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arrows hit it at once and it dropped.
"Now that," he said, "was good! Who did?"
Two of them spoke up; one was his and Ruth's Super-
ego, and the other was an up-to-now nameless Fuzzy
who had come in several weeks ago. Robin Hood would
do for him. Then he looked again. No. Maid Marian.
That was with half his mind. The other half was
worrying about Jack Holloway. Jack seemed to have
stopped giving a damn after he came back from Yellow-
sand. If it only hadn't been Little Fuzzy. Any of the
others, even one of his own family, he'd just have writ-
ten off, felt badly about, and gotten over. But Little
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FUZZ1ES AND OTHER PEOPLE
H. Beam Piper
161
Fuzzy was something special. He was the first one, and
besides that, he had something none of the others had,
the something that had brought him into Holloway's
Camp alone to make friends with the strange Big One.
Ruth and Pancho and Ernst Mallin hadn't gotten a de-
pendable IQ-test for Fuzzies developed yet, but they
all claimed that Little Fuzzy was a genius. And he was
Pappy Jack's favorite.
And now Jack was drinking, too. Not just a couple
before dinner and one or two in the evening. By God, he
was drinking as much as Gus Brannhard, and nobody
but Gus Brannhard could do that and get away with it.
Gerd wished he'd gone along with Jack to Mallorysport,
but George Lunt hadn't been away from here since right
after the Fuzzy Trial, and he was entitled to a trip to
town; and somebody had to stay and mind the store, so
he'd stayed.
Oh, hell, if Jack needed looking after, George could
look after him.
"Pappy Gerd! Pappy Gerd!" somebody was calling.
He turned to see Jack's Ko-Ko coming on a run. "Is
talk-screen! Mummy Woof say somebody in Big House
Place want to make talk."
"Hokay, I come." He turned to the Protection Force
trooper who was helping him. "Let them go get their ar-
rows. If that carton doesn't fall apart when they pull
them out, let them shoot another course." Then he
started up the slope toward the lab-hut, ahead of Ko-
Ko.
It was Juan Jimenez, at Company Science Center. He
gave a breath of relief; Jack hadn't gotten potted and
gotten into trouble.
"Hello, Gerd. Nothing more about Little Fuzzy?" he
asked.
"No. I don't think there is anything more. Jack's in
town; did you see him?"
"Yes, at the grand opening of the Fuzzy Club yester-
day. Ben and Gus want him to stay over till the conven-
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tion opens. Gerd, you were asking me about ecological
side effects of harpy extermination and wanted me to let
you know if anything turned up."
"Yes. Has anything?"
"I think so. Forests & Waters has been after me lately.
You know how all those people are; they get little, man-
ageable problems, and never bother consulting any-
body, and then when they get big and unmanageable
they want me to work miracles. You know where the
Squiggleis?"
He did. It was along the inside of the mountain range
on the lower western coast. It wasn't really a badland,
but it would do as a reasonable facsimile. Volcanic,
geologically recent; a lot of weathered-down lavabeds
covered with thin soil; about a thousand little streams
twisting every which way and all flowing finally into the
main Snake River from the west. Flooded bank-high in
rainy season and almost dry in summer, doing little or
nothing for the water situation on the cattle ranges at
any season. For the last ten years, since the Company
had been reforesting it, it had gotten a little better.
"Well, all those young featherleaf trees," Jimenez
said, "they'd been doing fine up to a couple of years
ago, holding moisture, stopping erosion, water table
going up all over the western half of the cattle country.
Then the damned goofers got in among them, and half
the young trees are chewed to death now."
That figured. They'd shot all the harpies out of the
southern half of the continent long ago; first chased
them out of the cattle country to protect the calves, and
then followed them into the upland forests where they'd
been feasting on goofers. Now the surplus goofers were
being crowded out of the uplands and down into
the Squiggle. Up in the north, Fuzzies killed a lot of
goofers, but there were no Fuzzies that far south.
But why shouldn't there be?
"Juan, I have an idea. We have a lot of Fuzzies here
who are real sharp with bows and arrows. I was out run-
162 H. Beam Piper
ning an archery class when you called me; you should
see them. Say we airlift about fifty of them down to
where the goofers are worst, and see what they do."
"Send them to Chester ville; the chief forester there'll
know where to spot them. How about arrows?"
"Well, how about arrows? How soon do you think
you can produce a lot, say a couple of thousand? I'll
send specs when I know where to send them. You can
make the shafts out of duralloy, the feathers out of
plastic, and the heads out of light steel. They won't have
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to shoot through armor-plate, just through goofers."
"Well, I wouldn't know about that; that's purely a
production problem...."
"Then, talk to a production man about it. Is Grego in
town? Talk to him; he'll get your production problems
unproblemed."
"Well, Gerd, thanks a million. That may just be the
answer. Airlift them around from place to place and
just let them hunt. I'll bet they'll get more goofers in a
day than five times as many men would get with rifles."
"Oh, hell, don't thank me. The Company's done a
lot of things for us. Hokfusine, to put it in one word. Of
course, we'll expect the Company to issue the same
rations they're getting here. . . ."
"Oh, sure. Look, I'll call Victor. He'll probably call
you back...."
XX»
Wise One was happy. For the first time since Old One
had made dead, he did not have to think.all the time of
what to do next and what would happen to the others if
anything happened to him. Big Ones' Friend would
think about all that now; he was leading the band. Of
course, he insisted that Wise One was the leader, but
that was foolishness.
Or maybe it wasn't; maybe it was wisdom so wise that
he thought it was foolishness because he was foolish
himself. That was a thought he had never had before.
Maybe he was getting wiser just by being with Big Ones'
Friend. Big Ones' Friend didn't want to make trouble in
the band; that was why he said Wise One should lead
and had given the the w'eesle to show it. His fingers
went to his throat to reassure himself that he really had
it.
Then he squirmed comfortably among the dry soft
grass and ferns under the brush shelter Big Ones' Friend
had shown them how to make, with the warmth and
glow of the fire on him, listening to the wind among the
trees and the splashing of the little moving-water and
the sound of the lake behind him. Fire was wonderful
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