He put one hand under it, to support it like a baby--at least, he seemed
to recall having seen babies supported in that way; babies were things he
didn't fool with if he could help it--and straightened. It weighed between
fifteen and twenty pounds. At first, it struggled in panic, then quieted
and seemed to enjoy being carried. In the living room he sat down in his
favorite armchair, under a standing lamp, and examined his new
acquaintance.
It was a mammal--there was a fairly large mammalian class on
Zarathustra--but beyond that he was stumped. It wasn't a primate, in the
Terran sense. It wasn't like anything Terran, or anything else on
Zarathustra. Being a biped put it in a class by itself for this planet. It
was just a Little Fuzzy, and that was the best he could do.
That sort of nomenclature was the best anybody could do on a Class-III
planet. On a Class-IV planet, say Loki, or Shesha, or Thor, naming animals
was a cinch. You pointed to something and asked a native, and he'd gargle
a mouthful of syllables at you, which might only mean, "Whaddaya wanna
know for?" and you took it down in phonetic alphabet and the whatzit had a
name. But on Zarathustra, there were no natives to ask. So this was a
Little Fuzzy.
"What would you like to eat, Little Fuzzy?" he asked. "Open your mouth,
and let Pappy Jack see what you have to chew with."
Little Fuzzy's dental equipment, allowing for the fact that his jaw was
rounder, was very much like his own.
"You're probably omnivorous. How would you like some nice Terran
Federation Space Forces Emergency Ration, Extraterrestrial, Type Three?"
he asked.
Little Fuzzy made what sounded like an expression of willingness to try
it. It would be safe enough; Extee Three had been fed to a number of
Zarathustran mammals without ill effects. He carried Little Fuzzy out into
the kitchen and put him on the floor, then got out a tin of the field
ration and opened it, breaking off a small piece and handing it down.
Little Fuzzy took the piece of golden-brown cake, sniffed at it, gave a
delighted yeek and crammed the whole piece in his mouth.
"You never had to live on that stuff and nothing else for a month, that's
for sure!"
He broke the cake in half and broke one half into manageable pieces and
put it down on a saucer. Maybe Little Fuzzy would want a drink, too. He
started to fill a pan with water, as he would for a dog, then looked at
his visitor sitting on his haunches eating with both hands and changed his
mind. He rinsed a plastic cup cap from an empty whisky bottle and put it
down beside a deep bowl of water. Little Fuzzy was thirsty, and he didn't
have to be shown what the cup was for.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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