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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. "Ernst Mallin's studying all the filmed
evidence we have and all the descriptions of Fuzzy behav-ior, and trying to
prove that none of it is the result of sapient menta-tion.
Ruth Ortheris is doing the same, only she's working on the line of instinct
and conditioned reflexes and nonsapient, single-stage rea-soning. 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."
"We hasn't turned up any simian or canine parallels to that fu-neral, has he?"
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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.
Resolved: that Fuz-zies are
Sapient Beings. Personally, I think we have the short end of it, but that only
means we'll have to work harder on it."
"You know, I was on a debating team at college," Emmert said brightly. When
that was disregarded, he added: "If I remember, the first thing was definition
of terms."
Grego looked up quickly. "Leslie, I think Nick has something. What is the
legal definition of a sapient being?"
"As far as I know, there isn't any. Sapience is something that's just taken
for granted."
"How about talk-and-build-a-fire?"
He shook his head. "People of the Colony of Vishnu versus Emily Morrosh, 6I2
A.E." He told them about the infanticide case. "I was looking up rulings on
sapience; I passed the word on to Ham O'Brien.
You know, what your people will have to do will be to pro-duce a definition of
sapience, acceptable to the court, that will in-clude all known sapient races
and at the same time exclude the Fuz-zies. I don't
envy them."
"We need some Fuzzies of our own to study," Grego said.
"Too bad we can't get hold of Holloway's," Enimert said. "Maybe we could, if
he leaves them alone at his camp."
"No. We can't risk that." He thought for a moment. "Wait a mo-ment. I think we
might be able to do it at that. Legally."
9
JACK HOLLOWAY saw Little Fuzzy eying the pipe he had laid in the ashtray, and
picked it up, putting it in his mouth. Little Fuzzy looked reproachfully at
him and started to get down onto the floor. Pappy
Jack was mean; didn't he think a Fuzzy might want to smoke a pipe, too? Well,
maybe it wouldn't hurt him. He picked Little Fuzzy up and set him back on his
lap, offering the pipestem. Little Fuzzy took a puff. He didn't cough over it;
evidently he had learned how to avoid inhaling.
"They scheduled the Kellogg trial first," Gus Bratinhard was say-ing, "and
there wasn't any way I could stop that. You see what the idea is? They'll try
him first, with Leslie Coombes running both the prosecution and the defense,
and if they can get him acquitted, it'll prejudice the sapience evidence we
introduce in your trial."
Mamma Fuzzy made another try at intercepting the drink he was hoisting, but he
frustrated that. Baby had stopped trying to sit on his head, and was playing
peek-a-boo from behind his whiskers.
"First," he continued, "they'll exclude every bit of evidence about the
Fuzzies that they can. That won't be much, but there'll be a fight to get any
of it in. What they can't exclude, they'll attack. They'll at-tack
credibility. Of course, with veridication, they can't claim any-body's lying,
but they can claim self-deception. You make a state~ ment you believe, true or
false, and the veridicator'll back you up on it. They'll attack qualifications
on expert testimony. They'll quibble about statements of fact and statements
of opinion. And what they can't exclude or attack, they'll accept, and then
deny that it's proof of sapience.
"What the hell do they want for proof of sapience?" Gerd de-manded. "Nuclear
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energy and contragravity and hyperdrive?"
"They will have a nice, neat, pedantic definition of sapience, tai-lored
especially to exclude the Fuzzies, and they will present it in court and try
to get it accepted, and it's up to us to guess in advance what that will be,
and have a refutation of it ready, and also a defini-tion of our own."
"Their definition will have to include Khooghras. Gerd, do the Khooghras bury
their dead?"
"Hell, no; they eat them. But you have to give them this, they cook them
first."
"Look, we won't get anywhere arguing about what Fuzzies do and Khooghras don't
do," Rainsford said.
"We'll have to get a definition of sapience. Remember what Ruth said Saturday
night?"
Gerd van Riebeek looked as though he didn't want to remember what Ruth had
said, or even remember
Ruth herself. Jack nodded, and repeated it. "I got the impression of
non-sapient intelligence shading up to a sharp line, and then sapience shading
up from there, maybe a different color, or wavy lines instead of straight
ones."
"That's a good graphic representation," Gerd said. "You know, that line's so
sharp I'd be tempted to think of sapience as a result of mutation, except that
I can't quite buy the same mutation happening in the same way on so many
different planets."
Ben Rainsford started to say something, then stopped short when a constabulary
siren hooted over the camp. The Fuzzies looked up in-terestedly. They knew
what that was. Pappy Jack's friends in the blue clothes. Jack went to the door
and opened it, putting the outside light on.
The car was landing; George Lunt, two of his men and two men in civilian
clothes were getting out. Both the latter were armed, and one of them carried
a bundle under his arm.
"Hello, George; come on in."
"We want to talk to you, Jack." Lunt's voice was strained, empty of warmth or
friendliness. "At least, these men do."
"Why, yes. Sure."
He backed into the room to permit them to enter. Something was wrong;
something bad had come up.
Khadra came in first, placing himself beside and a little behind him. Lunt
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