Bebe (26 page)

Sitting across the table from him, Bebe looked at him. She’d stopped crying about an hour or so ago. Now she just sat there, blinking at him with those impossibly blue eyes of hers and never so much as cracked a smile.

And why should she, really? Tral sat back in his chair, one elbow propped on the table, chin cupped in the palm of his eyes as he studied her in return. “She doesn’t know what humor is, she can’t understand a word you’re saying, and she’s about as far from sentient as Lazonian dart beetle.”

Pani understood what people were saying, a part of his brain tried to argue.

“But then Pani is older, whereas Bebe—” She perked a little when he said her name, her small hands coming up to grip her edge of the table in a look that was at once both reserved and vaguely hopeful. “Bebe is much younger and probably nowhere near as clever.” Two idle fingers tapped at his mouth as he eyed her critically. “Because that’s what humans are, aren’t they? You’re all clever little mimics. Bald little parrots who worm your ways into our hearts and homes because you also happen to look like people.”

Her brows quirked slightly as she watched him. Her head tilted to one side as he aimlessly traced along the curve of his lower lip.

“Yes, I know.” Tral frowned, thinking. “It’s all very puzzling. How am I supposed to confirm whether or not the human animal is, in fact, a species of people? Particularly when the world already knows said animal can be exceptionally clever and that I am the blood relation of a man with an agenda.” He tapped his mouth again. “We, at the bureau, refer to thissort of task as an impossible endeavor.” He thought about it. “Or top secret. Or grunt work, come to think of it. Which is probably how it landed in my lap.”

Watching him closely, Bebe slid off her chair. Tral came quickly back to himself when her face underwent a myriad of tiny gasping, wincing expressions, but she turned and limped heavily from the table anyway.

“Bebe, get off your feet,” he called sharply after her, but she vanished into the kitchen and out of his limited range of sight anyway. “Bebe!”

The pantry cupboard opened and, frowning even more disapprovingly when he heard her begin rummaging through it, he got up from his computer to go and get her. Already his hand was itching to roll up the cuffs of his sleeve, but he only got halfway around the table before she reappeared in the open kitchen archway. Her fingers nervously tapped at a package of freeze-dried vegetables.

She must be hungry.

“See what happens when you don’t eat your breakfast?” he said, and took the package when she held it out to him. He ruffled his fingers through her hair to show he wasn’t quite as irritated as he sounded and slipped past her. “Go sit down.”

She followed him a few steps into the kitchen instead, fingers tapping quietly away as she watched him pour the package into a bowl, add a little water and then set it into the wall unit to cook.

“Someone must want another spanking,” he warned, leaving the vegetables to cook. He picked her up and carried her back to her chair. “Get down again and you’ll do the rest of your sitting today on a very hot, sore bottom.”

The wall unit beeped. Leaving her there to absorb his warning, he went to get the bowl. “Hot,” he told her as he set it on the table in front of her. Handing her a spoon, he then went back to his computer. His work of fiction wasn’t going to write itself.

He sat down with a sigh and stared at the monitor some more. Tapping uninspired at the keys, he glanced up when he noticed Bebe wasn’t eating. She simply sat as he’d left her, the bowl cupped between her hands, if anything looking more perplexed than before.

“Suppertime,” he told her and gestured to the forgotten spoon. He didn’t think he’d given her enough of the painkillers to put her in a stupor, but the way she kept staring at him had him reaching across the table to check her pulse anyway.

Nope. Steady and just slow enough that, were it his heart, he’d be rushing for the nearest hospital. On her, it was perfectly normal.

“What’s the matter with you?” Tral asked, a little irritated. As if she could answer him. He shook his head, this time at himself, and tried to refocus on his job. His real job. The one that kept him in this very nice prepaid-for station house with not so nice prepackaged food for the table. “You asked for it, now eat. We don’t waste food here.”

The matter settled, he shifted in his chair and settled himself to doing his job while he still had one. Stifling another sigh, he cupped his chin in his hand and studied the screen. God, he hated filling out these useless, senseless, unending forms. After a moment, he tapped at his mouth with one finger again.

Bebe pushed her untouched bowl of vegetables towards him.

“No, thanks.” He pushed it back at her. “I ate my breakfast, so I’m not hungry. Stop your dawdling and eat. It’ll be nasty when it gets cold.”

She blinked those big blue eyes at him uncertainly, then slowly climbed back down off her chair.

“No, Bebe,” he said, straightening in his chair as she limped back into the kitchen. “I said, no! Bebe, don’t you ignore—she’s ignoring me. She’s absolutely ignoring me.” Tral got up when he heard the pantry cupboard open again. Prepackaged containers crackled as she shuffled through them. Truly annoyed now, he started after her, rolling up his shirt sleeve as he muttered, “It’s got to be some sort of congenital human defect. Something that makes it impossible to understand the word No unless it’s accompanied by a smarting bottom.”

There were tears in her eyes as she held out a container of dried fruit just as soon as he drew close enough.

“This is not a restaurant,” he told her, taking it from her. “You haven’t even touched your—”

She took out another package without even taking her eyes from him to see what it was and handed that to him now as well.

Tral stopped and stared at her, at the tears slowly spilling over her lashes to slide down her cheeks, at the trembling in her nervously tapping fingers, and in particular, at her thoroughly confused look. Then he glanced down at both the fruit and the small box of crackers in his hand, and then backed up half a step to stare at the bowl of rapidly cooling vegetables sitting neglected on the table.

It couldn’t possibly be that simple.

“If it is, I’m an idiot.” Turning his gaze back to her, Tral shuffled the packages into one hand and quite deliberately tapped his mouth.

Reaching into the cupboard, Bebe handed him a tin of ground meat.

Barking laughter, Tral threw his hands up in the air, very nearly throwing the crackers and dried fruit everywhere. “It’s sign language! Bebe, you’re a service pet!”

Tossing food packages onto the counter, Tral stopped all over again, his smile fading as he snapped around to look at her again. He frowned, his eyes narrowing as he considered the broader ramifications of that discovery. If Bebe could sign, then unlike Pani, she wasn’t bound by the physical constraints of an inferior throat.

Had anyone tried talking to a signing human before? Not just commands—fetch this, fetch that—but actually talk to one. Unfortunately, he didn’t know word one in sign language. Well all right, apparently he now knew 'food', but one word hardly a useful conversation made.

All at once, Tral turned to stare straight out through the kitchen doorway at his computer. He might not be a genius, but at least he wasn’t a complete idiot.

Picking her up, he carried her back to the table and set her firmly on her chair. “Stay here,” he told her, pointing for emphasis. “Stay. I mean it, stay!”

He waited to make sure she would, then dashed back into the kitchen to gather up an assorted armload of whatever he could grab before rejoining her in the next room. He dropped everything on the tabletop, quickly shuffling through the pile to set items upright and arrange them into a half-circular mess in front of Bebe. She looked for them to him, not just confused now but also somewhat concerned.

“I’m fine,” he assured her, dragging both his chair and his computer over to her side of the table. He sat down directly across from hers and adjusted his monitor so that he could better see the screen. It took a miniature forever to locate an adequate file on sign language, one that possessed detailed instructions, both written and artistically drawn, on exactly how to hold one’s hands to form the simplest of words.

“Let’s start with something easy,” he muttered. She blinked at him, his computer, and then back at him again as Tral made a deliberate fist and signed to her.

Bebe reached over half a dozen items to find the cup and handed it to him.

“Ha!” he crowed, disproportionately excited over the discovery. “You really do know how to sign!” He made himself calm down. “Okay, okay, let’s think about this.” He ran his fingers through his black hair, encountering just enough snarls to remind him that he hadn’t yet groomed himself for the day, and then refocused on the computer to find another symbol. “We need something harder.”

He flexed his fingers and was about to sign again when he was startled by the brush of her hands lightly fitting into his open palms. He glanced first at her (apparently, not only was she a service pet for the deaf, but for the blind as well) and then at her hands as she signed into his palms faster than he could follow.

“What? Wait, what?” He tried to separate just one of those gestures and then scrolled quickly through the computer file for something to match what he was seeing. She reached for his hands again, but he stopped her. “No, no. I can see. Do it in the air, but not so fast this time.”

She repeated herself, much more slowly.

“Do I...want...” Damn, what was that last gesture. “Do it again.”

Rising up onto her knees, Bebe leaned over far enough to look at the monitor. Tral could feel his jaw dropping when she scrolled down through the options, then pointed at the screen.

“Coffee,” he said faintly when he could finally drag his mouth shut again. He looked at her. She held up the cup again, eyebrows quirking questioningly. “No. No, thanks.”

His excitement had just officially died, leaving behind only gradual shades of horror. For the first time in his life, he considered the ludicrous possibility that his uncle might have been right about humans all along.

“No,” he said again, faintly shaken. “No, I, uh...I want to...where is it?” He quickly scrolled through the symbols in the language file until he found the right one. “I want to talk...to you.”

Her brows beetled, not just confused now but leery as well. She tapped her fingers against the cup before setting it down on the table. Watching him carefully, she resumed her seat to await whatever he did next.

Great.

“So what do I say?” And how much of it did she really understand? Maybe half, the unenlightened Tral inside him tried to whisper, but there was a funny feeling in his gut that worried she might actually understand just about everything. And if so, did that mean he should just...talk to her? As if she were like any other person? Or maybe this was just another example of clever parroting. How could he possibly tell the difference? If she was a service pet, then it only stood to reason she’d have been taught how to do things most other humans weren’t.

Tral rubbed his mouth again, struggling to think through what he could say—what he could do—to make anything she said or did irrefutable evidence. And at this point, he wasn’t sure which side of the human/sentience question he should aim for.

After a moment, she raised her hands and slowly signed, giving him ample time to find the right symbols in the language file.

“Am I feeling all right?” He blinked at her twice. “I’m...I’m fine.” Completely unnerved, but fine. Tral then sat there, contemplating all subtle nuances of the question. Angling his head, he cautiously asked. “Are you feeling all right?”

I’m tired
, she replied.
And my feet hurt. Are you still angry with me?

“Angry?” He sat back again. “Why would I be...You mean because of the food?”

Her expression turned completely self-conscious. She pointed at his hand first and then, when he only shook his head, at his waist.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What are you trying to say?”

Even more hesitantly, a flush of pink stealing up to color her cheeks, she pointed down into her lap. As understanding finally dawned, she wilted before him.
I did not mean to be disgusting.

Tral shoved his chair physically away from hers. He couldn’t breathe. That niggling, horrible doubt in his mind was rapidly becoming an even more starkly horrible certainty. Bebe hadn’t been in heat. She’d been aroused.

In very soft, small motions, she signed,
Are you unhappy with me?

As her expression turned pleading and her hands began a rapid fluttering of motions, Tral shoved everything on the table out of his way and pulled his computer into his lap. “Slow down.” He rapidly scrolled through the symbols, missing roughly half of what she said to him, and yet managed to piece together a poorly-cobbled, “Send away... don’t send...Bebe, wait. I can’t go that fast. Don’t...outside. Wait, outside? What are you talking about? I’m not sending you outside.”

I can be better. I can be good
. She blinked up at him, so intensely sad and small, her hands dropping into her lap to twitch out the last few words with only the faintest of movements. The look she gave him was at once both hopeful and completely without any hope at all.
If I am not disgusting any more, can I please stay here with you?

Tral stared at her. He covered his gaping mouth with one hand and for the longest time didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He could scarcely think beyond the thunderous certainty clanging away inside his thought-scattered mind: Bebe was self-aware. Bebe was sentient.

Bebe was people.

And if she was, then so too was every human on the whole of his planet.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Problem of Sentience

The computer beeped twice and, after an obscenely long lifetime—perhaps three minutes—the monitor lit up to frame his uncle’s face. Tral didn’t waste time offering a civilized greeting.