Read Online We Are Both Mammals by G. Wulfing - Free Book Online Page A

then
also, and that wishing did not help me to know. In that lack of
knowledge, whatever I did would be taking a risk, and I knew that
the outcome might be sorrow. 
 “It is not Avari-Ba’s fault; and it is not mine. Things are
as they are. I made my choice; now it is Avari-Ba’s turn to make a
choice.”
     
    –––––––
     
    I lay awake that night thinking about the thurga’s
words.
    It occurred to me that if I was genuinely
eager for death, the choice would have been easy. The fact that I
was still thinking about it perhaps meant that I was not so sour
and ill-disposed toward the idea of living as I had thought I
was.
    Was it living that I wanted, or life without
a thurga attached to me?
    Was I prepared to live like this?
    Was life with a constant, conjoined
companion actually palatable to me?
    I sensed that this was a crossroads, an
all-or-nothing decision. I did not want to change my mind in five
years’ time, or six months’, or fifteen years’. To give this
situation a trial run – to test the surgery for a year or so
in order to see if I was all right with it, treating Toro-a-Ba and
my own life and all the medical technology and expertise that had
been poured into me like a new car that I was taking for a test
drive – would be graceless. Ignorant. Selfish. I was either
prepared to live the rest of my days with Toro-a-Ba attached to me,
or I was not. If I was not, then I must die. That was the only fair
decision to make: why should Toro-a-Ba be yoked to someone who
unwaveringly resented his presence and his self-sacrifice?
    I would die nobly, for the
right reasons, or I would live on in these new circumstances with
all the grace and acceptance I could muster. That was my choice.
That was all I could do.
    Unfair things happen every day. Life is
under no obligation to treat us fairly. We can wither and wilt, or
we can swallow and move on.
    It was not fair that this had happened to
me. It was not fair that Toro-a-Ba and the surgeons had had no
knowledge of what my wishes would be with regard to the surgery.
They had done the best that they could, knowing that they were
taking risks, but that what they did might serve a greater purpose
in the end. Was it fair of me to hate them for that? What would I
have done in their positions?
    I began, quietly, to cry, as I lay there in
the dark on my pillow.
    Life is harsh and horrible. Life is cruel,
and unfair.
    And it has been thus since the beginning of
the world. Hundreds of generations have suffered under life’s
cruelty, bearing unspeakable sorrow. And yet we have endured.
    My tears flowed on and on.
    How brave is the human spirit? What light is
it that keeps us from lying down to die?
    I did not sleep that night. The nurses
continued to check on us, as always, but I feigned sleep whenever
they entered the room. By the time morning came, I had made my
decision.
    As the room lightened with the unseen dawn,
I looked at the thurga asleep beside me. For the first time, I
really looked at him, and this time I wanted to see him.
    This was the person who had risked his life
for me, a stranger.
    This was the person who had offered to
devote his life to my service.
    I stared at him; that small, furry,
dark-brown body with its little ribs rising and falling in sleep.
On his back, eyes closed, he looked vulnerable and diminutive. His
small, rat-like hands were lightly clasping the edge of the
bedclothes where they rested on his midriff.
    He even had whiskers. Whiskers,
and a small dark nose. I had known this all along, of course, but
now I was accepting it.
    He had claws, and a semi-prehensile tail,
this creature, the creature with whom I would spend the rest of my
life. His body was now joined to my body; I had an appendage, and
that appendage had fur. He had pointed teeth, including little
fangs, and tufts of black fur on his ears. Even though I had worked
with thurga-a for years now, and was living on their planet, they
still resembled animals to my eyes, and in