A dozen Fuzzies rushed past — the five Company Police Fuzzies and Mamma Fuzzy with Baby running beside her, and some others he felt he ought to know but didn’t. They were all swirling around a big red-and-gold ball, rolling it rapidly on the grass. Diamond took off after them.

“Why don’t you teach them some real ball games, Jack?” Clyde Garrick asked. He was a sports enthusiast. “Football, now; a Fuzzy football game would be something to watch.” A Fuzzy directly in front of the rolling ball leaped over it, coming down among those who were pushing it. “Basketball; did you see the jump that one made? I wish I could get a team of human kids who could jump like that together.”

Holloway shook his head. “Some of the marines out at Hoksu-Mitto tried to teach them soccer,” he said. “Didn’t work, at all. They couldn’t see the sense of the rules, and they couldn’t understand why all of them couldn’t play on both teams. If a Fuzzy sees somebody trying to do something, all he wants to do is help.”

That shocked Garrick. He didn’t think people who lacked competitive spirit were people at all. Stenson nodded.

“What I was saying. They want to help everybody. You could interest them in the sort of sports in which one really competes with oneself. If you teach a Fuzzy something new, he isn’t satisfied till he can do it again better.”

“Rifle shooting,” Garrick grudged. He didn’t consider shooting a sport at all. Not an athletic sport, at any rate. “I know shooters who claim they get just as much fun shooting alone as in a match.”

“I don’t know about that. A Fuzzy would need an awfully light rifle and awfully light loads. Mind, they only weigh fifteen or twenty pounds. A .22 light enough for a Fuzzy to handle would kick him as hard as my 12.7 express kicks me. But archery’d be all right. We’ve been teaching them to make bows and arrows and shoot them. You’d be surprised; most of them can pull a twenty-pound bow, and for them that’s heavier than a hundred-pound bow for a man.”

“Huh!” Garrick looked at the swirl of golden bodies around the bright-colored ball. Anybody who weighed so little and could pull a twenty-pound bow deserved respect, team spirit or no team spirit. “Tell you what, Jack. I’ll put up cups for regional archery matches and for a world’s championship match, and we can start having matches and organizing teams. Say, in a year, we could hold a match for the world’s title.”

What a Fuzzy would do with a trophy cup now!

“But what I’d really like to see,” Garrick continued, “would be a real live Fuzzy football league. Don’t you think you could get some interest stirred up?”

No, and a damned good thing. Start Fuzzy football, and the gamblers would be onto it like a Fuzzy after a land-prawn. And from what he knew about Fuzzies, any Fuzzy could be fixed to throw a game for half a cake of Extee-Three; and everybody on both teams would help, just to do what some Big One wanted. No, no Fuzzy football.

While he had been talking he had been edging and nudging the others toward the bartending robot. Yves Janiver, whose glass was empty, was aiding and abetting. As soon as they were close enough, he and the Native Court judge stepped in to get drinks. He was being supplied with his when he was greeted by Claudette Pendarvis, who asked if he had just arrived.

“Practically. I saw your two; they’re off somewhere with some of mine,” he said. “Is the judge here yet?”

No; he wasn’t. She asked Janiver if he knew where the Chief Justice was. In conference, in chambers — he and Gus Brannhard and some other lawyers. Pendarvis and Brannhard would be arriving a little later. Mrs. Pendarvis wanted to know if he was going to visit Adoption Bureau while he was in town.

“Yes, surely, Mrs. Pendarvis. Tomorrow morning be all right?”

Tomorrow morning would be fine. He asked her how things were going. Adoptions, she said, had fallen off somewhat; that was what he’d been expecting.

“But the hospital wants some more Fuzzies, to entertain the patients. They have some now; they want more. And Dr. Mallin says they are a wonderful influence on some of the mental patients.”

“Well, we can use some more at school,” a woman who had just come up said — Mrs. Hawkwood, principal of the kindergarten and primary schools. “We have a couple already, in the preliterate classes. Do you know, the Fuzzies are actually teaching the human children?”

Age-group four to six; yes, he could believe that.

“Why just preliterates, Mrs. Hawkwood?” he asked. “Put some of them into the c-a-t, spells cat class and see how fast they pick it up. Bet they do better than the human six year olds.”

“You mean, try to teach Fuzzies to read?”

The idea had never occurred to him before; it seemed like a good one. Evidently it hadn’t occurred to Mrs. Hawkwood, either, and now that it was presented to her, he could almost watch her thoughts chase one another across her face. Teach Fuzzies to read? Ridiculous; only people could read. But Fuzzies were people; there was scientific authority for that. But they were Fuzzies; that was different. But then…

At that point, Ben Rainsford came up, apologetic for not having greeted him earlier and asking if his family had come in with him. While he was talking to Ben, Holloway saw Chief Justice Pendarvis and Gus Brannhard approach. The Chief Justice got a glass of wine for himself and a cocktail for his wife; they stepped aside together. Brannhard, big and bearded and giving the impression, in spite of his meticulous courtroom black, of being in hunting clothes, secured a tumbler of straight whiskey. Victor Grego and Leslie Coombes came up and spoke. Then somebody pulled Rainsford aside to talk to him.

That was the trouble with these cocktail parties. You met everybody and never had a chance to talk to anybody. It was getting almost that bad at cocktail time out at Hoksu-Mitto now. Out of the corner of his eye, Holloway saw Mrs. Hawkwood fasten upon Ernst Mallin. Mallin was a real authority on Fuzzy psychology; if he told her Fuzzies could be taught to read, she’d have to believe it. He wanted to talk to Ernst himself about that, and about a lot of other things, but not in this donnybrook.

The wheelbarrow parade came by, more slowly and less noisily, and a little later the crowd that had been chasing the big ball came pushing it along, Baby Fuzzy jumping onto it and tumbling off it. Dinnertime for Fuzzies — putting back all the playthings where they belonged. He was in favor of using Fuzzies in schools for human children; maybe they’d have a civilizing influence. After a while, the Fuzzies came stringing back, mostly talking about food.

Dinnertime for Big Ones, too. It took longer to get them mobilized than it had the Fuzzies, and then, of course, they had to stop on the upper terrace where Sandra Glenn and Ahmed Khadra and some of the Government House staff had set up a Fuzzy-type smorgasbord on a big revolving table. The Fuzzies all thought that was fun. So did the human-people watching them. Eventually, they all got into the dining room. There weren’t enough ladies to pair off the guests, male and female after their kind like the passengers on the Ark. They placed Jack Holloway between Ben Rainsford and Leslie Coombes, with Victor Grego and Gus Brannhard on the other side.

By the time the robo-service in the middle of the table had taken away the dessert dishes and brought in coffee and liqueurs, Fuzzies were beginning to filter in. They’d finished their own dinner long ago; it was getting dark outside, and they wanted to be where the Big Ones were. Couldn’t blame them; it was their party, wasn’t it? They came in diffidently, like well-brought up children, looking but not touching anything, saying hello to people.

Diamond came over to Grego, who picked him up and set him on the edge of the table. Rainsford pushed back his chair, and Flora and Fauna climbed onto his lap. Gus Brannhard had four or five trying to clamber over him. Little Fuzzy wanted up on the table, too, and promptly unzipped his pouch, got out his little pipe, and lighted it. Several came to Leslie Coombes, begging, “Unka Less’ee, plis give smokko?” and Coombes lit cigarettes for them. Coombes liked Fuzzies, and treated them with the same grave courtesy he showed his human friends, but he didn’t want them climbing over him, and they knew it.