[Robert listens quietly, his expression sad and a little pained. It would be abhorrent, to any Terran, to see someone sapient in an enclosure for anything other than effect. Even the sentence "an animal that can think and talk like a human" reads like a travesty - humans are animals, after all - and the whole thing is just... grotesque.

Finally:]

But in the end, he... is still just an object... perhaps a fascinating discovery, but... he has a different standing from any other person. Legally, ethically...