'Does it bother you that I smell different today?' J.D. asked.
'Your new scent makes you a different shape in my mind.'
J.D. smiled. She hoped her new shape in Nerno's mind was not quite as undignified as it had been when she was with Zev. At least they had been making love within a gravity field. In zero gravity, sex could be hilarious.
'Today you're different, too,' J.D. said. 'Are you . . . wearing clothes?' 'No,' Nemo said.
Nemo reached up to the bank of honey ants and plucked one. Only a few remained. A burst of saliva flooded J.D.'s mouth. She could taste the sweetness and feel the rush. But instead of offering the honey ant to J.D., Nemo stroked the creature till it folded its legs. Nemo slid it into the silken pouch. Disappointed, J.D. watched it vanish.
A spinner emerged from beneath Nerno's vibrationsending legs. It crawled up the side fin and over Nerno's back, trailing a strand of silk. J.D. tapped into an LTM perception in the ultraviolet. The blanket of silk around Nerno's tail section rippled like water, like sunlight pouring through leafy trees and dappling the ground.
Several more spinners climbed up Nemo's side, helping create the layered fabric.
'You are so beautiful,' J.D. said.
'I'm changing,' Nemo said.
'But how? Why?'
'I'm changing myself into an adult, because I'm very old.'
'But you said you're just a child.'
'No, I told you I'm a juvenile.'
'But when you said you'd lived for a million yearsI thought you were just at the beginning of your life!'
'You asked my life span.'
J.D. grasped Nemo's tentacle suddenly. She sank down beside the squidmoth and stroked the soft, brilliant skin. She had asked Nemo's life span.
Nemo had lived a million years.
'How long do you live, after you become an adult?'
'Until I reproduce.'
'In a hundred years?' She was afraid to hear the answer. She made up one she hoped to hear. 'Five hundred?'
'In a few hours.'
'Oh, no-!'
I keep making assumptions! she shouted, angrily, to herself. Assumptions! 'You're protesting my decision,' Nemo said.
'Not your decision, just the timing. I just met you! I like you, I don't want to lose you!'
'If I'd known you were coming, I'd have waited to change.'
'Can't you wait now?'
'No, I've been preparing for too long.'
'You can't go back?'
One of the attendants that cleaned Nerno's skin scuttled across the floor.
Nemo's tentacle snapped out of J.D.'s hand and caught the creature. It struggled as Nemo placed it in the gray silk pouch. Holding the pouch with all three tentacles, trembling, Nemo sealed its edge to the curtain.
'All my attendants are parceled out.' Nemo touched the bulging pouches. 'Parceled out? Why? What are those things?'
'They are egg sacs for my children.'
'Can't you change your mind?'
'Do you wish me to change my mind?'
J.D. wanted to say, Yes! Don't change, don't die.
'What would happen if you stayed a juvenile?' she asked.
'My attendants would die.'
'And your children?'
'They'd never be born.'
'What about you?'
'I would leave nothing behind me.'
'Tell me your life cycle,' J.D. said.
'I awoke, I remembered my parents, to thank them, and I listened and I learned and I grew into my body.'
J.D. clutched at a hope. 'You listened to your parents? You learned from them? They were there to teach you?'
'They weren't there, but I remembered what they left for me, and I added to what they had learned.'
'Were they dead?'
'My juvenile parent might still be alive, but my adult parent died, of course.'
'When you exchange genetic material with others of your people-that's being a juvenile parent?'
'Yes, we're the juvenile parents of each other's children.'
'But you don't bear the children until after you metamorphose into an adult,' J.D. said, beginning to understand.
'That's right.'
'And then you'll die.'
'I'll die.'
'And you can't delay the change.'
Nemo touched the sacs again, handling them delicately so as not to damage the hibernating attendants and groomers, spinners and honey ants and silk-eaters. Nerno's legacy, parceled out into each offspring's cradle.
'I could stop the change.'
'Then what would happen?'
'I'd never change at all.'
'Never? You'd be immortal?'
'Until I got bored.'
'That could be a long time, Nemo.'
'But I'd have no offspring, and then no one would remember me.'
Nerno's tentacles withdrew from the silken sacs. The long tentacles twined together, apart, and circled JDA body, quivering, brushing her body with quick, delicate touches.
'I'd remember you,' J.D. said sadly.
'You aren't immortal.'
'No,' J.D. said.
'It's important for my children to remember me.'
'Will your children be identical to you, with identical memories-' She stopped. 'No, of course not, they have another parent. A juvenile parent.'
'They'll know all I know, but they won't be identical to me.'
'I understand.' She let Nerno's tentacle curl and cuddle in her hands, like a warm, furry snake. 'I wish we'd met sooner. I would have liked more time to know you.' She tried to smile. 'About a hundred years.' 'Maybe you'll know my children.'
'I hope so.'
The silk-spinners continued to crawl around and over Nemo, guided and encouraged, now and again, by one of the long tentacles.
'What will happen now?' J.D. asked.
'Soon I'll sleep, and you'll return home, and when I awaken I'll be changed.'
'What will you change to?'
'You can see, if you want.'
'I'd like that. Thank you. How will I know? When will it be?'
'It's different for everyone.'
'I'll wait.' 'No, go home, I'll call you to return.'
