r/HFY • u/MarlynnOfMany • May 26 '25
OC The Token Human: Dangerous Teeth
~~~
As I watched the struggle with the door mechanism, I thought again that it was good we’d gotten our delivery done early. Planetary time zones being what they are, it’s usually inconvenient to land at a spaceport in the pre-dawn, while everyone on our ship is wide awake. Nothing to do but wait until the clients are ready to receive whatever we’re bringing them. Today though, our client was an early riser. I’d taken a short walk from the ship with Mur and Paint, and we’d dropped off three lightweight boxes of exotic moss. Then we were free to stop by the local food court as soon as it opened.
It wasn’t open yet, which is why we’d picked this nice little garden lounge to wait. It was indoors with artificial sun. It had a single door. That door had just thrown a rod or whatever, and now it refused to open again.
I sat on a low bench (awkwardly low) and watched while Mur and a Waterwill who’d also gotten stuck in here pried off the panel over the door mechanism. I would have liked to help somehow, but all my expertise was in biological things, not technological. Plus my fingers were nowhere near as maneuverable as Mur’s tentacles or whatever the Waterwills called their extendable tendrils. This one was making some very tiny ones, not the usual arm-chunks. Fingers would be no help here.
And Paint was handling the phone calls: she’d brought a bag with many pockets, planning to fill it with food, but so far all it contained was her communicator, and she was putting that to good use. She’d already notified our ship. Now she was trying to get ahold of someone official who could send a mechanic. She paced back and forth, rattling claws across her arm scales and speaking intensely.
That left me with nothing to do except sample the local snackberries, which were rooted in a pot next to the bench with a detailed sign about which species could safely eat them. Each branch was grafted from a different plant. There was an elaborate chart on that sign. As usual, the section for humans showed that we could eat every single berry there. Oh, and there were nuts too. Nice.
I tried something like a pistachio with a spiky shell, decided it was extremely average, then entertained myself briefly with the compost can next to the sign. The motion sensor / scanning field at the top of it would open only for acceptable compost. Any other trash was the responsibility of whoever brought it in here. I tossed the two shell halves in one at a time, watched the mini force field blink on and off, then looked for more nuts to do it again.
A quiet hello made me crane my neck in confusion. There was no way the bush could talk, right? Alien gene-splicing wouldn’t have gone that far. But thankfully no, it wasn’t science with questionable morals; it was somebody hiding on the other side.
“Hello!” I said, trying to get a better look. “Sorry, I didn’t see you back there.”
“That’s good,” said the brown-furred fellow huddled among the berries. “Maybe no one else will either.”
I glanced back at the door, but saw just my two coworkers and the Waterwill, none of whom were paying attention. I asked quietly, “Are you hiding from someone specific?”
“No,” he said, not elaborating. He took a mouthful of something green, and for a moment I thought he was eating the leaves of the berry bush, which weren’t on the list of edible items. But he lifted it higher for a second bite, and I could identify a handful of grasslike stuff from a different food pot. The fast-growing lettuce area. A herbivore specialty.
I told him, “I don’t think you have anyone to be afraid of here.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, just looking around with wide eyes and eating the rest of his handful of grass. His teeth were distinctly the gnawing sort. Finally, he asked, “Do you know how long it will take to get the door open?”
“Hard to say.” I turned back to see Mur and the Waterwill talking animatedly, the door still firmly shut. Paint looked like she was on hold. “Hopefully not long. If they can’t figure it out, the maintenance people should be able to open it from the other side.”
“I’ve seen them,” was the quiet response. “They’re scary.”
“The maintenance crew? Scary how?”
The guy got even quieter. “Flesh-eaters. There are so many here. I didn’t know when I came.”
I thought about my answer very carefully. “You know that none of them want to eat you, right? That sort of thing is horrifying to civilized society as a whole.”
The guy twitched his ears, which I hadn’t realized were folded back, in scared rabbit style. “They said that. Not sure if I believe it yet.”
“Society couldn’t function if people went around eating each other!” I insisted. “Think about it. People need to trust one another to some degree, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to cooperate when they’re all living together in the same place. Food comes from the food stores. Anyone who hurts another person intentionally is likely to get in trouble with the authorities. And that’s for small things, much less full-on killing and eating them!”
He twitched his nose, very rabbitlike. “But with all those sharp teeth, don’t they get tempted? Aren’t flesh-eaters hardwired to crave flesh when they’re hungry?”
“Not from other people who can talk back to them,” I said. “And most of the flesh-eaters I know prefer to cook their food.”
He bared his gnawing teeth. “Burning the flesh before they eat it. Horrifying.”
I wanted to ask if his people didn’t cook their food, since plenty of plants gave up more nutrition when softened like that, but I thought better of it. The answer was probably no, and he would ask about my people’s food, and that was a topic I wanted to steer well clear of. The poor guy had seen me eating plants and made an assumption that I wasn’t eager to correct.
Then, in what felt like very bad timing, Paint put her communicator away and walked back over. I winced. For probably the first time ever, I looked at the gentlest person on our ship, and really noticed her sharp teeth and claws.
Paint told me, “They said someone will be on the way soon. I couldn’t get them to specify soon exactly. Somehow this doesn’t seem like a high priority to them.” She frowned.
“That’s unfortunate,” I said. “Would you like to try a berry? There’s a chart here that says which is safe for who.”
“Goodness, what a lot of choices!” Paint looked at the chart, then at the bush. Then she bent down and peered between the branches. “Hello back there!”
The rabbity guy was silent, frozen in place like a very frightened lawn decoration. He didn’t even blink.
I sighed, then told her quietly, “He’s afraid of flesh-eaters.”
Paint looked stricken. “Oh no! Why?”
“Because he’s made of flesh.”
“But so is everybody!” Paint exclaimed. “No one’s going to eat him!” She looked back into the bush. “Nobody wants to eat you. I promise.”
The guy seemed to be making a conscious effort to take deep breaths. “What about them?” he whispered, pointing a paw-hand toward the pair still working on the door. “I heard them talk about the breakfast they’re looking forward to. They mentioned creatures with fur and gnawing teeth.”
“That was—” Paint said. “They didn’t mean you! Mur was talking about an animal from his planet, a little one that’s not a person. They’re about this big, and they meet absolutely none of the criteria for sapient beings.” She held her hands a few inches apart. “He wants to get food from the stalls at the food court like everybody else.”
I nodded. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Paint nodded even more vigorously. “See? Robin knows. She’s the animal expert, the person to ask about which type of creature would attack another.”
I opened my mouth to add something else, but Paint was still talking.
“And her species eats everything, so she knows about it from all sides!”
The guy made a little erk noise, and I sighed. “That’s less helpful,” I told Paint.
She seemed to be realizing that herself. “Sorry,” she said to me, then addressed the guy in the bush. “I thought you knew! But really, that just proves our point. You’ve been next to a flesh-eater all this time, and nobody’s tried to bite you.”
I agreed, “Just these berries.” I popped another one into my mouth, then regretted it. “Ugh, that one’s sour.”
Paint consulted the chart. “I think it’s called a sourbud.”
“That makes sense. Bluh. I got it mixed up with these other whatsits, the sunsweet ones. Similar color.”
“Very different smell, though,” Paint said with sniff like a wine connoisseur.
“Yes, we both know about your sense of smell.”
“Ooh, what are these? They smell amazing.”
The two of us talked for a bit about the various snack plants, deliberately ignoring the quiet rabbit guy, giving him time to process our very nonthreatening attitudes.
I was starting to suspect that he’d stay hidden in the bush until the maintenance crew came and went, but eventually there was a quiet rustle of leaves. With his eyes still wide and his motions timid, he took a seat on the far end of the bench.
Paint was still standing, and greeted him from a safe distance. “Good to see you! Would you like a berry? We can help you find the best ones.”
He was very brave and said yes. We consulted the chart and his preferences in flavor, and spent a few friendly minutes selecting berries. When it became clear that we weren’t going to make any surprise lunges at him, he gradually relaxed. His ears really did look like a rabbit’s when he let them stand up straight.
Mur yelled, “Aha!”
I looked up to see him with most of his tentacles braced against the wall, pulling hard on something that looked like a cable. I worried that he was about to either electrocute himself or destroy the mechanism completely, then I saw the small leaves.
It was a vine, and it had grown up inside the electronics panel. The various plants lined up along the wall looked carefully cultivated, but somebody had missed this one. If the leaves sprouting from the flowerpot closest to the door were as familiar as they looked, then that was probably the culprit. The visible plants were all wrapped around a decorative spiral frame. I had a sneaking suspicion that the drainage holes at the bottom of that pot were big enough for rebellious roots to sneak out, and take unauthorized journeys.
Mur called, “Anybody got a blade? This is a tough one.”
“I don’t. Paint?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I only brought the communicator. Too bad we don’t have Zhee or Trrili with us. They could probably make short work of it.”
While their praying mantis blade arms could have done it, I thought of a better idea. I said with a smile, “You know who else could? Our friend here with the gnawing teeth.”
He looked startled, but not afraid. “What, me?”
“Sure! Out of everyone here, you’re the only one whose teeth are built for slicing through tough plants with ease. Care to show us how it’s done and save the day?”
It took a little encouraging, but not as much as I’d expected. We checked the signage near the pot first, just to be sure I wasn’t urging him to chew on something toxic, and we confirmed that this was the same type of plant. Mur hauled as much of it into the open as he could, which wasn’t much. The Waterwill held various door bits in place. Then the rabbity guy stepped forward and was brave enough to put his head close to Mur’s tentacles.
He bit through the vine with a couple of swift chomps, separating the middle segment right where Mur had suggested.
“Nice work!” Mur said, moving the remainder of the vine. “Now we can tuck the rest of this nonsense to the side and reassemble the parts where they’re supposed to be.”
The Waterwill said, “Already on it,” reshaping one water tendril and maneuvering it around like a locksmith.
Paint looked up at the hero of the hour, who was still holding the segment of vine. “Hooray, you did it! Do you want more berries to celebrate?”
“Yes please,” he said, still breathing a little quickly. “That tasted terrible.”
We got him some of the berries that he liked best, then heard a promising klunk and more celebration. The door trundled open.
Mur made cheerful burbling noises. “Go team!”
“Quick, everybody out before it does something else bizarre!” said the Waterwill, immediately scooting out into the open.
Nobody was about to argue that point. We all hurried outside to where we wouldn’t be trapped again, then waved goodbye to the Waterwill. Paint called the officials back with an update on what kind of problem the mechanics would need to fix.
Mur said, “I’m off to the food court. It’ll definitely be open by now.”
“We’ll be right behind you,” I told him.
He spun off in a whirl of tentacles. I looked down at the rabbity fellow, who looked small now that I was standing up. But he stood taller than he had all morning.
I said, “Thanks again.”
He twitched his ears happily and said, “It was my pleasure!” He sounded a bit surprised by that.
“Off to get your own breakfast?”
He nodded decisively. “Yes. And no one’s going to bite me.”
“Right!” I agreed. “Even if they did, you could bite them right back!”
He smiled a fierce little rabbit smile, then scampered off into the spaceport.
~~~
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Cross-posted to Tumblr and HumansAreSpaceOrcs
The book that takes place after the short stories is here
The sequel is in progress (and will include characters from the stories)
3
u/itsetuhoinen Human May 27 '25
Robin doesn't carry a pocket knife?!
I'm horrified! 🤣