Julia Ecklar - The Human Animal

Rahel nodded, then realized what exactly they’d just told her. “A doctor?” She jerked a startled look at the Larry. It stroked its eyes in nervous repetition. “The tlict have a doctor who can treat human beings?”

“Tlict. Not-tlict.” It shifted uneasily onto its hindmost limbs. “Medicine treatment of not-tlict.”

She shook her head in slow confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“This tlict is a veterinarian,” the dhaktu volunteered without benefit of a mazhet’s initiative.

A veterinarian? When its species apparently had no tolerance of animals, and very likely had none as pets? “I suppose that’s appropriate, at least.” She retreated an uncertain step, not sure if she should drive the tlict out or thank it for coming. Finally, she settled for sinking to her knees at the mouth of the crate and sighing at the boy still huddled at its rear. “Let me see if I can get him out for you.” She went down on all fours, slipping the fallen snooze pistol into her pocket as an afterthought.

The floor of the crate felt clammy and damp beneath her hands. Sour with human sweat, humid from urine and the boy’s labored breathing, the air in the crate nearly gagged her. She bit down hard against a cough, then stopped half-way down the box’s length to sink back on her heels and make eye contact with the boy. He crushed himself deeper into the corner he’d claimed as his own.

Rahel’s stomach tightened with regret. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” she whispered, just like she’d murmured to all the coyotes she’d tagged and sampled back home. “I know you’re scared, but it’s OK, everything’s gonna be OK.”

Just like the coyotes, his eyes reflected back a ghostly red that showed no signs of understanding.

But you’re not a coyote, are you? You’re a boy. Which means there’s something besides instinct going on in that oversized skull of yours.” Deliberately keeping her voice gentle anti soothing, her face serene despite her words, Rahel eased forward on hands-and-knees. The boy’s eyes flicked to follow her movements. “You know I’m a human, too. You know from the way I’m talking and moving that I’m not coming in here to rough you around, don’t you? We’re just gonna get a look at you and make sure everything’s OK.” She placed one hand feather-light against the side of his leg. His skin twitched away from her touch like a horse’s skin away from a fly.

She didn’t pull her hand back. “There’s no place else for you go to,” she said, sliding up his leg to where his arms were locked around his up-drawn knees. “You’re just gonna have to come out here with me.” And she closed her fingers around his wrist with a carefully calculated amalgam of tenderness and strength.

The boy exploded with a howl of rage. Rahel found herself jerked violently forward while he twisted and kicked and clawed to be rid of her. One wall of the crate banged into her shoulder; the boy’s back shoved awkwardly against her armpit as he planted bare feet on the opposite wall and clenched every muscle in his scrawny little frame to break away.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Still gripping fiercely to his wrist, Rahel snaked her free arm across the boy’s chest to wedge him against her and break his leverage. He gave in to her pulling immediately, and they crashed sideways onto the bottom of the crate. Rahel was willing to count that as a preliminary victory right up to the moment he wrenched his captive hand up in front of his face and bit into her forearm with a gristly crunch.

“Ah, goddammit!” Anger took the short route straight into her bloodstream. She swung one leg over the boy and pinned him in retaliation. “You little—!”

“Proctor Tovin?”

He squirmed frantically beneath her, jabbing his elbow at her thigh, and bit down harder when she tried to use her free hand to grab his flailing arm. She shouted again in pain, and suddenly understood what it felt like to want to beat another human being senseless with your bare hands. Jamming her forearm more firmly into the little beast’s mouth, she rolled onto one hip and dug across her front for the snooze pistol in her opposite pocket. It jutted against the fabric of her trousers like some dissatisfied animal who wanted to escape.

“Proctor Tovin?” the dhaktu called again. “Is some assistance required?”

Surely some mazhet had initiated the request, but Rahel would be damned if she could guess which one. “No!” She squeezed the pistol’s trigger without bothering to work it free of her pocket. The boy jerked with a yelp, then collapsed into a loose sprawl beside her. If anything, the pain in her arm redoubled with a throb when the boy’s bite pressure lifted.

“Doings between you sound most violent,” the dhaktu pointed out in sync with someone’s rapid clicking. “The mazhet remain available to assist in the unpacking of this merchandise.”

“All right, then.” Trying to ignore the progressively sticky feel of her shirt sleeve, Rahel untangled herself from the boy and rolled him over. “Get me the medikit from under the pilot’s console in the cockpit.” He seemed so light and tiny now that she could drag him from the crate without fighting. It was almost like handling a toy.

The yellow and salmon mazhet shadowed her, medikit balanced on one hand, as she backed out of the crate with the boy in tow. “Spread the blanket there.” Rahel jerked her chin toward the floor to her left, then waited somewhat impatiently while Ayr helped the first mazhet unfurl the blanket from the lid of the kit. Blood gathered in the elbow of her sleeve, spattering against the floor one fat drop at a time with a brittle tick, tick, tick. Behind her, the tlict echoed the sound with its toenails in apparently unconscious mimicry.

The mazhet laid out the blanket at an angle to her, one corner near her ankle, the opposing comer aiming across the deck toward the cockpit door. She lowered the boy onto the square without commenting on its odd positioning. Tugging her sleeve into a lumpy wad near her elbow, she backed away from both mazhet and boy to give the tlict whatever room it thought necessary. “Get to work, Larry. He’s not gonna be snoozed-out forever.”

The tlict scrubbed fretful arms across its eyes, then scuttled forward to straddle the boy’s body and probe him with some abdominal appendage. Rahel hoped to hell the kid didn’t wake up to that view.

She accepted the sterile wipe yellow-and-salmon handed her, then hissed through her teeth half in pain, half in dread as she daubed away the blood obscuring the wound. More welled up to replace it, but not before she could see the ragged half-moons of actual damage. He may not have had well developed canines, but the little bastard had certainly got her good.

Yellow-and-salmon pressed another clean wipe into her hand, and Rahel cocked a glance at the alien as she took it. The mazhet had turned the rest of the medikit to face her, obviously expecting her to select whatever medicaments she needed from the array in the bottom of the box. Rahel plucked out a largish handful of dry gauze to pack against the wound.

“Now that I’ve got your undivided attention…” She aimed the comment at the other two mazhet as much as the one by her side. “Can one of you tell me who’s got the control for the merchandise’s restraining collar?”

Yellow-and-salmon’s huge black eyes studied the treatment of her wound without blinking. Ayr and its companion only stood complacently, as though she’d never spoken.

Rahel wasn’t surprised to discover she was in no mood for mazhet weirdness. “What?” She looked irritably among the three of them. “Is there some mazhet rule against answering simple questions?”