Little Fuzzy, H. Beam Piper [rainbow fish read aloud txt] 📗

“Court order, all right, signed by the Chief Justice.” He handed it back. “They have to take the Fuzzies, and that’s all there is to it. Keep that order, though, and make them give you a signed and thumbprinted receipt. Type it up for them now, Jack.”

Gus wanted to busy him with something, so he wouldn’t have to watch what was going on. The smaller of the two deputies had dropped the bundle from under his arm. It was a number of canvas sacks. He sat down at the typewriter, closing his ears to the noises in the room, and wrote the receipt, naming the Fuzzies and describing them, and specifying that they were in good health and uninjured. One of them tried to climb to his lap, yeeking frantically; it clutched his shirt, but it was snatched away. He was finished with his work before the invaders were with theirs. They had three Fuzzies already in sacks. Khadra was catching Cinderella. Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy had run for the little door in the outside wall, but Lunt was standing with his heels against it, holding it shut; when they saw that, both of them began burrowing in the bedding. The third trooper and the smaller of the two deputies dragged them out and stuffed them into sacks.

He got to his feet, still stunned and only half comprehending, and took the receipt out of the typewriter. There was an argument about it; Lunt told the deputies to sign it or get the hell out without the Fuzzies. They signed, inked their thumbs and printed after their signatures. Jack gave the paper to Gus, trying not to look at the six bulging, writhing sacks, or hear the frightened little sounds.

“George, you’ll let them have some of their things, won’t you?” he asked.

“Sure. What kind of things?”

“Their bedding. Some of their toys.”

“You mean this junk?” The smaller of the two deputies kicked the ball-and-stick construction. “All we got orders to take is the Fuzzies.”

“You heard the gentleman.” Lunt made the word sound worse than son of a Khooghra. He turned to the two deputies. “Well, you have them; what are you waiting for?”

Jack watched from the door as they put the sacks into the aircar, climbed in after them and lifted out. Then he came back and sat down at the table.

“They don’t know anything about court orders,” he said. “They don’t know why I didn’t stop it. They think Pappy Jack let them down.”

“Have they gone, Jack?” Brannhard asked. “Sure?” Then he rose, reaching behind him, and took up a little ball of white fur. Baby Fuzzy caught his beard with both tiny hands, yeeking happily.

“Baby! They didn’t get him!”

Brannhard disengaged the little hands from his beard and handed him over.

“No, and they signed for him, too.” Brannhard downed what was left of his drink, got a cigar out of his pocket and lit it. “Now, we’re going to go to Mallorysport and get the rest of them back.”

“But…. But the Chief Justice signed that order. He won’t give them back just because we ask him to.”

Brannhard made an impolite noise. “I’ll bet everything I own Pendarvis never saw that order. They have stacks of those things, signed in blank, in the Chief of the Court’s office. If they had to wait to get one of the judges to sign an order every time they wanted to subpoena a witness or impound physical evidence, they’d never get anything done. If Ham O’Brien didn’t think this up for himself, Leslie Coombes thought it up for him.”

“We’ll use my airboat,” Gerd said. “You coming along, Ben? Let’s get started.”

He couldn’t understand. The Big Ones in the blue clothes had been friends; they had given the whistles, and shown sorrow when the killed one was put in the ground. And why had Pappy Jack not gotten the big gun and stopped them. It couldn’t be that he was afraid; Pappy Jack was afraid of nothing.

The others were near, in bags like the one in which he had been put; he could hear them, and called to them. Then he felt the edge of the little knife Pappy Jack had made. He could cut his way out of this bag now and free the others, but that would be no use. They were in one of the things the Big Ones went up into the sky in, and if he got out now, there would be nowhere to go and they would be caught at once. Better to wait.

The one thing that really worried him was that he would not know where they were being taken. When they did get away, how would they ever find Pappy Jack again?

Gus Brannhard was nervous, showing it by being overtalkative, and that worried Jack. He’d stopped twice at mirrors along the hallway to make sure that his gold-threaded gray neckcloth was properly knotted and that his black jacket was zipped up far enough and not too far. Now, in front of the door marked THE CHIEF JUSTICE, he paused before pushing the button to fluff his newly shampooed beard.

There were two men in the Chief Justice’s private chambers. Pendarvis he had seen once or twice, but their paths had never crossed. He had a good face, thin and ascetic, the face of a man at peace with himself. With him was Mohammed Ali O’Brien, who seemed surprised to see them enter, and then apprehensive. Nobody shook hands; the Chief Justice bowed slightly and invited them to be seated.

“Now,” he continued, when they found chairs, “Miss Ugatori tells me that you are making complaint against an action by Mr. O’Brien here.”

“We are indeed, your Honor.” Brannhard opened his briefcase and produced two papers—the writ, and the receipt for the Fuzzies, handing them across the desk. “My client and I wish to know upon what basis of legality your Honor sanctioned this act, and by what right Mr. O’Brien sent his officers to Mr. Holloway’s camp to snatch these little people from their friend and protector, Mr. Holloway.”

The judge looked at the two papers. “As you know, Miss Ugatori took prints of them when you called to make this appointment. I’ve seen them. But believe me, Mr. Brannhard, this is the first time I have seen the original of this writ. You know how these things are signed in blank. It’s a practice that has saved considerable time and effort, and until now they have only been used when there was no question that I or any other judge would approve. Such a question should certainly have existed in this case, because had I seen this writ I would never have signed it.” He turned to the now fidgeting Chief Prosecutor. “Mr. O’Brien,” he said, “one simply does not impound sapient beings as evidence, as, say, one impounds a veldbeest calf in a brand-alteration case. The fact that the sapience of these Fuzzies is still sub judice includes the presumption of its possibility. Now you know perfectly well that the courts may take no action in the face of the possibility that some innocent person may suffer wrong.”

“And, your Honor,” Brannhard leaped into the breach, “it cannot be denied that these Fuzzies have suffered a most outrageous wrong! Picture them—no, picture innocent and artless children, for that is what these Fuzzies are, happy trusting little children, who, until then, had known only kindness and affection—rudely kidnapped, stuffed into sacks by brutal and callous men—”

“Your Honor!” O’Brien’s face turned even blacker than the hot sun of Agni had made it. “I cannot hear officers of the court so characterized without raising my voice in protest!”

“Mr. O’Brien seems to forget that he is speaking in the presence of two eye witnesses to this brutal abduction.”

“If the officers of the court need defense, Mr. O’Brien, the court will defend them. I believe that you should presently consider a defense of your own actions.”

“Your Honor, I insist that I only acted as I felt to be my duty,” O’Brien said. “These Fuzzies are a key exhibit in the case of People versus Kellogg, since only by demonstration of their sapience can any prosecution against the defendant be maintained.”

“Then why,” Brannhard demanded, “did you endanger them in this criminally reckless manner?”

“Endanger them?” O’Brien was horrified. “Your Honor, I acted only to insure their safety and appearance in court.”

“So you took them away from the only man on this planet who knows anything about their proper care, a man who loves them as he would his own human children, and you subjected them to abuse, which, for all you knew, might have been fatal to them.”

Judge Pendarvis nodded. “I don’t believe, Mr. Brannhard, that you have overstated the case. Mr. O’Brien, I take a very unfavorable view of your action in this matter. You had no right to have what are at least putatively sapient beings treated in this way, and even viewing them as mere physical evidence I must agree with Mr. Brannhard’s characterization of your conduct as criminally reckless. Now, speaking judicially, I order you to produce those Fuzzies immediately and return them to the custody of Mr. Holloway.”

“Well, of course, your Honor.” O’Brien had been growing progressively distraught, and his face now had the gray-over-brown hue of a walnut gunstock that has been out in the rain all day. “It’ll take an hour or so to send for them and have them brought here.”

“You mean they’re not in this building?” Pendarvis asked.

“Oh, no, your Honor, there are no facilities here. I had them taken to Science Center—”

“What?”

Jack had determined to keep his mouth shut and let Gus do the talking. The exclamation was literally forced out of him. Nobody noticed; it had also been forced out of both Gus Brannhard and Judge Pendarvis. Pendarvis leaned forward and spoke with dangerous mildness:

“Do you refer, Mr. O’Brien, to the establishment of the Division of Scientific Study and Research of the chartered Zarathustra Company?”

“Why, yes; they have facilities for keeping all kinds of live animals, and they do all the scientific work for—”

Pendarvis cursed blasphemously. Brannhard looked as startled as though his own briefcase had jumped at his throat and tried to bite him. He didn’t look half as startled as Ham O’Brien did.

“So you think,” Pendarvis said, recovering his composure with visible effort, “that the logical custodian of prosecution evidence in a murder trial is the defendant? Mr. O’Brien, you simply enlarge my view of the possible!”

“The Zarathustra Company isn’t the defendant,” O’Brien argued sullenly.

“Not of record, no,” Brannhard agreed. “But isn’t the Zarathustra Company’s scientific division headed by one Leonard Kellogg?”

“Dr. Kellogg’s been relieved of his duties, pending the outcome of the trial. The division is now headed by Dr. Ernst Mallin.”

“Chief scientific witness for the defense; I fail to see any practical difference.”

“Well, Mr. Emmert said it would