Well, alone with a dog and five little creatures he was now willy-nilly assigning gender and social roles. Holloway figured there was a way to check to see who was male and who was female, but he didn’t figure that was actually his job. A biologist would be on-site in a few days. He could wait. And if he had guessed wrong, he could change his mind. Just ask Carl about that. He’d originally been named Carla, after Holloway’s aunt, until someone pointed out his new puppy’s plumbing in greater detail. Carl had been Holloway’s first dog. This was the excuse he gave when people pointed and laughed.

So: Papa (for now) Fuzzy, leader and patriarch. Holloway watched him interact with the other fuzzys and wondered again at the thing’s intelligence. He was damn smart, as far as animals went. Definitely smarter than Carl, whom he had apparently entirely coopted, given that the dog had now taken to following Papa around the treetop compound, tail wagging. It takes a certain kind of dog to willingly demote himself from alpha dog, and that dog was Carl. Holloway would have to speak to him about it, for what little good it would do, Carl being a dog and all.

Holloway rummaged through his brain to find an equivalently smart animal. If he had to guess, he’d say that Papa Fuzzy was about as smart as a capuchin monkey, a comparison Holloway was qualified to make because he had an acquaintance with one when he’d first landed on Zara XXIII. A “cap” had been the pet of Sam Hamilton, another surveyor, who worked the territory directly next to Holloway’s. The rumor was the monkey might have been smarter than Hamilton, who was rumored to have children’s reading primers on his infopanel so as to catch up for a lifetime of functional illiteracy.

Whether that was true or not, the monkey was clever as hell and also a little thief; Sam was repeatedly and apologetically handing back people’s keys and wallets, although the latter were often missing the printed ZaraCorp credit scrip that surveyors used to buy supplies and to gamble with. Credit cards were also occasionally found to have balances lightened. No one believed the monkey was responsible for that. Holloway had had to have a talk with Sam about it at one point.

Now Sam and the monkey were gone: Sam hadn’t taken care of his skimmer very well and had made an unscheduled hard landing on the jungle floor after one of his rotors flamed out. Sam had never bothered to get himself an emergency perimeter fence; by the time a neighboring surveyor had gotten to his location, the only thing left of Sam and his monkey had been a trail of blood leading into the jungle. Sales of emergency perimeter fences doubled in the next week.

The more Holloway thought about it, the more he figured that Papa Fuzzy might actually be smarter than that monkey. For one thing, he and his family were still alive in the same jungle that ate that monkey whole. He was also smart enough to realize that hanging out with Holloway might be an easier life than avoiding the predators in the trees and down on the jungle floor.

Next in the Fuzzy Family hierarchy had been the fuzzy who had first come down out of the trees to greet Papa. This fuzzy was slightly smaller than Papa, and lighter—golden-haired where Papa Fuzzy was more of a deep tortoiseshell coloring, but with a darker face. She (another assumption, Holloway realized) reminded Holloway of a Siamese or Himalayan breed of cat. This fuzzy was clearly Papa Fuzzy’s companion; the two of them were often close together and seemed openly affectionate, petting and nuzzling each other frequently. Holloway was mildly concerned that it might go further than that and then he would be an unwilling witness to fuzzy sex, or something. But the two kept it in their metaphorical pants, at least when he was around.

In any event, this fuzzy seemed friendly and trusting of Holloway and Carl, mostly, Holloway assumed, because Papa Fuzzy was friendly and trusting with them. Holloway, in a burst of no creativity whatsoever, called this one Mama Fuzzy.

Next up in the fuzzy hierarchy was the gray fuzzy who was as large as Papa Fuzzy, but was a bit more stout and perhaps a step or two slower, both in speed and, it seemed to Holloway, in the brains department. This fuzzy was affectionate toward Mama Fuzzy but in a different way from Papa Fuzzy. If Holloway had to guess, he’d say that this fuzzy was Mama Fuzzy’s own father, given how they acted and responded to each other. Again, a complete supposition on Holloway’s part; it might be that he used to be Mama Fuzzy’s mate before Papa Fuzzy came around, and now he was accepting some sort of secondary role. The ways of fuzzy society were a blank to Holloway, truth be told. Regardless, he found himself tagging this third animal as Grandpa Fuzzy.

Part of the reason Holloway found himself referring to Grandpa Fuzzy that way revolved around what appeared to be Grandpa’s primary job, which was herding the final two fuzzys and keeping them in line. These two fuzzys were smaller and acted younger—more impulsive and heedless, as exemplified by the tendency of one of them to go up to Carl and jump on his back, attempting to ride the dog like a noble steed. Carl did not appreciate this and at one point nipped the fuzzy. The fuzzy batted the dog on the nose and then ran squealing, thrilled, as Carl tried to eat him. Holloway figured this one had to be the fuzzy equivalent of a teenage boy. His fur was blotchy patches of gray and black on white. Holloway called him Pinto.

The final fuzzy, golden and color-pointed like Mama Fuzzy, was as high spirited as Pinto but less obnoxious about it. Rather than trying to ride Carl, she would pet him and groom him and try to hug him whenever possible. Carl was a good sport about this but found it only slightly less trying than being ridden; it appeared that even this most gregarious of dogs eventually needed his own space. When that happened, Carl would gently shake off this last fuzzy and retreat to the cabin; his dog door was still keyed to his radio transmitter, so the fuzzys couldn’t get through without his permission. He’d slip through the door and hide for an hour or two.

This littlest fuzzy did not seem offended or upset by the abandonment. She would simply turn her attentions to Holloway and whatever it was he was doing at the moment. She was not as affectionate to Holloway as she was to Carl but would stand close to him and pick up the objects he was working on or with. Holloway made a note to himself never to try to do a jigsaw puzzle with this particular creature around. For all that, he found her pleasant company and, frankly, adorable. He started to call her Baby Fuzzy.

Papa, Mama, Grandpa, Pinto, and Baby—they made a cozy little family unit. Holloway couldn’t decide whether he had adopted them or whether it was the other way around. Actually he suspected that the family had adopted Carl, and that he was just sort of a bonus: the best darn butler a little fuzzy ever had. Holloway found this idea unaccountably amusing, which was perhaps one of the reasons he had accepted the invasion of his home and life by the little creatures in the first place.

Which was not to say there were not adjustments.

Holloway experienced the first of these the morning after the Fuzzys had climbed down out of the trees. Holloway had woken up with a monumental backache; after a few seconds he realized it was because he was twisted like a pretzel in his cot.

The cause for this was four of the five fuzzys unequally distributed across his blanket, including one Grandpa, much to his consternation, hogging his pillow and snoring lightly in his face. While he was asleep, Carl had let the Fuzzys into the house and they had climbed into bed with him, and Holloway shifted in his sleep to give them room, resulting in his current contortionist position.

Holloway raised his head off the pillow and saw Carl lying on the floor next to the cot. Baby Fuzzy had nuzzled into his side and was sighing contentedly in her sleep. Carl didn’t look terribly comfortable, either. He noticed Holloway looking at him and gave him a look with his eyebrows that said, Sorry, man. I didn’t know.