XVI
They stopped whispering at the door, turned right, and ascended to thebench, bearing themselves like images in a procession, Ruiz first, thenhimself and then Janiver. They turned to the screen so that the publicwhom they served might see the faces of the judges, and then sat down. Thecourt crier began his chant. They could almost feel the tension in thecourtroom. Yves Janiver whispered to them:
"They all know about it."
As soon as the crier had stopped, Max Fane approached the bench, his faceblankly expressionless.
"Your Honors, I am ashamed to have to report that the defendant, LeonardKellogg, cannot be produced in court. He is dead; he committed suicide inhis cell last night. While in my custody," he added bitterly.
The stir that went through the courtroom was not shocked surprise, it wasa 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, andone of my deputies was keeping him under observation by screen." Fanespoke in a toneless, almost robotlike voice. "At twenty-two thirty, theprisoner went to bed, still wearing his shirt. He pulled the blankets upover his head. The deputy observing him thought nothing of that; manyprisoners 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 theblanket, was found saturated with blood. Kellogg had cut his throat, bysawing the zipper track of his shirt back and forth till he severed hisjugular vein. He was dead."
"Good heavens, Marshal!" He was shocked. The way he'd heard it, Kellogghad hidden a penknife, and he was prepared to be severe with Fane aboutit. But a thing like this! He found himself fingering the toothed track ofhis own jacket zipper. "I don't believe you can be at all censured for notanticipating a thing like that. It isn't a thing anybody would expect."
Janiver and Ruiz spoke briefly in agreement. Marshal Fane bowed slightlyand went off to one side.
Leslie Coombes, who seemed to be making a very considerable effort to lookgrieved and shocked, rose.
"Your Honors, I find myself here without a client," he said. "In fact, Ifind myself here without any business at all; the case against Mr.Holloway is absolutely insupportable. He shot a man who was trying to killhim, and that's all there is to it. I therefore pray your Honors todismiss 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 thejurisdiction of this court, but let me point out that I and my associatesare here participating in this case in the hope that the classification ofthis planet may be determined, and some adequate definition of sapienceestablished. These are most serious questions, your Honors."
"But, your Honors," Coombes protested, "we can't go through the farce oftrying a dead man."
"_People of the Colony of Baphomet_ versus _Jamshar Singh, Deceased_,charge of arson and sabotage, A.E. 604," the Honorable Gustavus AdolphusBrannhard 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 leftarm, his white mustache bristling truculently.
"I am not a dead man, your Honors, and I am on trial here. The reason I'mnot dead is why I am on trial. My defense is that I shot Kurt Borch whilehe was aiding and abetting in the killing of a Fuzzy. I want itestablished 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 ofmurder; if he is not guilty, he is entitled to the vindication of anacquittal. I am afraid, Mr. Coombes, that you will have to go onprosecuting him."
Another brief stir, like a breath of wind over a grain field, ran throughthe courtroom. The show was going on after all.
* * * * *
All the Fuzzies were in court this morning; Jack's six, and the five fromthe constabulary post, and Ben's Flora and Fauna, and the four RuthOrtheris claimed. There was too much discussion going on for anybody tokeep an eye on them. Finally one of the constabulary Fuzzies, eitherDillinger or Dr. Crippen, and Ben Rainsford's Flora and Fauna, camesauntering out into the open space between the tables and the benchdragging the hose of a vacuum-duster. Ahmed Khadra ducked under a tableand tried to get it away from them. This was wonderful; screaming indelight, they all laid hold of the other end, and Mike and Mitzi andSuperego and Complex ran to help them. The seven of them dragged Khadraabout ten feet before he gave up and let go. At the same time, anincipient fight broke out on the other side of the arc of tables betweenthe head of the language department at Mallorysport Academy and aspinsterish amateur phoneticist. At this point, Judge Pendarvis, decidingthat if you can't prevent it, relax and enjoy it, rapped a few times withhis gavel, and announced that court was recessed.
"You will all please remain here; this is not an adjournment, and if anyof the various groups who seem to be discussing different aspects of theproblem reach any conclusion they feel should be presented in evidence,will they please notify the bench so that court can be reconvened. In anycase, 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. MammaFuzzy wanted a puff: she didn't like it. Out of the corner of his eye, hesaw Mike and Mitzi, Flora and Fauna scampering around and up the stepsbehind the bench. When he looked again, they were all up on it, and Mitziwas showing the court what she had in her shoulder bag.
He got up, with Mamma and Baby, and crossed to where Leslie Coombes wassitting. By this time, somebody was bringing in a coffee urn from thecafeteria. Fuzzies ought to happen oftener in court.
* * * * *
The gavel tapped slowly. Little Fuzzy scrambled up onto Jack Holloway'slap. After five days in court, they had all learned that the gavel meantfor Fuzzies and other people to be quiet. It might be a good idea, Jackthought, to make a little gavel, when he got home, and keep it on thetable in the living room for when the family got too boisterous. Baby, whowasn't gavel-trained yet, started out onto the floor; Mamma dashed afterhim and brought him back under the table.
The place looked like a courtroom again. The tables were ranged in a neatrow facing the bench, and the witness chair and the jury box were backwhere they belonged. The ashtrays and the coffee urn and the ice tubs forbeer and soft drinks had vanished. It looked like the party was over. Hewas almost regretful; it had been fun. Especially for seventeen Fuzziesand a Baby Fuzzy and a little black-and-white kitten.
There was one unusual feature; there was now a fourth man on the bench, ingold-braided Navy black; sitting a little apart from the judges, trying tolook as though he weren't there at all--Space Commodore Alex Napier.
Judge Pendarvis laid down his gavel. "Ladies and gentlemen, are you readyto present the opinions you have reached?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ybarra, the Navy psychologist, rose. There was a reading screenin front of him; he snapped it on.
"Your Honors," he began, "there still exists considerable difference ofopinion 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 intothe 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 ofhim and continued:
"It is our opinion," he said, "that sapience may be defined as differingfrom nonsapience in that it is characterized by conscious thought, byability to think in logical sequence and by ability to think in termsother than mere sense data. We--meaning every member of every sapientrace--think consciously, and we know what we are thinking. This is not tosay that all our mental activity is conscious. The science of psychologyis based, to a large extent, upo
n our realization that only a smallportion 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 psychiatryconsists largely in bringing into consciousness some of the content ofthis submerged nine-tenths, and as a practitioner I can testify to itsdifficulty and uncertainty.
"We are so habituated to conscious thought that when we reach someconclusion by any nonconscious process, we speak of it as a 'hunch,' or an'intuition,' and question its validity. We are so habituated to actingupon consciously formed decisions that we must laboriously acquire, bysystematic drill, those automatic responses upon which we depend forsurvival in combat or other emergencies. And we are by nature so unawareof this vast submerged mental area that it was not until the first centuryPre-Atomic that its existence was more than vaguely suspected, and itsnature 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 nonsapientmentation as the sunlight reflected from its surface. This is aconsiderably less exact analogy; while the nonsapient mind deals,consciously, with nothing but present sense data, there is a considerableabsorption and re-emission of subconscious memories. Also, there areoccasional flashes of what must be conscious mental activity, in dealingwith some novel situation. Dr. van Riebeek, who is especially interestedin the evolutionary aspect of the question, suggests that the introductionof novelty because of drastic environmental changes may have forcednonsapient beings into more or less sustained conscious thinking and soinitiated mental habits which, in time, gave rise to true sapience.
"The sapient mind not only thinks consciously by habit, but it thinks inconnected sequence. It associates one thing with another. It reasonslogically, and forms conclusions, and uses those conclusions as premisesfrom which to arrive at further conclusions. It groups associationstogether, and generalizes. Here we pass completely beyond any comparisonwith nonsapience. This is not merely more consciousness, or more thinking;it is thinking of a radically different kind. The nonsapient mind dealsexclusively with crude sensory material. The sapient mind translates senseimpressions into ideas, and then forms ideas of ideas, in ascending ordersof abstraction, almost without limit.
"This, finally, brings us to one of the recognized overt manifestations ofsapience. The sapient being is a symbol user. The nonsapient being cannotsymbolize, because the nonsapient mind is incapable of concepts beyondmere sense images."
Ybarra drank some water, and twisted the dial of his reading screen withthe other hand.
"The sapient being," he continued, "can do one other thing. It is acombination of the three abilities already enumerated, but combining themcreates something much greater than the mere sum of the parts. The sapientbeing can imagine. He can conceive of something which has no existencewhatever in the sense-available world of reality, and then he can work andplan toward making it a part of reality. He can not only imagine, but hecan also create."
He paused for a moment. "This is our definition of sapience. When weencounter any being whose mentation includes these characteristics, we mayknow him for a sapient brother. It is the considered opinion of all of usthat the beings called Fuzzies are such beings."
Jack hugged the small sapient one on his lap, and Little Fuzzy looked upand murmured, "_He-inta?_"
"You're in, kid," he whispered. "You just joined the people."
Ybarra was saying, "They think consciously and continuously. We know thatby instrumental analysis of their electroencephalographic patterns, whichcompare closely to those of an intelligent human child of ten. They thinkin connected sequence; I invite consideration of all the different logicalsteps involved in the invention, designing and making of theirprawn-killing weapons, and in the development of tools with which to makethem. We have abundant evidence of their ability to think beyond presentsense data, to associate, to generalize, to abstract and to symbolize.
"And above all, they can imagine, not only a new implement, but a new wayof life. We see this in the first human contact with the race which, Isubmit, should be designated as _Fuzzy sapiens_. Little Fuzzy found astrange and wonderful place in the forest, a place unlike anything he hadever seen, in which lived a powerful being. He imagined himself living inthis place, enjoying the friendship and protection of this mysteriousbeing. So he slipped inside, made friends with Jack Holloway and livedwith him. And then he imagined his family sharing this precious comfortand companionship with him, and he went and found them and brought themback with him. Like so many other sapient beings, Little Fuzzy had abeautiful dream; like a fortunate few, he made it real."
The Chief Justice allowed the applause to run on for a few minutes beforeusing his gavel to silence it. There was a brief colloquy among the threejudges, and then the Chief Justice rapped again. Little Fuzzy lookedperplexed. Everybody had been quiet after he did it the first time, hadn'tthey?
"It is the unanimous decision of the court to accept the report alreadyentered into the record and just summarized by Lieutenant Ybarra, TFN, andto thank him and all who have been associated with him.
"It is now the ruling of this court that the species known as _Fuzzy fuzzyholloway zarathustra_ is in fact a race of sapient beings, entitled to therespect of all other sapient beings and to the full protection of the lawof the Terran Federation." He rapped again, slowly, pounding the decisioninto the legal framework.
Space Commodore Napier leaned over and whispered; all three of the judgesnodded emphatically. The naval officer rose.
"Lieutenant Ybarra, on behalf of the Service and of the Federation, Ithank you and those associated with you for a lucid and excellent report,the culmination of work which reflects credit upon all who participated init. I also wish to state that a suggestion made to me by Lieutenant Ybarraregarding possible instrumental detection of sapient mentation is beingcredited to him in my own report, with the recommendation that it be givenimportant priority by the Bureau of Research and Development. Perhaps thenext time we find people who speak beyond the range of human audition, whohave fur and live in a mild climate, and who like their food raw, we'llknow 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 isthe verdict of this court that the defendant, Jack Holloway, is not guiltyas here charged. He is herewith discharged from custody. If he or hisattorney will step up here, the bail bond will be refunded." He puzzledLittle Fuzzy by hammering again with his gavel to adjourn court.
This time, instead of keeping quiet, everybody made all the noise theycould, and Uncle Gus was holding him high over his head and shouting:
"The _winnah_! By unanimous decision!"