noticed about his wing. And since he was in Studies, not Labor, it didn't make so much difference about the wing. "C'mon, Roan . . . "
"What would I do there?" Roan asked. "Provided I could get a female up a tree to begin with?"
"Well . . . wings aren't really necessary. At least I hope not. Look at me." And he raised his wingless right arm.
"I'd rather not try." Roan pictured the black, screeching little gracyl females. He was glad he didn't want one, because she'd laugh at him if he did. Sneer at him. Flap her wings at him.
"But gee, here you are fourteen years old," Clanth persisted. "What are you going to do?"
"I'll wait," said Roan.
"For what?" Clanth asked, and didn't wait for an answer, for a gaggle of fourteens went by and Clanth ran off to join them.
Roan watched them go, then sat with the book in his lap, gazing at the clouds and trying to picture a human female. The portraits in his books, the descriptions he'd read; he tried to put all his knowledge together, but it wouldn't add up to a definite picture. Every time he thought he had it, it slipped away from him.
Day wore into evening and still Roan sat, and he thought about human women and then about human men, and the old heroes of his book, who left human women to go out and find new worlds, and died showing there were places besides earth where human men could bring human women. Human women were not like Ma. They were . . . Roan couldn't find the thought. He didn't know.
The gracyls had finished going by. The crowds of young males had gone out, and the crowds of ripening females. The first moon was still white in the sky, but it was brightening and soon the sickle anti-moon would come up and the ceremonies would begin and Roan wished Clanth well and hoped his female would not laugh too much at his poor wingless arm. Another group of youths was coming along; there was a low mutter of talk and laughter among them—and they were not gracyls.
"Supper!" Ma called. And came to the door. "What are you doing reading in that light?"
Roan peered through the gloom to see who was coming. The Veed. What were they doing out of their ornately decorated quarters in the heart of the town?
"Has there been a Veed murder or something?" Roan asked, because Ma always managed to know, without talking to anybody, what was going on in the adult world.
"If there has I don't want to know about it and neither do you," said Ma, retreating further behind the front door. "You come on in. You don't want to tempt that trash to stop here."
But Roan waited to watch them go by, the young Veed, their scalesuits glittering faintly even in the tarnished twilight. They walked upright, looking almost human, talking their Veed talk.
"They're children," Roan said, and went in finally. "About my age."
"About fifty years old," Ma said, spooning stewed limpid seeds onto the grits on his plate. "That would be about half mature, for them."
"One of them was an aristocrat. I saw the iridion quadrant on his cheek." What magic lives they must lead, Roan thought, those Veed, with their painted porches and their gardens and their endless games of slots and colored beads, and their lives that stretched on forever.
"When will I die?" Roan asked, and Dad dropped his knife with a helping of purplefruit balanced on it.
"What made you ask that?"
"Nothing. I just wondered. I mean the Veed take forever to grow up and gracyls die if they get broken badly, but what about me?"
"You," Dad said. "Well, I've always answered you straight. You'll live a long time yet. Take me. I'm a hundred and eighty, and still got lots of years ahead. You'll live longer yet. You're prime Terry stock, boy."
"Even if I don't get broken or something? That's all I'll live? I'll just die?"
"There's a story," Raff said, picking up his knife and scraping the dirtied fruit off on the side of his wooden plate, "an old, old story that at the beginning of time the nine Gods called all the species of intelligent beings together and