Chapter 2. (a) Leela
Our Leela had two eyes, a nose, two ears and and other things that normal humans have , so to most people she would appear to be what is commonly known as a 'normal' human being.
Thus it would be ridiculous to devote an entire chapter of this story to her. And since this story is not ridiculous this chapter is not devoted to Leela (in spite of the suspicious sounding chapter name).
When mankind first explored Baloney Centuri 2 (BC2) they found that it was already inhabited by intelligent life. This was not a big concern then, in fact, it was not even a small concern then. The Americans For Hunting had voted "intelligent life hunting" as the most popular sport of the century. It was a considered to be the only respectable and enjoyable sport that was totally safe for humans. After extensive research, scientists had concluded that the only way of making hunting safe for the hunters was to invent weapons that could harm intelligent life forms only. The weapons weren't very selective and could destroy cabbages and even some Aggies. This totally eliminated all the hunting related injuries which were always caused by some quail hunter mistaking some other garishly camouflaged hunter for a lion. The animals weren't too happy with this, but the pro-hunting lobby won the debate easily by pointing out that animals did not like football either.
The problem on this planet was the indigenous life form was not a docile, philosophical, highly intelligent being that could be easily killed by guns. The locals were docile , philosophical, highly intelligent beings that could not easily be shot down by guns. So the early settlers had no choice but to co exist with the Lelifes as the locals called themselves. Most people from terra found this outrageous and argued that this was against the spirit of humanity and even tried to pass a bill in the senate prohibiting peaceful coexistence and anti-creationism.
The Lelifes for all their intelligence and philosophy had never seen any other species (BC2 was monoLifeamaticosmatic, that is it had exactly one species of life on it). The were fascinated and awed by the variety of species coming from the space ships, pigs, cows, crows, grizzlies, rats, elephants and of course humans. The LeLifeans were fans of Animal farm and other Orwellian literature , and since they took it quite literally, they initially had a very low opinion about humans and pigs. However after a few months they realized they had been biased without reason and pigs were actually very friendly and smart.
It was by a queer twist of fate that Lelifes and humans started liking each other.
Vanilla, a cute human baby, was born in the I'Creams family. From the time she was very small, Vanilla showed signs of remarkable intelligence. By the time she was a year old she could say "mama, dada , gaga" in thirteen different languages. Since all the words in her limited vocabulary sounded the same in all those languages, no one around her noticed her remarkable abilities. By the time she was four, her parents started becoming vaguely discomfited by her. Visitors often asked their parents, "Don't you think its a bit unusual that Vanilla is reading Nietzsche and Sartre and talks about existentialism when you ask her to finish her lunch before she gets any chocolates ? ". Her parents just gave her a big hug and replied with an embarrassed shrug "Yes, we know, she is a bit slow, but we still love her".
They had seen their neighbor's 3 year old son declare "coooow" in a loud happy voice whenever he saw any remotely bovine animal (like a cockroach).
Feeling a wee bit jealous, they tried to coax Vanilla using pictures of a big spotted cow and all Vanila said was "Bos taurus" before going back to her scribblings. It was on her fifth birthday that they finally realized that Vanilla was not a normal human child. To her birthday party came a weird animal gracefully walking on four legs, around two feet tall, with a long spiky tail and beautiful wings so thin that you could almost see through them. And with a huge powerful leap and a gentle flap of his wings the creature lunged towards Vanilla, while all the guests and her parents stood rooted, terrified beyond their wits. "You !!!" Vanilla, exclaimed, "Yes, me !", the creature replied back. "I always felt you, I listened to you and for some time I thought you were my soul. I am you , nooo you are me, nooo this is so confusing, wahhh", she burst out crying. Bewildered, the creature toppled over Vanilla and added his wails to the pandemonium around. Half an hour later four more creatures, around a couple of feet taller than our original attacker arrived. Everyone had a long talk with expletives thrown around liberally (the creatures could talk in perfect grammatically correct English, which made it difficult for most of the English speaking humans in the room to understand them). Gradually, the clouds of confusion finally cleared the I' Creams residence. It turned out that Vanilla the human, and Vanilla, the loLeLife had a strong symbiotic telepathic unkinetic bond since their birth. In fact, though they had two different bodies they were the same creature, a hybrid of a human and a LeLife. The real Vanilla had two bodies Wayn the girl and Illa the leLife.The only hybrids the I'Creams had heard of before were cars and being fiercely patriotic, they had steadfastly had refused to buy one. So they were in a state of great shock, until one of the guests kindly explained that having a hybrid offspring wasn't as unpatriotic as owning a hybrid car.
Vanilla later sparked off the great debate of BC2 which lasted for more than 10 days. The rightists proposed that the hybrid species be called humfies, the leftists were outraged at the lack of consideration for the Lelifes and decided that lemans would be the ideal name. The biologists objected to this tirade by pointing out that both the names were easily pronounceable and were sure that having a name shorter than Cnemidophorus hyperythrus beldingi would be insulting to the new species. Anyway they settled this the old fashioned way (bribing, strong arming, mud slinging) and finally agreed upon pipsqueaks. The LeLifes (and the sole pipsqueak) weren't really concerned about this, and when the reporter from "Life (and Lelife)" magazine asked her an opinion about the new name, Wayn (remember the human part of Vanilla) simply responded saying "Cooow", much to the delight of her parents.
(to be contd)
