Little Fuzzy, H. Beam Piper [ebook reader computer txt] 📗

temperature. But sapience is qualitatively different from nonsapience. It’s more than just a higher degree of mental temperature. You might call it a sort of mental boiling point.”

“I think that’s a damn good analogy,” Rainsford said. “But what happens when the boiling point is reached?”

“That’s what we have to find out,” van Riebeek told him. “That’s what I was talking about a moment ago. We don’t know any more about how sapience appeared today than we did in the year zero, or in the year 654 Pre-Atomic for that matter.”

“Wait a minute,” Jack interrupted. “Before we go any deeper, let’s agree on a definition of sapience.”

Van Riebeek laughed. “Ever try to get a definition of life from a biologist?” he asked. “Or a definition of number from a mathematician?”

“That’s about it.” Ruth looked at the Fuzzies, who were looking at their colored-ball construction as though wondering if they could add anything more without spoiling the design. “I’d say: a level of mentation qualitatively different from nonsapience in that it includes ability to symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and ability to form abstract ideas. There; I didn’t say a word about talk-and-build-a-fire, did I?”

“Little Fuzzy symbolizes and generalizes,” Jack said. “He symbolizes a damnthing by three horns, and he symbolizes a rifle by a long thing that points and makes noises. Rifles kill animals. Harpies and damnthings are both animals. If a rifle will kill a harpy, it’ll kill a damnthing too.”

Juan Jimenez had been frowning in thought; he looked up and asked, “What’s the lowest known sapient race?”

“Yggdrasil Khooghras,” Gerd van Riebeek said promptly. “Any of you ever been on Yggdrasil?”

“I saw a man shot once on Mimir, for calling another man a son of a Khooghra,” Jack said. “The man who shot him had been on Yggdrasil and knew what he was being called.”

“I spent a couple of years among them,” Gerd said. “They do build fires; I’ll give them that. They char points on sticks to make spears. And they talk. I learned their language, all eighty-two words of it. I taught a few of the intelligentsia how to use machetes without maiming themselves, and there was one mental giant I could trust to carry some of my equipment, if I kept an eye on him, but I never let him touch my rifle or my camera.”

“Can they generalize?” Ruth asked.

“Honey, they can’t do nothin’ else but! Every word in their language is a high-order generalization. Hroosha, live-thing. Noosha, bad-thing. Dhishta, thing-to-eat. Want me to go on? There are only seventy-nine more of them.”

Before anybody could stop him, the communication screen got itself into an uproar. The Fuzzies all ran over in front of it, and Jack switched it on. The caller was a man in gray semiformals; he had wavy gray hair and a face that looked like Juan Jimenez’s twenty years from now.

“Good evening; Holloway here.”

“Oh, Mr. Holloway, good evening.” The caller shook hands with himself, turning on a dazzling smile. “I’m Leonard Kellogg, chief of the Company’s science division. I just heard the tape you made about the⁠—the Fuzzies?” He looked down at the floor. “Are these some of the animals?”

“These are the Fuzzies.” He hoped it sounded like the correction it was intended to be. “Dr. Bennett Rainsford’s here with me now, and so are Dr. Jimenez, Dr. van Riebeek and Dr. Ortheris.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jimenez squirming as though afflicted with ants, van Riebeek getting his poker face battened down and Ben Rainsford suppressing a grin. “Some of us are out of screen range, and I’m sure you’ll want to ask a lot of questions. Pardon us a moment, while we close in.”

He ignored Kellogg’s genial protest that that wouldn’t be necessary until the chairs were placed facing the screen. As an afterthought, he handed Fuzzies around, giving Little Fuzzy to Ben, Ko-Ko to Gerd, Mitzi to Ruth, Mike to Jimenez and taking Mamma and Baby on his own lap.

Baby immediately started to climb up onto his head, as expected. It seemed to disconcert Kellogg, also as expected. He decided to teach Baby to thumb his nose when given some unobtrusive signal.

“Now, about that tape I recorded last evening,” he began.

“Yes, Mr. Holloway.” Kellogg’s smile was getting more mechanical every minute. He was having trouble keeping his eyes off Baby. “I must say, I was simply astounded at the high order of intelligence claimed for these creatures.”

“And you wanted to see how big a liar I was. I don’t blame you; I had trouble believing it myself at first.”

Kellogg gave a musically blithe laugh, showing even more dental equipment.

“Oh, no. Mr. Holloway; please don’t misunderstand me. I never thought anything like that.”

“I hope not,” Ben Rainsford said, not too pleasantly. “I vouched for Mr. Holloway’s statements, if you’ll recall.”

“Of course, Bennett; that goes without saying. Permit me to congratulate you upon a most remarkable scientific discovery. An entirely new order of mammals⁠—”

“Which may be the ninth extrasolar sapient race,” Rainsford added.

“Good heavens, Bennett!” Kellogg jettisoned his smile and slid on a look of shocked surprise. “You surely can’t be serious?” He looked again at the Fuzzies, pulled the smile back on and gave a light laugh.

“I thought you’d heard that tape,” Rainsford said.

“Of course, and the things reported were most remarkable. But sapiences! Just because they’ve been taught a few tricks, and use sticks and stones for weapons⁠ ⁠…” He got rid of the smile again, and quick-changed to seriousness. “Such an extreme claim must only be made after careful study.”

“Well, I won’t claim they’re sapient,” Ruth Ortheris told him. “Not till day after tomorrow, at the earliest. But they very easily could be. They have learning and reasoning capacity equal to that of any eight-year-old Terran Human child, and well above that of the adults of some recognizedly sapient races. And they have not been taught tricks; they have learned by observation and reasoning.”

“Well, Dr. Kellogg, mentation levels isn’t my subject,” Jimenez took it