“Very well. Suppose that we admit it. His actions were certainly illegal. The use of human DNA in genetic experiments was and is strictly forbidden. Some form of punishment is surely not inappropriate.
“But now let us go on, and admit that the origin of the Shimmies has no bearing at all on the findings of this tribunal! Whether or not the Shimmies should exist is quite irrelevant. They do exist! When we ask what rights a child has, do we ask who its parents were, or how it came into the world? Of course not. Once a baby is here, we insist on its fair and humane treatment. Origins and rights have little to do with each other.
“Prove the Shimmies are human, says counsel for the defendant. But no one has ever devised a foolproof humanity test. Genetically speaking, we are told, a Shimmy is closer to a chimpanzee than he is to a human, since Jakob Schimmerhann used less than one tenth of one percent of human DNA sequences in creating the Shimmy form. The defendant therefore suggests that a Shimmy is only one thousandth part human. But what is left unmentioned is that we—humans and chimpanzees—share ninety-nine percent of our DNA sequences! Humans and chimpanzees are close cousins. The Shimmies are closer to us yet. So when the Attarian Corporation claims, in their use of Shimmies as slave laborers—”
“Objection. Your Honor, the term ‘slave laborers’ is an inappropriate one to describe working animals, which the Schimmerhann chimpanzees in our contention are.”
“Objection sustained.”
“I withdraw the term. I will say that the differences between humans and Shimmies are mainly the superficial ones of appearance, but in all real respects we are astonishingly close.
“But reject all those arguments about DNA, if you will, and say that they are no more than scientific mumbo jumbo. Look instead at the bald, undisputed facts, and our case still holds. As Professor Miraband pointed out earlier this week, an adult Shimmy can speak, and speak better than a human child at three years old. What difference does it make if that speech must be done through sign language? Would my honored colleagues suggest that a human person without a larynx, who must also communicate through sign language, ought to be stripped of his or her human rights for that reason? Or that a human child of three, who happens to be sick, may be put down for convenience? It is just as wrong to murder a Shimmy—”
“Objection. The term murder’ is not appropriate to describe the death of an animal.”
“Objection sustained. Counsel, please employ a terminology that bears less semantic loading. I am sure you are able to do so.”
“Yes, your Honor. I repeat, would a human child who was sick, or a human unable to communicate by speech, be mistreated, or killed? Of course not. Even the suggestion is ludicrous.
“And when it comes to manual skills, or the ability to follow direction, or—let us be quite explicit—the ability to think, our last witness made it very clear: an adult Shimmy surpasses the average human child of four years! Would you agree that a four-year old has no human rights? If there happened to be an excess of four-year olds, how do you react to the idea that their numbers be reduced? And yet that is exactly what could happen to any Shimmies, until their rights are established and protected.
“I say in conclusion, we are asking for full rights. But we are not talking animal rights here, we are talking people rights. Those rights for the Shimmies are not merely due, they are long overdue. It is immoral and it should be illegal to treat them as animals. They must be treated as people. They are people. Our case rests.”
Leon Karst was smiling as he nodded to the trio on the tribunal—one woman, two men—and resumed his seat. But Sally Polk could see that he was sweating. Karst had told Sally that the first week was crucial: “We make our case on direct testimony, not on cross-examination. By the end of the week we need to have the tribunal persuaded, and make sure the other side is staggering.”
If he were right—and Sally had seldom found him wrong—then this case was by now won or lost. Sally glanced around the packed courtroom, then looked up at the tribunal, leaning back in their seats after nearly thirty hours of testimony. As a new junior it was her first time in court. She tried to read their expressions. Dean Williams, the retired judge, was inscrutable. He wore a polite, remote expression, as though his mind was somewhere else. But the precision of his questions proved that was far from true. It was merely that his face gave nothing away. The man and woman flanking him were perhaps easier. Richard Kanter was a shrewd, dark-haired, out-of-condition lawyer from the Midwest, and he was nodding slowly, clearly approving of Leon Karst’s summation for the plaintiff. Laurel Garver, youngest of the three, and sitting to Judge Williams’s right, was leaning across to speak earnestly in his ear. Through the whole week she had seemed sympathetic to the case that Karst was making on behalf of the Shimmies.
Judge Williams listened carefully to Laurel Garver, nodded, and leaned back in his chair. “We’ll have to resolve that later,” he said. Then, to Leon Karst and his counterpart on the other side, “Unless you have procedural matters to take care of, the tribunal is adjourned until nine o’clock on Monday morning. Do you have anything?”
Sally stared at the lawyers for the other side. All of them had been no more than names and reputations on Monday morning. Now she had a strong feel for each of them. Deirdre Walsh—the famous Deirdre Walsh, chief counsel for the defendant—was shaking her head in reply to Judge Williams’s question. From her record and Leon Karst’s comments, she had to be tough, smart, and ruthless. She showed no sign at all that she was ready to give up on the case, but Sally would never have known of her toughness from her manner in court. Deirdre Walsh was conservatively dressed in a trim blue-gray business suit, set off by a wisp of blue lace at the throat and a sprig of fresh lavender on her lapel. She seemed friendly and quiet-spoken. (“But wait a bit,” Leon Karst had told Sally a couple of evenings ago. “Next week she’ll show her teeth.” He sounded pleased at the prospect. The press coverage would peak during the second week of the hearings.)
“One small point,” Karst was saying now to Judge Williams. “We will need to know the names of Monday’s witnesses.”
This was an important moment. The tribunal did not meet over the weekend, but no one pretended that it was a time for rest The three tribunal members would be reviewing the evidence presented during the week, then meeting at mealtimes to discuss the theory of the case. Deirdre Walsh and her assistants would be combing the transcripts of the previous week’s testimony, looking for any material that helped their case; and Leon Karst, with Sally’s help, would be deciding on the line of cross-examination for the first witnesses produced by the defendant. Each afternoon at close of business, the side whose case was being presented finally provided the names of the next day’s witnesses; each evening, the other side desperately prepared cross-examination materials.
“We will have only one witness on Monday.” Deirdre Walsh sounded casual. “That will be Captain Russell Grenville.”
There was a great buzz of conversation through the courtroom. Leon Karst grunted in surprise, while Sally puzzled over what was happening. She knew Grenville’s name—everyone did—but it had not been mentioned before during all the preparation for the Shimmy rights’ case. Surely that meant he could not be offered as a witness?
Karst was on his feet again, speaking through the din. “Your Honor, no one has previously offered Captain Grenville as a potential witness. He is therefore ineligible.”
“Quiet, please.” Judge Williams inclined his head toward Deirdre Walsh. “Counsel?”
“Normally, yes,” she said. “But let me remind my honored colleague for the plaintiff of the legal code, as established following Rose v. Watkins. ‘In the event that a potential witness is off-Earth, and the time of the return of such witness cannot be guaranteed in advance, then such witness may appear without prior notification, with cross-examination postponed upon request of counsel for an added twenty-four hours.’ That applies exactly to Captain Grenville.”
“Is he on Earth now?” a
sked Laurel Garver. “For the code you cite to be applicable…”
“He is not. But he is on the way. I can guarantee that he will be here, in this tribunal, on Monday morning.”
“Then the witness is approved. Any more discussion?” Judge Williams glanced around the room, smiling for the first time in a week. “Very well. Court adjourned.”
The cross-referenced database yielded masses of information about Captain Russell Grenville. Too much information. Sally Polk had to boil it down to something that could be summarized and used.
Commander of Sunskimmer, and first human to lead a landing party on the surface of Mercury. Tsiolkovskii Medal winner. First human to take a ship through the rings of Saturn. Congressional Medal winner. First human to lead a party surviving an encounter with Karkov’s Object. Explorers’ Club Award for Gallantry. First human to return volcanic samples from Io. Daedalus Award…
The list went on for pages. Nothing to grab on there. Grenville’s reputation as a commander and a leader was pure gold.
She keyed to personal data. Unmarried, but apparently heterosexual. No long-term relationships. She underlined that mentally, for possible future reference. Religious, high-church Episcopalian, but no evidence of extreme views. From a moderately wealthy family, two brothers, one an army general, one a successful businessman. No evidence of financial problems, or even of much interest in money. Politically conservative, consistent with the family’s background (in Sally’s experience, only very rich families were liberals—moderately rich ones ran conservative).
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.
Georgia On My Mind and Other Places Page 20