Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper
Author:H. Beam Piper [Piper, H. Beam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Published: 2006-04-08T16:00:00+00:00
Leslie Coombes found Nick Emmert with Victor Grego in the latter’s office when he entered. They both rose to greet him, and Grego said “You’ve heard?”
“Yes. O’Brien called me immediately. I called my client—my client of record, that is—and told him. I’m afraid it was rather a shock to him.”
“It wasn’t any shock to me,” Grego said as they sat down. “When Ham O’Brien’s as positive about anything as he was about that, I always expect the worst.”
“Pendarvis is going to try the case himself,” Emmert said. “I always thought he was a reasonable man, but what’s he trying to do now? Cut the Company’s throat?”
“He isn’t anti-Company. He isn’t pro-Company either. He’s just pro-law. The law says that a planet with native sapient inhabitants is a Class-IV planet, and has to have a Class-IV colonial government. If Zarathustra is a Class-IV planet, he wants it established, and the proper laws applied. If it’s a Class-IV planet, the Zarathustra Company is illegally chartered. It’s his job to put a stop to illegality. Frederic Pendarvis’ religion is the law, and he is its priest. You never get anywhere by arguing religion with a priest.”
They were both silent for a while after he had finished. Grego was looking at the globe, and he realized, now, that while he was proud of it, his pride was the pride in a paste jewel that stands for a real one in a bank vault. Now he was afraid that the real jewel was going to be stolen from him. Nick Emmert was just afraid.
“You were right yesterday, Victor. I wish Holloway’d killed that son of a Khooghra. Maybe it’s not too late—”
“Yes, it is, Nick. It’s too late to do anything like that. It’s too late to do anything but win the case in court.” He turned to Grego. “What are your people doing?”
Grego took his eyes from the globe. “Ernest Mallin’s studying all the filmed evidence we have and all the descriptions of Fuzzy behavior, and trying to prove that none of it is the result of sapient mentation. Ruth Ortheris is doing the same, only she’s working on the line of instinct and conditioned reflexes and nonsapient, single-stage reasoning. She has a lot of rats, and some dogs and monkeys, and a lot of apparatus, and some technician from Henry Stenson’s instrument shop helping her. Juan Jimenez is studying mentation of Terran dogs, cats and primates, and Freyan kholphs and Mimir black slinkers.”
“He hasn’t turned up any simian or canine parallels to that funeral, has he?”
Grego said nothing, merely shook his head. Emmert muttered something inaudible and probably indecent.
“I didn’t think he had. I only hope those Fuzzies don’t get up in court, build a bonfire and start making speeches in Lingua Terra.”
Nick Emmert cried out in panic. “You believe they’re sapient yourself!”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
Grego laughed sourly. “Nick thinks you have to believe a thing to prove it. It helps but it isn’t necessary. Say we’re a debating team; we’ve been handed the negative of the question.
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