XV

Ernst Mallin shrank, as though trying to pull himself into himself, when

he heard his name. He didn't want to testify. He had been dreading this

moment for days. Now he would have to sit in that chair, and they would

ask him questions, and he couldn't answer them truthfully and the globe

over his head--

When the deputy marshal touched his shoulder and spoke to him, he didn't

think, at first, that his legs would support him. It seemed miles, with

all the staring faces on either side of him. Somehow, he reached the chair

and sat down, and they fitted the helmet over his head and attached the

electrodes. They used to make a witness take some kind of an oath to tell

the truth. They didn't any more. They didn't need to.

As soon as the veridicator was on, he looked up at the big screen behind

the three judges; the globe above his head was a glaring red. There was a

titter of laughter. Nobody in the Courtroom knew better than he what was

happening. He had screens in his laboratory that broke it all down into

individual patterns--the steady pulsing waves from the cortex, the alpha

and beta waves; beta-aleph and beta-beth and beta-gimel and beta-daleth.

The thalamic waves. He thought of all of them, and of the electromagnetic

events which accompanied brain activity. As he did, the red faded and the

globe became blue. He was no longer suppressing statements and

substituting other statements he knew to be false. If he could keep it

that way. But, sooner or later, he knew, he wouldn't be able to.

The globe stayed blue while he named himself and stated his professional

background. There was a brief flicker of red while he was listing his

publication--that paper, entirely the work of one of his students, which

he had published under his own name. He had forgotten about that, but his

conscience hadn't.

"Dr. Mallin," the oldest of the three judges, who sat in the middle,

began, "what, in your professional opinion, is the difference between

sapient and nonsapient mentation?"

"The ability to think consciously," he stated. The globe stayed blue.

"Do you mean that nonsapient animals aren't conscious, or do you mean they

don't think?"

"Well, neither. Any life form with a central nervous system has some

consciousness--awareness of existence and of its surroundings. And

anything having a brain thinks, to use the term at its loosest. What I

meant was that only the sapient mind thinks and knows that it is

thinking."

He was perfectly safe so far. He talked about sensory stimuli and

responses, and about conditioned reflexes. He went back to the first

century Pre-Atomic, and Pavlov and Korzybski and Freud. The globe never

flickered.

"The nonsapient animal is conscious only of what is immediately present to

the senses and responds automatically. It will perceive something and make

a single statement about it--this is good to eat, this sensation is

unpleasant, this is a sex-gratification object, this is dangerous. The

sapient mind, on the other hand, is conscious of thinking about these

sense stimuli, and makes descriptive statements about them, and then makes

statements about those statements, in a connected chain. I have a

structural differential at my seat; if somebody will bring it to me--"

"Well, never mind now, Dr. Mallin. When you're off the stand and the

discussion begins you can show what you mean. We just want your opinion in

general terms, now."

"Well, the sapient mind can generalize. To the nonsapient animal, every

experience is either totally novel or identical with some remembered

experience. A rabbit will flee from one dog because to the rabbit mind it

is identical with another dog that has chased it. A bird will be attracted

to an apple, and each apple will be a unique red thing to peck at. The

sapient being will say, 'These red objects are apples; as a class, they

are edible and flavorsome.' He sets up a class under the general label of

apples. This, in turn, leads to the formation of abstract ideas--redness,

flavor, et cetera--conceived of apart from any specific physical object,

and to the ordering of abstractions--'fruit' as distinguished from apples,

'food' as distinguished from fruit."

The globe was still placidly blue. The three judges waited, and he

continued:

"Having formed these abstract ideas, it becomes necessary to symbolize

them, in order to deal with them apart from the actual object. The sapient

being is a symbolizer, and a symbol communicator; he is able to convey to

other sapient beings his ideas in symbolic form."

"Like '_Pa-pee Jaak_'?" the judge on his right, with the black mustache,

asked.

The globe flashed red at once.

"Your Honors, I cannot consider words picked up at random and learned by

rote speech. The Fuzzies have merely learned to associate that sound with

a specific human, and use it as a signal, not as a symbol."

The globe was still red. The Chief Justice, in the middle, rapped with his

gavel.

"Dr. Mallin! Of all the people on this planet, you at least should know

the impossibility of lying under veridication. Other people just know it

can't be done; you know why. Now I'm going to rephrase Judge Janiver's

question, and I'll expect you to answer truthfully. If you don't I'm going

to hold you in contempt. When those Fuzzies cried out, 'Pappy Jack!' do

you or do you not believe that they were using a verbal expression which

stood, in their minds, for Mr. Holloway?"

He couldn't say it. This sapience was all a big fake; he had to believe

that. The Fuzzies were only little mindless animals.

But he didn't believe it. He knew better. He gulped for a moment.

"Yes, your Honor. The term 'Pappy Jack' is, in their minds, a symbol

standing for Mr. Jack Holloway."

He looked at the globe. The red had turned to mauve, the mauve was

becoming violet, and then clear blue. He felt better than he had felt

since the afternoon Leonard Kellogg had told him about the Fuzzies.

"Then Fuzzies do think consciously, Dr. Mallin?" That was Pendarvis.

"Oh, yes. The fact that they use verbal symbols indicates that, even

without other evidence. And the instrumental evidence was most impressive.

The mentation pictures we got by encephalography compare very favorably

with those of any human child of ten or twelve years old, and so does

their learning and puzzle-solving ability. On puzzles, they always think

the problem out first, and then do the mechanical work with about the same

mental effort, say, as a man washing his hands or tying his neckcloth."

The globe was perfectly blue. Mallin had given up trying to lie; he was

simply gushing out everything he thought.

* * * * *

Leonard Kellogg slumped forward, his head buried in his elbows on the

table, and misery washed over him in tides.

_I am a murderer; I killed a person. Only a funny little person with fur,

but she was a person, and I knew it when I killed her, I knew it when I

saw that little grave out in the woods, and they'll put me in that chair

and make me admit it to everybody, and then they'll take me out in the

jail yard and somebody will shoot me through the head with a pistol,

and--_

_And all the poor little thing wanted was to show me her new jingle!_

* * * * *

"Does anybody want to ask the witness any questions?" the Chief Justice

was asking.

"I don't," Captain Greibenfeld said. "Do you, Lieutenant?"

"No, I don't think so," Lieutenant Ybarra said. "Dr. Mallin's given us a

very lucid statement of his opinions."

He had, at that, after he'd decided he couldn't beat the veridicator. Jack

found himself sympathizing with Mallin. He'd disliked the man from the

first, but he looked different now--sort of cleaned and washed out inside.

Maybe everybody ought to be veridicated, now and then, to teach them that

honesty begins with honesty to self.

"Mr. Coombes?" Mr. Coombes looked as though he never wanted to ask another

witness another question as long as he lived. "Mr. Brannhard?"

Gus got up, holding a sapient member of a sapient race who was hanging

onto his beard, and thanked Ernst Mallin fulsomely.

"In that case, we'll adjourn until o-nine-hundred tomorrow. Mr. Coombes, I

have here a check on the chartered Zarathustra Company for twenty-five

thousand sols. I am returning it to you and I am canceling Dr. Kellogg's

bail," Judge Pendarvis said, as a couple of attendants began getting

Mallin loose from the veridicator.

"Are you also canceling Jack Holloway's?"

"No, and I would advise you not to make an issue of it, Mr. Coombes. The

only reason I haven't dismissed the charge against Mr. Holloway is that I

don't want to handicap you by cutting off your foothold in the

prosecution. I do not consider Mr. Holloway a bail risk. I do so consider

your client, Dr. Kellogg."

"Frankly, your Honor, so do I," Coombes admitted. "My protest was merely

an example of what Dr. Mallin would call conditioned reflex."

Then a crowd began pushing up around the table; Ben Rainsford, George Lunt

and his troopers, Gerd and Ruth, shoving in among them, their arms around

each other.

"We'll be at the hotel after a while, Jack," Gerd was saying. "Ruth and I

are going out for a drink and something to eat; we'll be around later to

pick up her Fuzzies."

Now his partner had his girl back, and his partner's girl had a Fuzzy

family of her own. This was going to be real fun. What were their names

now? Syndrome, Complex, Id and Superego. The things some people named

Fuzzies!