Ben Rainsford went back to Beta Continent, and Gerd van Riebeek remained
in Mallorysport. The constabulary at Post Fifteen had made steel
chopper-diggers for their Fuzzies, and reported a gratifying abatement of
the land-prawn nuisance. They also made a set of scaled-down carpenter
tools, and their Fuzzies were building themselves a house out of scrap
crates and boxes. A pair of Fuzzies showed up at Ben Rainsford's camp, and
he adopted them, naming them Flora and Fauna.
Everybody had Fuzzies now, and Pappy Jack only had Baby. He was lying on
the floor of the parlor, teaching Baby to tie knots in a piece of string.
Gus Brannhard, who spent most of the day in the office in the Central
Courts building which had been furnished to him as special prosecutor, was
lolling in an armchair in red-and-blue pajamas, smoking a cigar, drinking
coffee--his whisky consumption was down to a couple of drinks a day--and
studying texts on two reading screens at once, making an occasional remark
into a stenomemophone. Gerd was at the desk, spoiling notepaper in an
effort to work something out by symbolic logic. Suddenly he crumpled a
sheet and threw it across the room, cursing. Brannhard looked away from
his screens.
"Trouble, Gerd?"
Gerd cursed again. "How the devil can I tell whether Fuzzies generalize?"
he demanded. "How can I tell whether they form abstract ideas? How can I
prove, even, that they have ideas at all? Hell's blazes, how can I even
prove, to your satisfaction, that I think consciously?"
"Working on that idea I mentioned?" Brannhard asked.
"I was. It seemed like a good idea but...."
"Suppose we go back to specific instances of Fuzzy behavior, and present
them as evidence of sapience?" Brannhard asked. "That funeral, for
instance."
"They'll still insist that we define sapience."
The communication screen began buzzing. Baby Fuzzy looked up
disinterestedly, and then went back to trying to untie a figure-eight knot
he had tied. Jack shoved himself to his feet and put the screen on. It was
Max Fane, and for the first time that he could remember, the Colonial
Marshal was excited.
"Jack, have you had any news on the screen lately?"
"No. Something turn up?"
"God, yes! The cops are all over the city hunting the Fuzzies; they have
orders to shoot on sight. Nick Emmert was just on the air with a reward
offer--five hundred sols apiece, dead or alive."
It took a few seconds for that to register. Then he became frightened. Gus
and Gerd were both on their feet and crowding to the screen behind him.
"They have some bum from that squatters' camp over on the East Side who
claims the Fuzzies beat up his ten-year-old daughter," Fane was saying.
"They have both of them at police headquarters, and they've handed the
story out to Zarathustra News, and Planetwide Coverage. Of course, they're
Company-controlled; they're playing it for all it's worth."
"Have they been veridicated?" Brannhard demanded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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