The four looked at one another. He lit a fresh cigarette from the end of the old one, dropping the butt on the floor and tramping it.
“Twenty years is a hell of a long time,” Thaxter said. “You’re dead a damn sight longer, though. Yes, if you can make a deal, go ahead.”
“What makes you think you can?” Conrad Evins demanded. “You say they’re sure of conviction on the sunstone charges. Why would they take a plea on them and drop the Fuzzy charges? That’s what they really want to convict us on.”
“Want to, yes. But I don’t believe they can, and I think Gus Brannhard doesn’t, either. Enslavement is the reduction of a sapient being to the status of chattel property; purchase or sale of a sapient being so chattelized; and/or compulsory labor or service under restraint. Well, we’ll claim those Fuzzies weren’t slaves but willing accomplices.”
“That’s not the way the Fuzzies tell it,” Rose Evins said indifferently.
“In court, the Fuzzies won’t tell it any way at all,” he told them. “In court, the Fuzzies will not be permitted to testify. Take my word for it; they just won’t.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Thaxter grunted skeptically. “If true. How about the faginy charge?”
Ingermann puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke at the overhead light, then sat down on the edge of the table. “Faginy,” he began, “consists of training minor children to perform criminal and/or immoral acts; and/or compelling minor children to perform such acts; and/or deriving gain or profit from performance of such acts by minor children. According to the Pendarvis Decisions, Fuzzies are legally equivalent to human children of under twelve years of age, so according to the Pendarvis Decisions, what you did when you trained those Fuzzies to crawl through ventilation ducts and remove simulated sunstones from cabinets in a mock-up of the Company gem-vault was faginy; and so was taking them to Company House and having them crawl in and get out the real sunstones; and, according to law, the penalty is death by shooting, mandatory and without discretion of the court.
“Well, I’m attacking this legal fiction that a mature adult Fuzzy is a minor child. No one in this Government-Company axis wants to have to defend the Fuzzies’ minor-child status in court. That’s why they’ll take your pleas on the sunstone charges and drop the Fuzzy charges. As you remarked, Leo, twenty years is a long time, but you’re dead a lot longer.”
An incredulous, almost hopeful, look came into Rose Evins’s eyes, and was instantly extinguished. She wasn’t going to abandon the peace of resignation for the torments of hope.
“Well, yes,” she said softly. “Plead us guilty on those other charges. It won’t make any difference.”
Her husband also agreed, taking his cue from her; Novaes took his from both, simply nodding. Thaxter’s mouth curved down more at the corners, and his lower lip jutted out farther.
“It better not,” he said. “Ingermann, if you plead us guilty on the sunstone charges and then get us shot for faginy or enslavement—”
“Shut up!” Ingermann barked. He was frightened; he knew what Thaxter was going to say next. “You damned fool, didn’t I tell you they have this room bugged?”
CHAPTER FIVE
WISE ONE WOKE in the dawn chill; Little She and Big She and Lame One and Fruitfinder were cuddled against him, warmed by his body heat as he was by theirs. Lame One, waking, stirred. It was still dark under the thornbushes, but there was a faint grayness above; the sun was stirring awake in its sleeping-place, too, and would soon come out to make light and warmth. The others, Stonebreaker and Stabber and Other She, were also waking. This had been a good sleeping-place, safe and cozy. It would be nice to lie here for a long time, but soon they would have to relieve themselves, and that would mean digging holes. And he was hungry. He said so, and the others agreed.
Little She said: “Don’t leave pretty bright-things. Take along.”
They would take them, and, as usual, Little She would carry them. Lately the others had begun calling her Carries-Bright-Things. But they all wanted to keep them. They were pretty and strange, and they never tired of looking at them and talking about them and playing with them. Once, they lost one of the bigger ones, and they had gone back and hunted for it from before sunhighest time until a long while after before they found it. After that, they had broken off three sticks and wedged one into the open end of each bright-thing, so that they would be easier to carry and harder to lose.
The daylight grew stronger; birds twittered happily. They found soft ground and dug their holes. They always did that — bury the bad smells, even if they went away at once. Then they went to the little stream and drank and splashed in it, and then waded across and started, line-abreast, to hunt. The sky grew bright blue, flecked with golden clouds. He wondered again about the sleeping-place of the sun, and why the sun always went into it from one part of the sky and came out from another. The People had argued about that for as long as he could remember, but nobody really knew why.
They found a tree with round fruit on it. When best, this kind of fruit was pure white. Now it was spotted with brown and was not so good, but they were hungry. They threw sticks to knock it down, and ate. They found and ate lizards and grubs. Then they found a zatku.
Zatku were hard-shelled things, as long as an arm, with many legs, a hand and one finger of legs on each side, and four jointed arms ending in sharp jaws. Zatku could hurt with these; it had been a zatku that had hurt Lame One’s leg. Stonebreaker poked this one with the sharp end of his killing-club, and it grasped it with all four jaw-arms. Immediately, Other She stamped the knob of her club down on its head and, to make sure, struck again. Then they all stood back while Wise One broke and tore away the shell and pulled off one of the jaw-arms to dig out the meat. They all trusted him to see that everybody got a share. There was enough that everybody could have a second small morsel.
They hunted for a long time, and found another zatku. This was good; it had been a long time since they had found two zatku in one day. They hunted outward after they had eaten the second one, until almost sunhighest time, but they did not find any more.
They found other things to eat, however. They found the soft pink growing-things, like hands with many fingers; they were good. They killed one of the fat little animals with brown fur that ran from one of them and was clubbed by another. And Stonebreaker threw his club and knocked down a low-flying bird; everyone praised him for that. As they hunted they had been climbing the slope of a hill. By the time they reached the top, everybody had found enough to eat.
The hilltop was a nice place. There were a few trees and low bushes and stretches of open grass, and from it they could see a long way. Far to sun-upward, a big river wound glinting through the trees, and there were mountains all around. It was good to lie in the soft grass, warmed by the sun, the wind ruffling their fur and tickling pleasantly.
There was a gotza circling in the sky, but it was too far away to see them. They sat and watched it; once it made a short turn, one wing high, then dived down out of sight.
“Gotza see something,” Stonebreaker said. “Go down, eat.”
“Hope not People,” Big She said.
“Not many People this place,” he said. “Long time not see other People.”
It had been many-many days ago, far to the sun’s right hand, that they had last talked to other People, a band of two males and three females. They had talked a long time and made sleeping place together, and the next day they had parted to hunt. They had not seen those People again. Now they talked about them.