The tide was with him; Pomfrey used it. "If it please the court and if the counsels for the respondent will permit, we can shorten these proceedings. I will state the theory under which relief is sought and then, by a few questions, it may be settled one way or another. I ask that it be stipulated that it was the intention of Workers, Incorporated, through its servants, to take the life of my client."
Stipulation was refused.
"So? Then I ask that the court take judicial notice of the well known fact that these anthropoid workers are destroyed when they no longer show a profit; thereafter I will call witnesses, starting with Horace Blakesly, to show that Jerry was and presumably is under such sentence of death."
Another hurried huddle resulted in the stipulation that Jerry had, indeed, been scheduled for euthanasia.
"Then," said Pomfrey, "I will state my theory. Jerry is not an animal, but a man. It is not legal to kill him it is murder."
First there was silence, then the crowd gasped. People had grown used to animals that talked and worked, but they were no more prepared to think of them as persons, humans, men, than were the haughty Roman citizens prepared to concede human feelings to their barbarian slaves.
Pomfrey let them have it while they were still groggy. "What is a man? A collection of living cells and tissues? A legal fiction, like this corporate 'person* that would take poor Jerry's life? No, a man is none of these things. A man is a collection of hopes and fears, of human longings, of aspirations greater than himself more than the clay from which he came; less than the Creator which lifted him up from the clay. Jerry has been taken from his jungle and made something more than the poor creatures who were his ancestors, even as you and I. We ask that this Court recognize his manhood."
The opposing attorneys saw that the Court was moved, they drove in fast. An anthropoid, they contended, could not be a man because he lacked human shape and human intelligence. Pomfrey called his first witness Master B'na Kreeth.
The Martian's normal bad temper had not been improved by being forced to wait around for three days in a travel tank, to say nothing of the indignity of having to interrupt his researches to take part in the childish pow-wows of terrestrials.
There was further delay to irritate him while Pomfrey forced the corporation attorneys to accept B'na as an expert witness. They wanted to refuse but could not he was their own Director of Research. He also held voting control of all Martian-held Workers' stock, a fact unmentioned but hampering.
More delay while an interpreter was brought in to help administer the oath B na Kreeth, self-centered as all Martians, had never bothered to leam English.
He twittered and chirped in answer to the demand that he tell the truth, the whole truth, and so forth; the interpreter looked pained. "He says he can't do it," he informed the judge.
Pomfrey asked for exact translation.
The interpreter looked uneasily at the Judge. "He says that if he told the whole truth you fools not 'fools' exactly; it's a Martian word meaning a sort of headless worm-you would not understand it.У
The court discussed the idea of contempt briefly. When die Martian understood that he was about to be forced to remain in a travel tank for thirty days he came down off his high horse and agreed to tell the truth as adequately as was possible; he was accepted as a witness.
"Are you a man?" demanded Pomfrey.
"Under your laws and by your standards I am a man.
"By what theory? Your body is unlike ours; you cannot even live in our air. You do not speak our language; your ideas are alien to us. How can you be a man?'
The Martian answered carefully: "I quote from the Terra-Martian Treaty, which you must accept as supreme law. ТAs members of the Great Race, while sojourning on the Third PlanetХshall have all the rights and prerogatives of the native dominant race of the Third Planet.У This clause has been interpreted by the Bi-Planet Tribunal to mean that members of the Great Race are ФmenХ whatever that may be."
"Why do you refer to your sort as the 'Great Race'?"
"Because of our superior intelligence."
"Superior to men?"
"We are men."
"Superior to the intelligence of earth men?"
"That is self-evident."
"Just as we are superior in intelligence to this poor creature Jerry?"
"That is not self-evident."
"Finished with the witness," announced Pomfrey. The opposition counsels should have left bad enough alone; instead they tried to get B'na Kreeth to define the difference in intelligence between humans and worker-anthropoids. Master B'na explained meticulously that cultural differences masked the intrinsic differences, if any, and that, in any case, both anthropoids and men made so little use of their respective potential intelligences that it was really too early to tell which race would turn out to be the superior race in the Third Planet.
He had just begun to discuss how a truly superior race could be bred by combining the best features of anthropoids and men when he was hastily asked to "stand down."
"May it please the Court," said Pomfrey, "we have not advanced the theory; we have merely disposed of respondent's contention that a particular shape and a particular degree of intelligence are necessary to manhood. I now ask that the petitioner be recalled to the stand that the court may determine whether he is, in truth, human."
"If the learned court please " The battery of lawyers had been in a huddle ever since B'na Kreeth's travel tank had been removed from the room; the chief counsel now spoke.
"The object of the petition appears to be to protect the life of this chattel. There is no need to draw out these proceedings; respondent stipulates that this chattel will be allowed to die a natural death in the hands of its present custodian and moves that the action be dismissed."
"What do you say to that?" the Court asked Pomfrey.
Pomfrey visibly gathered his toga about him. "We ask not for cold charity from this corporation, but for the justice of the court. We ask that Jerry's humanity be established as a matter of law. Not for him to vote, nor to hold property, nor to be relieved of special police regulations appropriate to his group but we do ask that he be adjudged at least as human as that aquarium monstrosity just removed from this court room!"
The judge turned to Jerry. "Is that what you want, Jerry?"
Jerry looked uneasily at Pomfrey, then said, "Okay, Boss."
"Come up to the chair."
"One moment " The opposition chief counsel seemed flurried. "I ask the Court to consider that a ruling in this matter may affect a long established commercial practice necessary to the economic life of-"
"Objection!" Pomfrey was on his feet, bristling. "Never have I heard a more outrageous attempt to prejudice a decision. My esteemed colleague might as well ask the Court to decide a murder case from political considerations. I protest-"
"Never mind," said the court. "The suggestion will be ignored. Proceed with your witness."
Pomfrey bowed. "We are exploring the meaning of this strange thing called 'manhood.' We have seen (hat it is not a matter of shape, nor race, nor planet of birth, nor ofacutenessofmind. Truly, it cannot be defined, yet it may be experienced. It can reach from heart to heart, from spirit to spirit." He turned to Jerry. "Jerry will you sing your new song for the judge?"
"Sure mike." Jerry looked uneasily up at the whirring cameras, the mikes, and the ikes, then cleared his throat:
"Way down upon de Suwannee Ribber...Far, far away; Dere s where my heart is turning ebber..."
The applause scared him out of his wits; the banging of the gavel frightened him still more but it mattered not; the issue was no longer in doubt.
Jerry was a man.