him on his lap.

  "Now," he said, reaching for the control panel of the viewscreen. "Watchthis; we're going to see something nice."

  When he put on the screen, at random, he got a view, from close up, of thegreat fires that were raging where the Company people were burning off thedead forests on what used to be Big Blackwater Swamp. Little Fuzzy criedout in alarm, flung his arms around Pappy Jack's neck and buried his facein the bosom of his shirt. Well, forest fires started from lightningsometimes, and they'd be bad things for a Little Fuzzy. He worked theselector and got another pickup, this time on the top of Company House inMallorysport, three time zones west, with the city spread out below andthe sunset blazing in the west. Little Fuzzy stared at it in wonder. Itwas pretty impressive for a little fellow who'd spent all his life in thebig woods.

  So was the spaceport, and a lot of other things he saw, though a view ofthe planet as a whole from Darius puzzled him considerably. Then, in themiddle of a symphony orchestra concert from Mallorysport Opera House, hewriggled loose, dropped to the floor and caught up his wood chisel,swinging it back over his shoulder like a two-handed sword.

  "What the devil? Oh-oh!"

  A land-prawn, which must have gotten in while the door was open, wascrossing the living room. Little Fuzzy ran after and past it, pivoted andbrought the corner of the chisel edge down on the prawn's neck, neatlybeheading it. He looked at his victim for a moment, then slid the chiselunder it and flopped it over on its back, slapping it twice with the flatand cracking the undershell. The he began pulling the dead prawn apart,tearing out pieces of meat and eating them delicately. After disposing ofthe larger chunks, he used the chisel to chop off one of the prawn'smandibles to use as a pick to get at the less accessible morsels. When hehad finished, he licked his fingers clean and started back to thearmchair.

  "No." Jack pointed at the prawn shell. "Wastebasket."

  "Yeek?"

  "Wastebasket."

  Little Fuzzy gathered up the bits of shell, putting them where theybelonged. Then he came back and climbed up on Pappy Jack's lap, and lookedat things in the screen until he fell asleep.

  Jack lifted him carefully and put him down on the warm chair seat withoutwakening him, then went to the kitchen, poured himself a drink and broughtit in to the big table, where he lit his pipe and began writing up hisdiary for the day. After a while, Little Fuzzy woke, found that the lap hehad gone to sleep on had vanished, and yeeked disconsolately.

  A folded blanket in one corner of the bedroom made a satisfactory bed,once Little Fuzzy had assured himself that there were no bugs in it. Hebrought in his bottle and his plastic box and put them on the floor besideit. Then he ran to the front door in the living room and yeeked to be letout. Going about twenty feet from the house, he used the chisel to dig asmall hole, and after it had served its purpose he filled it in carefullyand came running back.

  Well, maybe Fuzzies were naturally gregarious, and werehomemakers--den-holes, or nests, or something like that. Nobody wantsmesses made in the house, and when the young ones did it, their parentswould bang them around to teach them better manners. This was LittleFuzzy's home now; he knew how he ought to behave in it.

  * * * * *

  The next morning at daylight, he was up on the bed, trying to dig PappyJack out from under the blankets. Besides being a most efficientland-prawn eradicator, he made a first rate alarm clock. But best of all,he was Pappy Jack's Little Fuzzy. He wanted out; this time Jack took hismovie camera and got the whole operation on film. One thing, there'd haveto be a little door, with a spring to hold it shut, that little Fuzzycould operate himself. That was designed during breakfast. It only took acouple of hours to make and install it; Little Fuzzy got the idea as soonas he saw it, and figured out how to work it for himself.

  Jack went back to the workshop, built a fire on the hand forge and forgeda pointed and rather broad blade, four inches long, on the end of a footof quarter-inch round tool-steel. It was too point-heavy when finished, sohe welded a knob on the other end to balance it. Little Fuzzy knew whatthat was for right away; running outside, he dug a couple of practiceholes with it, and then began casting about in the grass for land-prawns.

  Jack followed him with the camera and got movies of a couple of prawnkillings, accomplished with smooth, by-the-numbers precision. Little Fuzzyhadn't learned that chop-clap-clap routine in the week since he had foundthe wood chisel.

  Going into the shed, he hunted for something without more than a generalidea of what it would look like, and found it where Little Fuzzy haddiscarded it when he found the chisel. It was a stock of hardwood a footlong, rubbed down and polished smooth, apparently with sandstone. Therewas a paddle at one end, with enough of an edge to behead a prawn, and theother end had been worked to a point. He took it into the living hut andsat down at the desk to examine it with a magnifying glass. Bits of soilembedded in the sharp end--that had been used as a pick. The paddle endhad been used as a shovel, beheader and shell-cracker. Little Fuzzy hadknown exactly what he wanted when he'd started making that thing, he'dkept on until it was as perfect as possible, and had stopped short ofspoiling it by overrefinement.

  Finally, Jack put it away in the top drawer of the desk. He was thinkingabout what to get for lunch when Little Fuzzy burst into the living room,clutching his new weapon and yeeking excitedly.

  "What's the matter, kid? You got troubles?" He rose and went to thegunrack, picking down a rifle and checking the chamber. "Show Pappy Jackwhat it is."

  Little Fuzzy followed him to the big door for human-type people, ready tobolt back inside if necessary.

  The trouble was a harpy--a thing about the size and general design of aTerran Jurassic pterodactyl, big enough to take a Little Fuzzy at onemouthful. It must have made one swoop at him already, and was circlingback for another. It ran into a 6-mm rifle bullet, went into a backwardloop and dropped like a stone.

  Little Fuzzy made a very surprised remark, looked at the dead harpy for amoment and then spotted the ejected empty cartridge. He grabbed it andheld it up, asking if he could have it. When told that he could,
he ranback to the bedroom with it. When he returned, Pappy Jack picked him upand carried him to the hangar and up into the control cabin of themanipulator.

  The throbbing of the contragravity-field generator and the sense of risingworried him at first, but after they had picked up the harpy with thegrapples and risen to five hundred feet he began to enjoy the ride. Theydropped the harpy a couple of miles up what the latest maps weredesignating as Holloway's Run, and then made a wide circle back over themountains. Little Fuzzy thought it was fun.

  After lunch, Little Fuzzy had a nap on Pappy Jack's bed. Jack took themanipulator up to the diggings, put off a couple more shots, uncoveredmore flint and found another sunstone. It wasn't often that he foundstones on two successive days. When he returned to the camp, Little Fuzzywas picking another land-prawn apart in front of the living hut.

  After dinner--Little Fuzzy liked cooked food, too, if it wasn't toohot--they went into the living room. He remembered having seen a bolt andnut in the desk drawer when he had been putting the wooden prawn-killeraway, and he got it out, showing it to Little Fuzzy. Little Fuzzy studiedit for a moment, then ran into the bedroom and came back with hisscrew-top bottle. He took the top off, put it on again and then screwedthe nut off the bolt, holding it up.

  "See, Pappy?" Or yeeks to that effect. "Nothing to it."

  Then he unscrewed the bottle top, dropped the bolt inside after replacingthe nut and screwed the cap on again.

  "Yeek," he said, with considerable self-satisfaction.

  He had a right to be satisfied with himself. What he'd been doing had beengeneralizing. Bottle tops and nuts belonged to the general class ofthings-that-screwed-onto-things. To take them off, you turned left; to putthem on again, you turned right, after making sure that the threadsengaged. And since he could conceive of right- and left-handedness, thatmight mean that he could think of properties apart from objects, and thatwas forming abstract ideas. Maybe that was going a little far, but....

  "You know, Pappy Jack's got himself a mighty smart Little Fuzzy. Are you agrown-up Little Fuzzy, or are you just a baby Little Fuzzy? Shucks, I'llbet you're Professor Doctor Fuzzy."

  He wondered what to give the professor, if that was what he was, to workon next, and he doubted the wisdom of teaching him too much about takingthings apart, just at present. Sometime he might come home and findsomething important taken apart, or, worse, taken apart and put togetherincorrectly. Finally, he went to a closet, rummaging in it until he founda tin canister. By the time he returned, Little Fuzzy had gotten up on thechair, found his pipe in the ashtray and was puffing on it and coughing.

  "Hey, I don't think that's good for you!"

  He recovered the pipe, wiped the stem on his shirt-sleeve and put it inhis mouth, then placed the canister on the floor, and put Little Fuzzy onthe floor beside it. There were about ten pounds of stones in it. When hehad first settled here, he had made a collection of the local minerals,and, after learning what he'd wanted to, he had thrown them out, all buttwenty or thirty of the prettiest specimens. He was glad, now, that he hadkept these.

  Little Fuzzy looked the can over, decided that the lid was a member ofthe class of things-that-screwed-onto-things and got it off. The insideof the lid was mirror-shiny, and it took him a little thought to discoverthat what he saw in it was only himself. He yeeked about that, and lookedinto the can. This, he decided, belonged to the class ofthings-that-can-be-dumped, like wastebaskets, so he dumped it on thefloor. Then he began examining the stones and sorting them by color.

  Except for an interest in colorful views on the screen, this was the firstreal evidence that Fuzzies possessed color perception. He proceeded togive further and more impressive proof, laying out the stones by shade, incorrect spectral order, from a lump of amethystlike quartz to a dark redstone. Well, maybe he'd seen rainbows. Maybe he'd lived near a big mistywaterfall, where there was always a rainbow when the sun was shining. Ormaybe that was just his natural way of seeing colors.

  Then, when he saw what he had to work with, he began making arrangementswith them, laying them out in odd circular and spiral patterns. Each timehe finished a pattern, he would yeek happily to call attention to it, sitand look at it for a while, and then take it apart and start a new one.Little Fuzzy was capable of artistic gratification too. He made uselessthings, just for the pleasure of making and looking at them.

  Finally, he put the stones back into the tin, put the lid on and rolled itinto the bedroom, righting it beside his bed along with his othertreasures. The new weapon he laid on the blanket beside him when he wentto bed.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, Jack broke up a whole cake of Extee Three and put itdown, filled the bowl with water, and, after making sure he had leftnothing lying around that Little Fuzzy could damage or on which he mighthurt himself, took the manipulator up to the diggings. He worked allmorning, cracking nearly a ton and a half of flint, and found nothing.Then he set off a string of shots, brought down an avalanche of sandstoneand exposed more flint, and sat down under a pool-ball tree to eat hislunch.

  Half an hour after he went back to work, he found the fossil of somejellyfish that hadn't eaten the right things in the right combinations,but a little later, he found four nodules, one after another, and two ofthem were sunstones; four or five chunks later, he found a third. Why,this must be the Dying Place of the Jellyfish! By late afternoon, when hehad cleaned up all his loose flint, he had nine, including one deep redmonster an inch in diameter. There must have been some convection currentin the ancient ocean that had swirled them all into this one place. Heconsidered setting off some more shots, decided that it was too late andreturned to camp.

  "Little Fuzzy!" he called, opening the living-room door. "Where are you,Little Fuzzy? Pappy Jack's rich; we're going to celebrate!"

  Silence. He called again; still no reply or scamper of feet. Probablycleaned up all the prawns around the camp and went hunting farther outinto the woods, thought Jack. Unbuckling his gun and dropping it onto thetable, he went out to the kitchen. Most of the Extee Three was gone. Inthe bedroom, he found that Little Fuzzy had dumped the stones out of thebiscuit tin and made an arrangement, and laid the wood chisel in a neatdiagonal across the blanket.

  After getting dinner assembled and in the oven, he went out and called fora while, then mixed a highball and took it into the living room, sittingdown with it to go over his day's findings. Rather incredulously, herealized that he had cracked out at least seventy-five thousand sols'worth of stones today. He put them into the bag and sat sipping thehighball and thinking pleasant thoughts until the bell on the stove warnedhim that dinner was ready.

  He ate alone--after all the years he had been doing that contentedly, ithad suddenly become intolerable--and in the evening he dialed through hismicro-film library, finding only books he had read and reread a dozentimes, or books he kept for reference. Several times he thought he heardthe little door open, but each time he was mistaken. Finally he went tobed.

  As soon as he woke, he looked across at the folded blanket, but the woodchisel was still lying athwart it. He put down more Extee Three andchanged the water in the bowl before leaving for the diggings. That day hefound three more sunstones, and put them in the bag mechanically andwithout pleasure. He quit work early and spent over an hour spiralingaround the camp, but saw nothing. The Extee Three in the kitchen wasuntouched.

  Maybe the little fellow ran into something too big for him, even with hisfine new weapon--a hobthrush, or a bush-goblin, or another harpy. Or maybehe'd just gotten tired staying in one place, and had moved on.

  No; he'd liked it here. He'd had fun, and been happy. He shook his headsadly. Once he, too, had lived in a pleasant place, where he'd had fun,and could have been happy if he hadn't thought there was something he'dhad to do. So he had gone away, leaving grieved people behind him. Maybethat was how it was with Little Fuzzy. Maybe he didn't realize how much ofa place he had made for himself here, or how empty he was leaving it.


  He started for the kitchen to get a drink, and checked himself. Take adrink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has adrink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks allaround. No; he'd have one drink, maybe a little bigger than usual, beforehe went to bed.