I shook my head, said what I should have said to him long ago. "She wouldn't take you, Qui. You don't have to worry." "She would. if anything happened to you."
"No. She'd take Xuan Hoa. Hoa. wants it." She wouldn't if she had stayed to watch Lomas.
"They don't take women," he said with contempt.
"They do sometimes." I glanced at him. "Actually, they prefer women. You should be around them when they talk among themselves. They say women have more body fat to protect the grubs. But they usually take men to leave the women free to bear their own young."
"To provide the next generation of host animals," he said, switching from contempt to bitterness.
"It's more than that!" I countered. Was it?
"If it were going to happen to me, I'd want to believe it was more, too."
"It is more!" I felt like a kid. Stupid argument.
"Did you think so while T'Gatoi was picking worms out of that guy's guts?"
"It's not supposed to happen that way."
"Sure it is. You weren't supposed to see it, that's all. And his Tlic was supposed to do it. She could sting him unconscious and the operation wouldn't have been as painful. But she'd still open him, pick out the grubs, and if she missed even one, it would poison him and eat him from the inside out."
There was actually a time when my mother told me to show respect for Qui because he was my older brother. I walked away, hating him. In his way, he was gloating. He was safe and I wasn't. I could have hit him, but I didn't think I would be able to stand it when he refused to hit back, when he looked at me with contempt and pity.
He wouldn't let me get away. Longer-legged, he swung ahead of me and made me feel as though I were following him.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I strode on, sick and furious.
"Look, it probably won't be that bad with you. T'Gatoi likes you. She'll be careful."
I turned back toward the house, almost running from him. "Has she done it to you vet?" he asked, keeping up easily.
"I mean, you're about the right age for implantation. Has she—"
I hit him. I didn't know I was going to do it, but I think I meant to kill him. If he hadn't been bigger and stronger, I think I would have.
He tried to hold me off, but in the end, had to defend himself. He only hit me a couple of times. That was plenty. I don't remember going down, but when I came to, he was gone. It was worth the pain to be rid of him.
I got up and walked slowly toward the house. The back was dark. No one was in the kitchen. My mother and sisters were sleeping in their bedrooms—or pretending to.
Once I was in the kitchen, I could hear voices—Tlic and Terran from the next room. I couldn't make out what they were saying—didn't want to make it out.
I sat down at my mother's table, waiting for quiet. The table was smooth and worn, heavy and well-crafted. My father had made it for her just before he died. I remembered hanging around underfoot when he built it. He didn't mind. Now I sat leaning on it, missing him. I could have talked to him. He had done it three times in his long life. Three clutches of eggs, three times being opened and sewed up. How had he done it? How did anyone do it?
I got up, took the rifle from its hiding place, and sat down again with it. It needed cleaning, oiling.
All I did was load it.
"Gan?"
She made a lot of little clicking sounds when she walked on bare floor, each limb clicking in succession as it touched down. Waves of little clicks.
She came to the table, raised the front half of her body above it, and surged onto it. Sometimes she moved so smoothly she seemed to flow like water itself. She coiled her-self into a small hill in the middle of the table and looked at me.
"That was bad," she said softly. "You should not have seen it. It need not be that way."
"I know."
"T'Khotgif—Ch'Khotgif now—she will die of her disease. She will not live to raise her children. But her sister will provide for them, and for Bram Lomas." Sterile sister. One fertile female in every lot. One to keep the family going. That sister owed Lomas more than she could ever repay.
"He'll live then?"
"Yes."
"I wonder if he would do it again."
"No one would ask him to do that, again."
I looked into the yellow eyes, wondering how much I saw and understood there, and how much I only imagined. "No one ever asks us," I said. "You never asked me."
She moved her head slightly. "What's the matter with your face?"
"Nothing. Nothing important." Human eyes probably wouldn't have noticed the swelling in the darkness. The only light was from one of the moons, shining through a window across the room.
"Did you use the rifle to shoot the achti?"
"Yes."
"And do you mean to use it to shoot me?"
I stared at her, outlined in moonlight—coiled, graceful body. "What does Terran blood taste like to you?"
She said nothing.
"What are you?" I whispered. "What are we to you?"
She lay still, rested her head on her topmost coil. "You know me as no other does," she said softly. "You must decide."
"That's what happened to my face," I told her.
"What?"
"Qui goaded me into deciding to do something. It didn't turn out very well." I moved the gun slightly, brought the barrel up diagonally under my own chin. "At least it was a decision I made."
"As this will be."
"Ask me, Gatoi."
"For my children's lives?"
She would say something like that. She knew how to manipulate people, Terran and Tlic. But not this time.
"I don't want to be a host animal," I said. "Not even yours."
It took her a long time to answer. "We use almost no host animals these days," she said. "You know that."
"You use us."
"We do. We wait long years for you and teach you and join our families to yours." She moved restlessly. "You know you aren't animals to us."
I stared at her, saying nothing.
"The animals we once used began killing most of our eggs after implantation long before your ancestors arrived," she said softly. "You know these things, Gan. Because your people arrived, we are relearning what it means to be a healthy, thriving people. And your ancestors, fleeing from their homeworld, from their own kind who would have killed or enslaved them—they survived because of us. We saw them as people and gave them the Preserve when they still tried to kill us as worms."
At the word «Worms» I jumped. I couldn't help it, and she couldn't help noticing it.
"I see," she said quietly. "Would you really rather die than bear my young, Gan?"