"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 3 - Other People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

similarly charged for having shot a Company gunman who had tried
to interfere while he was administering a beating to Kellogg. Both
cases, scheduled to be tried as one, would hinge on whether
Fuzzies were sapient beings or just cute little animals. On the
docket, it was People of the Colony of Zarathustra versus Kellogg
and Holloway, but, beginning with Holloway's lawyer, Gus
Brannhard, everybody was calling it Friends of Little Fuzzy versus
The Chartered Zarathustra Company.

Little Fuzzy and his friends won, and when, on September 14,
Chief Justice Frederic Pendarvis rapped with his gavel after
reading what would go down in Federation legal history as the
Pendarvis Decisions, Zarathustra became a Class-IV inhabited
planet. The Space Navy had to take over until a new Colonial
Government could be set up, and Bennett Rainsford was
appointed Governor-General. The Zarathustra Company's charter
was as dead as the Code of Hammurabi.

And Fuzzy fuzzy holloway was now Fuzzy sapiens Zarathustra.

He didn't know that anybody called him a Fuzzy.

When he and his kind called themselves anything, it was Gashta,
"People."

There were animals, of course, but they weren't People. They
couldn't talk, and they wouldn't make friends. Some were large and
dangerous, like the threehorned hesh-nazza, or the night-hunting
"screamers," or, worst of all, the gotza that soared on wide wings
and swooped upon their prey. And some were small and good to
eat, and the best of them were the zatku that scuttled on many legs
among the grass and had to be broken out of their hard shells to
get at the sweet white meat. One hunted and killed to eat, and one
avoided being killed and eaten, and one tried to have all the fun
one could.

Hunting was fun if game was not too scarce and one was not too
hungry. And it was fun to outwit something that was hunting one
and make a good escape. And it was fun to romp and chase one
another through the woods, and to find new things; and it was fun to
make a good sleeping-place and huddle together and talk until
sleep came. And then, when the sun came back from its sleeping-
place, it would be another day, and new and interesting things
would happen.

It had always been like that, for as long as he could remember, and
that had been a long time. He couldn't count how often the leaves
had turned yellow and red and then brown, and fallen from the
trees. All those who had been with the band when he was small
were gone, killed, or drifted away. Others had joined the band, and