Are We Not Men?

   Mordrick was rolled into the common area on a kind of stretcher, bound up and gagged. The place was all in concrete and stone and brick, a lattice of metal bars blocking off the sky overhead. He noticed where other people poked their heads through the small circular openings that passed for windows high on the walls.
    The attendants unstrapped Mordrick and removed the gag. They had stripped him of all clothing and belongings, so he might as well just be a humanoid animal. Some might say he was that to start with, since his was a sort of hybrid species, a pink unicorn man with hooves, tail, and short fur all over. Still, he was not accustomed to being treated as an animal.
    “This is your new home,” said the head-shaved keeper. “Please, learn to be content here.”
    “Sure,” Mordrick said bitterly. “It's easy for you to say.”
    The keeper bowed and backed towards the sliding metal door. He and his attendants vanished and the door slammed shut.
    Mordrick rubbed his wrists and wandered towards one of the many archways. In the open space were numerous artificial rocks with equally artificial springs of water flowing from them for the inmates to drink from.
    A graying old satyr came out of the shadows and said “New here, eh?”
    Mordrick nodded “I was on the moon, for a layover. The men came and grabbed me, robbed me, said I couldn't use their spaceport. Said I was...”
    “...an animal, yes,” the other nodded. “That's how they get most of us.”
    “What do they do it for?”
    “The zoo is their biggest attraction. The more of us there are the more will come with their money.”
    The satyr, named Kit, explained how things worked, when food was brought, sleeping arrangements. The “animals” where expected to sleep in the open, eat in the open, defecate in the open, and any other thing where it might be seen. Glass walkways were set overhead for these purposes and many access windows were laid in the shadowed spaces.
    One day Mordrick sat, trying to eat food pellets while groomed humanoids gawked at him from the tube above. “I don't see how we can live like this,” he complained to a leonine man sitting beside him. “Eating off the ground... it's a wonder we don't all get sick.”
    “I get sick a lot,” the lion man said. “They allow us no modern conveniences. We aren't even allowed to bathe properly.”
    “I'm not going to lick myself or throw my filth, I refuse.”
    “Just don't try and build anything. If they catch you making things out of stones or plants or anything, that goes very badly. They want to believe that they're the only ones who use tools.”
    “We have thumbs, surely they haven't missed that.”
    “If they admit we have thumbs they say we haven't the brains to use them.”
    “That's absurd, they have trade with our planets. They've seen our ships, our cities, our machines.”
    The lion man shook his maned head “Most of them have never traveled off the planet, so it's easy to believe we haven't got those things. They entertain myths here that all advanced peoples in space are hairless things like them. Sometimes they talk about nobly trading with worlds full of savages. I think they still smart about the wars of 200 years ago.”
    Mordrick explored a little more each day, walking in bigger circles around the enclosure complex. In some places the inmates simply lay on the rocks and let the people stare out at them, in others they fought in large groups just to get the zookeepers to hose them down. Mordrick didn't fight, however, he just stood by and waited for the hoses.
    At one edge of the zoo village lay an artificial lake, in the center of which was an artificial island. Mordrick swam out to it and found a group of reptile men lying on rocks in front of an observation tube. There were also caves in the great rock and in one the observation window was boarded over.
    “Someone smashed the glass,” said a voice nearby. Mordrick turned and saw it was a purple faun. “Some of the reptile men got too excited while fighting.”
    “Does that mean no one's watching us?”
    “That's what I'd like to believe.”
    “Say, you're from Pondix star, aren't you? I heard your kind had strong psychic abilities.”
    The purple faun nodded “Yes, the keepers are aware of that too. When they get one of us they perform brain surgery, see?” he showed the scar on his head.
    During the next fight, Mordrick waited for the keepers and rolled on the ground, holding his stomach. They took him to one of the underground hospital rooms.
    His bed was attached to another, one of a lion man with a bandaged leg.
    “What happened to you?” the lion man asked.
    “Nothing,” Mordrick answered. “I just got tired of being out there.”
    “Don't tell them that. They can be outright cruel. Look at that fellow in the other room.” In a windowed chamber lay a purple faun, tied to a bed, drugs pumping into him through a tube. “They're going to cut up his brain so he can't call for help.”
    “Call for help?”
    “Sure, those from Pondix star can send a distress signal across lightyears of space in an instant.”
    “Do you think you could bite through my bonds?”
    Mordrick waited until the nurse was out of the surgery booth and then crept over. He switched out the tranquilizer with vitamins and gave the poor devil a short of adrenaline.
    The faun opened his eyes “What's going on?”
    “Can you send for a ship? They plan to cut out your psychic cortex, but I figure that's our only chance out of here.”
    The faun sat up “You're damn right I'm gonna send for a ship!”
    Mordrick used a rag full of tranquilizer on the first doctor who entered and began unlocking each of the patients in the hospital. Soon they had hands on a dart gun and were able to hold the hospital against the scores of staff who tried to come in through the hall.
    “How long on that ship?” Mordrick asked the faun.
    “They have gravity drive, so probably two or three...”
    “Days?”
    “No, hours.”
    The doctor, tied to a bed propped against a door, returned to consciousness “You can't hope to escape from here. You're totally surrounded and all police forces are geared towards securing this zoo. Why not return to your cages? It's the easier thing, besides, you're hardly suited to-”
    Mordrick shot him with another dart.
    “Will that be an overdose?” the faun asked.
    “I wouldn't mind so much if it was,” Mordrick replied.
    Soon the room began to shake and the whole zoo was rocked by sounds of destruction.
    A score of purple fauns with weapons marched down the hall.
    The fellow who Mordrick had freed advanced to meet them and shook their hands. “You're just in time, captain!”
    “We came as soon as we were able, Prince Chan.”
    “Prince?” Mordrick asked.
    “Yes,” the prince answered, for it was he. “I can't thank you enough for saving me.”
    “Don't forget, I was saving me too!”
    The captain nodded “All the captives here are free and the capitol is in our hands. I suggest you men take a shower and get dressed. What are we, animals?”

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  “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

 “Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

“Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

 “Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

 “Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

H. G. Wells, The Island Of Doctor Moreau 

 (Ron Perlman as the Sayer of the Law.  The Island of Doctor Moreau, New Line Cinema, 1996)