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

Daniel? Is it enough?”
    Puzzled, and weary from concentrating, I
asked, “Is what enough?”
    “ My reasons.” Toro-a-Ba
held my gaze. “Are they … enough? Are they … to your
liking?”
    “ I suppose.”
    I suspected that the creature was asking for
validation, for confirmation from me that he had done the right
thing and that I was accepting or approving of it; but weariness
was clouding my brain and the best, the suitable, response eluded
me.
    “ Yes,” I said, for lack of
any inspiration. “It’s good. Your reasons are … good.”
    Exhaustion seemed to consume me, and I fell
asleep for hours.
    When I woke, eventually, in the small hours
of the morning, I pondered what Toro-a-Ba had said.
    … I asked if you were a
good person. Your colleagues told me that you were. Everyone agreed
that you were worth saving.
    I wondered exactly who had said that, and
why they had said it. Was it only my co-workers? I could think of
no one else whom he might have had the opportunity to ask, and no
one else who really knew me well enough to make a statement
regarding my character.
    ‘ A good person’, and
‘worth saving’.
    Had they meant it, or had it been simply
that they wanted me saved, and that the surgeons wanted to perform
their work on me?
    I was mildly, dismally, listlessly curious,
but I did not have the energy to care much. It didn’t matter
whether they were wrong or right: I was alive, ‘good’ or not,
‘worth saving’ or not.
     
    –––––––
     
    The creature beside me had, in effect, given up his
life so that I might keep mine. This creature had surrendered his
right to an independent life, to autonomy and freedom, and had
dedicated his life to my service.
    The very thought made me feel ill.
    He had done this for a stranger. For someone
who was not his friend, not his relative, not a neighbour nor even
an acquaintance; not of his own culture nor even his own species;
someone about whom he knew next to nothing, someone with whom he
might be utterly incompatible, someone who would slow him down and
make him ill – at least in the beginning of the recovery. And
what if I hated him? What if I resented being used as an experiment
– an unvolunteering prototype for this new surgery – and
vented my anger on him? What if I murdered him, committing suicide
in the process?
    The thurga had placed his life in my hands
even as he had saved mine.
    Was I supposed to be grateful?
    Or was I allowed to feel angry that someone
had sewn me into another creature, giving me a conjoined twin,
saddling me with the burden of another’s life, without my
consent?
    Sleep, when it came, was a relief; not just
from physical pain and discomfort, but from my own thoughts.
    It often came in broken phases, however;
often at night I would find myself lying awake, just as I often
drifted off to sleep during daylight.
    Some of those nights were so long. My body,
confused by the drugs and by the shock of the whole ordeal, seemed
to be unsure of itself and what was expected of it.
    On one such night, I lay thinking, trying to
ignore the vague nausea and various aches and twinges that plagued
my every waking moment now that I was not heavily sedated.
    It had occurred to me that if I desired it,
I could strangle or suffocate the thurga beside me with relative
ease: by the time the nurses arrived, he could be dead. Of course,
I too would die shortly thereafter: a murder-suicide.
    I would die a murderer, having killed the
one who had devoted his life to saving mine.
    Had Toro-a-Ba known that such a thing might
occur, when he volunteered to save my life?
    I began to think about what thoughts may
have passed through Toro-a-Ba’s head when he made that decision.
Had he fully understood what it would be like?
    Had he honestly been content to spend his
life in the service of one who was a stranger to him?
    Who would volunteer for that? Who would
devote every moment for the rest of his life to supporting someone
else about whom he