The Trans-Human

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WHEN Johnny was five years old, he didn't know he was a human being. On his fifth birthday he was living in an eight-sided tower under a yellow sky, and he played and had his lessons in a most improbably-shaped walled enclosure, and he thought he was a very, very happy Khasr child. He didn't know that the Khasr had played a very dirty trick on him by not killing him when they massacred his parents and all the other colonists on Llandu II, and he didn't suspect that every act of kindness they showed him afterward was part of an even dirtier trick. His playmates were especially chosen Khasr, but he didn't know that, either. When he waked in the morning, his playmates waked too. Johnny slept on a soft cushion, but his playmates slept dangling from the bars of a cage-like contraption, hanging by the claws on each of their eight legs. When he'd had his bath they came crawling about him, saying "Good-morning Johnny," in human voices that they'd carefully learned to copy from human vision-records. Johnny beamed at them and zestfully asked what they'd play that day.

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