RUTH VAN RIEBEEK—she had resigned both her Navy commission and
her maiden name simultaneously five days ago—ought, she told
herself, to be happy and excited. She was clear out of the Navy
Intelligence and its dark corridors of deceit and suspicion, and
she and Gerd were married, and any scientific worker in the
Federation would give anything to be in her place. A whole new
science, the study of a new race of sapient beings; why, it was
only the ninth time that had happened in the five centuries since
the first Terran starship left the Sol System. A tiny spot of
light—what they really knew about the Fuzzies—surrounded by a
twilight zone of what they thought they knew, mostly erroneous. And
beyond that, the dark of ignorance, full of strange surprises,
waiting to be conquered. And she was in on the very beginning of
it. It was a wonderful opportunity.
But wasn’t it just one Nifflheim of a way to spend a
honeymoon?
When she and Gerd were married, everything was going to be so
wonderful. They would spend a lazy week here in the city, just
being happy together and making plans and gathering things for
their new home. Then they would go back to Beta Continent, and Gerd
would work the sunstone diggings in partnership with Jack Holloway
while she kept house, and they would spend the rest of their lives
being happy together in the woods, with their four Fuzzies, Id and
Superego and Complex and Syndrome.
The honeymoon, as such, had lasted one night, here at the Hotel
Mallory. The next morning, before they were through breakfast, Jack
Holloway was screening them. Space Commodore Napier had appointed
Ben Rainsford Governor, and Ben had immediately appointed Jack
Commissioner of Native Affairs, and now Jack was appointing Gerd to
head his study and research bureau, taking it for granted that Gerd
would accept. Gerd had, taking it for granted that she would agree,
as, after a rebellious moment, she had.
After all, weren’t they all responsible for what had
happened? The Fuzzies certainly weren’t; they hadn’t
gone to law to be declared sapient. All a Fuzzy wanted was to have
fun. And they were responsible to the Fuzzies for what would happen
to them hereafter, all of them together, Ben Rainsford and Jack
Holloway and she and Gerd, and Pancho Ybarra. And now, Lynne
Andrews.
Through the open front of the room, on the balcony, she could
hear Lynne’s voice, half amused and half exasperated:
“You little devils! Bring that back here! Do-bizzo. So
josso-aki!”
A Fuzzy—one of the two males, Superego—dashed inside with a
lighted cigarette, the other male, Id, and one of the girls,
Syndrome, pursuing. She put in her earplug and turned on her
hearing-aid, wishing for the millionth time that Fuzzies had
humanly audible voices. Id was clamoring that it was his turn and
trying to take the cigarette away from Superego, who pushed him off
with his free hand, took a quick puff, and handed it to Syndrome,
who began puffing hastily on it. Id started to grab it, then saw
the cigarette she was smoking and ran to climb on her lap,
pleading:
“Mummy Woof, josso-aki smokko.”
Lynne Andrews, slender and blonde, followed them into the room,
the earplug wire of her hearing-aid leading down from under the
green bandeau around her head. She carried Complex, squirming in
her arms. Complex was complaining that Auntie Lynne wouldn’t
give her smokko.
“That’s one Terran word they picked up soon
enough,” Lynne was commenting.
“Let her have one; it won’t hurt her.” With
scientific caution, she added, “It doesn’t seem to hurt
them.”
She knew what Lynne was thinking. She had been
recruited—shanghaied would probably be a better word—from
Mallorysport General Hospital because they wanted somebody whose
M.D. was a little less a matter of form than hers or Pancho
Ybarra’s. Lynne was a pediatrician, which had seemed
appropriate because Fuzzies were about the size of year-old human
children and because a pediatrician, like a veterinarian, has to be
able to get along with a minimum of cooperation from the patient.
Unfortunately, she was carrying it beyond analogy and equating
Fuzzies with human children. A year-old human oughtn’t to be
allowed to smoke, so neither should a Fuzzy, who might be fifty for
all anybody knew to the contrary.
She gave Id her cigarette. Lynne, apparently much against her
better judgment, sat down on a couch and lit one for Complex, and
one for herself, and then lit a third for Superego. Now all the
Fuzzies had smokko. Syndrome ran to one of the low cocktail tables
and came back with an ashtray, which she put on the floor. The
others sat down with her around it, all but Id, who stayed on Mummy
Woof’s lap.
“Lynne, they won’t take anything that hurts
them,” she argued. “Alcohol, for instance.”
Lynne had to agree. Any Fuzzy would take a drink, just to do
what the Big Ones were doing—once. The smallest quantity
affected a Fuzzy instantly, and a tipsy Fuzzy was really something
to see, and then the Fuzzy would have a sick hangover, and never
took a second drink. That was one of the things she’d found
out while working with Ernst Mallin, the Company psychologist, and
doublecrossing him and the company for Navy Intelligence.
“Well, some of them don’t like smokko.”
“Some human-type people don’t, either. Some
human-type people have allergies. What kind of allergies do Fuzzies
have? That’s something else for you to find out.”
She set Id on the table and pulled one of the loose-leaf books
toward her, picking up a pen and writing the word at the top of the
blank page. Id picked up another pen and began making a series of
little circles on the notepad.
The door from the hallway opened into the next room; she heard
Pancho Ybarra’s voice and her husband laughing. The three on
the floor put their cigarettes in the ashtray and jumped to their
feet, shrieking, “Pappy Ge’hd! Unka Panko!” and
dashed through the door into the next room. Id, dropping the pen,
jumped down and ran after them. In a moment, they were all back.
Syndrome had a Navy officer’s cap on her head, holding it up
with both hands to see from under it. Id followed, with
Gerd’s floppy gray sombrero, and Complex and Superego came in
carrying a bulky briefcase between them. Gerd and Pancho followed.
Gerd’s suit, freshly pressed that morning, already rumpled,
but the Navy psychologist was still miraculously handbox-neat. She
rose and greeted them, kissing Gerd; Pancho crossed the couch and
sat down with Lynne.
“Well, what’s new?” Gerd asked.
“Jack called me, about an hour ago. They have the lab hut
up, and all the equipment they have for it moved in. They have some
bungalows up, a double one for us. Jack showed me a view of it;
it’s nice. And I was bullying people about the computer and
the rest of the stuff. We can all go out as soon as we have
everything here together.”
“This evening, if we want to run ourselves ragged and get
in in the middle of the night,” Gerd said. “After
lunch tomorrow, if we want to take our time. Ben Rainsford wants us
for dinner this evening.”
Lynne thought that sounded a trifle cannibalistic, and voted for
tomorrow. “How did you make out at the hospital?” she
asked.
“They gave us everything we asked for, no argument at
all,” Gerd said. “And the same at Science Center. I was
surprised.”
“I wasn’t,” Pancho said. “There’s
a lot of scuttlebutt about the Government taking both over. In a
couple of weeks, we may be their bosses. What are we going to do
about lunch; go out or have it sent in?”
“Let’s have it sent in,” she said. “We
can check over these equipment lists, and you two can chase up
anything that’s left out this afternoon.”
Pancho got out his cigarette case, and discovered that it was
empty.
“Hey, Lynne; so-josso-aki-smokko,” he said.
Well, it would be a honeymoon. Sort of crowded, but fun. And
Pancho and Lynne were beginning to take an interest in each other.
She was glad of that.
CHIEF JUSTICE FREDERIC Pendarvis leaned his elbows on the bench
and considered the three black coated lawyers before him in the
action of John Doe, Richard Roe, et alii, An Unincorporated
Voluntary Association, versus The Colonial Government of
Zarathustra.
One, at the defendants’ lectern, was a giant; well over
six feet and two hundred pounds, his big-nosed face masked by a
fluffy gray-brown beard, an unruly mop of gray-brown hair
suggesting, incongruously, a halo. His name was Gustavus Adolphus
Brannhard, and until he had been rocketed to prominence in what
everybody was calling the Fuzzy Trial, he had been chiefly noted
for his ability to secure the acquittal of obviously guilty
clients, his prowess as a big-game hunter, and his capacity,
without visible effect, for whisky. For the past five days, he had
been Attorney-General of the Colony of Zarathustra.
The man standing beside and slightly behind him would have
seemed tall, too, in the proximity of anybody but Gus Brannhard. He
was slender and suavely elegant, and his thin, aristocratic
features wore an habitually half-bored, half-amused expression, as
though life were a joke he had heard too many times before. His
name was Leslie Coombes, he was the Zarathustra Company’s
chief attorney, and from the position he had taken it looked as
though he were here to support his erstwhile antagonist in People
versus Holloway and Kellogg.
The third, at the plaintiff’s lectern, was Hugo Ingermann;
Judge Pendarvis was making a determined effort not to let that
prejudice him against his clients. To his positive knowledge,
Ingermann had been in court at least seven times in the last six
years representing completely honest and respectable people, and it
was possible, though scarcely probable, that this might be the
eighth occasion. He was, of course, a member of the Bar, due to
lack of evidence to support disbarment proceedings, so he had a
right to stand here and be heard.
“This is an action, is it not, to require the Colonial
Government to make available for settlement and exploitation lands
now in the public domain, and to set up offices where claims to
such lands may be filed?” he asked.
“It is, your Honor. I represent the plaintiffs,”
Ingermann said. He was shorter than either of the others; plump,
with a smooth, pink-cheeked face, and beginning to lose his hair in
front. There was an expression of complete and utter sincerity in
his round blue eyes which might have deceived anybody who had not
been on Zarathustra long enough to have heard of him. He would have
continued had Pendarvis not turned to Brannhard.
“I represent the Colonial Government, your Honor; we are
contesting the plaintiff’s action.”
“And you, Mr. Coombes?”
“I represent the Charterless Zarathustra Company,”
Coombes said. “We are not a party to this action. I am here
merely as observer and amicus curiae. “
“The . . . Charterless, did you say, Mr. Coombes? . . . Zarathustra Company had a right to be so represented here, they
have a substantial interest.” He wondered whose idea
“Charterless” was; it sounded like a typical piece of
Grego gallows-humor. “Mr. Ingermann?”
“Your Honor, it is the contention of the plaintiffs whom I
here represent that since approximately eighty percent of the land
surface of this planet is now public domain, by virtue of a recent
ruling of the Honorable Supreme Court, it is now obligatory upon
the Colonial Government to make this land available to the public.
This, your Honor, is plainly stated in Federation Law . . . ”
He began citing acts, sections, paragraphs; precedents; relevant
decisions of Federation Courts on other planets. He was talking
entirely for the record; all this had been included in the brief he
had submitted. It should be heard, but enough was enough.
“Yes, Mr. Ingermann; the Court is aware of the law, and
takes notice that it has been upheld in other cases,” he
said. “The Government doesn’t dispute this, Mr.
Brannhard?”
“Not at all, your Honor. Far from it. Governor Rainsford
is, himself, most anxious to transfer unseated land to private
ownership . . . ”
“Yes, but when?” Ingermann demanded. “How long
is Governor Rainsford going to drag his feet . . . ”
“I question the justice of Mr. Ingermann’s so
characterizing the situation,” Brannhard interrupted.
“It must be remembered that it is less than a week since
there was any public land at all on this planet.”
“Or since the Government Mr. Ingermann’s clients are
suing has existed,” Coombes added. “And I could endure
knowing who these Messieurs Doe and Roe are. The names sound
faintly familiar, but . . . ”
“Your Honor, my clients are an association of individuals
interested in acquiring land,” Ingermann said.
“Prospectors, woodsmen, tenant farmers, small veldbeest
ranchers . . . ”
“Loan-sharks, shylocks, percentage grubstakers,
speculators, would-be claim brokers,” Brannhard
continued.
“They are the common people of this planet!”
Ingermann declared. “The workers, the sturdy and honest
farmers, the frontiersmen, all of whom the Zarathustra Company has
held in peonage until liberated by the great and historic decisions
which bear your Honor’s name.”
“Just a moment,” Coombes almost drawled. “Your
Honor, the word ‘peonage’ has a specific meaning at
law. I must deny most vehemently that it has ever described the
relationship between the Zarathustra Company and anybody on this
planet.”
“The word was ill-chosen, Mr. Ingermann. It will be
deleted from the record.”
“We still haven’t found out who Mr.
Ingermann’s clients are, your Honor,” Brannhard said.
“May I suggest that Mr. Ingermann be placed on the stand and
asked to name them?”
Ingermann shot a quick, involuntary glance at the witness stand:
a heavy chair, with electrode attachments and a bright metal helmet
over it, and a translucent globe on a standard. Then he began
clamoring protests. So far, Hugo Ingermann had always managed to
avoid having to testify to anything under veridication. That was
probably why he was still a member of the Bar, instead of a
convict.
“No, Mr. Brannhard,” he said, with real sadness.
“Mr. Ingermann is not compelled to divulge the names of his
clients. Mr. Ingermann would be within his rights in bringing this
action on his own responsibility, out of his deep love of justice
and well-known zeal for the public welfare.”
Brannhard shrugged massively. Nobody could blame him for not
trying. Coombes spoke:
“Your Honor, we are all agreed about the
Government’s obligation, but has it occurred, either to Mr.
Ingermann or to the Court, that the present Government is merely a
fiat-government set up by military authority? Commodore Napier
acted, as he was obliged to, as the ranking officer of the Terran
Federation Armed Forces present, to constitute civil government to
replace the former one, declared illegal by your Honor. Until
elections can be held and a popularly elected Colonial Legislature
can be convened, there may be grave doubts as to the validity of
some of Governor Rainsford’s acts, especially in granting
titles to land. Your Honor, do we want to see the courts of this
planet vexed, for years to come, with litigation over such
titles?”
“That’s the Government’s attitude
precisely,” Brannhard agreed. “We’re required by
law to hold such elections with a year; to do that we’ll have
to hold an election for delegates to a constitutional convention
and get a planetary constitution adopted. That will take six to
eight months. Until this can be done, we petition the Court to
withhold action on this matter.”
“That’s quite reasonable, Mr. Brannhard. The Court
recognizes the Government’s legal obligation, but the Court
does not recognize any immediacy in fulfilling it. If, within a
year, the Government can open the public lands and establish
land-claims offices, the Court will be quite satisfied.” He
tapped lightly with his gavel. “Next case, if you
please,” he told the crier.
“Now I see it!” Ingermann almost shouted. “The
Zarathustra Company’s taken over this new Class-IV
Government, and the courts along with it!”
He hit the bench again with his gavel; this time it cracked like
a rifle shot.
“Mr. Ingermann! You are not deliberately placing yourself
in contempt, are you?” he asked. “No? I’d hoped
not. Next case, please.”
LESLIE COOMBES ACCEPTED the cocktail with a word of absentminded
thanks, tasted it, and set it down on the low table. It was cool
and quiet up here on the garden-terrace around Victor Grego’s
penthouse at the top of Company House; the western sky was a
conflagration of sunset reds and oranges and yellows.
“No, Victor; Gus Brannhard is not our friend. He’s
not our enemy, but as Attorney-General he is Ben Rainsford’s
lawyer, and the Government’s—at the moment, it’s hard
to distinguish between the two—and Ben Rainsford hates all of us
vindictively.”
Victor Grego looked up from the drink he was pouring for
himself. He had a broad-cheeked, wide-mouthed face. A few threads
of gray were visible in the sunset glow among the black at his
temples; they hadn’t been there before the Fuzzy Trial.
“I don’t see why,” he said, “It’s
all over now. They made their point about the Fuzzies; that was all
they were interested in, wasn’t it?”
He was being quite honest about it, too, Coombes thought. Grego
was simply incapable of animosity about something that was over and
done with.
“It was all Jack Holloway and Gerd van Riebeek were
interested in. Brannhard was their lawyer; he’d have fought
just as hard to prove that bush-goblins were sapient beings. But
Rainsford is taking this personally. The Fuzzies were his great
scientific discovery, and we tried to discredit it, and that makes
us Bad Guys. And in the last chapter, the Bad Guys should all be
killed or sent to jail.”
Grego stoppered the cocktail jug and picked up his glass.
“We haven’t come to the last chapter yet,” he
said. “ I don’t want any more battles; we haven’t
patched up the combat damage from the last one. But if Ben
Rainsford wants one, I’m not bugging out on it. You know, we
could make things damned nasty for him.” He sipped slowly and
set the glass down. “This so-called Government of his is
broke; you know that, don’t you? And it’ll take from
six to eight months to get a Colonial Legislature organized and in
session, and he can’t levy taxes by executive decree;
that’s purely a legislative function. In the meantime,
he’ll have to borrow, and the only place he can borrow is
from the bank we control.”
That was the trouble with Victor. If anybody or anything
challenged him, his first instinct was to hit back. Following that
instinct when he had first heard of the Fuzzies had gotten the
Company back of the eightball in the first place.
“Well, don’t do any fighting with planet busters at
twenty paces,” he advised. “Gus Brannhard and Alex
Napier, between them, talked him out of prosecuting us for what we
did before the trial, and convinced him he’d wreck the whole
planetary economy if he damaged the company too badly. We’re
in the same spot; we can’t afford to have a bankrupt
Government on top of everything else. Let him borrow all the money
he wants.”
“And then tax it away from us to pay it back?”
“Not if we get control of the Legislature and write the
tax laws ourselves. This is a political battle; let’s use
political weapons.”
“You mean organize a Zarathustra Company Party?”
Grego laughed. “You have any idea how unpopular the Company
is, right now?”
“No, no. Let the citizens and voters organize the parties.
We’ll just pick out the best one and take it over. All
we’ll need to organize will be a political
organization.”
Grego smiled slowly over the rim of his glass and swallowed.
“Yes, Leslie. I don’t think I need to tell you what
to do. You know it better than I do. Have you anybody in mind to
head it? They shouldn’t be associated with the Company at
all; at least, not where the public can see it.”
He named a few names—independent business men, freeholding
planters, professional people, a clergyman or so. Grego nodded
approvingly at each.
“Hugo Ingermann,” he said.
“Good God!” Coombes doubted his ears for a moment.
Then he was shocked. “We want nothing whatever to do with
that fellow. Why, there isn’t a crooked operation in
Mallorysport, criminal or just plain dishonest, that he isn’t
mixed up in. And I told you how he was talking in court
today.”
Grego nodded again. “Precisely. Well, we won’t have
anything to do with him. We’ll just let Hugo go his
malodorous way, and cash in on any scandals he creates. You say
Rainsford thinks in terms of Good Guys and Bad Guys? Well, Hugo
Ingermann is the baddest Bad Guy on the planet, and if Rainsford
doesn’t know that, and he probably doesn’t, Gus
Brannhard’ll tell him. I just hope Hugo Ingermann goes on
attacking the Company every time he opens his mouth.” He
finished what was in his glass and unstoppered the jug.
“Still with me, Leslie? It’s a half hour yet to
dinner.”
As Gus Brannhard started across the lawn on the south side of
Government House, two Fuzzies came dashing to meet him. Their names
were Flora and Fauna, and as usual he had to pause and remember
that fauns were male and that Flora was a regular feminine name.
The names some people gave Fuzzies. Of course, Ben was a
naturalist. If he had a pair of Fuzzies of his own, he’d
probably have called them Felony and Misdemeanor, or Misfeasance
and Malfeasance. He put in his earphone and squatted to get down to
their level.
“Hello, sapient being. Now keep your hands out of Uncle
Gus’s whiskers.” He glanced up and saw the small man
with the red beard approaching. “Hello, Ben. They pull yours
much?”
“Sometimes. I haven’t so much to pull. Yours is more
fun. Jack Holloway says they think you’re a Big Fuzzy.”
The Fuzzies were pointing across the lawn, clamoring for him to
come and see something. “Oh, sure; their new home. I’ll
bet there isn’t a Fuzzy anywhere had a nicer home. Hokay,
kids; bizzo.”
The new home was a Marine Corps pup-tent, pitched in an open
glade beside a fountain; it would be a lot roomier for two Fuzzies
than for two Marines. There were Fuzzy treasures scattered around
it, things from toy shops, and odds and ends of bright or colored
or oddly shaped junk they had scavenged for themselves. He noticed,
and commented on, a stout toy wheelbarrow.
“Oh, yes; we have discovered the wheel,” Ben said.
“They were explaining it to me yesterday; very intelligently,
as far as I could follow. They give each other rides, and they are
very good about taking turns. And they use it to collect loot. Very
good about that, too; always ask if they can have anything they
find.”
“Well, this is just wonderful,” he told them, and
then repeated it in Fuzzy. Ben complimented him on his progress in
the language.
“I damn well better learn it. Pendarvis is going to set up
a Native Cases Court, like the ones on Loki and Gimli and Thor. Be
anybody’s guess how soon I’ll have to listen to a flock
of Fuzzy witnesses.”
He looked inside the tent. The blankets and cushions were all
piled at one end; bed-making, it seemed, wasn’t a Fuzzy
accomplishment. A bed was to sleep in, and no Fuzzy could see the
sense in making a bed and then having to unmake it before he could
use it. He looked at some of their things, and picked up a little
knife, trying the edge on his thumb. Immediately, Flora cried
out:
“Keffu, Unka Gus! Sha’ap; kuttsu!”
“Muhgawd, Ben; you hear what she said? She speaks Lingua
Terra!”
“That’s right. That was one of the first things I
taught them. And you don’t have to teach them anything more
than once, either.” He looked at his watch, and spoke to the
Fuzzies. They seemed disappointed, but Fauna said, “Hokay,” and ran into the tent, bringing out his shoulderbag and
chopper-digger, and Flora’s. “Told them we have to make
Big One talk, to go hunt landprawns. I had a bunch brought in, this
morning, and turned loose for them.”
Fauna piled into the wheelbarrow; Flora got between the shafts
and picked it up, starting off at a run, the passenger whooping
loudly. Ben watched them vanish among the shrubbery, and got out
his pipe and tobacco.
“Gus, why in Nifflheim did Leslie Coombes show up in court
today and back you against this fellow Ingermann?” he
demanded. “I thought Grego put Ingermann up to that
himself.”
That’s right; any time anything happens, blame Grego.
“No, Ben. The company doesn’t want a big land-rush
starting, any more than we do. They don’t want their whole
labor force bugging out on them, and that’s what it would
come to. I don’t know why I can’t pound it into your
head that Victor Grego had as big a stake in keeping things
together on this planet as you have.”
“Yes, if he can control it the way he used to. Well,
I’m not going to let him . . . ”
He made an impatient noise. “And Ingermann; Grego
wouldn’t touch him with a ten-light-year pole. You call Grego
a criminal? Well, maybe you were too busy, over on Beta, counting
tree rings and checking on the love life of bush-goblins, to know
about the Mallorysport underworld, but as a criminal lawyer I had
to. Beside Hugo Ingermann, Victor Grego is a saint, and they have
images of him in all the churches and work miracles with them. You
name any kind of a racket—dope, prostitution, gambling,
protection-shakedowns, illicit gem buying, shylocking, stolen
goods—and Ingermann’s at the back of it. This action of his,
today; he has a ring of crooks who want to make a killing in land
speculation. That’s why I wanted to stop him, and
that’s why Grego sent Coombes to help me. Ben, you’re
going to find that this is only the first of many occasions when
you and Grego are going to be on the same side.”
Rainsford started an angry reply; before he could speak, Gerd
van Riebeek’s voice floated down from the escalator-head on
the terrace above.
“Anybody home down there?”
“No, nobody but us Fuzzies,” Rainsford called back.
“Come on down.”
RUTH VAN RIEBEEK—she had resigned both her Navy commission and
her maiden name simultaneously five days ago—ought, she told
herself, to be happy and excited. She was clear out of the Navy
Intelligence and its dark corridors of deceit and suspicion, and
she and Gerd were married, and any scientific worker in the
Federation would give anything to be in her place. A whole new
science, the study of a new race of sapient beings; why, it was
only the ninth time that had happened in the five centuries since
the first Terran starship left the Sol System. A tiny spot of
light—what they really knew about the Fuzzies—surrounded by a
twilight zone of what they thought they knew, mostly erroneous. And
beyond that, the dark of ignorance, full of strange surprises,
waiting to be conquered. And she was in on the very beginning of
it. It was a wonderful opportunity.
But wasn’t it just one Nifflheim of a way to spend a
honeymoon?
When she and Gerd were married, everything was going to be so
wonderful. They would spend a lazy week here in the city, just
being happy together and making plans and gathering things for
their new home. Then they would go back to Beta Continent, and Gerd
would work the sunstone diggings in partnership with Jack Holloway
while she kept house, and they would spend the rest of their lives
being happy together in the woods, with their four Fuzzies, Id and
Superego and Complex and Syndrome.
The honeymoon, as such, had lasted one night, here at the Hotel
Mallory. The next morning, before they were through breakfast, Jack
Holloway was screening them. Space Commodore Napier had appointed
Ben Rainsford Governor, and Ben had immediately appointed Jack
Commissioner of Native Affairs, and now Jack was appointing Gerd to
head his study and research bureau, taking it for granted that Gerd
would accept. Gerd had, taking it for granted that she would agree,
as, after a rebellious moment, she had.
After all, weren’t they all responsible for what had
happened? The Fuzzies certainly weren’t; they hadn’t
gone to law to be declared sapient. All a Fuzzy wanted was to have
fun. And they were responsible to the Fuzzies for what would happen
to them hereafter, all of them together, Ben Rainsford and Jack
Holloway and she and Gerd, and Pancho Ybarra. And now, Lynne
Andrews.
Through the open front of the room, on the balcony, she could
hear Lynne’s voice, half amused and half exasperated:
“You little devils! Bring that back here! Do-bizzo. So
josso-aki!”
A Fuzzy—one of the two males, Superego—dashed inside with a
lighted cigarette, the other male, Id, and one of the girls,
Syndrome, pursuing. She put in her earplug and turned on her
hearing-aid, wishing for the millionth time that Fuzzies had
humanly audible voices. Id was clamoring that it was his turn and
trying to take the cigarette away from Superego, who pushed him off
with his free hand, took a quick puff, and handed it to Syndrome,
who began puffing hastily on it. Id started to grab it, then saw
the cigarette she was smoking and ran to climb on her lap,
pleading:
“Mummy Woof, josso-aki smokko.”
Lynne Andrews, slender and blonde, followed them into the room,
the earplug wire of her hearing-aid leading down from under the
green bandeau around her head. She carried Complex, squirming in
her arms. Complex was complaining that Auntie Lynne wouldn’t
give her smokko.
“That’s one Terran word they picked up soon
enough,” Lynne was commenting.
“Let her have one; it won’t hurt her.” With
scientific caution, she added, “It doesn’t seem to hurt
them.”
She knew what Lynne was thinking. She had been
recruited—shanghaied would probably be a better word—from
Mallorysport General Hospital because they wanted somebody whose
M.D. was a little less a matter of form than hers or Pancho
Ybarra’s. Lynne was a pediatrician, which had seemed
appropriate because Fuzzies were about the size of year-old human
children and because a pediatrician, like a veterinarian, has to be
able to get along with a minimum of cooperation from the patient.
Unfortunately, she was carrying it beyond analogy and equating
Fuzzies with human children. A year-old human oughtn’t to be
allowed to smoke, so neither should a Fuzzy, who might be fifty for
all anybody knew to the contrary.
She gave Id her cigarette. Lynne, apparently much against her
better judgment, sat down on a couch and lit one for Complex, and
one for herself, and then lit a third for Superego. Now all the
Fuzzies had smokko. Syndrome ran to one of the low cocktail tables
and came back with an ashtray, which she put on the floor. The
others sat down with her around it, all but Id, who stayed on Mummy
Woof’s lap.
“Lynne, they won’t take anything that hurts
them,” she argued. “Alcohol, for instance.”
Lynne had to agree. Any Fuzzy would take a drink, just to do
what the Big Ones were doing—once. The smallest quantity
affected a Fuzzy instantly, and a tipsy Fuzzy was really something
to see, and then the Fuzzy would have a sick hangover, and never
took a second drink. That was one of the things she’d found
out while working with Ernst Mallin, the Company psychologist, and
doublecrossing him and the company for Navy Intelligence.
“Well, some of them don’t like smokko.”
“Some human-type people don’t, either. Some
human-type people have allergies. What kind of allergies do Fuzzies
have? That’s something else for you to find out.”
She set Id on the table and pulled one of the loose-leaf books
toward her, picking up a pen and writing the word at the top of the
blank page. Id picked up another pen and began making a series of
little circles on the notepad.
The door from the hallway opened into the next room; she heard
Pancho Ybarra’s voice and her husband laughing. The three on
the floor put their cigarettes in the ashtray and jumped to their
feet, shrieking, “Pappy Ge’hd! Unka Panko!” and
dashed through the door into the next room. Id, dropping the pen,
jumped down and ran after them. In a moment, they were all back.
Syndrome had a Navy officer’s cap on her head, holding it up
with both hands to see from under it. Id followed, with
Gerd’s floppy gray sombrero, and Complex and Superego came in
carrying a bulky briefcase between them. Gerd and Pancho followed.
Gerd’s suit, freshly pressed that morning, already rumpled,
but the Navy psychologist was still miraculously handbox-neat. She
rose and greeted them, kissing Gerd; Pancho crossed the couch and
sat down with Lynne.
“Well, what’s new?” Gerd asked.
“Jack called me, about an hour ago. They have the lab hut
up, and all the equipment they have for it moved in. They have some
bungalows up, a double one for us. Jack showed me a view of it;
it’s nice. And I was bullying people about the computer and
the rest of the stuff. We can all go out as soon as we have
everything here together.”
“This evening, if we want to run ourselves ragged and get
in in the middle of the night,” Gerd said. “After
lunch tomorrow, if we want to take our time. Ben Rainsford wants us
for dinner this evening.”
Lynne thought that sounded a trifle cannibalistic, and voted for
tomorrow. “How did you make out at the hospital?” she
asked.
“They gave us everything we asked for, no argument at
all,” Gerd said. “And the same at Science Center. I was
surprised.”
“I wasn’t,” Pancho said. “There’s
a lot of scuttlebutt about the Government taking both over. In a
couple of weeks, we may be their bosses. What are we going to do
about lunch; go out or have it sent in?”
“Let’s have it sent in,” she said. “We
can check over these equipment lists, and you two can chase up
anything that’s left out this afternoon.”
Pancho got out his cigarette case, and discovered that it was
empty.
“Hey, Lynne; so-josso-aki-smokko,” he said.
Well, it would be a honeymoon. Sort of crowded, but fun. And
Pancho and Lynne were beginning to take an interest in each other.
She was glad of that.
CHIEF JUSTICE FREDERIC Pendarvis leaned his elbows on the bench
and considered the three black coated lawyers before him in the
action of John Doe, Richard Roe, et alii, An Unincorporated
Voluntary Association, versus The Colonial Government of
Zarathustra.
One, at the defendants’ lectern, was a giant; well over
six feet and two hundred pounds, his big-nosed face masked by a
fluffy gray-brown beard, an unruly mop of gray-brown hair
suggesting, incongruously, a halo. His name was Gustavus Adolphus
Brannhard, and until he had been rocketed to prominence in what
everybody was calling the Fuzzy Trial, he had been chiefly noted
for his ability to secure the acquittal of obviously guilty
clients, his prowess as a big-game hunter, and his capacity,
without visible effect, for whisky. For the past five days, he had
been Attorney-General of the Colony of Zarathustra.
The man standing beside and slightly behind him would have
seemed tall, too, in the proximity of anybody but Gus Brannhard. He
was slender and suavely elegant, and his thin, aristocratic
features wore an habitually half-bored, half-amused expression, as
though life were a joke he had heard too many times before. His
name was Leslie Coombes, he was the Zarathustra Company’s
chief attorney, and from the position he had taken it looked as
though he were here to support his erstwhile antagonist in People
versus Holloway and Kellogg.
The third, at the plaintiff’s lectern, was Hugo Ingermann;
Judge Pendarvis was making a determined effort not to let that
prejudice him against his clients. To his positive knowledge,
Ingermann had been in court at least seven times in the last six
years representing completely honest and respectable people, and it
was possible, though scarcely probable, that this might be the
eighth occasion. He was, of course, a member of the Bar, due to
lack of evidence to support disbarment proceedings, so he had a
right to stand here and be heard.
“This is an action, is it not, to require the Colonial
Government to make available for settlement and exploitation lands
now in the public domain, and to set up offices where claims to
such lands may be filed?” he asked.
“It is, your Honor. I represent the plaintiffs,”
Ingermann said. He was shorter than either of the others; plump,
with a smooth, pink-cheeked face, and beginning to lose his hair in
front. There was an expression of complete and utter sincerity in
his round blue eyes which might have deceived anybody who had not
been on Zarathustra long enough to have heard of him. He would have
continued had Pendarvis not turned to Brannhard.
“I represent the Colonial Government, your Honor; we are
contesting the plaintiff’s action.”
“And you, Mr. Coombes?”
“I represent the Charterless Zarathustra Company,”
Coombes said. “We are not a party to this action. I am here
merely as observer and amicus curiae. “
“The . . . Charterless, did you say, Mr. Coombes? . . . Zarathustra Company had a right to be so represented here, they
have a substantial interest.” He wondered whose idea
“Charterless” was; it sounded like a typical piece of
Grego gallows-humor. “Mr. Ingermann?”
“Your Honor, it is the contention of the plaintiffs whom I
here represent that since approximately eighty percent of the land
surface of this planet is now public domain, by virtue of a recent
ruling of the Honorable Supreme Court, it is now obligatory upon
the Colonial Government to make this land available to the public.
This, your Honor, is plainly stated in Federation Law . . . ”
He began citing acts, sections, paragraphs; precedents; relevant
decisions of Federation Courts on other planets. He was talking
entirely for the record; all this had been included in the brief he
had submitted. It should be heard, but enough was enough.
“Yes, Mr. Ingermann; the Court is aware of the law, and
takes notice that it has been upheld in other cases,” he
said. “The Government doesn’t dispute this, Mr.
Brannhard?”
“Not at all, your Honor. Far from it. Governor Rainsford
is, himself, most anxious to transfer unseated land to private
ownership . . . ”
“Yes, but when?” Ingermann demanded. “How long
is Governor Rainsford going to drag his feet . . . ”
“I question the justice of Mr. Ingermann’s so
characterizing the situation,” Brannhard interrupted.
“It must be remembered that it is less than a week since
there was any public land at all on this planet.”
“Or since the Government Mr. Ingermann’s clients are
suing has existed,” Coombes added. “And I could endure
knowing who these Messieurs Doe and Roe are. The names sound
faintly familiar, but . . . ”
“Your Honor, my clients are an association of individuals
interested in acquiring land,” Ingermann said.
“Prospectors, woodsmen, tenant farmers, small veldbeest
ranchers . . . ”
“Loan-sharks, shylocks, percentage grubstakers,
speculators, would-be claim brokers,” Brannhard
continued.
“They are the common people of this planet!”
Ingermann declared. “The workers, the sturdy and honest
farmers, the frontiersmen, all of whom the Zarathustra Company has
held in peonage until liberated by the great and historic decisions
which bear your Honor’s name.”
“Just a moment,” Coombes almost drawled. “Your
Honor, the word ‘peonage’ has a specific meaning at
law. I must deny most vehemently that it has ever described the
relationship between the Zarathustra Company and anybody on this
planet.”
“The word was ill-chosen, Mr. Ingermann. It will be
deleted from the record.”
“We still haven’t found out who Mr.
Ingermann’s clients are, your Honor,” Brannhard said.
“May I suggest that Mr. Ingermann be placed on the stand and
asked to name them?”
Ingermann shot a quick, involuntary glance at the witness stand:
a heavy chair, with electrode attachments and a bright metal helmet
over it, and a translucent globe on a standard. Then he began
clamoring protests. So far, Hugo Ingermann had always managed to
avoid having to testify to anything under veridication. That was
probably why he was still a member of the Bar, instead of a
convict.
“No, Mr. Brannhard,” he said, with real sadness.
“Mr. Ingermann is not compelled to divulge the names of his
clients. Mr. Ingermann would be within his rights in bringing this
action on his own responsibility, out of his deep love of justice
and well-known zeal for the public welfare.”
Brannhard shrugged massively. Nobody could blame him for not
trying. Coombes spoke:
“Your Honor, we are all agreed about the
Government’s obligation, but has it occurred, either to Mr.
Ingermann or to the Court, that the present Government is merely a
fiat-government set up by military authority? Commodore Napier
acted, as he was obliged to, as the ranking officer of the Terran
Federation Armed Forces present, to constitute civil government to
replace the former one, declared illegal by your Honor. Until
elections can be held and a popularly elected Colonial Legislature
can be convened, there may be grave doubts as to the validity of
some of Governor Rainsford’s acts, especially in granting
titles to land. Your Honor, do we want to see the courts of this
planet vexed, for years to come, with litigation over such
titles?”
“That’s the Government’s attitude
precisely,” Brannhard agreed. “We’re required by
law to hold such elections with a year; to do that we’ll have
to hold an election for delegates to a constitutional convention
and get a planetary constitution adopted. That will take six to
eight months. Until this can be done, we petition the Court to
withhold action on this matter.”
“That’s quite reasonable, Mr. Brannhard. The Court
recognizes the Government’s legal obligation, but the Court
does not recognize any immediacy in fulfilling it. If, within a
year, the Government can open the public lands and establish
land-claims offices, the Court will be quite satisfied.” He
tapped lightly with his gavel. “Next case, if you
please,” he told the crier.
“Now I see it!” Ingermann almost shouted. “The
Zarathustra Company’s taken over this new Class-IV
Government, and the courts along with it!”
He hit the bench again with his gavel; this time it cracked like
a rifle shot.
“Mr. Ingermann! You are not deliberately placing yourself
in contempt, are you?” he asked. “No? I’d hoped
not. Next case, please.”
LESLIE COOMBES ACCEPTED the cocktail with a word of absentminded
thanks, tasted it, and set it down on the low table. It was cool
and quiet up here on the garden-terrace around Victor Grego’s
penthouse at the top of Company House; the western sky was a
conflagration of sunset reds and oranges and yellows.
“No, Victor; Gus Brannhard is not our friend. He’s
not our enemy, but as Attorney-General he is Ben Rainsford’s
lawyer, and the Government’s—at the moment, it’s hard
to distinguish between the two—and Ben Rainsford hates all of us
vindictively.”
Victor Grego looked up from the drink he was pouring for
himself. He had a broad-cheeked, wide-mouthed face. A few threads
of gray were visible in the sunset glow among the black at his
temples; they hadn’t been there before the Fuzzy Trial.
“I don’t see why,” he said, “It’s
all over now. They made their point about the Fuzzies; that was all
they were interested in, wasn’t it?”
He was being quite honest about it, too, Coombes thought. Grego
was simply incapable of animosity about something that was over and
done with.
“It was all Jack Holloway and Gerd van Riebeek were
interested in. Brannhard was their lawyer; he’d have fought
just as hard to prove that bush-goblins were sapient beings. But
Rainsford is taking this personally. The Fuzzies were his great
scientific discovery, and we tried to discredit it, and that makes
us Bad Guys. And in the last chapter, the Bad Guys should all be
killed or sent to jail.”
Grego stoppered the cocktail jug and picked up his glass.
“We haven’t come to the last chapter yet,” he
said. “ I don’t want any more battles; we haven’t
patched up the combat damage from the last one. But if Ben
Rainsford wants one, I’m not bugging out on it. You know, we
could make things damned nasty for him.” He sipped slowly and
set the glass down. “This so-called Government of his is
broke; you know that, don’t you? And it’ll take from
six to eight months to get a Colonial Legislature organized and in
session, and he can’t levy taxes by executive decree;
that’s purely a legislative function. In the meantime,
he’ll have to borrow, and the only place he can borrow is
from the bank we control.”
That was the trouble with Victor. If anybody or anything
challenged him, his first instinct was to hit back. Following that
instinct when he had first heard of the Fuzzies had gotten the
Company back of the eightball in the first place.
“Well, don’t do any fighting with planet busters at
twenty paces,” he advised. “Gus Brannhard and Alex
Napier, between them, talked him out of prosecuting us for what we
did before the trial, and convinced him he’d wreck the whole
planetary economy if he damaged the company too badly. We’re
in the same spot; we can’t afford to have a bankrupt
Government on top of everything else. Let him borrow all the money
he wants.”
“And then tax it away from us to pay it back?”
“Not if we get control of the Legislature and write the
tax laws ourselves. This is a political battle; let’s use
political weapons.”
“You mean organize a Zarathustra Company Party?”
Grego laughed. “You have any idea how unpopular the Company
is, right now?”
“No, no. Let the citizens and voters organize the parties.
We’ll just pick out the best one and take it over. All
we’ll need to organize will be a political
organization.”
Grego smiled slowly over the rim of his glass and swallowed.
“Yes, Leslie. I don’t think I need to tell you what
to do. You know it better than I do. Have you anybody in mind to
head it? They shouldn’t be associated with the Company at
all; at least, not where the public can see it.”
He named a few names—independent business men, freeholding
planters, professional people, a clergyman or so. Grego nodded
approvingly at each.
“Hugo Ingermann,” he said.
“Good God!” Coombes doubted his ears for a moment.
Then he was shocked. “We want nothing whatever to do with
that fellow. Why, there isn’t a crooked operation in
Mallorysport, criminal or just plain dishonest, that he isn’t
mixed up in. And I told you how he was talking in court
today.”
Grego nodded again. “Precisely. Well, we won’t have
anything to do with him. We’ll just let Hugo go his
malodorous way, and cash in on any scandals he creates. You say
Rainsford thinks in terms of Good Guys and Bad Guys? Well, Hugo
Ingermann is the baddest Bad Guy on the planet, and if Rainsford
doesn’t know that, and he probably doesn’t, Gus
Brannhard’ll tell him. I just hope Hugo Ingermann goes on
attacking the Company every time he opens his mouth.” He
finished what was in his glass and unstoppered the jug.
“Still with me, Leslie? It’s a half hour yet to
dinner.”
As Gus Brannhard started across the lawn on the south side of
Government House, two Fuzzies came dashing to meet him. Their names
were Flora and Fauna, and as usual he had to pause and remember
that fauns were male and that Flora was a regular feminine name.
The names some people gave Fuzzies. Of course, Ben was a
naturalist. If he had a pair of Fuzzies of his own, he’d
probably have called them Felony and Misdemeanor, or Misfeasance
and Malfeasance. He put in his earphone and squatted to get down to
their level.
“Hello, sapient being. Now keep your hands out of Uncle
Gus’s whiskers.” He glanced up and saw the small man
with the red beard approaching. “Hello, Ben. They pull yours
much?”
“Sometimes. I haven’t so much to pull. Yours is more
fun. Jack Holloway says they think you’re a Big Fuzzy.”
The Fuzzies were pointing across the lawn, clamoring for him to
come and see something. “Oh, sure; their new home. I’ll
bet there isn’t a Fuzzy anywhere had a nicer home. Hokay,
kids; bizzo.”
The new home was a Marine Corps pup-tent, pitched in an open
glade beside a fountain; it would be a lot roomier for two Fuzzies
than for two Marines. There were Fuzzy treasures scattered around
it, things from toy shops, and odds and ends of bright or colored
or oddly shaped junk they had scavenged for themselves. He noticed,
and commented on, a stout toy wheelbarrow.
“Oh, yes; we have discovered the wheel,” Ben said.
“They were explaining it to me yesterday; very intelligently,
as far as I could follow. They give each other rides, and they are
very good about taking turns. And they use it to collect loot. Very
good about that, too; always ask if they can have anything they
find.”
“Well, this is just wonderful,” he told them, and
then repeated it in Fuzzy. Ben complimented him on his progress in
the language.
“I damn well better learn it. Pendarvis is going to set up
a Native Cases Court, like the ones on Loki and Gimli and Thor. Be
anybody’s guess how soon I’ll have to listen to a flock
of Fuzzy witnesses.”
He looked inside the tent. The blankets and cushions were all
piled at one end; bed-making, it seemed, wasn’t a Fuzzy
accomplishment. A bed was to sleep in, and no Fuzzy could see the
sense in making a bed and then having to unmake it before he could
use it. He looked at some of their things, and picked up a little
knife, trying the edge on his thumb. Immediately, Flora cried
out:
“Keffu, Unka Gus! Sha’ap; kuttsu!”
“Muhgawd, Ben; you hear what she said? She speaks Lingua
Terra!”
“That’s right. That was one of the first things I
taught them. And you don’t have to teach them anything more
than once, either.” He looked at his watch, and spoke to the
Fuzzies. They seemed disappointed, but Fauna said, “Hokay,” and ran into the tent, bringing out his shoulderbag and
chopper-digger, and Flora’s. “Told them we have to make
Big One talk, to go hunt landprawns. I had a bunch brought in, this
morning, and turned loose for them.”
Fauna piled into the wheelbarrow; Flora got between the shafts
and picked it up, starting off at a run, the passenger whooping
loudly. Ben watched them vanish among the shrubbery, and got out
his pipe and tobacco.
“Gus, why in Nifflheim did Leslie Coombes show up in court
today and back you against this fellow Ingermann?” he
demanded. “I thought Grego put Ingermann up to that
himself.”
That’s right; any time anything happens, blame Grego.
“No, Ben. The company doesn’t want a big land-rush
starting, any more than we do. They don’t want their whole
labor force bugging out on them, and that’s what it would
come to. I don’t know why I can’t pound it into your
head that Victor Grego had as big a stake in keeping things
together on this planet as you have.”
“Yes, if he can control it the way he used to. Well,
I’m not going to let him . . . ”
He made an impatient noise. “And Ingermann; Grego
wouldn’t touch him with a ten-light-year pole. You call Grego
a criminal? Well, maybe you were too busy, over on Beta, counting
tree rings and checking on the love life of bush-goblins, to know
about the Mallorysport underworld, but as a criminal lawyer I had
to. Beside Hugo Ingermann, Victor Grego is a saint, and they have
images of him in all the churches and work miracles with them. You
name any kind of a racket—dope, prostitution, gambling,
protection-shakedowns, illicit gem buying, shylocking, stolen
goods—and Ingermann’s at the back of it. This action of his,
today; he has a ring of crooks who want to make a killing in land
speculation. That’s why I wanted to stop him, and
that’s why Grego sent Coombes to help me. Ben, you’re
going to find that this is only the first of many occasions when
you and Grego are going to be on the same side.”
Rainsford started an angry reply; before he could speak, Gerd
van Riebeek’s voice floated down from the escalator-head on
the terrace above.
“Anybody home down there?”
“No, nobody but us Fuzzies,” Rainsford called back.
“Come on down.”