Fuzzy Sapiens f-2

by H. Beam Piper

  “This is an action, is it not, to require the Colonial Government to make available for settlement and exploitation lands now in the public domain, and to set up offices where claims to such lands may be filed?” he asked.

  “It is, your Honor. I represent the plaintiffs,” Ingermann said. He was shorter than either of the others; plump, with a smooth, pink-cheeked face, and beginning to lose his hair in front. There was an expression of complete and utter sincerity in his round blue eyes which might have deceived anybody who had not been on Zarathustra long enough to have heard of him. He would have continued had Pendarvis not turned to Brannhard.

  “I represent the Colonial Government, your Honor; we are contesting the plaintiff’s action.”

  “And you, Mr. Coombes?”

  “I represent the Charterless Zarathustra Company,” Coombes said. “We are not a party to this action. I am here merely as observer and amicus curiae. “

  “The… Charterless, did you say, Mr. Coombes?… Zarathustra Company had a right to be so represented here, they have a substantial interest.” He wondered whose idea “Charterless” was; it sounded like a typical piece of Grego gallows-humor. “Mr. Ingermann?”

  “Your Honor, it is the contention of the plaintiffs whom I here represent that since approximately eighty percent of the land surface of this planet is now public domain, by virtue of a recent ruling of the Honorable Supreme Court, it is now obligatory upon the Colonial Government to make this land available to the public. This, your Honor, is plainly stated in Federation Law…”

  He began citing acts, sections, paragraphs; precedents; relevant decisions of Federation Courts on other planets. He was talking entirely for the record; all this had been included in the brief he had submitted. It should be heard, but enough was enough.

  “Yes, Mr. Ingermann; the Court is aware of the law, and takes notice that it has been upheld in other cases,” he said. “The Government doesn’t dispute this, Mr. Brannhard?”

  “Not at all, your Honor. Far from it. Governor Rainsford is, himself, most anxious to transfer unseated land to private ownership…”

  “Yes, but when?” Ingermann demanded. “How long is Governor Rainsford going to drag his feet…”

  “I question the justice of Mr. Ingermann’s so characterizing the situation,” Brannhard interrupted. “It must be remembered that it is less than a week since there was any public land at all on this planet.”

  “Or since the Government Mr. Ingermann’s clients are suing has existed,” Coombes added. “And I could endure knowing who these Messieurs Doe and Roe are. The names sound faintly familiar, but…”

  “Your Honor, my clients are an association of individuals interested in acquiring land,” Ingermann said. “Prospectors, woodsmen, tenant farmers, small veldbeest ranchers…”

  “Loan-sharks, shylocks, percentage grubstakers, speculators, would-be claim brokers,” Brannhard continued.

  “They are the common people of this planet!” Ingermann declared. “The workers, the sturdy and honest farmers, the frontiersmen, all of whom the Zarathustra Company has held in peonage until liberated by the great and historic decisions which bear your Honor’s name.”

  “Just a moment,” Coombes almost drawled. “Your Honor, the word ‘peonage’ has a specific meaning at law. I must deny most vehemently that it has ever described the relationship between the Zarathustra Company and anybody on this planet.”

  “The word was ill-chosen, Mr. Ingermann. It will be deleted from the record.”

  “We still haven’t found out who Mr. Ingermann’s clients are, your Honor,” Brannhard said. “May I suggest that Mr. Ingermann be placed on the stand and asked to name them?”

  Ingermann shot a quick, involuntary glance at the witness stand: a heavy chair, with electrode attachments and a bright metal helmet over it, and a translucent globe on a standard. Then he began clamoring protests. So far, Hugo Ingermann had always managed to avoid having to testify to anything under veridication. That was probably why he was still a member of the Bar, instead of a convict.

  “No, Mr. Brannhard,” he said, with real sadness. “Mr. Ingermann is not compelled to divulge the names of his clients. Mr. Ingermann would be within his rights in bringing this action on his own responsibility, out of his deep love of justice and well-known zeal for the public welfare.”

  Brannhard shrugged massively. Nobody could blame him for not trying. Coombes spoke:

  “Your Honor, we are all agreed about the Government’s obligation, but has it occurred, either to Mr. Ingermann or to the Court, that the present Government is merely a fiat-government set up by military authority? Commodore Napier acted, as he was obliged to, as the ranking officer of the Terran Federation Armed Forces present, to constitute civil government to replace the former one, declared illegal by your Honor. Until elections can be held and a popularly elected Colonial Legislature can be convened, there may be grave doubts as to the validity of some of Governor Rainsford’s acts, especially in granting titles to land. Your Honor, do we want to see the courts of this planet vexed, for years to come, with litigation over such titles?”

  “That’s the Government’s attitude precisely,” Brannhard agreed. “We’re required by law to hold such elections with a year; to do that we’ll have to hold an election for delegates to a constitutional convention and get a planetary constitution adopted. That will take six to eight months. Until this can be done, we petition the Court to withhold action on this matter.”

  “That’s quite reasonable, Mr. Brannhard. The Court recognizes the Government’s legal obligation, but the Court does not recognize any immediacy in fulfilling it. If, within a year, the Government can open the public lands and establish land-claims offices, the Court will be quite satisfied.” He tapped lightly with his gavel. “Next case, if you please,” he told the crier.

  “Now I see it!” Ingermann almost shouted. “The Zarathustra Company’s taken over this new Class-IV Government, and the courts along with it!”

  He hit the bench again with his gavel; this time it cracked like a rifle shot.

  “Mr. Ingermann! You are not deliberately placing yourself in contempt, are you?” he asked. “No? I’d hoped not. Next case, please.”

  LESLIE COOMBES ACCEPTED the cocktail with a word of absentminded thanks, tasted it, and set it down on the low table. It was cool and quiet up here on the garden-terrace around Victor Grego’s penthouse at the top of Company House; the western sky was a conflagration of sunset reds and oranges and yellows.

  “No, Victor; Gus Brannhard is not our friend. He’s not our enemy, but as Attorney-General he is Ben Rainsford’s lawyer, and the Government’s — at the moment, it’s hard to distinguish between the two — and Ben Rainsford hates all of us vindictively.”

  Victor Grego looked up from the drink he was pouring for himself. He had a broad-cheeked, wide-mouthed face. A few threads of gray were visible in the sunset glow among the black at his temples; they hadn’t been there before the Fuzzy Trial.

  “I don’t see why,” he said, “It’s all over now. They made their point about the Fuzzies; that was all they were interested in, wasn’t it?”

  He was being quite honest about it, too, Coombes thought. Grego was simply incapable of animosity about something that was over and done with.

  “It was all Jack Holloway and Gerd van Riebeek were interested in. Brannhard was their lawyer; he’d have fought just as hard to prove that bush-goblins were sapient beings. But Rainsford is taking this personally. The Fuzzies were his great scientific discovery, and we tried to discredit it, and that makes us Bad Guys. And in the last chapter, the Bad Guys should all be killed or sent to jail.”

  Grego stoppered the cocktail jug and picked up his glass.

  “We haven’t come to the last chapter yet,” he said. “I don’t want any more battles; we haven’t patched up the combat damage from the last one. But if Ben Rainsford wants one, I’m not bugging out on it. You know, we could make things damned nasty for him.” H
e sipped slowly and set the glass down. “This so-called Government of his is broke; you know that, don’t you? And it’ll take from six to eight months to get a Colonial Legislature organized and in session, and he can’t levy taxes by executive decree; that’s purely a legislative function. In the meantime, he’ll have to borrow, and the only place he can borrow is from the bank we control.”

  That was the trouble with Victor. If anybody or anything challenged him, his first instinct was to hit back. Following that instinct when he had first heard of the Fuzzies had gotten the Company back of the eightball in the first place.

  “Well, don’t do any fighting with planet busters at twenty paces,” he advised. “Gus Brannhard and Alex Napier, between them, talked him out of prosecuting us for what we did before the trial, and convinced him he’d wreck the whole planetary economy if he damaged the company too badly. We’re in the same spot; we can’t afford to have a bankrupt Government on top of everything else. Let him borrow all the money he wants.”

  “And then tax it away from us to pay it back?”

  “Not if we get control of the Legislature and write the tax laws ourselves. This is a political battle; let’s use political weapons.”

  “You mean organize a Zarathustra Company Party?” Grego laughed. “You have any idea how unpopular the Company is, right now?”

  “No, no. Let the citizens and voters organize the parties. We’ll just pick out the best one and take it over. All we’ll need to organize will be a political organization.”

  Grego smiled slowly over the rim of his glass and swallowed.

  “Yes, Leslie. I don’t think I need to tell you what to do. You know it better than I do. Have you anybody in mind to head it? They shouldn’t be associated with the Company at all; at least, not where the public can see it.”

  He named a few names — independent business men, freeholding planters, professional people, a clergyman or so. Grego nodded approvingly at each.

  “Hugo Ingermann,” he said.

  “Good God!” Coombes doubted his ears for a moment. Then he was shocked. “We want nothing whatever to do with that fellow. Why, there isn’t a crooked operation in Mallorysport, criminal or just plain dishonest, that he isn’t mixed up in. And I told you how he was talking in court today.”

  Grego nodded again. “Precisely. Well, we won’t have anything to do with him. We’ll just let Hugo go his malodorous way, and cash in on any scandals he creates. You say Rainsford thinks in terms of Good Guys and Bad Guys? Well, Hugo Ingermann is the baddest Bad Guy on the planet, and if Rainsford doesn’t know that, and he probably doesn’t, Gus Brannhard’ll tell him. I just hope Hugo Ingermann goes on attacking the Company every time he opens his mouth.” He finished what was in his glass and unstoppered the jug. “Still with me, Leslie? It’s a half hour yet to dinner.”

  As Gus Brannhard started across the lawn on the south side of Government House, two Fuzzies came dashing to meet him. Their names were Flora and Fauna, and as usual he had to pause and remember that fauns were male and that Flora was a regular feminine name. The names some people gave Fuzzies. Of course, Ben was a naturalist. If he had a pair of Fuzzies of his own, he’d probably have called them Felony and Misdemeanor, or Misfeasance and Malfeasance. He put in his earphone and squatted to get down to their level.

  “Hello, sapient being. Now keep your hands out of Uncle Gus’s whiskers.” He glanced up and saw the small man with the red beard approaching. “Hello, Ben. They pull yours much?”

  “Sometimes. I haven’t so much to pull. Yours is more fun. Jack Holloway says they think you’re a Big Fuzzy.” The Fuzzies were pointing across the lawn, clamoring for him to come and see something. “Oh, sure; their new home. I’ll bet there isn’t a Fuzzy anywhere had a nicer home. Hokay, kids; bizzo.”

  The new home was a Marine Corps pup-tent, pitched in an open glade beside a fountain; it would be a lot roomier for two Fuzzies than for two Marines. There were Fuzzy treasures scattered around it, things from toy shops, and odds and ends of bright or colored or oddly shaped junk they had scavenged for themselves. He noticed, and commented on, a stout toy wheelbarrow.

  “Oh, yes; we have discovered the wheel,” Ben said. “They were explaining it to me yesterday; very intelligently, as far as I could follow. They give each other rides, and they are very good about taking turns. And they use it to collect loot. Very good about that, too; always ask if they can have anything they find.”

  “Well, this is just wonderful,” he told them, and then repeated it in Fuzzy. Ben complimented him on his progress in the language.

  “I damn well better learn it. Pendarvis is going to set up a Native Cases Court, like the ones on Loki and Gimli and Thor. Be anybody’s guess how soon I’ll have to listen to a flock of Fuzzy witnesses.”

  He looked inside the tent. The blankets and cushions were all piled at one end; bed-making, it seemed, wasn’t a Fuzzy accomplishment. A bed was to sleep in, and no Fuzzy could see the sense in making a bed and then having to unmake it before he could use it. He looked at some of their things, and picked up a little knife, trying the edge on his thumb. Immediately, Flora cried out:

  “Keffu, Unka Gus! Sha’ap; kuttsu!”

  “Muhgawd, Ben; you hear what she said? She speaks Lingua Terra!”

  “That’s right. That was one of the first things I taught them. And you don’t have to teach them anything more than once, either.” He looked at his watch, and spoke to the Fuzzies. They seemed disappointed, but Fauna said, “Hokay,” and ran into the tent, bringing out his shoulderbag and chopper-digger, and Flora’s. “Told them we have to make Big One talk, to go hunt landprawns. I had a bunch brought in, this morning, and turned loose for them.”

  Fauna piled into the wheelbarrow; Flora got between the shafts and picked it up, starting off at a run, the passenger whooping loudly. Ben watched them vanish among the shrubbery, and got out his pipe and tobacco.

  “Gus, why in Nifflheim did Leslie Coombes show up in court today and back you against this fellow Ingermann?” he demanded. “I thought Grego put Ingermann up to that himself.”

  That’s right; any time anything happens, blame Grego.

  “No, Ben. The company doesn’t want a big land-rush starting, any more than we do. They don’t want their whole labor force bugging out on them, and that’s what it would come to. I don’t know why I can’t pound it into your head that Victor Grego had as big a stake in keeping things together on this planet as you have.”

  “Yes, if he can control it the way he used to. Well, I’m not going to let him…”

  He made an impatient noise. “And Ingermann; Grego wouldn’t touch him with a ten-light-year pole. You call Grego a criminal? Well, maybe you were too busy, over on Beta, counting tree rings and checking on the love life of bush-goblins, to know about the Mallorysport underworld, but as a criminal lawyer I had to. Beside Hugo Ingermann, Victor Grego is a saint, and they have images of him in all the churches and work miracles with them. You name any kind of a racket — dope, prostitution, gambling, protection-shakedowns, illicit gem buying, shylocking, stolen goods — and Ingermann’s at the back of it. This action of his, today; he has a ring of crooks who want to make a killing in land speculation. That’s why I wanted to stop him, and that’s why Grego sent Coombes to help me. Ben, you’re going to find that this is only the first of many occasions when you and Grego are going to be on the same side.”

  Rainsford started an angry reply; before he could speak, Gerd van Riebeek’s voice floated down from the escalator-head on the terrace above.

  “Anybody home down there?”

  “No, nobody but us Fuzzies,” Rainsford called back. “Come on down.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WITH A SIGH of relief, Victor Grego entered the living room of his penthouse apartment. His hand rose to the switch beside the door, then dropped; the faint indirect glow from around the edge of the ceiling was enough. He’d just pour himself a drink and sit here in the crepuscular silence, resting. His bod
y was tired, more so than it should be, at his age, but his brain was still racing at top speed. No use trying to go to sleep now.

  He took off his jacket and neckcloth and dropped them on a chair, opening his shirt collar as he went to the cellaret; he poured a big inhaler-glass half full of brandy and started for his favorite chair, then returned to get the bottle. It would take more than one glass to brake the speeding wheels inside his head. He placed the bottle on a low table, beside the fluted glass bowl, and sat down, wondering what he had noticed that had disturbed him. Nothing important; he sipped from the glass and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  They had the trouble in the veldbeest country on Beta and Delta Continents worked out, at least to where they knew what to do about it. Close down all the engineering jobs, the Big Blackwater drainage project on Beta, and the various construction jobs, and shift men to the cattle ranges; issue them combat equipment and put them on fighting pay, to deal with these gangs of rustlers that were springing up. Maybe if they started a couple of range-wars, Ian Ferguson and his Colonial Constabulary would have to take a hand. But the main thing was to keep the herds together. And the wild veldbeest; Ben Rainsford was a conservationist, he ought to be interested in protecting them.

  And he still hadn’t decided on a sunstone buying policy. Not enough information on the present situation. He’d have to do something about that.

  Oh, Nifflheim with it; think about it tomorrow.

  He drank more brandy, and reached to the glass bowl on the low table, and found that it was empty. That was what had bothered him. It had been half full of the sort of tidbits he privately called nibblements — salted nuts, wafers, things like that — when he and Leslie Coombes had gone through the room on their way down for dinner.