Page 37 - Effable Encounters

Power to the Creatures!

commitment to them. “Let me review the rationale behind our
maneuver today. It has been more than ten years since the language
gene was discovered and spliced into dozens of higher animal species
before any regulatory attempt was made to control the procedure.
Every university in the world wanted to show off its talking zebra,
chattering marmoset, pontificating penguin. The gold rush to stake
out claims for a Nobel Prize turned into a stampede. No thought
given to the implications. But that is nothing new, and certainly not
worth pondering at this point. Suffice it to say that the technology
went out over computer networks, and the number of unsanctioned
experiments taking place around the world today cannot begin to be
estimated.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Ingrid looked puzzled.
“Of course it is!” Bert’s ire rekindled. “More experiments on live
animals mean more torture, more vivisection, more kidnap and
breeding of laboratory specimens. Use your head!”
Alison moved closer to Ingrid.
“Never mind him. Nothing is that cut-and-dry. Some species might
never have found their voice without unauthorized dabbling by half-
trained geneticists in out-of-the-way places. Look at the Siberian
tiger: he was flown in to the conference last year just in time to make
a very eloquent plea on behalf of his threatened sanctuary. And he
was also able to get on the witness stand and save his own skin when
the Russians tried him for mauling a park ranger involved in
poaching. That went out to a hundred million living rooms, and
brought in a lot of contributions to our organizations. His gening was
definitely beyond the parameters set by the international standards
committee.”
Bert grumbled, but Karl reasserted his leadership.
“Again, not a crucial issue. If we let ourselves be diverted endlessly,
we’ll achieve no unity and our opponents will win without a fight. It
goes without saying that animal rights organizations have gone
through a period of turmoil in the past decade. The mute victims of
factory farming, of cosmetic approval-testing, of cult sacrifice, of
casual and callous commerce in a thousand areas of everyday human
existence, suddenly began crying out for justice. The rights which had
been sought for so many years by so many humane individuals were
not merely amplified and personalized by animals themselves, but the

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