Ben Rainsford’s airjeep came over the mountains from the south in the late morning and settled onto the grass. Jack helped him inside with his luggage, and then they sat down under the big featherleaf trees to smoke their pipes and watch the Fuzzies playing in the grass. Occasionally they saw Kurt Borch pottering around outside the other camp.
“I sent the report off,” Rainsford said, then looked at his watch. “It ought to be on the mail boat for Mallorysport by now; this time tomorrow it’ll be in hyperspace for Terra. We won’t say anything about it; just sit back and watch Len Kellogg and Ernst Mallin working up a sweat trying to talk us out of sending it.” He chuckled. “I made a definite claim of sapience; by the time I got the report in shape to tape off, I couldn’t see any other alternative.”
“Damned if I can. You hear that, kids?” he asked Mike and Mitzi, who had come over in hope that there might be goodies for them. “Uncle Ben says you’re sapient.”
“Yeek?”
“They want to know if it’s good to eat. What’ll happen now?”
“Nothing, for about a year. Six months from now, when the ship gets in, the Institute will release it to the press, and then they’ll send an investigation team here. So will any of the other universities or scientific institutes that may be interested. I suppose the government’ll send somebody, too. After all, subcivilized natives on colonized planets are wards of the Terran Federation.”
He didn’t know that he liked that. The less he had to do with the government the better, and his Fuzzies were wards of Pappy Jack Holloway. He said as much.
Rainsford picked up Mitzi and stroked her. “Nice fur,” he said. “Fur like that would bring good prices. It will, if we don’t get these people recognized as sapient beings.”
He looked across the run at the new camp and wondered. Maybe Leonard Kellogg saw that, too, and saw profits for the Company in Fuzzy fur.
The airjeeps returned in the middle of the afternoon, first Mallin’s, and then Kellogg’s. Everybody went inside. An hour later, a constabulary car landed in front of the Kellogg camp. George Lunt and Ahmed Khadra got out. Kellogg came outside, spoke with them and then took them into the main living hut. Half an hour later, the lieutenant and the trooper emerged, lifted their car across the run and set it down on the lawn. The Fuzzies ran to meet them, possibly expecting more whistles, and followed them into the living room. Lunt and Khadra took off their berets, but made no move to unbuckle their gun belts.
“We got your package off all right Ben,” Lunt said. He sat down and took Goldilocks on his lap; immediately Cinderella jumped up, also. “Jack, what the hell’s that gang over there up to anyhow?”
“You got that, too?”
“You can smell it on them for a mile, against the wind. In the first place, that Borch. I wish I could get his prints; I’ll bet we have them on file. And the whole gang’s trying to hide something, and what they’re trying to hide is something they’re scared of, like a body in a closet. When we were over there, Kellogg did all the talking; anybody else who tried to say anything got shut up fast. Kellogg doesn’t like you, Jack and he doesn’t like Ben, and he doesn’t like the Fuzzies. Most of all he doesn’t like the Fuzzies.”
“Well, I told you what I thought this morning,” Rainsford said. “They don’t want outsiders discovering things on this planet. It wouldn’t make them look good to the home office on Terra. Remember, it was some non-Company people who discovered the first sunstones, back in ’Forty-eight.”
George Lunt looked thoughtful. On him, it was a scowl.
“I don’t think that’s it, Ben. When we were talking to him, he admitted very freely that you and Jack discovered the Fuzzies. The way he talked, he didn’t seem to think they were worth discovering at all. And he asked a lot of funny questions about you, Jack. The kind of questions I’d ask if I was checking up on somebody’s mental competence.” The scowl became one of anger now. “By God, I wish I had an excuse to question him—with a veridicator!”
Kellogg didn’t want the Fuzzies to be sapient beings. If they weren’t they’d be … fur-bearing animals. Jack thought of some overfed society dowager on Terra or Baldur, wearing the skins of Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and Cinderella and Goldilocks wrapped around her adipose carcass. It made him feel sick.
Tuesday dawned hot and windless, a scarlet sun coming up in a hard, brassy sky. The Fuzzies, who were in to wake Pappy Jack with their whistles, didn’t like it; they were edgy and restless. Maybe it would rain today after all. They had breakfast outside on the picnic table, and then Ben decided he’d go back to his camp and pick up a few things he hadn’t brought and now decided he needed.
“My hunting rifle’s one,” he said, “and I think I’ll circle down to the edge of the brush country and see if I can pick off a zebralope. We ought to have some more fresh meat.”
So, after eating, Rainsford got into his jeep and lifted away. Across the run, Kellogg and Mallin were walking back and forth in front of the camp, talking earnestly. When Ruth Ortheris and Gerd van Riebeek came out, they stopped, broke off their conversation and spoke briefly with them. Then Gerd and Ruth crossed the footbridge and came up the path together.
The Fuzzies had scattered, by this time, to hunt prawns. Little Fuzzy and Ko-Ko and Goldilocks ran to meet them; Ruth picked Goldilocks up and carried her, and Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy ran on ahead. They greeted Jack, declining coffee; Ruth sat down in a chair with Goldilocks, Little Fuzzy jumped up on the table and began looking for goodies, and when Gerd stretched out on his back on the grass Ko-Ko sat down on his chest.
“Goldilocks is my favorite Fuzzy,” Ruth was saying. “She is the sweetest thing. Of course, they’re all pretty nice. I can’t get over how affectionate and trusting they are; the ones we saw out in the woods were so timid.”
“Well, the ones out in the woods don’t have any Pappy Jack to look after them” Gerd said. “I’d imagine they’re very affectionate among themselves, but they have so many things to be afraid of. You know, there’s another prerequisite for sapience. It develops in some small, relatively defenseless, animal surrounded by large and dangerous enemies he can’t outrun or outfight. So, to survive, he has to learn to outthink them. Like our own remote ancestors, or like Little Fuzzy; he had his choice of getting sapient or getting exterminated.”
Ruth seemed troubled. “Gerd, Dr. Mallin has found absolutely nothing about them that indicates true sapience.”
“Oh, Mallin be bloodied; he doesn’t know what sapience is any more than I do. And a good deal less than you do, I’d say. I think he’s trying to prove that the Fuzzies aren’t sapient.”
Ruth looked startled. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s been sticking out all over him ever since he came here. You’re a psychologist; don’t tell me you haven’t seen it. Maybe if the Fuzzies were proven sapient it would invalidate some theory he’s gotten out of a book, and he’d have to do some thinking for himself. He wouldn’t like that. But you have to admit he’s been fighting the idea, intellectually and emotionally, right from the start. Why, they could sit down with pencils and slide rules and start working differential calculus and it wouldn’t convince him.”
“Dr. Mallin’s trying to—” she began angrily. Then she broke it off. “Jack, excuse us. We didn’t really come over here to have a fight. We came to meet some Fuzzies. Didn’t we, Goldilocks?”
Goldilocks was playing with the silver charm on the chain around her neck, holding it to her ear and shaking it to make it tinkle, making small delighted sounds. Finally she held it up and said, “Yeek?”
“Yes, sweetie-pie, you can have it.” Ruth took the chain from around her neck and put it over Goldilocks’ head; she had to loop it three times before it would fit. “There now; that’s your very own.”
“Oh, you mustn’t give her things like that.”
“Why not. It’s just cheap trade-junk. You’ve been on Loki, Jack, you know what it is.” He did; he’d traded stuff like that to the natives himself. “Some of the girls at the hospital there gave it to me for a joke. I only wear it because I have it. Goldilocks likes it a lot better than I do.”
An airjeep rose from the other side and floated across. Juan Jimenez was piloting it; Ernst Mallin stuck his head out the window on the right, asked her if she were ready and told Gerd that Kellogg would pick him up in a few minutes. After she had gotten into the jeep and it had lifted out, Gerd put Ko-Ko off his chest and sat up, getting cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
“I don’t know what the devil’s gotten into her,” he said, watching the jeep vanish. “Oh, yes, I do. She’s gotten the Word from On High. Kellogg hath spoken. Fuzzies are just silly little animals,” he said bitterly.
“You work for Kellogg, too, don’t you?”
“Yes. He doesn’t dictate my professional opinion, though. You know, I thought, in the evil hour when I took this job—” He rose to his feet, hitching his belt to balance the weight of the pistol on the right against the camera-binoculars on the left, and changed the subject abruptly. “Jack, has Ben Rainsford sent a report on the Fuzzies to the Institute yet?” he asked.
“Why?”
“If he hasn’t, tell him to hurry up and get one in.”
There wasn’t time to go into that further. Kellogg’s jeep was rising from the camp across the run and approaching.
He decided to let the breakfast dishes go till after lunch. Kurt Borch had stayed behind at the Kellogg camp, so he kept an eye on the Fuzzies and brought them back when they started to stray toward the footbridge. Ben Rainsford hadn’t returned by lunchtime, but zebralope hunting took a little time, even from the air. While he was eating, outside, one of the rented airjeeps returned from the northeast in a hurry, disgorging Ernst Mallin, Juan Jimenez and Ruth Ortheris. Kurt Borch came hurrying out; they talked for a few minutes, and then they all went inside. A little later, the second jeep came in, even faster, and landed; Kellogg and van Riebeek hastened into the living hut. There wasn’t anything more to see. He carried the dishes into the kitchen and washed them, and the Fuzzies went into the bedroom for their nap.
He was sitting at the table in the living room when Gerd van Riebeek knocked on the open door.
“Jack, can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.
“Sure. Come in.”
Van Riebeek entered, unbuckling his gun belt. He shifted a chair so that he could see the door from it, and laid the belt on the floor at his feet when he sat down. Then he began to curse Leonard Kellogg in four or five languages.
“Well, I agree, in principle; why in particular, though?”
“You know what that son of a Khooghra’s doing?” Gerd asked. “He and that—” He used a couple of Sheshan words, viler than anything in Lingua Terra. “—that quack headshrinker, Mallin, are preparing a report, accusing you and Ben Rainsford of perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax. You taught the Fuzzies some tricks; you and Rainsford, between you, made those artifacts yourselves and the two of you are conspiring to foist the Fuzzies off as sapient beings. Jack, if it weren’t so goddamn stinking contemptible, it would be the biggest joke of the century!”
“I take it they wanted you to sign this report, too?”
“Yes, and I told Kellogg he could—” What Kellogg could do, it seemed, was both appalling and physiologically impossible. He cursed again, and then lit a cigarette and got hold of himself. “Here’s what happened. Kellogg and I went up that stream, about twenty miles down Cold Creek, the one you’ve been working on, and up onto the high flat to a spring and a stream that flows down in the opposite direction. Know where I mean? Well, we found where some Fuzzies had been camping, among a lot of fallen timber. And we found a little grave, where the Fuzzies had buried one of their people.”
He should have expected something like that, and yet it startled him. “You mean, they bury their dead? What was the grave like?”
“A little stone cairn, about a foot and a half by three, a foot high. Kellogg said it was just a big toilet pit, but I was sure of what it was. I opened it. Stones under the cairn, and then filled-in earth, and then a dead Fuzzy wrapped in grass. A female; she’d been mangled by something, maybe a bush-goblin. And get this Jack; they’d buried her prawn-stick with her.”
“They bury their dead! What was Kellogg doing, while you were opening the grave?”
“Dithering around having ants. I’d been taking snaps of the grave, and I was burbling away like an ass about how important this was and how it was positive proof of sapience, and he was insisting that we get back to camp at once. He called the other jeep and told Mallin to get to camp immediately, and Mallin and Ruth and Juan were there when we got in. As soon as Kellogg told them what we’d found, Mallin turned fish-belly white and wanted to know how we were going to suppress it. I asked him if he was nuts, and then Kellogg came out with it. They don’t dare let the Fuzzies be proven sapient.”
“Because the Company wants to sell Fuzzy furs?”
Van Riebeek looked at him in surprise. “I never thought of that. I doubt if they did, either. No. Because if the Fuzzies are sapient beings, the Company’s charter is automatically void.”
This time Jack cursed, not Kellogg but himself.
“I am a senile old dotard! Good Lord, I know colonial law; I’ve been skating on the edge of it on more planets than you’re years old. And I never thought of that; why, of course it would. Where are you now, with the Company, by the way?”
“Out, but I couldn’t care less. I have enough in the bank for the trip back to Terra, not counting what I can raise on my boat and some other things. Xeno-naturalists don’t need to worry about finding jobs. There’s Ben’s outfit, for instance. And, brother, when I get back to Terra, what I’ll spill about this deal!”
“If you get back. If you don’t have an accident before you get on the ship.” He thought for a moment. “Know anything about geology?”
“Why, some; I have to work with fossils. I’m as much a paleontologist as a zoologist. Why?”
“How’d you like to stay here with me and hunt fossil jellyfish for a while? We won’t make twice as much, together, as I’m making now, but you can look one way while I’m looking the other, and we may both stay alive longer that way.”
“You mean that, Jack?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
Van Riebeek rose and held out his hand; Jack came around the table and shook it. Then he reached back and picked up his belt, putting it on.
“Better put yours on, too, partner. Borch is probably the only one we’ll need a gun for, but—”
Van Riebeek buckled on his belt, then drew his pistol and worked the slide to load the chamber. “What are we going to do?” he asked.
“Well, we’re going to try to handle it legally. Fact is, I’m even going to call the cops.”
He punched out a combination on the communication screen. It lighted and opened a window into the constabulary post. The sergeant who looked out of it recognized him and grinned.
“Hi, Jack. How’s the family?” he asked. “I’m coming up, one of these evenings, to see them.”
“You can see some now.” Ko-Ko and Goldilocks and Cinderella were coming out of the hall from the bedroom; he gathered them up and put them on the table. The sergeant was fascinated. Then he must have noticed that both Jack and Gerd were wearing their guns in the house. His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You got problems, Jack?” he asked.
“Little ones; they may grow, though. I have some guests here who have outstayed their welcome. For the record, better make it that I have squatters I want evicted. If there were a couple of blue uniforms around, maybe it might save me the price of a few cartridges.”
“I read you. George was mentioning that you might regret inviting that gang to camp on you.” He picked up a handphone. “Calderon to Car Three,” he said. “Do you read me, Three? Well, Jack Holloway’s got a little squatter trouble. Yeah; that’s it. He’s ordering them off his grant, and he thinks they might try to give him an argument. Yeah, sure, Peace Lovin’ Jack Holloway, that’s him. Well, go chase his squatters for him, and if they give you anything about being Company big wheels, we don’t care what kind of wheels they are, just so’s they start rolling.” He replaced the phone. “Look for them in about an hour, Jack.”
“Why, thanks, Phil. Drop in some evening when you can hang up your gun and stay awhile.”
He blanked the screen and began punching again. This time he got a girl, and then the Company construction boss at Red Hill.
“Oh, hello, Jack; is Dr. Kellogg comfortable?”
“Not very. He’s moving out this afternoon. I wish you’d have your gang come up with those scows and get that stuff out of my back yard.”
“Well, he told us he was staying for a couple of weeks.”
“He got his mind changed for him. He’s to be off my land by sunset.”
The Company man looked troubled. “Jack, you haven’t been having trouble with Dr. Kellogg, have you?” he asked. “He’s a big man with the Company.”
“That’s what he tells me. You’ll still have to come and get that stuff, though.”
He blanked the screen. “You know,” he said, “I think it would be no more than fair to let Kellogg in on this. What’s his screen combination?”
Gerd supplied it, and he punched it out. One of those tricky special Company combinations. Kurt Borch appeared in the screen immediately.
“I want to talk to Kellogg.”
“Doctor Kellogg is very busy, at present.”
“He’s going to be a damned sight busier; this is moving day. The whole gang of you have till eighteen hundred to get off my grant.”
Borch was shoved aside, and Kellogg appeared. “What’s this nonsense?” he demanded angrily.
“You’re ordered to move. You want to know why? I can let Gerd van Riebeek talk to you; I think there are a few things he’s forgotten to call you.”
“You can’t order us out like this. Why, you gave us permission—”
“Permission cancelled. I’ve called Mike Hennen in Red Hill; he’s sending his scows back for the stuff he brought here. Lieutenant Lunt will have a couple of troopers here, too. I’ll expect you to have your personal things aboard your airboat when they arrive.”
He blanked the screen while Kellogg was trying to tell him that it was all a misunderstanding.
“I think that’s everything. It’s quite a while till sundown,” he added, “but I move for suspension of rules while we pour a small libation to sprinkle our new partnership. Then we can go outside and observe the enemy.”
There was no observable enemy action when they went out and sat down on the bench by the kitchen door. Kellogg would be screening Mike Hennen and the constabulary post for verification, and there would be a lot of gathering up and packing to do. Finally, Kurt Borch emerged with a contragravity lifter piled with boxes and luggage, and Jimenez walking beside to steady the load. Jimenez climbed up onto the airboat and Borch floated the load up to him and then went back into the huts. This was repeated several times. In the meantime, Kellogg and Mallin seemed to be having some sort of exchange of recriminations in front. Ruth Ortheris came out, carrying a briefcase, and sat down on the edge of a table under the awning.
Neither of them had been watching the Fuzzies, until they saw one of them start down the path toward the footbridge, a glint of silver at the throat identifying Goldilocks.
“Look at that fool kid; you stay put, Gerd, and I’ll bring her back.”
He started down the path; by the time he had reached the bridge, Goldilocks was across and had vanished behind one of the airjeeps parked in front of the Kellogg camp. When he was across and within twenty feet of the vehicle, he heard a sound across and within twenty feet of the vehicle, he heard a sound he had never heard before—a shrill, thin shriek, like a file on saw teeth. At the same time, Ruth’s voice screamed.
“Don’t! Leonard, stop that!”
As he ran around the jeep, the shrieking broke off suddenly. Goldilocks was on the ground, her fur reddened. Kellogg stood over her, one foot raised. He was wearing white shoes, and they were both spotted with blood. He stamped the foot down on the little bleeding body, and then Jack was within reach of him, and something crunched under the fist he drove into Kellogg’s face. Kellogg staggered and tried to raise his hands; he made a strangled noise, and for an instant the idiotic thought crossed Jack’s mind that he was trying to say, “Now, please don’t misunderstand me.” He caught Kellogg’s shirt front in his left hand, and punched him again in the face, and again, and again. He didn’t know how many times he punched Kellogg before he heard Ruth Ortheris’ voice:
“Jack! Watch out! Behind you!”
He let go of Kellogg’s shirt and jumped aside, turning and reaching for his gun. Kurt Borch, twenty feet away, had a pistol drawn and pointed at him.
His first shot went off as soon as the pistol was clear of the holster. He fired the second while it was still recoiling; there was a spot of red on Borch’s shirt that gave him an aiming point for the third. Borch dropped the pistol he hadn’t been able to fire, and started folding at the knees and then at the waist. He went down in a heap on his face.
Behind him, Gerd van Riebeek’s voice was saying, “Hold it, all of you; get your hands up. You, too, Kellogg.”
Kellogg, who had fallen, pushed himself erect. Blood was gushing from his nose, and he tried to stanch it on the sleeve of his jacket. As he stumbled toward his companions, he blundered into Ruth Ortheris, who pushed him angrily away from her. Then she went to the little crushed body, dropping to her knees beside it and touching it. The silver charm bell on the neck chain jingled faintly. Ruth began to cry.
Juan Jimenez had climbed down from the airboat; he was looking at the body of Kurt Borch in horror.
“You killed him!” he accused. A moment later, he changed that to “murdered.” Then he started to run toward the living hut.
Gerd van Riebeek fired a bullet into the ground ahead of him, bringing him up short.
“You’ll stop the next one, Juan,” he said. “Go help Dr. Kellogg; he got himself hurt.”
“Call the constabulary,” Mallin was saying. “Ruth, you go; they won’t shoot at you.”
“Don’t bother. I called them. Remember?”
Jimenez had gotten a wad of handkerchief tissue out of his pocket and was trying to stop his superior’s nosebleed. Through it, Kellogg was trying to tell Mallin that he hadn’t been able to help it.
“The little beast attacked me; it cut me with that spear it was carrying.”
Ruth Ortheris looked up. The other Fuzzies were with her by the body of Goldilocks; they must have come as soon as they had heard the screaming.
“She came up to him and pulled at his trouser leg, the way they all do when they want to attract your attention,” she said. “She wanted him to look at her new jingle.” Her voice broke, and it was a moment before she could recover it. “And he kicked her, and then stamped her to death.”
“Ruth, keep your mouth shut!” Mallin ordered. “The thing attacked Leonard; it might have given him a serious wound.”
“It did!” Still holding the wad of tissue to his nose with one hand, Kellogg pulled up his trouser leg with the other and showed a scar on his shin. It looked like a briar scratch. “You saw it yourself.”
“Yes, I saw it. I saw you kick her and jump on her. And all she wanted was to show you her new jingle.”
Jack was beginning to regret that he hadn’t shot Kellogg as soon as he saw what was going on. The other Fuzzies had been trying to get Goldilocks onto her feet. When they realized that it was no use, they let the body down again and crouched in a circle around it, making soft, lamenting sounds.
“Well, when the constabulary get here, you keep quiet,” Mallin was saying. “Let me do the talking.”
“Intimidating witnesses, Mallin?” Gerd inquired. “Don’t you know everybody’ll have to testify at the constabulary post under veridication? And you’re drawing pay for being a psychologist, too.” Then he saw some of the Fuzzies raise their heads and look toward the southeastern horizon. “Here come the cops, now.”
However, it was Ben Rainsford’s airjeep, with a zebralope carcass lashed along one side. It circled the Kellogg camp and then let down quickly; Rainsford jumped out as soon as it was grounded, his pistol drawn.
“What happened, Jack?” he asked, then glanced around, from Goldilocks to Kellogg to Borch to the pistol beside Borch’s body. “I get it. Last time anybody pulled a gun on you, they called it suicide.”
“That’s what this was, more or less. You have a movie camera in your jeep? Well, get some shots of Borch, and some of Goldilocks. Then stand by, and if the Fuzzies start doing anything different, get it all. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”
Rainsford looked puzzled, but he holstered his pistol and went back to his jeep, returning with a camera. Mallin began insisting that, as a licensed M.D., he had a right to treat Kellogg’s injuries. Gerd van Riebeek followed him into the living hut for a first-aid kit. They were just emerging, van Riebeek’s automatic in the small of Mallin’s back, when a constabulary car grounded beside Rainsford’s airjeep. It wasn’t Car Three. George Lunt jumped out, unsnapping the flap of his holster, while Ahmed Khadra was talking into the radio.
“What’s happened, Jack? Why didn’t you wait till we got here?”
“This maniac assaulted me and murdered that man over there!” Kellogg began vociferating.
“Is your name Jack too?” Lunt demanded.
“My name’s Leonard Kellogg, and I’m a chief of division with the Company—”
“Then keep quiet till I ask you something. Ahmed, call the post; get Knabber and Yorimitsu, with investigative equipment, and find out what’s tying up Car Three.”
Mallin had opened the first-aid kit by now; Gerd, on seeing the constabulary, had holstered his pistol. Kellogg, still holding the sodden tissues to his nose, was wanting to know what there was to investigate.
“There’s the murderer; you have him red-handed. Why don’t you arrest him?”
“Jack, let’s get over where we can watch these people without having to listen to them,” Lunt said. He glanced toward the body of Goldilocks. “That happen first?”
“Watch out, Lieutenant! He still has his pistol!” Mallin shouted warningly.
They went over and sat down on the contragravity-field generator housing of one of the rented airjeeps. Jack started with Gerd van Riebeek’s visit immediately after noon.
“Yes, I thought of that angle myself,” Lunt said disgustedly. “I didn’t think of it till this morning, though, and I didn’t think things would blow up as fast as this. Hell, I just didn’t think! Well, go on.”
He interrupted a little later to ask: “Kellogg was stamping on the Fuzzy when you hit him. You were trying to stop him?”
“That’s right. You can veridicate me on that if you want to.”
“I will; I’ll veridicate this whole damn gang. And this guy Borch had his heater out when you turned around? Nothing to it, Jack. We’ll have to have some kind of a hearing, but it’s just plain self-defense. Think any of this gang will tell the truth here, without taking them in and putting them under veridication?”
“Ruth Ortheris will, I think.”
“Send her over here, will you.”
She was still with the Fuzzies, and Ben Rainsford was standing beside her, his camera ready. The Fuzzies were still swaying and yeeking plaintively. She nodded and rose without speaking, going over to where Lunt waited.
“Just what did happen, Jack?” Rainsford wanted to know. “And whose side is he on?” He nodded toward van Riebeek, standing guard over Kellogg and Mallin, his thumbs in his pistol belt.
“Ours. He’s quit the Company.”
Just as he was finishing, Car Three put in an appearance; he had to tell the same story over again. The area in front of the Kellogg camp was getting congested; he hoped Mike Hennen’s labor gang would stay away for a while. Lunt talked to van Riebeek when he had finished with Ruth, and then with Jimenez and Mallin and Kellogg. Then he and one of the men from Car Three came over to where Jack and Rainsford were standing. Gerd van Riebeek joined them just as Lunt was saying:
“Jack, Kellogg’s made a murder complaint against you. I told him it was self-defense, but he wouldn’t listen. So, according to the book, I have to arrest you.”
“All right.” He unbuckled his gun and handed it over. “Now, George, I herewith make complaint and accusation against Leonard Kellogg, charging him with the unlawful and unjustified killing of a sapient being, to wit, an aboriginal native of the planet of Zarathustra commonly known as Goldilocks.”
Lunt looked at the small battered body and the six mourners around it.
“But, Jack, they aren’t legally sapient beings.”
“There is no such thing. A sapient being is a being on the mental level of sapience, not a being that has been declared sapient.”
“Fuzzies are sapient beings,” Rainsford said. “That’s the opinion of a qualified xeno-naturalist.”
“Two of them,” Gerd van Riebeek said. “That is the body of a sapient being. There’s the man who killed her. Go ahead, Lieutenant, make your pinch.”
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
The Fuzzies were rising, sliding their chopper-diggers under the body of Goldilocks and lifting it on the steel shafts. Ben Rainsford was aiming his camera as Cinderella picked up her sister’s weapon and followed, carrying it; the others carried the body toward the far corner of the clearing, away from the camp. Rainsford kept just behind them, pausing to photograph and then hurrying to keep up with them.
They set the body down. Mike and Mitzi and Cinderella began digging; the others scattered to hunt for stones. Coming up behind them, George Lunt took off his beret and stood holding it in both hands; he bowed his head as the grass-wrapped body was placed in the little grave and covered.
Then, when the cairn was finished, he replaced it, drew his pistol and checked the chamber.
“That does it, Jack,” he said. “I am now going to arrest Leonard Kellogg for the murder of a sapient being.”
Jack Holloway had been out on bail before, but never for quite so much. It was almost worth it, though, to see Leslie Coombes’s eyes widen and Mohammed Ali O’Brien’s jaw drop when he dumped the bag of sunstones, blazing with the heat of the day and of his body, on George Lunt’s magisterial bench and invited George to pick out twenty-five thousand sols’ worth. Especially after the production Coombes had made of posting Kellogg’s bail with one of those precertified Company checks.
He looked at the whisky bottle in his hand, and then reached into the cupboard for another one. One for Gus Brannhard, and one for the rest of them. There was a widespread belief that that was why Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard was practicing sporadic law out here in the boondocks of a boondock planet, defending gun fighters and veldbeest rustlers. It wasn’t. Nobody on Zarathustra knew the reason, but it wasn’t whisky. Whisky was only the weapon with which Gus Brannhard fought off the memory of the reason.
He was in the biggest chair in the living room, which was none too ample for him; a mountain of a man with tousled gray-brown hair, his broad face masked in a tangle of gray-brown beard. He wore a faded and grimy bush jacket with clips of rifle cartridges on the breast, no shirt and a torn undershirt over a shag of gray-brown chest hair. Between the bottoms of his shorts and the tops of his ragged hose and muddy boots, his legs were covered with hair. Baby Fuzzy was sitting on his head, and Mamma Fuzzy was on his lap. Mike and Mitzi sat one on either knee. The Fuzzies had taken instantly to Gus. Bet they thought he was a Big Fuzzy.
“Aaaah!” he rumbled, as the bottle and glass were placed beside him. “Been staying alive for hours hoping for this.”
“Well, don’t let any of the kids get at it. Little Fuzzy trying to smoke pipes is bad enough; I don’t want any dipsos in the family, too.”
Gus filled the glass. To be on the safe side, he promptly emptied it into himself.
“You got a nice family, Jack. Make a wonderful impression in court—as long as Baby doesn’t try to sit on the judge’s head. Any jury that sees them and hears that Ortheris girl’s story will acquit you from the box, with a vote of censure for not shooting Kellogg, too.”
“I’m not worried about that. What I want is Kellogg convicted.”
“You better worry, Jack,” Rainsford said. “You saw the combination against us at the hearing.”
Leslie Coombes, the Company’s top attorney, had come out from Mallorysport in a yacht rated at Mach 6, and he must have crowded it to the limit all the way. With him, almost on a leash, had come Mohammed Ali O’Brien, the Colonial Attorney General, who doubled as Chief Prosecutor. They had both tried to get the whole thing dismissed—self-defense for Holloway, and killing an unprotected wild animal for Kellogg. When that had failed, they had teamed in flagrant collusion to fight the inclusion of any evidence about the Fuzzies. After all it was only a complaint court; Lieutenant Lunt, as a police magistrate, had only the most limited powers.
“You saw how far they got, didn’t you?”
“I hope we don’t wish they’d succeeded,” Rainsford said gloomily.
“What do you mean, Ben?” Brannhard asked. “What do you think they’ll do?”
“I don’t know. That’s what worries me. We’re threatening the Zarathustra Company, and the Company’s too big to be threatened safely,” Rainsford replied. “They’ll try to frame something on Jack.”
“With veridication? That’s ridiculous, Ben.”
“Don’t you think we can prove sapience?” Gerd van Riebeek demanded.
“Who’s going to define sapience? And how?” Rainsford asked. “Why, between them, Coombes and O’Brien can even agree to accept the talk-and-build-a-fire rule.”
“Huh-uh!” Brannhard was positive. “Court ruling on that, about forty years ago, on Vishnu. Infanticide case, woman charged with murder in the death of her infant child. Her lawyer moved for dismissal on the grounds that murder is defined as the killing of a sapient being, a sapient being is defined as one that can talk and build a fire, and a newborn infant can do neither. Motion denied; the court ruled that while ability to speak and produce fire is positive proof of sapience, inability to do either or both does not constitute legal proof of nonsapience. If O’Brien doesn’t know that, and I doubt if he does, Coombes will.” Brannhard poured another drink and gulped it before the sapient beings around him could get at it. “You know what? I will make a small wager, and I will even give odds, that the first thing Ham O’Brien does when he gets back to Mallorysport will be to enternolle prosequion both charges. What I’d like would be for him tonol. pros.Kellogg and let the charge against Jack go to court. He would be dumb enough to do that himself, but Leslie Coombes wouldn’t let him.”
“But if he throws out the Kellogg case, that’s it,” Gerd van Riebeek said. “When Jack comes to trial, nobody’ll say a mumblin’ word about sapience.”
“I will, and I will not mumble it. You all know colonial law on homicide. In the case of any person killed while in commission of a felony, no prosecution may be brought in any degree, against anybody. I’m going to contend that Leonard Kellogg was murdering a sapient being, that Jack Holloway acted lawfully in attempting to stop it and that when Kurt Borch attempted to come to Kellogg’s assistance he, himself, was guilty of felony, and consequently any prosecution against Jack Holloway is illegal. And to make that contention stick, I shall have to say a great many words, and produce a great deal of testimony, about the sapience of Fuzzies.”
“It’ll have to be expert testimony,” Rainsford said. “The testimony of psychologists. I suppose you know that the only psychologists on this planet are employed by the chartered Zarathustra Company.” He drank what was left of his highball, looked at the bits of ice in the bottom of his glass and then rose to mix another one. “I’d have done the same as you did, Jack, but I still wish this hadn’t happened.”
“Huh!” Mamma Fuzzy looked up, startled by the exclamation. “What do you think Victor Grego’s wishing, right now?”
Victor Grego replaced the hand-phone. “Leslie, on the yacht,” he said. “They’re coming in now. They’ll stop at the hospital to drop Kellogg, and then they’re coming here.”
Nick Emmert nibbled a canape. He had reddish hair, pale eyes and a wide, bovine face.
“Holloway must have done him up pretty badly,” he said.
“I wish Holloway’d killed him!” He blurted it angrily, and saw the Resident General’s shocked expression.
“You don’t really mean that, Victor?”
“The devil I don’t!” He gestured at the recorder-player, which had just finished the tape of the hearing, transmitted from the yacht at sixty-speed. “That’s only a teaser to what’ll come out at the trial. You know what the Company’s epitaph will be?Kicked to death, along with a Fuzzy, by Leonard Kellogg.”
Everything would have worked out perfectly if Kellogg had only kept his head and avoided collision with Holloway. Why, even the killing of the Fuzzy and the shooting of Borch, inexcusable as that had been, wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for that asinine murder complaint. That was what had provoked Holloway’s counter-complaint, which was what had done the damage.
And, now that he thought of it, it had been one of Kellogg’s people, van Riebeek, who had touched off the explosion in the first place. He didn’t know van Riebeek himself, but Kellogg should have, and he had handled him the wrong way. He should have known what van Riebeek would go along with and what he wouldn’t.
“But, Victor, they won’t convict Leonard of murder,” Emmert was saying. “Not for killing one of those little things.”
“‘Murder shall consist of the deliberate and unjustified killing of any sapient being, of any race,’” he quoted. “That’s the law. If they can prove in court that the Fuzzies are sapient beings….”
Then, some morning, a couple of deputy marshals would take Leonard Kellogg out in the jail yard and put a bullet through the back of his head, which, in itself, would be no loss. The trouble was, they would also be shooting an irreparable hole in the Zarathustra Company’s charter. Maybe Kellogg could be kept out of court, at that. There wasn’t a ship blasted off from Darius without a couple of drunken spacemen being hustled aboard at the last moment; with the job Holloway must have done, Kellogg should look just right as a drunken spaceman. The twenty-five thousand sols’ bond could be written off; that was pennies to the Company. No, that would still leave them stuck with the Holloway trial.
“You want me out of here when the others come, Victor?” Emmert asked, popping another canape into his mouth.
“No, no; sit still. This will be the last chance we’ll have to get everybody together; after this, we’ll have to avoid anything that’ll look like collusion.”
“Well, anything I can do to help; you know that, Victor,” Emmert said.
Yes, he knew that. If worst came to utter worst and the Company charter were invalidated, he could still hang on here, doing what he could to salvage something out of the wreckage—if not for the Company, then for Victor Grego. But if Zarathustra were reclassified, Nick would be finished. His title, his social position, his sinecure, his grafts and perquisites, his alias-shrouded Company expense account—all out the airlock. Nick would be counted upon to do anything he could—however much that would be.
He looked across the room at the levitated globe, revolving imperceptibly in the orange spotlight. It was full dark on Beta Continent now, where Leonard Kellogg had killed a Fuzzy named Goldilocks and Jack Holloway had killed a gunman named Kurt Borch. That angered him, too; hell of a gunman! Clear shot at the broad of a man’s back, and still got himself killed. Borch hadn’t been any better choice than Kellogg himself. What was the matter with him; couldn’t he pick men for jobs any more? And Ham O’Brien! No, he didn’t have to blame himself for O’Brien. O’Brien was one of Nick Emmert’s boys. And he hadn’t picked Nick, either.
The squawk-box on the desk made a premonitory noise, and a feminine voice advised him that Mr. Coombes and his party had arrived.
“All right; show them in.”
Coombes entered first, tall suavely elegant, with a calm, untroubled face. Leslie Coombes would wear the same serene expression in the midst of a bombardment or an earthquake. He had chosen Coombes for chief attorney, and thinking of that made him feel better. Mohammed Ali O’Brien was neither tall, elegant nor calm. His skin was almost black—he’d been born on Agni, under a hot B3 sun. His bald head glistened, and a big nose peeped over the ambuscade of a bushy white mustache. What was it they said about him? Only man on Zarathustra who could strut sitting down. And behind them, the remnant of the expedition to Beta Continent—Ernst Mallin, Juan Jimenez and Ruth Ortheris. Mallin was saying that it was a pity Dr. Kellogg wasn’t with them.
“I question that. Well, please be seated. We have a great deal to discuss, I’m afraid.”
Mr. Chief Justice Frederic Pendarvis moved the ashtray a few inches to the right and the slender vase with the spray of starflowers a few inches to the left. He set the framed photograph of the gentle-faced, white-haired woman directly in front of him. Then he took a thin cigar from the silver box, carefully punctured the end and lit it. Then, unable to think of further delaying tactics, he drew the two bulky loose-leaf books toward him and opened the red one, the criminal-case docket.
Something would have to be done about this; he always told himself so at this hour. Shoveling all this stuff onto Central Courts had been all right when Mallorysport had had a population of less than five thousand and nothing else on the planet had had more than five hundred, but that time was ten years past. The Chief Justice of a planetary colony shouldn’t have to wade through all this to see who had been accused of blotting the brand on a veldbeest calf or who’d taken a shot at whom in a barroom. Well, at least he’d managed to get a few misdemeanor and small-claims courts established; that was something.
The first case, of course, was a homicide. It usually was. From Beta, Constabulary Fifteen, Lieutenant George Lunt. Jack Holloway—so old Jack had cut another notch on his gun—Cold Creek Valley, Federation citizen, race Terran human; willful killing of a sapient being, to wit Kurt Borch, Mallorysport, Federation citizen, race Terran human. Complainant, Leonard Kellogg, the same. Attorney of record for the defendant, Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard. The last time Jack Holloway had killed anybody, it had been a couple of thugs who’d tried to steal his sunstones; it hadn’t even gotten into complaint court. This time he might be in trouble. Kellogg was a Company executive. He decided he’d better try the case himself. The Company might try to exert pressure.
The next charge was also homicide, from Constabulary, Beta Fifteen. He read it and blinked. Leonard Kellogg, willful killing of a sapient being, to wit, Jane Doe alias Goldilocks, aborigine, race Zarathustran Fuzzy, complainant, Jack Holloway, defendant’s attorney of record, Leslie Coombes. In spite of the outrageous frivolity of the charge, he began to laugh. It was obviously an attempt to ridicule Kellogg’s own complaint out of court. Every judicial jurisdiction ought to have at least one Gus Brannhard to liven things up a little. Race Zarathustran Fuzzy!
Then he stopped laughing suddenly and became deadly serious, like an engineer who finds a cataclysmite cartridge lying around primed and connected to a discharger. He reached out to the screen panel and began punching a combination. A spectacled young man appeared and greeted him deferentially.
“Good morning, Mr. Wilkins,” he replied. “A couple of homicides at the head of this morning’s docket—Holloway and Kellogg, both from Beta Fifteen. What is known about them?”
The young man began to laugh. “Oh, your Honor, they’re both a lot of nonsense. Dr. Kellogg killed some pet belonging to old Jack Holloway, the sunstone digger, and in the ensuing unpleasantness—Holloway can be very unpleasant, if he feels he has to—this man Borch, who seems to have been Kellogg’s bodyguard, made the suicidal error of trying to draw a gun on Holloway. I’m surprised at Lieutenant Lunt for letting either of those charges get past hearing court. Mr. O’Brien has enterednolle prosequion both of them, so the whole thing can be disregarded.”
Mohammed O’Brien knew a charge of cataclysmite when he saw one, too. His impulse had been to pull the detonator. Well, maybe this charge ought to be shot, just to see what it would bring down.
“I haven’t approved thenolle prosequiyet, Mr. Wilkins,” he mentioned gently. “Would you please transmit to me the hearing tapes on these cases, at sixty-speed? I’ll take them on the recorder of this screen. Thank you.”
He reached out and made the necessary adjustments. Wilkins, the Clerk of the Courts, left the screen, and returned. There was a wavering scream for a minute and a half. Going to take more time than he had expected. Well.…
There wasn’t enough ice in the glass, and Leonard Kellogg put more in. Then there was too much, and he added more brandy. He shouldn’t have started drinking this early, be drunk by dinnertime if he kept it up, but what else was there to do? He couldn’t go out, not with his face like this. In any case, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
They were all down on him. Ernst Mallin, and Ruth Ortheris, and even Juan Jimenez. At the constabulary post, Coombes and O’Brien had treated him like an idiot child who has to be hushed in front of company and coming back to Mallorysport they had ignored him completely. He drank quickly, and then there was too much ice in the glass again. Victor Grego had told him he’d better take a vacation till the trial was over, and put Mallin in charge of the division. Said he oughtn’t to be in charge while the division was working on defense evidence. Well, maybe; it looked like the first step toward shoving him completely out of the Company.
He dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. It tasted badly, and after a few puffs he crushed it out. Well, what else could he have done? After they’d found that little grave, he had to make Gerd understand what it would mean to the Company. Juan and Ruth had been all right, but Gerd—The things Gerd had called him; the things he’d said about the Company. And then that call from Holloway, and the humiliation of being ordered out like a tramp.
And then that disgusting little beast had come pulling at his clothes, and he had pushed it away—well, kicked it maybe—and it had struck at him with the little spear it was carrying. Nobody but a lunatic would give a thing like that to an animal anyhow. And he had kicked it again, and it had screamed….
The communication screen in the next room was buzzing. Maybe that was Victor. He gulped the brandy left in the glass and hurried to it.
It was Leslie Coombes, his face remotely expressionless.
“Oh, hello, Leslie.”
“Good afternoon, Dr. Kellogg.” The formality of address was studiously rebuking. “The Chief Prosecutor just called me; Judge Pendarvis has denied thenolle prosequihe entered in your case and in Mr. Holloway’s, and ordered both cases to trial.”
“You mean they’re actually taking this seriously?”
“It is serious. If you’re convicted, the Company’s charter will be almost automatically voided. And, although this is important only to you personally, you might, very probably, be sentenced to be shot.” He shrugged that off, and continued: “Now, I’ll want to talk to you about your defense, for which I am responsible. Say ten-thirty tomorrow, at my office. I should, by that time, know what sort of evidence is going to be used against you. I will be expecting you, Dr. Kellogg.”
He must have said more than that, but that was all that registered. Leonard wasn’t really conscious of going back to the other room, until he realized that he was sitting in his relaxer chair, filling the glass with brandy. There was only a little ice in it, but he didn’t care.
They were going to try him for murder for killing that little animal, and Ham O’Brien had said they wouldn’t, he’d promised he’d keep the case from trial and he hadn’t, they were going to try him anyhow and if they convicted him they would take him out and shoot him for just killing a silly little animal he had killed it he’d kicked it and jumped on it he could still hear it screaming and feel the horrible soft crunching under his feet….
He gulped what was left in the glass and poured and gulped more. Then he staggered to his feet and stumbled over to the couch and threw himself onto it, face down, among the cushions.
Leslie Coombes found Nick Emmert with Victor Grego in the latter’s office when he entered. They both rose to greet him, and Grego said “You’ve heard?”
“Yes. O’Brien called me immediately. I called my client—my client of record, that is—and told him. I’m afraid it was rather a shock to him.”
“It wasn’t any shock to me,” Grego said as they sat down. “When Ham O’Brien’s as positive about anything as he was about that, I always expect the worst.”
“Pendarvis is going to try the case himself,” Emmert said. “I always thought he was a reasonable man, but what’s he trying to do now? Cut the Company’s throat?”
“He isn’t anti-Company. He isn’t pro-Company either. He’s just pro-law. The law says that a planet with native sapient inhabitants is a Class-IV planet, and has to have a Class-IV colonial government. If Zarathustra is a Class-IV planet, he wants it established, and the proper laws applied. If it’s a Class-IV planet, the Zarathustra Company is illegally chartered. It’s his job to put a stop to illegality. Frederic Pendarvis’ religion is the law, and he is its priest. You never get anywhere by arguing religion with a priest.”
They were both silent for a while after he had finished. Grego was looking at the globe, and he realized, now, that while he was proud of it, his pride was the pride in a paste jewel that stands for a real one in a bank vault. Now he was afraid that the real jewel was going to be stolen from him. Nick Emmert was just afraid.
“You were right yesterday, Victor. I wish Holloway’d killed that son of a Khooghra. Maybe it’s not too late—”
“Yes, it is, Nick. It’s too late to do anything like that. It’s too late to do anything but win the case in court.” He turned to Grego. “What are your people doing?”
Grego took his eyes from the globe. “Ernest Mallin’s studying all the filmed evidence we have and all the descriptions of Fuzzy behavior, and trying to prove that none of it is the result of sapient mentation. Ruth Ortheris is doing the same, only she’s working on the line of instinct and conditioned reflexes and nonsapient, single-stage reasoning. She has a lot of rats, and some dogs and monkeys, and a lot of apparatus, and some technician from Henry Stenson’s instrument shop helping her. Juan Jimenez is studying mentation of Terran dogs, cats and primates, and Freyan kholphs and Mimir black slinkers.”
“He hasn’t turned up any simian or canine parallels to that funeral, has he?”
Grego said nothing, merely shook his head. Emmert muttered something inaudible and probably indecent.
“I didn’t think he had. I only hope those Fuzzies don’t get up in court, build a bonfire and start making speeches in Lingua Terra.”
Nick Emmert cried out in panic. “You believe they’re sapient yourself!”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
Grego laughed sourly. “Nick thinks you have to believe a thing to prove it. It helps but it isn’t necessary. Say we’re a debating team; we’ve been handed the negative of the question.Resolved: that Fuzzies are Sapient Beings.Personally, I think we have the short end of it, but that only means we’ll have to work harder on it.”
“You know, I was on a debating team at college,” Emmert said brightly. When that was disregarded, he added: “If I remember, the first thing was definition of terms.”
Grego looked up quickly. “Leslie, I think Nick has something. What is the legal definition of a sapient being?”
“As far as I know, there isn’t any. Sapience is something that’s just taken for granted.”
“How about talk-and-build-a-fire?”
He shook his head. “People of the Colony of VishnuversusEmily Morrosh, 612A.E.” He told them about the infanticide case. “I was looking up rulings on sapience; I passed the word on to Ham O’Brien. You know, what your people will have to do will be to produce a definition of sapience, acceptable to the court, that will include all known sapient races and at the same time exclude the Fuzzies. I don’t envy them.”
“We need some Fuzzies of our own to study,” Grego said.
“Too bad we can’t get hold of Holloway’s,” Emmert said. “Maybe we could, if he leaves them alone at his camp.”
“No. We can’t risk that.” He thought for a moment. “Wait a moment. I think we might be able to do it at that. Legally.”
Jack Holloway saw Little Fuzzy eying the pipe he had laid in the ashtray, and picked it up, putting it in his mouth. Little Fuzzy looked reproachfully at him and started to get down onto the floor. Pappy Jack was mean; didn’t he think a Fuzzy might want to smoke a pipe, too? Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt him. He picked Little Fuzzy up and set him back on his lap, offering the pipestem. Little Fuzzy took a puff. He didn’t cough over it; evidently he had learned how to avoid inhaling.
“They scheduled the Kellogg trial first,” Gus Brannhard was saying, “and there wasn’t any way I could stop that. You see what the idea is? They’ll try him first, with Leslie Coombes running both the prosecution and the defense, and if they can get him acquitted, it’ll prejudice the sapience evidence we introduce in your trial.”
Mamma Fuzzy made another try at intercepting the drink he was hoisting, but he frustrated that. Baby had stopped trying to sit on his head, and was playing peek-a-boo from behind his whiskers.
“First,” he continued, “they’ll exclude every bit of evidence about the Fuzzies that they can. That won’t be much, but there’ll be a fight to get any of it in. What they can’t exclude, they’ll attack. They’ll attack credibility. Of course, with veridication, they can’t claim anybody’s lying, but they can claim self-deception. You make a statement you believe, true or false, and the veridicator’ll back you up on it. They’ll attack qualifications on expert testimony. They’ll quibble about statements of fact and statements of opinion. And what they can’t exclude or attack, they’ll accept, and then deny that it’s proof of sapience.
“What the hell do they want for proof of sapience?” Gerd demanded. “Nuclear energy and contragravity and hyperdrive?”
“They will have a nice, neat, pedantic definition of sapience, tailored especially to exclude the Fuzzies, and they will present it in court and try to get it accepted, and it’s up to us to guess in advance what that will be, and have a refutation of it ready, and also a definition of our own.”
“Their definition will have to include Khooghras. Gerd, do the Khooghras bury their dead?”
“Hell, no; they eat them. But you have to give them this, they cook them first.”
“Look, we won’t get anywhere arguing about what Fuzzies do and Khooghras don’t do,” Rainsford said. “We’ll have to get a definition of sapience. Remember what Ruth said Saturday night?”
Gerd van Riebeek looked as though he didn’t want to remember what Ruth had said, or even remember Ruth herself. Jack nodded, and repeated it. “I got the impression of non-sapient intelligence shading up to a sharp line, and then sapience shading up from there, maybe a different color, or wavy lines instead of straight ones.”
“That’s a good graphic representation,” Gerd said. “You know, that line’s so sharp I’d be tempted to think of sapience as a result of mutation, except that I can’t quite buy the same mutation happening in the same way on so many different planets.”
Ben Rainsford started to say something, then stopped short when a constabulary siren hooted over the camp. The Fuzzies looked up interestedly. They knew what that was. Pappy Jack’s friends in the blue clothes. Jack went to the door and opened it, putting the outside light on.
The car was landing; George Lunt, two of his men and two men in civilian clothes were getting out. Both the latter were armed, and one of them carried a bundle under his arm.
“Hello, George; come on in.”
“We want to talk to you, Jack.” Lunt’s voice was strained, empty of warmth or friendliness. “At least, these men do.”
“Why, yes. Sure.”
He backed into the room to permit them to enter. Something was wrong; something bad had come up. Khadra came in first, placing himself beside and a little behind him. Lunt followed, glancing quickly around and placing himself between Jack and the gunrack and also the holstered pistols on the table. The third trooper let the two strangers in ahead of him, and then closed the door and put his back against it. He wondered if the court might have cancelled his bond and ordered him into custody. The two strangers—a beefy man with a scrubby black mustache, and a smaller one with a thin, saturnine face—were looking expectantly at Lunt. Rainsford and van Riebeek were on their feet. Gus Brannhard leaned over to refill his glass, but did not rise.
“Let me have the papers,” Lunt said to the beefy stranger.
The other took a folded document and handed it over.
“Jack, this isn’t my idea,” Lunt said. “I don’t want to do it, but I have to. I wouldn’t want to shoot you, either, but you make any resistance and I will. I’m no Kurt Borch; I know you, and I won’t take any chances.”
“If you’re going to serve that paper, serve it,” the bigger of the two strangers said. “Don’t stand yakking all night.”
“Jack,” Lunt said uncomfortably, “this is a court order to impound your Fuzzies as evidence in the Kellogg case. These men are deputy marshals from Central Courts; they’ve been ordered to bring the Fuzzies into Mallorysport.”
“Let me see the order, Jack,” Brannhard said, still remaining seated.
Lunt handed it to Jack, and he handed it across to Brannhard. Gus had been drinking steadily all evening; maybe he was afraid he’d show it if he stood up. He looked at it briefly and nodded.
“Court order, all right, signed by the Chief Justice.” He handed it back. “They have to take the Fuzzies, and that’s all there is to it. Keep that order, though, and make them give you a signed and thumbprinted receipt. Type it up for them now, Jack.”
Gus wanted to busy him with something, so he wouldn’t have to watch what was going on. The smaller of the two deputies had dropped the bundle from under his arm. It was a number of canvas sacks. He sat down at the typewriter, closing his ears to the noises in the room, and wrote the receipt, naming the Fuzzies and describing them, and specifying that they were in good health and uninjured. One of them tried to climb to his lap, yeeking frantically; it clutched his shirt, but it was snatched away. He was finished with his work before the invaders were with theirs. They had three Fuzzies already in sacks. Khadra was catching Cinderella. Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy had run for the little door in the outside wall, but Lunt was standing with his heels against it, holding it shut; when they saw that, both of them began burrowing in the bedding. The third trooper and the smaller of the two deputies dragged them out and stuffed them into sacks.
He got to his feet, still stunned and only half comprehending, and took the receipt out of the typewriter. There was an argument about it; Lunt told the deputies to sign it or get the hell out without the Fuzzies. They signed, inked their thumbs and printed after their signatures. Jack gave the paper to Gus, trying not to look at the six bulging, writhing sacks, or hear the frightened little sounds.
“George, you’ll let them have some of their things, won’t you?” he asked.
“Sure. What kind of things?”
“Their bedding. Some of their toys.”
“You mean this junk?” The smaller of the two deputies kicked the ball-and-stick construction. “All we got orders to take is the Fuzzies.”
“You heard the gentleman.” Lunt made the word sound worse than son of a Khooghra. He turned to the two deputies. “Well, you have them; what are you waiting for?”
Jack watched from the door as they put the sacks into the aircar, climbed in after them and lifted out. Then he came back and sat down at the table.
“They don’t know anything about court orders,” he said. “They don’t know why I didn’t stop it. They think Pappy Jack let them down.”
“Have they gone, Jack?” Brannhard asked. “Sure?” Then he rose, reaching behind him, and took up a little ball of white fur. Baby Fuzzy caught his beard with both tiny hands, yeeking happily.
“Baby! They didn’t get him!”
Brannhard disengaged the little hands from his beard and handed him over.
“No, and they signed for him, too.” Brannhard downed what was left of his drink, got a cigar out of his pocket and lit it. “Now, we’re going to go to Mallorysport and get the rest of them back.”
“But…. But the Chief Justice signed that order. He won’t give them back just because we ask him to.”
Brannhard made an impolite noise. “I’ll bet everything I own Pendarvis never saw that order. They have stacks of those things, signed in blank, in the Chief of the Court’s office. If they had to wait to get one of the judges to sign an order every time they wanted to subpoena a witness or impound physical evidence, they’d never get anything done. If Ham O’Brien didn’t think this up for himself, Leslie Coombes thought it up for him.”
“We’ll use my airboat,” Gerd said. “You coming along, Ben? Let’s get started.”
He couldn’t understand. The Big Ones in the blue clothes had been friends; they had given the whistles, and shown sorrow when the killed one was put in the ground. And why had Pappy Jack not gotten the big gun and stopped them. It couldn’t be that he was afraid; Pappy Jack was afraid of nothing.
The others were near, in bags like the one in which he had been put; he could hear them, and called to them. Then he felt the edge of the little knife Pappy Jack had made. He could cut his way out of this bag now and free the others, but that would be no use. They were in one of the things the Big Ones went up into the sky in, and if he got out now, there would be nowhere to go and they would be caught at once. Better to wait.
The one thing that really worried him was that he would not know where they were being taken. When they did get away, how would they ever find Pappy Jack again?
Gus Brannhard was nervous, showing it by being overtalkative, and that worried Jack. He’d stopped twice at mirrors along the hallway to make sure that his gold-threaded gray neckcloth was properly knotted and that his black jacket was zipped up far enough and not too far. Now, in front of the door markedTHE CHIEF JUSTICE, he paused before pushing the button to fluff his newly shampooed beard.
There were two men in the Chief Justice’s private chambers. Pendarvis he had seen once or twice, but their paths had never crossed. He had a good face, thin and ascetic, the face of a man at peace with himself. With him was Mohammed Ali O’Brien, who seemed surprised to see them enter, and then apprehensive. Nobody shook hands; the Chief Justice bowed slightly and invited them to be seated.
“Now,” he continued, when they found chairs, “Miss Ugatori tells me that you are making complaint against an action by Mr. O’Brien here.”
“We are indeed, your Honor.” Brannhard opened his briefcase and produced two papers—the writ, and the receipt for the Fuzzies, handing them across the desk. “My client and I wish to know upon what basis of legality your Honor sanctioned this act, and by what right Mr. O’Brien sent his officers to Mr. Holloway’s camp to snatch these little people from their friend and protector, Mr. Holloway.”
The judge looked at the two papers. “As you know, Miss Ugatori took prints of them when you called to make this appointment. I’ve seen them. But believe me, Mr. Brannhard, this is the first time I have seen the original of this writ. You know how these things are signed in blank. It’s a practice that has saved considerable time and effort, and until now they have only been used when there was no question that I or any other judge would approve. Such a question should certainly have existed in this case, because had I seen this writ I would never have signed it.” He turned to the now fidgeting Chief Prosecutor. “Mr. O’Brien,” he said, “one simply does not impound sapient beings as evidence, as, say, one impounds a veldbeest calf in a brand-alteration case. The fact that the sapience of these Fuzzies is stillsub judiceincludes the presumption of its possibility. Now you know perfectly well that the courts may take no action in the face of the possibility that some innocent person may suffer wrong.”
“And, your Honor,” Brannhard leaped into the breach, “it cannot be denied that these Fuzzies have suffered a most outrageous wrong! Picture them—no, picture innocent and artless children, for that is what these Fuzzies are, happy trusting little children, who, until then, had known only kindness and affection—rudely kidnapped, stuffed into sacks by brutal and callous men—”
“Your Honor!” O’Brien’s face turned even blacker than the hot sun of Agni had made it. “I cannot hear officers of the court so characterized without raising my voice in protest!”
“Mr. O’Brien seems to forget that he is speaking in the presence of two eye witnesses to this brutal abduction.”
“If the officers of the court need defense, Mr. O’Brien, the court will defend them. I believe that you should presently consider a defense of your own actions.”
“Your Honor, I insist that I only acted as I felt to be my duty,” O’Brien said. “These Fuzzies are a key exhibit in the case ofPeopleversusKellogg, since only by demonstration of their sapience can any prosecution against the defendant be maintained.”
“Then why,” Brannhard demanded, “did you endanger them in this criminally reckless manner?”