Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (26 page)

She stopped fiddling with the cursor control, and leaned back in her chair. It was nearly ten o’clock, and still she had nothing useful for Leon. Russell Grenville’s personal data matched his public image. Everything in his political, religious, and financial history spoke of a solid, conservative outlook on life, the profile of an upright, rigidly moral man with a strong Calvinist streak—and a tough witness. It would not be surprising if he preferred to think of the Shimmies as animals rather than humans. But there had to be more to it than that. There were billions of people on Earth who shared that opinion. Why would Deirdre Walsh drag Captain Russell Grenville back from wherever he was, back at vast cost from somewhere in the middle of nowhere millions of miles from Earth, unless there was something more?

Sally sighed and went back to the searches. Just where had the defendant’s lawyer dragged him from?

The Egyptian Cluster. Thirteen months ago he had set out on an expedition to the region of the Egyptian Cluster, to catalog and assay outlying members.

Sally pulled in a cross-reference. She had been right, it really was the middle of nowhere. The Cluster was an odd little group of asteroids, with orbits different from anything else in the System. “The common plane of their orbits lies at sixty degrees to the ecliptic.” What was the
ecliptic
? Another ten minutes went into answering that, but she had no choice. Leon Karst had a rule: “Never ask a witness a question if you don’t know what the answer will be. And never bring me a fact you can’t explain—because I may have to explain it to a judge and jury.” A year with him had taught her he wasn’t joking.

She read on. It was time-consuming and very expensive in fuel to visit the Egyptian Cluster. The only sizable colony there was a fifty-person mining outpost on Horus. Had Grenville intended to visit Horus itself? Somewhere in the general databases there ought to be his complete flight plan.

She wriggled her way through the reference banks, hopping from one index to another. In another half hour she found the mission profile. She had intended to inspect the flight plan, but before she did that she took a look at the manifest. What she saw there sent her hurrying off to find Leon Karst.

* * *

“It’s half the story.” Leon Karst went through a vitality dead spot between eight and nine at night, but once clear of that he was ready to work until dawn. Now he had his second wind. “So Grenville had half a dozen Schimmerhann chimps on his ship, as part of his crew. And he objected to their presence.”

“I’ve got Richard digging for an actual copy of that objection.”

“Quite right, we have to, for completeness. But I don’t have great hopes. It’ll be a formal thing. Hell, no matter what he says about the Shimmies, it wouldn’t justify dragging Grenville all the way back here on a hyperbolic orbit—don’t bother to look it up, I know what it means, it says you have to spend money, lots of it, to get from here to there.” He was frowning at the projection screen, where the crew and manifest of Grenville’s ship were listed. “I’m telling you, Deirdre Walsh has something else up her sleeve. Something to do with Grenville and the Shimmies on his mission.”

Leon Karst was married, with three children. Sally had heard him talk of his family dozens of times, but he never spoke his wife’s name with half the intensity that he said “Deirdre Walsh.”

“If she didn’t have something special,” he went on, “she’d have called by now, suggesting a weekend meeting and maybe an out-of-court settlement. I’ve been watching the judge and the rest of the tribunal, and they’re sold on our case. We did really well last week. Deirdre sees the way the river flows as well as I do. She ought to be crawling here on her belly. And since she’s not . . .”

“What next?”

“We’d like to find out what happened on Grenville’s ship. I already put in a call to Phil Saxby, over in the USF, but there’s a blanket silence on anything to do with that mission. We know where they went, and who went, and that’s all. I don’t have the right level of insider. Did you know that Deirdre Walsh’s brother works for the USF, up near the top? No need to guess where
her
information comes from. The only thing I found out for certain is that Grenville won’t arrive on Earth until Sunday night. No chance for us to get anyone in to see him before he testifies.”

“So you can’t find out what’s been happening?”

“I’m going to find out, all right. I’m going to find out when Captain Russell Grenville, damn his navy breeches, stands up in court at nine o’clock on Monday morning and tells me and the rest of the universe.” Karst glared at Sally. “You thought you saw newsmongers today. Just wait until Monday morning, Sal. We’ll be able to paper the walls with press credentials.”

Sally thought at first that she was seeing anger. Only later, flopping into bed at nearly four a.m., did she recognize Leon Karst’s expression. He was full of a vast, visceral excitement.

* * *

By Sunday afternoon even Leon Karst was ready to admit they had done all they could by way of preparation. At Sally’s urging he allowed himself to be dragged along to the old Virginia estate, twenty miles west of the city, where the Animal Rights League had their headquarters. It was his second visit, and her twenty-fifth.

To Sally, the hundred-acre wooded lot always felt more like a prison than a nonprofit organization’s main facility. There was a tall fence of thick chain-link, a line of electrified wire along its top, and the entrances were guarded by heavy metal gates. The men and woman on duty carried electronic communications devices and stun guns.

Perhaps not a prison, thought Sally, as they passed inspection and were ushered through by the uniformed guard. More like a beleaguered fortress, maybe.

Almost at once they saw the first Shimmies, wandering freely through the woods in the mild October sun. Leon opened the car window and stuck his head out to stare at a group of five walking along the grass verge.

“They look just like chimpanzees, don’t they?” he said. “I know they’re a little taller and heavier, but you don’t notice that from here.”

“That’s part of the problem,” said Sally. “If you don’t know Shimmies, and you haven’t interacted with them, you can’t help thinking of them just as chimps. In fact, for all I know, that group
is
chimps. It’s hard for us to tell the difference. That makes people uncomfortable.”

“You bet it does. Once we get the Shimmies their rights as humans—and we will, Sal, no matter what Russell Grenville says—then we’ll have a new problem. How will the average person know if he’s dealing with a Shimmy or a standard chimp? And you know where
that
will take us. Right where the Animal Rights League wants us to go.”

“They say that ordinary chimps are smart enough to deserve full rights, too. Did you know that there are chimps on the West Coast with a working vocabulary of four hundred words?”

“Yeah. And gorillas.” The car stopped, but Leon stayed in his seat. “
And
orangutans. I’ll say this before we get inside, Sally. We’re going to do our damnedest to win this case, but the problem with
all
cases like this is that they’re never an end. They’re always a beginning. We’ll have full rights for Shimmies, then it will be human rights for chimps, then rights for baboons, then rights for dogs and cats. These people will never stop. And if you think I’m going to stand up in court, and plead for rights for oysters . . .”

You might, Leon
—
if Deirdre were your opposition.
But Sally said nothing.

The inside of the main building had a strange smell, like a cross between a hospital and a zoo. Leon Karst wrinkled his nose. He had come along to humor Sally, but he did not pretend to be comfortable.

“Intellectual commitment to a client is right, Sally,” he had said, when the case began. “In fact, it’s absolutely essential, even if it’s a
pro bono
case where we don’t get paid. But
emotion
for a client’s cause is the worst thing you can do for them. It clouds your judgment. That’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to spend too much time with the Shimmies.”

But he had not objected when Sally made regular visits to this facility. She felt that she had to understand for herself just how intelligent a Shimmy might be.

It took a while for her to realize a basic truth: Shimmies were as variable in their intelligence as humans. In a population at the Animal Rights League headquarters of about six hundred, Sally had met Shimmies who could sign for food and water, and little else. But there was also Skeeter, a female Shimmy who knew the name of every human in headquarters, who loved to make jokes and puns in Ameslan, and who seemed to catch on to ideas as fast as any human. And Skeeter was still immature, still developing.

She was waiting for them just inside the door. Sally recognized her, even without the identifying color-coded waistband. The Shimmies saw no point in wearing clothes, but many of them found it convenient to hang a carrying pouch on their belt.

“Hello again,” Skeeter signed, slowly, knowing the limits of Sally’s mastery of sign language. “Say hello Mr. Karst from me. How case going?”

Skeeter was all chimp, except for the expression in her brown eyes. That expression, to Sally, made her all human.

“It went well last week.” She spoke very slowly and clearly, though in Skeeter’s case that was hardly necessary. “But tomorrow the other side begins their case. We do not know what they will say.”

“Wish I there.” She gave the sign for humor. “Be witness.”

Sally smiled back, and turned to Leon Karst. “Skeeter says she wishes she could appear in court, too, and be a witness for us.”

“Sure. Tell her—” Leon paused and shook his head. He smiled at the Shimmy. “Sorry, Skeeter. I forget that you understand. I wish you could be a witness, too. It is a flaw in our legal system—a bad piece of our system. Until you have human rights, you cannot be used for a witness, even though your testimony is just what we need to guarantee you those rights.”

“Say, I understand.” Skeeter signed to Sally. “Mr. Karst not comfortable here, right? Tell him, we all thank his work. Know he win for us. Take him now, keep his thinking happy for tomorrow.”

And if
that
isn’t human (or superhuman) sensitivity, thought Sally, then I don’t know what is. “We have to go upstairs first, Skeeter, and talk to general counsel—”

“Who ‘General Counsel’?” Skeeter spelled the words out, syllable by syllable.

“General counsel is top lawyer for the Animal Rights League. He’ll want to know what to expect tomorrow.”

“Me, too. Good luck.”

“Thank you.” Sally returned the sign for “Good luck”—one of the few dozen she could make with confidence, and led Leon toward the elevator.

And since we don’t know what to expect tomorrow, she thought, we need all the luck we can get.

* * *

Leon Karst had been right on almost all his predictions. Neither Sally nor anyone else in the office had been able to learn more about Russell Grenville’s mission to the Egyptian Cluster, or its outcome. A check at the Wallops Island spaceport on Sunday evening revealed only that Grenville was expected there about midnight, and would be driven to the tribunal in time for the Monday hearings. Deirdre Walsh did not call at any time during the weekend, to propose settlement negotiations or for any other reason.

But on two points, Leon Karst proved dead wrong. First, Captain Russell Grenville did not stand up in court on Monday morning. He could not.

The courtroom was full to capacity by eight-thirty. Judge Williams and the other two tribunal members were in their seats by eight fifty-five. At one minute to nine, the doors to the chambers occupied by representatives of the Attarian Corporation and their legal counsel opened. Two men entered. They were carrying a flat padded table between them. On that table, upright, was Captain Russell Grenville. He was held by a harness at chest and midriff. He was armless and legless.

The broad head and the full beard were unmistakable. But the heavy shoulders no longer supported well-muscled arms, and the long, strong legs had been removed at the hips.

And contrary to Leon Karst’s prediction, Russell Grenville did not begin his testimony at nine o’clock. The screams, shouts, and general chaos that erupted at Grenville’s entry took fifteen minutes to subside. One woman and one man fainted, and had to be carried out; another three were forcibly ejected, shouting unintelligible slogans. Sally could not tell which side of the case they were on.

In the middle of the confusion, Leon Karst leaned over to her. “That’s the way you do it, if you’re Deirdre Walsh.” He spoke in a low voice, but he could have shouted without drawing attention. “You see, it doesn’t
matter
what Grenville says now. He has the sympathy of everyone in the courtroom, even the tribunal members. They’ll try to be objective, but they’re human, too. Bang goes our case.”

His eyes were gleaming—with admiration, not emotion. (Sally remembered what she had been told when she first came to work. “Leon leaves his emotions outside the courtroom. He has a guiding principle there: ‘What counts in legal practice is honesty, decency, and sincerity. As soon as you learn to fake those, you have it made.’”)

“What can we do, Leon?”

He shrugged. “Lie low. Listen, watch, think. But we may be dead in the water. Unless something new comes up, I’m not a big enough fool to cross-examine Grenville.”

Sally realized just how carefully Grenville’s appearance and testimony were being managed when order was finally restored and it was time to swear in the witness.

Deirdre Walsh turned to the judge and said simply, “Your Honor, Captain Grenville has never told anything other than the truth. I hope that is enough.” She left it to the audience (and the tribunal) to realize that the usual practice of the witness raising his right hand for swearing-in was here impossible.

Russell Grenville held his torso upright on the cushions. If what had happened to him had affected his mind, it was impossible to tell that from his face.

“Captain Grenville.” Deirdre Walsh began quietly, speaking so softly that the courtroom stilled to hear her. “Let me first ask you to confirm certain details of your personal history.”