XIII
The management of the Hotel Mallory appeared to have undergone a change ofheart, or of policy, toward Fuzzies. It might have been Gus Brannhard'sthreats of action for racial discrimination and the possibility that theFuzzies might turn out to be a race instead of an animal species afterall. The manager might have been shamed by the way the Lurkin story hadcrumbled into discredit, and influenced by the revived public sympathy forthe Fuzzies. Or maybe he just decided that the chartered ZarathustraCompany wasn't as omnipotent as he'd believed. At any rate, a large room,usually used for banquets, was made available for the Fuzzies George Luntand Ben Rainsford were bringing in for the trial, and the four strangersand their black-and-white kitten were installed there. There were a lot oftoys of different sorts, courtesy of the management, and a big viewscreen. The four strange Fuzzies dashed for this immediately and turned iton, yeeking in delight as they watched landing craft coming down andlifting out at the municipal spaceport. They found it very interesting. Itonly bored the kitten.
With some misgivings, Jack brought Baby down and introduced him. They weredelighted with Baby, and Baby thought the kitten was the most wonderfulthing he had ever seen. When it was time to feed them, Jack had his owndinner brought in, and ate with them. Gus and Gerd came down and joinedhim later.
"We got the Lurkin kid and her father," Gus said, and then falsettoed:"'Naw, Pop gimme a beatin', and the cops told me to say it was theFuzzies.'"
"She say that?"
"Under veridication, with the screen blue as a sapphire, in front of halfa dozen witnesses and with audiovisuals on. Interworld's putting it on theair this evening. Her father admitted it, too; named Woller and the desksergeant. We're still looking for them; till we get them, we aren't anycloser to Emmert or Grego. We did pick up the two car cops, but they don'tknow anything on anybody but Woller."
That was good enough, as far as it went, Brannhard thought, but it didn'tgo far enough. There were those four strange Fuzzies showing up out ofnowhere, right in the middle of Nick Emmert's drive-hunt. They'd been keptsomewhere by somebody--that was how they'd learned to eat Extee Three andfound out about viewscreens. Their appearance was too well synchronized tobe accidental. The whole thing smelled to him of a booby trap.
One good thing had happened. Judge Pendarvis had decided that it would benext to impossible, in view of the widespread public interest in the caseand the influence of the Zarathustra Company, to get an impartial jury,and had proposed a judicial trial by a panel of three judges, himself oneof them. Even Leslie Coombes had felt forced to agree to that.
He told Jack about the decision. Jack listened with apparentattentiveness, and then said:
"You know, Gus, I'll always be glad I let Little Fuzzy smoke my pipe whenhe wanted to, that night out at camp."
The way he was feeling, he wouldn't have cared less if the case was goingto be tried by a panel of three zaragoats.
Ben Rainsford, his two Fuzzies, and George Lunt, Ahmed Khadra and theother constabulary witnesses and their family, arrived shortly before noonon Saturday. The Fuzzies were quartered in the stripped-out banquet room,and quickly made friends with the four already there, and with Baby. Eachfamily bedded down apart, but they ate together and played with eachothers' toys and sat in a clump to watch the viewscreen. At first, theFerny Creek family showed jealousy when too much attention was paid totheir kitten, until they decided that nobody was trying to steal it.
It would have been a lot of fun, eleven Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy and ablack-and-white kitten, if Jack hadn't kept seeing his own family, sixquiet little ghosts watching but unable to join the frolicking.
* * * * *
Max Fane brightened when he saw who was on his screen.
"Well, Colonel Ferguson, glad to see you."
"Marshal," Ferguson was smiling broadly. "You'll be even gladder in aminute. A couple of my men, from Post Eight, picked up Woller and thatdesk sergeant, Fuentes."
"Ha!" He started feeling warm inside, as though he had just downed a slugof Baldur honey-rum. "How?"
"Well, you know Nick Emmert has a hunting lodge down there. Post Eightkeeps an eye on it for him. This afternoon, one of Lieutenant Obefemi'scars was passing over it, and they picked up some radiation and infraredon their detectors, as though the power was on inside. When they went downto investigate, they found Woller and Fuentes making themselves at home.They brought them in, and both of them admitted under veridication thatEmmert had given them the keys and sent them down there to hide out tillafter the trial.
"They denied that Emmert had originated the frameup. That had been one ofWoller's own flashes of genius, but Emmert knew what the score was andwent right along with it. They're being brought up here the first thingtomorrow morning."
"Well, that's swell, Colonel! Has it gotten out to the news services yet?"
"No. We would like to have them both questioned here in Mallorysport, andtheir confessions recorded, before we let the story out. Otherwise,somebody might try to take steps to shut them up for good."
That had been what he had been thinking of. He said so, and Fergusonnodded. Then he hesitated for a moment, and said:
"Max, do you like the situation here in Mallorysport? Be damned if I do."
"What do you mean?"
"There are too many strangers in town," Ian Ferguson said. "All the samekind of strangers--husky-looking young men, twenty to thirty, going aroundin pairs and small groups. I've been noticing it since day before last,and there seem to be more of them every time I look around."
"Well, Ian, it's a young man's planet, and we can expect a big crowd intown for the trial...."
He didn't really believe that. He just wanted Ian Ferguson to put a nameon it first. Ferguson shook his head.
"No, Max. This isn't a trial-day crowd. We both know what they're like;remember when they tried the Gawn brothers? No whooping it up in bars, noexcitement, no big crap games; this crowd's just walking around, keepingquiet, as though they expected a word from somebody."
"Infiltration." Goddamit, he'd said it first, himself after all! "VictorGrego's worried about this."
"I know it, Max. And Victor Grego's like a veldbeest bull; he isn'tdangerous till he's scared, and then watch out. And against the gangthat's moving in here, the men you and I have together would last about aslong as a pint of trade-gin at a Sheshan funeral."
"You thinking of pushing the panic-button?"
The constabulary commander frowned. "I don't want to. A dim view would betaken back on Terra if I did it without needing to. Dimmer view would betaken of needing to without doing it, though. I'll make another check,first."
* * * * *
Gerd van Riebeek sorted the papers on the desk into piles, lit a cigaretteand then started to mix himself a highball.
"Fuzzies are members of a sapient race," he declared. "They reasonlogically, both deductively and inductively. They learn by experiment,analysis and association. They formulate general principles, and applythem to specific instances. They plan their activities in advance. Theymake designed artifacts, and artifacts to make artifacts. They are able tosymbolize, and convey ideas in symbolic form, and form symbols byabstracting from objects.
"They have aesthetic sense and creativity," he continued. "They becomebored in idleness, and they enjoy solving problems for the pleasure ofsolving them. They bury their dead ceremoniously, and bury artifacts withthem."
He blew a smoke ring, and then tasted his drink. "They do all thesethings, and they also do carpenter work, blow police whistles, make eatingtools to eat land-prawns with and put molecule-model balls together.Obviously they are sapient beings. But don't please don't ask me to definesapience, because God damn it to Nifflheim, I still can't!"
"I think you just did," Jack said.
"No, that won't do. I need a definition."
"Don't worry, Gerd," Gus Brannhard told him. "Leslie Coombes will bring anice shiny new definition into court. We'll just
use that."
Little Fuzzy Page 13
