Little Fuzzy

  XI

  The two lawyers had risen hastily when Chief Justice Pendarvis entered; heresponded to their greetings and seated himself at his desk, reaching forthe silver cigar box and taking out a panatela. Gustavus AdolphusBrannhard picked up the cigar he had laid aside and began puffing on it;Leslie Coombes took a cigarette from his case. They both looked at him,waiting like two drawn weapons--a battle ax and a rapier.

  "Well, gentlemen, as you know, we have a couple of homicide cases andnobody to prosecute them," he began.

  "Why bother, your Honor?" Coombes asked. "Both charges are completelyfrivolous. One man killed a wild animal, and the other killed a man whowas trying to kill him."

  "Well, your Honor, I don't believe my client is guilty of anything,legally or morally," Brannhard said. "I want that established by anacquittal." He looked at Coombes. "I should think Mr. Coombes would bejust as anxious to have his client cleared of any stigma of murder, too."

  "I am quite agreed. People who have been charged with crimes ought to havepublic vindication if they are innocent. Now, in the first place, Iplanned to hold the Kellogg trial first, and then the Holloway trial. Areyou both satisfied with that arrangement?"

  "Absolutely not, your Honor," Brannhard said promptly. "The whole basis ofthe Holloway defense is that this man Borch was killed in commission of afelony. We're prepared to prove that, but we don't want our caseprejudiced by an earlier trial."

  Coombes laughed. "Mr. Brannhard wants to clear his client by preconvictingmine. We can't agree to anything like that."

  "Yes, and he is making the same objection to trying your client first.Well, I'm going to remove both objections. I'm going to order the twocases combined, and both defendants tried together."

  A momentary glow of unholy glee on Gus Brannhard's face; Coombes didn'tlike the idea at all.

  "Your Honor, I trust that that suggestion was only made facetiously," hesaid.

  "It wasn't, Mr. Coombes."

  "Then if your Honor will not hold me in contempt for saying so, it is themost shockingly irregular--I won't go so far as to say improper--trialprocedure I've ever heard of. This is not a case of accomplices chargedwith the same crime; this is a case of two men charged with differentcriminal acts, and the conviction of either would mean the almostautomatic acquittal of the other. I don't know who's going to be named totake Mohammed O'Brien's place, but I pity him from the bottom of my heart.Why, Mr. Brannhard and I could go off somewhere and play poker while theprosecutor would smash the case to pieces."

  "Well, we won't have just one prosecutor, Mr. Coombes, we will have two.I'll swear you and Mr. Brannhard in as special prosecutors, and you canprosecute Mr. Brannhard's client, and he yours. I think that would removeany further objections."

  It was all he could do to keep his face judicially grave and unmirthful.Brannhard was almost purring, like a big tiger that had just gotten thebetter of a young goat; Leslie Coombes's suavity was beginning to crumbleslightly at the edges.

  "Your Honor, that is a most excellent suggestion," Brannhard declared. "Iwill prosecute Mr. Coombes's client with the greatest pleasure in theuniverse."

  "Well, all I can say, your Honor, is that if the first proposal was themost irregular I had ever heard, the record didn't last long!"

  "Why, Mr. Coombes, I went over the law and the rules of jurisprudence verycarefully, and I couldn't find a word that could be construed asdisallowing such a procedure."

  "I'll bet you didn't find any precedent for it either!"

  Leslie Coombes should have known better than that; in colonial law, youcan find a precedent for almost anything.

  "How much do you bet, Leslie?" Brannhard asked, a larcenous gleam in hiseye.

  "Don't let him take your money away from you. I found, inside an hour,sixteen precedents, from twelve different planetary jurisdictions."

  "All right, your Honor," Coombes capitulated. "But I hope you know whatyou're doing. You're turning a couple of cases of the People of the Colonyinto a common civil lawsuit."

  Gus Brannhard laughed. "What else is it?" he demanded. "_Friends of LittleFuzzy_ versus _The chartered Zarathustra Company_; I'm bringing action asfriend of incompetent aborigines for recognition of sapience, and Mr.Coombes, on behalf of the Zarathustra Company, is contesting to preservethe Company's charter, and that's all there is or ever was to this case."

  That was impolite of Gus. Leslie Coombes had wanted to go on to the endpretending that the Company charter had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  * * * * *

  There was an unending stream of reports of Fuzzies seen here and there,often simultaneously in impossibly distant parts of the city. Some werefrom publicity seekers and pathological liars and crackpots; some were theresult of honest mistakes or overimaginativeness. There was some reason tosuspect that not a few had originated with the Company, to confuse thesearch. One thing did come to light which heartened Jack Holloway. Anintensive if concealed search was being made by the Company police, and bythe Mallorysport police department, which the Company controlled.

  Max Fane was giving every available moment to the hunt. This wasn'tbecause of ill will for the Company, though that was present, nor becausethe Chief Justice was riding him. The Colonial Marshal was pro-Fuzzy. Sowere the Colonial Constabulary, over whom Nick Emmert's administrationseemed to have little if any authority. Colonel Ian Ferguson, thecommandant, had his appointment direct from the Colonial Office on Terra.He had called by screen to offer his help, and George Lunt, over on Beta,screened daily to learn what progress was being made.

  Living at the Hotel Mallory was expensive, and Jack had to sell somesunstones. The Company gem buyers were barely civil to him; he didn't tryto be civil at all. There was also a noticeable coolness toward him at thebank. On the other hand, on several occasions, Space Navy officers andratings down from Xerxes Base went out of their way to accost him,introduce themselves, shake hands with him and give him their best wishes.

  Once, in one of the weather-domed business centers, an elderly man withwhite hair showing under his black beret greeted him.

  "Mr. Holloway I want to tell you how grieved I am to learn about thedisappearance of those little people of yours," he said. "I'm afraidthere's nothing I can do to help you, but I hope they turn up safely."

  "Why, thank you, Mr. Stenson." He shook hands with the old masterinstrument maker. "If you could make me a pocket veridicator, to use onsome of these people who claim they saw them, it would be a big help."

  "Well, I do make rather small portable veridicators for the constabulary,but I think what you need is an instrument for detection of psychopaths,and that's slightly beyond science at present. But if you're stillprospecting for sunstones, I have an improved micro-ray scanner I justdeveloped, and...."

  He walked with Stenson to his shop, had a cup of tea and looked at thescanner. From Stenson's screen, he called Max Fane. Six more people hadclaimed to have seen the Fuzzies.

  Within a week, the films taken at the camp had been shown so frequently ontelecast as to wear out their interest value. Baby, however, was stillavailable for new pictures, and in a few days a girl had to be hired totake care of his fan mail. Once, entering a bar, Jack thought he saw Babysitting on a woman's head. A second look showed that it was only alife-sized doll, held on with an elastic band. Within a week, he wasseeing Baby Fuzzy hats all over town, and shop windows were full oflife-sized Fuzzy dolls.

  In the late afternoon, two weeks after the Fuzzies had vanished, MarshalFane dropped him at the hotel. They sat in the car for a moment, and Fanesaid:

  "I think this is the end of it. We're all out of cranks and exhibitionistsnow."

  He nodded. "That woman we were talking to. She's crazy as a bedbug."

  "Yeah. In the past ten years she's confessed to every unsolved crime onthe planet. It shows you how hard up we are that I waste your time andmine listening to her."

  "Max, nobody's seen them. You think they just aren't, any more, don'tyou?" r />
  The fat man looked troubled. "Well, Jack, it isn't so much that nobody'sseen them. Nobody's seen any trace of them. There are land-prawns allaround, but nobody's found a cracked shell. And six active, playful,inquisitive Fuzzies ought to be getting into things. They ought to beraiding food markets, and fruit stands, getting into places andransacking. But there hasn't been a thing. The Company police have stoppedlooking for them now."

  "Well, I won't. They must be around somewhere." He shook Fane's hand, andgot out of the car. "You've been awfully helpful, Max. I want you to knowhow much I thank you."

  He watched the car lift away, and then looked out over the city--a vistaof treetop green, with roofs and the domes of shopping centers andbusiness centers and amusement centers showing through, and the angularbuttes of tall buildings rising above. The streetless contragravity cityof a new planet that had never known ground traffic. The Fuzzies could behiding anywhere among those trees--or they could all be dead in someman-made trap. He thought of all the deadly places into which they couldhave wandered. Machinery, dormant and quiet, until somebody threw aswitch. Conduits, which could be flooded without warning, or filled withscalding steam or choking gas. Poor little Fuzzies, they'd think a citywas as safe as the woods of home, where there was nothing worse thanharpies and damnthings.

  Gus Brannhard was out when he went down to the suite; Ben Rainsford was ata reading screen, studying a psychology text, and Gerd was working at adesk that had been brought in. Baby was playing on the floor with thebright new toys they had gotten for him. When Pappy Jack came in, hedropped them and ran to be picked up and held.

  "George called," Gerd said. "They have a family of Fuzzies at the postnow."

  "Well, that's great." He tried to make it sound enthusiastic. "How many?"

  "Five, three males and two females. They call them Dr. Crippen, Dillinger,Ned Kelly, Lizzie Borden and Calamity Jane."

  Wouldn't it be just like a bunch of cops to hang names like that oninnocent Fuzzies?

  "Why don't you call the post and say hello to them?" Ben asked.

  "Baby likes them; he'd think it was fun to talk to them again."

  He let himself be urged into it, and punched out the combination. Theywere nice Fuzzies; almost, but of course not quite, as nice as his own.

  "If your family doesn't turn up in time for the trial, have Gus subpoenaours," Lunt told him. "You ought to have some to produce in court. Twoweeks from now, this mob of ours will be doing all kinds of things. Youought to see them now, and we only got them yesterday afternoon."

  He said he hoped he'd have his own by then; he realized that he was sayingit without much conviction.

  They had a drink when Gus came in. He was delighted with the offer fromLunt. Another one who didn't expect to see Pappy Jack's Fuzzies aliveagain.

  "I'm not doing a damn thing here," Rainsford said. "I'm going back to Betatill the trial. Maybe I can pick up some ideas from George Lunt's Fuzzies.I'm damned if I'm getting away from this crap!" He gestured at the readingscreen. "All I have is a vocabulary, and I don't know what half the wordsmean." He snapped it off. "I'm beginning to wonder if maybe Jimenezmightn't have been right and Ruth Ortheris is wrong. Maybe you can be justa little bit sapient."

  "Maybe it's possible to be sapient and not know it," Gus said. "Like thecharacter in the old French play who didn't know he was talking prose."

  "What do you mean, Gus?" Gerd asked.

  "I'm not sure I know. It's just an idea that occurred to me today. Kick itaround and see if you can get anything out of it."

  * * * * *

  "I believe the difference lies in the area of consciousness," Ernst Mallinwas saying. "You all know, of course, the axiom that only one-tenth, nevermore than one-eighth, of our mental activity occurs above the level ofconsciousness. Now let us imagine a hypothetical race whose entirementation is conscious."

  "I hope they stay hypothetical," Victor Grego, in his office across thecity, said out of the screen. "They wouldn't recognize us as sapient atall."

  "We wouldn't be sapient, as they'd define the term," Leslie Coombes, inthe same screen with Grego, said. "They'd have some equivalent of thetalk-and-build-a-fire rule, based on abilities of which we can't evenconceive."

  Maybe, Ruth thought, they might recognize us as one-tenth to as much asone-eighth sapient. No, then we'd have to recognize, say, a chimpanzee asbeing one-one-hundredth sapient, and a flatworm as being sapient to theorder of one-billionth.

  "Wait a minute," she said. "If I understand, you mean that nonsapientbeings think, but only subconsciously?"

  "That's correct, Ruth. When confronted by some entirely novel situation, anonsapient animal will think, but never consciously. Of course, familiarsituations are dealt with by pure habit and memory-response."

  "You know, I've just thought of something," Grego said. "I think we canexplain that funeral that's been bothering all of us in nonsapient terms."He lit a cigarette, while they all looked at him expectantly. "Fuzzies,"he continued, "bury their ordure: they do this to avoid an unpleasantsense-stimulus, a bad smell. Dead bodies quickly putrefy and smell badly;they are thus equated, subconsciously, with ordure and must be buried. AllFuzzies carry weapons. A Fuzzy's weapon is--still subconsciously--regardedas a part of the Fuzzy, hence it must also be buried."

  Mallin frowned portentously. The idea seemed to appeal to him, but ofcourse he simply couldn't agree too promptly with a mere layman, even theboss.

  "Well, so far you're on fairly safe ground, Mr. Grego," he admitted."Association of otherwise dissimilar things because of some apparentsimilarity is a recognized element of nonsapient animal behavior." Hefrowned again. "That _could_ be an explanation. I'll have to think of it."

  About this time tomorrow, it would be his own idea, with grudgingrecognition of a suggestion by Victor Grego. In time, that would beforgotten; it would be the Mallin Theory. Grego was apparently agreeable,as long as the job got done.

  "Well, if you can make anything out of it, pass it on to Mr. Coombes assoon as possible, to be worked up for use in court," he said.