Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper (little readers .TXT) 📖

shouldn’t have to wade through all this to see who had been accused of blotting the brand on a veldbeest calf or who’d taken a shot at whom in a barroom. Well, at least he’d managed to get a few misdemeanor and small-claims courts established; that was something.

The first case, of course, was a homicide. It usually was. From Beta, Constabulary Fifteen, Lieutenant George Lunt. Jack Holloway—so old Jack had cut another notch on his gun—Cold Creek Valley, Federation citizen, race Terran human; willful killing of a sapient being, to wit Kurt Borch, Mallorysport, Federation citizen, race Terran human. Complainant, Leonard Kellogg, the same. Attorney of record for the defendant, Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard. The last time Jack Holloway had killed anybody, it had been a couple of thugs who’d tried to steal his sunstones; it hadn’t even gotten into complaint court. This time he might be in trouble. Kellogg was a Company executive. He decided he’d better try the case himself. The Company might try to exert pressure.

The next charge was also homicide, from Constabulary, Beta Fifteen. He read it and blinked. Leonard Kellogg, willful killing of a sapient being, to wit, Jane Doe alias Goldilocks, aborigine, race Zarathustran Fuzzy, complainant, Jack Holloway, defendant’s attorney of record, Leslie Coombes. In spite of the outrageous frivolity of the charge, he began to laugh. It was obviously an attempt to ridicule Kellogg’s own complaint out of court. Every judicial jurisdiction ought to have at least one Gus Brannhard to liven things up a little. Race Zarathustran Fuzzy!

Then he stopped laughing suddenly and became deadly serious, like an engineer who finds a cataclysmite cartridge lying around primed and connected to a discharger. He reached out to the screen panel and began punching a combination. A spectacled young man appeared and greeted him deferentially.

“Good morning, Mr. Wilkins,” he replied. “A couple of homicides at the head of this morning’s docket—Holloway and Kellogg, both from Beta Fifteen. What is known about them?”

The young man began to laugh. “Oh, your Honor, they’re both a lot of nonsense. Dr. Kellogg killed some pet belonging to old Jack Holloway, the sunstone digger, and in the ensuing unpleasantness—Holloway can be very unpleasant, if he feels he has to—this man Borch, who seems to have been Kellogg’s bodyguard, made the suicidal error of trying to draw a gun on Holloway. I’m surprised at Lieutenant Lunt for letting either of those charges get past hearing court. Mr. O’Brien has entered nolle prosequi on both of them, so the whole thing can be disregarded.”

Mohammed O’Brien knew a charge of cataclysmite when he saw one, too. His impulse had been to pull the detonator. Well, maybe this charge ought to be shot, just to see what it would bring down.

“I haven’t approved the nolle prosequi yet, Mr. Wilkins,” he mentioned gently. “Would you please transmit to me the hearing tapes on these cases, at sixty-speed? I’ll take them on the recorder of this screen. Thank you.”

He reached out and made the necessary adjustments. Wilkins, the Clerk of the Courts, left the screen, and returned. There was a wavering scream for a minute and a half. Going to take more time than he had expected. Well.…

There wasn’t enough ice in the glass, and Leonard Kellogg put more in. Then there was too much, and he added more brandy. He shouldn’t have started drinking this early, be drunk by dinnertime if he kept it up, but what else was there to do? He couldn’t go out, not with his face like this. In any case, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

They were all down on him. Ernst Mallin, and Ruth Ortheris, and even Juan Jimenez. At the constabulary post, Coombes and O’Brien had treated him like an idiot child who has to be hushed in front of company and coming back to Mallorysport they had ignored him completely. He drank quickly, and then there was too much ice in the glass again. Victor Grego had told him he’d better take a vacation till the trial was over, and put Mallin in charge of the division. Said he oughtn’t to be in charge while the division was working on defense evidence. Well, maybe; it looked like the first step toward shoving him completely out of the Company.

He dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. It tasted badly, and after a few puffs he crushed it out. Well, what else could he have done? After they’d found that little grave, he had to make Gerd understand what it would mean to the Company. Juan and Ruth had been all right, but Gerd—The things Gerd had called him; the things he’d said about the Company. And then that call from Holloway, and the humiliation of being ordered out like a tramp.

And then that disgusting little beast had come pulling at his clothes, and he had pushed it away—well, kicked it maybe—and it had struck at him with the little spear it was carrying. Nobody but a lunatic would give a thing like that to an animal anyhow. And he had kicked it again, and it had screamed….

The communication screen in the next room was buzzing. Maybe that was Victor. He gulped the brandy left in the glass and hurried to it.

It was Leslie Coombes, his face remotely expressionless.

“Oh, hello, Leslie.”

“Good afternoon, Dr. Kellogg.” The formality of address was studiously rebuking. “The Chief Prosecutor just called me; Judge Pendarvis has denied the nolle prosequi he entered in your case and in Mr. Holloway’s, and ordered both cases to trial.”

“You mean they’re actually taking this seriously?”

“It is serious. If you’re convicted, the Company’s charter will be almost automatically voided. And, although this is important only to you personally, you might, very probably, be sentenced to be shot.” He shrugged that off, and continued: “Now, I’ll want to talk to you about your defense, for which I am responsible. Say ten-thirty tomorrow, at my office. I should, by that time, know what sort of evidence is going to be used against you. I will be expecting you, Dr. Kellogg.”

He must have said more than that, but that was all that registered. Leonard wasn’t really conscious of going back to the other room, until he realized that he was sitting in his relaxer chair, filling the glass with brandy. There was only a little ice in it, but he didn’t care.

They were going to try him for murder for killing that little animal, and Ham O’Brien had said they wouldn’t, he’d promised he’d keep the case from trial and he hadn’t, they were going to try him anyhow and if they convicted him they would take him out and shoot him for just killing a silly little animal he had killed it he’d kicked it and jumped on it he could still hear it screaming and feel the horrible soft crunching under his feet….

He gulped what was left in the glass and poured and gulped more. Then he staggered to his feet and stumbled over to the couch and threw himself onto it, face down, among the cushions.

Leslie Coombes found Nick Emmert with Victor Grego in the latter’s office when he entered. They both rose to greet him, and Grego said “You’ve heard?”

“Yes. O’Brien called me immediately. I called my client—my client of record, that is—and told him. I’m afraid it was rather a shock to him.”

“It wasn’t any shock to me,” Grego said as they sat down. “When Ham O’Brien’s as positive about anything as he was about that, I always expect the worst.”

“Pendarvis is going to try the case himself,” Emmert said. “I always thought he was a reasonable man, but what’s he trying to do now? Cut the Company’s throat?”

“He isn’t anti-Company. He isn’t pro-Company either. He’s just pro-law. The law says that a planet with native sapient inhabitants is a Class-IV planet, and has to have a Class-IV colonial government. If Zarathustra is a Class-IV planet, he wants it established, and the proper laws applied. If it’s a Class-IV planet, the Zarathustra Company is illegally chartered. It’s his job to put a stop to illegality. Frederic Pendarvis’ religion is the law, and he is its priest. You never get anywhere by arguing religion with a priest.”

They were both silent for a while after he had finished. Grego was looking at the globe, and he realized, now, that while he was proud of it, his pride was the pride in a paste jewel that stands for a real one in a bank vault. Now he was afraid that the real jewel was going to be stolen from him. Nick Emmert was just afraid.

“You were right yesterday, Victor. I wish Holloway’d killed that son of a Khooghra. Maybe it’s not too late—”

“Yes, it is, Nick. It’s too late to do anything like that. It’s too late to do anything but win the case in court.” He turned to Grego. “What are your people doing?”

Grego took his eyes from the globe. “Ernest Mallin’s studying all the filmed evidence we have and all the descriptions of Fuzzy behavior, and trying to prove that none of it is the result of sapient mentation. Ruth Ortheris is doing the same, only she’s working on the line of instinct and conditioned reflexes and nonsapient, single-stage reasoning. She has a lot of rats, and some dogs and monkeys, and a lot of apparatus, and some technician from Henry Stenson’s instrument shop helping her. Juan Jimenez is studying mentation of Terran dogs, cats and primates, and Freyan kholphs and Mimir black slinkers.”

“He hasn’t turned up any simian or canine parallels to that funeral, has he?”

Grego said nothing, merely shook his head. Emmert muttered something inaudible and probably indecent.

“I didn’t think he had. I only hope those Fuzzies don’t get up in court, build a bonfire and start making speeches in Lingua Terra.”

Nick Emmert cried out in panic. “You believe they’re sapient yourself!”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

Grego laughed sourly. “Nick thinks you have to believe a thing to prove it. It helps but it isn’t necessary. Say we’re a debating team; we’ve been handed the negative of the question. Resolved: that Fuzzies are Sapient Beings. Personally, I think we have the short end of it, but that only means we’ll have to work harder on it.”

“You know, I was on a debating team at college,” Emmert said brightly. When that was disregarded, he added: “If I remember, the first thing was definition of terms.”

Grego looked up quickly. “Leslie, I think Nick has something. What is the legal definition of a sapient being?”

“As far as I know, there isn’t any. Sapience is something that’s just taken for granted.”

“How about talk-and-build-a-fire?”

He shook his head. “People of the Colony of Vishnu versus Emily Morrosh, 612 A.E.” He told them about the infanticide case. “I was looking up rulings on sapience; I passed the word on to Ham O’Brien. You know, what your people will have to do will be to produce a definition of sapience, acceptable to the court, that will include all known sapient races and at the same time exclude the Fuzzies. I don’t envy them.”

“We need some Fuzzies of our own to study,” Grego said.

“Too bad we can’t get hold of Holloway’s,” Emmert said. “Maybe we could, if he leaves them alone at his camp.”

“No. We can’t risk that.” He thought for a moment. “Wait a moment. I think we might be able to do it at that. Legally.”

IX

Jack Holloway saw Little Fuzzy eying the pipe he had laid in the ashtray, and picked it up, putting it in his mouth. Little Fuzzy looked reproachfully at him and started to get down onto the floor. Pappy Jack was mean; didn’t he think a Fuzzy might want to smoke a pipe, too? Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt him. He picked Little Fuzzy up and set him back on his lap, offering the pipestem. Little Fuzzy took a puff. He didn’t cough over it; evidently he had learned how to avoid inhaling.

“They scheduled the