"That doesn't seem quite fair. I'm thirty-eight now. Ten years from now I'll be forty-eight. I'll live perhaps to eighty. That gives you over thirty years."
"It gives you them, too," Lyf said.
"But your world is alien."
"Not entirely. There are quite a few humans on Hel. You'd have plenty of company."
"I can imagine," she said drily.
Lyf flinched. "I've told you I do not like those anthropomorphic references to my race."
"So you say. But I don't trust you even though you've told me the truth about my body. I won't sell my soul."
"I'll put a disclaimer in writing if that will satisfy you," Lyf said wearily. "I'm tired of haggling."
"But will you obey it."
"With us Devi, a contract is sacred. Even your mythology tells you that much."