“Let’s start with something easy,” he muttered. She blinked at him, his computer, and then back at him again as Tral made a deliberate fist and signed to her.
Bebe reached over half a dozen items to find the cup and handed it to him.
“Ha!” he crowed, disproportionately excited over the discovery. “You really do know how to sign!” He made himself calm down. “Okay, okay, let’s think about this.” He ran his fingers through his black hair, encountering just enough snarls to remind him that he hadn’t yet groomed himself for the day, and then refocused on the computer to find another symbol. “We need something harder.”
He flexed his fingers and was about to sign again when he was startled by the brush of her hands lightly fitting into his open palms. He glanced first at her (apparently, not only was she a service pet for the deaf, but for the blind as well) and then at her hands as she signed into his palms faster than he could follow.
“What? Wait, what?” He tried to separate just one of those gestures and then scrolled quickly through the computer file for something to match what he was seeing. She reached for his hands again, but he stopped her. “No, no. I can see. Do it in the air, but not so fast this time.”
She repeated herself, much more slowly.
“Do I...want...” Damn, what was that last gesture. “Do it again.”
Rising up onto her knees, Bebe leaned over far enough to look at the monitor. Tral could feel his jaw dropping when she scrolled down through the options, then pointed at the screen.
“Coffee,” he said faintly when he could finally drag his mouth shut again. He looked at her. She held up the cup again, eyebrows quirking questioningly. “No. No, thanks.”
His excitement had just officially died, leaving behind only gradual shades of horror. For the first time in his life, he considered the ludicrous possibility that his uncle might have been right about humans all along.
“No,” he said again, faintly shaken. “No, I, uh...I want to...where is it?” He quickly scrolled through the symbols in the language file until he found the right one. “I want to talk...to you.”
Her brows beetled, not just confused now but leery as well. She tapped her fingers against the cup before setting it down on the table. Watching him carefully, she resumed her seat to await whatever he did next.
Great.
“So what do I say?” And how much of it did she really understand? Maybe half, the unenlightened Tral inside him tried to whisper, but there was a funny feeling in his gut that worried she might actually understand just about everything. And if so, did that mean he should just...talk to her? As if she were like any other person? Or maybe this was just another example of clever parroting. How could he possibly tell the difference? If she was a service pet, then it only stood to reason she’d have been taught how to do things most other humans weren’t.
Tral rubbed his mouth again, struggling to think through what he could say—what he could do—to make anything she said or did irrefutable evidence. And at this point, he wasn’t sure which side of the human/sentience question he should aim for.
After a moment, she raised her hands and slowly signed, giving him ample time to find the right symbols in the language file.
“Am I feeling all right?” He blinked at her twice. “I’m...I’m fine.” Completely unnerved, but fine. Tral then sat there, contemplating all subtle nuances of the question. Angling his head, he cautiously asked. “Are you feeling all right?”
I’m tired, she replied. And my feet hurt. Are you still angry with me?
“Angry?” He sat back again. “Why would I be...You mean because of the food?”
Her expression turned completely self-conscious. She pointed at his hand first and then, when he only shook his head, at his waist.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What are you trying to say?”
Even more hesitantly, a flush of pink stealing up to color her cheeks, she pointed down into her lap. As understanding finally dawned, she wilted before him. I did not mean to be disgusting.
Tral shoved his chair physically away from hers. He couldn’t breathe. That niggling, horrible doubt in his mind was rapidly becoming an even more starkly horrible certainty. Bebe hadn’t been in heat. She’d been aroused.
In very soft, small motions, she signed, Are you unhappy with me?
As her expression turned pleading and her hands began a rapid fluttering of motions, Tral shoved everything on the table out of his way and pulled his computer into his lap. “Slow down.” He rapidly scrolled through the symbols, missing roughly half of what she said to him, and yet managed to piece together a poorly-cobbled, “Send away... don’t send...Bebe, wait. I can’t go that fast. Don’t...outside. Wait, outside? What are you talking about? I’m not sending you outside.”
I can be better. I can be good. She blinked up at him, so intensely sad and small, her hands dropping into her lap to twitch out the last few words with only the faintest of movements. The look she gave him was at once both hopeful and completely without any hope at all. If I am not disgusting any more, can I please stay here with you?
Tral stared at her. He covered his gaping mouth with one hand and for the longest time didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He could scarcely think beyond the thunderous certainty clanging away inside his thought-scattered mind: Bebe was self-aware. Bebe was sentient.
Bebe was people.
And if she was, then so too was every human on the whole of his planet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Problem of Sentience
The computer beeped twice and, after an obscenely long lifetime—perhaps three minutes—the monitor lit up to frame his uncle’s face. Tral didn’t waste time offering a civilized greeting.
“Humans are sentient beings,” he blurted.
Bach smiled. It was the first time Tral had ever seen the man truly, honestly smile at him. He wasn’t even showing any teeth. It was genuine and honest, and under any other circumstance, Tral would have been shocked speechless to see it. Since he was already shocked, he barely had enough collective thought to process his uncle’s having a face much less an expression.
“They aren’t animals at all,” Tral said.
Bach’s smile widened. “I know.”
“You know,” Tral echoed. He shoved his fingers through his hair. He’d done that so many times today, he was surprised he had any left at all. “You know! How can you say that so calmly?”
“I’ve had twenty-six years to become used to the idea.”
“I talk,” came Pani’s voice from somewhere off screen. Bach shifted slightly sideways to lift her onto his lap and a portion of her face rose to block out his as she peered into the monitor now, too. “Hello, Tral.”
“Hello, Pani.” Tral stared at her, the far-reaching implications of his new-found discovery leaving him deeply, profoundly disturbed. Unable to hold her steady gaze, he fixed his attention back on his uncle. “How can you keep her, knowing...what you do?”
“I went to great lengths, when I first stood as you do now, to send her back to Earth.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“What makes you think I did?” When Tral’s gaze again dipped to Pani, Bach said, “She threw herself in front of pet poachers and forced her way back to me.”
“Bad Pani,” she added, her cherubic face splitting into a well-satisfied grin. “Property of Papa, 11355921.”
Tral’s astonishment sank into dismay. “Does she even know what that means?”
“She does.”
“And you kept her?”
“It seemed the thing to do.” Bach shrugged with his eyebrows. “I also married her.”
The confession left Tral gaping. “You did not!”
“I most certainly did. It was a very quiet ceremony attended by Magistrate Remeik, himself. Of course, he was only a councilman back then, and if I recall, he also thought I was crazy. Still, to have done anything less would have reduced me to being just another pet owner. I co
uld not reconcile my conscience to that.”
“So you married your pet,” Tral said, still shocked. He rubbed his face with both hands, staring at the monitor without really seeing it. “Your pet, who isn’t a pet at all. Do you have any idea what will happen to us when this becomes public knowledge?”
“Yes.” Bach’s smile faded a shade, the inky-black depths of his stare hardening like stone. “Why do you think I set up the Preserve? Haven’t you wondered why I picked you to be the observer—the only observer—in the entire park? Haven’t you wondered why it takes twenty-five thousand acres to house four humans and one half-ass scientist?”
“Because these are the kinds of secrets people kill to keep,” Tral realized out loud. “The pet industry alone is worth...millions.”
“This goes beyond money,” Bach told him.
Tral sat stupidly blinking at the monitor. “What’s worth more than money?”
“Power and, more importantly, the loss of it. We as a people abolished slavery more than four hundred years ago, and yet here we are, on our home world no less, oppressing an entire race of small people. It is estimated that one out of every five households has at least one pet. Stray packs roam our city streets, eating out of dumpsters, starving to death in plain sight and when they shy from a ‘helping’ hand, we call them wild. We breed them for color and docility. We take their children from them. We separate families, lovers and friends, and use them for our pleasure. If they resist, we break their spirits or put them down. I once feared we would do to Earth as we did to Kadmier, sweeping every last trace of mankind from existence out of some irrational fear they might somehow jeopardize our survival. But we have done so much worse in these last thirty years.
“They cannot go out of doors without a leash, thanks to Councilman Und’wi’s leash law. Aggressive humans who injure their owners are summarily destroyed, murdered for the crime of protesting their forced captivity thanks to the Hagn Act, pushed through congress by Senator Sa’an over twenty years ago. He’s up for re-election this year, I believe. Even the magistrate himself is not untouched by the stain of what we have become. He has known even longer than I that the intelligence lurking behind the eyes of our world’s most favorite and cherished household pet far exceeds that of any animal. Do you think Remeik will stand idly by while you forever taint his memory, tarnish all his terms of service, by making him the politician who single-handedly brought slavery back to our world? Do you think Sa’an will stand proudly at your side while humans cast off their shackles, all the while knowing that a single stroke of his pen has indirectly caused the extermination of more than 2.7 million human people?
“Every politician who kept a pet or wrote a law concerning them will find their public—their adoring public—turning on them as stories of pet abuse begin to find their way onto the national news. Oh, and I promise you—” Bach’s voice deepened somberly, no trace of a smile now anywhere about him. “—I promise, there will be many of them, and they will be horrific. Our propensity for cruelty has always been as boundless as our arrogance.”
“My God,” Tral said flatly. “I’m going to be killed.”
“No, you won’t,” Bach said, waving that concern aside with two fingers.
“No, you won’t,” Tral corrected. “You headed Central’s police division! Everybody still fears you!” He wilted slightly, feeling very much like a pawn. “I sincerely, sincerely regret not being feared.”
“They won’t kill you because I won’t allow it,” Bach frowned. “And because we are going to expose this to the world in such a manner that, when the news finally does break, it breaks so hard and fast as to make the truth impossible to conceal.”
“I’m dead,” Tral moaned, scraping his fingers back through his hair again. “I’m dead, and you’re insane! We’ll both be arrested as traitors—crackpot traitors—to the Central Cause! We’ll be tortured until our bones fall out and then—if we’re lucky—we’ll be shot!”
“There’s no talking to you when you get like this,” Bach tsked. “Call me when you’re done being melodramatic.”
“Why?!” Tral demanded as his uncle reached out to disconnect the call. “Why would you do this to me?! Your own flesh and blood!”
Eyebrows arching in amusement, Bach paused to grace him with yet another fond smile. “Dear boy, exactly who else could I do this to?”
“Anyone! Anyone but me!”
“Be patient, boy. Go about your work as if everything were normal. I promise, I will find a way to get us both through this with our skin and bones intact.” Chuckling, Bach disengaged the call, leaving Tral to drop his head into his hands.
He groaned. A very small hand hesitantly settled on his shoulder. Raising his head, Tral looked down at Bebe, standing quietly at his elbow and looking concerned.
Are you all right? she signed. Softly, comfortingly, she tried to soothe him by petting his arm.
“Bebe,” he countered, pained. “Why couldn’t you have been a parrot?”
She quirked her brows at him, still petting his arm. In need of more comfort than that, he pulled her up to sit in his lap.
“Get off your feet,” he told her grumpily. Wrapping his arms around her, he cradled her close, her back against his chest, her small head resting just under his chin, and tried to think how he could get out from under the mountain of unwelcome responsibility that had just been dropped on his shoulders. His narrow shoulders. Suddenly, being condemned to crawl through endless stretches of ductwork on some distant space station didn’t seem so bad.
He sighed.
Bebe shifted her softly stroking hand from his arm to his cheek. Even more softly, she began to hum. He snorted when he recognized the lullaby and instantly regretted having done it when she fell tensely silent. Burying his face in her hair, he gave her a reassuring squeeze until gradually she began to relax again. Slowly, she stroked his cheek and then, even more tentatively, to hum. The same lullaby as before. In fact, the same short bar, softly hummed over and over again as she tried to comfort him as best she knew how.
Sighing, Tral buried his face in her hair. He closed his eyes, listening to her faint voice. The lullaby wasn’t hard to recognize, even from the partial piece of it that she kept trying to sing. Wondering if she knew any human ones—or even if humans had lullabies—any better than she knew this one, he began to hum along with her. She fell silent when they reached the end of the notes she knew and he continued on, filling in the parts she didn’t.
He hummed that lullaby twice from start to finish, and it just seemed so right to rock her while he did it. A soft and gentle side to side motion, cradling her upon his knees, with her small warm body pillowed against his chest.
Her small, warm and completely naked body.
Tral stopped, both the rocking and the humming falling still. Opening his eyes, he found himself staring down over her shoulder at the twin peaks of her breasts just above his arms, folded as they were around her waist. His palm itched to reach up and cup one.
She hadn’t been a person in his mind yet for even one full day and already he was aching to fuck her. He was more of an animal than she had ever been.
Disgusted with himself now too, Tral abruptly lifted her from his lap and stood. He set her on the chair before quickly leaving the room. He paced the hall restlessly twice before realizing just leaving the kitchen was not going to do it. He left the house, banishing himself to the frigid winter temperatures outside. He didn’t even grab his coat first but stood on the front porch, letting the snow and the wind whip around him until he was shivering and his teeth were chattering so hard it felt as if his jaw would break.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. He could drop to his knees right now and shovel snow by the fistfuls down the front of his pants and it still wouldn’t be enough. With an animal he had half a chance, but with a woman... There was just no way. He’d never be able to live sex-free with a naked, attractive woman who didn’t want to be close to him as much as she w
as conditioned to want to be.
The cold was quickly too much for him to bear remaining outside, even for the sake of self-flagellation. But as he burst back into the warmth of the house and muscled the door closed again despite the raw fury of the winter wind, one quick glance at the dining table showed it to be vacant. Bebe was gone.
Turning his head, Tral checked the small living room and was about to venture into the kitchen when a soft keening sound from the bathroom caught his attention. Walking down the hall, he tipped his ear to the door first, then opened it. She was standing at the sink, hot water flowing from the faucet, gripping the lip of the counter with one hand while using a damp cloth with the other to wash between her legs. She was sobbing, teeth gritted as she scrubbed and scrubbed. The tops of her thighs already looked red and raw.
“Bebe!” Pushing into the bathroom, Tral grabbed the cloth from her. Dropping it into the basin of the sink, he quickly shut the water off and then had to grab for the cloth again when she tried to take it back again. “Stop.”
Her hands fluttered through the air, rapidly signing who knows what. Tral only recognized one word from earlier that day. Until the day he died, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget it.
He grabbed her wrists, stilling her mid-sentence, and then he loomed in close to her, letting her both see and feel the full weight of his disapproval. Her tear-filled eyes grew huge and she tried to pull away, but his grip on her hands did not loosen and he only yanked her close again.
“You are not disgusting,” he said. “You ever say that to me again and I promise you, I might have to wade through ten-feet of snow first, but I will find a worthy switch and you won’t sit for a week. Now, do you understand what I just said?”
Her mouth frozen in a startled ‘o’, Bebe nodded.
“Fine.” Tral let go of her wrists and bent to pick her up. “I’m getting damn tired of telling you to stay off your feet, too.”
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