With some misgivings5, Jack6 brought Baby down and introduced him. They were delighted with Baby, and Baby thought the kitten was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. When it was time to feed them, Jack had his own dinner brought in, and ate with them. Gus and Gerd came down and joined him later.
“We got the Lurkin kid and her father,” Gus said, and then falsettoed: “‘Naw, Pop gimme a beatin’, and the cops told me to say it was the Fuzzies.’”
“She say that?”
“Under veridication, with the screen blue as a sapphire7, in front of half a dozen witnesses and with audiovisuals on. Interworld’s putting it on the air this evening. Her father admitted it, too; named Woller and the desk sergeant8. We’re still looking for them; till we get them, we aren’t any closer to Emmert or Grego. We did pick up the two car cops, but they don’t know anything on anybody but Woller.”
That was good enough, as far as it went, Brannhard thought, but it didn’t go far enough. There were those four strange Fuzzies showing up out of nowhere, right in the middle of Nick Emmert’s drive-hunt. They’d been kept somewhere by somebody—that was how they’d learned to eat Extee Three and found out about viewscreens. Their appearance was too well synchronized9 to be accidental. The whole thing smelled to him of a booby trap.
One good thing had happened. Judge Pendarvis had decided that it would be next to impossible, in view of the widespread public interest in the case and the influence of the Zarathustra Company, to get an impartial10 jury, and had proposed a judicial11 trial by a panel of three judges, himself one of them. Even Leslie Coombes had felt forced to agree to that.
He told Jack about the decision. Jack listened with apparent attentiveness12, and then said:
“You know, Gus, I’ll always be glad I let Little Fuzzy smoke my pipe when he wanted to, that night out at camp.”
The way he was feeling, he wouldn’t have cared less if the case was going to be tried by a panel of three zaragoats.
Ben Rainsford, his two Fuzzies, and George Lunt, Ahmed Khadra and the other constabulary witnesses and their family, arrived shortly before noon on Saturday. The Fuzzies were quartered in the stripped-out banquet room, and quickly made friends with the four already there, and with Baby. Each family bedded down apart, but they ate together and played with each others’ toys and sat in a clump13 to watch the viewscreen. At first, the Ferny Creek14 family showed jealousy15 when too much attention was paid to their kitten, until they decided that nobody was trying to steal it.
It would have been a lot of fun, eleven Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy and a black-and-white kitten, if Jack hadn’t kept seeing his own family, six quiet little ghosts watching but unable to join the frolicking.
Max Fane brightened when he saw who was on his screen.
“Well, Colonel Ferguson, glad to see you.”
“Marshal,” Ferguson was smiling broadly. “You’ll be even gladder in a minute. A couple of my men, from Post Eight, picked up Woller and that desk sergeant, Fuentes.”
“Ha!” He started feeling warm inside, as though he had just downed a slug of Baldur honey-rum. “How?”
“Well, you know Nick Emmert has a hunting lodge16 down there. Post Eight keeps an eye on it for him. This afternoon, one of Lieutenant17 Obefemi’s cars was passing over it, and they picked up some radiation and infrared18 on their detectors19, as though the power was on inside. When they went down to investigate, they found Woller and Fuentes making themselves at home. They brought them in, and both of them admitted under veridication that Emmert had given them the keys and sent them down there to hide out till after the trial.
“They denied that Emmert had originated the frameup. That had been one of Woller’s own flashes of genius, but Emmert knew what the score was and went right along with it. They’re being brought up here the first thing tomorrow morning.”
“No. We would like to have them both questioned here in Mallorysport, and their confessions21 recorded, before we let the story out. Otherwise, somebody might try to take steps to shut them up for good.”
That had been what he had been thinking of. He said so, and Ferguson nodded. Then he hesitated for a moment, and said:
“Max, do you like the situation here in Mallorysport? Be damned if I do.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are too many strangers in town,” Ian Ferguson said. “All the same kind of strangers—husky-looking young men, twenty to thirty, going around in pairs and small groups. I’ve been noticing it since day before last, and there seem to be more of them every time I look around.”
“Well, Ian, it’s a young man’s planet, and we can expect a big crowd in town for the trial….”
He didn’t really believe that. He just wanted Ian Ferguson to put a name on it first. Ferguson shook his head.
“No, Max. This isn’t a trial-day crowd. We both know what they’re like; remember when they tried the Gawn brothers? No whooping22 it up in bars, no excitement, no big crap games; this crowd’s just walking around, keeping quiet, as though they expected a word from somebody.”
“Infiltration.” Goddamit, he’d said it first, himself after all! “Victor Grego’s worried about this.”
“I know it, Max. And Victor Grego’s like a veldbeest bull; he isn’t dangerous till he’s scared, and then watch out. And against the gang that’s moving in here, the men you and I have together would last about as long as a pint23 of trade-gin at a Sheshan funeral.”
“You thinking of pushing the panic-button?”
The constabulary commander frowned. “I don’t want to. A dim view would be taken back on Terra if I did it without needing to. Dimmer view would be taken of needing to without doing it, though. I’ll make another check, first.”
Gerd van Riebeek sorted the papers on the desk into piles, lit a cigarette and then started to mix himself a highball.
“Fuzzies are members of a sapient24 race,” he declared. “They reason logically, both deductively and inductively. They learn by experiment, analysis and association. They formulate25 general principles, and apply them to specific instances. They plan their activities in advance. They make designed artifacts, and artifacts to make artifacts. They are able to symbolize26, and convey ideas in symbolic27 form, and form symbols by abstracting from objects.
“They have aesthetic28 sense and creativity,” he continued. “They become bored in idleness, and they enjoy solving problems for the pleasure of solving them. They bury their dead ceremoniously, and bury artifacts with them.”
He blew a smoke ring, and then tasted his drink. “They do all these things, and they also do carpenter work, blow police whistles, make eating tools to eat land-prawns with and put molecule-model balls together. Obviously they are sapient beings. But don’t please don’t ask me to define sapience29, because God damn it to Nifflheim, I still can’t!”
“I think you just did,” Jack said.
“No, that won’t do. I need a definition.”
“Don’t worry, Gerd,” Gus Brannhard told him. “Leslie Coombes will bring a nice shiny new definition into court. We’ll just use that.”
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1
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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2
discredit
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| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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omnipotent
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| adj.全能的，万能的 | |
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misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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6
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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sapphire
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| n.青玉，蓝宝石；adj.天蓝色的 | |
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sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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synchronized
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| 同步的 | |
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10
impartial
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| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
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judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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attentiveness
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| [医]注意 | |
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clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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16
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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18
infrared
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| adj./n.红外线(的) | |
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19
detectors
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| 探测器( detector的名词复数 ) | |
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20
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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21
confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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22
whooping
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| 发嗬嗬声的，发咳声的 | |
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23
pint
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| n.品脱 | |
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sapient
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| adj.有见识的，有智慧的 | |
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25
formulate
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| v.用公式表示；规划；设计；系统地阐述 | |
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symbolize
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| vt.作为...的象征，用符号代表 | |
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symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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28
aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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29
sapience
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| n.贤明，睿智 | |
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