GUS BRANNHARD SAID, “Well, I was wrong. I am most happy to
admit it. I’ve been getting the same reports, from all over,
and the editorial opinion is uniformly favorable.”
Leslie Coombes, in the screen, nodded. He was in the library of
his apartment across the city, with a coffee service and a stack of
papers and teleprint sheets on the table in front of him.
“Editorial opinion, of course, doesn’t win
elections, but the grass-roots level reports are just as good.
Things are going to be just as they always were, and that’s
what most people really want. It ought to gain us some votes,
instead of losing us any. These people Hugo Ingermann was
frightening with stories about how they were going to be taxed into
poverty to maintain the Fuzzies in luxury, for instance . . . Now
it appears that the Fuzzies will be financing the
Government.”
“Is Victor still in town?”
“Oh, no. He left for Yellowsand Canyon before daybreak.
He’s been having men and equipment shifted in there from Big
Blackwater for the last week. By this time, they’re probably
digging out sunstones by the peck.”
He laughed. Like a kid with a new rifle; couldn’t wait to
try it out. “I suppose he took Diamond along?” Grego
never went anywhere without his Fuzzy. “Well, why don’t
you drop around to Government House for cocktails? Jack’s
still in town, and we can talk without as many interruptions, human
and otherwise, as last evening.”
Coombes said he would be glad to. They chatted for a few
minutes, then broke the connection, and immediately the screen
buzzer began. When he put it on again, his screen-girl looked out
of it as though she smelled a week-old dead snake somewhere.
“The Honorable—technically, of course—Hugo
Ingermann,” she said. “He’s been trying to get
you for the last ten minutes.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to get him ever since I took
office,” he said. “Put him on.” Then he snapped
on the recorder.
The screen flickered and cleared, and a plump, well-barbered
face looked out of it, affable and candid, with innocently wide
blue eyes. A face anybody who didn’t know its owner would
trust.
“Good morning, Mr. Brannhard.”
“Good morning indeed, Mr. Ingermann. Is there something I
can do for you? Besides dropping dead, that is?”
“Ah, I believe there is something I can do for you, Mr.
Brannhard,” Ingermann beamed like an orphanage superintendent
on Christmas morning. “How would you like pleas of guilty
from Leo Thaxter, Conrad and Rose Evins, and Phil
Novaes?”
“I couldn’t even consider them. You know pleas of
guilty to capital charges aren’t admissible.”
Ingermann stared for a moment in feigned surprise, then laughed.
“Those ridiculous things? No, we are pleading guilty to the
proper and legitimate charges of first-degree burglary, grand
larceny, and criminal conspiracy. That is, of course, if the Colony
agrees to drop that silly farrago of faginy and enslavement
charges.”
He checked the impulse to ask Ingermann if he were crazy.
Whatever Hugo Ingermann was, he wasn’t that. He substituted:
“Do you think I’m crazy, Mr. Ingermann?”
“I hope you’re smart enough to see the advantage of
my offer,” Ingermann replied.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not. The advantage
to your clients, yes; that’s the difference between twenty
years in the penitentiary and a ten-millimeter bullet in the back
of the head. I’m afraid the advantage to the Colony is
slightly less apparent.”
“It shouldn’t be. You can’t get a conviction
on those charges, and you know it. I’m giving you a chance to
get off the hook.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you, Mr. Ingermann,
indeed it is. I’m afraid, though, that I can’t take
advantage of your good nature. You’ll just have to fight
those charges in court.”
“You think I can’t?” Ingermann was openly
contemptuous now. “You’re prosecuting my clients, if
that’s how you mispronounce it, on charges of faginy. You know perfectly well that the crime of faginy cannot be
committed against an adult, and you know, just as well, that
that’s what those Fuzzies are.”
“They are legally minor children.”
“They are classified as minor children by a court ruling.
That ruling is not only contrary to physical fact but is also a
flagrant usurpation of legislative power by the judiciary, and
hence unconstitutional. As such, I mean to attack it.”
And wouldn’t that play Nifflheim? The Government
couldn’t let that ruling be questioned; why, it would . . . Which was what Ingermann was counting on, of course. He
shrugged.
“We can get along without convicting them of faginy; we
can still convict them of enslavement. That’s the nice thing
about capital punishment: nobody needs to be shot in the head more
than once.”
Ingermann laughed scornfully. “You think you can frame my
clients on enslavement charges? Those Fuzzies weren’t slaves;
they were accomplices.”
“They were made drunk, transported under the influence of
liquor from their native habitat, confined under restraint,
compelled to perform work, and punished for failure to do so by
imprisonment in a dungeon, by starvation, and by electric-shock
tortures. If that isn’t a classic description of the
conditions of enslavement, I should like to hear one.”
“And have the Fuzzies accused my clients of these
crimes?” Ingermann asked. “Under veridication, on a
veridicator tested to distinguish between true and false statements
when made by Fuzzies?”
No, they hadn’t; and that was only half of it. The other
half was what he’d been afraid of all along.
“Don’t tell me; I’ll tell you,”
Ingermann went on. “They have not, for the excellent reason
that Fuzzies can’t be veridicated. I have that on the
authority of Dr. Ernst Mallin, Victor Grego’s chief
Fuzzyologist. A polyencephalographic veridicator simply will not
respond to Fuzzies. Now, you put those Fuzzies on the stand against
my clients and watch what happens.”
That was true. Mallin, who had the idea that scientific
information ought to be published, had stated that no Fuzzy with
whom he had worked had ever changed the blue light of a veridicator
to the red of falsehood. He had also stated that in his experience
no Fuzzy had ever made a false statement, under veridication or
otherwise. But Ingermann was ignoring that.
“And as to these faginy charges, if you people really
believe that Fuzzies are legally minor children, why was it thought
necessary to have a dozen and a half of them fingerprint that
Yellowsand lease agreement? Minor children do not sign documents
like that.”
He laughed. “Oh, that was just fun for the Fuzzies,”
he said. “They wanted to do what the Big Ones were
doing.”
“Mr. Brannhard!” From Ingermann’s tone, he
might have been a parent who has just been informed by a
five-year-old that a gang of bandits in black masks had come in and
looted the cookie jar. “Do you expect me to believe
that?”
“I don’t give a hoot on Nifflheim whether you do or
not, Mr. Ingermann. Now, was there anything else you wanted to talk
to me about?”
“Isn’t that enough for now?” Ingermann asked.
“The trial won’t be for a month yet. If, in the
meantime, you change your mind—and if you’re well-advised you
will—just give me a call. Goodbye for now.”
VICTOR GREGO’S AIRCAR pilot wasn’t usually insane . . . only when he got his hands on the controls of a vehicle.
Yellowsand Canyon was three time zones east of Mallorysport, and,
coming in, the sun was an hour higher than when they had lifted
out. Diamond had noticed that too, and commented on it.
A sergeant of the Marine guard met them on the top landing stage
of Government House. “Mr. Grego. Mr. Coombes and Mr.
Brannhard are here, with the Governor in his office.”
“Is anybody here going to try to arrest my Fuzzy?”
he asked.
The sergeant grinned. “No, sir. He’s been accused of
everything but space-piracy, high treason, and murder-one, along
with the others, but Marshal Fane says he won’t arrest any of
them if they show up tomorrow in Complaint Court.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Then, I won’t need
this.” Victor unbuckled his pistol, wrapping the belt around
the holster, and tossed it onto the back seat of the car, lifting
Diamond and setting him on his shoulder. “Go amuse yourself
for a couple of hours,” he told the pilot. “Stay around
where I can reach you, though.”
At the head of the escalator, he told Diamond the same thing,
watching him ride down and scamper across the garden in search of
Flora and Fauna and the rest of his friends. Then Victor went
inside, and found Leslie Coombes and Gus Brannhard seated with Ben
Rainsford at the oval table in the private conference room. They
exchanged greetings, and he sat down with them.
“Now, what the devil’s all this about arresting
Fuzzies?” he demanded. “What are they charged
with?”
“They aren’t charged with anything, yet,”
Brannhard told him. “Hugo Ingermann made information against
all six of them with the Colonial Marshal. He accused Allan
Pinkerton and Arsene Lupin and Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler and
Mata Hari of first-degree burglary, grand larceny and criminal
conspiracy, and Diamond with misprision of felony and
accessory-before-the-fact. They won’t be charged till the
accusations are heard in Complaint Court tomorrow.”
Complaint Court was something like the ancient grand jury—an
inquiry into whether or not a chargeable crime had been committed.
The accusation was on trial there, not the accused.
“Well, you aren’t letting it get past there, are
you?”
Before Brannhard could answer, Jack Holloway and Ernst Mallin
came in. Holloway was angry, the tips of his mustache twitching and
a feral glare in his eyes. He must have looked like that when he
beat up Kellogg and shot Borch. Ernst Mallin looked distressed;
he’d been in one criminal case involving Fuzzies, and that
had been enough. Ahmed Khadra entered behind them, with Fitz
Mortlake, the Company Police captain who was guardian-of-record for
the other five Fuzzies. After more greetings, they all sat
down.
“What are you going to do about this goddamned
thing?” Jack Holloway began while he was still pulling up his
chair. “You going to let that son of a Khooghra get away with
this?”
“If you mean the Fuzzies, hell, no,” Brannhard said.
“They’re not guilty of anything, and everybody,
Ingermann included, knows it. He’s trying to bluff me into
dropping the faginy and enslavement charges and letting his clients
cop a plea on the burglary and larceny charges. He thinks I’m
afraid to prosecute those faginy and enslavement charges.
He’s right; I am. But I’m going ahead with
them.”
“Well, but, my God . . . !” Jack Holloway began to
explode. “What’s wrong with those charges?”
“Well, the faginy, now,” Brannhard said.
“That’s based on the assumption that Fuzzies are
equivalent to human children of ten-to-twelve, and that rests on a
reversible judicial opinion, not on statute law. Ingermann thinks
we’ll drop the charges rather than open the Fuzzies’
minor-child status to question, because that’s the basis of
the whole Government Fuzzy policy.”
“And you’re afraid of that?”
“Of course he is,” Coombes said. “So am I, and
so ought you to be. Just take the Yellowsand agreement. If the
Fuzzies are legally minor children, they can’t control or
dispose of property. The Government, as guardian-in-general of the
whole Fuzzy race, has authority to do that, including leasing
mineral lands. But suppose they’re adult aborigines. Even
Class-IV aborigines can control their own property, and according
to Federation Law, Terrans are forbidden to settle upon or exploit
the ‘anciently accustomed habitation’ of Class-IV
natives—in this case, Beta Continent north of the Snake and the
Little Blackwater, which includes Yellowsand Canyon—without the
natives’ consent. Consent, under Federation Law, must be
expressed by vote of a representative tribal council, or by the
will of a recognized tribal chief.”
“Well, Jesus-in-the-haymow!” Jack Holloway almost
yelled. “There is no such damned thing! They have no tribes,
just little family groups, about half a dozen in each. And who in
Nifflheim ever heard of a Fuzzy chief?”
“Then, we’re all right,” he said. “The
law cannot compel the performance of an impossibility.”
“You only have half of that, Victor,” Coombes said.
“The law, for instance, cannot compel a blind man to pass a
vision test. The law, however, can and does make passing
such a test a requirement for operating a contragravity vehicle.
Blind men cannot legally pilot aircars. So if we can’t secure
the consent of a nonexistent Fuzzy tribal council, we can’t
mine sunstones at Yellowsand, lease or no lease.”
“Then, we’ll get out all we can while the lease is
still good.” He’d stripped Big Blackwater of men and
equipment already; he was thinking of what other Peters could be
robbed to pay Yellowsand Paul. “We have a month till the
trial.”
“I’m just as interested in that as you are,
Victor,” Gus Brannhard said, “But that’s not the
only thing. There’s the Adoption Bureau: If the Fuzzies
aren’t minor children, somebody might make
enslavement—peonage at least—out of those adoptions. And the health
and education programs. And the hokfusine—sooner or later
some damned do-gooder’ll squawk about compulsory medication.
And here’s another angle: under Colonial Law, nobody is
chargeable with any degree of homicide in any case of a person
killed while committing a felony. As minor children of under
twelve, Fuzzies are legally incapable of committing felony. But if
they’re legally adults . . .
Jack literally howled. “Then, anybody could shoot a Fuzzy,
anytime, if he caught him breaking into something, or . . . ”
“Well, say we drop the faginy charges,” Fitz
Mortlake suggested. “We still have the other barrel loaded.
They can be shot just as dead for enslavement as for enslavement
and faginy.”
“Is the other barrel loaded, though?” Gus asked.
“I can put that gang on the stand—thank all the gods and the
man who invented the veridicator, there’s no law against
self-incrimination—I can’t force them to talk. You
can’t do things in open court like you can in the back room
at a police station. I may be able to get a conviction without the
Fuzzies’ testimony, but I can’t guarantee it. Tell him
about it, Dr. Mallin.”
“Well.” Ernst Mallin cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said again. “You all understand the
principles of the polyencephalographic veridicator. All mental
activity is accompanied by electromagnetic activity, in detectable
wave patterns. The veridicator is so adjusted as to respond only to
the wave patterns accompanying the suppression of a true statement
and the substitution of a false statement, by causing the blue
light in the globe to turn red. I have used the veridicator in
connection with psychological experiments with quite a few Fuzzies.
I have never had one change the blue light to red.”
He didn’t go into the legal aspects of that; that
wasn’t his subject. It was Gus Brannhard’s:
“And court testimony, no exception, must be given under
veridication, with a veridicator tested by having a test-witness
make a random series of true and false statements. If Fuzzies
can’t be veridicated, then Fuzzies can’t testify—like
Leslie’s blind man flying an aircar.”
“Yes, and that’ll play Nifflheim, too,” Ahmed
Khadra said. “How do you think we’ll prosecute anybody
for mistreating Fuzzies if the Fuzzies can’t testify against
him?”
“Or somebody claims Fuzzy adoptions are
enslavement,” Ben Rainsford said. “Victor’s
Diamond, for instance, or my Flora and Fauna. How could we prove
that our Fuzzies are happy with us and wouldn’t want to live
anywhere else, if they can’t testify to it?”
“Wait a minute. I’m just a layman,” Grego
said, “but I know that every accused person is entitled to
testify in his own defense. These Fuzzies are accused persons,
thanks to Hugo Ingermann himself.”
Brannhard laughed. “Ingermann’s hoping to hang us on
that,” he said. “He expects Leslie, who’s
defending them, to put them on the stand in Complaint Court, so
that I’ll have to attack their eligibility to testify and
stop myself from using their testimony against his clients. Well,
we won’t do it that way. Leslie’ll just plead them not
guilty but chargeable and waive hearing.”
“But then they’ll all have to stand trial,”
Grego objected.
“Sure they will.” The Attorney General’s laugh
became a belly-shaking guffaw. “Remember the last time a
bunch of Fuzzies got loose in court? We’ll just let them act
like Fuzzies, and see what it does to Ingermann’s claim that
they’re mature and responsible adults.”
“Dr. Mallin,” Coombes said suddenly. “You say
you never saw a Fuzzy red-light a veridicator. Did you ever hear a
Fuzzy make a demonstrably false statement under
veridication?”
“To my knowledge, I never heard a Fuzzy make a
demonstrably false statement under any circumstances, Mr.
Coombes.”
“Ah. And in People versus Kellogg and Holloway you gave
testimony about extensive studies you had made of Fuzzies’
electroencephalographic patterns. So their mental activity is
accompanied by electromagnetic activity?”
Maybe it might be a good thing to have a lawyer sit in on every
scientific discussion, just to see that the rules of evidence are
applied. Mallin gave one of his tight little smiles.
“Precisely, Mr. Coombes. Fuzzies exhibit the same general
wave-patterns as Terrans or any other known sapient race. All but
the suppression-substitution pattern which triggers the
light-change in the veridicator. No detection instrument can
function in the absence of the event it is intended to detect.
Fuzzies simply do not suppress true statements and substitute false
statements. That is, they do not lie.”
“That’ll be one hell of a thing to try to
prove,” Gus Brannhard said. “Fitz, you questioned those
Fuzzies under veridication after the gem-vault job, didn’t
you?”
“Yes. Ahmed and Miss Glenn interpreted for them; Diamond
helped too. The veridicator had been tested; we used scaled down
electrodes and a helmet made up in the robo-service shop at Company
House. We got nothing but blue from any of them. We accepted
that.”
“I would have, too,” Brannhard said. “But in
court we’ll have to show that the veridicator would have
red-lighted if any of them had tried to lie.”
“We need Fuzzy test-witnesses, to lie under
veridication,” Coombes said. “If they don’t know
how to lie, we’ll have to teach a few. I believe that will be
Dr. Mallin’s job; I will help. Do any of you gentlemen
collect paradoxes? This one’s a gem—to prove that Fuzzies
tell the truth, we must first prove that they tell lies. You know,
that’s one of the things I love about the law.”
Everybody laughed, except Jack Holloway. He sat staring glumly
at the tabletop.
“So now, along with everything else we’ve got to
make liars out of them too,” he said. “I wonder what
we’ll finally end up making them.”
GUS BRANNHARD SAID, “Well, I was wrong. I am most happy to
admit it. I’ve been getting the same reports, from all over,
and the editorial opinion is uniformly favorable.”
Leslie Coombes, in the screen, nodded. He was in the library of
his apartment across the city, with a coffee service and a stack of
papers and teleprint sheets on the table in front of him.
“Editorial opinion, of course, doesn’t win
elections, but the grass-roots level reports are just as good.
Things are going to be just as they always were, and that’s
what most people really want. It ought to gain us some votes,
instead of losing us any. These people Hugo Ingermann was
frightening with stories about how they were going to be taxed into
poverty to maintain the Fuzzies in luxury, for instance . . . Now
it appears that the Fuzzies will be financing the
Government.”
“Is Victor still in town?”
“Oh, no. He left for Yellowsand Canyon before daybreak.
He’s been having men and equipment shifted in there from Big
Blackwater for the last week. By this time, they’re probably
digging out sunstones by the peck.”
He laughed. Like a kid with a new rifle; couldn’t wait to
try it out. “I suppose he took Diamond along?” Grego
never went anywhere without his Fuzzy. “Well, why don’t
you drop around to Government House for cocktails? Jack’s
still in town, and we can talk without as many interruptions, human
and otherwise, as last evening.”
Coombes said he would be glad to. They chatted for a few
minutes, then broke the connection, and immediately the screen
buzzer began. When he put it on again, his screen-girl looked out
of it as though she smelled a week-old dead snake somewhere.
“The Honorable—technically, of course—Hugo
Ingermann,” she said. “He’s been trying to get
you for the last ten minutes.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to get him ever since I took
office,” he said. “Put him on.” Then he snapped
on the recorder.
The screen flickered and cleared, and a plump, well-barbered
face looked out of it, affable and candid, with innocently wide
blue eyes. A face anybody who didn’t know its owner would
trust.
“Good morning, Mr. Brannhard.”
“Good morning indeed, Mr. Ingermann. Is there something I
can do for you? Besides dropping dead, that is?”
“Ah, I believe there is something I can do for you, Mr.
Brannhard,” Ingermann beamed like an orphanage superintendent
on Christmas morning. “How would you like pleas of guilty
from Leo Thaxter, Conrad and Rose Evins, and Phil
Novaes?”
“I couldn’t even consider them. You know pleas of
guilty to capital charges aren’t admissible.”
Ingermann stared for a moment in feigned surprise, then laughed.
“Those ridiculous things? No, we are pleading guilty to the
proper and legitimate charges of first-degree burglary, grand
larceny, and criminal conspiracy. That is, of course, if the Colony
agrees to drop that silly farrago of faginy and enslavement
charges.”
He checked the impulse to ask Ingermann if he were crazy.
Whatever Hugo Ingermann was, he wasn’t that. He substituted:
“Do you think I’m crazy, Mr. Ingermann?”
“I hope you’re smart enough to see the advantage of
my offer,” Ingermann replied.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not. The advantage
to your clients, yes; that’s the difference between twenty
years in the penitentiary and a ten-millimeter bullet in the back
of the head. I’m afraid the advantage to the Colony is
slightly less apparent.”
“It shouldn’t be. You can’t get a conviction
on those charges, and you know it. I’m giving you a chance to
get off the hook.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you, Mr. Ingermann,
indeed it is. I’m afraid, though, that I can’t take
advantage of your good nature. You’ll just have to fight
those charges in court.”
“You think I can’t?” Ingermann was openly
contemptuous now. “You’re prosecuting my clients, if
that’s how you mispronounce it, on charges of faginy. You know perfectly well that the crime of faginy cannot be
committed against an adult, and you know, just as well, that
that’s what those Fuzzies are.”
“They are legally minor children.”
“They are classified as minor children by a court ruling.
That ruling is not only contrary to physical fact but is also a
flagrant usurpation of legislative power by the judiciary, and
hence unconstitutional. As such, I mean to attack it.”
And wouldn’t that play Nifflheim? The Government
couldn’t let that ruling be questioned; why, it would . . . Which was what Ingermann was counting on, of course. He
shrugged.
“We can get along without convicting them of faginy; we
can still convict them of enslavement. That’s the nice thing
about capital punishment: nobody needs to be shot in the head more
than once.”
Ingermann laughed scornfully. “You think you can frame my
clients on enslavement charges? Those Fuzzies weren’t slaves;
they were accomplices.”
“They were made drunk, transported under the influence of
liquor from their native habitat, confined under restraint,
compelled to perform work, and punished for failure to do so by
imprisonment in a dungeon, by starvation, and by electric-shock
tortures. If that isn’t a classic description of the
conditions of enslavement, I should like to hear one.”
“And have the Fuzzies accused my clients of these
crimes?” Ingermann asked. “Under veridication, on a
veridicator tested to distinguish between true and false statements
when made by Fuzzies?”
No, they hadn’t; and that was only half of it. The other
half was what he’d been afraid of all along.
“Don’t tell me; I’ll tell you,”
Ingermann went on. “They have not, for the excellent reason
that Fuzzies can’t be veridicated. I have that on the
authority of Dr. Ernst Mallin, Victor Grego’s chief
Fuzzyologist. A polyencephalographic veridicator simply will not
respond to Fuzzies. Now, you put those Fuzzies on the stand against
my clients and watch what happens.”
That was true. Mallin, who had the idea that scientific
information ought to be published, had stated that no Fuzzy with
whom he had worked had ever changed the blue light of a veridicator
to the red of falsehood. He had also stated that in his experience
no Fuzzy had ever made a false statement, under veridication or
otherwise. But Ingermann was ignoring that.
“And as to these faginy charges, if you people really
believe that Fuzzies are legally minor children, why was it thought
necessary to have a dozen and a half of them fingerprint that
Yellowsand lease agreement? Minor children do not sign documents
like that.”
He laughed. “Oh, that was just fun for the Fuzzies,”
he said. “They wanted to do what the Big Ones were
doing.”
“Mr. Brannhard!” From Ingermann’s tone, he
might have been a parent who has just been informed by a
five-year-old that a gang of bandits in black masks had come in and
looted the cookie jar. “Do you expect me to believe
that?”
“I don’t give a hoot on Nifflheim whether you do or
not, Mr. Ingermann. Now, was there anything else you wanted to talk
to me about?”
“Isn’t that enough for now?” Ingermann asked.
“The trial won’t be for a month yet. If, in the
meantime, you change your mind—and if you’re well-advised you
will—just give me a call. Goodbye for now.”
VICTOR GREGO’S AIRCAR pilot wasn’t usually insane . . . only when he got his hands on the controls of a vehicle.
Yellowsand Canyon was three time zones east of Mallorysport, and,
coming in, the sun was an hour higher than when they had lifted
out. Diamond had noticed that too, and commented on it.
A sergeant of the Marine guard met them on the top landing stage
of Government House. “Mr. Grego. Mr. Coombes and Mr.
Brannhard are here, with the Governor in his office.”
“Is anybody here going to try to arrest my Fuzzy?”
he asked.
The sergeant grinned. “No, sir. He’s been accused of
everything but space-piracy, high treason, and murder-one, along
with the others, but Marshal Fane says he won’t arrest any of
them if they show up tomorrow in Complaint Court.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Then, I won’t need
this.” Victor unbuckled his pistol, wrapping the belt around
the holster, and tossed it onto the back seat of the car, lifting
Diamond and setting him on his shoulder. “Go amuse yourself
for a couple of hours,” he told the pilot. “Stay around
where I can reach you, though.”
At the head of the escalator, he told Diamond the same thing,
watching him ride down and scamper across the garden in search of
Flora and Fauna and the rest of his friends. Then Victor went
inside, and found Leslie Coombes and Gus Brannhard seated with Ben
Rainsford at the oval table in the private conference room. They
exchanged greetings, and he sat down with them.
“Now, what the devil’s all this about arresting
Fuzzies?” he demanded. “What are they charged
with?”
“They aren’t charged with anything, yet,”
Brannhard told him. “Hugo Ingermann made information against
all six of them with the Colonial Marshal. He accused Allan
Pinkerton and Arsene Lupin and Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler and
Mata Hari of first-degree burglary, grand larceny and criminal
conspiracy, and Diamond with misprision of felony and
accessory-before-the-fact. They won’t be charged till the
accusations are heard in Complaint Court tomorrow.”
Complaint Court was something like the ancient grand jury—an
inquiry into whether or not a chargeable crime had been committed.
The accusation was on trial there, not the accused.
“Well, you aren’t letting it get past there, are
you?”
Before Brannhard could answer, Jack Holloway and Ernst Mallin
came in. Holloway was angry, the tips of his mustache twitching and
a feral glare in his eyes. He must have looked like that when he
beat up Kellogg and shot Borch. Ernst Mallin looked distressed;
he’d been in one criminal case involving Fuzzies, and that
had been enough. Ahmed Khadra entered behind them, with Fitz
Mortlake, the Company Police captain who was guardian-of-record for
the other five Fuzzies. After more greetings, they all sat
down.
“What are you going to do about this goddamned
thing?” Jack Holloway began while he was still pulling up his
chair. “You going to let that son of a Khooghra get away with
this?”
“If you mean the Fuzzies, hell, no,” Brannhard said.
“They’re not guilty of anything, and everybody,
Ingermann included, knows it. He’s trying to bluff me into
dropping the faginy and enslavement charges and letting his clients
cop a plea on the burglary and larceny charges. He thinks I’m
afraid to prosecute those faginy and enslavement charges.
He’s right; I am. But I’m going ahead with
them.”
“Well, but, my God . . . !” Jack Holloway began to
explode. “What’s wrong with those charges?”
“Well, the faginy, now,” Brannhard said.
“That’s based on the assumption that Fuzzies are
equivalent to human children of ten-to-twelve, and that rests on a
reversible judicial opinion, not on statute law. Ingermann thinks
we’ll drop the charges rather than open the Fuzzies’
minor-child status to question, because that’s the basis of
the whole Government Fuzzy policy.”
“And you’re afraid of that?”
“Of course he is,” Coombes said. “So am I, and
so ought you to be. Just take the Yellowsand agreement. If the
Fuzzies are legally minor children, they can’t control or
dispose of property. The Government, as guardian-in-general of the
whole Fuzzy race, has authority to do that, including leasing
mineral lands. But suppose they’re adult aborigines. Even
Class-IV aborigines can control their own property, and according
to Federation Law, Terrans are forbidden to settle upon or exploit
the ‘anciently accustomed habitation’ of Class-IV
natives—in this case, Beta Continent north of the Snake and the
Little Blackwater, which includes Yellowsand Canyon—without the
natives’ consent. Consent, under Federation Law, must be
expressed by vote of a representative tribal council, or by the
will of a recognized tribal chief.”
“Well, Jesus-in-the-haymow!” Jack Holloway almost
yelled. “There is no such damned thing! They have no tribes,
just little family groups, about half a dozen in each. And who in
Nifflheim ever heard of a Fuzzy chief?”
“Then, we’re all right,” he said. “The
law cannot compel the performance of an impossibility.”
“You only have half of that, Victor,” Coombes said.
“The law, for instance, cannot compel a blind man to pass a
vision test. The law, however, can and does make passing
such a test a requirement for operating a contragravity vehicle.
Blind men cannot legally pilot aircars. So if we can’t secure
the consent of a nonexistent Fuzzy tribal council, we can’t
mine sunstones at Yellowsand, lease or no lease.”
“Then, we’ll get out all we can while the lease is
still good.” He’d stripped Big Blackwater of men and
equipment already; he was thinking of what other Peters could be
robbed to pay Yellowsand Paul. “We have a month till the
trial.”
“I’m just as interested in that as you are,
Victor,” Gus Brannhard said, “But that’s not the
only thing. There’s the Adoption Bureau: If the Fuzzies
aren’t minor children, somebody might make
enslavement—peonage at least—out of those adoptions. And the health
and education programs. And the hokfusine—sooner or later
some damned do-gooder’ll squawk about compulsory medication.
And here’s another angle: under Colonial Law, nobody is
chargeable with any degree of homicide in any case of a person
killed while committing a felony. As minor children of under
twelve, Fuzzies are legally incapable of committing felony. But if
they’re legally adults . . .
Jack literally howled. “Then, anybody could shoot a Fuzzy,
anytime, if he caught him breaking into something, or . . . ”
“Well, say we drop the faginy charges,” Fitz
Mortlake suggested. “We still have the other barrel loaded.
They can be shot just as dead for enslavement as for enslavement
and faginy.”
“Is the other barrel loaded, though?” Gus asked.
“I can put that gang on the stand—thank all the gods and the
man who invented the veridicator, there’s no law against
self-incrimination—I can’t force them to talk. You
can’t do things in open court like you can in the back room
at a police station. I may be able to get a conviction without the
Fuzzies’ testimony, but I can’t guarantee it. Tell him
about it, Dr. Mallin.”
“Well.” Ernst Mallin cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said again. “You all understand the
principles of the polyencephalographic veridicator. All mental
activity is accompanied by electromagnetic activity, in detectable
wave patterns. The veridicator is so adjusted as to respond only to
the wave patterns accompanying the suppression of a true statement
and the substitution of a false statement, by causing the blue
light in the globe to turn red. I have used the veridicator in
connection with psychological experiments with quite a few Fuzzies.
I have never had one change the blue light to red.”
He didn’t go into the legal aspects of that; that
wasn’t his subject. It was Gus Brannhard’s:
“And court testimony, no exception, must be given under
veridication, with a veridicator tested by having a test-witness
make a random series of true and false statements. If Fuzzies
can’t be veridicated, then Fuzzies can’t testify—like
Leslie’s blind man flying an aircar.”
“Yes, and that’ll play Nifflheim, too,” Ahmed
Khadra said. “How do you think we’ll prosecute anybody
for mistreating Fuzzies if the Fuzzies can’t testify against
him?”
“Or somebody claims Fuzzy adoptions are
enslavement,” Ben Rainsford said. “Victor’s
Diamond, for instance, or my Flora and Fauna. How could we prove
that our Fuzzies are happy with us and wouldn’t want to live
anywhere else, if they can’t testify to it?”
“Wait a minute. I’m just a layman,” Grego
said, “but I know that every accused person is entitled to
testify in his own defense. These Fuzzies are accused persons,
thanks to Hugo Ingermann himself.”
Brannhard laughed. “Ingermann’s hoping to hang us on
that,” he said. “He expects Leslie, who’s
defending them, to put them on the stand in Complaint Court, so
that I’ll have to attack their eligibility to testify and
stop myself from using their testimony against his clients. Well,
we won’t do it that way. Leslie’ll just plead them not
guilty but chargeable and waive hearing.”
“But then they’ll all have to stand trial,”
Grego objected.
“Sure they will.” The Attorney General’s laugh
became a belly-shaking guffaw. “Remember the last time a
bunch of Fuzzies got loose in court? We’ll just let them act
like Fuzzies, and see what it does to Ingermann’s claim that
they’re mature and responsible adults.”
“Dr. Mallin,” Coombes said suddenly. “You say
you never saw a Fuzzy red-light a veridicator. Did you ever hear a
Fuzzy make a demonstrably false statement under
veridication?”
“To my knowledge, I never heard a Fuzzy make a
demonstrably false statement under any circumstances, Mr.
Coombes.”
“Ah. And in People versus Kellogg and Holloway you gave
testimony about extensive studies you had made of Fuzzies’
electroencephalographic patterns. So their mental activity is
accompanied by electromagnetic activity?”
Maybe it might be a good thing to have a lawyer sit in on every
scientific discussion, just to see that the rules of evidence are
applied. Mallin gave one of his tight little smiles.
“Precisely, Mr. Coombes. Fuzzies exhibit the same general
wave-patterns as Terrans or any other known sapient race. All but
the suppression-substitution pattern which triggers the
light-change in the veridicator. No detection instrument can
function in the absence of the event it is intended to detect.
Fuzzies simply do not suppress true statements and substitute false
statements. That is, they do not lie.”
“That’ll be one hell of a thing to try to
prove,” Gus Brannhard said. “Fitz, you questioned those
Fuzzies under veridication after the gem-vault job, didn’t
you?”
“Yes. Ahmed and Miss Glenn interpreted for them; Diamond
helped too. The veridicator had been tested; we used scaled down
electrodes and a helmet made up in the robo-service shop at Company
House. We got nothing but blue from any of them. We accepted
that.”
“I would have, too,” Brannhard said. “But in
court we’ll have to show that the veridicator would have
red-lighted if any of them had tried to lie.”
“We need Fuzzy test-witnesses, to lie under
veridication,” Coombes said. “If they don’t know
how to lie, we’ll have to teach a few. I believe that will be
Dr. Mallin’s job; I will help. Do any of you gentlemen
collect paradoxes? This one’s a gem—to prove that Fuzzies
tell the truth, we must first prove that they tell lies. You know,
that’s one of the things I love about the law.”
Everybody laughed, except Jack Holloway. He sat staring glumly
at the tabletop.
“So now, along with everything else we’ve got to
make liars out of them too,” he said. “I wonder what
we’ll finally end up making them.”