Julia Ecklar: The Human Animal

Illustration by Peter Peebles

“I’m sorry, but animals are not allowed on board the Interface.”

Rahel Tovin looked at the cluster of robots blocking her path, wondering how many were programmed nobodies, and how many the sentient Newborns who ran Interface station. At least one sported a glossy brass plate riveted over its old Robot Identification Number: MECHANIC. Rahel couldn’t help feeling that if she’d had to fight in court to obtain even the most basic “human” rights, she would have picked a better name than her previous job.

“Interesting house rule.” On the ground beside Rahel, Toad hit the end of her lead and snuffled all over Mechanic’s treadmill, pretending not to be leash-broken. “Sounds kind of like an anti-carbon bias to me.”

“On the contrary.” Mechanic rolled straight backward and stranded Toad at the end of her line. The drones to either side didn’t move, but Toad still cocked her head attentively from side to side, as though sure they were about to do something fascinating. “The regulation was established at the request of several carbon-based lifeforms who frequently ply their trades on the Interface.”

“Animals restricting animals?” Rahel tucked one foot under Toad’s broad, brindled ribcage, and used it to slide the puppy back toward her. “That’s pretty funny.”

“Sentients restricting animals,” Mechanic countered smoothly.

A yellow playback light blinked into life on the shoulder of one of the drones, and a flat, overly-loud voice reeled forth from its chest speaker.-“Any self-motivating life-form judged incapable of making informed decisions regarding its own safety or the safety of others shall be defined an animal and restrained accordingly.”

Mechanic extended a manipulator arm, and Toad’s ears flicked forward with interest. “Visual reference identifies this as Canis familiaris, breed unknown, age approximately four and one half Standard months. You lead it about on a leash, indicating you fear its behavior should it pass outside your influence—”

“I fear she’ll piddle all over your space station, that’s what I fear.”

“It is the opinion of the Interface that the lifeform in your possession is an animal. We must ask that you remove it from the Interface, or it will be impounded.”

“The opinion of the Interface, or the opinion of your sentience bigots?” Rahel didn’t really expect an answer. Mechanic didn’t offer one. Its optics clicked focus between Rahel, the puppy, its drones, while the drones themselves waited with programmed patience for something decisive to happen.

Ten meters down the corridor, a tall, grey-brown creature sidled into sight from behind a structural support. Combing rear legs over its velvet-furred abdomen, it chewed at its uppermost appendages while the eyes in its thorax glittered attentively. It looked like a melding of centaur and mantis, minus the exoskeleton and plus an additional set of pincer arms around the area of its waist. When it saw Rahel studying it across the distance, a shiver of distress trembled through its multi-jointed limbs and it scurried forward to crouch behind the line of robots, weaving nervously.

“Worry. Pungent. Breathing. Worry.” The clean, Standard words—so expressionless and mechanical—obviously stuttered forth from the knobbed and fluted cylinder the spindly creature scraped erratically across its underside. Whatever concepts were supposed to be transmitted by the words was just as obviously alien in origin. “Animal. Yes? Animal. No?”

“This is a puppy,” Rahel said clearly, hoping the alien’s translator device had some means of sending language the other way. “A dog, domesticated by humans almost since day one.” Toad stretched her neck out as far as thick terrier muscles would allow, groaning at the prospect of never exploring those thorny alien legs. “You wouldn’t recognize her breed even if I told you what it was—it was extinct up until six months ago.”

A flutter of movement marked the passing of translator rod through two sets of appendages to some orifice at the top of the creature’s thorax, then back down to its belly again. “Inside-in-food-protect-living no. Answer. No.”

Mechanic translated simply, “Domestication is not an issue.”

Rahel scowled up at the alien and it skittered backward in apparent alarm. “What? You don’t domesticate animals?”

“Breathing. Not-think. Smelling frighten. Abomination.”

This time, Mechanic didn’t offer a clarification.

“Look,” Rahel sighed to the Newborn, “you guys set up this space station so various species could negotiate trade agreements, right? Well, I’m here to talk to some people about trade, just like you want.” Rahel gathered up a fistful of leash and pulled the puppy a few sliding steps closer when Toad cocked her head as though contemplating another approach on the alien. “She’s free of parasites and diseases, and I won’t let her off the leash. I’ll even put a diaper on her, if that’ll make you happy.” Toad would just love that. Still, the brass at Noah’s Ark would kill Rahel if she got kicked offstation all because of a puppy and some touchy alien.

If Mechanic could shake its head, it probably would have. Instead, it snaked out an arm and pinched Toad’s leash between two fingers. Rahel tightened her own grip on the bundle when drones closed in on either side, and Toad leapt to her feet, whip-like tail slicing the air into shreds of doggy delight at the very suggestion of play. The alien minced a half-meter closer to chew on its own hands.

“To avoid seizure of this animal, you must leave it on your transport,” Mechanic instructed Rahel. “Your transport must then remain disconnected from the Interface and parked no less than fifteen thousand kilometers away.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Rahel avoided picking up Toad as a rule—she’d be a thirteen-kilo terrier when she was full grown, and shouldn’t get used to being carried around—but she stooped now to tuck the puppy protectively under one arm. “There’s nobody to pilot my jump if I’m not there. I travel alone.”

“Perhaps that’s something you should rectify before you revisit the Interface.”

“Look…” She reached to twitch the leash out of Mechanic’s grip, but the alien behind the Newborn was faster. Pinching a roll of white-and-brindle skin in the longest of its thorax pincers, it dragged Toad forward by one jowl and one ear, frightening a piercing scream from the puppy. Rahel’s heart lunged for her throat. She hugged Toad like a mother bear and twisted her shoulder to the creature, striking out at the same time to grab the alien hand and thrust her thumb into the hinge of its largest joint. It felt like grabbing the mummified remains of a snake. But like a stubborn horse’s jaw, the grip popped almost reflexively open, and Rahel scrambled two long steps backward before either alien or robots could reach toward her again.

The creature’s legs bent into sharp peaks, and it sank almost supine behind the line of robots, its thorax curled down across its back. The translator beneath its belly groaned and stuttered, but didn’t offer forth any words. Just as well. Rahel wasn’t in the mood for its explanations, anyway.

“I came a couple hundred light-years to do business at your station,” she told Mechanic, still hugging Toad. The puppy had crammed herself as small as caninely possible, her head burrowed into Rahel’s armpit and her tail sleeked between her hind legs. “I’m willing to leave the dog on my ship if that’s what the Interface wants me to do, but if you think I’m going to let some chicken-shit extraterrestrial—”