Fuzzy Nation Read Online Free PDF Page A

bindi kept well, which was why Holloway had them.
    Holloway slowly walked back toward the kitchen area, keeping his eye on the cat thing, but taking it off momentarily to lift the plastic bell. He reached for an apple, but then thought better of it and took the bindi instead. The bindi was local fruit; the cat thing was a local animal. He’d never known an apple to kill an alien creature, but why take that chance.
    Holloway opened a drawer and took out a knife. The cat thing notably shifted at the sight of it. Holloway kept the knife low and quickly quartered the bindi, and got a reminder that bindi were sloppy fruit; juice and soft pulp ran through his fingers. He ignored this and conspicuously set the knife back into the drawer and closed it. He’d clean it off later.
    The cat thing seemed to relax a bit, but then got more apprehensive as Holloway approached the bookcase again. The creature was at one corner of the top of the bookcase; Holloway pathed himself the long way around to stand by the other corner, too far away to grab the animal. The cat thing crouched there and stared at Holloway, unblinking.
    Holloway took a quarter of the bindi and popped it in his mouth, chewing it slowly and obviously and with apparent satisfaction, watching the cat thing watch him. He swallowed and then placed another quarter of the bindi on the far top corner of the bookcase.
    “That’s yours,” Holloway said, as if saying so would make the action any clearer to the animal. Then he placed the other two bindi quarters on his work desk and conspicuously turned his back on the cat thing, moving to pick up the mess in the cabin.
    Holloway had no idea whether the thing would understand he was offering it food, or even if the creature would like bindi. If the thing really was like a cat, it’d be a carnivore. Well, Holloway had some lizard cutlets in the cooler. He could try those next.
    One part of Holloway’s brain, which fancied itself the sensible part, was currently yelling at him. What the hell are you doing feeding a wild animal? it was saying. You should have opened the door and let Carl chase it out of the cabin. You never acted this way when the lizards got in .
    Holloway had no good answer for this, other than that for some reason, the creature interested him. Most of the land animals on Zara XXIII were more reptilian than not; mammal-like creatures on the planet were few and far between. In fact, Holloway couldn’t remember seeing one, either live or in a database, that was as large as this one was. He’d have to check the database again.
    But what interested him the most was the way the creature was acting. The cat thing was obviously terrified, but it wasn’t acting like a terrified animal. It seemed like it was smarter than the average wild animal, especially here on Zara XXIII, where the local fauna never struck Holloway as having developed an evolutionary premium on brains.
    Also, the thing looked like a cat, and Holloway always liked cats. Holloway’s internal sensible person smacked his virtual forehead at that.
    Holloway took the papers he’d collected, tapped them together, and placed them on his work desk, glancing up at the cat thing. It was busily devouring the bindi slice as if it hadn’t eaten in days. That answers that, Holloway thought. He reached down and turned over his spare infopanel, preemptively wincing as he did so, preparing for a cracked screen or something worse. To his surprise, it appeared unharmed. He powered it up and it came to life, fully functional. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked again at the cat thing, which had finished its fruit slice.
    “You’re lucky this thing still works,” Holloway said to the creature. “If you broke it, I might have had to let Carl eat you.”
    The cat thing said nothing (of course) but kept glancing from Holloway to the two remaining bindi slices. The thing was obviously still hungry and trying to figure out how to get to the bindi without getting