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a thurga, when I
should have been upright and doing something?
    How could this have come to pass?
    I still could not remember the accident that
had caused me to be here in the first place: were it not for the
photographs that the nurses had shown me – photographs of the
collapsed machinery in the laboratory, out from underneath which
they had pulled my half-crushed body – I might have wondered
whether it had actually happened. I might have been deceived; just
an unwitting victim for Surgeons Suva-a and Fong to experiment on
…
    Why me?
    I did not realise that I had whispered those
words until I heard a slight movement to my right and Toro-a-Ba
murmured, “Daniel?”
    “ Huh?” I blurted quietly,
a little startled and confused. I started to glance to my right,
then it was as though my head checked itself. No part of me wanted
to look at the thurga beside me.
    “ Are you all
right?”
    “ Mm,” I confirmed
unconvincingly, with a slight nod.
    There was a pause. I could feel the thurga
looking at me.
    After a long moment, I cleared my throat
slightly, and croaked, “Why you? Why did they choose you?”
    “ I
volunteered.”
    Why …? I wondered yet again, dizzily. Why on
earth would anyone volunteer for this?
    A moment passed before I could ask tersely,
“Why?”
    “ I felt moved to do so,”
the creature answered mildly, after a brief moment. “I felt pity
for you.”
    Toro-a-Ba paused again, for longer. Then he
ventured, “Since we are already obliged to be intimate physically,
it seems to me natural that you and I should become intimate
psychologically, or emotionally, if you will. The gut is an
emotional organ, Daniel, in thurga-a as well as in humans, so it
follows that you and I will most likely end up sharing our emotions
anyway, to some extent, on a physical level.”
    I closed my eyes and set my teeth, clenching
my farther fist, while a wave of nausea passed over me.
    The creature seemed to notice, and
waited.
    All I could muster in response was,
“And?”
    “ So I hope you will allow
me to be honest and open with you about my reasons for volunteering
for this surgery.”
    Why, I wondered, curious despite myself.
Were his reasons very selfish or impure?
    “ I have wanted, for as
long as I can remember, to do something good with my life.
Something … great. I have always wanted to do something that would
be worth remembering, something that would be honourable and
virtuous and worthy of blessing. I became an intern at this clinic
in the hope that I could someday become a nurse and help people;
but it always seemed to me that there might be something more; that
this was not the end of my quest to do something great. When
Surgeon Suva-a proposed the surgery that she said might save your
life, I felt a great shout go up within me. And I knew that this
was what I had been waiting for. This was my chance to do something
good and great. I could save your life, and perhaps the lives of
others in future if this surgery was successful, and spend the rest
of my days allowing someone else to live.”
    Toro-a-Ba paused. “I knew very little about
you, so I called the laboratories where you worked and asked if you
were a good person. The people there were confused at first; I had
to tell them that it was because you would be receiving organ
transplants and since I was the guardian of a human ward whose
organs you would be receiving, I wanted to know if my ward’s organs
would be going to a good person.” He made a face that I interpreted
as rue; thurga expressions can be so subtle. “It was partially
true. I could think of no other way to get such information about
you without revealing the truth.
    “ Your colleagues told me
that you were. Everyone agreed that you were worth
saving.”
    The creature closed his eyes for a moment,
as though tired or grieved. It was not until this point that I
realised I was looking at him.
    After a moment, he opened them again, looked
into my eyes and asked, “Is it good,