The Visitor (13 page)

Akkal screamed suddenly:

“
I know! I know! Speciesism, Yes! You’ve told me that bullshit word before! But, I can't stop! You hear? I can't! I can't!”
 

Akkali intervened:

“
Maybe you'd better go, Okkala...”
 

“
No, no! I don’t want her to leave," said Akkal. “Let's talk about it, since it’s necessary that we speak! Let her hear me out, too! I've listened to her. So now let her hear me!”
 

“
In that case, calm down," advised Akkali. “Lets all sit and... What would you like to drink, Okkala?”
 

“
No thanks, Akkali, I’m not thirsty.”
 

“
But, it has nothing to do with thirst! A little fortified wine?”
 

“
Okay... Thanks.”
 

All sat down. The children were silent wishing for the best.

“
I'll go see Sneaky,” said Akkaliza. “I won’t be long.”
 

“
Can I go with you?” asked her brother.
 

“
Come!” she said with a smile.
 

They looked at them leaving.

“
Everyone would be so pleased if you could get along with each other,” said Akkali, handing a glass to her sister-in-law. “Surely, it should be possible!”
 

Brother and sister paused sharing embarrassed looks.

“
I told you I understand what you say, but I can't stop,” said Akkal. “I’ve far too many debts, responsibilities towards employees, other...”
 

Okkala decided to allow her brother a breather. She changed the subject. Well, almost:

“
I assume that you’ve received an invitation from channel 2.”
 

“
Yes, we’ve received it. From your question, I suppose that you did too. It’s what I feared.”
 

“
Are you coming?”
 

“
No.”
 

“
Nature Foods won’t be present on the show?”
 

“
Yes. But, unless by that time I’ve a change of heart, I won't burden myself with representing the company. You’ll have someone else before of you.”
 

*

Toro didn’t know that the umas called him Toro. Furthermore, he didn’t know that he had a name for someone. And to tell the truth, he didn’t even know what a name was. As a reproductive bov, Toro had the privilege to enjoy a much bigger space than that allocated to his fellow kind whose destiny was to produce meat or milk. He lived in a twenty-five square meter pen, delimited by sturdy bars. He was a male whose sperm had the advantage to generate individuals that grew quickly for a given quantity of food and that had a relatively low bone mass. Appreciated characteristics for producing profitable meat bovs. Nature Foods’ veterinarians came regularly collect his seed for safekeeping. For a few months a year, he was left outdoors, rather than locked up, for fear that captivity under conditions that were too harsh would reduce his fertility. And so, beautiful pictures could be made, much more flattering than bovs confined to jails that could barely fit them in.

His living conditions were indeed very enviable as compared to those of his ilk in livestock intensive farming. But that also, he had no knowledge of, because it would have required that he already knew that they existed. No, Toro really didn’t know much. Not that his intelligence, his cognitive faculties were reduced; the paucity of his knowledge was only due to his isolation. His world was limited to what was available to his eyes: some trees that there were around his enclosure and the rare umas coming, either to bring him food and to clean his prison or to proceed to activities upon him that he wasn’t aware of, since beforehand, he had been put to sleep using some substance mixed into his food. Toro was terribly bored. There was nothing else to do but to eat and to watch the same trees and the same earth around him. When an animal passed in his field of vision, it was quite an event. Alas, it happened sometimes, but much too rarely! One time, something ran along the trees. It looked like a kind of squirrel. Toro had immediately realized that it was a some kind of living being, like himself. Despite his extremely reduced repository of knowledge, something innate in him had let him
know. He had cried out with enthusiasm thrusting his arms through the bars. But he had only succeeded in scaring the creature, which had quickly fled away. Then Toro had cried, not knowing that he was crying; the only thing that he knew was that it sometimes happened when he was sad, without actually knowing that he was sad. He was unaware that he wasn’t the only one to have feelings.
 

So far, this morning was a morning like any other for Toro, but...

A small noise from a crushed twig solicited his hearing. Listening carefully, he looked in the direction of its origin. What was then projected onto his bored retinas froze him with stupor: coming out of the vegetation, a creature had just appeared. A creature almost similar to himself. It wasn’t quite the same, but he hadn’t ever seen anything that resembled him as much. He was so astonished that he lost the use of his speech and of his muscles. Which was a good thing, since it avoided the shouting and gesticulating that risked scaring off this incredible encounter. As soon as he recovered the use of his vocal cords and his limbs, he consciously forced himself to tone down his reactions to prevent a repeat of his experience with the squirrel. That would have been catastrophic, because this creature was significantly more interesting than the latter. He contented himself to tighten the bars in his hands and make a few small whimpers of welcome.

*

Mahisa was surprised. One of her fellow kind stood before her. After several days of walking, it was the first time she met one.

“
Hello,” she said.
 

The individual was whimpering. His fingers were gripping onto strange upright trunks very smooth, without branches and leafless. He didn’t respond, but continued to whine softly. He was a male with impressive muscles. She approached and said:

“
I’m Mahisa. I'm looking for Etos. Etos was kidnapped by lightning-slayers with the help of monsters having four round legs. Do you think that Mahisa is nearing their territory?”
 

The stranger only fell to his knees and continued to whimper his entire body trembling. Then, he began to produce a series of sounds more or less articulated and meaningless. The idea that Toro couldn’t speak didn’t enter Mahisa’s mind. How could she suspect that he’d never met a being of his species before? His behavior puzzled her, but her attention was attracted to the bananas and huge apples that were lying all around on the ground, beyond the standing trunks. One of the big apples was within her grasp. She reached out her hand and quickly took it. This done, she started to devouring it backing up in fear that her theft would upset the stranger. But quickly realizing that he couldn’t overcome the obstacles surrounding him, she was reassured. Even more so when instead of outrage, he lobbed all the apples from his territory to offer them to her. These offerings as generous as unexpected touched her deeply.

“
Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, they are really very beautiful and very good. But... Why are you enclosed in those strange things?”
 

All she got for answer were grunts, groans and barely articulated random sounds. She greedily ate two apples, that calmed her hunger a bit, and then she repeated:

“
Do you think that the territory of lightning-slayers and of the four round feet is still far away?”
 

This strange character’s reaction was identical to before, but with more frenzy. His cries, grunts and whimpers filled the forest.

“
Okay,” she concluded. “Thanks for the apples. Mahisa must leave.”
 

After loading her hands with three more of the fruit, she started to walk away when she heard him crying broken-heartedly. He tended his arms through the things that held him prisoner as to implore her to stay. She hesitated. But then a conspicuous physical reaction between his legs had just complicated the situation; she no desire at all to mate.

*

Toro was in a trance. The creature that looked like him had uttered sounds that he had never heard before, but that evoked in him something so strong that his heart beats shook his whole being. Oh! And also, something inexplicable happened while looking at her. He felt growing inside him such a troubling desire. He wouldn’t have been able to identify, even to himself, how he felt for her, but he was no longer able to detach his eyes from her. When she began to go away, he felt unbearable inner pain, intimate and profound rupture that annihilated him. He could no longer see her except through his tears. His experience with the squirrel had been hard to live with, but if she left also, it would simply be unbearable; he knew.

*

Ikklobar was a young veterinarian, mixed-race with slightly more blue scales than green. Ikkillu had given him the task of caring for Toro. When he saw on the surveillance camera screen the condition the male breeder was in, he wondered what was wrong with it. He had been absent only for a short while to satisfy nature’s call and he had chatted a little with a maintenance technician also. What could have happened in such a short time? He hadn’t an inkling of an idea. Ikkillu had asked him to call her in the event of a major problem. He decided that this was one.

*

Ikkillu, Ekkbokk, and Ikklobar got off the small open off-road vehicle and approached the enclosure.

“
So, Toro!” launched Ikkillu. “What’s wrong?”
 

“
Oh my! Something’s the matter there,” said Ikklobar. “Look how red its eyes are!”
 

“
Perhaps it’s been stung by insects,” proposed Ikkillu. “It has something in its eyes, that's for sure. They are flooded with tears.”
 

“
These damned beasts have eyes that are very fragile,” added Ekkbokk. “We’ve problems with them too often.”
 

“
Let’s put it to sleep,” suggested his boss. “I'll enter to examine it. You, Ikklobar,  go review the camera recordings to see what happened from all angles. I'll call you when you have to come pick us up.”
 

Ekkbokk placed a dart into the hypodermic rifle and fired it at Toro. They waited a few seconds. Toro stopped moaning and gesticulating. When it sank slowly on its side, they entered the enclosure and began to examine the male breeder.

“
It must have wanted to run away from something,” observed Ekkbokk. “Look at these bruises on its mouth and many other places. We can see that it crashed into the bars.”
 

“
Yes, it’s possible that it was attacked by a swarm of wasps or something like that. Ikklobar will find out from the videos. The timing is wrong whatever it is, I must go and have a look at the boss’s beast that we treated yesterday.”
 

“
You still don’t know what he wants to do with it?”
 

“
Well... No,” she said.
 

“
Whatever it is, it’s personal, because he told us that he would pay for it himself.”
 

“
Who knows what he has in mind!” she exclaimed, while opening each of Toro’s eyes to examine it closely.”
 

“
Perhaps a new breeder. But the beast doesn’t seem right. It’s far from looking like a meat machine.”
 

“
Yes, but maybe it has another interesting gene. Toro doesn’t seem to have an infection problem in its eyes. Still, I'll take a sample for the lab.”
 

“
Good idea. In case he’s infected with a damned bacteria. Anyway, I don’t understand why it’s taken outside. It would surely be safer...
 

“
It’s an idea of the guy who preceded me in my function. He said that it promoted fertility. I didn’t find it urgent to stop it when I took office. You know, it isn’t easy to question past practices when you’re new.”
 

“
Yeah, I understand!”
 

*

If Ekklamisa seemed dead still before her screen, it was in fact because she really was dead still before her screen. But her mind was far from being frozen. She was staring at the last picture of the space machine that was hurtling toward them with an inexpressible fascination.
I’m observing the product of extraterumastrial engineering
she kept saying to herself. Of course, on Teruma, satellite dishes were made also, identical to the one mounted on the device; the same needs often generate the same technological responses. But knowing that its components had been designed and manufactured by non terumastrial minds was sufficient to make it thrilling. The list of questions arising from this seemed infinite. What did its designers looked like? What was their technological level at the time that their cosmic traveler was launched? And was it within the reach of an uman mind to imagine what level they should have reached by now?

The latest calculations were even more encouraging than the previous ones. More encouraging, yes, but more anxiety-producing also. Indeed, they showed that the thing would pass by at a maximum of fifty thousand kilometers from Teruma. So, of course, there was more hope to be able to intercept it, but at the same time so was the even greater certainty of frustration in the event of failure.

*

Mahisa had been terrified when she saw three lightning-slayers arriving on the hollow back of a four round feet. She ran away while still following her route from the cover of trees, but without losing sight of the edge of the forest. That was a good way to avoid getting lost in its depths, where unknown trees eventually looked all alike. She had run for a long time. Her lungs were demanding lots of air. Now, she walked. Exhaustion fell onto her. She had advanced for too long. She needed to sleep. She sank a little more in the forest, taking care to find a landmark to be able to return to the edge when she woke up; it was a tree with five branches, above a short, massive trunk, that looked like a big hand. Going beyond it by about ten meters, she lied down in a slight depression padded with moss and short grass figuring that to find the edge, all she had to do was to go in the direction of the hand. The bed was comfortable, she fell asleep thinking of Etos.