TUESDAY DAWNED HOT and windless, a scarlet sun coming up in a
hard, brassy sky. The Fuzzies, who were in to wake Pappy Jack with
their whistles, didn’t like it; they were edgy and restless.
Maybe it would rain today after all. They had breakfast outside on
the picnic table, and then Ben decided he’d go back to his
camp and pick up a few things he hadn’t brought and now
decided he needed.
“My hunting rifle’s one,” he said, “and
I think I’ll circle down to the edge of the brush country and
see if I can pick off a zebralope. We ought to have some more fresh
meat.”
So, after eating, Rainsford got into his jeep and lifted away.
Across the run, Kellogg and Mallin were walking back and forth in
front of the camp, talking earnestly. When Ruth Ortheris and Gerd
van Riebeek came out, they stopped, broke off their conversation
and spoke briefly with them. Then Gerd and Ruth crossed the
footbridge and came up the path together.
The Fuzzies had scattered, by this time, to hunt prawns. Little
Fuzzy and Ko-Ko and Goldilocks ran to meet them; Ruth picked
Goldilocks up and carried her, and Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy ran on
ahead. They greeted Jack, declining coffee; Ruth sat down in a
chair with Goldilocks, Little Fuzzy jumped up on the table and
began looking for goodies, and when Gerd stretched out on his back
on the grass Ko-Ko sat down on his chest.
“Goldilocks is my favorite Fuzzy,” Ruth was saying.
“She is the sweetest thing. Of course, they’re all
pretty nice. I can’t get over how affectionate and trusting
they are; the ones we saw out in the woods were so
timid.”
“Well, the ones out in the woods don’t have any
Pappy Jack to look after them,” Gerd said. “I’d
imagine they’re very affectionate among themselves, but they
have so many things to be afraid of. You know, there’s
another prerequisite for sapience. It develops in some small,
relatively defenseless, animal surrounded by large and dangerous
enemies he can’t outrun or outfight. So, to survive, he has
to learn to outthink them. Like our own remote ancestors, or like
Little Fuzzy; he had his choice of getting sapient or getting
exterminated.”
Ruth seemed troubled. “Gerd, Dr. Mallin has found
absolutely nothing about them that indicates true
sapience.”
“Oh, Mallin be bloodied; he doesn’t know what
sapience is any more than I do. And a good deal less than you do,
I’d say. I think he’s trying to prove that the Fuzzies
aren’t sapient.”
Ruth looked startled. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s been sticking out all over him ever since he
came here. You’re a psychologist; don’t tell me you
haven’t seen it. Maybe if the Fuzzies were proven sapient it
would invalidate some theory he’s gotten out of a book, and
he’d have to do some thinking for himself. He wouldn’t
like that. But you have to admit he’s been fighting the idea,
intellectually and emotionally, right from the start. Why, they
could sit down with pencils and slide rules and start working
differential calculus and it wouldn’t convince
him.”
“Dr. Mallin’s trying to—” she began angrily.
Then she broke it off. “Jack, excuse us. We didn’t
really come over here to have a fight. We came to meet some
Fuzzies. Didn’t we, Goldilocks?”
Goldilocks was playing with the silver charm on the chain around
her neck, holding it to her ear and shaking it to make it tinkle,
making small delighted sounds. Finally she held it up and said,
“Yeek?”
“Yes, sweetie-pie, you can have it.” Ruth took the
chain from around her neck and put it over Goldilocks’ head;
she had to loop it three times before it would fit. “There
now; that’s your very own.”
“Oh, you mustn’t give her things like
that.”
“Why not. It’s just cheap trade-junk. You’ve
been on Loki, Jack, you know what it is.” He did; he’d
traded stuff like that to the natives himself. “Some of the
girls at the hospital there gave it to me for a joke. I only wear
it because I have it. Goldilocks likes it a lot better than I
do.”
An airjeep rose from the other side and floated across. Juan
Jimenez was piloting it; Ernst Mallin stuck his head out the window
on the right, asked her if she were ready and told Gerd that
Kellogg would pick him up in a few minutes. After she had gotten
into the jeep and it had lifted out, Gerd put Ko-Ko off his chest
and sat up, getting cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
“I don’t know what the devil’s gotten into
her,” he said, watching the jeep vanish. “Oh, yes, I
do. She’s gotten the Word from On High. Kellogg hath spoken.
Fuzzies are just silly little animals,” he said bitterly.
“You work for Kellogg, too, don’t you?”
“Yes. He doesn’t dictate my professional opinion,
though. You know, I thought, in the evil hour when I took this
job—” He rose to his feet, hitching his belt to balance the
weight of the pistol on the right against the camera, binoculars on
the left, and changed the subject abruptly. “Jack, has Ben
Rainsford sent a report on the Fuzzies to the Institute yet?”
he asked.
“Why?”
“If he hasn’t, tell him to hurry up and get one
in.”
There wasn’t time to go into that further. Kellogg’s
jeep was rising from the camp across the run and approaching.
He decided to let the breakfast dishes go till after lunch. Kurt
Borch had stayed behind at the Kellogg camp, so he kept an eye on
the Fuzzies and brought them back when they started to stray toward
the footbridge. Ben Rainsford hadn’t returned by lunchtime,
but zebralope hunting took a little time, even from the air. While
he was eating, outside, one of the rented airjeeps returned from
the northeast in a hurry, disgorging Ernst Mallin, Juan Jimenez and
Ruth Ortheris. Kurt Borch came hurrying out; they talked for a few
minutes, and then they all went inside. A little later, the second
jeep came in, even faster, and landed; Kellogg and van Riebeek
hastened into the living hut. There wasn’t anything more to
see. He carried the dishes into the kitchen and washed them, and
the Fuzzies went into the bedroom for their nap.
He was sitting at the table in the living room when Gerd van
Riebeek knocked on the open door.
“Jack, can I talk to you for a minute?” he
asked.
“Sure. Come in.”
Van Riebeek entered, unbuckling his gun belt. He shifted a chair
so that he could see the door from it, and laid the belt on the
floor at his feet when he sat down. Then he began to curse Leonard
Kellogg in four or five languages.
“Well, I agree, in principle; why in particular,
though?”
“You know what that son of a Kooghra’s doing?”
Gerd asked. “He and that—” He used a couple of Sheshan
words, viler than anything in Lingua Terra. “—that quack
headshrinker, Mallin, are preparing a report, accusing you and Ben
Rainsford of perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax. You taught
the Fuzzies some tricks; you and Rainsford, between you, made those
artifacts yourselves and the two of you are conspiring to foist the
Fuzzies off as sapient beings. Jack, if it weren’t so goddamn
stinking contemptible, it would be the biggest joke of the
century!”
“I take it they wanted you to sign this report,
too?”
“Yes, and I told Kellogg he could—” What Kellogg
could do, it seemed, was both appalling and physiologically
impossible. He cursed again, and then lit a cigarette and got hold
of himself. “Here’s what happened. Kellogg and I went
up that stream, about twenty miles down Cold Creek, the one
you’ve been working on, and up onto the high flat to a spring
and a stream that flows down in the opposite direction. Know where
I mean? Well, we found where some Fuzzies had been camping, among a
lot of fallen timber. And we found a little grave, where the
Fuzzies had buried one of their people.”
He should have expected something like that, and yet it startled
him. “You mean, they bury their dead? What was the grave
like?”
“A little stone cairn, about a foot and a half by three, a
foot high. Kellogg said it was just a big toilet pit, but I was
sure of what it was. I opened it. Stones under the cairn, and then
filled-in earth, and then a dead Fuzzy wrapped in grass. A female;
she’d been mangled by something, maybe a bush-goblin. And get
this Jack; they’d buried her prawn-stick with her.”
“They bury their dead! What was Kellogg doing, while you
were opening the grave?”
“Dithering around having ants. I’d been taking snaps
of the grave, and I was burbling away like an ass about how
important this was and how it was positive proof of sapience, and
he was insisting that we get back to camp at once. He called the
other jeep and told Mallin to get to camp immediately, and Mallin
and Ruth and Juan were there when we got in. As soon as Kellogg
told them what we’d found, Mallin turned fish-belly white and
wanted to know how we were going to suppress it. I asked him if he
was nuts, and then Kellogg came out with it. They don’t dare
let the Fuzzies be proven sapient.”
“Because the Company wants to sell Fuzzy furs?”
Van Riebeek looked at him in surprise. “I never thought of
that. I doubt if they did, either. No. Because if the Fuzzies are
sapient beings, the Company’s charter is automatically
void.”
This time Jack cursed, not Kellogg but himself.
“I am a senile old dotard! Good Lord, I know colonial law;
I’ve been skating on the edge of it on more planets than
you’re years old. And I never thought of that; why, of course
it would. Where are you now, with the Company, by the
way?”
“Out, but I couldn’t care less. I have enough in the
bank for the trip back to Terra, not counting what I can raise on
my boat and some other things. Xeno-naturalists don’t need to
worry about finding jobs. There’s Ben’s outfit, for
instance. And, brother, when I get back to Terra, what I’ll
spill about this deal!”
“If you get back. If you don’t have an accident
before you get on the ship.” He thought for a moment.
“Know anything about geology?”
“Why, some; I have to work with fossils. I’m as much
a paleonotologist as a zoologist. Why?”
“How’d you like to stay here with me and hunt fossil
jellyfish for a while? We won’t make twice as much, together,
as I’m making now, but you can look one way while I’m
looking the other, and we may both stay alive longer that
way.”
“You mean that, Jack?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
Van Riebeek rose and held out his hand; Jack came around the
table and shook it. Then he reached back and picked up his belt,
putting it on.
“Better put yours on, too, partner. Borch is probably the
only one we’ll need a gun for, but—”
Van Riebeek buckled on his belt, then drew his pistol and worked
the slide to load the chamber. “What are we going to
do?” he asked.
“Well, we’re going to try to handle it legally. Fact
is, I’m even going to call the cops.”
He punched out a combination on the communication screen. It
lighted and opened a window into the constabulary post. The
sergeant who looked out of it recognized him and grinned.
“Hi, Jack. How’s the family?” he asked.
“I’m coming up, one of these evenings, to see
them.”
“You can see some now.” Ko-Ko and Goldilocks and
Cinderella were coming out of the hall from the bedroom; he
gathered them up and put them on the table. The sergeant was
fascinated. Then he must have noticed that both Jack and Gerd were
wearing their guns in the house. His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You got problems, Jack?” he asked.
“Little ones; they may grow, though. I have some guests
here who have outstayed their welcome. For the record, better make
it that I have squatters I want evicted. If there were a couple of
blue uniforms around, maybe it might save me the price of a few
cartridges.”
“I read you. George was mentioning that you might regret
inviting that gang to camp on you.” He picked up a handphone.
“Calderon to Car Three,” he said. “Do you read
me, Three? Well, Jack Holloway’s got a little squatter
trouble. Yeah; that’s it. He’s ordering them off his
grant, and he thinks they might try to give him an argument. Yeah,
sure, Peace Lovin’ Jack Holloway, that’s him. Well, go
chase his squatters for him, and if they give you anything about
being Company big wheels, we don’t care what kind of wheels
they are, just so’s they start rolling.” He replaced
the phone. “Look for them in about an hour, Jack.”
“Why, thanks, Phil. Drop in some evening when you can hang
up your gun and stay awhile.”
He blanked the screen and began punching again. This time he got
a girl, and then the Company construction boss at Red Hill.
“Oh, hello, Jack; is Dr. Kellogg comfortable?”
“Not very. He’s moving out this afternoon. I wish
you’d have your gang come up with those scows and get that
stuff out of my backyard.”
“Well, he told us he was staying for a couple of
weeks.”
“He got his mind changed for him. He’s to be off my
land by sunset.”
The Company man looked troubled. “Jack, you haven’t
been having trouble with Dr. Kellogg, have you?” he asked.
“He’s a big man with the Company.”
“That’s what he tells me. You’ll still have to
come and get that stuff, though.”
He blanked the screen. “You know,” he said, “I
think it would be no more than fair to let Kellogg in on this.
What’s his screen combination?”
Gerd supplied it, and he punched it out. One of those tricky
special Company combinations. Kurt Borch appeared in the screen
immediately.
“I want to talk to Kellogg.”
“Doctor Kellogg is very busy, at present.”
“He’s going to be a damned sight busier; this is
moving day. The whole gang of you have till eighteen hundred to get
off my grant.”
Borch was shoved aside, and Kellogg appeared.
“What’s this nonsense?” he demanded angrily.
“You’re ordered to move. You want to know why? I can
let Gerd van Riebeek talk to you; I think there are a few things
he’s forgotten to call you.”
“You can’t order us out like this. Why, you gave us
permission—”
“Permission cancelled. I’ve called Mike Hennen in
Red Hill; he’s sending his scows back for the stuff he
brought here. Lieutenant Lunt will have a couple of troopers here,
too. I’ll expect you to have your personal things aboard your
airboat when they arrive.”
He blanked the screen while Kellogg was trying to tell him that
it was all a misunderstanding.
“I think that’s everything. It’s quite a while
till sundown,” he added, “but I move for suspension of
rules while we pour a small libation to sprinkle our new
partnership. Then we can go outside and observe the
enemy.”
There was no observable enemy action when they went out and sat
down on the bench by the kitchen door. Kellogg would be screening
Mike Hennen and the constabulary post for verification, and there
would be a lot of gathering up and packing to do. Finally, Kurt
Borch emerged with a contragravity lifter piled with boxes and
luggage, and Jimenez walking beside to steady the load. Jimenez
climbed up onto the airboat and Borch floated the load up to him
and then went back into the huts. This was repeated several times.
In the meantime, Kellogg and Mallin seemed to be having some sort
of exchange of recriminations in front. Ruth Ortheris came out,
carrying a briefcase, and sat down on the edge of a table under the
awning.
Neither of them had been watching the Fuzzies, until they saw
one of them start down the path toward the footbridge, a glint of
silver at the throat identifying Goldilocks.
“Look at that fool kid; you stay put, Gerd, and I’ll
bring her back.”
He started down the path; by the time he had reached the bridge,
Goldilocks was across and had vanished behind one of the airjeeps
parked in front of the Kellogg camp. When he was across and within
twenty feet of the vehicle, he heard a sound he had never heard
before—a shrill, thin shriek, like a file on saw teeth. At the same
time, Ruth’s voice screamed.
“Don’t! Leonard, stop that!”
As he ran around the jeep, the shrieking broke off suddenly.
Goldilocks was on the ground, her fur reddened. Kellogg stood over
her, one foot raised. He was wearing white shoes, and they were
both spotted with blood. He stamped the foot down on the little
bleeding body, and then Jack was within reach of him, and something
crunched under the fist he drove into Kellogg’s face. Kellogg
staggered and tried to raise his hands; he made a strangled noise,
and for an instant the idiotic thought crossed Jack’s mind
that he was trying to say, “Now, please don’t
misunderstand me.” He caught Kellogg’s shirt front in
his left hand, and punched him again in the face, and again, and
again. He didn’t know how many times he punched Kellogg
before he heard Ruth Ortheris’ voice:
“Jack! Watch out! Behind you!”
He let go of Kellogg’s shirt and jumped aside, turning and
reaching for his gun. Kurt Borch, twenty feet away, had a pistol
drawn and pointed at him.
His first shot went off as soon as the pistol was clear of the
holster. He fired the second while it was still recoiling; there
was a spot of red on Borch’s shirt that gave him an aiming
point for the third. Borch dropped the pistol he hadn’t been
able to fire, and started folding at the knees and then at the
waist. He went down in a heap on his face.
Behind him, Gerd van Riebeek’s voice was saying,
“Hold it, all of you; get your hands up. You, too,
Kellogg.”
Kellogg, who had fallen, pushed himself erect. Blood was gushing
from his nose, and he tried to stanch it on the sleeve of his
jacket. As he stumbled toward his companions, he blundered into
Ruth Ortheris, who pushed him angrily away from her. Then she went
to the little crushed body, dropping to her knees beside it and
touching it. The silver charm bell on the neck chain jingled
faintly. Ruth began to cry.
Juan Jimenez had climbed down from the airboat; he was looking
at the body of Kurt Borch in horror.
“You killed him!” he accused. A moment later, he
changed that to “murdered.” Then he started to run
toward the living hut.
Gerd van Riebeek fired a bullet into the ground ahead of him,
bringing him up short.
“You’ll stop the next one, Juan,” he said.
“Go help Dr. Kellogg; he got himself hurt.”
“Call the constabulary,” Mallin was saying.
“Ruth, you go; they won’t shoot at you.”
“Don’t bother. I called them. Remember?”
Jimenez had gotten a wad of handkerchief tissue out of his
pocket and was trying to stop his superior’s nosebleed.
Through it, Kellogg was trying to tell Mallin that he hadn’t
been able to help it.
“The little beast attacked me; it cut me with that spear
it was carrying.”
Ruth Ortheris looked up. The other Fuzzies were with her by the
body of Goldilocks; they must have come as soon as they had heard
the screaming.
“She came up to him and pulled at his trouser leg, the way
they all do when they want to attract your attention,” she
said. “She wanted him to look at her new jingle.” Her
voice broke, and it was a moment before she could recover it.
“And he kicked her, and then stamped her to death.”
“Ruth, keep your mouth shut!” Mallin ordered.
“The thing attacked Leonard; it might have given him a
serious wound.”
“It did!” Still holding the wad of tissue to his
nose with one hand, Kellogg pulled up his trouser leg with the
other and showed a scar on his shin. It looked like a briar
scratch. “You saw it yourself.”
“Yes, I saw it. I saw you kick her and jump on her. And
all she wanted was to show you her new jingle.”
Jack was beginning to regret that he hadn’t shot Kellogg
as soon as he saw what was going on. The other Fuzzies had been
trying to get Goldilocks onto her feet. When they realized that it
was no use, they let the body down again and crouched in a circle
around it, making soft, lamenting sounds.
“Well, when the constabulary get here, you keep
quiet,” Mallin was saying. “Let me do the
talking.”
“Intimidating witnesses, Mallin?” Gerd inquired.
“Don’t you know everybody’ll have to testify at
the constabulary post under veridication? And you’re drawing
pay for being a psychologist, too.” Then he saw some of the
Fuzzies raise their heads and look toward the southeastern horizon.
“Here come the cops, now.”
However, it was Ben Rainsford’s airjeep, with a zebralope
carcass lashed along one side. It circled the Kellogg camp and then
let down quickly; Rainsford jumped out as soon as it was grounded,
his pistol drawn.
“What happened, Jack?” he asked, then glanced
around, from Goldilocks to Kellogg to Borch to the pistol beside
Borch’s body. “I get it. Last time anybody pulled a gun
on you, they called it suicide.”
“That’s what this was, more or less. You have a
movie camera in your jeep? Well, get some shots of Borch, and some
of Goldilocks. Then stand by, and if the Fuzzies start doing
anything different, get it all. I don’t think you’ll be
disappointed.”
Rainsford looked puzzled, but he holstered his pistol and went
back to his jeep, returning with a camera. Mallin began insisting
that, as a licensed M.D., he had a right to treat Kellogg’s
injuries. Gerd van Riebeek followed him into the living but for a
first-aid kit. They were just emerging, van Riebeek’s
automatic in the small of Mallin’s back, when a constabulary
car grounded beside Rainsford’s airjeep. It wasn’t Car
Three. George Lunt jumped out, unsnapping the flap of his holster,
while Ahmed Khadra was talking into the radio.
“What’s happened, Jack? Why didn’t you wait
till we got here?”
“This maniac assaulted me and murdered that man over
there!” Kellogg began vociferating.
“Is your name Jack, too?” Lunt demanded.
“My name’s Leonard Kellogg, and I’m a chief of
division with the Company—”
“Then keep quiet till I ask you something. Ahmed, call the
post; get Knabber and Yorimitsu, with investigative equipment, and
find out what’s tying up Car Three.”
Mallin had opened the first-aid kit by now; Gerd, on seeing the
constabulary, had holstered his pistol. Kellogg, still holding the
sodden tissues to his nose, was wanting to know what there was to
investigate.
“There’s the murderer; you have him red-handed. Why
don’t you arrest him?”
“Jack, let’s get over where we can watch these
people without having to listen to them,” Lunt said. He
glanced toward the body of Goldilocks. “That happen
first?”
“Watch out, Lieutenant! He still has his pistol!”
Mallin shouted warningly.
They went over and sat down on the contragravity-field generator
housing one of the rented airjeeps. Jack started with Gerd van
Riebeek’s visit immediately after noon.
“Yes, I thought of that angle myself,” Lunt said
disgustedly. “I didn’t think of it till this morning,
though, and I didn’t think things would blow up as fast as
this. Hell, I just didn’t think! Well, go on.”
He interrupted a little later to ask: “Kellogg was
stamping on the Fuzzy when you hit him. You were trying to stop
him?”
“That’s right. You can veridicate me on that if you
want to.”
“I will; I’ll veridicate this whole damn gang. And
this guy Borch had his heater out when you turned around? Nothing
to it, Jack. We’ll have to have some kind of a hearing, but
it’s just plain self-defense. Think any of this gang will
tell the truth here, without taking them in and putting them under
veridication?”
“Ruth Ortheris will, I think.”
“Send her over here, will you.”
She was still with the Fuzzies, and Ben Rainsford was standing
beside her, his camera ready. The Fuzzies were still swaying and
yeeking plaintively. She nodded and rose without speaking, going
over to where Lunt waited.
“Just what did happen, Jack?” Rainsford wanted to
know. “And whose side is he on?” He nodded toward van
Riebeek, standing guard over Kellogg and Mallin, his thumbs in his
pistol belt.
“Ours. He’s quit the Company.”
Just as he was finishing, Car Three put in an appearance; he had
to tell the same story over again. The area in front of the Kellogg
camp was getting congested; he hoped Mike Hennen’s labor gang
would stay away for a while. Lunt talked to van Riebeek when he had
finished with Ruth, and then with Jimenez and Mallin and Kellogg.
Then he and one of the men from Car Three came over to where Jack
and Rainsford were standing. Gerd van Riebeek joined them just as
Lunt was saying:
“Jack, Kellogg’s made a murder complaint against
you. I told him it was self-defense, but he wouldn’t listen.
So, according to the book, I have to arrest you.”
“All right.” He unbuckled his gun and handed it
over. “Now, George, I herewith make complaint and accusation
against Leonard Kellogg, charging him with the unlawful and
unjustified killing of a sapient being, to wit, an aboriginal
native of the planet of Zarathustra commonly known as
Goldilocks.”
Lunt looked at the small battered body and the six mourners
around it.
“But, Jack, they aren’t legally sapient
beings.”
“There is no such thing. A sapient being is a being on the
mental level of sapience, not a being that has been declared
sapient.”
“Fuzzies are sapient beings,” Rainsford said.
“That’s the opinion of a qualified
xenonaturalist.”
“Two of them,” Gerd van Riebeek said. “That is
the body of a sapient being. There’s the man who killed her.
Go ahead, Lieutenant, make your pinch.”
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
The Fuzzies were rising, sliding their chopper-diggers under the
body of Goldilocks and lifting it on the steel shafts. Ben
Rainsford was aiming his camera as Cinderella picked up her
sister’s weapon and followed, carrying it; the others carried
the body toward the far corner of the clearing, away from the camp.
Rainsford kept just behind them, pausing to photograph and then
hurrying to keep up with them.
They set the body down. Mike and Mitzi and Cinderella began
digging; the others scattered to hunt for stones. Coming up behind
them, George Lunt took off his beret and stood holding it in both
hands; he bowed his head as the grass-wrapped body was placed in
the little grave and covered.
Then, when the cairn was finished, he replaced it, drew his
pistol and checked the chamber.
“That does it, Jack,” he said. “I am now going
to arrest Leonard Kellogg for the murder of a sapient
being.”
TUESDAY DAWNED HOT and windless, a scarlet sun coming up in a
hard, brassy sky. The Fuzzies, who were in to wake Pappy Jack with
their whistles, didn’t like it; they were edgy and restless.
Maybe it would rain today after all. They had breakfast outside on
the picnic table, and then Ben decided he’d go back to his
camp and pick up a few things he hadn’t brought and now
decided he needed.
“My hunting rifle’s one,” he said, “and
I think I’ll circle down to the edge of the brush country and
see if I can pick off a zebralope. We ought to have some more fresh
meat.”
So, after eating, Rainsford got into his jeep and lifted away.
Across the run, Kellogg and Mallin were walking back and forth in
front of the camp, talking earnestly. When Ruth Ortheris and Gerd
van Riebeek came out, they stopped, broke off their conversation
and spoke briefly with them. Then Gerd and Ruth crossed the
footbridge and came up the path together.
The Fuzzies had scattered, by this time, to hunt prawns. Little
Fuzzy and Ko-Ko and Goldilocks ran to meet them; Ruth picked
Goldilocks up and carried her, and Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy ran on
ahead. They greeted Jack, declining coffee; Ruth sat down in a
chair with Goldilocks, Little Fuzzy jumped up on the table and
began looking for goodies, and when Gerd stretched out on his back
on the grass Ko-Ko sat down on his chest.
“Goldilocks is my favorite Fuzzy,” Ruth was saying.
“She is the sweetest thing. Of course, they’re all
pretty nice. I can’t get over how affectionate and trusting
they are; the ones we saw out in the woods were so
timid.”
“Well, the ones out in the woods don’t have any
Pappy Jack to look after them,” Gerd said. “I’d
imagine they’re very affectionate among themselves, but they
have so many things to be afraid of. You know, there’s
another prerequisite for sapience. It develops in some small,
relatively defenseless, animal surrounded by large and dangerous
enemies he can’t outrun or outfight. So, to survive, he has
to learn to outthink them. Like our own remote ancestors, or like
Little Fuzzy; he had his choice of getting sapient or getting
exterminated.”
Ruth seemed troubled. “Gerd, Dr. Mallin has found
absolutely nothing about them that indicates true
sapience.”
“Oh, Mallin be bloodied; he doesn’t know what
sapience is any more than I do. And a good deal less than you do,
I’d say. I think he’s trying to prove that the Fuzzies
aren’t sapient.”
Ruth looked startled. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s been sticking out all over him ever since he
came here. You’re a psychologist; don’t tell me you
haven’t seen it. Maybe if the Fuzzies were proven sapient it
would invalidate some theory he’s gotten out of a book, and
he’d have to do some thinking for himself. He wouldn’t
like that. But you have to admit he’s been fighting the idea,
intellectually and emotionally, right from the start. Why, they
could sit down with pencils and slide rules and start working
differential calculus and it wouldn’t convince
him.”
“Dr. Mallin’s trying to—” she began angrily.
Then she broke it off. “Jack, excuse us. We didn’t
really come over here to have a fight. We came to meet some
Fuzzies. Didn’t we, Goldilocks?”
Goldilocks was playing with the silver charm on the chain around
her neck, holding it to her ear and shaking it to make it tinkle,
making small delighted sounds. Finally she held it up and said,
“Yeek?”
“Yes, sweetie-pie, you can have it.” Ruth took the
chain from around her neck and put it over Goldilocks’ head;
she had to loop it three times before it would fit. “There
now; that’s your very own.”
“Oh, you mustn’t give her things like
that.”
“Why not. It’s just cheap trade-junk. You’ve
been on Loki, Jack, you know what it is.” He did; he’d
traded stuff like that to the natives himself. “Some of the
girls at the hospital there gave it to me for a joke. I only wear
it because I have it. Goldilocks likes it a lot better than I
do.”
An airjeep rose from the other side and floated across. Juan
Jimenez was piloting it; Ernst Mallin stuck his head out the window
on the right, asked her if she were ready and told Gerd that
Kellogg would pick him up in a few minutes. After she had gotten
into the jeep and it had lifted out, Gerd put Ko-Ko off his chest
and sat up, getting cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
“I don’t know what the devil’s gotten into
her,” he said, watching the jeep vanish. “Oh, yes, I
do. She’s gotten the Word from On High. Kellogg hath spoken.
Fuzzies are just silly little animals,” he said bitterly.
“You work for Kellogg, too, don’t you?”
“Yes. He doesn’t dictate my professional opinion,
though. You know, I thought, in the evil hour when I took this
job—” He rose to his feet, hitching his belt to balance the
weight of the pistol on the right against the camera, binoculars on
the left, and changed the subject abruptly. “Jack, has Ben
Rainsford sent a report on the Fuzzies to the Institute yet?”
he asked.
“Why?”
“If he hasn’t, tell him to hurry up and get one
in.”
There wasn’t time to go into that further. Kellogg’s
jeep was rising from the camp across the run and approaching.
He decided to let the breakfast dishes go till after lunch. Kurt
Borch had stayed behind at the Kellogg camp, so he kept an eye on
the Fuzzies and brought them back when they started to stray toward
the footbridge. Ben Rainsford hadn’t returned by lunchtime,
but zebralope hunting took a little time, even from the air. While
he was eating, outside, one of the rented airjeeps returned from
the northeast in a hurry, disgorging Ernst Mallin, Juan Jimenez and
Ruth Ortheris. Kurt Borch came hurrying out; they talked for a few
minutes, and then they all went inside. A little later, the second
jeep came in, even faster, and landed; Kellogg and van Riebeek
hastened into the living hut. There wasn’t anything more to
see. He carried the dishes into the kitchen and washed them, and
the Fuzzies went into the bedroom for their nap.
He was sitting at the table in the living room when Gerd van
Riebeek knocked on the open door.
“Jack, can I talk to you for a minute?” he
asked.
“Sure. Come in.”
Van Riebeek entered, unbuckling his gun belt. He shifted a chair
so that he could see the door from it, and laid the belt on the
floor at his feet when he sat down. Then he began to curse Leonard
Kellogg in four or five languages.
“Well, I agree, in principle; why in particular,
though?”
“You know what that son of a Kooghra’s doing?”
Gerd asked. “He and that—” He used a couple of Sheshan
words, viler than anything in Lingua Terra. “—that quack
headshrinker, Mallin, are preparing a report, accusing you and Ben
Rainsford of perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax. You taught
the Fuzzies some tricks; you and Rainsford, between you, made those
artifacts yourselves and the two of you are conspiring to foist the
Fuzzies off as sapient beings. Jack, if it weren’t so goddamn
stinking contemptible, it would be the biggest joke of the
century!”
“I take it they wanted you to sign this report,
too?”
“Yes, and I told Kellogg he could—” What Kellogg
could do, it seemed, was both appalling and physiologically
impossible. He cursed again, and then lit a cigarette and got hold
of himself. “Here’s what happened. Kellogg and I went
up that stream, about twenty miles down Cold Creek, the one
you’ve been working on, and up onto the high flat to a spring
and a stream that flows down in the opposite direction. Know where
I mean? Well, we found where some Fuzzies had been camping, among a
lot of fallen timber. And we found a little grave, where the
Fuzzies had buried one of their people.”
He should have expected something like that, and yet it startled
him. “You mean, they bury their dead? What was the grave
like?”
“A little stone cairn, about a foot and a half by three, a
foot high. Kellogg said it was just a big toilet pit, but I was
sure of what it was. I opened it. Stones under the cairn, and then
filled-in earth, and then a dead Fuzzy wrapped in grass. A female;
she’d been mangled by something, maybe a bush-goblin. And get
this Jack; they’d buried her prawn-stick with her.”
“They bury their dead! What was Kellogg doing, while you
were opening the grave?”
“Dithering around having ants. I’d been taking snaps
of the grave, and I was burbling away like an ass about how
important this was and how it was positive proof of sapience, and
he was insisting that we get back to camp at once. He called the
other jeep and told Mallin to get to camp immediately, and Mallin
and Ruth and Juan were there when we got in. As soon as Kellogg
told them what we’d found, Mallin turned fish-belly white and
wanted to know how we were going to suppress it. I asked him if he
was nuts, and then Kellogg came out with it. They don’t dare
let the Fuzzies be proven sapient.”
“Because the Company wants to sell Fuzzy furs?”
Van Riebeek looked at him in surprise. “I never thought of
that. I doubt if they did, either. No. Because if the Fuzzies are
sapient beings, the Company’s charter is automatically
void.”
This time Jack cursed, not Kellogg but himself.
“I am a senile old dotard! Good Lord, I know colonial law;
I’ve been skating on the edge of it on more planets than
you’re years old. And I never thought of that; why, of course
it would. Where are you now, with the Company, by the
way?”
“Out, but I couldn’t care less. I have enough in the
bank for the trip back to Terra, not counting what I can raise on
my boat and some other things. Xeno-naturalists don’t need to
worry about finding jobs. There’s Ben’s outfit, for
instance. And, brother, when I get back to Terra, what I’ll
spill about this deal!”
“If you get back. If you don’t have an accident
before you get on the ship.” He thought for a moment.
“Know anything about geology?”
“Why, some; I have to work with fossils. I’m as much
a paleonotologist as a zoologist. Why?”
“How’d you like to stay here with me and hunt fossil
jellyfish for a while? We won’t make twice as much, together,
as I’m making now, but you can look one way while I’m
looking the other, and we may both stay alive longer that
way.”
“You mean that, Jack?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
Van Riebeek rose and held out his hand; Jack came around the
table and shook it. Then he reached back and picked up his belt,
putting it on.
“Better put yours on, too, partner. Borch is probably the
only one we’ll need a gun for, but—”
Van Riebeek buckled on his belt, then drew his pistol and worked
the slide to load the chamber. “What are we going to
do?” he asked.
“Well, we’re going to try to handle it legally. Fact
is, I’m even going to call the cops.”
He punched out a combination on the communication screen. It
lighted and opened a window into the constabulary post. The
sergeant who looked out of it recognized him and grinned.
“Hi, Jack. How’s the family?” he asked.
“I’m coming up, one of these evenings, to see
them.”
“You can see some now.” Ko-Ko and Goldilocks and
Cinderella were coming out of the hall from the bedroom; he
gathered them up and put them on the table. The sergeant was
fascinated. Then he must have noticed that both Jack and Gerd were
wearing their guns in the house. His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You got problems, Jack?” he asked.
“Little ones; they may grow, though. I have some guests
here who have outstayed their welcome. For the record, better make
it that I have squatters I want evicted. If there were a couple of
blue uniforms around, maybe it might save me the price of a few
cartridges.”
“I read you. George was mentioning that you might regret
inviting that gang to camp on you.” He picked up a handphone.
“Calderon to Car Three,” he said. “Do you read
me, Three? Well, Jack Holloway’s got a little squatter
trouble. Yeah; that’s it. He’s ordering them off his
grant, and he thinks they might try to give him an argument. Yeah,
sure, Peace Lovin’ Jack Holloway, that’s him. Well, go
chase his squatters for him, and if they give you anything about
being Company big wheels, we don’t care what kind of wheels
they are, just so’s they start rolling.” He replaced
the phone. “Look for them in about an hour, Jack.”
“Why, thanks, Phil. Drop in some evening when you can hang
up your gun and stay awhile.”
He blanked the screen and began punching again. This time he got
a girl, and then the Company construction boss at Red Hill.
“Oh, hello, Jack; is Dr. Kellogg comfortable?”
“Not very. He’s moving out this afternoon. I wish
you’d have your gang come up with those scows and get that
stuff out of my backyard.”
“Well, he told us he was staying for a couple of
weeks.”
“He got his mind changed for him. He’s to be off my
land by sunset.”
The Company man looked troubled. “Jack, you haven’t
been having trouble with Dr. Kellogg, have you?” he asked.
“He’s a big man with the Company.”
“That’s what he tells me. You’ll still have to
come and get that stuff, though.”
He blanked the screen. “You know,” he said, “I
think it would be no more than fair to let Kellogg in on this.
What’s his screen combination?”
Gerd supplied it, and he punched it out. One of those tricky
special Company combinations. Kurt Borch appeared in the screen
immediately.
“I want to talk to Kellogg.”
“Doctor Kellogg is very busy, at present.”
“He’s going to be a damned sight busier; this is
moving day. The whole gang of you have till eighteen hundred to get
off my grant.”
Borch was shoved aside, and Kellogg appeared.
“What’s this nonsense?” he demanded angrily.
“You’re ordered to move. You want to know why? I can
let Gerd van Riebeek talk to you; I think there are a few things
he’s forgotten to call you.”
“You can’t order us out like this. Why, you gave us
permission—”
“Permission cancelled. I’ve called Mike Hennen in
Red Hill; he’s sending his scows back for the stuff he
brought here. Lieutenant Lunt will have a couple of troopers here,
too. I’ll expect you to have your personal things aboard your
airboat when they arrive.”
He blanked the screen while Kellogg was trying to tell him that
it was all a misunderstanding.
“I think that’s everything. It’s quite a while
till sundown,” he added, “but I move for suspension of
rules while we pour a small libation to sprinkle our new
partnership. Then we can go outside and observe the
enemy.”
There was no observable enemy action when they went out and sat
down on the bench by the kitchen door. Kellogg would be screening
Mike Hennen and the constabulary post for verification, and there
would be a lot of gathering up and packing to do. Finally, Kurt
Borch emerged with a contragravity lifter piled with boxes and
luggage, and Jimenez walking beside to steady the load. Jimenez
climbed up onto the airboat and Borch floated the load up to him
and then went back into the huts. This was repeated several times.
In the meantime, Kellogg and Mallin seemed to be having some sort
of exchange of recriminations in front. Ruth Ortheris came out,
carrying a briefcase, and sat down on the edge of a table under the
awning.
Neither of them had been watching the Fuzzies, until they saw
one of them start down the path toward the footbridge, a glint of
silver at the throat identifying Goldilocks.
“Look at that fool kid; you stay put, Gerd, and I’ll
bring her back.”
He started down the path; by the time he had reached the bridge,
Goldilocks was across and had vanished behind one of the airjeeps
parked in front of the Kellogg camp. When he was across and within
twenty feet of the vehicle, he heard a sound he had never heard
before—a shrill, thin shriek, like a file on saw teeth. At the same
time, Ruth’s voice screamed.
“Don’t! Leonard, stop that!”
As he ran around the jeep, the shrieking broke off suddenly.
Goldilocks was on the ground, her fur reddened. Kellogg stood over
her, one foot raised. He was wearing white shoes, and they were
both spotted with blood. He stamped the foot down on the little
bleeding body, and then Jack was within reach of him, and something
crunched under the fist he drove into Kellogg’s face. Kellogg
staggered and tried to raise his hands; he made a strangled noise,
and for an instant the idiotic thought crossed Jack’s mind
that he was trying to say, “Now, please don’t
misunderstand me.” He caught Kellogg’s shirt front in
his left hand, and punched him again in the face, and again, and
again. He didn’t know how many times he punched Kellogg
before he heard Ruth Ortheris’ voice:
“Jack! Watch out! Behind you!”
He let go of Kellogg’s shirt and jumped aside, turning and
reaching for his gun. Kurt Borch, twenty feet away, had a pistol
drawn and pointed at him.
His first shot went off as soon as the pistol was clear of the
holster. He fired the second while it was still recoiling; there
was a spot of red on Borch’s shirt that gave him an aiming
point for the third. Borch dropped the pistol he hadn’t been
able to fire, and started folding at the knees and then at the
waist. He went down in a heap on his face.
Behind him, Gerd van Riebeek’s voice was saying,
“Hold it, all of you; get your hands up. You, too,
Kellogg.”
Kellogg, who had fallen, pushed himself erect. Blood was gushing
from his nose, and he tried to stanch it on the sleeve of his
jacket. As he stumbled toward his companions, he blundered into
Ruth Ortheris, who pushed him angrily away from her. Then she went
to the little crushed body, dropping to her knees beside it and
touching it. The silver charm bell on the neck chain jingled
faintly. Ruth began to cry.
Juan Jimenez had climbed down from the airboat; he was looking
at the body of Kurt Borch in horror.
“You killed him!” he accused. A moment later, he
changed that to “murdered.” Then he started to run
toward the living hut.
Gerd van Riebeek fired a bullet into the ground ahead of him,
bringing him up short.
“You’ll stop the next one, Juan,” he said.
“Go help Dr. Kellogg; he got himself hurt.”
“Call the constabulary,” Mallin was saying.
“Ruth, you go; they won’t shoot at you.”
“Don’t bother. I called them. Remember?”
Jimenez had gotten a wad of handkerchief tissue out of his
pocket and was trying to stop his superior’s nosebleed.
Through it, Kellogg was trying to tell Mallin that he hadn’t
been able to help it.
“The little beast attacked me; it cut me with that spear
it was carrying.”
Ruth Ortheris looked up. The other Fuzzies were with her by the
body of Goldilocks; they must have come as soon as they had heard
the screaming.
“She came up to him and pulled at his trouser leg, the way
they all do when they want to attract your attention,” she
said. “She wanted him to look at her new jingle.” Her
voice broke, and it was a moment before she could recover it.
“And he kicked her, and then stamped her to death.”
“Ruth, keep your mouth shut!” Mallin ordered.
“The thing attacked Leonard; it might have given him a
serious wound.”
“It did!” Still holding the wad of tissue to his
nose with one hand, Kellogg pulled up his trouser leg with the
other and showed a scar on his shin. It looked like a briar
scratch. “You saw it yourself.”
“Yes, I saw it. I saw you kick her and jump on her. And
all she wanted was to show you her new jingle.”
Jack was beginning to regret that he hadn’t shot Kellogg
as soon as he saw what was going on. The other Fuzzies had been
trying to get Goldilocks onto her feet. When they realized that it
was no use, they let the body down again and crouched in a circle
around it, making soft, lamenting sounds.
“Well, when the constabulary get here, you keep
quiet,” Mallin was saying. “Let me do the
talking.”
“Intimidating witnesses, Mallin?” Gerd inquired.
“Don’t you know everybody’ll have to testify at
the constabulary post under veridication? And you’re drawing
pay for being a psychologist, too.” Then he saw some of the
Fuzzies raise their heads and look toward the southeastern horizon.
“Here come the cops, now.”
However, it was Ben Rainsford’s airjeep, with a zebralope
carcass lashed along one side. It circled the Kellogg camp and then
let down quickly; Rainsford jumped out as soon as it was grounded,
his pistol drawn.
“What happened, Jack?” he asked, then glanced
around, from Goldilocks to Kellogg to Borch to the pistol beside
Borch’s body. “I get it. Last time anybody pulled a gun
on you, they called it suicide.”
“That’s what this was, more or less. You have a
movie camera in your jeep? Well, get some shots of Borch, and some
of Goldilocks. Then stand by, and if the Fuzzies start doing
anything different, get it all. I don’t think you’ll be
disappointed.”
Rainsford looked puzzled, but he holstered his pistol and went
back to his jeep, returning with a camera. Mallin began insisting
that, as a licensed M.D., he had a right to treat Kellogg’s
injuries. Gerd van Riebeek followed him into the living but for a
first-aid kit. They were just emerging, van Riebeek’s
automatic in the small of Mallin’s back, when a constabulary
car grounded beside Rainsford’s airjeep. It wasn’t Car
Three. George Lunt jumped out, unsnapping the flap of his holster,
while Ahmed Khadra was talking into the radio.
“What’s happened, Jack? Why didn’t you wait
till we got here?”
“This maniac assaulted me and murdered that man over
there!” Kellogg began vociferating.
“Is your name Jack, too?” Lunt demanded.
“My name’s Leonard Kellogg, and I’m a chief of
division with the Company—”
“Then keep quiet till I ask you something. Ahmed, call the
post; get Knabber and Yorimitsu, with investigative equipment, and
find out what’s tying up Car Three.”
Mallin had opened the first-aid kit by now; Gerd, on seeing the
constabulary, had holstered his pistol. Kellogg, still holding the
sodden tissues to his nose, was wanting to know what there was to
investigate.
“There’s the murderer; you have him red-handed. Why
don’t you arrest him?”
“Jack, let’s get over where we can watch these
people without having to listen to them,” Lunt said. He
glanced toward the body of Goldilocks. “That happen
first?”
“Watch out, Lieutenant! He still has his pistol!”
Mallin shouted warningly.
They went over and sat down on the contragravity-field generator
housing one of the rented airjeeps. Jack started with Gerd van
Riebeek’s visit immediately after noon.
“Yes, I thought of that angle myself,” Lunt said
disgustedly. “I didn’t think of it till this morning,
though, and I didn’t think things would blow up as fast as
this. Hell, I just didn’t think! Well, go on.”
He interrupted a little later to ask: “Kellogg was
stamping on the Fuzzy when you hit him. You were trying to stop
him?”
“That’s right. You can veridicate me on that if you
want to.”
“I will; I’ll veridicate this whole damn gang. And
this guy Borch had his heater out when you turned around? Nothing
to it, Jack. We’ll have to have some kind of a hearing, but
it’s just plain self-defense. Think any of this gang will
tell the truth here, without taking them in and putting them under
veridication?”
“Ruth Ortheris will, I think.”
“Send her over here, will you.”
She was still with the Fuzzies, and Ben Rainsford was standing
beside her, his camera ready. The Fuzzies were still swaying and
yeeking plaintively. She nodded and rose without speaking, going
over to where Lunt waited.
“Just what did happen, Jack?” Rainsford wanted to
know. “And whose side is he on?” He nodded toward van
Riebeek, standing guard over Kellogg and Mallin, his thumbs in his
pistol belt.
“Ours. He’s quit the Company.”
Just as he was finishing, Car Three put in an appearance; he had
to tell the same story over again. The area in front of the Kellogg
camp was getting congested; he hoped Mike Hennen’s labor gang
would stay away for a while. Lunt talked to van Riebeek when he had
finished with Ruth, and then with Jimenez and Mallin and Kellogg.
Then he and one of the men from Car Three came over to where Jack
and Rainsford were standing. Gerd van Riebeek joined them just as
Lunt was saying:
“Jack, Kellogg’s made a murder complaint against
you. I told him it was self-defense, but he wouldn’t listen.
So, according to the book, I have to arrest you.”
“All right.” He unbuckled his gun and handed it
over. “Now, George, I herewith make complaint and accusation
against Leonard Kellogg, charging him with the unlawful and
unjustified killing of a sapient being, to wit, an aboriginal
native of the planet of Zarathustra commonly known as
Goldilocks.”
Lunt looked at the small battered body and the six mourners
around it.
“But, Jack, they aren’t legally sapient
beings.”
“There is no such thing. A sapient being is a being on the
mental level of sapience, not a being that has been declared
sapient.”
“Fuzzies are sapient beings,” Rainsford said.
“That’s the opinion of a qualified
xenonaturalist.”
“Two of them,” Gerd van Riebeek said. “That is
the body of a sapient being. There’s the man who killed her.
Go ahead, Lieutenant, make your pinch.”
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
The Fuzzies were rising, sliding their chopper-diggers under the
body of Goldilocks and lifting it on the steel shafts. Ben
Rainsford was aiming his camera as Cinderella picked up her
sister’s weapon and followed, carrying it; the others carried
the body toward the far corner of the clearing, away from the camp.
Rainsford kept just behind them, pausing to photograph and then
hurrying to keep up with them.
They set the body down. Mike and Mitzi and Cinderella began
digging; the others scattered to hunt for stones. Coming up behind
them, George Lunt took off his beret and stood holding it in both
hands; he bowed his head as the grass-wrapped body was placed in
the little grave and covered.
Then, when the cairn was finished, he replaced it, drew his
pistol and checked the chamber.
“That does it, Jack,” he said. “I am now going
to arrest Leonard Kellogg for the murder of a sapient
being.”