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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.”
The Wrathelders are not to be dismissed lightly. They had little interest in our human pet project to begin with. It sounded far too much like charity and conservation for their liking. But as the popularity of human pets grew, and the profits became more obvious, it was inevitable they would begin to take interest.
“You know they have weight with the council,” Kahn says. “It’s only a matter of time before they’re bringing in shipments of humans without any selection criteria or training. They’ll be wild. They’ll be destructive. They’ll be riddled with disease and parasites. The males will form defensive bands, and the females will become pregnant and distressed at the loss of their mates. There is every chance they will bring young to the planet too. They won’t have our restraint or protocols about not separating mothers from young. It will be a tragedy.”
I am listening, silently mentally agreeing to everything he is saying. In the very old days, our family, the Voros, would have approached the Wrathelders and negotiated a way out of this situation. In more modern times, few are open to such negotiation. The Wrathelders and the Voros have staked their claims and bad blood has been allowed to fester between us.
“Maybe what we need to do is show the council what a wild human is really like,” I suggest. “It just so happens we have a completely uncontrolled little specimen upstairs. When I tell you what she did to her first owners, you’ll be very much displeased. But we could always…”
“Unleash her on the council, with her rabid appetite for pancakes and disrespect?”
Kahn is not immediately convinced, though a slight smile does appear on his features.
“It would be amusing,” he admits. “If nothing else. But it may also prove that we have no control over our human pets, and the Wrathelders may as well have a permit to import as well.”
“We already look like we are importing wild humans. Jennifer spent three days absolutely terrorizing everybody she met until her owners returned her.”
His expression becomes solemn again. “I am sorry I sold her. You are right. I should have been much more careful. Things have been so much busier now that it is just the two of us.”
There are four of us brothers, but only Kahn and I are of any use these days.
“Don’t worry. I should have made certain you knew what I was doing with her. It would be nice if Rake would at least come back and help.”
“Rake,” Kahn sighs. “Where is our little brother?”
“Back in the woods, I assume.”
Rake is younger than Kahn by three minutes and is the embodiment of wildness and chaos. He’s the complete opposite of Kahn in terms of temperament. Usually, I do not mind his uncivilized ways, but it does cause problems when he appears from wherever he’s been to throw as many wrenches in as many gears as possible before sinking back beneath the waters of his own personal chaos. Personally, I think we are probably slightly better off without our younger siblings.
Between Kahn’s obsessive need for order, and Rake’s refusal of it, I’m the middle man. The oldest brother. The one who has to bring calm to what might otherwise be the incendiary relationships of our band of brothers.
“If father were here…” Kahn begins.
“Father is not here. We are. We will deal with this. Don’t worry.”
