Redeeming Factors (Revised)

by James R. Lane

Much of humanity doggedly believed that science fiction’s favorite cliché benefactors, “Godlike, Benevolent Aliens” (GBAs for short), had dropped by Earth to collect critter samples to “uplift”, and as part of that grandiose scheme the benefactors were thought to have done more than a little creative genetic surgery on some of their subjects. When the projects were completed, so the popular theory went, the GBAs apparently seeded dozens of distant worlds with the sentient fruits of their God-like labors. And in an ironic twist that triggered strident wails and vehement denials by most of mankind’s organized religions, most followers of the GBA theory were more than happy to include humankind as one of the uplifted beneficiaries.

  We were, after all, a “Planet of the Apes”.

  As for the intelligent aliens we found, if bipedal most were close to the human-norm in size; if quadruped they often resembled pony-sized centaurs with all the complicated breathing and internal plumbing problems such a bizarre, split-mode physiology would necessitate.

  When we stumbled across them most of the alien species were at a level of technology somewhat comparable to late 19th/early-20th century humanity. Only two races, the otter-like Mn’rii and the bear-like Ruug’h, were close to early 21st century humanity’s level of sophistication. The Mn’rii, in fact, appeared to be slightly ahead of us in cybernetics and biotechnology, while the ill-tempered, warlike Ruug’h trailed mere decades behind us militarily—at least we hoped they trailed us. Our military scientists were terrified that the secretive Ruug’h were successfully hiding sophisticated war machines the likes of which we could not readily counter. Still, neither of the advanced alien species had apparently tripped across the jumperdrive technology nor, for the time being, were we competing with them for expansion worlds.

  The Mn’rii and the Ruug’h both had the necessary industrial/technological infrastructure to build and utilize their own jumperdrive modules (should they be shown how), so we seriously considered trading them the technical data and ready-made tooling in exchange for lucrative tourism and trade agreements. We knew that, once they got their own jumperdrive production into high gear, all deals with us would probably become null and void. Still, we didn’t worry much about the cheerful, unfailingly congenial Mn’rii; like their otter kin they seemed to be too busy enjoying life to be a serious threat to anybody else. The dour Ruug’h, however, troubled the various political and military minds, human and non-human alike. It was widely believed that the Ruug’h were destined to become boils on every other species’ butts.

  Mankind was more than happy to sell the less-advanced species carefully screened technological improvements along with passage to wherever they wanted to go, but of course “sell” was the operant word. In one way or another all the alien species had to buy themselves passage off their worlds, and for some the price was high, the rewards for leaving home dubious. Mankind, though, felt a strange affinity for many of the disturbingly familiar alien species, and in the cases of the numerous non-violent herbivores we quickly offered them full military protection from a universe populated by their worst carnivorous nightmares.

  Most of the aliens, carnivore and herbivore alike, were comfortable with humankind acting as an interstellar referee, and the novelty of seeing living Disney-like and Warner Brothers-analogous creatures in the flesh (and fur, feathers and scales) made many of the alien species popular with almost everyone on earth. And while, in all honesty, none of the aliens were in any way cartoon-like (and unlike cartoons, many of them definitely smelled) most still evoked awe and warm feelings in our souls.

  Toy manufacturers strained their resources to fill the sudden demand for stuffed animal toys, called plushies, in likenesses of many of the aliens. Everywhere you went you saw children happily clutching soft and fuzzy little alien analogues, including the popular H’kaah, Mn’rii—even the not-so-popular Ruug’h. Alien plushies sprouted like weeds on desktops, car dashboards and coffee tables. We really loved the idea of sharing the universe with our newfound friends.

  Humankind, however, had a special fondness for the H’kaah. Children have always loved gentle, cuddly rabbits, and when children grow up their ideas of lovable rabbits grow up, too.

  But back to the H’kaah, and why some humans REALLY loved them. Genetic tests proved that they were, indeed, based on rabbits in the same way we humans are based on apes, but unlike most of the other sentient species we’d found, the H’kaah were enough like us to be interesting on a more “personal” level, too.

  As stated, at first glance most of the alien species appeared to be evolved versions of more-or-less familiar Earth-native species. While many were bipedal and all had functional hands or hand-like appendages, they had, for the most part, retained their ancestral physiology. If their ancestors had tails, their modern analogs had them. If their ancestors had pouches for their young or hooves for feet or impressive racks of horns or five pairs of mammalian teats, then their descendants did, too.

  The H’kaah, though, had not closely followed that evolutionary pattern. They showed obvious signs of humanoform genetic engineering to the degree that they appeared more akin to us than they were to their rabbit ancestors.

  They were also enough like Homo Sapiens to be, in a word—sexy.

  By human standards the females were anatomically correct and physiologically pleasing; two pert, human-style breasts were perched properly on the chest. No double-row of rabbit teats, normally found on the lower bellies of their woodland cousins, could be seen peeking through the lush abdominal fur of modern H’kaah; they hadn’t been rabbits for at least as long as humans hadn’t been prehensile-tailed, grasping-footed monkeys. Full hips, moderate waistline, slightly heavy thighs leading to plantigrade, non-human feet—no problem, their distant ancestors had, after all, hopped around and nibbled grass millennia before their cartoon-animated cousins cracked jokes and dodged balding, inept hunters.

  Their arms were human-proportioned and their somewhat stubby-fingered hands were shaped more like ours than animal paws, yet their fingers and rabbit-like toes sported aesthetic pearly claws instead of our flat nails. When looking at their faces one was immediately drawn to their large, beautifully expressive eyes, which were set human-like toward the front of a human shaped, pleasingly proportioned head. There were brains behind those eyes, too!

  The muzzle/snout was not quite human-flat, the chin short, the nose a perfect rabbit pink-rimmed triangular button that only occasionally twitched. Gleaming white (instead of yellow) traditional rabbit front teeth, a bifurcated upper lip and cat-like whiskers were there, too, yet were correctly proportioned to the rest of the face. As one would imagine, the most prominent feature of the head, besides the human-like long hair where we normally had it, was the ears, and Bugs Bunny would have been proud. Like their rabbit kin most H’kaah had erectile, mobile ears that ranged in size from modest to tall, yet some were exotic, droopy lop. Of course humans immediately wanted to stroke the ears, a practice that drove the average H’kaah to distraction.

  Ears are personal and private. Ears are expressive and sensitive. Ears are not meant to be “man”-handled by rude, crude, nearly hairless apes.

  Among H’kaah lovers, stroking another’s ears is highly erotic.

  To everyone else H’kaah ears, like their tails, were decidedly off-limits to casual touching except by small children who, regardless of species, always make their own rules.

  As noted, the H’kaah did have tails, and those fluffy appendages were as rabbit-pert and sexy as the rest of the package. And while they were off-limits to casual fondling that offense was seldom a problem since, at least in polite human society, H’kaah usually wore a human-minimum of lightweight clothing. It’s been shown that, regardless of race or species, when a person is “clothed” they’re generally treated with a modicum of respect, and around humans H’kaah females frequently wore petite halter-tops with matching shorts. Their clothing, necessarily light due to their warm fur covering, was enough to get the message across, to wit: “Don’t fondle
the tits, and hands off the butt-puff!” However, just like in the classic cartoons, the tails were worn outside the lightweight shorts. A little hole in the upper seat area of the shorts allowed the expressive tail its provocative freedom.

  While descriptions to this point had been of the female H’kaah physique, the male H’kaah was also guaranteed to make horny human females’ upper lips sweat and lower lips quiver. Slightly larger than the females, the males generally had broad, humanlike chests with muscular arms, and if they wore an upper body garment at all (which was rare in warm weather) it was seldom more than a lightweight vest. The males, just like their female counterparts, had saucy rabbit tails that poked out the back of their shorts. H’kaah sexual equipment was another point in which they were not simply “evolved rabbit”; while not quite the human norm, both males and females sported “equipment” close enough in form and function to ours to be fully compatible.

  * * *

  And this brings us to Jack Ross, and the reason for his visit to Patrons that particular fine spring day. Ross was a man of many talents, several tragedies and more than a lion’s share of dark, ugly secrets.

  Eight years of military life, most of those spent in covert special operations, made him tough on the outside. Those years also gave him a worldview far different from the common citizenry, even those with broad-based military service. And along with his expanded attitudes came a fierce passion for personal honor and dignity, painfully ground into his psyche by the death and suffering of several of his special ops buddies. The fact that he helped bring about the death and suffering of those he deemed the enemy also left its mark on his soul, yet Jack Ross was especially careful to keep his personal shadows well hidden.

  Ross, you see, had reached a middle-age turning point. Married and then divorced, children grown and gone, he was tired of the bar scene, the club scene and the whole shallow, frustrating dating game. He was a successful businessman with enough money and social prestige to live comfortably in the post-jumperdrive exodus world; what he did not have was an interesting companion with whom to share his life.

  Ross had made many strong friendships during both his military and business careers. Years earlier, with the advent of the jumperdrive and the looming possibility of contact with sentient aliens, he foresaw the potential danger to both human and alien societies. Calling in favors and leaning hard on old friendships, Ross managed to convince enough behind-the-scenes UN powerbrokers to be prepared to take action— drastic to the point of draconian if necessary—to avert social chaos on Earth as well as on any civilized world humanity might find.

  And find them we did.

  Two short years after Ross and his friends drew up first-contact contingency plans mankind stumbled across the first of what turned out to be twenty-six inhabited worlds. Once the first alien society was discovered it didn’t take Earth’s military machine long to move in with ugly but efficient interstellar gunboats. As quickly as alien-inhabited planets were discovered they were surrounded with picket ships to enforce an interstellar embargo. In use the jumperdrives produced a strange but distinct energy signature that was impossible to shield from detection. This made any attempt to slip through planetary blockades completely futile, so almost from the start mankind’s access to worlds populated by sentient aliens was tightly controlled.

  This wasn’t done, however, to keep the aliens repressed; sadly, we had to protect many of the species from predatory humans of all stripes and philosophies. Capitalists wanted to buy and sell the aliens; Communists wanted to make sure no alien had more or less than any other alien; religionists wanted to save the aliens’ souls (if they, indeed, had souls, a hot-button issue endlessly debated among scores of top human theologians). Lastly, there were certain individuals who were hell-bent on turning as many of the aliens as possible into the latest, hottest sex toys.

  And in cutthroat competition with the professional perversion merchants came legions of horny adolescent humans, males and females alike, who had rip-roaring wet dreams of borrowing the family star buggy and zipping over to the nearest exotic world to snag a fuzzy-tailed “piece of strange”. This happened on several worlds before hastily implemented restrictions could be put into place, and our embarrassed United Nations worked long and hard to keep a lid on the resulting social problems for all species involved.

  Ross knew that permanently isolating the aliens would not be a viable solution. If there was ever to be any hope of the different species coexisting, there had to be cross-cultural and amicable social contact among their worlds as well as with humanity. Again working closely with old friends Ross quickly came up with a plan that, at least on the surface, seemed to be the answer to their prayers. It promised to give each of the timid herbivore species an opportunity to be trained (conditioned, actually) in how to survive assimilation into what was, to them, a mostly hostile, meat-eating universe.

  The few openly predatory carnivores and one of the omnivore species, however, refused to even discuss the assimilation plan. Therefore those species remained, for the most part, restricted to their solitary worlds while an understandably nervous UN tried to figure out what to do with them.

  Humanity wasn’t just about to give “smart wolves” and their ilk free access to entire planets full of defenseless, sentient “prey”.

  After two years of careful negotiations with the apprehensive H’kaah government, the first experimental plan had been hammered out, but what it boiled down to was a deceptively simple business deal.

  Integrating H’kaah citizens into complex human societies would require close supervision, and in some cases unusual protection. That was where Ross and his friends came in. With the United Nations’ blessing, along with full covert economic support, they formed the core of what they hoped would eventually be a network of small companies worldwide, dedicated to giving carefully selected aliens critically-needed experience living in cutthroat human society.

  To keep the timid rabbit-like H’kaah from feeling like exploited serfs the plan was to employ them as personal companions to mostly middle-class families and individuals. Their duties would include performing a variety of tasks within their physical and educational capabilities, thereby earning a salary that could be spent on Earth or converted to equitable money and sent home to their families. They would be given the same “resident alien” status as any foreign-national human, with all the rules and protections of the laws that apply in similar situations.

  Assuming it worked, once the practice was widespread other suitable alien species would be given the opportunity to participate in human society. When possible, carefully selected humans would work under the same type of program on alien worlds. Once all that was in place and working—if, in fact, it could be made to work at all—the plan was to try to integrate the more hostile aliens into each other’s societies.

  There were a lot of “ifs” to be considered, but everything starts with a first step, and Ross’ arrival at Patrons signaled the public part of that beginning. Sadly, as in countless other ventures mankind had involved itself in throughout its history, things were not always what they seemed, and people often got hurt—or worse.

  * * *

  Once the delicate negotiations with the H’kaah government had been completed Ross dropped completely into the background of the business, becoming a perfect “silent partner”. Even though he had worked closely with his friend Theodore Shapiro (the public head of Patrons) as they hammered out the countless details of the operation, Ross had never set foot in the building where the Patrons operation was located, nor had he met with any other Earth-based Patrons staff members. In the Earth side of the business Ross operated like he had in his productive years of covert, “black” operations his government never officially sanctioned. In fact, Ross was so deeply buried in the operation only a few close friends and business associates knew his true status; the regular staff thought him to be merely their first customer and a good friend of the man they assumed to be the sole owner of the
business.

  The beige stucco-covered building topped with a red-tile roof was visually bland, but the walkway from the asphalt-paved parking lot to the solid wood entrance door wound through shrubbery and was paved with cedar chips, something more normally found in a home garden environment. The company’s use of that, along with the natural-looking wood main door, seemed an honest attempt at creating an inviting, non-threatening environment. Ross was completely at ease dressed in Florida-casual clothes, and felt his loose-fitting white polo shirt, khaki Dockers and brown leather Rockport deck shoes perfectly matched the laid-back atmosphere Patrons seemed so anxious to project. Still, he wondered if he would find the interior of the old, converted medical office building to be as warm; he knew with a sudden, silly grin that he would surely find it “fuzzy” inside.

  As he reached for the doorknob he heard a distinct click, and the door hummed, swinging inward and away from his outstretched hand. While his momentum was carrying him awkwardly across the threshold he caught a glimpse of a microwave motion sensor above the doorframe. “So much for low-tech warmth,” he muttered in disgust.

  The door closed itself behind him, rudely nudging his butt in its passing, yet that minor indignity was quickly forgotten as his attention shifted to the reception area—what little there was of it. With barely enough room for Ross and a normal-appearing woman seated behind an old-fashioned beige steel office desk, the reception area seemed comprised of nothing more than a tiny, bare room, frightfully sterile and claustrophobic. To the woman’s right was a closed wooden door; to her immediate left was a beige painted wall as blank as the one right behind her chair.

  I’ve seen coffins with more ambiance and elbowroom than this, he thought in amazement. There wasn’t even a chair and the obligatory outdated magazines for him to pretend to read while he cooled his heels. I guess customers are expected to either go right in or be booted right back out, he mused, but before he could say anything the receptionist spoke.