The nonhumans standing before vats of pickled meat looked like goldfish bowls set atop Eiffel Towers of mucus. Crystaline rods pushed themselves out of the goldfish bowls and were sucked back in.

"I'm looking for an animal that looks like this," said Graa, rapping Koen's temple with his beak.

The hagfish familiar to humans is one of only two surviving clades of the once-mighty cyclostomes, a group of fishes without jaws or teeth.1 Without these advantages, hagfish make do with the ability to tie themselves in knots and produce a form of mucus unrivaled in its durability and abundance.2 On one earth, their slime allowed hagfish to conquer the land.

Step 1: secrete a sheath that dries into a tough crust, impermeable to water. Step 2: push spines of denser material out. These can work as legs. Step 3: incorporate found objects, such as wood, stone, and eventually glass. Step 4: develop a moral system based upon the Courteous Extrusion of Complementary Forms.

"Fascinating." A telescope extended from the goldfish-bowl head of the Extrusian on the right. Something wriggled around the eyepiece. "Is it a shark?" A pair of hardened fans extended from bowl, flapping.

"Of course he isn't a shark," said Graa. "Look at the bones. Koen, show the honored Extrusian your elbows."

"Elbows. I like them." The second Extrusian thrust down a pair of hardened spikes of mucus and rocked up onto them. Another pair of spikes became arms. A pair of lenses pushed themselves out of the front of the fishbowl, and took on the look of eyes in a face. The Extrusian was being most polite.

"Look at that gristle!" she said, bending her new spine to peer more closely at Koen's joints. "No, I'd remember if I tried to hack through something like that. If you're looking for bony fishes, you should try the Flouderers."3

Koen saw where this was going, and attempted a short-cut. "Could we talk to a tetrapod? Or a mammal?"

"Oh, you can talk." The Extrusian on the left straightened. She now looked like a scarecrow made of snot and plastic.

The other Extrusian had molded itself into a dark globe with wings. He oozed his way up the arm of his partner and sat there.

Self-Flinger, who had been tending her cat all this time, looked up and fanned her ears in approval. "An excellent likeness you've made."

"Thank you."

"Do not divert from the flight plan," said Graa. "This is important."

"Very important!" said the Extrusian on the left. "You seem to be suggesting that a sophont has found its way into the wrong side of the meat market, and that is a stance we refuse to mimic."

"No, no." said Graa. "Smooth your feathers."

The Extrusian on the right extruded some feathers and smoothed them.

"Human Koen has confused the issue by speaking. He is only a sapient cousin-species to the domesticated animal that I have lost."

The right Exstrusian created a beak, which was most gracious of him. "If it's tetrapods you want," he said, "ask the Huddle."

"Or the Greaves," said the one in human form.

"Oh, the Greaves," said Koen. "I know the ones who work for Furry Foods." He didn't say what jerks they'd been to him.

"Excellent," said Graa. "Onward, steed!"

Koen turned and experienced a moment of dizziness. It felt as if his soul had become unmoored from his body.

He hadn't cooked for days. Hell, he hadn't thought about his job. How long until Ambassador Li wondered why his dinner tasted like it had been frozen and reheated?

And worse, much worse, was the fact that Koen hadn't cooked! What was he if he wasn't a comforter with food? Not a researcher or an educator anymore. Not a son.

A pain in his cheek. "Resume walking."

Koen shook his head and was sure he felt his brains slosh. This was crazy. Koen was crazy. No, he was sleep-deprived and hopeless. What he needed was…

"What is 'koffie'?" Graa mimicked the word perfectly, and Koen realized he'd been mumbling to himself in Dutch. "Is it some sort of percolation of the roasted and ground seeds of a bush?"

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Self-Flinger chattered her teeth, ears tipped back. "It sounds like an alkaloid."

"A plant extract that wakes you up." Koen fumbled for the word. "A stimulant?"

Fling's ears flattened further. "I don't approve of altering brain chemistry."

"Do they sell that sort of thing here?" Koen pleaded.

"At the meat market? Of course not. Meat can't kill you, no matter what your species. Alkaloids, in the other direction? Who knows all the ways they might kill someone. Stop complaining and march."

Koen marched.

The Extrusians politely held their shapes until Koen, Graa, and Self-Flinger were out of sight. They relaxed back into shapelessness, chatting idly about what it would be like to have permanent bones.

The Huddle did not seem to have come to the market today, and the Greaves here were as rude and aggressive as the ones who had delivered Koen's groceries. They hadn't seen or even heard of Mr. Grumbles of course,and nor had the Proskelisks, Successors, or fly-coated Roridum.

The repeated noes should have made Graa feel better. Instead, he flew from stall to stall, asking sharper, louder, less coherent questions. No, we haven't heard of a hominin being stolen. No, we weren't offered thirty kilograms of suspicious meat. How dare you suggest that we sold someone a haunch of your Mr. Grumbles?

A hand on Koen's elbow brought him back up from another standing half-doze.

"I think it is time to take him home," she said. "I blame my orofacial motor cortex4 for blurting out the first image my visual center fed it, and mentioning this place."

Koen blinked. "What?"

"I made a mistake." She chattered her teeth. "But even so, I would have thought Graa would have the sense to recognize that his Mr. Grumbles is not at the meat market. Or else the wisdom to enjoy the thrill of worrying."

"We've been searching since yesterday evening," said Koen. "I've been up since yesterday morning."

"And you look terrible," Self-Flinger assured him. "But that's the problem with birds."

"I'm not a bird."

She gave his arm a pat. "My memory centers know that, Human Koen. I mean that although your body looks terrible openly, birds hide their state of health."

Koen didn't know what to do with that implication. His brain, as Self-Flinger might say, did not want to understand things. It didn't want to plant red herrings to distract Graa or at least swap recipes and business cards with all the food importers around him. All it wanted to do was go home and sleep.

"General Graa," he said when the bird returned to his shoulder. "I'm tired."

"I'm tired too. I am annoyed. But we have no time for rest."

Koen was beginning to feel a bit annoyed, himself. "General Graa, this is a waste of time. I can't help you find Mr. Grumbles if I can't sleep."

Wings spread across his peripheral vision. "I am furious! How dare you act pitifully toward me now? I owe you nothing."

"Graa," said Self-Flinger. "Your body acts against you. You cannot punish Human Koen and work with him at the same time. You cannot punish yourself and work."

"I owe you no submission, either. I didn't ask you to attach yourself to this mission."

The Toxoplasmotic extended a foot to pet her jaguar. "It would have been easier to stay in the dog park. But I go where things are not easy."

"I am frustrated and angry," said General Graa.

"Would you treat Mr. Grumbles the way you are treating your body?"

The wings stretched farther, quivering. "I am proud. I can go all day like this."

Koen felt the words moving in his throat and was too tired and angry to stop them. "Would you treat Mr. Grumbles the way you're treating me?"

General Graa's wings snapped closed. He crouched on Koen's shoulder, feathers locked tight around his body.

"Exciting!" said Self-Flinger.

Graa peeped low in this throat. "I am shocked. I am humbled."

Koen was shocked, too, and about two steps behind in this conversation. He knew General Graa was frustrated and angry, and didn't think he deserved to sleep. What had said just now? It seemed to have worked.

Graa wiped his beak. "But every moment we don't find Mr. Grumbles is another moment in which something terrible might happen to him."

"You've informed the police, haven't you?" asked Self-Flinger.

The police. Koen had promised he would do that, hadn't he? He opened his eyes. Ow. "I'll call the police," he mumbled. "I'll tell them…translator! Call the police. Tell them—"

A beak was in his ear. "Stop that," murmured General Graa. "Down, boy. I am tender. Come."

He shifted his weight, and Koen gratefully followed it. He let the bird steer him home.

1 Delabre, Christiane; et al. (2002). "Complete Mitochondrial DNA of the Hagfish, Eptatretus burgeri: The Comparative Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA Sequences Strongly Supports the Cyclostome Monophyly". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 22 (2): 184–192. doi:10.1006/mpev.2001.1045.

2 Fudge, Douglas et al. (2005). "Composition, morphology and mechanics of hagfish slime". Journal of Experimental Biology. 208 (24): 4613–4625. doi:10.1242/jeb.01963.

3 The Humble Flounderers after Knowledge did, in fact evolve from flatfish.

4 Okobi et al. "Motor cortical control of vocal interaction in neotropical singing mice." Science. 2019 Mar 1;363(6430):983-988. doi: 10.1126/science.aau9480.