you.'
So she could walk the corridors or walk among the trees, but she couldn't get into anything Nikanj didn't want her in. Still, that was more freedom than she had had before it put her to sleep.
'Why did you do this?' she asked, staring at it.
'To give you what I could. Not another long sleep or solitude. Only this. You know the layout of the quarters now, and you know Kaal. And the people nearby know you.,'
So she could be trusted out alone again, she thought bitterly. And within the quarters, she could be depended on not to do the local equivalent of spilling the drain-cleaner or starting a fire. She could even be trusted not to annoy the neighbors. Now she could keep herself occupied until someone decided it was time to send her off to the work she did not want and could not do-the work that would probably get her killed. How many more Paul Tituses could she survive, after all?
Nikanj lay down again and seemed to tremble. It was trembling. Its body tentacles exaggerated the movement and made its whole body seem to vibrate. She neither knew nor cared what was wrong with it. She left it where it was and went out to get food.
In one compartment in the seemingly empty little living-room-dining-room-kitchen, she found fresh fruit: oranges, bananas, mangoes, papayas, and melons of different kinds. In other compartments she found nuts, bread, and honey.
Picking and choosing, she made herself a meal. She had intended to take it outside, to eat-the first meal she had not had to ask for or wait for. The first meal she would eat under the pseudotrees without first having to be let out like a pet animal.
She opened a wall to go out, then stopped. The wall began to close after a moment. She sighed and turned away from it.
Angrily, she reopened the food compartments, took out extra food and went back in to Nikanj. It was still lying down, still trembling. She put a few pieces of fruit down next to it.
'Your sensory arms have already begun, haven't they?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'Do you want anything to eat?'
'Yes.' It took an orange and bit into it, eating skin and all. It hadn't done that before.
'We generally peel them,' she said.
'I know. Wasteful.'
'Look, do you need anything? Want me to find one of your parents?'
'No. This is normal. I'm glad I changed you when I did. I wouldn't trust myself to do it now. I knew this was coming.'
'Why didn't you tell me it was so close?'
'You were too angry.'
She sighed, tried to understand her own feelings. She was still angry-angry, bitter, frightened...
And yet she had come back. She had not been able to leave Nikanj trembling in its bed while she enjoyed her greater freedom.
Nikanj finished the orange and began on a banana. It did not peel this either.
'Can I see?' she asked.
It raised one arm, displaying ugly, lumpy, mottled flesh perhaps six inches beneath the arm.
'Does it hurt?'
'No. There isn't a word in English for the way it makes me feel. The closest would be. . . sexually aroused.'
She stepped away from it, alarmed.
'Thank you for coming back.'
She nodded. 'You're not supposed to feel aroused with just me here.'
'I'm becoming sexually mature. I'll feel this way from time to time as my body changes even though I don't yet have the organs I would use in sex. It's a little like feeling an amputated limb as though it were still there. I've heard humans do that.'
'I've heard that we do, too, but-'
'I would feel aroused if I were alone. You don't make me feel it any more than I would if I were alone. Yet your presence helps me.' It drew its head and body tentacles into knots. 'Give me something else to eat.'
She gave it a papaya and all the nuts she had brought in. It ate them quickly.
'Better,' it said. 'Eating dulls the feeling sometimes.' She sat down on the bed and asked, 'What happens now?'
'When my parents realize what's happening to me, they'll send for Ahajas and Dichaan.'
'Do you want me to look for them-your parents, I mean?'
'No.' It rubbed the bed platform beneath its body. 'The walls will alert them. Probably they already have. Wall tissues respond to beginning metamorphosis very quickly.'
'You mean the walls will feel different or smell different or something?'
