“Have you actually ever read Cheng versus BlueSky Corporation?” Sullivan asked. “The ruling that established the criteria for proving sentience?”

“Back in law school,” Holloway said.

“I read through it again because of all of this,” Sullivan said. “Read Cheng and its aftereffects. Do you remember why the court ruled against Cheng?” Sullivan asked.

“Because he couldn’t prove that the Nimbus Floaters were sentient,” Holloway said. “He couldn’t prove that they had speech.”

“That’s correct,” Sullivan said. “People remember that he couldn’t prove it; what they don’t remember is why he couldn’t prove it. The reason why he couldn’t prove it was because they were all dead. In the time between when Cheng filed his case and the time it reached the high court, the Nimbus Floaters went extinct.”

“They died off,” Holloway said.

“No,” Sullivan said. “They were killed off, Jack. Their numbers were never large, and once Cheng filed his suit, they started dropping fast.”

“They would have been given protected status as soon as the case was filed,” Holloway said.

Sullivan gave Holloway a lopsided grin. “Yes, on a planet with no oversight, and a resident population of surveyors and workers whose livelihoods would disappear if the floaters were recognized as sentient,” he said. “You tell me how well the words ‘protected status’ would work in a situation like that.”

“Point,” Holloway said.

“No one was ever caught killing the floaters, of course,” Sullivan said. “But a population doesn’t just decline that quickly for no reason. There was no climate event, no bug the resident animals caught from humans, nothing like that. The only explanation that fits the data was intentional human predation.”

“I’m sure you weren’t the only one who noticed this,” Holloway said.

“No,” Sullivan said. “In the wake of Cheng, the Colonial Authority changed procedures to keep it from happening again. Now when there’s suspicion of predation the CA is supposed to appoint a Special Master to bring it to a halt. But Special Masters can be appointed only after an SSR is filed or ordered. That hasn’t happened here. Right now, the fuzzys have no sort of legal protection at all.”

“So you think people will hunt them,” Holloway said.

“I think it’s inevitable,” Sullivan said. “And I think you and I will be responsible for it. I’m indirectly responsible by suggesting to you and Isabel the ‘needs study’ option. You, Jack, are directly responsible by forcing the judge to implement it. As soon as the word gets out, every surveyor and worker on the planet is going hunting for the fuzzys. They’re going to try to kill them before their sentience can be proved one way or another. If they kill them now, there won’t be any left to prove their sentience one way or another.”

“If they’re wiped out, no one could be charged with murder,” Holloway said. “Because as far as anyone could prove, they were just killing animals.”

Sullivan nodded. “We’ve marked them for extinction. Pure and simple,” he said. “That’s why I needed to know how you felt about them. Because right now, you, me, and Isabel are the only friends they have.”

From Holloway’s jacket pocket a tone rang out. It was his pocket infopanel. Holloway fished it out, read it, and stood up.

“What is it?” Sullivan said.

“It’s the emergency alert system at my cabin,” Holloway said. “My house is on fire.”

Chapter Twenty

Holloway saw the tendrils of smoke rising while he was still twenty kilometers out. They were thin pencil lines against the sky.

“Crap,” Holloway said, to himself. The good news is a thin line of smoke meant the worst of the fire was over and that the damage was contained to his own house and tree compound; the spikewoods had not gone up and the rest of the forest was not burning to the ground. The fire-suppression system he’d installed had done its job well enough.

The bad news was, his cabin was still almost certainly a smoking ruin. He was glad he left Carl with Isabel for this trip. Carl wasn’t mentally equipped for figuring out fire damage.

He was also mildly worried about the Fuzzys, but only mildly. They might be sentient or they might not be, but either way he figured they knew how to run from a fire.

Several minutes later Holloway was circling his compound, assessing the damage. As he expected, the cabin was a mess, made as it was of relatively cheap plastics and woods. The storage sheds and landing area, made of less flammable metals and composites, showed smoke and outward fire damage but no charring or apparent structural damage. Holloway decided to go in, setting his skimmer to hover a meter over the landing pad rather than put its full weight on it. There might not be any apparent structural damage to the pad, but for the moment he’d rather not test the assumption. He felt confident the structure would bear his weight; less so that of a large flying machine.

He got out of the skimmer and put his weight on the landing pad. It held just fine. He took a step and nearly landed on his ass—not because of fire damage but because of the residue of the fire-suppressing foam that had shot out of several outlets to coat the compound as soon as the emergency system had registered a burn. Holloway’s compound was in the trees, and on thundery days it was not all that unusual for lightning to find its way down for a visit. Holloway had his weathervanes and lightning harvesters, but despite all that, this wouldn’t be the first time some part of the compound caught fire. After the first fire, Holloway had prepared for the next.

Holloway’s first stop was not the wreck of his cabin. Instead he made an immediate beeline to the larger of the storage sheds. He gingerly touched the door. It was a couple hours after the initial burn, but the door might still be hot.

It wasn’t. Even better, the electronic lock was undamaged. Holloway keyed the entry combination, stood to the side to avoid any escaping blast of superheated air, and slid open the door.

There was a gaping hole in the floor where his surveying explosives were supposed to be.

Holloway grinned. There was supposed to be a gaping hole in the floor where his explosives used to be. If there wasn’t, there likely wouldn’t have been a platform for him to land on, and possibly not a forest for him to fly to. Holloway did not keep an excessive amount of surveying explosives, but what he had on hand was more than enough to flatten the neighborhood.

He walked over to the hole. The hole was a trapdoor laid into the floor of the storage shed, over which Holloway placed his explosives, in sturdy cases. In case of a fire emergency or a direct lightning strike on the storage shed, the trapdoor would open and cases would tumble the many meters to jungle floor. The cases were designed to be tossed out of aircraft and survive a fall of up to three hundred meters; it was considerably less than that to the jungle floor. The explosives inside were susceptible to being triggered by heat but not by jostling.

Holloway looked down. The cases were visible on the ground, a couple directly underneath him but others knocked haphazardly by the branches of the spikewoods below. Holloway would have to reset the trapdoor and then retrieve the cases. That would be a pain in the ass as well as slightly dangerous—there was always the chance of predators—but it was better than having the explosives go off in a fire and turning the entire jungle into a conflagration.

In the branches below him, Holloway caught a flash of white. It looked like Pinto Fuzzy, lounging about. “You couldn’t have tried to put out the fire?” Holloway yelled down to the fuzzy. The creature didn’t answer, but then Holloway really didn’t expect it to.