“Better hesh-nazza eat takku than us,” Lame One said.

“Big takku,” Stabber remarked. “Hesh-nazza eat long time. Then go to sleep. Next sun-time, be hungry, hunt again.”

“Hesh-nazza not come up here,” Carries-Bright-Things said. “Stay by moving-water, in low place.”

She was right; hesh-nazza did not like to climb steep places. They stayed by moving-waters, and hunted by lying quietly and waiting for animals, or for People, to come by. He was glad that he and the others had not crossed farther up the stream.

It would still be daylight for a time, but the sun was low enough that they should begin to think about finding a good sleeping-place. The top of this mountain was big and he could see nothing ahead but woods — big trees, some nut-trees. This would be a good place to sleep, and after the sun came out of its sleeping-place, they could go down into the low place on the other side.

“Go down way we came up,” Big She argued. Lately, Big She was beginning to be contrary. “Good place; nut-trees.”

“Bad place; hesh-nazza,” Stabber told her. “Hesh-nazza go down moving water little way, wait. We come, then we be inside hesh-nazza. Better do what Wise One say; Wise One knows best.”

“First, find sleeping-place here,” he said. “Now we go hunt. Everybody, look for good place to sleep.”

The others agreed. They had seen nut-trees here too; where there were nut-trees, there were small animals, good to eat, which gnawed nut-shells open. They might kill and eat a few. Nuts were good, but meat was better. There might even be zatku up here.

They spread out, calling back and forth to one another, being careful to make no noise with their feet among the dead leaves. He thought about the takku. He and at least one of the others had hit it with stones. A person could throw a stone hard enough to knock down and sometimes even kill a hatta-zosa, but all the stones had done to the takku had been to frighten it. He wished there were some way People could kill takku. One takku would be meat enough for everybody all day, and some to carry to the sleeping place for the next morning; and from a takku’s leg-bones good clubs could be made.

He wished he knew how the Big Ones made the thunder-death. Anything that killed a gotza in the air would kill a takku. Why, anything that would kill a gotza would even kill a hesh-nazza! There must be no animal of which the Big Ones were afraid.

IT HAD BEEN a week before Jack Holloway had been able to get away from Mallorysport and back to Hoksu-Mitto, and by that time the new permanent office building was finished and furnished. He had a nice big room on the first floor, complete, of course, with a stack of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk in his absence. The old prefab hut had been taken down and moved across the run, and set up beside the schoolhouse as additional living quarters for Fuzzies, of whom there were now four hundred. That was a hell of a lot of Fuzzies.

“They’re costing like hell too,” George Lunt said. George and Gerd van Riebeek, who had returned from Yellowsand Canyon the day after the lease agreement had been signed, and Pancho Ybarra were with him in his new office the morning after his return. “And we have a hundred to a hundred and fifty more at the outposts, and hokfusine and Extee-Three to supply to the families living on farms and plantations.”

George didn’t need to tell him that. A lot of what had piled up on his desk had to do with supplies bought or on order. And the Native Commission payroll: two hundred fifty ZNPF officers and men, Ahmed Khadra’s investigators, the technicians and construction men, the clerical force, the men and women working under Gerd van Riebeek in the scientific bureau, Lynn Andrews and her medical staff…

“If that Yellowsand agreement goes out the airlock,” Gerd van Riebeek voiced his own thoughts, “we’ll have a hell of a lot of bills to pay and nothing to pay them with.”

Nobody argued that point. Pancho Ybarra said, “It’s on the Fuzzy Reservation; doesn’t the Colonial Government control that?”

“Not the way we need, not if the Fuzzies aren’t minor children. The Government controls the Reservation to enforce the law; that means, if the Fuzzies are legally adults, nobody is permitted to mine sunstones on the Reservation without the Fuzzies’ consent.”

“Those fingerprint signatures on that agreement,” George Lunt considered. “I know, they were only additional witnesses, but weren’t they acquiescent witnesses? Wouldn’t that do as evidence of consent?”

Gus Brannhard had thought of that a couple of days ago. Maybe that would stand up in court; Chief Justice Pendarvis had declined to give a guidance opinion on it, which didn’t look too good.

“Well, then, let’s get their consent,” Gerd said. “We have over four hundred here; that’s the most Fuzzies in any one place on the planet. Let’s hold a Fuzzy election. Elect Little Fuzzy paramount chief, and elect about a dozen subchiefs, and hold a tribal council, and vote consent to lease Yellowsand to the Company. You ought to see some of the tribal councils on Yggdrasil; at least ours would be sober.”

“Or Gimli; I was stationed there before I was transferred to Zarathustra,” Lunt said. “That’s how the Gimli Company got consent to work those fissionable-ore mines.”

“Won’t do. According to law, what one of these tribal councils has to do is vote somebody something like a power of attorney to transact their business for them, and that has to be veridicated by the native chief or council or whatever granting it,” he said.

Silence fell with a dull thump. The four of them looked at one another. Lunt said:

“With that much money involved, a couple of lawyers like Gus Brannhard and Leslie Coombes ought to be able to find some way around the law.”

“I don’t want to have to get around the law,” Holloway said. “If we get around the law to help the Fuzzies, somebody else’ll take the same road around it to hurt them.” His pipe had gone out, and there was nothing in it but ashes when he tried to relight it. He knocked it into an ashtray and got out his tobacco pouch. “This isn’t just for this week or this year. There’ll be Fuzzies and other people living together on this planet for thousands of years, and we want to start Fuzzy-Human relations off right. We don’t know who’ll run the Government and the Company after Rainsford and Grego and the rest of us are dead. They will run things on precedents we establish now.”

He was talking more to himself than to the three men in the office with him. He puffed on the pipe, and then continued.

“That’s why I want to see Leo Thaxter and Evins and his wife and Phil Novaes shot for what they did to those Fuzzies. I’m not bloodthirsty; I’ve killed enough people myself that I don’t see any fun in it. I just want the law clear and plain that Fuzzies are entitled to the same protection as human children, and I want a precedent to warn anybody else of what they’ll get if they mistreat Fuzzies.”

“I agree,” Pancho Ybarra said. “In my professional opinion, to which I will testify, that’s exactly what Fuzzies are — innocent and trusting little children, as helpless and vulnerable in human society as human children are in adult society. And the gang who enslaved and tortured those Fuzzies to make thieves out of them ought to be shot, not so much for what they did as for being the sort of people who would do it.”

“What do you think about the veridication angle?” Lunt asked. “If we can’t get that cleared up, we won’t be able to do anything.”

“Well, if a Fuzzy doesn’t red-light a veridicator, it means the Fuzzy isn’t lying,” Gerd said. “You ever know a Fuzzy to lie? I’ve never known one to; neither has Ruth.”

“Neither have I, not even the ones we’ve caught raising hell down in the farming country,” Lunt said. “Every man on the Protection Force’ll testify to that.”