“Ben, let’s get these agreements signed,” Grego said. “Then we can give the kids some attention.”

“Where’ll we sign them, in your office?” he asked Rainsford.

“No, sign them right here at the table where everybody can watch. That’s what the party’s about, isn’t it?” Rainsford said.

They cleared a space in front of the Governor-General, putting Fuzzies on the floor or handing them to people farther down on either side. The scrolls, three copies of each agreement, were brought; Rainsford had one of his secretaries read them aloud. The first was the general agreement, by which the Colonial Government agreed to lease, for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, all unseated public lands to the Charterless Zarathustra Company, Ltd., of Zarathustra, excepting the area on Beta Continent set aside as a Fuzzy Reservation, in return for which the said Charterless Zarathustra Company, Ltd., agreed to carry on all the nonprofit public services previously performed by the Chartered Zarathustra Company, and, in addition, to conduct researches and studies for the benefit of the race known as Fuzzy sapiens zarathustra at Science Center. Except for the northern part of Beta Continent, the new Company was getting back, as lessees, everything it had lost as owner by the Pendarvis Decisions.

Rainsford and Grego signed it, with Gus Brannhard and Leslie Coombes as cosigners, with a few witnesses chosen at random from around the table. Then the Yellowsand Canyon agreement was read; as Commissioner of Native Affairs, Holloway had an interest in that. The Company leased, also for nine hundred ninety-nine years, a tract fifty miles square around the head of Yellowsand Canyon, with rights to mine, quarry, erect buildings, and remove from the tract sunstones and other materials. The Government agreed to lease other tracts to the Company, subject to the consent of the Native Commission, and to lease land on the Fuzzy Reservation to nobody else without consent of the Company. The Company agreed to pay royalties on all sunstones removed, at the rate of four hundred fifty sols per carat, said moneys to be held in trust for the Fuzzies as a race by the Colonial Government and invested with the Banking Cartel, the interest accruing to the Government as an administration fee. Well, that put the Government in the black, and made the Fuzzies rich, and gave the Charterless Zarathustra Company more than the Chartered Zarathustra Company had lost. Everybody ought to be happy.

Rainsford and Grego, and Gus and Leslie Coombes signed it, so did Jack Holloway, as Commissioner of Native Affairs. They picked half a dozen more witnesses who also signed.

“What’s the matter with having a few Fuzzies sign it too?” Grego asked, indicating the crowd that had climbed to the table on both sides to watch what the Big Ones were doing. “It’s their Reservation, and it’s their sunstones.”

“Oh, Victor,” Coombes protested. “They can’t sign this. They’re incompetent aborigines, and legally minor children. And besides, they can’t write. At least, not yet.”

“They can fingerprint after their names, the way any other illiterates do,” Gus Brannhard said. “And they can sign as additional witnesses; neither as aborigines nor as minor children are they debarred from testifying to things of their own experience or observation. I’m going to send Leo Thaxter and the Evinses and Phil Novaes out to be shot on Fuzzy testimony.”

“Chief Justice Pendarvis, give us a guidance-opinion on that,” Coombes said. “I’d like some Fuzzies to sign it, but not if it would impair the agreement.”

“Oh, it would not do that, Mr. Coombes,” Pendarvis said. “Not in my opinion, anyhow. Mr. Justice Janiver, what’s your opinion?”

“Well, as witnesses, certainly,” Janiver agreed. “The Fuzzies are here present and the signing takes place within their observation; they can certainly testify to that.”

“I think,” Pendarvis said, “that the Fuzzies ought to be informed of the purpose of this signing, though.”

“Mr. Brannhard, you want to try that?” Coombes asked. “Can you explain the theory of land tenure, mineral rights, and contractual obligation in terms comprehensible to a Fuzzy?”

“Jack, you try it; you know more about Fuzzies than I do,” Brannhard said.

“Well, I can try.” He turned to Diamond and Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and a few others closest to him.

“Big Ones make name-marks on paper,” he said. “This means, Big Ones go into woods-place Fuzzies come from — dig holes, get stones, make trade with other Big Ones. Then get nice things, give to Fuzzies. Make name-marks on paper for Fuzzies, Fuzzies make finger-marks.”

“Why make finga’p’int?” Little Fuzzy asked. “Get idee-disko?” He fingered the silver disc at his throat.

“No; just make finga’p’int. Then, somebody ask Fuzzies, Fuzzies say, yes, saw Big Ones make name-marks.”

“But why?” Diamond wanted to know. “Big Ones give Fuzzies nice things now.”

“This is playtime for Big Ones,” Flora said. “Pappy Ben make play like this all the time, make name-mark on paper.”

“That’s right,” Brannhard said. “This is how Big Ones make play. Much fun; Big Ones call it Law. Now, you watch what Unka Gus do.”

GUS BRANNHARD SAID, “Well, I was wrong. I am most happy to admit it. I’ve been getting the same reports, from all over, and the editorial opinion is uniformly favorable.”

Leslie Coombes, in the screen, nodded. He was in the library of his apartment across the city, with a coffee service and a stack of papers and teleprint sheets on the table in front of him.

“Editorial opinion, of course, doesn’t win elections, but the grass-roots level reports are just as good. Things are going to be just as they always were, and that’s what most people really want. It ought to gain us some votes, instead of losing us any. These people Hugo Ingermann was frightening with stories about how they were going to be taxed into poverty to maintain the Fuzzies in luxury, for instance… Now it appears that the Fuzzies will be financing the Government.”

“Is Victor still in town?”

“Oh, no. He left for Yellowsand Canyon before daybreak. He’s been having men and equipment shifted in there from Big Blackwater for the last week. By this time, they’re probably digging out sunstones by the peck.”

He laughed. Like a kid with a new rifle; couldn’t wait to try it out. “I suppose he took Diamond along?” Grego never went anywhere without his Fuzzy. “Well, why don’t you drop around to Government House for cocktails? Jack’s still in town, and we can talk without as many interruptions, human and otherwise, as last evening.”

Coombes said he would be glad to. They chatted for a few minutes, then broke the connection, and immediately the screen buzzer began. When he put it on again, his screen-girl looked out of it as though she smelled a week-old dead snake somewhere.

“The Honorable — technically, of course — Hugo Ingermann,” she said. “He’s been trying to get you for the last ten minutes.”

“Well, I’ve been trying to get him ever since I took office,” he said. “Put him on.” Then he snapped on the recorder.

The screen flickered and cleared, and a plump, well-barbered face looked out of it, affable and candid, with innocently wide blue eyes. A face anybody who didn’t know its owner would trust.

“Good morning, Mr. Brannhard.”

“Good morning indeed, Mr. Ingermann. Is there something I can do for you? Besides dropping dead, that is?”

“Ah, I believe there is something I can do for you, Mr. Brannhard,” Ingermann beamed like an orphanage superintendent on Christmas morning. “How would you like pleas of guilty from Leo Thaxter, Conrad and Rose Evins, and Phil Novaes?”

“I couldn’t even consider them. You know pleas of guilty to capital charges aren’t admissible.”

Ingermann stared for a moment in feigned surprise, then laughed. “Those ridiculous things? No, we are pleading guilty to the proper and legitimate charges of first-degree burglary, grand larceny, and criminal conspiracy. That is, of course, if the Colony agrees to drop that silly farrago of faginy and enslavement charges.”