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then another. Then voices shouted.
They got Herckerd. They got the sunstones, too. Then he forgot about
both. Just get away, get far away, get away fast.
There was a steel door at the head of the stairs. Oh, God, please don t let
it be locked! He flung himself at it, gripping the latch-handle.
It wasn t. The door swung open, and he stumbled through and closed it
behind him, hearing, as he did, voices coming up from below. Then he turned,
in the lighted hallway beyond.
There was a policeman standing not fifteen feet away, holding a short
carbine with a thick, flaring muzzle, a stunner. He crouched, grabbing for his
pistol. Then the blunderbuss muzzle of the stunner swung toward him at the
policeman s hip. He had the pistol half drawn when the lights all went out and
a crushing shock hit him, shaking and jarring him into oblivion.
THE OPERATION-COMMAND ROOM was silent. When the voice from the
screen speaker ceased, there was not a sound for an instant. Then there was
a soft susurration; everybody in the place was exhaling at once. Grego found
that he had been holding his own breath. So had Harry Steefer; he was
exhaling noisily.
 Well, that s it, the Chief said.  I m glad they took Novaes alive, anyhow.
It ll be a couple of hours before he s able to talk. He picked up his cigarette
pack, shook one out for himself and offered it.
Moses Herckerd wouldn t do any talking; he d taken a dozen submachine
gun bullets.
 What ll we do with the sunstones? the voice from the screen asked.
 Take them to the gem-vault; we ll sort them over tomorrow or when we
have time. He turned to the open screens to city police and Colonial
Constabulary. The non-coms who had been on them were replaced by Ralph
Earlie and Ian Ferguson, respectively.  You hear what was going on? he
asked.
 We got most of it, Ferguson said, and Earlie said,  You got them, and
you got the stones back, but just what did happen?
 They had a contragravity-lifter; they used it to get up one of the main
conduit shafts, and then they got into a maintenance passage on the
fourteenth level down. One of our jeeps caught them; Herckerd tried to put up
a fight and got shot to hamburger; Novaes ran up a flight of stairs and came
out in a hall right in front of a cop with a sono-stunner. When he comes to,
we ll question him and check his story with the Fuzzies, he said.  How are
you doing at Mortgageville?
 We have the place surrounded, Ferguson said.  They might get out on
foot; they won t in a vehicle. We have three Navy landing-craft loaded with
detection equipment circling overhead, and Casagra has a hundred Marines
along with my men.
 I can t help on that, at all, the Mallorysport police chief said.  I have all
my men out making raids, and if you don t need that blockade around
Company House any more, I want the men who are there. We have Ivan
Bowlby, Spike Heenan and Raul Laporte, and we re pulling in everybody
that s ever had anything to do with any of them, or Leo Thaxter. We don t
have Thaxter, yet. I suppose he s at Mortgageville, along with the Evinses,
waiting for Herckerd and Novaes to bring in the loot. And we have Hugo
Ingermann, and this time he can t talk himself out. We got Judge Pendarvis
out of bed, and he signed warrants for all of them; reasonable grounds for
suspicion and authority to veridicate. We re saving him for last; we ve just
started on the small-fry.
There wasn t any question in his mind that Leo Thaxter was involved in
the attempt on the gem-vault. Whether Bowlby or Heenan or Laporte had
anything to do with it was more or less immaterial. They could be questioned,
not only about that but about anything else, and anything they admitted under
veridication was admissible as evidence against them, self incriminatory or
not.
 Well, I m going over and see what they ve been getting from the
Fuzzies, he said.  There ought to be quite a little, by now. He glanced up at
the screen from Steefer s office; half a dozen people were there now, and he
was surprised to see Jack Holloway among them. He couldn t have flown in
from Beta Continent since this had started.  I ll call back, or have somebody
call, later.
Crossing the hall, he joined the group who were interviewing the five
Herckerd-Novaes-Evins-Thaxter Fuzzies. Juan Jimenez was there, so were a
couple of doctors who had been working with Fuzzies at the reception center.
So was Claudette Pendarvis. Jack Holloway met him as he entered, and they
shook hands.
 I thought there might be something I could do to help, he said.  Listen,
Mr. Grego, you re not going to bring any charges against these Fuzzies, are
you?
 Good Lord, no!
 Well, they re sapient beings, and they broke the law, Holloway said.
 They are legally ten-year-old children, Judge Pendarvis s wife said.
 They are not morally responsible; they were taught to do this by humans.
 Yes, faginy, along with enslavement, Ahmed Khadra said.  Mandatory
death by shooting for that, too.
 And I hope they shoot that Evins woman first of all; she s the worst of the
lot, Sandra Glenn said.  She s the one who used the electric shock-rod on
them when they made mistakes.
 Mr. Grego, Ernst Mallin interrupted.  I don t understand this. These
Fuzzyphones are simple enough for any Fuzzy to operate; all they need to do
is hold the little pistol-grip and the switch works automatically. Diamond can
talk audibly, but he simply cannot teach any of these other Fuzzies to use it.
You don t have your hearing aid on, do you? Well, listen to this.
Diamond used his Fuzzyphone; he spoke quite audibly. When he gave it
to any of the others, all they produced was,  Yeek.
 Let me see that thing. He took it from Diamond and carried it over to the
desk; rummaging in the top middle drawer, he found a little screwdriver and
took it apart. The mechanism seemed to be all right. He removed the tiny
power-unit and exchanged it for a similar one from a flashlight he found in the
Chief s desk. The flashlight wouldn t light. He handed the Fuzzyphone to
Mallin.
 Give this to one of the others, not Diamond. Have him say something.
Mallin handed the Fuzzyphone to one of the pair whom Lansky and
Eggers had captured in the vault, and asked him a question. Holding the
Fuzzyphone to his mouth, the Fuzzy answered quite audibly. Three or four of
the humans said,  What the hell? or words to that effect.
 Diamond, you not need talk-thing to make talk like Big One, he said.
 You make talk like Big One any time. You make talk like Big One now.
 Like this? Diamond asked.
 How does he do it? Mrs. Pendarvis demanded.  Their voices aren t
audible, at all.
 You think the power-unit gave out, and he just went on copying the
sounds he was accustomed to make with the Fuzzyphone? Mallin asked.
 That s right. He heard himself speak in the audible range, and he just
learned to pitch his voice to imitate his own transformed voice. I ll bet he s
been talking audibly for weeks, and we never knew it.
 Bet he didn t know it, either, Jack Holloway said.  Mr. Grego, do you
think he could teach other Fuzzies to do that?
 That would be kind of hard, wouldn t it? Mallin asked.  Does he really
know, himself, how he does it?
 Mr. Grego! the police sergeant, who was still keeping half an eye on the
communication screen, broke in. The Chief wants to know if you want to go to
the gem-vault and check the contents of that suitcase.
 Has anybody else checked it?
 Well, Captain Lansky has, but . . . 
 Then lock it up in the vault; I don t have to do that. The Nifflheim with it.
I ll check it tomorrow. I m busy, now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
 YOU THINK FOUR-FIFTY a carat would be all right? Victor Grego was
asking.
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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]