Free The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories by Bruce McAllister Page A

weather one conventionally took one’s jacket off in; but there was only one place to remove one’s jacket with at least a modicum of dignity, and that was, of course, in the privacy of one’s own FabHome-by-the-Sea. To thwart convention, he was wearing his new triple-weave “gauze” jacket in the pattern called “Summer Shimmer”—handsome, odorless, waterproof, and cool. He would not remove it until he wished to. 
    He was the last, as always, to leave the Bureau, and as always he felt the pride. There was nothing sweeter than being the last—than lifting off from the empty pad with the rotor blades singing over him and the setting sun below as he made his way in his earned solitude away from the city up the coast to another, smaller helipad and his FabHome near Oxnard. He had worked hard for such sweetness, he reminded himself. 
    His heli sat glowing in the sun’s last light—part of the perfect scene—and he took his time walking to it. It was worth a paintbrush painting, or a digital one, or a multimedia poem. Perhaps he would make something to memorialize it this weekend, after the other members of his triad visited for their intimacy session. 
    As he reached the pilot’s side and the little door there, a shadow separated itself from the greater shadow cast by the craft, and he nearly screamed. 
    The figure was tall and at first he thought it was a costume, a joke played by a colleague, nothing worse. 
    But as the figure stepped into the fading light, he saw what it was and nearly screamed again. He had seen such creatures in newscasts, of course, and even at a distance at the shuttleport or at major tourist landmarks in the city, but never like this. So close.  
    When it spoke, the voice was low and mechanical—the work of an Ipoor mesh. 
    “You are,” the alien said, “James Ortega-Mambay . . . Seventh District Supervisor . . . BuPopCon?” 
    Ortega-Mambay considered denying it, but did not. He knew the reputation of the Antalou as well as anyone did. He knew the uses to which his own race, not to mention the other four races mankind had met among the stars, had put them. The Antalou did not strike him as creatures one lied to without risk. 
    “Yes. . . . I am. I am Ortega-Mambay.” 
    “My own name,” the Antalou said, “does not matter, Ortega-Mambay. You know what I am. . . . What matters . . . is that you have decreed . . . the pregnancy of Linda Tuckey-Yatsen illegal. . . . You have ordered the unborn female sibling . . . of the boy Kim Tuckey-Yatsen . . . aborted. Is this true?” 
    The alien waited. 
    “It may be,” the man said, fumbling. “I certainly do not have all of our cases memorized. We do not process them by family name—” 
    He stopped as he saw the absurdity of it. It was outrageous. 
    “I really do not see what business this is of yours,” he began. “This is a Terran city, and an overpopulated one—in an overpopulated nation on an overpopulated planet that cannot afford to pay to move its burden offworld. We are faced with a problem and one we are quite happy solving by ourselves. None of this can possibly be any of your affair, Visitor. Do you have standing with your delegation in this city?” 
    “I do not,” the mesh answered, “and it is indeed . . . my affair if . . . the unborn female child of Family Tuckey-Yatsen dies.” 
    “I do not know what you mean.” 
    “She is to live, Ortega-Mambay . . . Her brother wishes a sibling. . . . He lives and schools . . . in three small rooms while his parents work . . . somewhere in the city. . . . To him . . . the female child his mother carries . . . is already born. He has great feeling for her . . . in the way of your kind, Ortega-Mambay.” 
    This could not be happening, Ortega-Mambay told himself. It was insane, and he could feel rising within him a rage he hadn’t felt since his first job with the government. “How dare you!” he heard himself say. “You are standing on the home planet of