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to
– fed into – another creature. An alien. A thing that
looked like a possum.
    I had an alien attached to me.
    Like a conjoined twin, but worse: my twin
was not even my own species.
    I was like a sideshow freak from the
long-gone centuries when such things had existed.
    I was like a monster. A two-headed
monster.
    I started to weep.
    I wept uncontrollably, like a child.
    I do not know if I sobbed aloud or if I wept
in silence; I do not remember if the night nurses came to me or
not; they may even have sedated me: I do not remember. I was lost
in darkness and grief. The pain was overwhelming, and the
difference between the physical pain of my sobbing and the pain of
my emotions themselves had blurred: both seemed the same.
    A long time later, Toro-a-Ba confessed to me
that he had sensed me weeping on that night. For a moment, he said,
he had wondered if I needed help or was trying to vomit, but then
he had understood. Somehow, he said, he had understood what I was
feeling and why I was weeping; and he had known that if he moved or
spoke or gave any sign of his presence, he would only have pushed
my crazed, grieving mind further into hysteria or anguish. So he
had said nothing, remaining in utter silence and stillness as
though he were in deep sleep, and had listened, with his eyes
closed, to my grief and pain.
    Toro-a-Ba does not remember if the nurses
sedated me or not. All he remembers is that his heart ached for me,
and that it was all he could do to feign obliviousness and refrain
from trying to offer me comfort, knowing that to do so would be the
worst action he could take.
    On that night I was crying alone in the
dark, like a child who fears monsters under the bed; but the
monster in my room was not under my bed, but in it. The monster in
my bedroom … was me.
     
    –––––––
     
    Surgeons Fong and Suva-a informed me and Toro-a-Ba
that, upon their and others’ recommendations, the government had
granted us a special subsidy: we would not have to work for the
rest of our lives.
    It took me a while to process this, and as I
contemplated it in the following hours the thought occurred to me
that it was as though the thurga and I were being paid for
existing, or for being the surgeons’ test subjects – or perhaps I
was being repaid for what had been done to me.
    The subsidy took care of the question of how
I was supposed to work with a thurga attached to me; but while the
thought of never working again may appeal to some, it did not to
me. What was I supposed to do with my life if I had lost both my
independence and my ability to work?
    Because this procedure was new and
experimental, it was being kept secret from everyone outside the
clinic, with the exception of Toro-a-Ba’s immediate family, so that
the human media could not discover the story and make it public
before it was certain that the surgery had been a success. Thurga-a
generally do not pay great attention to the news unless it is
relevant to them, but for the sake of the human population the
surgeons wanted to handle the matter delicately, and not reveal it
until the time was ripe. The laboratories where I worked had been
told only that I was recovering but would never be able to return
to work; and, of course, Toro-a-Ba had worked here at the
clinic.
    Everyone seemed so pleased that the surgery
had been successful. Everyone seemed to be happy that they had
saved my life, and that the thurga who volunteered had not lost
his. Was I supposed to feel grateful?
    The surgeons and nurses would ask me how I
felt, and I would reply in physical terms: describing what my body
was feeling. Trying to describe what was going on inside my head,
even if they had asked, would have been impossible.
    Once, awake in the late
afternoon, I stared at the scotia where the wall in front of me
joined the ceiling, and all I could think was, Why?
    Why had this happened to me?
    Why was I lying here in the soft daylight of
late afternoon, in a hospital bed, attached to