T'Gatoi lifted her head and perhaps a meter of her body off the couch as though she were sitting up. "He's still too thin,"my mother said sharply. Thinness is dangerous."The probing changed subtly, became a series of caresses. "You're better,"she said this time, probing me with six or seven of her limbs."You're gaining weight finally. It was impossible to be formal with her while lying against her and hearing her complain as usual that I was too skinny. She simply came in, climbed onto one of her special couches, and called me over to keep her warm. T'Gatoi and my mother had been friends all my mother's life, and T'Gatoi was not interested in being honored in the house she considered her second home. It was an honor to have T'Gatoi in the family, but it was hardly a novelty. I had no idea why she was lying, or even what she was lying about. My mother was at her most formal and severe when she was lying. It was an honor, my mother said, that such a person had chosen to come into the family. When I was little and at home more, my mother used to try to tell me how to behave with T'Gato - how to be respectful and always obedient because T'Gatoi was the Tlic government official in charge of the Preserve, and thus the most important of her kind to deal directly with Terrans. T'Gatoi liked our body heat and took advantage of it whenever she could. I saw her turn away as several of T'Gatoi's limbs secured me closer. And toward the end of his life, when he should have been slowing down, he had married my mother and fathered four children.īut my mother seemed content to age before she had to. My father, who had never refused one in his life, had lived more than twice as long as he should have. The eggs prolonged life, prolonged vigor. Less of her hair would be gray if she indulged now and then. I lay against T'Gatoi's long, velvet underside, sipping from my egg now and then, wondering why my mother denied herself such a harmless pleasure. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. T'Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. T'Gatoi's sister had given us two sterile eggs. My last night of childhood began with a visit home.
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