Chapter 5

Victor Grego crushed out his cigarette slowly and deliberately.

“Yes, Leonard,” he said patiently. “It’s very interesting, and doubtless an important discovery, but I can’t see why you’re making such a production of it. Are you afraid I’ll blame you for letting non-Company people beat you to it? Or do you merely suspect that anything Bennett Rainsford’s mixed up in is necessarily a diabolical plot against the Company and, by consequence, human civilization?”

Leonard Kellogg looked pained. “What I was about to say, Victor, is that both Rainsford and this man Holloway seem convinced that these things they call Fuzzies aren’t animals at all. They believe them to be sapient beings.”

“Well, that’s--” He bit that off short as the significance of what Kellogg had just said hit him. “Good God, Leonard! I beg your pardon abjectly; I don’t blame you for taking it seriously. Why, that would make Zarathustra a Class-IV inhabited planet.”

“For which the Company holds a Class-III charter,” Kellogg added. “For an uninhabited planet.”

Automatically void if any race of sapient beings were discovered on Zarathustra.

“You know what will happen if this is true?”

“Well, I should imagine the charter would have to be renegotiated, and now that the Colonial Office knows what sort of a planet this is, they’ll be anything but generous with the Company...”

“They won’t renegotiate anything, Leonard. The Federation government will simply take the position that the Company has already made an adequate return on the original investments, and they’ll award us what we can show as in our actual possession--I hope--and throw the rest into the public domain.”

The vast plains on Beta and Delta continents, with their herds of veldbeest--all open range, and every ‘beest that didn’t carry a Company brand a maverick. And all the untapped mineral wealth, and the untilled arable land; it would take years of litigation even to make the Company’s claim to Big Blackwater stick. And Terra-Baldur-Marduk Spacelines would lose their monopolistic franchise and get sticky about it in the courts, and in any case, the Company’s import-export monopoly would go out the airlock. And the squatters rushing in and swamping everything--

“Why, we won’t be any better off than the Yggdrasil Company, squatting on a guano heap on one continent!” he burst out. “Five years from now, they’ll be making more money out of bat dung than we’ll be making out of this whole world!”

And the Company’s good friend and substantial stockholder, Nick Emmert, would be out, too, and a Colonial Governor General would move in, with regular army troops and a complicated bureaucracy. Elections, and a representative parliament, and every Tom, Dick and Harry with a grudge against the Company would be trying to get laws passed--And, of course, a Native Affairs Commission, with its nose in everything.

“But they couldn’t just leave us without any kind of a charter,” Kellogg insisted. Who was he trying to kid--besides himself? “It wouldn’t be fair!” As though that clinched it. “It isn’t our fault!”

He forced more patience into his voice. “Leonard, please try to realize that the Terran Federation government doesn’t give one shrill soprano hoot on Nifflheim whether it’s fair or not, or whose fault what is. The Federation government’s been repenting that charter they gave the Company ever since they found out what they’d chartered away. Why, this planet is a better world than Terra ever was, even before the Atomic Wars. Now, if they have a chance to get it back, with improvements, you think they won’t take it? And what will stop them? If those creatures over on Beta Continent are sapient beings, our charter isn’t worth the parchment it’s engrossed on, and that’s an end of it.” He was silent for a moment. “You heard that tape Rainsford transmitted to Jimenez. Did either he or Holloway actually claim, in so many words, that these things really are sapient beings?”

“Well, no; not in so many words. Holloway consistently alluded to them as people, but he’s just an ignorant old prospector. Rainsford wouldn’t come out and commit himself one way or another, but he left the door wide open for anybody else to.”

“Accepting their account, could these Fuzzies be sapient?”

“Accepting the account, yes,” Kellogg said, in distress. “They could be.”

They probably were, if Leonard Kellogg couldn’t wish the evidence out of existence.

“Then they’ll look sapient to these people of yours who went over to Beta this morning, and they’ll treat it purely as a scientific question and never consider the legal aspects. Leonard, you’ll have to take charge of the investigation, before they make any reports everybody’ll be sorry for.”

Kellogg didn’t seem to like that. It would mean having to exercise authority and getting tough with people, and he hated anything like that. He nodded very reluctantly.

“Yes. I suppose I will. Let me think about it for a moment, Victor.”

One thing about Leonard; you handed him something he couldn’t delegate or dodge and he’d go to work on it. Maybe not cheerfully, but conscientiously.

“I’ll take Ernst Mallin along,” he said at length. “This man Rainsford has no grounding whatever in any of the psychosciences. He may be able to impose on Ruth Ortheris, but not on Ernst Mallin. Not after I’ve talked to Mallin first.” He thought some more. “We’ll have to get these Fuzzies away from this man Holloway. Then we’ll issue a report of discovery, being careful to give full credit to both Rainsford and Holloway--we’ll even accept the designation they’ve coined for them--but we’ll make it very clear that while highly intelligent, the Fuzzies are not a race of sapient beings. If Rainsford persists in making any such claim, we will brand it as a deliberate hoax.”

“Do you think he’s gotten any report off to the Institute of Xeno-Sciences yet?”

Kellogg shook his head. “I think he wants to trick some of our people into supporting his sapience claims; at least, corroborating his and Holloway’s alleged observations. That’s why I’ll have to get over to Beta as soon as possible.”

By now, Kellogg had managed to convince himself that going over to Beta had been his idea all along. Probably also convincing himself that Rainsford’s report was nothing but a pack of lies. Well, if he could work better that way, that was his business.

“He will, before long, if he isn’t stopped. And a year from now, there’ll be a small army of investigators here from Terra. By that time, you should have both Rainsford and Holloway thoroughly discredited. Leonard, you get those Fuzzies away from Holloway and I’ll personally guarantee they won’t be available for investigation by then. Fuzzies,” he said reflectively. “Fur-bearing animals, I take it?”

“Holloway spoke, on the tape, of their soft and silky fur.”

“Good. Emphasize that in your report. As soon as it’s published, the Company will offer two thousand sols apiece for Fuzzy pelts. By the time Rainsford’s report brings anybody here from Terra, we may have them all trapped out.”

Kellogg began to look worried.

“But, Victor, that’s genocide!”

“Nonsense! Genocide is defined as the extermination of a race of sapient beings. These are fur-bearing animals. It’s up to you and Ernst Mallin to prove that.”

The Fuzzies, playing on the lawn in front of the camp, froze into immobility, their faces turned to the west. Then they all ran to the bench by the kitchen door and scrambled up onto it.

“Now what?” Jack Holloway wondered.

“They hear the airboat,” Rainsford told him. “That’s the way they acted yesterday when you were coming in with your machine.” He looked at the picnic table they had been spreading under the featherleaf trees. “Everything ready?”

“Everything but lunch; that won’t be cooked for an hour yet. I see them now.”

“You have better eyes than I do, Jack. Oh, I see it. I hope the kids put on a good show for them,” he said anxiously.

He’d been jittery ever since he arrived, shortly after breakfast. It wasn’t that these people from Mallorysport were so important themselves; Ben had a bigger name in scientific circles than any of this Company crowd. He was just excited about the Fuzzies.

The airboat grew from a barely visible speck, and came spiraling down to land in the clearing. When it was grounded and off contragravity, they started across the grass toward it, and the Fuzzies all jumped down from the bench and ran along with them.

The three visitors climbed down. Ruth Ortheris wore slacks and a sweater, but the slacks were bloused over a pair of ankle boots. Gerd van Riebeek had evidently done a lot of field work: his boots were stout, and he wore old, faded khakis and a serviceable-looking sidearm that showed he knew what to expect up here in the Piedmont. Juan Jimenez was in the same sports casuals in which he had appeared on screen last evening. All of them carried photographic equipment. They shook hands all around and exchanged greetings, and then the Fuzzies began clamoring to be noticed. Finally all of them, Fuzzies and other people, drifted over to the table under the trees.

Ruth Ortheris sat down on the grass with Mamma and Baby. Immediately Baby became interested in a silver charm which she wore on a chain around her neck which tinkled fascinatingly. Then he tried to sit on her head. She spent some time gently but firmly discouraging this. Juan Jimenez was squatting between Mike and Mitzi, examining them alternately and talking into a miniature recorder phone on his breast, mostly in Latin. Gerd van Riebeek dropped himself into a folding chair and took Little Fuzzy on his lap.

“You know, this is kind of surprising,” he said. “Not only finding something like this, after twenty-five years, but finding something as unique as this. Look, he doesn’t have the least vestige of a tail, and there isn’t another tailless mammal on the planet. Fact, there isn’t another mammal on this planet that has the slightest kinship to him. Take ourselves; we belong to a pretty big family, about fifty-odd genera of primates. But this little fellow hasn’t any relatives at all.”

“Yeek?”

“And he couldn’t care less, could he?” Van Riebeek pummeled Little Fuzzy gently. “One thing, you have the smallest humanoid known; that’s one record you can claim. Oh-oh, what goes on?”

Ko-Ko, who had climbed upon Rainsford’s lap, jumped suddenly to the ground, grabbed the chopper-digger he had left beside the chair and started across the grass. Everybody got to their feet, the visitors getting cameras out. The Fuzzies seemed perplexed by all the excitement. It was only another land-prawn, wasn’t it?

Ko-Ko got in front of it, poked it on the nose to stop it and then struck a dramatic pose, flourishing his weapon and bringing it down on the prawn’s neck. Then, after flopping it over, he looked at it almost in sorrow and hit it a couple of whacks with the flat. He began pulling it apart and eating it.

“I see why you call him Ko-Ko,” Ruth said, aiming her camera, “Don’t the others do it that way?”

“Well, Little Fuzzy runs along beside them and pivots and gives them a quick chop. Mike and Mitzi flop theirs over first and behead them on their backs. And Mamma takes a swipe at their legs first. But beheading and breaking the undershell, they all do that.”

“Uh-huh; that’s basic,” she said. “Instinctive. The technique is either self-learned or copied. When Baby begins killing his own prawns, see if he doesn’t do it the way Mamma does!”

“Hey, look!” Jimenez cried. “He’s making a lobster pick for himself!”

Through lunch, they talked exclusively about Fuzzies. The subjects of the discussion nibbled things that were given to them, and yeeked among themselves. Gerd van Riebeek suggested that they were discussing the odd habits of human-type people. Juan Jimenez looked at him, slightly disturbed, as though wondering just how seriously he meant it.

“You know, what impressed me most in the taped account was the incident of the damnthing,” said Ruth Ortheris. “Any animal associating with man will try to attract attention if something’s wrong, but I never heard of one, not even a Freyan kholph or a Terran chimpanzee, that would use descriptive pantomime. Little Fuzzy was actually making a symbolic representation, by abstracting the distinguishing characteristic of the damnthing.”

“Think that stiff-arm gesture and bark might have been intended to represent a rifle?” Gerd van Riebeek asked. “He’d seen you shooting before, hadn’t he?”

“I don’t think it was anything else. He was telling me, ‘Big nasty damnthing outside; shoot it like you did the harpy.’ And if he hadn’t run past me and pointed back, that damnthing would have killed me.”

Jimenez, hesitantly, said, “I know I’m speaking from ignorance. You’re the Fuzzy expert. But isn’t it possible that you’re overanthropomorphizing? Endowing them with your own characteristics and mental traits?”

“Juan, I’m not going to answer that right now. I don’t think I’ll answer at all. You wait till you’ve been around these Fuzzies a little longer, and then ask it again, only ask yourself.”

“So you see, Ernst, that’s the problem.”

Leonard Kellogg laid the words like a paperweight on the other words he had been saying, and waited. Ernst Mallin sat motionless, his elbows on the desk and his chin in his hands. A little pair of wrinkles, like parentheses, appeared at the corners of his mouth.

“Yes. I’m not a lawyer, of course, but...”

“It’s not a legal question. It’s a question for a psychologist.”

That left it back with Ernst Mallin, and he knew it.

“I’d have to see them myself before I could express an opinion. You have that tape of Holloway’s with you?” When Kellogg nodded, Mallin continued: “Did either of them make any actual, overt claim of sapience?”

He answered it as he had when Victor Grego had asked the same question, adding:

“The account consists almost entirely of Holloway’s uncorroborated statements concerning things to which he claims to have been the sole witness.”

“Ah.” Mallin permitted himself a tight little smile. “And he’s not a qualified observer. Neither, for that matter, is Rainsford. Regardless of his position as a xeno-naturalist, he is a complete layman in the psychosciences. He’s just taken this other man’s statements uncritically. As for what he claims to have observed for himself, how do we know he isn’t including a lot of erroneous inferences with his descriptive statements?”

“How do we know he’s not perpetrating a deliberate hoax?”

“But, Leonard, that’s a pretty serious accusation.”

“It’s happened before. That fellow who carved a Late Upland Martian inscription in that cave in Kenya, for instance. Or Hellermann’s claim to have cross-bred Terran mice with Thoran tilbras. Or the Piltdown Man, back in the first century Pre-Atomic?”

Mallin nodded. “None of us like to think of a thing like that, but, as you say, it’s happened. You know, this man Rainsford is just the type to do something like that, too. Fundamentally an individualistic egoist; badly adjusted personality type. Say he wants to make some sensational discovery which will assure him the position in the scientific world to which he believes himself entitled. He finds this lonely old prospector, into whose isolated camp some little animals have strayed. The old man has made pets of them, taught them a few tricks, finally so projected his own personality onto them that he has convinced himself that they are people like himself. This is Rainsford’s great opportunity; he will present himself as the discoverer of a new sapient race and bring the whole learned world to his feet.” Mallin smiled again. “Yes, Leonard, it is altogether possible.”