LITTLE FUZZY (Part 5), by H. Beam Piper

XIII

The management of the Hotel Mallory appeared to have undergone a change of heart, or of policy, toward Fuzzies. It might have been Gus Brannhard’s threats of action for racial discrimination and the possibility that the Fuzzies might turn out to be a race instead of an animal species after all. The manager might have been shamed by the way the Lurkin story had crumbled into discredit, and influenced by the revived public sympathy for the Fuzzies. Or maybe he just decided that the chartered Zarathustra Company wasn’t as omnipotent as he’d believed. At any rate, a large room, usually used for banquets, was made available for the Fuzzies George Lunt and Ben Rainsford were bringing in for the trial, and the four strangers and their black-and-white kitten were installed there. There were a lot of toys of different sorts, courtesy of the management, and a big view screen. The four strange Fuzzies dashed for this immediately and turned it on, yeeking in delight as they watched landing craft coming down and lifting out at the municipal spaceport. They found it very interesting. It only bored the kitten.

With some misgivings, Jack brought Baby down and introduced him. They were delighted with Baby, and Baby thought the kitten was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. When it was time to feed them, Jack had his own dinner brought in, and ate with them. Gus and Gerd came down and joined him later.

“We got the Lurkin kid and her father,” Gus said, and then falsettoed: “‘Naw, Pop gimme a beatin’, and the cops told me to say it was the Fuzzies.’”

“She say that?”

“Under veridication, with the screen blue as a sapphire, in front of half a dozen witnesses and with audiovisuals on. Interworld’s putting it on the air this evening. Her father admitted it, too; named Woller and the desk sergeant. We’re still looking for them; till we get them, we aren’t any closer to Emmert or Grego. We did pick up the two car cops, but they don’t know anything on anybody but Woller.”

That was good enough, as far as it went, Brannhard thought, but it didn’t go far enough. There were those four strange Fuzzies showing up out of nowhere, right in the middle of Nick Emmert’s drive-hunt. They’d been kept somewhere by somebody—that was how they’d learned to eat Extee Three and found out about viewscreens. Their appearance was too well synchronized to be accidental. The whole thing smelled to him of a booby trap.

One good thing had happened. Judge Pendarvis had decided that it would be next to impossible, in view of the widespread public interest in the case and the influence of the Zarathustra Company, to get an impartial jury, and had proposed a judicial trial by a panel of three judges, himself one of them. Even Leslie Coombes had felt forced to agree to that.

He told Jack about the decision. Jack listened with apparent attentiveness, and then said:

“You know, Gus, I’ll always be glad I let Little Fuzzy smoke my pipe when he wanted to, that night out at camp.”

The way he was feeling, he wouldn’t have cared less if the case was going to be tried by a panel of three zaragoats.

Ben Rainsford, his two Fuzzies, and George Lunt, Ahmed Khadra and the other constabulary witnesses and their family, arrived shortly before noon on Saturday. The Fuzzies were quartered in the stripped-out banquet room, and quickly made friends with the four already there, and with Baby. Each family bedded down apart, but they ate together and played with each others’ toys and sat in a clump to watch the viewscreen. At first, the Ferny Creek family showed jealousy when too much attention was paid to their kitten, until they decided that nobody was trying to steal it.

It would have been a lot of fun, eleven Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy and a black-and-white kitten, if Jack hadn’t kept seeing his own family, six quiet little ghosts watching but unable to join the frolicking.

Max Fane brightened when he saw who was on his screen.

“Well, Colonel Ferguson, glad to see you.”

“Marshal,” Ferguson was smiling broadly. “You’ll be even gladder in a minute. A couple of my men, from Post Eight, picked up Woller and that desk sergeant, Fuentes.”

“Ha!” He started feeling warm inside, as though he had just downed a slug of Baldur honey-rum. “How?”

“Well, you know Nick Emmert has a hunting lodge down there. Post Eight keeps an eye on it for him. This afternoon, one of Lieutenant Obefemi’s cars was passing over it, and they picked up some radiation and infrared on their detectors, as though the power was on inside. When they went down to investigate, they found Woller and Fuentes making themselves at home. They brought them in, and both of them admitted under veridication that Emmert had given them the keys and sent them down there to hide out till after the trial.

“They denied that Emmert had originated the frameup. That had been one of Woller’s own flashes of genius, but Emmert knew what the score was and went right along with it. They’re being brought up here the first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Well, that’s swell, Colonel! Has it gotten out to the news services yet?”

“No. We would like to have them both questioned here in Mallorysport, and their confessions recorded, before we let the story out. Otherwise, somebody might try to take steps to shut them up for good.”

That had been what he had been thinking of. He said so, and Ferguson nodded. Then he hesitated for a moment, and said:

“Max, do you like the situation here in Mallorysport? Be damned if I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are too many strangers in town,” Ian Ferguson said. “All the same kind of strangers—husky-looking young men, twenty to thirty, going around in pairs and small groups. I’ve been noticing it since day before last, and there seem to be more of them every time I look around.”

“Well, Ian, it’s a young man’s planet, and we can expect a big crowd in town for the trial….”

He didn’t really believe that. He just wanted Ian Ferguson to put a name on it first. Ferguson shook his head.

“No, Max. This isn’t a trial-day crowd. We both know what they’re like; remember when they tried the Gawn brothers? No whooping it up in bars, no excitement, no big crap games; this crowd’s just walking around, keeping quiet, as though they expected a word from somebody.”

“Infiltration.” Goddamit, he’d said it first, himself after all! “Victor Grego’s worried about this.”

“I know it, Max. And Victor Grego’s like a veldbeest bull; he isn’t dangerous till he’s scared, and then watch out. And against the gang that’s moving in here, the men you and I have together would last about as long as a pint of trade-gin at a Sheshan funeral.”

“You thinking of pushing the panic-button?”

The constabulary commander frowned. “I don’t want to. A dim view would be taken back on Terra if I did it without needing to. Dimmer view would be taken of needing to without doing it, though. I’ll make another check, first.”

Gerd van Riebeek sorted the papers on the desk into piles, lit a cigarette and then started to mix himself a highball.

“Fuzzies are members of a sapient race,” he declared. “They reason logically, both deductively and inductively. They learn by experiment, analysis and association. They formulate general principles, and apply them to specific instances. They plan their activities in advance. They make designed artifacts, and artifacts to make artifacts. They are able to symbolize, and convey ideas in symbolic form, and form symbols by abstracting from objects.

“They have aesthetic sense and creativity,” he continued. “They become bored in idleness, and they enjoy solving problems for the pleasure of solving them. They bury their dead ceremoniously, and bury artifacts with them.”

He blew a smoke ring, and then tasted his drink. “They do all these things, and they also do carpenter work, blow police whistles, make eating tools to eat land-prawns with and put molecule-model balls together. Obviously they are sapient beings. But don’t please don’t ask me to define sapience, because God damn it to Nifflheim, I still can’t!”

“I think you just did,” Jack said.

“No, that won’t do. I need a definition.”

“Don’t worry, Gerd,” Gus Brannhard told him. “Leslie Coombes will bring a nice shiny new definition into court. We’ll just use that.”

XIV

They walked together, Frederic and Claudette Pendarvis, down through the roof garden toward the landing stage, and, as she always did, Claudette stopped and cut a flower and fastened it in his lapel.

“Will the Fuzzies be in court?” she asked.

“Oh, they’ll have to be. I don’t know about this morning; it’ll be mostly formalities.” He made a grimace that was half a frown and half a smile. “I really don’t know whether to consider them as witnesses or as exhibits, and I hope I’m not called on to rule on that, at least at the start. Either way, Coombes or Brannhard would accuse me of showing prejudice.”

“I want to see them. I’ve seen them on screen, but I want to see them for real.”

“You haven’t been in one of my courts for a long time, Claudette. If I find that they’ll be brought in today, I’ll call you. I’ll even abuse my position to the extent of arranging for you to see them outside the courtroom. Would you like that?”

She’d love it. Claudette had a limitless capacity for delight in things like that. They kissed good-bye, and he went to where his driver was holding open the door of the aircar and got in. At a thousand feet he looked back; she was still standing at the edge of the roof garden, looking up.

He’d have to find out whether it would be safe for her to come in. Max Fane was worried about the possibility of trouble, and so was Ian Ferguson, and neither was given to timorous imaginings. As the car began to descend toward the Central Courts buildings, he saw that there were guards on the roof, and they weren’t just carrying pistols—he caught the glint of rifle barrels, and the twinkle of steel helmets. Then, as he came in, he saw that their uniforms were a lighter shade of blue than the constabulary wore. Ankle boots and red-striped trousers; Space Marines in dress blues. So Ian Ferguson had pushed the button. It occurred to him that Claudette might be safer here than at home.

A sergeant and a couple of men came up as he got out; the sergeant touched the beak of his helmet in the nearest thing to a salute a Marine ever gave anybody in civilian clothes.

“Judge Pendarvis? Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, sergeant. Just why are Federation Marines guarding the court building?”

“Standing by, sir. Orders of Commodore Napier. You’ll find that Marshal Fane’s people are in charge below-decks, but Marine Captain Casagra and Navy Captain Greibenfeld are waiting to see you in your office.”

As he started toward the elevators, a big Zarathustra Company car was coming in. The sergeant turned quickly, beckoned a couple of his men and went toward it on the double. He wondered what Leslie Coombes would think about those Marines.

The two officers in his private chambers were both wearing sidearms. So, also, was Marshal Fane, who was with them. They all rose to greet him, sitting down when he was at his desk. He asked the same question he had of the sergeant above.

“Well, Constabulary Colonel Ferguson called Commodore Napier last evening and requested armed assistance, your Honor,” the officer in Space Navy black said. “He suspected, he said, that the city had been infiltrated. In that, your Honor, he was perfectly correct; beginning Wednesday afternoon, Marine Captain Casagra, here, on Commodore Napier’s orders, began landing a Marine infiltration force, preparatory to taking over the Residency. That’s been accomplished now; Commodore Napier is there, and both Resident General Emmert and Attorney General O’Brien are under arrest, on a variety of malfeasance and corrupt-practice charges, but that won’t come into your Honor’s court. They’ll be sent back to Terra for trial.”

“Then Commodore Napier’s taken over the civil government?”

“Well, say he’s assumed control of it, pending the outcome of this trial. We want to know whether the present administration’s legal or not.”

“Then you won’t interfere with the trial itself?”

“That depends, your Honor. We are certainly going to participate.” He looked at his watch. “You won’t convene court for another hour? Then perhaps I’ll have time to explain.”

Max Fane met them at the courtroom door with a pleasant greeting. Then he saw Baby Fuzzy on Jack’s shoulder and looked dubious.

“I don’t know about him, Jack. I don’t think he’ll be allowed in the courtroom.”

“Nonsense!” Gus Brannhard told him. “I admit, he is both a minor child and an incompetent aborigine, but he is the only surviving member of the family of the decedent Jane Doe alias Goldilocks, and as such has an indisputable right to be present.”

“Well, just as long as you keep him from sitting on people’s heads. Gus, you and Jack sit over there; Ben, you and Gerd find seats in the witness section.”

It would be half an hour till court would convene, but already the spectators’ seats were full, and so was the balcony. The jury box, on the left of the bench, was occupied by a number of officers in Navy black and Marine blue. Since there would be no jury, they had apparently appropriated it for themselves. The press box was jammed and bristling with equipment.

Baby was looking up interestedly at the big screen behind the judges’ seats; while transmitting the court scene to the public, it also showed, like a nonreversing mirror, the same view to the spectators. Baby wasn’t long in identifying himself in it, and waved his arms excitedly. At that moment, there was a bustle at the door by which they had entered, and Leslie Coombes came in, followed by Ernst Mallin and a couple of his assistants, Ruth Ortheris, Juan Jimenez—and Leonard Kellogg. The last time he had seen Kellogg had been at George Lunt’s complaint court, his face bandaged and his feet in a pair of borrowed moccasins because his shoes, stained with the blood of Goldilocks, had been impounded as evidence.

Coombes glanced toward the table where he and Brannhard were sitting, caught sight of Baby waving to himself in the big screen and turned to Fane with an indignant protest. Fane shook his head. Coombes protested again, and drew another headshake. Finally he shrugged and led Kellogg to the table reserved for them, where they sat down.

Once Pendarvis and his two associates—a short, roundfaced man on his right, a tall, slender man with white hair and a black mustache on his left—were seated, the trial got underway briskly. The charges were read, and then Brannhard, as the Kellogg prosecutor, addressed the court—“being known as Goldilocks…sapient member of a sapient race…willful and deliberate act of the said Leonard Kellogg…brutal and unprovoked murder.” He backed away, sat on the edge of the table and picked up Baby Fuzzy, fondling him while Leslie Coombes accused Jack Holloway of brutally assaulting the said Leonard Kellogg and ruthlessly shooting down Kurt Borch.

“Well, gentlemen, I believe we can now begin hearing the witnesses,” the Chief Justice said. “Who will start prosecuting whom?”

Gus handed Baby to Jack and went forward: Coombes stepped up beside him.

“Your Honor, this entire trial hinges upon the question of whether a member of the species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra is or is not a sapient being,” Gus said. “However, before any attempt is made to determine this question, we should first establish, by testimony, just what happened at Holloway’s Camp, in Cold Creek Valley, on the afternoon of June 19, Atomic Era Six Fifty-Four, and once this is established, we can then proceed to the question of whether or not the said Goldilocks was truly a sapient being.”

“I agree,” Coombes said equably. “Most of these witnesses will have to be recalled to the stand later, but in general I think Mr. Brannhard’s suggestion will be economical of the court’s time.”

“Will Mr. Coombes agree to stipulate that any evidence tending to prove or disprove the sapience of Fuzzies in general be accepted as proving or disproving the sapience of the being referred to as Goldilocks?”

Coombes looked that over carefully, decided that it wasn’t booby-trapped and agreed. A deputy marshal went over to the witness stand, made some adjustments and snapped on a switch at the back of the chair. Immediately the two-foot globe in a standard behind it lit, a clear blue. George Lunt’s name was called; the lieutenant took his seat and the bright helmet was let down over his head and the electrodes attached.

The globe stayed a calm, untroubled blue while he stated his name and rank. Then he waited while Coombes and Brannhard conferred. Finally Brannhard took a silver half-sol piece from his pocket, shook it between cupped palms and slapped it onto his wrist. Coombes said, “Heads,” and Brannhard uncovered it, bowed slightly and stepped back.

“Now, Lieutenant Lunt,” Coombes began, “when you arrived at the temporary camp across the run from Holloway’s camp, what did you find there?”

“Two dead people,” Lunt said. “A Terran human, who had been shot three times through the chest, and a Fuzzy, who had been kicked or trampled to death.”

“Your Honors!” Coombes expostulated, “I must ask that the witness be requested to rephrase his answer, and that the answer he has just made be stricken from the record. The witness, under the circumstances, has no right to refer to the Fuzzies as ‘people.’”

“Your Honors,” Brannhard caught it up, “Mr. Coombes’s objection is no less prejudicial. He has no right, under the circumstances, to deny that the Fuzzies be referred to as ‘people.’ This is tantamount to insisting that the witness speak of them as nonsapient animals.”

It went on like that for five minutes. Jack began doodling on a notepad. Baby picked up a pencil with both hands and began making doodles too. They looked rather like the knots he had been learning to tie. Finally, the court intervened and told Lunt to tell, in his own words, why he went to Holloway’s camp, what he found there, what he was told and what he did. There was some argument between Coombes and Brannhard, at one point, about the difference between hearsay and res gestae. When he was through, Coombes said, “No questions.”

“Lieutenant, you placed Leonard Kellogg under arrest on a complaint of homicide by Jack Holloway. I take it that you considered this complaint a valid one?”

“Yes, sir. I believed that Leonard Kellogg had killed a sapient being. Only sapient beings bury their dead.”

Ahmed Khadra testified. The two troopers who had come in the other car, and the men who had brought the investigative equipment and done the photographing at the scene testified. Brannhard called Ruth Ortheris to the stand, and, after some futile objections by Coombes, she was allowed to tell her own story of the killing of Goldilocks, the beating of Kellogg and the shooting of Borch. When she had finished, the Chief Justice rapped with his gavel.

“I believe that this testimony is sufficient to establish the fact that the being referred to as Jane Doe alias Goldilocks was in fact kicked and trampled to death by the defendant Leonard Kellogg, and that the Terran human known as Kurt Borch was in fact shot to death by Jack Holloway. This being the case, we may now consider whether or not either or both of these killings constitute murder within the meaning of the law. It is now eleven forty. We will adjourn for lunch, and court will reconvene at fourteen hundred. There are a number of things, including some alterations to the courtroom, which must be done before the afternoon session…. Yes, Mr. Brannhard?”

“Your Honors, there is only one member of the species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra at present in court, an immature and hence nonrepresentative individual.” He picked up Baby and exhibited him. “If we are to take up the question of the sapience of this species, or race, would it not be well to send for the Fuzzies now staying at the Hotel Mallory and have them on hand?”

“Well, Mr. Brannhard,” Pendarvis said, “we will certainly want Fuzzies in court, but let me suggest that we wait until after court reconvenes before sending for them. It may be that they will not be needed this afternoon. Anything else?” He tapped with his gavel. “Then court is adjourned until fourteen hundred.”

Some alterations in the courtroom had been a conservative way of putting it. Four rows of spectators’ seats had been abolished, and the dividing rail moved back. The witness chair, originally at the side of the bench, had been moved to the dividing rail and now faced the bench, and a large number of tables had been brought in and ranged in an arc with the witness chair in the middle of it. Everybody at the tables could face the judges, and also see everybody else by looking into the big screen. A witness on the chair could also see the veridicator in the same way.

Gus Brannhard looked around, when he entered with Jack, and swore softly.

“No wonder they gave us two hours for lunch. I wonder what the idea is.” Then he gave a short laugh. “Look at Coombes; he doesn’t like it a bit.”

A deputy with a seating diagram came up to them.

“Mr. Brannhard, you and Mr. Holloway over here, at this table.” He pointed to one a little apart from the others, at the extreme right facing the bench. “And Dr. van Riebeek, and Dr. Rainsford over here, please.”

The court crier’s loud-speaker, overhead, gave two sharp whistles and began:

“Now hear this! Now hear this! Court will convene in five minutes—”

Brannhard’s head jerked around instantly, and Jack’s eyes followed his. The court crier was a Space Navy petty officer.

“What the devil is this?” Brannhard demanded. “A Navy court-martial?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering, Mr. Brannhard,” the deputy said. “They’ve taken over the whole planet, you know.”

“Maybe we’re in luck, Gus. I’ve always heard that if you’re innocent you’re better off before a court-martial and if you’re guilty you’re better off in a civil court.”

He saw Leslie Coombes and Leonard Kellogg being seated at a similar table at the opposite side of the bench. Apparently Coombes had also heard that. The seating arrangements at the other tables seemed a little odd too. Gerd van Riebeek was next to Ruth Ortheris, and Ernst Mallin was next to Ben Rainsford, with Juan Jimenez on his other side. Gus was looking up at the balcony.

“I’ll bet every lawyer on the planet’s taking this in,” he said. “Oh-oh! See the white-haired lady in the blue dress, Jack? That’s the Chief Justice’s wife. This is the first time she’s been in court for years.”

“Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! Rise for the Honorable Court!”

Somebody must have given the petty officer a quick briefing on courtroom phraseology. He stood up, holding Baby Fuzzy, while the three judges filed in and took their seats. As soon as they sat down, the Chief Justice rapped briskly with his gavel.

“In order to forestall a spate of objections, I want to say that these present arrangements are temporary, and so will be the procedures which will be followed. We are not, at the moment, trying Jack Holloway or Leonard Kellogg. For the rest of this day, and, I fear, for a good many days to come, we will be concerned exclusively with determining the level of mentation of Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra.

“For this purpose, we are temporarily abandoning some of the traditional trial procedures. We will call witnesses; statements of purported fact will be made under veridication as usual. We will also have a general discussion, in which all of you at these tables will be free to participate. I and my associates will preside; as we can’t have everybody shouting disputations at once, anyone wishing to speak will have to be recognized. At least, I hope we will be able to conduct the discussion in this manner.

“You will all have noticed the presence of a number of officers from Xerxes Naval Base, and I suppose you have all heard that Commodore Napier has assumed control of the civil government. Captain Greibenfeld, will you please rise and be seen? He is here participating as amicus curiae, and I have given him the right to question witnesses and to delegate that right to any of his officers he may deem proper. Mr. Coombes and Mr. Brannhard may also delegate that right as they see fit.”

Coombes was on his feet at once. “Your Honors, if we are now to discuss the sapience question, I would suggest that the first item on our order of business be the presentation of some acceptable definition of sapience. I should, for my part, very much like to know what it is that the Kellogg prosecution and the Holloway defense mean when they use that term.”

That’s it. They want us to define it. Gerd van Riebeek was looking chagrined; Ernst Mallin was smirking. Gus Brannhard, however, was pleased.

“Jack, they haven’t any more damn definition than we do,” he whispered.

Captain Greibenfeld, who had seated himself after rising at the request of the court, was on his feet again.

“Your Honors, during the past month we at Xerxes Naval Base have been working on exactly that problem. We have a very considerable interest in having the classification of this planet established, and we also feel that this may not be the last time a question of disputable sapience may arise. I believe, your Honors, that we have approached such a definition. However, before we begin discussing it, I would like the court’s permission to present a demonstration which may be of help in understanding the problems involved.”

“Captain Greibenfeld has already discussed this demonstration with me, and it has my approval. Will you please proceed, Captain,” the Chief Justice said.

Greibenfeld nodded, and a deputy marshal opened the door on the right of the bench. Two spacemen came in, carrying cartons. One went up to the bench; the other started around in front of the tables, distributing small battery-powered hearing aids.

“Please put them in your ears and turn them on,” he said. “Thank you.”

Baby Fuzzy tried to get Jack’s. He put the plug in his ear and switched on the power. Instantly he began hearing a number of small sounds he had never heard before, and Baby was saying to him: “He-inta sa-wa’aka; igga sa geeda?”

“Muhgawd, Gus, he’s talking!”

“Yes, I hear him; what do you suppose—?”

“Ultrasonic; God, why didn’t we think of that long ago?”

He snapped off the hearing aid. Baby Fuzzy was saying, “Yeeek.” When he turned it on again, Baby was saying, “Kukk-ina za zeeva.”

“No, Baby, Pappy Jack doesn’t understand. We’ll have to be awfully patient, and learn each other’s language.”

“Pa-pee Jaaak!” Baby cried. “Ba-bee za-hinga; Pa-pee Jaak za zag ga he-izza!”

“That yeeking is just the audible edge of their speech; bet we have a lot of transsonic tones in our voices, too.”

“Well, he can hear what we say; he’s picked up his name and yours.”

“Mr. Brannhard, Mr. Holloway,” Judge Pendarvis was saying, “may we please have your attention? Now, have you all your earplugs in and turned on? Very well; carry on, Captain.”

This time, an ensign went out and came back with a crowd of enlisted men, who had six Fuzzies with them. They set them down in the open space between the bench and the arc of tables and backed away. The Fuzzies drew together into a clump and stared around them, and he stared, unbelievingly, at them. They couldn’t be; they didn’t exist any more. But they were—Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and Cinderella. Baby whooped something and leaped from the table, and Mamma came stumbling to meet him, clasping him in her arms. Then they all saw him and began clamoring: “Pa-pee Jaaak! Pa-pee Jaaak!”

He wasn’t aware of rising and leaving the table; the next thing he realized, he was sitting on the floor, his family mobbing him and hugging him, gabbling with joy. Dimly he heard the gavel hammering, and the voice of Chief Justice Pendarvis: “Court is recessed for ten minutes!” By that time, Gus was with him; gathering the family up, they carried them over to their table.

They stumbled and staggered when they moved, and that frightened him for a moment. Then he realized that they weren’t sick or drugged. They’d just been in low-G for a while and hadn’t become reaccustomed to normal weight. Now he knew why he hadn’t been able to find any trace of them. He noticed that each of them was wearing a little shoulder bag—a Marine Corps first-aid pouch—slung from a webbing strap. Why the devil hadn’t he thought of making them something like that? He touched one and commented, trying to pitch his voice as nearly like theirs as he could. They all babbled in reply and began opening the little bags and showing him what they had in them—little knives and miniature tools and bits of bright or colored junk they had picked up. Little Fuzzy produced a tiny pipe with a hardwood bowl, and a little pouch of tobacco from which he filled it. Finally, he got out a small lighter.

“Your Honors!” Gus shouted, “I know court is recessed, but please observe what Little Fuzzy is doing.”

While they watched, Little Fuzzy snapped the lighter and held the flame to the pipe bowl, puffing.

Across on the other side, Leslie Coombes swallowed once or twice and closed his eyes.

When Pendarvis rapped for attention and declared court reconvened, he said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have all seen and heard this demonstration of Captain Greibenfeld’s. You have heard these Fuzzies uttering what certainly sounds like meaningful speech, and you have seen one of them light a pipe and smoke. Incidentally, while smoking in court is discountenanced, we are going to make an exception, during this trial, in favor of Fuzzies. Other people will please not feel themselves discriminated against.”

That brought Coombes to his feet with a rush. He started around the table and then remembered that under the new rules he didn’t have to.

“Your Honors, I objected strongly to the use of that term by a witness this morning; I must object even more emphatically to its employment from the bench. I have indeed heard these Fuzzies make sounds which might be mistaken for words, but I must deny that this is true speech. As to this trick of using a lighter, I will undertake, in not more than thirty days, to teach it to any Terran primate or Freyan kholph.”

Greibenfeld rose immediately. “Your Honors, in the past thirty days, while these Fuzzies were at Xerxes Naval Base, we have compiled a vocabulary of a hundred-odd Fuzzy words, for all of which definite meanings have been established, and a great many more for which we have not as yet learned the meanings. We even have the beginning of a Fuzzy grammar. As for this so-called trick of using a lighter, Little Fuzzy—we didn’t know his name then and referred to him as M2—learned that for himself, by observation. We didn’t teach him to smoke a pipe either; he knew that before we had anything to do with him.”

Jack rose while Greibenfeld was still speaking. As soon as the Space Navy captain had finished, he said:

“Captain Greibenfeld, I want to thank you and your people for taking care of the Fuzzies, and I’m very glad you learned how to hear what they’re saying, and thank you for all the nice things you gave them, but why couldn’t you have let me know they were safe? I haven’t been very happy the last month, you know.”

“I know that, Mr. Holloway, and if it’s any comfort to you, we were all very sorry for you, but we could not take the risk of compromising our secret intelligence agent in the Company’s Science Center, the one who smuggled the Fuzzies out the morning after their escape.” He looked quickly across in front of the bench to the table at the other end of the arc. Kellogg was sitting with his face in his hands, oblivious to everything that was going on, but Leslie Coombes’s well-disciplined face had broken, briefly, into a look of consternation. “By the time you and Mr. Brannhard and Marshal Fane arrived with an order of the court for the Fuzzies’ recovery, they had already been taken from Science Center and were on a Navy landing craft for Xerxes. We couldn’t do anything without exposing our agent. That, I am glad to say, is no longer a consideration.”

“Well, Captain Greibenfeld,” the Chief Justice said, “I assume you mean to introduce further testimony about the observations and studies made by your people on Xerxes. For the record, we’d like to have it established that they were actually taken there, and when, and how.”

“Yes, your Honor. If you will call the fourth name on the list I gave you, and allow me to do the questioning, we can establish that.”

The Chief Justice picked up a paper. “Lieutenant j.g. Ruth Ortheris, TFN Reserve,” he called out.

This time, Jack Holloway looked up into the big screen, in which he could see everybody. Gerd van Riebeek, who had been trying to ignore the existence of the woman beside him, had turned to stare at her in amazement. Coombes’s face was ghastly for an instant, then froze into corpselike immobility: Ernst Mallin was dithering in incredulous anger; beside him Ben Rainsford was grinning in just as incredulous delight. As Ruth came around in front of the bench, the Fuzzies gave her an ovation; they remembered and liked her. Gus Brannhard was gripping his arm and saying: “Oh, brother! This is it, Jack; it’s all over but shooting the cripples!”

Lieutenant j.g. Ortheris, under a calmly blue globe, testified to coming to Zarathustra as a Federation Naval Reserve officer recalled to duty with Intelligence, and taking a position with the Company.

“As a regularly qualified doctor of psychology, I worked under Dr. Mallin in the scientific division, and also with the school department and the juvenile court. At the same time I was regularly transmitting reports to Commander Aelborg, the chief of Intelligence on Xerxes. The object of this surveillance was to make sure that the Zarathustra Company was not violating the provisions of their charter or Federation law. Until the middle of last month, I had nothing to report beyond some rather irregular financial transactions involving Resident General Emmert. Then, on the evening of June fifteen—”

That was when Ben had transmitted the tape to Juan Jimenez; she described how it had come to her attention.

“As soon as possible, I transmitted a copy of this tape to Commander Aelborg. The next night, I called Xerxes from the screen on Dr. van Riebeek’s boat and reported what I’d learned about the Fuzzies. I was then informed that Leonard Kellogg had gotten hold of a copy of the Holloway-Rainsford tape and had alerted Victor Grego; that Kellogg and Ernst Mallin were being sent to Beta Continent with instructions to prevent publication of any report claiming sapience for the Fuzzies and to fabricate evidence to support an accusation that Dr. Rainsford and Mr. Holloway were perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax.”

“Here, I’ll have to object to this, your Honor,” Coombes said, rising. “This is nothing but hearsay.”

“This is part of a Navy Intelligence situation estimate given to Lieutenant Ortheris, based on reports we had received from other agents,” Captain Greibenfeld said. “She isn’t the only one we have on Zarathustra, you know. Mr. Coombes, if I hear another word of objection to this officer’s testimony from you, I am going to ask Mr. Brannhard to subpoena Victor Grego and question him under veridication about it.”

“Mr. Brannhard will be more than happy to oblige, Commander,” Gus said loudly and distinctly.

Coombes sat down hastily.

“Well, Lieutenant Ortheris, this is most interesting, but at the moment, what we’re trying to establish is how these Fuzzies got to Xerxes Naval Base,” the chubby associate justice, Ruiz, put in.

“I’ll try to get them there as quickly as possible, your Honor,” she said. “On the night of Friday the twenty-second, the Fuzzies were taken from Mr. Holloway and brought into Mallorysport; they were turned over by Mohammed O’Brien to Juan Jimenez, who took them to Science Center and put them in cages in a room back of his office. They immediately escaped. I found them, the next morning, and was able to get them out of the building, and to turn them over to Commander Aelborg, who had come down from Xerxes to take personal charge of the Fuzzy operation. I will not testify as to how I was able to do this. I am at present and was then an officer of the Terran Federation Armed Forces; the courts have no power to compel a Federation officer to give testimony involving breach of military security. I was informed, through my contact in Mallorysport, from time to time, of the progress of the work of measuring the Fuzzies’ mental level there; I was able to pass on suggestions occasionally. Any time any of these suggestions was based on ideas originating with Dr. Mallin, I was careful to give him full credit.”

Mallin looked singularly unappreciative.

Brannhard got up. “Before this witness is excused, I’d like to ask if she knows anything about four other Fuzzies, the ones found by Jack Holloway up Ferny Creek on Friday.”

“Why, yes; they’re my Fuzzies, and I was worried about them. Their names are Complex, Syndrome, Id and Superego.”

“Your Fuzzies, Lieutenant?”

“Well, I took care of them and worked with them; Juan Jimenez and some Company hunters caught them over on Beta Continent. They were kept at a farm center about five hundred miles north of here, which had been vacated for the purpose. I spent all my time with them, and Dr. Mallin was with them most of the time. Then, on Monday night, Mr. Coombes came and got them.”

“Mr. Coombes, did you say?” Gus Brannhard asked.

“Mr. Leslie Coombes, the Company attorney. He said they were needed in Mallorysport. It wasn’t till the next day that I found out what they were needed for. They’d been turned loose in front of that Fuzzy hunt, in the hope that they would be killed.”

She looked across at Coombes; if looks were bullets, he’d have been deader than Kurt Borch.

“Why would they sacrifice four Fuzzies merely to support a story that was bound to come apart anyhow?” Brannhard asked.

“That was no sacrifice. They had to get rid of those Fuzzies, and they were afraid to kill them themselves for fear they’d be charged with murder along with Leonard Kellogg. Everybody, from Ernst Mallin down, who had anything to do with them was convinced of their sapience. For one thing, we’d been using those hearing aids ourselves; I suggested it, after getting the idea from Xerxes. Ask Dr. Mallin about it, under veridication. Ask him about the multiordinal polyencephalograph experiments, too.”

“Well, we have the Holloway Fuzzies placed on Xerxes,” the Chief Justice said. “We can hear the testimony of the people who worked with them there at any time. Now, I want to hear from Dr. Ernst Mallin.”

Coombes was on his feet again. “Your Honors, before any further testimony is heard, I would like to confer with my client privately.”

“I fail to see any reason why we should interrupt proceedings for that purpose, Mr. Coombes. You can confer as much as you wish with your client after this session, and I can assure you that you will be called upon to do nothing on his behalf until then.” He gave a light tap with his gavel and then said: “Dr. Ernst Mallin will please take the stand.”

XV

Ernst Mallin shrank, as though trying to pull himself into himself, when he heard his name. He didn’t want to testify. He had been dreading this moment for days. Now he would have to sit in that chair, and they would ask him questions, and he couldn’t answer them truthfully and the globe over his head—

When the deputy marshal touched his shoulder and spoke to him, he didn’t think, at first, that his legs would support him. It seemed miles, with all the staring faces on either side of him. Somehow, he reached the chair and sat down, and they fitted the helmet over his head and attached the electrodes. They used to make a witness take some kind of an oath to tell the truth. They didn’t any more. They didn’t need to.

As soon as the veridicator was on, he looked up at the big screen behind the three judges; the globe above his head was a glaring red. There was a titter of laughter. Nobody in the Courtroom knew better than he what was happening. He had screens in his laboratory that broke it all down into individual patterns—the steady pulsing waves from the cortex, the alpha and beta waves; beta-aleph and beta-beth and beta-gimel and beta-daleth. The thalamic waves. He thought of all of them, and of the electromagnetic events which accompanied brain activity. As he did, the red faded and the globe became blue. He was no longer suppressing statements and substituting other statements he knew to be false. If he could keep it that way. But, sooner or later, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to.

The globe stayed blue while he named himself and stated his professional background. There was a brief flicker of red while he was listing his publication—that paper, entirely the work of one of his students, which he had published under his own name. He had forgotten about that, but his conscience hadn’t.

“Dr. Mallin,” the oldest of the three judges, who sat in the middle, began, “what, in your professional opinion, is the difference between sapient and nonsapient mentation?”

“The ability to think consciously,” he stated. The globe stayed blue.

“Do you mean that nonsapient animals aren’t conscious, or do you mean they don’t think?”

“Well, neither. Any life form with a central nervous system has some consciousness—awareness of existence and of its surroundings. And anything having a brain thinks, to use the term at its loosest. What I meant was that only the sapient mind thinks and knows that it is thinking.”

He was perfectly safe so far. He talked about sensory stimuli and responses, and about conditioned reflexes. He went back to the first century Pre-Atomic, and Pavlov and Korzybski and Freud. The globe never flickered.

“The nonsapient animal is conscious only of what is immediately present to the senses and responds automatically. It will perceive something and make a single statement about it—this is good to eat, this sensation is unpleasant, this is a sex-gratification object, this is dangerous. The sapient mind, on the other hand, is conscious of thinking about these sense stimuli, and makes descriptive statements about them, and then makes statements about those statements, in a connected chain. I have a structural differential at my seat; if somebody will bring it to me—”

“Well, never mind now, Dr. Mallin. When you’re off the stand and the discussion begins you can show what you mean. We just want your opinion in general terms, now.”

“Well, the sapient mind can generalize. To the nonsapient animal, every experience is either totally novel or identical with some remembered experience. A rabbit will flee from one dog because to the rabbit mind it is identical with another dog that has chased it. A bird will be attracted to an apple, and each apple will be a unique red thing to peck at. The sapient being will say, ‘These red objects are apples; as a class, they are edible and flavorsome.’ He sets up a class under the general label of apples. This, in turn, leads to the formation of abstract ideas—redness, flavor, et cetera—conceived of apart from any specific physical object, and to the ordering of abstractions—‘fruit’ as distinguished from apples, ‘food’ as distinguished from fruit.”

The globe was still placidly blue. The three judges waited, and he continued:

“Having formed these abstract ideas, it becomes necessary to symbolize them, in order to deal with them apart from the actual object. The sapient being is a symbolizer, and a symbol communicator; he is able to convey to other sapient beings his ideas in symbolic form.”

“Like ‘Pa-pee Jaak’?” the judge on his right, with the black mustache, asked.

The globe flashed red at once.

“Your Honors, I cannot consider words picked up at random and learned by rote speech. The Fuzzies have merely learned to associate that sound with a specific human, and use it as a signal, not as a symbol.”

The globe was still red. The Chief Justice, in the middle, rapped with his gavel.

“Dr. Mallin! Of all the people on this planet, you at least should know the impossibility of lying under veridication. Other people just know it can’t be done; you know why. Now I’m going to rephrase Judge Janiver’s question, and I’ll expect you to answer truthfully. If you don’t I’m going to hold you in contempt. When those Fuzzies cried out, ‘Pappy Jack!’ do you or do you not believe that they were using a verbal expression which stood, in their minds, for Mr. Holloway?”

He couldn’t say it. This sapience was all a big fake; he had to believe that. The Fuzzies were only little mindless animals.

But he didn’t believe it. He knew better. He gulped for a moment.

“Yes, your Honor. The term ‘Pappy Jack’ is, in their minds, a symbol standing for Mr. Jack Holloway.”

He looked at the globe. The red had turned to mauve, the mauve was becoming violet, and then clear blue. He felt better than he had felt since the afternoon Leonard Kellogg had told him about the Fuzzies.

“Then Fuzzies do think consciously, Dr. Mallin?” That was Pendarvis.

“Oh, yes. The fact that they use verbal symbols indicates that, even without other evidence. And the instrumental evidence was most impressive. The mentation pictures we got by encephalography compare very favorably with those of any human child of ten or twelve years old, and so does their learning and puzzle-solving ability. On puzzles, they always think the problem out first, and then do the mechanical work with about the same mental effort, say, as a man washing his hands or tying his neckcloth.”

The globe was perfectly blue. Mallin had given up trying to lie; he was simply gushing out everything he thought.

Leonard Kellogg slumped forward, his head buried in his elbows on the table, and misery washed over him in tides.

I am a murderer; I killed a person. Only a funny little person with fur, but she was a person, and I knew it when I killed her, I knew it when I saw that little grave out in the woods, and they’ll put me in that chair and make me admit it to everybody, and then they’ll take me out in the jail yard and somebody will shoot me through the head with a pistol, and—

And all the poor little thing wanted was to show me her new jingle!

“Does anybody want to ask the witness any questions?” the Chief Justice was asking.

“I don’t,” Captain Greibenfeld said. “Do you, Lieutenant?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lieutenant Ybarra said. “Dr. Mallin’s given us a very lucid statement of his opinions.”

He had, at that, after he’d decided he couldn’t beat the veridicator. Jack found himself sympathizing with Mallin. He’d disliked the man from the first, but he looked different now—sort of cleaned and washed out inside. Maybe everybody ought to be veridicated, now and then, to teach them that honesty begins with honesty to self.

“Mr. Coombes?” Mr. Coombes looked as though he never wanted to ask another witness another question as long as he lived. “Mr. Brannhard?”

Gus got up, holding a sapient member of a sapient race who was hanging onto his beard, and thanked Ernst Mallin fulsomely.

“In that case, we’ll adjourn until o-nine-hundred tomorrow. Mr. Coombes, I have here a check on the chartered Zarathustra Company for twenty-five thousand sols. I am returning it to you and I am canceling Dr. Kellogg’s bail,” Judge Pendarvis said, as a couple of attendants began getting Mallin loose from the veridicator.

“Are you also canceling Jack Holloway’s?”

“No, and I would advise you not to make an issue of it, Mr. Coombes. The only reason I haven’t dismissed the charge against Mr. Holloway is that I don’t want to handicap you by cutting off your foothold in the prosecution. I do not consider Mr. Holloway a bail risk. I do so consider your client, Dr. Kellogg.”

“Frankly, your Honor, so do I,” Coombes admitted. “My protest was merely an example of what Dr. Mallin would call conditioned reflex.”

Then a crowd began pushing up around the table; Ben Rainsford, George Lunt and his troopers, Gerd and Ruth, shoving in among them, their arms around each other.

“We’ll be at the hotel after a while, Jack,” Gerd was saying. “Ruth and I are going out for a drink and something to eat; we’ll be around later to pick up her Fuzzies.”

Now his partner had his girl back, and his partner’s girl had a Fuzzy family of her own. This was going to be real fun. What were their names now? Syndrome, Complex, Id and Superego. The things some people named Fuzzies!

XVI

They stopped whispering at the door, turned right, and ascended to the bench, bearing themselves like images in a procession, Ruiz first, then himself and then Janiver. They turned to the screen so that the public whom they served might see the faces of the judges, and then sat down. The court crier began his chant. They could almost feel the tension in the courtroom. Yves Janiver whispered to them:

“They all know about it.”

As soon as the crier had stopped, Max Fane approached the bench, his face blankly expressionless.

“Your Honors, I am ashamed to have to report that the defendant, Leonard Kellogg, cannot be produced in court. He is dead; he committed suicide in his cell last night. While in my custody,” he added bitterly.

The stir that went through the courtroom was not shocked surprise, it was a sigh of fulfilled expectation. They all knew about it.

“How did this happen, Marshal?” he asked, almost conversationally.

“The prisoner was put in a cell by himself; there was a pickup eye, and one of my deputies was keeping him under observation by screen.” Fane spoke in a toneless, almost robotlike voice. “At twenty-two thirty, the prisoner went to bed, still wearing his shirt. He pulled the blankets up over his head. The deputy observing him thought nothing of that; many prisoners do that, on account of the light. He tossed about for a while, and then appeared to fall asleep.

“When a guard went in to rouse him this morning, the cot, under the blanket, was found saturated with blood. Kellogg had cut his throat, by sawing the zipper track of his shirt back and forth till he severed his jugular vein. He was dead.”

“Good heavens, Marshal!” He was shocked. The way he’d heard it, Kellogg had hidden a penknife, and he was prepared to be severe with Fane about it. But a thing like this! He found himself fingering the toothed track of his own jacket zipper. “I don’t believe you can be at all censured for not anticipating a thing like that. It isn’t a thing anybody would expect.”

Janiver and Ruiz spoke briefly in agreement. Marshal Fane bowed slightly and went off to one side.

Leslie Coombes, who seemed to be making a very considerable effort to look grieved and shocked, rose.

“Your Honors, I find myself here without a client,” he said. “In fact, I find myself here without any business at all; the case against Mr. Holloway is absolutely insupportable. He shot a man who was trying to kill him, and that’s all there is to it. I therefore pray your Honors to dismiss the case against him and discharge him from custody.”

Captain Greibenfeld bounded to his feet.

“Your Honors, I fully realize that the defendant is now beyond the jurisdiction of this court, but let me point out that I and my associates are here participating in this case in the hope that the classification of this planet may be determined, and some adequate definition of sapience established. These are most serious questions, your Honors.”

“But, your Honors,” Coombes protested, “we can’t go through the farce of trying a dead man.”

“People of the Colony of Baphomet versus Jamshar Singh, Deceased, charge of arson and sabotage, A.E. 604,” the Honorable Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard interrupted.

Yes, you could find a precedent in colonial law for almost anything.

Jack Holloway was on his feet, a Fuzzy cradled in the crook of his left arm, his white mustache bristling truculently.

“I am not a dead man, your Honors, and I am on trial here. The reason I’m not dead is why I am on trial. My defense is that I shot Kurt Borch while he was aiding and abetting in the killing of a Fuzzy. I want it established in this court that it is murder to kill a Fuzzy.”

The judge nodded slowly. “I will not dismiss the charges against Mr. Holloway,” he said. “Mr. Holloway had been arraigned on a charge of murder; if he is not guilty, he is entitled to the vindication of an acquittal. I am afraid, Mr. Coombes, that you will have to go on prosecuting him.”

Another brief stir, like a breath of wind over a grain field, ran through the courtroom. The show was going on after all.

All the Fuzzies were in court this morning; Jack’s six, and the five from the constabulary post, and Ben’s Flora and Fauna, and the four Ruth Ortheris claimed. There was too much discussion going on for anybody to keep an eye on them. Finally one of the constabulary Fuzzies, either Dillinger or Dr. Crippen, and Ben Rainsford’s Flora and Fauna, came sauntering out into the open space between the tables and the bench dragging the hose of a vacuum-duster. Ahmed Khadra ducked under a table and tried to get it away from them. This was wonderful; screaming in delight, they all laid hold of the other end, and Mike and Mitzi and Superego and Complex ran to help them. The seven of them dragged Khadra about ten feet before he gave up and let go. At the same time, an incipient fight broke out on the other side of the arc of tables between the head of the language department at Mallorysport Academy and a spinsterish amateur phoneticist. At this point, Judge Pendarvis, deciding that if you can’t prevent it, relax and enjoy it, rapped a few times with his gavel, and announced that court was recessed.

“You will all please remain here; this is not an adjournment, and if any of the various groups who seem to be discussing different aspects of the problem reach any conclusion they feel should be presented in evidence, will they please notify the bench so that court can be reconvened. In any case, we will reconvene at eleven thirty.”

Somebody wanted to know if smoking would be permitted during the recess. The Chief Justice said that it would. He got out a cigar and lit it. Mamma Fuzzy wanted a puff: she didn’t like it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mike and Mitzi, Flora and Fauna scampering around and up the steps behind the bench. When he looked again, they were all up on it, and Mitzi was showing the court what she had in her shoulder bag.

He got up, with Mamma and Baby, and crossed to where Leslie Coombes was sitting. By this time, somebody was bringing in a coffee urn from the cafeteria. Fuzzies ought to happen oftener in court.

The gavel tapped slowly. Little Fuzzy scrambled up onto Jack Holloway’s lap. After five days in court, they had all learned that the gavel meant for Fuzzies and other people to be quiet. It might be a good idea, Jack thought, to make a little gavel, when he got home, and keep it on the table in the living room for when the family got too boisterous. Baby, who wasn’t gavel-trained yet, started out onto the floor; Mamma dashed after him and brought him back under the table.

The place looked like a courtroom again. The tables were ranged in a neat row facing the bench, and the witness chair and the jury box were back where they belonged. The ashtrays and the coffee urn and the ice tubs for beer and soft drinks had vanished. It looked like the party was over. He was almost regretful; it had been fun. Especially for seventeen Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy and a little black-and-white kitten.

There was one unusual feature; there was now a fourth man on the bench, in gold-braided Navy black; sitting a little apart from the judges, trying to look as though he weren’t there at all—Space Commodore Alex Napier.

Judge Pendarvis laid down his gavel. “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to present the opinions you have reached?” he asked.

Lieutenant Ybarra, the Navy psychologist, rose. There was a reading screen in front of him; he snapped it on.

“Your Honors,” he began, “there still exists considerable difference of opinion on matters of detail but we are in agreement on all major points. This is quite a lengthy report, and it has already been incorporated into the permanent record. Have I the court’s permission to summarize it?”

The court told him he had. Ybarra glanced down at the screen in front of him and continued:

“It is our opinion,” he said, “that sapience may be defined as differing from nonsapience in that it is characterized by conscious thought, by ability to think in logical sequence and by ability to think in terms other than mere sense data. We—meaning every member of every sapient race—think consciously, and we know what we are thinking. This is not to say that all our mental activity is conscious. The science of psychology is based, to a large extent, upon our realization that only a small portion of our mental activity occurs above the level of consciousness, and for centuries we have been diagraming the mind as an iceberg, one-tenth exposed and nine-tenths submerged. The art of psychiatry consists largely in bringing into consciousness some of the content of this submerged nine-tenths, and as a practitioner I can testify to its difficulty and uncertainty.

“We are so habituated to conscious thought that when we reach some conclusion by any nonconscious process, we speak of it as a ‘hunch,’ or an ‘intuition,’ and question its validity. We are so habituated to acting upon consciously formed decisions that we must laboriously acquire, by systematic drill, those automatic responses upon which we depend for survival in combat or other emergencies. And we are by nature so unaware of this vast submerged mental area that it was not until the first century Pre-Atomic that its existence was more than vaguely suspected, and its nature is still the subject of acrimonious professional disputes.”

There had been a few of those, off and on, during the past four days, too.

“If we depict sapient mentation as an iceberg, we might depict nonsapient mentation as the sunlight reflected from its surface. This is a considerably less exact analogy; while the nonsapient mind deals, consciously, with nothing but present sense data, there is a considerable absorption and re-emission of subconscious memories. Also, there are occasional flashes of what must be conscious mental activity, in dealing with some novel situation. Dr. van Riebeek, who is especially interested in the evolutionary aspect of the question, suggests that the introduction of novelty because of drastic environmental changes may have forced nonsapient beings into more or less sustained conscious thinking and so initiated mental habits which, in time, gave rise to true sapience.

“The sapient mind not only thinks consciously by habit, but it thinks in connected sequence. It associates one thing with another. It reasons logically, and forms conclusions, and uses those conclusions as premises from which to arrive at further conclusions. It groups associations together, and generalizes. Here we pass completely beyond any comparison with nonsapience. This is not merely more consciousness, or more thinking; it is thinking of a radically different kind. The nonsapient mind deals exclusively with crude sensory material. The sapient mind translates sense impressions into ideas, and then forms ideas of ideas, in ascending orders of abstraction, almost without limit.

“This, finally, brings us to one of the recognized overt manifestations of sapience. The sapient being is a symbol user. The nonsapient being cannot symbolize, because the nonsapient mind is incapable of concepts beyond mere sense images.”

Ybarra drank some water, and twisted the dial of his reading screen with the other hand.

“The sapient being,” he continued, “can do one other thing. It is a combination of the three abilities already enumerated, but combining them creates something much greater than the mere sum of the parts. The sapient being can imagine. He can conceive of something which has no existence whatever in the sense-available world of reality, and then he can work and plan toward making it a part of reality. He can not only imagine, but he can also create.”

He paused for a moment. “This is our definition of sapience. When we encounter any being whose mentation includes these characteristics, we may know him for a sapient brother. It is the considered opinion of all of us that the beings called Fuzzies are such beings.”

Jack hugged the small sapient one on his lap, and Little Fuzzy looked up and murmured, “He-inta?”

“You’re in, kid,” he whispered. “You just joined the people.”

Ybarra was saying, “They think consciously and continuously. We know that by instrumental analysis of their electroencephalographic patterns, which compare closely to those of an intelligent human child of ten. They think in connected sequence; I invite consideration of all the different logical steps involved in the invention, designing and making of their prawn-killing weapons, and in the development of tools with which to make them. We have abundant evidence of their ability to think beyond present sense data, to associate, to generalize, to abstract and to symbolize.

“And above all, they can imagine, not only a new implement, but a new way of life. We see this in the first human contact with the race which, I submit, should be designated as Fuzzy sapiens. Little Fuzzy found a strange and wonderful place in the forest, a place unlike anything he had ever seen, in which lived a powerful being. He imagined himself living in this place, enjoying the friendship and protection of this mysterious being. So he slipped inside, made friends with Jack Holloway and lived with him. And then he imagined his family sharing this precious comfort and companionship with him, and he went and found them and brought them back with him. Like so many other sapient beings, Little Fuzzy had a beautiful dream; like a fortunate few, he made it real.”

The Chief Justice allowed the applause to run on for a few minutes before using his gavel to silence it. There was a brief colloquy among the three judges, and then the Chief Justice rapped again. Little Fuzzy looked perplexed. Everybody had been quiet after he did it the first time, hadn’t they?

“It is the unanimous decision of the court to accept the report already entered into the record and just summarized by Lieutenant Ybarra, TFN, and to thank him and all who have been associated with him.

“It is now the ruling of this court that the species known as Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra is in fact a race of sapient beings, entitled to the respect of all other sapient beings and to the full protection of the law of the Terran Federation.” He rapped again, slowly, pounding the decision into the legal framework.

Space Commodore Napier leaned over and whispered; all three of the judges nodded emphatically. The naval officer rose.

“Lieutenant Ybarra, on behalf of the Service and of the Federation, I thank you and those associated with you for a lucid and excellent report, the culmination of work which reflects credit upon all who participated in it. I also wish to state that a suggestion made to me by Lieutenant Ybarra regarding possible instrumental detection of sapient mentation is being credited to him in my own report, with the recommendation that it be given important priority by the Bureau of Research and Development. Perhaps the next time we find people who speak beyond the range of human audition, who have fur and live in a mild climate, and who like their food raw, we’ll know what they are from the beginning.”

Bet Ybarra gets another stripe, and a good job out of this. Jack hoped so. Then Pendarvis was pounding again.

“I had almost forgotten; this is a criminal trial,” he confessed. “It is the verdict of this court that the defendant, Jack Holloway, is not guilty as here charged. He is herewith discharged from custody. If he or his attorney will step up here, the bail bond will be refunded.” He puzzled Little Fuzzy by hammering again with his gavel to adjourn court.

This time, instead of keeping quiet, everybody made all the noise they could, and Uncle Gus was holding him high over his head and shouting:

“The winnah! By unanimous decision!”

XVII

Ruth Ortheris sipped at the tart, cold cocktail. It was good; oh, it was good, all good! The music was soft, the lights were dim, the tables were far apart; just she and Gerd, and nobody was paying any attention to them. And she was clear out of the business, too. An agent who testified in court always was expended in service like a fired round. They’d want her back, a year from now, to testify when the board of inquiry came out from Terra, but she wouldn’t be Lieutenant j.g. Ortheris then, she’d be Mrs. Gerd van Riebeek. She set down the glass and rubbed the sunstone on her finger. It was a lovely sunstone, and it meant such a lovely thing.

And we’re getting married with a ready-made family, too. Four Fuzzies and a black-and-white kitten.

“You’re sure you really want to go to Beta?” Gerd asked. “When Napier gets this new government organized, it’ll be taking over Science Center. We could both get our old jobs back. Maybe something better.”

“You don’t want to go back?” He shook his head. “Neither do I. I want to go to Beta and be a sunstone digger’s wife.”

“And a Fuzzyologist.”

“And a Fuzzyologist. I couldn’t drop that now. Gerd, we’re only beginning with them. We know next to nothing about their psychology.”

He nodded seriously. “You know, they may turn out to be even wiser than we are.”

She laughed. “Oh, Gerd! Let’s don’t get too excited about them. Why, they’re like little children. All they think about is having fun.”

“That’s right. I said they were wiser than we are. They stick to important things.” He smoked silently for a moment. “It’s not just their psychology; we don’t know anything much about their physiology, or biology either.” He picked up his glass and drank. “Here; we had eighteen of them in all. Seventeen adults and one little one. Now what kind of ratio is that? And the ones we saw in the woods ran about the same. In all, we sighted about a hundred and fifty adults and only ten children.”

“Maybe last year’s crop have grown up,” she began.

“You know any other sapient races with a one-year maturation period?” he asked. “I’ll bet they take ten or fifteen years to mature. Jack’s Baby Fuzzy hasn’t gained a pound in the last month. And another puzzle; this craving for Extee Three. That’s not a natural food; except for the cereal bulk matter, it’s purely synthetic. I was talking to Ybarra; he was wondering if there mightn’t be something in it that caused an addiction.”

“Maybe it satisfies some kind of dietary deficiency.”

“Well, we’ll find out.” He inverted the jug over his glass. “Think we could stand another cocktail before dinner?”

Space Commodore Napier sat at the desk that had been Nick Emmert’s and looked at the little man with the red whiskers and the rumpled suit, who was looking back at him in consternation.

“Good Lord, Commodore; you can’t be serious?”

“But I am. Quite serious, Dr. Rainsford.”

“Then you’re nuts!” Rainsford exploded. “I’m no more qualified to be Governor General than I’d be to command Xerxes Base. Why, I never held an administrative position in my life.”

“That might be a recommendation. You’re replacing a veteran administrator.”

“And I have a job. The Institute of Zeno-Sciences—”

“I think they’ll be glad to give you leave, under the circumstances. Doctor, you’re the logical man for this job. You’re an ecologist; you know how disastrous the effects of upsetting the balance of nature can be. The Zarathustra Company took care of this planet, when it was their property, but now nine-tenths of it is public domain, and people will be coming in from all over the Federation, scrambling to get rich overnight. You’ll know how to control things.”

“Yes, as Commissioner of Conservation, or something I’m qualified for.”

“As Governor General. Your job will be to make policy. You can appoint the administrators.”

“Well, who, for instance?”

“Well, you’re going to need an Attorney General right away. Who will you appoint for that position?”

“Gus Brannhard,” Rainsford said instantly.

“Good. And who—this question is purely rhetorical—will you appoint as Commissioner of Native Affairs?”

Jack Holloway was going back to Beta Continent on the constabulary airboat. Official passenger: Mr. Commissioner Jack Holloway. And his staff: Little Fuzzy, Mamma Fuzzy, Baby Fuzzy, Mike, Mitzi, Ko-Ko and Cinderella. Bet they didn’t know they had official positions!

Somehow he wished he didn’t have one himself.

“Want a good job, George?” he asked Lunt.

“I have a good job.”

“This’ll be a better one. Rank of major, eighteen thousand a year. Commandant, Native Protection Force. And you won’t lose seniority in the constabulary; Colonel Ferguson’ll give you indefinite leave.”

“Well, cripes, Jack, I’d like to, but I don’t want to leave the kids. And I can’t take them away from the rest of the gang.”

“Bring the rest of the gang along. I’m authorized to borrow twenty men from the constabulary as a training cadre, and you only have sixteen. Your sergeants’ll get commissions, and all your men will be sergeants. I’m going to have a force of a hundred and fifty for a start.”

“You must think the Fuzzies are going to need a lot of protection.”

“They will. The whole country between the Cordilleras and the West Coast Range will be Fuzzy Reservation and that’ll have to be policed. Then the Fuzzies outside that will have to be protected. You know what’s going to happen. Everybody wants Fuzzies; why, even Judge Pendarvis approached me about getting a pair for his wife. There’ll be gangs hunting them to sell, using stun-bombs and sleepgas and everything. I’m going to have to set up an adoption bureau; Ruth will be in charge of that. And that’ll mean a lot of investigators—”

Oh, it was going to be one hell of a job! Fifty thousand a year would be chicken feed to what he’d lose by not working his diggings. But somebody would have to do it, and the Fuzzies were his responsibility.

Hadn’t he gone to law to prove their sapience?

They were going home, home to the Wonderful Place. They had seen many wonderful places, since the night they had been put in the bags: the place where everything had been light and they had been able to jump so high and land so gently, and the place where they had met all the others of their people and had so much fun. But now they were going back to the old Wonderful Place in the woods, where it had all started.

And they had met so many Big Ones, too. Some Big Ones were bad, but only a few; most Big Ones were good. Even the one who had done the killing had felt sorry for what he had done; they were all sure of that. And the other Big Ones had taken him away, and they had never seen him again.

He had talked about that with the others—with Flora and Fauna, and Dr. Crippen, and Complex, and Superego, and Dillinger and Lizzie Borden. Now that they were all going to live with the Big Ones, they would have to use those funny names. Someday they would find out what they meant, and that would be fun, too. And they could; now the Big Ones could put things in their ears and hear what they were saying, and Pappy Jack was learning some of their words, and teaching them some of his.

And soon all the people would find Big Ones to live with, who would take care of them and have fun with them and love them, and give them the Wonderful Food. And with the Big Ones taking care of them, maybe more of their babies would live and not die so soon. And they would pay the Big Ones back. First they would give their love and make them happy. Later, when they learned how, they would give their help, too.