Captain Ahmed Khadra, chief of detectives, ZNPF, and Colonel Ian Ferguson, Commandant, Colonial Constabulary, were listening to the telecast with Max Fane, the Colonial Marshal, in the latter’s office. In the screen, Governor Rainsford was saying:
“And any person capturing or illegally transporting or illegally holding in restraint any Fuzzy for purposes of sale will be guilty of enslavement.”
“Aah!” Max Fane set a stiffly extended index finger against the base of his skull, cocked his thumb and clicked his tongue. “Death’s mandatory; no discretion-of-the-court about it.”
“Yves Janiver’ll try all the Fuzzy cases. He likes Fuzzies,” Ferguson said. “He won’t like people who mistreat them.”
“I know Janiver’s attitude on death penalties,” Fane said. “He doesn’t think people should be shot for committing crimes; he thinks they should be shot for being the kind of people who commit them. He thinks shooting criminals is like shooting diseased veldbeest. A sanitation measure. So do I.”
“If Herckerd and Novaes are smart, they’ll come in and surrender now,” Ferguson said. “You think they still have the other five?”
Khadra shook his head. “I think they sold them to somebody in Mallorysport as soon as they moved them out of Company House. If we could find out who that is…”
“I could name a dozen possibilities,” Max Fane told him. “And back of each one of them is Hugo Ingermann.”
“I wish we could haul Ingermann in and veridicate him,” Ferguson said.
“Well, you can’t. Ingermann’s a lawyer, and the only way you can question a lawyer under veridication is catch him standing over a corpse with a bloody knife in his hand. And you have a Nifflheim of a time doing it, even then.”
“A GREAT MANY people want Fuzzies; we know that,” the Governor was saying. “Many of them should have them; they would make Fuzzies happy, and would be made happy by them. We are not going to deny such people an opportunity to adopt these charming little persons. An adoption bureau has been set up already; Mrs. Frederic Pendarvis, the wife of the Chief Justice, will be in charge of it, and the offices have already been set up in the Central Courts Building, and will open tomorrow morning…”
“Oh, Daddy; Mother!” the little girl cried. “You hear that, now. The Governor says people can have Fuzzies of their own. Won’t you get me a Fuzzy? I’ll be as good as good to it — him, I mean, or her, whichever.”
The parents looked at one another, and then at their twelve-year-old daughter.
“What do you think, Bob?”
“You’ll have to take care of it, Marjory, and that will be a lot of work. You’ll have to feed it, and give it baths, and…”
“Oh, I will; I’ll do anything, just if I can have one. And people mustn’t call Fuzzies ‘it,’ Daddy; Fuzzies are people, too, like us. You didn’t call me ‘it,’ when I was a little baby, did you?”
“I’m afraid your father did, my dear. Just at first. And you’ll have to study and learn the language, so you can talk to the Fuzzy, because Fuzzies don’t speak Lingua Terra. You know, Bob, I think I’d enjoy having a Fuzzy around, myself.”
“You know, I believe I would, too. Well, let’s get around to this adoption bureau the first thing tomorrow…”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEY WERE HAVING a party at the Pendarvis home. Jack Holloway sat on his heels on the floor, smoking his pipe and interpreting, while the judge and his wife, in a low easy-chair and on a drum-shaped hassock respectively, were getting acquainted with the guests of honor, the two Fuzzies Juan Jimenez had brought in from Beta Continent that evening. Gus Brannhard, who had come along from Government House, was sprawled in one of the larger chairs, chuckling in his beard. Juna Jimenez and Ahmed Khadra had removed their hearing aids and carried their drinks to the other side of the room, where they were talking about Jimenez’s visit, with a couple of George Lunt’s troopers, to the site of his former camp.
“They were back, after we left,” Jimenez was saying. “We could see where they’d set a car down. There wasn’t much to see; they policed everything up very neatly after they left, the second time. Didn’t leave any litter around.”
“Or any evidence,” Khadra added.
“That was what Yorimitsu and Calderon said when they saw it. I gather they take a dim view of neatness.”
“Around where they’re investigating, sure. Tidying up around the scene of a crime’s gotten more criminals off than all the crooked lawyers in the Galaxy. In this case it doesn’t matter. Herekerd and Novaes brought those Fuzzies in; we know that. We have a witness.”
“Can you veridicate a Fuzzy?” Brannhard asked, over his shoulder. “If you can’t, the defense’ll object.”
Pendarvis looked up and around. “Mr. Brannhard, I’m afraid I’d have to sustain such an objection. I suspect that Judge Janiver, who’d be hearing the case, would, too. If I were you, I’d find out. Have you ever been veridicated?” he asked the Fuzzy on his lap.
The Fuzzy — the male member of the couple, who was trying to work the zipper of his jacket — said, “Unnh?” The judge scratched the back of his head, which the Fuzzy, like most furry people, liked, and wondered how long it would take to learn the language.
“Not too long,” Jack told him. “It only took me a day to learn everything the people on Xerxes learned; by the time we were starting for home, after the trial, I could talk to them. What are you going to call them?”
“Don’t they have names of their own, Mr. Holloway?” the judge’s wife asked.
“They don’t seem to. In the woods, there are never more than six or eight in a family, if that’s what the groups are. I guess all the natives names are things like ‘me,’ and ‘you,’ and ‘this one,’ and ‘that one’. ”
“You’ll have to have names for them, for the adoption papers,” Brannhard said.
“At the camp, we just called them ‘the Newlyweds,’ ” Khadra said.
“How about Pierrot and Columbine?” Mrs. Pendarvis asked.
Her husband nodded. “I think that would be fine.” He pointed to himself.
“Aki Pappy Frederic. So Pierrot. “
“Aki Py’hot? Py’hot siggo Pappy F’ed’ik. “
“He accepts the name. He says he likes you. What are you going to do with them tomorrow, Mrs. Pendarvis? Do you have any human servants here?”
“No, everything’s robotic, and I oughtn’t to leave them alone with robots. Not till they get used to them.”
“Drop them off at Government House; they can play with Flora and Fauna,” Brannhard suggested. “And I’ll call Victor Grego and invite his Diamond over, and they can have a real party. First Fuzzy social event of the season.”
A mellow-toned bell began chiming. The Judge set Pierrot on the floor and excused himself; Pierrot trotted after him. In a moment, both were back.
“Chief Earlie’s on screen,” he said. “He wants to talk either to Captain Khadra or Mr. Holloway.”
That was the new Mallorysport chief of police. Jack nodded to Khadra, who left the room.
“Probably found something out about Herckerd and Novaes,” Brannhard said.
“Will you really charge them with enslavement?” Mrs. Pendarvis asked. “That’s mandatory death.”
“You catch people, deprive them of their freedom, make property of them,” Brannhard said. “What else can you call it? A pet slave is still a slave, if he belongs to somebody else. I don’t know how a Fuzzy could be made to work…”
“Nightclub entertainers, attractions in bars, sideshow acts…”
Khadra came back; he had his beret on, and was buckling on his pistol.
“Earlie says he has a report on a Fuzzy being seen in an apartment-unit over on the north side of the city,” he said. “Informant says a Fuzzy is being kept by a family on one of the upper floors. He’s sending men there now.”