DAUGHTER

A Sequel to MOTHER

By PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Thrilling Wonder Stories Winter 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CQ! CQ!

This is Mother Hardhead pulsing.

Keep quiet, all you virgins and Mothers, while I communicate. Listen, listen, all you who are hooked into this broadcast. Listen, and I will tell you how I left my Mother, how my two sisters and I grew our shells, how I dealt with the olfway, and why I have become the Mother with the most prestige, the strongest shell, the most powerful broadcaster and beamer, and the pulser of a new language.

First, before I tell my story, I will reveal to all you who do not know it that my father was a mobile.

Yes, do not be nervequivered. That is a so-story. It is not a not-so-story.

Father was a mobile.

Mother pulsed, "Get out!"

Then, to show she meant business, she opened her exit-iris.

That sobered us up and made us realize how serious she was. Before, when she snapped open her iris, she did it so we could practise pulsing at the other young crouched in the doorway to their Mother's wombs, or else send a respectful message to the Mothers themselves, or even a quick one to Grandmother, far away on a mountainside. Not that she received, I think, because we young were too weak to transmit that far. Anyway, Grandmother never acknowledged receipt.

At times, when Mother was annoyed because we would all broadcast at once instead of asking her permission to speak one at a time or because we would crawl up the sides of her womb and then drop off the ceiling onto the floor with a thud, she would pulse at us to get out and build our own shells. She meant it, she said.

Then, according to our mood, we would either settle down or else get more boisterous. Mother would reach out with her tentacles and hold us down and spank us. 

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