Fuzzy Nation

by John Scalzi

  Isabel sat in her chair and looked straight ahead, pointedly not looking at Holloway. Sullivan reached over and put his hand on her shoulder, to comfort her. Isabel took it and held it, but didn’t look back at him. She kept staring forward, with a look on her face. Holloway knew what the look meant. It meant that Isabel, finally, understood what all the other players knew: that this inquiry didn’t really matter. The decision about the fuzzys had already been made, and these were just the motions they had to go through to get there.

  Isabel knew that she had been demolished up there on the stand. Holloway knew that his role in the play was to deliver the coup de grâce.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Judge Soltan called his name, Holloway got up from the defense table and installed himself at the witness stand. The judge reminded him that he would have to speak the truth. Holloway looked into the courtroom at Brad Landon, and said he would. Landon gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

  Isabel followed Holloway’s gaze and saw Landon. She turned back to Holloway, her expression unreadable.

  “Mr. Holloway, please state your full name and occupation,” Janice Meyer said to Holloway.

  “I’m Jack Holloway, and I’ve been a contract surveyor and prospector here on Zara Twenty-three for over eight years,” he said.

  “How long have you known Dr. Wangai?” Meyer asked.

  “I met her briefly when she arrived on Zara Twenty-three,” Holloway said. “I made better acquaintance of her a year later, when she and I were guests at Chad Bourne’s annual holiday party for the surveyors he represents. We started a relationship several months after that, which lasted for about two years, at which point we broke up for reasons already noted today.”

  “What is your current relationship with Dr. Wangai?” Meyer asked.

  Holloway looked at Isabel, whose expression now was blank. “We’re friends, but I have things to apologize for,” he said.

  Meyer nodded. “Now, you discovered these creatures that you and Dr. Wangai call ‘fuzzys’ recently, is that correct?”

  “About a month ago now, yes,” Holloway said. “One of them got into my cabin.”

  “And Dr. Wangai has spent how much time with them during this period?” Meyer asked.

  “She spent about a week studying them at my compound,” Holloway said.

  “It doesn’t seem like a very large amount of time,” Meyer observed. “Especially to make a determination that these creatures are sapient.”

  “Isabel’s a scientist and believes she knows what to look for,” Holloway said. “I suspect she believes she observed enough to know, otherwise she wouldn’t make the claim.”

  “Do you support her claim?” Meyer asked.

  “Isabel is aware that she and I have had differing opinions on the matter,” Holloway said, “and the last time we spoke about it, I repeated that I did not believe the fuzzys were sentient.”

  “Why do you think you two have such a difference of opinion?” Meyer asked.

  “You mean, aside from the fact that I discovered a sunstone seam that will be worth billions of credits to me so long as the fuzzys are determined not to be sentient,” Holloway said.

  Meyer blinked at this. “I think we’re all aware you’re a ZaraCorp contractor,” she said.

  “Well, besides that, I had observed the fuzzys longer than Isabel had,” Holloway said. “And while I am not a scientist and can speak only as a self-interested layman, the fuzzys initially struck me as nothing more than clever animals, like monkeys or perhaps the universe’s smartest cats.”

  “Are they smart enough to be trained?” Meyer asked.

  “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” Holloway said. “I’ve trained my dog to do all sorts of tricks, and each of the fuzzys is smarter than my dog.”

  “Smart enough to learn enough tricks that could fool a biologist?” Meyer asked.

  “If the biologist in this case was not an expert on xenosapience, and if her own excitement about the discovery kept her from observing certain obvious things, sure,” Holloway said.

  “You’re suggesting Dr. Wangai was not observant,” Meyer prompted.

  “She was observant, but I know there were some lapses,” Holloway said.

  “That’s not an accusation to be made lightly against Zara Twenty-three’s chief biologist,” Meyer said.

  “I’ll give you an example,” Holloway said. “After I met the fuzzys, I assigned them gender roles, based on certain assumptions I made: Males would be aggressive and boisterous, females nurturing and sweet. So I called them Papa Fuzzy and Mama Fuzzy and so on. For several days, Isabel assumed that the fuzzys were actually male and female, even though as the planet’s biologist, she knew that most animals on the planet didn’t have genders like they do back on Earth. She admitted to me that she initially assumed the fuzzys were male and female because I had told her so, and she assumed I had checked.”

  “That’s a pretty substantial lapse in observation,” Meyer said. “I don’t suppose you have any evidence of this aside from your word on it.”

  Holloway pointed past Isabel. “Mr. Sullivan over there heard her say it,” he said. “To be clear, Isabel did figure it out eventually. It just took a few days.”

  “Because you told her otherwise,” Meyer said.

  “Yes,” Holloway said. “I didn’t intend to mislead Isabel; it was just my own assumption. It was innocent. But I did end up misleading her.”

  “No one’s blaming you for intentionally causing damage to Dr. Wangai’s professional standing,” Meyer assured him. “But, Mr. Holloway, is there possibly another way you misled Dr. Wangai? Not by what you told her, but by what you didn’t tell her?”

  Holloway looked uncomfortable. “Yes,” he said, finally. “I suppose I did. And up here now, I’m quite embarrassed about it. I wish I didn’t have to admit to it.”

  “You do have to admit to it, Mr. Holloway,” said Judge Soltan.

  “I know,” Holloway said. “Of course. I think it would be easier to explain, however, if I could use the monitor Isabel set up to give you her briefing. Would that be all right?”

  “How long will this take?” Soltan asked.

  “I will be as brief as I possibly can,” Holloway said. “Trust me, I want to get this over as quickly as you do.”

  “All right,” Soltan said.

  Holloway pointed to the defense table. “There’s data that I need on the infopanel.”

  “You may leave the witness stand, but you are still providing testimony and must tell the truth,” Soltan said.

  “I understand,” Holloway said. He stood up, exited the stand, and walked over to the defense table, where his infopanel lay. He ignored it and went to Isabel, who couldn’t stand to look at him.

  “Isabel,” he said.

  “Please don’t talk to the other expert at this time, Mr. Holloway,” Soltan said.

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Holloway said. “But I don’t need the data on my infopanel. I need the data on hers.”

  “I don’t understand,” Soltan said.

  “Nor do I,” Meyer said.

  “The data in Isabel’s infopanel is secure video, taken with cameras and recorders designed for scientific and legal verifiability,” Holloway said. “I am well aware that my own truth on the stand has been challenged, not the least by Isabel here. I want to be sure everyone can believe what I’m going to say, and that I haven’t tampered with the evidence I’m going to show you.”

  Soltan nodded. “Dr. Wangai, please give Mr. Holloway your infopanel,” she said.

  Isabel handed over the machine.

  “Thank you,” Holloway said. “Are all your video records accessible?”

  “I’m signed in,” Isabel said, tightly. She was avoiding saying any more to Holloway than she absolutely needed to.

  “Did you change the file names of the videos?” Holloway asked.

  “No,” Isabel said.

  “Okay,” Holloway said. “Thanks.” Is
abel didn’t respond. Holloway glanced over to Sullivan, whose own expression didn’t appear to be particularly friendly. He too had figured out the show trial nature of the inquiry.

  Holloway tapped the infopanel and opened a pipe between it and the monitor. The monitor flicked on and awaited input.

  “We’ve already established that Dr. Wangai, despite her considerable competence and talent as a scientist, does sometimes allow her assumptions to overrule her skills as an observer and her knowledge of this planet’s faunasphere,” Holloway said. His voice had become animated and precise; it was the voice Holloway used as a trial lawyer. Both Soltan and Meyer jumped a little at the change in tone. Holloway noted that but didn’t let the notation show on his face. “Taking my word for the fuzzys being gendered is the obvious example. But there’s another one that she missed.”

  Holloway tapped the panel again, and a video played out on it: an image of Papa, Mama, and Grandpa Fuzzy sitting together in a semicircle, eating bindi fruit.

  “As we all know, one of the major signifiers for sapience is the capacity for speech. Per the Cheng ruling, this means ‘meaningful communication that conveys more than the immediate and presently imminent.’ To date, three species are known to communicate at a level that satisfies Cheng: humans, Urai, and Negad. It is what each of these species have in common.

  “But there is another thing that humans, Urai, and Negad also share in common: Their speech is vocalized, and the vocalization for each falls within a range that is perceivable by the human ear. In fact, it’s the humans who have the greatest range of frequencies in their speech, while the Negad have the least. The point is, we can hear when humans, Urai, and Negad are speaking.”

  Holloway paused the video. “A couple of weeks ago I was visiting the new camp ZaraCorp is building to exploit the sunstone seam I discovered. While I was there, I was shown these large speakers posted around the fence line. They were blasting sound at an incredibly high decibel level in order to scare away the zararaptors and other large predators of the jungle—but while I could feel the speakers pounding away, I couldn’t hear them, because they were emitting their sound at twenty-five kilohertz. That’s higher than human hearing can register.”

  “I’m waiting to hear relevance, Mr. Holloway,” Soltan said.

  “Exactly,” Holloway said. “You’re waiting to hear relevance, but you can’t, because you’re listening too low. We all have been. The loudspeakers on the fence line work because the predators of Zara Twenty-three hear higher frequencies than we do. And they hear higher frequencies not for some random reason, but because it makes evolutionary sense for them to do so. Say, because their prey and other small animals make sounds in that range.”

  Holloway reset the video and popped up a settings overlay on top of it. “One of the nice things about the research-level camera Dr. Wangai used to record the fuzzys is that unlike most commercial cameras, it records data humans don’t perceive on their own,” he said. “For example, in addition to recording the visible color spectrum, it records into the infrared and ultraviolet frequencies. You have to use filters to see these data, of course, but the data are there. It also records sounds above and below human hearing. You have to use filters for them, too.”

  Holloway flipped through the overlay’s menus and reset the video’s audio filters to bring sounds above human hearing range into audibility. He started the video again.

  It was the same image of Papa, Mama, and Grandpa Fuzzy sitting in a semicircle. Only now it sounded as if they were talking to each other.

  “Look,” Holloway said, quietly, and pointed. “Look how they wait their turn to speak. Look how they respond to whatever the other is saying.” He turned up the volume of the monitor; the chittering between the fuzzys got louder. “You can hear the structure of the language.”

  After a few more moments Holloway paused the video, closed it, and pulled up another one, this one of Grandpa Fuzzy and Pinto. Now beside the head-smacking was a constant stream of noise from Grandpa, interrupted occasionally by a squeak from Pinto. The squeak sounded, of all things, petulant.

  Pause, close, open another video. In this one Mama Fuzzy was grooming Baby Fuzzy. The noises coming from Mama Fuzzy in this one were different from the noises in the other videos: softer, more sibilant.

  “My god,” Isabel said. “Mama’s singing.”

  In the video Baby Fuzzy added its voice to Mama Fuzzy’s, the two creatures joined in harmony. Everyone watched and listened to the video for a moment.

  Then Holloway paused the video and looked over to Isabel. “I’m sorry, Dr. Wangai,” he said, walking to her. “But this is yet another case of your observational skills failing you. You knew, I presume, that Zara Twenty-three creatures could hear above the human hearing range, which implies quite strongly that they or other creatures make noises above that range as well. Yet, just as you let my assertion of the fuzzys’ genders get past you, so you also worked from the implicit assumption that speech for the fuzzys would be like speech for any other sentient species—something you could hear. And thus, the most important part of your argument for the fuzzys’ sentience—their ability to speak—went unheard and unobserved.”

  Holloway held out Isabel’s infopanel to her. She took it, shaking.

  Holloway turned to Meyer, who was looking at him with the same expression she might have if he had stripped naked right there in the courtroom. “And this is how I misled Isabel, Ms. Meyer, Your Honor,” he said, turning briefly to nod in the direction of the similarly shocked-looking Judge Soltan. “I mentioned that the last time I spoke to her I told her I didn’t believe the fuzzys were sentient, because I didn’t. But then I saw one of the fuzzys make my dog sit and lie down and roll over—vocal commands. I couldn’t hear them, but I remembered that other animals here heard higher frequencies, just like my dog could. So I went back through the data and found the fuzzys had been speaking all along.

  “I misled Isabel by not telling her this,” Holloway said. “And thus by making her think that I disagreed with her about the sentience of the fuzzys, when in fact over the last few days I have become completely convinced of it. They speak, Ms. Meyer, Your Honor. They speak and discuss and argue and sing. That’s not a trick you can fake, no matter how clever an animal you are, or how clever you, as a human, might be with training animals. These aren’t just animals. These are people.

  “And Dr. Wangai,” Holloway said, turning to Isabel again, “I was wrong. I was wrong to keep this information from you, and for allowing you to enter into this inquiry without all the facts you needed to defend your assertion, and for allowing anyone to cast doubt on your reputation. It was wrong. I was wrong for ever doing it or for ever allowing it. I am sorry.”

  Holloway turned away from Isabel and sat back down in the witness stand.

  “I’m done with my presentation,” he said, to the judge.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “This proves nothing,” Meyer said, once she had gained enough composure to begin again.

  “It proves that we can’t immediately discount the idea that the fuzzys have speech,” Holloway said. “That’s something. It’s something fairly big.”

  “You could very well have taught them to make these sounds,” Meyer said.

  “Are you suggesting that I created a hoax so byzantine that it includes teaching animals to speak something no one could hear?” Holloway said. “To what end, Ms. Meyer? If it was a trick to fool Isabel, then it failed, because she didn’t know of it until just a couple minutes ago.”

  “It’s a hoax to put the Zarathustra Company in an uncomfortable financial position,” Meyer said.

  “Then it’s a hoax that also puts me in an uncomfortable financial position, because I stand to lose billions if the fuzzys are deemed sentient,” Holloway said. “I have a very distinct and obvious reason to hope the fuzzys are simply animals.”

  Meyer opened her mouth; Holloway held up his hand. “I know where you’re going next,” he said. “The onl
y possible way this does me any good is if I’ve somehow set things up to short ZaraCorp stock on the market, in the hope of reaping the benefit when the stock price falls. But to forestall such an argument, I’m willing to give Judge Soltan complete access to all my financial and communication data for the last couple of years. She’s more than welcome to have forensics experts go through the data to look for evidence that I’m trying to manipulate ZaraCorp stock. But I can tell you right now that she won’t find it. My only financial holdings at this point are the royalties ZaraCorp automatically puts into my account at the Zarathustra Corporate Bank. I think I earn half a percent on that annually.”

  “But we have no way of knowing if these sounds are speech!” Meyer said. “You’re a surveyor, not an expert on xenosapience. And we’ve already established that Dr. Wangai has no formal training in xenosapience. Neither of you can even knowledgably guess at what those sounds mean.”

  Holloway saw Isabel’s eyes widen; she knew the hole Meyer had just fallen into. Holloway smiled. “You are quite correct, Ms. Meyer,” he said. “So I suggest we let someone who can knowledgably guess give an expert opinion. I suggest we call Arnold Chen.”

  “Who?” Meyer said.

  “Arnold Chen,” Holloway repeated. “He received his doctorate in xenolinguistics. University of Chicago, I believe. He works in the same office as Dr. Wangai. Just down the street from here. I understand he was mistakenly assigned to Zara Twenty-three. Lucky for us he’s here.”

  “Is this correct?” Soltan said to Meyer.

  “I don’t know,” Meyer said. She was thoroughly confused by the course of events.

  “Excuse me, Your Honor,” Isabel said. “Jack’s correct. Dr. Chen is a xenolinguist. He’s also likely to be in his office right now.”

  “Doing what, exactly?” Soltan said.

  “That’s a good question, Your Honor,” Isabel said. “I’m sure Dr. Chen would like to know what he’s supposed to be doing as well.”

  “Let’s bring him in,” Soltan said.