XV
Ernst Mallin shrank, as though trying to pull himself into himself, whenhe heard his name. He didn't want to testify. He had been dreading thismoment for days. Now he would have to sit in that chair, and they wouldask him questions, and he couldn't answer them truthfully and the globeover his head--
When the deputy marshal touched his shoulder and spoke to him, he didn'tthink, at first, that his legs would support him. It seemed miles, withall the staring faces on either side of him. Somehow, he reached the chairand sat down, and they fitted the helmet over his head and attached theelectrodes. They used to make a witness take some kind of an oath to tellthe 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 behindthe three judges; the globe above his head was a glaring red. There was atitter of laughter. Nobody in the Courtroom knew better than he what washappening. He had screens in his laboratory that broke it all down intoindividual patterns--the steady pulsing waves from the cortex, the alphaand 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 electromagneticevents which accompanied brain activity. As he did, the red faded and theglobe became blue. He was no longer suppressing statements andsubstituting other statements he knew to be false. If he could keep itthat way. But, sooner or later, he knew, he wouldn't be able to.
The globe stayed blue while he named himself and stated his professionalbackground. There was a brief flicker of red while he was listing hispublication--that paper, entirely the work of one of his students, whichhe had published under his own name. He had forgotten about that, but hisconscience hadn't.
"Dr. Mallin," the oldest of the three judges, who sat in the middle,began, "what, in your professional opinion, is the difference betweensapient 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 theydon't think?"
"Well, neither. Any life form with a central nervous system has someconsciousness--awareness of existence and of its surroundings. Andanything having a brain thinks, to use the term at its loosest. What Imeant was that only the sapient mind thinks and knows that it isthinking."
He was perfectly safe so far. He talked about sensory stimuli andresponses, and about conditioned reflexes. He went back to the firstcentury Pre-Atomic, and Pavlov and Korzybski and Freud. The globe neverflickered.
"The nonsapient animal is conscious only of what is immediately present tothe senses and responds automatically. It will perceive something and makea single statement about it--this is good to eat, this sensation isunpleasant, this is a sex-gratification object, this is dangerous. Thesapient mind, on the other hand, is conscious of thinking about thesesense stimuli, and makes descriptive statements about them, and then makesstatements about those statements, in a connected chain. I have astructural differential at my seat; if somebody will bring it to me--"
"Well, never mind now, Dr. Mallin. When you're off the stand and thediscussion begins you can show what you mean. We just want your opinion ingeneral terms, now."
"Well, the sapient mind can generalize. To the nonsapient animal, everyexperience is either totally novel or identical with some rememberedexperience. A rabbit will flee from one dog because to the rabbit mind itis identical with another dog that has chased it. A bird will be attractedto an apple, and each apple will be a unique red thing to peck at. Thesapient being will say, 'These red objects are apples; as a class, theyare edible and flavorsome.' He sets up a class under the general label ofapples. 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 hecontinued:
"Having formed these abstract ideas, it becomes necessary to symbolizethem, in order to deal with them apart from the actual object. The sapientbeing is a symbolizer, and a symbol communicator; he is able to convey toother 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 byrote speech. The Fuzzies have merely learned to associate that sound witha 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 hisgavel.
"Dr. Mallin! Of all the people on this planet, you at least should knowthe impossibility of lying under veridication. Other people just know itcan't be done; you know why. Now I'm going to rephrase Judge Janiver'squestion, and I'll expect you to answer truthfully. If you don't I'm goingto hold you in contempt. When those Fuzzies cried out, 'Pappy Jack!' doyou or do you not believe that they were using a verbal expression whichstood, in their minds, for Mr. Holloway?"
He couldn't say it. This sapience was all a big fake; he had to believethat. 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 symbolstanding for Mr. Jack Holloway."
He looked at the globe. The red had turned to mauve, the mauve wasbecoming violet, and then clear blue. He felt better than he had feltsince 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, evenwithout other evidence. And the instrumental evidence was most impressive.The mentation pictures we got by encephalography compare very favorablywith those of any human child of ten or twelve years old, and so doestheir learning and puzzle-solving ability. On puzzles, they always thinkthe problem out first, and then do the mechanical work with about the samemental 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 wassimply gushing out everything he thought.
* * * * *
Leonard Kellogg slumped forward, his head buried in his elbows on thetable, 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 Isaw that little grave out in the woods, and they'll put me in that chairand make me admit it to everybody, and then they'll take me out in thejail 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 Justicewas asking.
"I don't," Captain Greibenfeld said. "Do you, Lieutenant?"
"No, I don't think so," Lieutenant Ybarra said. "Dr. Mallin's given us avery lucid statement of his opinions."
He had, at that, after he'd decided he couldn't beat the veridicator. Jackfound himself sympathizing with Mallin. He'd disliked the man from thefirst, but he looked different now--sort of cleaned and washed out inside.Maybe everybody ought to be veridicated, now and then, to teach them thathonesty begins with honesty to self.
"Mr. Coombes?" Mr. Coombes looked as though he never wanted to ask anotherwitness another question as long as he lived. "Mr. Brannhard?"
Gus got up, holding a sapient member of a sapient race who was hangingonto his beard, and thanked Ernst Mallin fulsomely.
"In that case, we'll adjourn until o-nine-hundred tomorrow. Mr. Coombes, Ihave here a check on the chartered Zarathustra Company for twenty-fivethousand sols. I am returning it to you and I am canceling Dr. Kellogg'sbail," Judge Pendarvis said, as a couple of attendants began gettingMallin loose f
rom the veridicator.
"Are you also canceling Jack Holloway's?"
"No, and I would advise you not to make an issue of it, Mr. Coombes. Theonly reason I haven't dismissed the charge against Mr. Holloway is that Idon't want to handicap you by cutting off your foothold in theprosecution. I do not consider Mr. Holloway a bail risk. I do so consideryour client, Dr. Kellogg."
"Frankly, your Honor, so do I," Coombes admitted. "My protest was merelyan example of what Dr. Mallin would call conditioned reflex."
Then a crowd began pushing up around the table; Ben Rainsford, George Luntand his troopers, Gerd and Ruth, shoving in among them, their arms aroundeach other.
"We'll be at the hotel after a while, Jack," Gerd was saying. "Ruth and Iare going out for a drink and something to eat; we'll be around later topick up her Fuzzies."
Now his partner had his girl back, and his partner's girl had a Fuzzyfamily of her own. This was going to be real fun. What were their namesnow? Syndrome, Complex, Id and Superego. The things some people namedFuzzies!