“Get yourself a new Attorney-General, too. I’m with Jack on this.”

Rainsford dropped his pipe into the tobacco pouch.

“You mean you’re all against me? What are you doing, bucking for jobs with the CZC?”

After a crack like that, there were those who would have insisted on continuing the discussion by correspondence and through seconds. With anybody but Ben Rainsford, he would have, himself. He turned to Pancho Ybarra.

“Doctor, as a psychiatrist what is your opinion of that outburst?” he asked.

“I’m not entitled to express an opinion,” the Navy psychologist replied. “Governor Rainsford is not my patient.”

“You mean, I ought to be somebody’s?” Rainsford demanded.

“Well, now that you ask, you’re not exactly psychotic, but you’re certainly not displaying much sanity on the subject of Victor Grego.”

“You think we ought to just sit back and let him do anything he pleases; run the planet the way he did before the Pendarvis Decisions?”

“He didn’t do such a bad job, Ben,” he said. “I’m beginning to think he did a damn sight better job than you’ll do unless you stop playing Hatfields and McCoys and start governing. You have to arrange for elections for delegates, and a constitutional convention. You have to take over and operate all these public services the Company’s been relieved of responsibility for when their charter was invalidated. And you’ll have to stop this cattle rustling on Beta and Delta Continents, or you’ll have a couple of first-class range wars on your hands. And you’d better start thinking about the immigrant rush that’s going to hit this planet when the news of the Pendarvis Decisions gets around.”

Rainsford, his pipe and tobacco shoved into his side pocket, was on his feet. He’d tried to interrupt a couple of times.

“Oh, to Nifflheim with you!” he cried. “I’m going out and talk to my Fuzzies.”

With that, he flung out of the room. For a moment, nobody said anything, then Jack Holloway swore.

“I hope the Fuzzies talk some sense into him. Be damned if I can.”

They probably would, if he’d listen to them. They had more sense than he had, at the moment. Ahmed Khadra, who had sat motionless through the upper-echelon brawl, clattered his cup and saucer.

“Jack, you think we ought to go check in at the hotel?” he asked.

“Nifflheim, no! This isn’t Ben Rainsford’s private camp, this is Government House,” Holloway said. “We work for the Government, too. We have work to do now.”

“We’ll have to talk to him again.” He wasn’t looking forward to it with any pleasure. “We have to get some kind of a Fuzzy Code scotch-taped together, and he’ll have to okay it. We need special legislation, and till we can get a Colonial Legislature, that’ll have to be by executive decree. And you’ll have to figure out a way to make Fuzzies available for adoption. You can’t break up a black market by shooting a few people for enslavement; you’ll have to make it possible for people to get Fuzzies legally, with controls and safeguards, instead of buying them from racketeers.”

“I know it, Gus,” Jack said. “I’ve been thinking about it; a regular adoption bureau. But who can I get to handle it? I don’t know anybody.”

“Well, I know everybody around Central Courts Building.” That ought to be enough; Central Courts was like a village, in which everybody knew everybody else. “Maybe Leslie Coombes would help me.”

“My God, Gus; don’t let Ben hear you say that,” Jack implored. “He’d blow up about a hundred megatons. You might just as well talk about getting V-dash-R G-dash-O to help.”

“He could help a lot. If we ask him, he would.”

“Ruth did a lot of work with juvenile court, on her cover-job,” Ybarra mentioned. “There’s some kind of a Juvenile Welfare Association…”

“Claudette Pendarvis. The Chief Justice’s wife. She does a lot about Juvenile Welfare.”

“Yes,” Ybarra agreed instantly. “I’ve heard Ruth talk about her. Very favorably, too, and Ruth has a galloping allergy for volunteer do-gooders as a rule.”

“She likes Fuzzies,” Jack said. “She couldn’t stay away from them during the trial. I promised her a pair as soon as I got a nice couple.” He got to his feet. “Let’s move into one of the offices, where we have a table to work on, and some communication screens. I’ll call her now and ask her about it.”

“FREDERIC, MAY I interrupt?”

Pendarvis turned from the reading-screen and started to lay aside his cigar and rise. Claudette, entering the room, motioned him to keep his seat and advanced to take the low cushion-stool, clasping her hands about her knees and tilting her head back in the same girlish pose he remembered from the long ago days on Baldur when he had been courting her.

“I want to tell you something lovely, Frederic,” she began. “Mr. Holloway just called me. He says he has two Fuzzies for me, a boy Fuzzy and a girl Fuzzy; he’s going to have them brought in tomorrow or the next day.”

“Well, that is lovely.” Claudette was crazy about Fuzzies. Had been ever since the first telecasts of them, and she had watched them in court and visited them at the Hotel Mallory during the trial. Now that he considered, he would like a pair of Fuzzies, too. “I think I’ll enjoy having them here as much as you will. I like Fuzzies, as long as they stay out of my courtroom.”

They both laughed, remembering what seventeen Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy had done to the dignity of the court while their sapience was being debated.

“I hope this won’t be regarded as special privilege though,” he added. “A great many people want Fuzzies, and…”

“But other people can have Fuzzies, too. That was what Mr. Holloway was calling me about. They’ll be made available for adoption, and he wants me to supervise it, to make sure they don’t get into wrong hands and aren’t mistreated.”

That was something else. They’d both have to think about that carefully.

“You think it would be proper for you to have an official position like that?” he asked.

“I can’t see why not. I’m doing the same kind of work with Juvenile Welfare.”

“You’ll be making decisions on who should and who should not be allowed to adopt Fuzzies. When I get a Native Cases Court set up — I think Yves Janiver, for that — your decisions will be accepted.”

“Whose decisions do you think Adolphe Ruiz’s Juvenile Court accepts now?”

“That’s right,” he agreed. And she couldn’t accept the Fuzzies and refuse to help with the adoption bureau; that wouldn’t be right, at all. And she wanted Fuzzies so badly. “Well, go ahead, darling; do it. Whoever takes that position will have to be somebody who really loves Fuzzies. What did you tell Mr. Holloway?”

“That I’d talk to you, and then call him back. He’s at Government House now.”

“Well, call him and tell him you accept. I’ll call Yves and talk to him about the Native Cases Court…”

She had left the low seat while he was speaking; she stopped to kiss him on the way out. She’d be so happy. He hoped he wouldn’t be too severely criticized. Well, he’d been criticized before and survived it.

VICTOR GREGO WATCHED Diamond investigating the articles on top of the low cocktail table. He took a couple of salted nuts from the glass bowl, nibbled one, and put the rest back. He looked at the half-full coffee cup and the liqueur glass, and left both alone. Then he started to pick up the ashtray.

“No, Diamond. Vov. Don’t touch.”

“Vov ninta, Diamond,” Ernst Mallin, who was a slightly more advanced Fuzzy linguist, said. “We ought to learn their language, instead of making them learn ours.”

“We ought to teach them our language, so they can speak to anybody, and not just Fuzzyologists.”

“I deplore that term, Mr. Grego. The suffix is Greek, from logos. Fuzzy is not a Greek word, and should not be combined with it.”

“Oh, rubbish, Ernst. We’re not speaking Greek; we’re speaking Lingua Terra. You know what Lingua Terra is? An indiscriminate mixture of English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Afrikaans, mostly English. And you know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids in the Ninth Century Pre-Atomic, and no more legitimate than any of the other results. If a little Greek suffix gets into a mess like that, it’ll have to take care of itself the best way it can. And you’d better learn to like the term, because it’s your new title. Chief Fuzzyologist; fifteen percent salary increase.”