Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 47529 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47529 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 158(@300wpm)
“You should have made her do this,” Kahn complains.
“She needs rest.”
“Soft,” Kahn grunts with distaste.
I do not care what my younger brother thinks about how I handle my human. She is not his problem, and he certainly has no authority over me.
Having restored our home, we retreat for drinks. I know he’s not really angry about the human. He has his own problems to worry about, but he’d prefer to grumble about my pet than focus on them.
“We did agree no pets.” Kahn reminds me of the rule that I myself made.
“I know, but this one was on the verge of being destroyed. I had to do something.”
“Could have left her at the shop.”
“Turns out, I couldn’t. Imagine if she had broken out there. We might never have found her. She’s the one you sold without checking, Kahn. You played a role in this mess, so you might want to let the righteous act drop.”
Kahn does not let the righteous act drop. Not even a little bit.
“It’s not like you to select a human who wouldn’t make a suitable pet,” Kahn says. “And that human has close to no signs of being a suitable pet. She’s not submissive. She’s not sweet. She has criminal tendencies. She…”
I take a long swig of fermented fruit beverage as Kahn lists the many obvious shortcomings of my human pet. He’s not wrong about a single thing. She has a wild temperament, and she is clearly given to criminality, but those are survival traits, and I very much admire them. Kahn does not agree. Kahn expects obedience almost before a pet is tamed.
“How did the meeting go?” I ask.
I don’t really need to know the answer to that question. It is obvious that the meeting Kahn had with the Euphorian council went poorly.
“They want to open up the permit process. Wrathelders have been petitioning them. They say it is unfair that our family has a monopoly on the human pet trade. I told them selection matters, and that bringing just one or two of the wrong humans here could quite literally destroy our civilization, but they didn’t believe me. I could tell they thought we just want to keep competition out of the industry. If Euphoria is filled with enough breeding humans, they could easily form wild pockets and create a hostile civilization right under the noses of these idiots who sit in their pale towers and make decrees about things they do not begin to understand. Look what humans did to their own planet! How can anybody think they would be any kinder to ours?”
I listen as he rants aloud, using a more primal form of communication to express his frustration. No wonder he was so furious when he found my pet loose in the house after a day like the one he has had. Kahn respects humans more than most of our kind. He understands that they can be genuinely dangerous.
“There are humans who would understand our technology and even devise ways to use them against us. I tried to warn the council, but they don’t believe it to be a problem. They’re looking at the numbers, and at the demand. Wrathelders are pushing for more in-home breeding too. We have such a limited pool of humans here, and they want to start cross-breeding. It’s madness. Imagine how related some of them already are, and how interrelated they will be after just a few generations…”
Kahn is smart, resourceful, and powerful. He suffers greatly because others are not as smart or forward thinking, and he spends much of his life trying to explain consequences to others. It is a source of perpetual torment.
“We need limits on human populations, and we need bans on breeding. It is easy enough to render the males sterile without impinging on their physical health. Even on Earth, vasectomies were practiced regularly.”
He is not talking to me so much as expounding on the very same points he would have spent all day trying to make to no avail. Another powerful family, the Wrathelders, are lobbying to transport humans, and in far greater numbers, and at much lower rates.
I have not greatly concerned myself with these matters. Kahn likes to deal with officials. I prefer to focus on the humans we are training and saving. But there comes a time when ignoring matters of state is no longer an option, and it seems as though that time is upon me.
“At the meeting, Phenix Wrathelder unveiled a design for a ship that could take upwards of ten thousand humans in a single trip. I told him that would be ecological suicide. Do you know what he said?”
“No.”
“He said that if some of them do get free, they would be amusing to hunt.” Kahn looks at me with an expression of restrained horror. “We’re trying to preserve the human species. That’s what the license is supposed to do. But the whole exercise is in the proceeds of being corrupted by greed. It sickens me.”