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in a tangle of gray-brown beard. He wore a faded and grimy bush jacket with
clips of rifle cartridges on the breast, no shirt and a torn undershirt over a
shag of gray-brown chest hair. Between the bottoms of his shorts and the tops
of his ragged hose and muddy boots, his legs were covered with hair. Baby
Fuzzy was sitting on his head, and Mamma Fuzzy was on his lap. Mike and Mitzi
sat one on either knee. The Fuzzies had taken instantly to Gus. Bet they
thought he was a Big Fuzzy.
Aaaah! he rumbled, as the bottle and glass were placed beside him. Been
staying alive for hours hoping for this.
Well, don t let any of the kids get at it. Little Fuzzy trying to smoke
pipes is bad enough; I don t want any dipsos in the family, too.
Gus filled the glass. To be on the safe side, he promptly emptied it into
himself.
You got a nice family, Jack. Make a wonderful impression in court as long as
Baby doesn t try to sit on the judge s head. Any jury that sees them and hears
that Ortheris girl s story will acquit you from the box, with a vote of
censure for not shooting Kellogg, too.
I m not worried about that. What I want is Kellogg convicted.
You better worry, Jack, Rainsford said. You saw the combination against us
at the hearing.
Leslie Coombes, the Company s top attorney, had come out from Mallorysport in
a yacht rated at Mach 6, and he must have crowded it to the limit all the way.
With him, almost on a leash, had come Mohammed Ali O Brien, the Colonial
Attorney General, who doubled as Chief Prosecutor. They had both tried to get
the whole thing dismissed self-defense for Holloway, and killing an
unprotected wild animal for Kellogg. When that had failed, they had teamed in
flagrant collusion to fight the inclusion of any evidence about the Fuzzies.
After all it was only a complaint court; Lieutenant Lunt, as a police
magistrate, had only the most limited powers.
You saw how far they got, didn t you?
I hope we don t wish they d succeeded, Rainsford said gloomily.
What do you mean, Ben? Brannhard asked. What do you think they ll do?
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I don t know. That s what worries me. We re threatening the Zarathustra
Company, and the Company s too big to be threatened safely, Rainsford
replied. They ll try to frame something on Jack.
With veridication?That s ridiculous, Ben.
Don t you think we can prove sapience? Gerd van Riebeek demanded.
Who s going to define sapience? And how? Rainsford asked. Why, between
them, Coombes and O Brien can even agree to accept the talk-and-build-a-fire
rule.
Huh-uh! Brannhard was positive. Court ruling on that, about forty years ago,
on Vishnu. Infanticide case, woman charged with murder in the death of her
infant child. Her lawyer moved for dismissal on the grounds that murder is
defined as the killing of a sapient being, a sapient being is defined as one
that can talk and build a fire, and a newborn infant can do neither. Motion
denied; the court ruled that while ability to speak and produce fire is
positive proof of sapience, inability to do either or both does not constitute
legal proof of nonsapience. If O Brien doesn t know that, and I doubt if he
does, Coombes will. Brannhard poured another drink and gulped it before the
sapient beings around him could get at it. You know what? I will make a small
wager, and I will even give odds, that the first thing Ham O Brien does when
he gets back to Mallorysport will be to enternolle prosequi on both charges.
What I d like would be for him tonol. pros. Kellogg and let the charge against
Jack go to court. He would be dumb enough to do that himself, but Leslie
Coombes wouldn t let him.
But if he throws out the Kellogg case, that s it, Gerd van Riebeek said.
When Jack comes to trial, nobody ll say a mumblin word about sapience.
I will, and I will not mumble it. You all know colonial law on homicide. In
the case of any person killed while in commission of a felony, no prosecution
may be brought in any degree, against anybody. I m going to contend that
Leonard Kellogg was murdering a sapient being, that Jack Holloway acted
lawfully in attempting to stop it and that when Kurt Borch attempted to come
to Kellogg s assistance he, himself, was guilty of felony, and consequently
any prosecution against Jack Holloway is illegal. And to make that contention
stick, I shall have to say a great many words, and produce a great deal of
testimony, about the sapience of Fuzzies.
It ll have to be expert testimony, Rainsford said. The testimony of
psychologists. I suppose you know that the only psychologists on this planet
are employed by the chartered Zarathustra Company. He drank what was left of
his highball, looked at the bits of ice in the bottom of his glass and then
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