"George" by Emma Lydia Bates

         “George hasn’t been having a great time recently, though, have you George?”

         George’s head turned sluggishly towards us. He blinked, twice. I looked back at the tour group. “George isn’t at his best right now, I’m afraid…”

         “Make him do something, then!” One of the kids called out from the way. I smiled at his dad, who said nothing.

         “I’m afraid I can’t do that…” I began.

         “Yes you can!”

         “Oh no, I can’t,” I said, putting on my best pantomime voice.

         “Well, why not?” His dad demanded, and rapped on the glass barrier between us and George. He wasn’t a danger as such, but we didn’t know what diseases he might have since we found him, so we thought it best to keep him separated from everyone else. The glass was thick enough for him not be able to hear the tapping, either, so I wasn’t too worried about it. Mostly, he just sat there, and ate, and slept, like any other animal. I liked to stand and talk to him some evenings. Some days, I would have said I could see some intelligence in his eyes, almost as though he understood.

         “He’s not here to perform,” I explained calmly, “and he’s very ill. We’re not sure how long he’s got left, so we have to be very careful around him.”

         One of the other people in the tour group looked sniffy. “What’s your problem, miss? Can’t you just clone him if he cops it?”

         I fought to control a sudden surge of anger. “No, we can’t do that. After all, that George isn’t cloned is part of what makes him such a special part of the museum’s collection.”

         The man would had tapped on the glass barrier before, was now tapping more enthusiastically, until George’s whole enclosure shook, and he looked up, obviously perturbed. I was getting better at understanding his expressions and emotions. But the tour group weren’t interested in that sort of thing. The boy jumped up and down.

         “He looked up! Come on, you can make him do more than just look up?”
         “What would you like him to do?” I said, turning to the boy. “Dance for you? Run around? He’s not a toy, you know. He’s real. He has feelings.”

         The boy looked at me like I was mad for a moment, and then laughed. “No, he doesn’t!”

         “What makes you so sure?”

         “It’s not like he’s a person, ma’am,” the dad said. “He might look like one, but don’t delude yourself. It’s spending too much time with him, that’s what does it.”

         It was fair criticism perhaps – after all, I did spend a lot of time with him. I liked his calm, slow, graceful movements, and the way he blinked and looked at me. It was like looking back in time, at a better era. But the tour group wouldn’t understand any of that. George, to them, was just another one of the museum’s novelties, like the rocket and the last rat. It’s not like he’s a person. What did they know?

         “Well,” I said. “He is a person, just not a person like we are.”
         The man shook his head. “I’m a biologist, ma’am,” he said, as though it meant he knew every secret of the universe. “I know what I’m talking about. Look at his head, at his hair. Look at all the creases in his face. He’s not a human being, is he? He’s like what came before it. Like a monkey.”

         I moved in front of the glass pane, almost to protect George from their words. “He’s more than that. He’s special. As a biologist, can’t you understand that?”
         The man shook his head. “He’s just some old thing that ought to have died years ago.”

         He was lying on the floor and the people in the tour group were gasping before I even realised I’d punched him. A maternal woman grabbed his son and held him protectively to her. The tour group were all muttering disapprovingly, but were watching more attentively that they had all day. This was far more interesting to them than the sum total of everything the museum had to offer them.

         He got up quicker than I might have expected, grabbed for the lapels on my museum uniform and shoved me up against the glass of George’s cage, which rattled alarmingly. He hissed something unintelligible into my face, and slapped me. I forced him away and hit him again, but that time he was expecting it and didn’t fall. I kicked low, and was rewarded with a low moan from him, and a harsh expletive. The maternal woman looked disapproving. He grabbed for my legs and tried to shove me over. I summoned my strength and punched him again, but he threw me down on to the ground, and began to wrestle, aiming blows at my face and body and missing, mostly. He was stronger than me, but I was the better fighter. I got back to my feet.

         “Apologise,” I said, breathing hard.

         “I won’t,” he said.

         I hit him again, and then as he lunged for me, stood still.

         He stopped as I stopped, confused.

         I was watching George’s enclosure. Three people in the uniform of the museum staff had unlocked the door of the cage and walked in. George was lying on his back, making noises I’d never heard before. They sounded almost like words, or screams, but in a language so far removed from ours…

         I realised I didn’t actually know how old he was. He’d been lost in time, until a shuttle had picked him up, ancient but kept alive by the stasis function in his shuttle. They’d tested him, and found out he was like something before us – not quite yet a human being. Then they’d done more tests, and handed him over to us for an exhibit, because he was unique.

         I watched the three museum staff silently rush around him, taking his pulse and checking his breathing and shaking their heads and stepping back. And we stood and watched as George, the ancient last human being not created by cloning, not genetically modified, just far more human than anyone in the tour group – we stood, and we watched, as he died.

         I turned around breezily, and put on my best smile. “Sorry about that. Shall we go on to the section on the mammoth now?”