Bloodchild Summary & Analysis

Gan, the narrator, begins by calling the evening of the story his “last night of childhood.” Gan and T’Gatoi are visiting his family’s home, bringing two eggs given by T’Gatoi’s sister for the family to drink. Gan’s siblings share one and Gan drinks the other whole egg himself, at T’Gatoi’s direction. Lien abstains from the egg.

Gan lays with T’Gatoi, stretched out against her belly, watching his mother and wondering why she refused eggs. Her hair is graying, and old age is clearly setting in. Gan’s father drank every egg he was given and lived twice as long as a normal Terran lifespan.

Gan’s mother shows discomfort whenever T’Gatoi pulls Gan closer. Gan continues to wonder why Lien seems to disdain T’Gatoi now, even though she will never say it outright. Lien and T’Gatoi had been close once and Lien always instructed Gan to obey, honor, and respect T’Gatoi.

Though when T’Gatoi usually lies with Gan she complains he is too skinny, this time she admires that he is gaining weight, admonishing him that it is dangerous to be too thin. While poking Gan with her legs to see his body fat, she begins to caress him instead. Lien is embittered by this and interjects that Gan is still too thin, rather abruptly.

T’Gatoi tells Lien that she wants her to drink what is left of Gan’s egg. Lien resists at first, but eventually begrudgingly obeys and drinks, her face visibly relaxing as she does. T’Gatoi chides Lien for not drinking egg more often, saying that Lien refuses to take care of herself and is allowing old age to set in too soon.

Gan reflects on T’Gatoi’s struggle to keep the Terrans in the Preserve safe. The masses of Tlic outside all want access to the Terrans and do not understand why they are protected in the Preserve at all. T’Gatoi uses her political power to only distribute certain Terrans as needed to wealthy Tlic, or as favors or bribes. T’Gatoi also instituted the uniting of Tlic and Terran families and stopped the practice of separating Terran families from each other. T’Gatoi is all that stands between the protected Terrans and the desperate throngs of Tlic, and the whole family knows that they owe T’Gatoi everything.

T’Gatoi pushes Gan away from her and tells Lien to come lie with her. Lien does not want to, but eventually relents. T’Gatoi wraps her legs around Lien like a cage, as she often does, and stings her with her tail. The sting does not hurt, but has a sedative effect. Lien is angry and surprised when T’Gatoi stings her, but T’Gatoi insists that she needs to relax and get some sleep.

Under the effect of egg and sting, Lien protests that T’Gatoi will never take Gan from her, and could never buy him with eggs and long life. T’Gatoi humors her, knowing that she would never say these things if she were sober. Gan briefly fantasizes about holding Lien’s hand and showing affection to her, knowing that in her loosened state she might return it. Aware that it would cause her shame in the morning, though, he opts not to.

T’Gatoi tells Xuan Hoa to take off Lien’s shoes, saying that she will sting her again soon and let her sleep until the next day. Lien snidely says that she ought to have crushed T’Gatoi when she was small, calling back to the time when they were both children and close friends.

T’Gatoi had played a significant role in Lien’s early life, even introducing her to her husband. T’Gatoi left, however, to become a politician, eventually taking control of the Preserve. Lien, knowing that she would have to give one child to a Tlic no matter what, promised T’Gatoi one of her children. Though Xuan Hoa wanted to be chosen, T’Gatoi opted for Gan while Lien was still pregnant with him. T’Gatoi finished her rise to power and returned to claim Gan. She was there when he was born, holding him within minutes and giving him egg within days. Because he has known T’Gatoi for all his days, Gan trusts her completely and is affectionate towards her.

Gan surmises that had Qui been raised in such a way, perhaps he would not hate and fear the Tlic as much as he does. Even so, Qui makes sure that he gets his fair portion of every egg that is made available.

With Lien falling asleep against her, T’Gatoi senses something is wrong and gets up and runs out the door Gan admires her body, so different from his own, as she rushes away.  Gan follows her and holds the door as she carries an unconscious man inside, saying that the man is N’Tlic. T’Gatoi starts stripping the man’s clothing off and orders Gan to run and call for help.

Gan hesitates and then convinces her to send Qui instead, since Gan wants to stay and help T’Gatoi. T’Gatoi warns Gan that he should not see what is about to happen, as it will be painful and difficult. But since Qui is in no shape to help, she relents. The unconscious man’s armband states that his name is Bram Lomas and he belongs to T’Khotgif Teh. T’Gatoi sends Quo to call for T’Khotgif, keeping Gan with herself. Meanwhile, Lomas has begun regaining consciousness.

T’Gatoi finishes stripping the man and instructs Gan to go out to the pasture and slaughter a large animal and bring it back with him. When Gan hesitates, she strikes him with her tail hard enough to throw him off his feet. Gan gets up and goes to look for a weapon to kill an animal with.

Lien raises livestock for their fur, but Gan has no experience in killing them since he, as T’Gatoi’s mate, has been excluded from learning the family business. Feeling unsure of himself, Gan fetches a hidden and contraband rifle from the kitchen with which to kill an animal. Gan knows that T’Gatoi would probably realize that the animal was killed with a firearm and confiscate the rifle. Guns had been outlawed after the Terrans and the Tlic had spent several years fighting and killing each other, before peace had been made by integrating families.

Gan goes out and kills a large animal with the rifle, carrying it over his shoulder. He is about to bring it back to T’Gatoi when he hesitates, realizing that he is afraid to participate in what is about to happen. T’Gatoi calls for him and Gan is so ashamed that he forces himself to return.

Lomas is unconscious again and Gan’s family has left the room. Gan sets the animal down next to T’Gatoi and she uses one of her claws to slit its body open. She tells Gan that he will have to hold Lomas’ shoulders. Gan begins to feel panicked at the thought of it, not wanting to be involved.

Lien returns and offers to help Gan hold Lomas down, but Gan convinces her to leave again, insisting that he can handle it himself. Lien caresses Gan’s face, a rare expression of affection, and leaves the room once more. T’Gatoi is relieved, knowing that Lien would only suffer more if she had stayed and watched.

Lomas regains consciousness again. T’Gatoi warns him that she will not be able to sting him unconscious, so he will have to be awake for the procedure. After she is finished though, she will sting him to sleep. Lomas begs T’Gatoi to wait, but she cannot, knowing his life is in danger. She reassures him that T’Khotgif Teh will come with eggs to help him heal.

T’Gatoi uses her claw to locate where there is movement under the skin, warning Gan that she is about to begin. She uses her body to secure Lomas’s legs and ties his hands with his own pants in order to help Gan hold him down. She rolls up Lomas’s shirt and puts it in his mouth so that he’ll have something to bite down on.

T’Gatoi cuts open Lomas with her claw. He screams in agony but she pays little attention, licking the blood away (her saliva helps slow the bleeding). Gan feels as if he is helping T’Gatoi to torture Lomas and knows that he will vomit soon.

T’Gatoi begins removing Tlic grubs from Lomas’s body, the first one having eaten its way through the egg case already. If it had been left any longer, it would have started to eat the Terran’s body, and the toxin released from the egg would have poisoned him to death. Lomas passes out. T’Gatoi places the grub in the body of the animal that Gan killed.

T’Gatoi continues picking grubs shaped like large worms, filled with blood, out of Lomas’s body. They have been feeding on his blood vessels. T’Gatoi reacts with excitement upon finding a male and great satisfaction at the number of eggs that have grown to size, remarking that Terrans make ideal hosts. She seems unperturbed by Lomas’s suffering or the procedure at hand.

Gan realizes that although he has known about the birth process his whole life, he was not prepared to actually see it and perhaps never would be. As he watches T’Gatoi lick the blood off of an egg case, he wonders if she remembers the taste from when she drank the blood of her Terran host. It makes her appear alien to Gan, which he would never have thought possible.

T’Gatoi happily pulls out a few more Tlic young, but knowing that Gan feels ill, sends him outside to vomit. He does so and finds that when he is finished he is crying uncontrollably. Whenever he closes his eyes he sees visions of red worms digging through bloody human flesh.

A car arrives at the house carrying Qui, a Terran doctor, and T’Khotgif Teh. Gan explains what has happened and that there were many healthy grubs extracted. The doctor dashes toward the house. T’Khotgif Teh emerges from the vehicle and immediately asks about Lomas, which Gan appreciates. She too runs toward the house. Qui tells Gan that T’Khotgif Teh is very ill, which is why she was not with Lomas when the eggs were ready to hatch.

Qui asks Gan what he saw and can smell the vomit in the air. He tells Gan that now he knows what will happen to his own body in the future. Gan tries to walk away from him, reflecting on how he and Qui used to be close friends, until Qui started trying to run away. Soon enough, Qui realized there was nowhere to run to, so he focused on getting whatever eggs he could to drink. He became over-protective of Gan in “a way that clearly said, as long as [Gan] was all right, [Qui] was safe from the Tlic.”

Qui follows Gan, pressing him for details of what happened and what he saw. Gan will not offer anything and especially does not want to discuss it with Qui.

Qui keeps following Gan and suddenly tells Gan that he has seen worse than Lomas’s birthing. He tells Gan that he saw Tlic eat a man. Gan calls him a liar but Qui continues: when he was little, he was walking home when he saw a Tlic and an N’Tlic. The man needed the grubs taken out of his body, but the Tlic refused because there were no other animals for them to eat and they would die. The Tlic young were already eating the man alive from the inside when he finally convinced the Tlic to cut his throat, which she did, and then watched as her babies ate their way out of the man’s carcass, then turned back and ate the rest of him.

Gan is shocked, but believes him. He understands that that is when Qui started trying to run away, before realizing that there is nowhere to run to; the Preserve is like a cage. Gan tries to reassure Qui that T’Gatoi would never touch him, but Qui insists that that is only true is long as Gan is alive. If something happened to Gan, Qui would be taken as a host.

Qui and Gan argue about whether or not the Tlic view the Terrans as mere host animals. Gan tries to defend the Tlic, but as he is arguing he realizes that he is not so sure. Gan realizes that Qui is gloating for the fact that he is safe from the Tlic and Gan is not.

Qui continues to follow Gan and harass him until Gan attacks him, realizing after the fact that he might have killed him if Qui were not so much bigger and stronger than he is. Qui, for his part, only hits Gan a couple of times to defend himself during the fight. Even so he knocks Gan out for a short while. When Gan wakes up, Qui is gone.

Gan walks back to the house. It is getting dark, but he can hear voices, both Tlic and Terran, in another room. Gan goes to the kitchen and sits at the table that his father made for Lien. It makes him miss his father and wish that he was there to give him advice, since his father had undergone the birthing process three different times, being cut open and sewn up each time.

Gan gets up and fetches the contraband rifle from its hiding place, thinking that he will clean it and load it, but instead, simply loads it with ammunition. T’Gatoi finds him and sits on the kitchen table, facing him. She is coiled up, looking downwards toward Gan.

T’Gatoi expresses regret for the fact that Gan had to see Lomas’s birthing, admitting that that was not how the process was supposed to happen. She also tells Gan that T’Khotgif Teh is very sick and will die soon, but her children will be cared for by her sister, as will Bram Lomas for the rest of his life. He will never have to host eggs again.

Gan looks into T’Gatoi’s eyes, wondering how much of her he truly understands and how much he had only imagined that he understood. He accuses T’Gatoi of never having asked if he even wanted to be her mate and host her eggs. She does not reply to this.

T’Gatoi sees the rifle and knows that Gan used it to kill the animal. She asks if he now means to kill her with it as well.

Gan responds by asking T’Gatoi what she is, and what he is to her. She tells him that he knows her better than any living being, so he must decide what she is for himself.

Gan puts the barrel of the rifle underneath his own chin, saying that this will finally be his decision and demands that T’Gatoi ask him for the lives of her children, which he will someday bear.

Gan states that he does not want to be a host animal, even for T’Gatoi. She claims that they are far more than host animals, and reminds him that the Tlic gave the Terrans protection on the reservation even when the Terrans were still trying to kill the Tlic. The Terrans were fleeing their own people who had killed and enslaved them. The Tlic offered them a chance at survival.

T’Gatoi asks Gan if he would rather die than bear her children. When he does not answer, she offers to impregnate Xuan Hoa instead. Gan immediately tells her that he does want Xuan Hoa to be the host instead, and T’Gatoi announces that she will tell Xuan Hoa that evening or the next morning and sleep in her bedroom that night.

Gan is alarmed by the speed of it all, and realizes that he is using Xuan Hoa as a shield just like Qui uses him. Gan decides that he cannot become like Qui and subject his sister to the same risk and fear that is his own responsibility. Gan begs T’Gatoi not to impregnate Xuan Hoa.

T’Gatoi responds angrily for the first time, claiming that these are “adult things” and insinuating that Gan is not ready to handle such serious matters. Gan persists and removes the rifle from his head, insisting T’Gatoi impregnate him as had always been the plan.

T’Gatoi reaches for the rifle, but Gan tells her that she must leave it. T’Gatoi persists, stating that it is forbidden, but Gan is insistent, telling her that if these are adult matters and the Terrans truly are more than host animals to the Tlic, she must accept the risk inherent in dealing with a partner. T’Gatoi makes an angry hiss, but relents. Gan realizes that she is, for the first time that he has been aware of, actually afraid. The gun will be in the same house that her children will often be in, and T’Gatoi is old enough to remember when Terrans killed Tlic with firearms.

T’Gatoi announces to Gan that she will implant the first egg that same night. Gan is unsurprised, having already surmised that this would be the case. But by the urgency in T’Gatoi’s voice, Gan realizes that she must lay an egg in someone tonight. If he had not consented, Xuan Hoa would’ve been impregnated immediately. Gan is hurt by this.

T’Gatoi meets Gan in his bedroom and Gan undresses and lays with her. She gives him a small sting to take the edge off and then penetrates him with her ovipositor and begins undulating against his body to transfer the egg into his abdomen.

T’Gatoi has so far left Gan uncaged by her legs. When he accidentally hurts her by moving to suddenly, he expects her to entrap him, but she does not, leaving him free. This make him feel ashamed, and he apologizes.

Gan asks T’Gatoi if she cares that it is him that she is impregnating, to which she responds that she had already chosen him long ago. This night is about Gan making his own choices. But she is fearful of giving her children to someone who hates them, so she would have impregnated Xuan Hoa if she had to.

Gan admits that it was not hate he felt, but fear. He is still afraid of what will happen to him and the risk involved, but he also realizes that he has been afraid of losing T’Gatoi and needs to keep her for himself. This pleases her.

T’Gatoi understands that seeing Lomas’s birthing made Gan very afraid and she insists that Terrans should never see that. Gan disagrees, however, arguing that Terrans should see the birthing process from a young age, and should see it when it goes right. T’Gatoi insists that it is a private process and always has been, and they drop the argument.

The egg enters Gan’s body along with enough of the narcotic fluid to relax him. In the induced state, he is able to think about the rifle and the birth, as well as of his feelings of despair, horror, and fear without reliving them, giving him some distance.

Gan insists that he could not have shot T’Gatoi. She is too important to him, too vital for the Terrans’ protection, and she was even birthed out of his father’s own body. When T’Gatoi asks if he could have shot himself, he admits that he very nearly did. Gan realizes that suicide is the only true “running away” that Qui has been searching for.

T’Gatoi reassures Gan that rather than dying, now he will live, and that she is healthy and strong and will always be there to take care of him.