"You're not human at all, are you?" The little prawn's eyes were fixed intently upon Wikus, as if this were the most important question in the world.
Wikus sighed. Or as close as a prawn could get to a sigh. "Listen, kid, you know just as well as anyone else -- as everyone else in this in this district what I am and what I was."
"I just mean right now. You're not human at all right now." Wikus didn't reply, but the silent confirmation was evident. "But you will be? You'll be a human?"
He wished the child would go away, stop reminding him of things he didn't want to think about. "Christopher promised three years, and it's been four years, seven months, and eighteen days. So no. No, I won't ever be human again." Wouldn't ever see Tania again, never see their -- "Don't you have somewhere else you can be?" he asked the kid.
"You said I shouldn't wander around alone," the little prawn countered. "He's probably just late. How long's a year? Sometimes the humans who sell meat are late because of ..." The kid paused, searching for a word. "Traffic. Is there traffic up there?"
Contemplating that only made Wikus think of everything else that could have gone wrong. "How the fuck should I know what goes on up there?" The kid just stared at him. "Okay, fine, maybe he's just late. If Christopher comes back, then yes, I will be a human."
"Will you be the same human you were before? How will your friend's medicine get it right, if you're not human at all right now? Aren't there two kinds of humans? What if when you're human again you're a ..." Another pause. "The kind that lays eggs. That would be better, right? To be able to have children?"
Wikus hadn't thought along these lines before, and was somewhat disturbed by the child's questions. Did all children think this much? Had he thought this much when he was that age? Yes, he answered himself. He'd thought about Star Wars and how it would be neat if an alien spaceship actually landed, and look where that line of thought had gotten him. "Christopher said he could change me back, and 'back' implies the same as I was before. And human females --" The little prawn chirped happily -- there was the word he had been looking for! "don't lay eggs."
"But they still have children?"
"Yes."
The little one looked puzzled, but moved on. "So, if your friend's medicine can make you human even though there's nothing human in you right now, then it could make anyone human, right?"
"I ... suppose so."
"So I can be a human too?"
"No!" The child shrank back at his outburst. "Why would you want to be a human?"
"So that I can --" the child started to answer, but Wikus didn't let him finish.
"Look, I was born a human, so I'm supposed to be a human. You were born a prawn, so you're meant to stay that way. Okay? When Christopher gets back, you are going to fly away with the rest of your kind to your promised land, or wherever, and I am going to stay on Earth. You don't get to stay with me."
"But you're my mother!"
Wikus didn't argue this. Facts were facts. "You weren't supposed to happen, okay? You were an accident." He pushed aside the memory of what it felt like, being told the same thing when he was a child himself. "I'm only taking care of you because --" Because he couldn't trust anyone else to do a proper job of it, not that he would admit that. "Anyway, when Christopher comes back, he'll take care of you. He knows how to raise a kid."
"He'll be taking care of everybody, though."
"You just can't stay with me." The young prawn -- his son -- looked utterly devastated. "I have a wife, a human wife. She has a son. I think he's mine." Wikus hadn't known. For four years, he hadn't known about the existence of his human son. He still didn't even know his name.
"And you like him better than me," his nonhuman son stated.
"That's ... that's not what I meant. I haven't even met him. This just ... isn't how it should have happened. I should have been there for them."
"But you don't want to be here for me?"
"Look, I just ..." This isn't how things should have happened, he thought again to himself. Tania and I wanted kids so badly, and now I discover I have a son and I don't know anything about him, don't know what he's like, what kind of a boy he is... I hope he... Wikus paused, looking at the boy in front of him. I hope he takes after his mother, that was the logical thing to want, but the thought that came first, unbidden, to his mind was I hope he's like you.
"Look, I didn't mean that, okay? Of course I want to be here for you. I'm sorry I -- even if it didn't happen the way I wanted, I'm glad you're here. And I won't make you go away, not if you don't want to."
"Really?" His son looked up at him, light coming back into his eyes.
"Really." He tried not to think about how impossible the situation would be, if -- when -- Christopher returned. He'd been deceiving himself, saying he didn't want the little prawn with him. "Maybe someday you can even meet your brother, hmm?"
The kid's eyes widened. He clearly hadn't thought of it that way. "He's my brother? I have a human brother?"
Wikus nodded. That idea would keep his son occupied for a while, he could tell. He wondered what Tania would think. Wondered how he would ever explain all this to her, and wondered what he would do when he couldn't.