Marsdog - Beth Bernobich

Tom

An Old Friend
Here is a Shortstory Online

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jimmy, who lived on Mars.
Actually, he wasn't a boy and his name wasn't Jimmy. There are no pronouns in any human language for his sex, unless you made up one like Zhe or Lo. Zhe -- no, that's just too damned silly, let's stick with "he." He was really a Taledi, a six-legged arthropod; his carapace was blood red and shiny, his antennae little more than black stubs above his bright faceted eyes. The Taledi had arrived on Mars in the far, far past of this future, so long ago that their language and their mating habits had evolved well away from those Taledi who remained in the home planetary system of Jafal. There, on Jafal, the Taledi lived in dwellings open to the air, and mated without regard to caste or nest-affiliation, or even the survival of the species. The Taledi on Mars lived out their thirty or forty deca-revolutions in sophisticated pressure suits, which they only removed in the privacy of their in-dwellings, and only with members of their mate-unities, usual three or four in number.
But that's more than you wanted to know.

Marsdog - Beth Bernobich
 
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