H. Piper - Little Fuzzy

“Mr. Stenson,” she began, before he could say anything. “That apparatus I brought to your shop this morning — the sensory-response detector — we’ve made a simply frightful mistake. There’s nothing wrong with it whatever, and if anything’s done with it, it may cause serious damage.”

“I don’t think I understand, Dr. Ortheris.”

“Well, it was a perfectly natural mistake. You see, we’re all at our wits’ end here. Mr. Holloway and his lawyer and the Colonial Marshal are here with an order from Judge Pendarvis for the return of those Fuzzies. None of us knows what we’re doing at all. Why the whole trouble with the apparatus was the fault of the operator. We’ll have to have it back immediately, all of it.”

“I see, Dr. Ortheris.” The old instrument maker looked worried. “But I’m afraid the apparatus has already gone to the workroom. Mr. Stephenson has it now, and I can’t get in touch with him at present. If the mistake can be corrected, what do you want done?”

“Just hold it; I’ll call or send for it.”

She blanked the screen. Old Johnson, the chief data synthesist, tried to detain her with some question.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson. I can’t stop now. I have to go over to Company House right away.”

THE SUITE AT the Hotel Mallory was crowded when Jack Holloway returned with Gerd van Riebeek; it was noisy with voices, and the ventilators were laboring to get rid of the tobacco smoke. Gus Brannhard, Ben Rainsford and Baby Fuzzy were meeting the press.

“Oh, Mr. Holloway!” somebody shouted as he entered. “Have you found them yet?”

“No; we’ve been all over Science Center from top to bottom. We know they went down a few floors from where they’d been caged, but that’s all. I don’t think they could have gotten outside; the only exit on the ground level’s through a vestibule where a Company policeman was on duty, and there’s no way for them to have climbed down from any of the terraces or landing stages.”

“Well, Mr. Holloway, I hate to suggest this,” somebody else said, “but have you eliminated the possibility that they might have hidden in a trash bin and been dumped into the mass energy converter?”

“We thought of that. The converter’s underground, in a vault that can be entered only by one door, and that was locked. No trash was disposed of between the time they were brought there and the time the search started, and everything that’s been sent to the converter since has been checked piece by piece.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Holloway, and I know that everybody hearing this will be glad, too. I take it you’ve not given up looking for them?”

“Are we on the air now? No, I have not; I’m staying here in Mallorysport until I either find them or am convinced that they aren’t in the city. And I am offering a reward of two thousand sols apiece for their return to me. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll have descriptions ready for you…”

Victor Grego unstoppered the refrigerated cocktail jug. “More?” he asked Leslie Coombes.

“Yes, thank you.” Coombes held his glass until it was filled. “As you say, Victor, you made the decision, but you made it on my advice, and the advice was bad.”

He couldn’t disagree, even politely, with that. He hoped it hadn’t been ruinously bad. One thing, Leslie wasn’t trying to pass the buck, and considering how Ham O’Brien had mishandled his end of it, he could have done so quite plausibly.

“I used bad judgment,” Coombes said dispassionately, as though discussing some mistake Hitler had made, or Napoleon. “I thought O’Brien wouldn’t try to use one of those presigned writs, and I didn’t think Pendarvis would admit, publicly, that he signed court orders in blank. He’s been severely criticized by the press about that.”

He hadn’t thought Brannhard and Holloway would try to fight a court order either. That was one of the consequences of being too long in a seemingly irresistible position; you didn’t expect resistance. Kellogg hadn’t expected Jack Holloway to order him off his land grant. Kurt Borch had thought all he needed to do with a gun was pull it and wave it around. And Jimenez had expected the Fuzzies to just sit in their cages.

“I wonder where they got to,” Coombes was saying. “I understand they couldn’t be found at all in the building.”

“Ruth Ortheris has an idea. She got away from Science Center before Fane could get hold of her and veridicate her. It seems she and an assistant took some apparatus out, about ten o’clock, in a truck. She thinks the Fuzzies hitched a ride with her. I know that sounds rather improbable, but hell, everything else sounds impossible. I’ll have it followed up. Maybe we can find them before Holloway does. They’re not inside Science Center, that’s sure.” His own glass was empty; he debated a refill and voted against it. “O’Brien’s definitely out, I take it?”

“Completely. Pendarvis gave him his choice of resigning or facing malfeasance charges.”

“They couldn’t really convict him of malfeasance for that, could they? Misfeasance, maybe, but—”

“They could charge him. And then they could interrogate him under veridication about his whole conduct in office, and you know what they would bring out,” Coombes said. “He almost broke an arm signing his resignation. He’s still Attorney General of the Colony, of course; Nick issued a statement supporting him. That hasn’t done Nick as much harm as O’Brien could do spilling what he knows about Residency affairs.

“Now Brannhard is talking about bringing suit against the Company, and he’s furnishing copies of all the Fuzzy films Holloway has to the news services. Interworld News is going hog-wild with it, and even the services we control can’t play it down too much. I don’t know who’s going to be prosecuting these cases, but whoever it is, he won’t dare pull any punches. And the whole thing’s made Pendarvis hostile to us. I know, the law and the evidence and nothing but the law and the evidence, but the evidence is going to filter into his conscious mind through this hostility. He’s called a conference with Brannhard and myself for tomorrow afternoon; I don’t know what that’s going to be like.”

THE TWO LAWYERS had risen hastily when Chief Justice Pendarvis entered; he responded to their greetings and seated himself at his desk, reaching for the silver cigar box and taking out a panatella. Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard picked up the cigar he had laid aside and began puffing on it; Leslie Coombes took a cigarette from his case. They both looked at him, waiting like two drawn weapons — a battle axe and a rapier.

“Well, gentlemen, as you know, we have a couple of homicide cases and nobody to prosecute them,” he began.

“Why bother, your Honor?” Coombes asked. “Both charges are completely frivolous. One man killed a wild animal, and the other killed a man who was trying to kill him.”

“Well, your Honor, I don’t believe my client is guilty of anything, legally or morally,” Brannhard said. “I want that established by an acquittal.” He looked at Coombes. “I should think Mr. Coombes would be just as anxious to have his client cleared of any stigma of murder, too.”

“I am quite agreed. People who have been charged with crimes ought to have public vindication if they are innocent. Now, in the first place, I planned to hold the Kellogg trial first, and then the Holloway trial. Are you both satisfied with that arrangement?”

“Absolutely not, your Honor,” Brannhard said promptly. “The whole basis of the Holloway defense is that this man Borch was killed in commission of a felony. We’re prepared to prove that, but we don’t want our case prejudiced by an earlier trial.”