Thirty-seven chubby, green grubs bounced on end, like tomato worms on pogo sticks. Circling around me, they thudded softly on the sand that lined the floor of the hive. Jumping and yelling, they sprang over my head. They called, "Kul Pill! Kul Pill."

The absurdity. "Pill" was a mispronunciation of "Bill", but "Kul" was the Kuchaktapa word for "older brother." The little rogues addressed me as a family member, an "older brother" of a brood of grubs, a title of respect. If only the people back home could see me now.

"Ssst!" The warning came from the back room, where Teengen, the queen mother, oversaw the drones cooking dinner. The grubs lined up, from the largest to the smallest, like giant lima beans standing at attention. They formed a ring around the chamber. Two rows of nubs lined the belly of each grub, and each nub ended in a suction cup—closed for the sake of modesty, of course.

Teengen’s head poked out from the kitchen, her antennae brushing the doorway, the thousand facets of her single eye flashing like a diamond in the dark room. She clacked her pincers together. Thirty-seven grubs twisted their bottom ends into the sand lining the floor of the chamber. Their brains are in their bottom ends, and they think better with their rears buried.

They have never believed me when I have told them that my brain is inside my head. Time and again, whenever I have needed to think, they have drawn a circle in the sand and told me to sit.

Potakpo, the grubs’ father, inspected each of them in turn, and nodded his approval. He was a magnificent Kuchak. He had a cherry-red, insectoid body of three sections and ten legs. His single, magnificent eye covered most of his head, and the facets twinkled in the light of the hurricane lantern. Potakpo’s exoskeleton could not carry emotion, but his words carried an undercurrent of humor when he spoke to his children. "What do you have for Kul Bill?"

"A topi!"

"A topi?"

"A topi!"

"Go get it!"

They bounced out of the room like a class of human kindergarteners. "A topi for Kul Pill!"

I groaned.

Potakpo’s first section reverberated up into his nasal cavity. It sounded like the low purr of a cat, a resonant, warm sound—his laugh.

I smelled the fruit before he saw it. A topi has a stench. A powerful one that can’t really be compared to anything else. The Maker must have held his breath when he created it. But how could he pronounce such an abomination good?

Bible school didn’t prepare its students for deep, theological questions like that.

Three of the larger grubs gently skooched into the room, balancing the topi on their heads between them. As large as a watermelon, the skin of the fruit looked like it came from a rat snake, brown and scaly. A score of grubs danced around the fruit, bobbing up and down. "Eat it! Eat it!"

"Ssst!"

The grubs stood still. A foul odor rose from the hub of the green circle.

"Ask Kul Bill politely, in English," said Potakpo.

Mataka, the sole princess of the brood, approached me and bowed. "Kul Pill, please eat a piece of topi."

"His name is Kul Bill."

"Yes, Daddy. Kul Pill, please eat."

I picked up the heavy fruit with both hands and set it on the sand floor. The stench threatened to suffocate me. I made a show of trying to break open the shell, but I had just clipped my fingernails, and I couldn’t break open the skin.

Potakpo said, "Allow me." He sliced the topi into two neat halves with a swipe of one pincer.

So much for my polite attempt to avoid the fruit.

The grub line chanted softly, "Eat it. Eat it. Eat it."

I separated a soft, slimy, white section of the flesh.

"Eat it. Eat it."

I held my breath and popped the fruit into my mouth. It tasted like a rotting grape. The flesh squirmed around on my tongue. I checked a gag reflex, and swallowed it without chewing. The thing quivered like a goldfish in my stomach.

I waited for the transformation.

The grubs changed the chant. "Wau woop! Wau woop! Wau woop!"

The hair on my arms and legs stood up first. Then the hair on my head. Every single hair on my body became stiff and hard, hard as a quill. I dropped to all fours and charged with a roar, a porcupine from Earth facing off against its alien predators.

The grubs squealed and scattered in all directions. I caught one on the spikes of my head and threw him against the paper mache wall of the hive. He bounced off and lay on the floor, purring with laughter.

I growled, looking left and right, knowing many of the grubs had taken refuge up on their father’s back. "Aaah!" they shouted. Grubs leapt from on high, dropping down around me, surrounding me in a bobbing circle.

I was trapped. The horror.

Several grubs slid under me and flipped their heads up. I flew up into the air. Thousands of hard quill-hairs on the back of my body stuck to the fibrous ceiling. I was fastened to it as firmly as a butterfly pinned to a board. Even my arms were stuck.

Thirty-seven grubs rolled on the floor, their bodies reverberating. The mass of green grubs quivered below, their blobby shadows bobbing in the light of the lamp. Potakpo purred from his second section. He seldom laughed so hard. Teengen stood in the doorway to the cooking area, two of her sections vibrating like a kitten. When she caught her breath, she motioned to a drone, who rushed from the kitchen and offered a drinking bowl up to me. "Some kokok juice for you."

"I can’t move. I’m stuck."

Both adult Kuchak collapsed. Even their third sections vibrated.

"Really. I can’t get down."

Potakpo reached up, his pincers slicing through the air like an elephant’s tusks. The tip of a pincer narrowly missed my chest. I took a deep breath. A bead of sweat formed on my forehead and fell onto a facet of Potakpo’s eye. He grunted and wiped his eye with a cloth. Slowly, he raised his pincers again, like an enormous pair of tweezers, and grasped my torso. He tugged my right arm from the ceiling, then the left, and then pulled my torso away from the ceiling. He set me down, unharmed.

The grubs cheered wildly.

Teengen personally handed me the bowl of kokok juice. The honor of the gesture was lost on me at that moment, I so enjoyed the relief the drink brought. Kokok works as a kind of antidote to the topi. The kokok immediately calmed my lurching stomach. My hair would lay down in a few minutes, and would soften up after a few hours. My nerves would relax later.

While I drank, the drones set out the grubs’ dinner: rice aged for the proper amount of mold, fruit also aged to moldy perfection, and ants. Their ants are domesticated livestock, and grow to the size of large dogs. They smelled wonderful when roasted over a fire.

For me, Teengen set two legs of ant, several fresh bananas, and a fresh bowl of rice. She must have sent a runner for the fruit. The round trip to the settlement on top of the cliff would have taken nearly four hours. I started to protest the extravagance, but she said, "Ssst!"

I smirked. "Yes, Mama Teengen." I imitated the Kuchak purr by trilling my tongue.

She swatted my head like my mother used to.

When the sun sank halfway down toward the horizon, I started to take my leave. The trip from the hive to the trailhead took two hours. The grubs were already waiting to accompany me up the side of the mountain.

Potakpo said, "Will you come again next week?"

"I must take my turn as host. You must come to my home next week."

"Thirty-seven grubs for dinner are thirty-seven too many."

"Nonsense. I would be honored to have you and your family come."

"What do you see in us, anyway?"

Teengen’s head snapped toward her husband.

The abrupt question took me by surprise as well. Kuchak leave-taking has well-worn forms. It always involves compliments, polite invitations, and courteous refusals, each in its proper turn. Fondness is expressed by the length of time to say farewell. Potakpo’s question went wide of the formula. I struggled to know how to respond politely. "I’m sorry. I don’t know the proper answer for that question."

"It is not part of our farewell ritual. I am sorry for being rude, but I have wanted to ask that question for a long time." He addressed his wife, "By your leave, Queen, we will continue to say goodbye in a moment."

Potakpo gave his bottom an extra twist. "You understand some of our language now, and my children call you ‘Kul’. They love you."

"They are beautiful children, and I love them, too."

"You are too kind. We are insects. You are human. Why do you take such interest in us?"

The grubs all stood still. They looked neither surprised nor shamed by the question. They simply waited for a response.

I was speechless. I looked to Teengen, but her face was expressionless as ever, and I turned back to Potakpo. "You were made by the Maker, just as I was. You live and love and rejoice in him. You are special, because he made you that way."

The language failed me, and I blurted in English. "I mean, look at you. You are a spectacular species."

Potakpo nodded to show he understood, an English gesture, and continued in my language. "When the Maker came, he came in a human body, on Earth of the humans. He did not come in an insect body. He did not come to this world. Our world."

"No. But we don’t deserve the honor. We kill. We lie, and cheat. We sleep with each other’s wives."

"No more than we do."

"So we are no better than you."

"Humans were made in the image of God. The book says so. If humans are the image, insects cannot be."

This was difficult logic to escape, and one of the most difficult concepts for the Kuchak to accept. I sat and twisted my rear in the sand. Teengen sighed in relief, which is what I wanted. The Kuchak do not mind silence in conversations, and I was in no hurry to respond.

I said, "Potakpo, I think maybe we need to translate Genesis into Kuchaktapa soon. That tells the story of creation. It says that all animals were created before humans were—"

The grubs gasped. Mataka mumbled, "That means the Kuchak are more important than hu—"

Potakpo rounded on the grub. "Hush, child! Let Kul Bill finish." He nodded to me.

So. The Kuchak believe importance is associated with consecutive order. Like humans believe the being first in line is important. The verse about the last being first and the first being last would challenge them, but I would have to think more about that later. "All animals were created on the same day as humans."

"What was the order?"

This was not going well. "Plants came first."

The Kuchak gasped.

"We needed something to eat, I think. Then the Maker made animals. Man came next, then out of man, the Maker made woman."

Mataka squirmed. "Women are not less important than men! The first woman must have been made first."

"Humans think that the first woman was made last to emphasize that she was the greatest beauty of God’s creation."

"So insects are less than humans? Is that what you are saying?"

This was not going well at all. "Listen, sweetheart. When the Maker finished with all creation, he said it was all ‘very good.’ Kuchak and human, male and female. Even topi."

Teengen’s head snapped up. Both of her antennae spread out to their full width. She had understood I didn’t like the fruit.

I couldn’t say anything right. "I’m sorry, Queen Teegen. The topi is hard for a human body to digest." That wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough. She probably guessed the rest anyway. "I ate it to entertain—"

She shook her head like a human to dismiss any more talk about the subject.

Mataka was deep in thought. "The Messiah did come in a male human body…"

"Yes, he did. But listen to what you said. You know him as Messiah. So do I. He calls you younger sister, and me younger brother. He is our older brother, our kul. We are part of the same hive."

Teengen said, "We have heard enough of this for now. Kul Bill must go home."

The grubs jumped up. "Stay Kul Pill! Stay! Please stay tonight!"

Back to the familiar ritual. I gestured all of them to be quiet. "I was just inviting all of you to my home next week. What do you think of that?"

"No Kul Pill! Stay here!"

"No, I must go home. And I would like you to come to my home."

"Stay!"

I didn’t know how to take my proper leave from Kuchak children. I looked helplessly at Teengen.

"Children…"

The grubs became quiet.

"Would you like Kul Bill to stay?"

"Yes!"

That was not what I was expecting.

The mother’s intonation was stern. "If Kul Bill stays, you must promise to never give him a topi again."

My regard for the queen went up. If only human women could understand me that well.

Mataka looked up with her single eye. "We have kokok to give after the topi. Kul Pill loves kokok."

"Yes! Give Kul Bill as much kokok as he asks, whenever he asks for it. Kokok is good for both human and kuchak. But no more topi."

Mataka sagged. She turned to me. "You don’t like topi?"

What could I say? "My stomach…" I searched for the proper Kuchaktapa word.

"I am sorry, Kul Pill. I didn’t know."

I knelt down. "I know, sweetheart. It’s okay."

"You won’t be an Earth monster anymore?"

"Would you like me to be an Earth monster?"

"Yes!" said some of the smaller grubs.

"No," said Mataka. "The topi kershchik your stomach. I don’t want you to eat it anymore."

Kershchik. I would remember that word. "Well, the Earth porcupine is gone…but I can be an Earth dog!"

Mataka looked up, hope in her eye.

I dropped down on all fours and growled. Some of the grubs squealed and bounced away. I barked and snapped my teeth. The rest of the grubs scattered in all directions. At least a dozen hopped up to their father’s back. "Aaah!" they cried. Grubs leaped from on high, surrounding their kul alien. The rogues.

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