Adulthood Rites Page 5

  “What will you do about the guns?” he asked.

  “Nothing, except to those who actually do try to shoot us. Those go back to the ship permanently. They lose Earth. We’ve told them that. So far, none of them have shot us. A few have shot one another, though.”

  Lilith looked startled. “You’re letting them do that?”

  Nikanj focused a cone of tentacles on her. “Could we stop them, Lilith, really?”

  “You used to try!”

  “Aboard the ship, here in Lo, and in the other trade villages. Nowhere else. We control the resisters only if we cage them, drug them, and allow them to live in an unreal world of drug-stimulated imaginings. We’ve done that to a few violent Humans. Shall we do it to more?”

  Lilith only stared at it, her expression unreadable.

  “You won’t do that?” Tino asked.

  “We won’t. We have prints of all of you. We would be sorry to lose you, but at least we would save something. We will be inviting your people to join us again. If any are injured or crippled or even sick in spite of our efforts, we’ll offer them our help. They’re free to accept our help yet stay in their villages. Or they can come to us.” It aimed a sharp cone of head tentacles at Tino. “You’ve known since I sent you back to your parents years ago that you could choose to come to us.”

  Tino shook his head, spoke softly. “I seem to remember that I didn’t want to go back to my parents. I asked to stay with you. To this day, I don’t know why.”

  “I wanted to keep you. If you’d been a little older … But we’ve been told and shown that we aren’t good at raising fully Human children.” It shifted its attention for a moment to Lilith, but she looked away. “You had to be left with your parents to grow up. I thought I wouldn’t see you again.”

  Tino caught himself staring at the ooloi’s long, gray sensory arms. Both arms seemed relaxed against the ooloi’s sides, their ends coiled, spiraling upward so that they did not touch the floor.

  “They always look a little like elephants’ trunks to me,” Lilith said.

  Tino glanced at her and saw that she was smiling—a sad smile that became her somehow. For a moment, she was beautiful. He did not know what he wanted from the ooloi—if he wanted anything. But he knew what he wanted from the woman. He wished the ooloi were not there. And as soon as the thought occurred to him, he rejected it. Lilith and Nikanj were a pair somehow. Without Nikanj, she would not have been as desirable. He did not understand this, but he accepted it.

  They would have to show him what was to happen. He would not ask. They had made it clear they wanted something from him. Let them ask.

  “I was thinking,” Tino said, referring to the sensory arms, “that I don’t know what they are.”

  Nikanj’s body tentacles seemed to tremble, then solidify into discolored lumps. They sank into themselves the way the soft bodies of slugs seemed to when they drew themselves up to rest.

  Tino drew back a little in revulsion. God, the Oankali were ugly creatures. How had Human beings come to tolerate them so easily, to touch them and allow them to …

  Lilith took the ooloi’s right sensory arm between her hands and held it even when Nikanj seemed to try to pull away. She stared at it, and Tino knew there must be some communication. Did the Oankali share mind-reading abilities with their pet Humans? Or was it mind reading? Lilith spoke aloud.

  “Slow,” she whispered. “Give him a moment. Give me a moment. Don’t defeat your own purpose by hurrying.”

  For a moment, Nikanj’s lumps looked worse—like some grotesque disease. Then the lumps resolved themselves again into slender gray body tentacles no more grotesque than usual. Nikanj drew its sensory arm from Lilith’s hands, then stood up and went to a far corner of the room. There it sat down and seemed almost to turn itself off. Like something carved from gray marble, it became utterly still. Even its head and body tentacles ceased to move.

  “What was all that?” Tino demanded.

  Lilith smiled broadly. “For the first time in my life, I had to tell it to be patient. If it were Human, I would say it was infatuated with you.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “I am,” she said. “This is worse than infatuation. I’m glad you feel something for it, too, even though you don’t yet know what.”

  “Why has it gone to sit in that corner?”

  “Because it can’t quite bring itself to leave the room, though it knows it should—to let the two of us be Human for a little while. Anyway, I don’t think you really want it to leave.”

  “Can it read minds? Can you?”

  She did not laugh. At least she did not laugh. “I’ve never met anyone, Oankali or Human, who could read minds. It can stimulate sensations and send your thoughts off in all sorts of directions, but it can’t read those thoughts. It can only share the new sensations they produce. In effect, it can give you the most realistic and the most pleasurable dreams you’ve ever experienced. Nothing you’ve known before can match it—except perhaps your conditioning. And that should tell you why you’re here, why you were bound to seek out a trade village sooner or later. Nikanj touched you when you were too young to have any defenses. And what it gave you, you won’t ever quite forget—or quite remember, unless you feel it again. You want it again. Don’t you.”

  It was not a question. Tino swallowed and did not bother with an answer. “I remember drugs,” he said, staring at nothing. “I never took any. I was too young before the war. I remember other people taking them and maybe going crazy for a little while or maybe just being high. I remember that they got addicted, that they got hurt sometimes or killed …”

  “This isn’t just a drug.”

  “What then?”

  “Direct stimulation of the brain and nervous system.” She held up her hand to stop him from speaking. “There’s no pain. They hate pain more than we do, because they’re more sensitive to it. If they hurt us, they hurt themselves. And there are no harmful side effects. Just the opposite. They automatically fix any problems they find. They get real pleasure from healing or regenerating, and they share that pleasure with us. They weren’t as good at repairs before they found us. Regeneration was limited to wound healing. Now they can grow you a new leg if you lose one. They can even regenerate brain and nervous tissue. They learned that from us, believe it or not. We had the ability, and they knew how to use it. They learned by studying our cancers, of all things. It was cancer that made Humanity such a valuable trade partner.”

  Tino shook his head, not believing. “I saw cancer kill both my grandfathers. It’s nothing but a filthy disease.”

  Lilith touched his shoulder, let her hand slide down his arm in a caress. “So that’s it. That’s why Nikanj is so attracted to you. Cancer killed three close relatives of mine, including my mother. I’m told it would have killed me if the Oankali hadn’t done some work on me. It’s a filthy disease to us, but to the Oankali, it’s the tool they’ve been looking for for generations.”

  “What will it do to me that has to do with cancer?”

  “Nothing. It just finds you a lot more attractive than it does most Humans. What can you do with a beautiful woman that you can’t do with an ugly one? Nothing. It’s just a matter of preference. Nikanj and every other Oankali already have all the information they need to use what they’ve learned from us. Even the constructs can use it once they’re mature. But people like you and me are still attractive to them.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m told our children will understand them, but we won’t.”

  “Our children will be them.”

  “You accept that?”

  It took him a moment to realize what he had said. “No! I don’t know. Yes, but—” He closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  She moved closer to him, rested warm, calloused hands on his forearms. He could smell her. Crushed plants—the way a fresh-cut lawn used to smell. Food, pepper and sweet. Woman. He reached out to her, touched
the large breasts. He could not help himself. He had wanted to touch them since he had first seen them. She lay down on her side, drawing him down facing her. It occurred to him a moment later that Nikanj was behind him. That she had deliberately positioned him so that Nikanj would be behind him.

  He sat up abruptly, turned to look at the ooloi. It had not moved. It gave no sign that it was even alive.

  “Lie here with me for a while,” she said.

  “But—”

  “We’ll go to Nikanj in a little while. Won’t we.”

  “I don’t know.” He lay down again, now glad to keep his back to it. “I still don’t understand what it does. I mean, so it gives me good dreams. How? And what else will it do? Will it use me to make you pregnant?”

  “Not now. Akin is too young. It … might collect some sperm from you. You won’t be aware of it. When they have the chance, they stimulate a woman to ovulate several eggs. They collect the eggs, store them, collect sperm, store it. They can keep sperm and eggs viable and separate in their bodies for decades. Akin is the child of a man who died nearly thirty years ago.”

  “I heard there was a time limit—that they could only keep sperm and eggs alive for a few months.”

  “Progress. Before I left the ship, someone came up with a new method of preservation. Nikanj was one of the first to learn it.”

  Tino looked at her closely, searched her smooth, broad face. “So you’re what? In your fifties?”

  “Fifty-five.”

  He sighed, shook his head against the arm he had rested it on. “You look younger than I do. I’ve at least got a few gray hairs. I remember I used to worry that I really was the Human the Oankali had failed with, fertile and aging normally, and that all I’d really get out of it was old.”

  “Nikanj wouldn’t have failed with you.”

  She was so close to him that he couldn’t help touching her, moving his fingers over the fine skin. He drew back, though, when she mentioned the ooloi’s name.

  “Can’t it go?” he whispered. “Just for a while.”

  “It chooses not to,” she said in a normal voice. “And don’t bother whispering. It can hear your heartbeat from where it’s sitting. It can hear your subvocalizations—the things you … say to yourself in words but not quite out loud. That may be why you thought it could read minds. And it obviously will not go away.”

  “Can we?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “It isn’t Human, Tino. This isn’t like having another man or woman in the room.”

  “It’s worse.”

  She smiled wearily, leaned over him, and kissed him. Then she sat up. “I understand,” she said. “I felt the way you do once. Maybe it’s just as well.” She hugged herself and looked at him almost angrily. Frustration? How long had it been for her? Well, the damned ooloi could not always be there. Why wouldn’t it go away, wait its turn? Failing that, why was he so shy of it? Its presence did bother him more than another Human’s would have. Much more.

  “We’ll join Nikanj, Tino, once I’ve told you one more thing,” she said. “That is, we’ll join it if you decide you still want anything to do with me.”

  “With you? But it wasn’t you I was having trouble with. I mean—”

  “I know. This is something else—something I’d rather never mention to you. But if I don’t, someone else will.” She drew a deep breath. “Didn’t you wonder about me? About my name?”

  “I thought you should have changed it. It isn’t a very popular name.”

  “I know. And changing it wouldn’t do much good. Too many people know me. I’m not just someone stuck with an unpopular name, Tino. I’m the one who made it unpopular. I’m Lilith Iyapo.”

  He frowned, began to shake his head, then stopped. “You’re not the one who … who …”

  “I awakened the first three groups of Humans to be sent back to Earth. I told them what their situation was, what their options were, and they decided I was responsible for it all. I helped teach them to live in the forest, and they decided it was my fault they had to give up civilized life. Sort of like blaming me for the goddamn war! Anyway, they decided I had betrayed them to the Oankali, and the nicest thing some of them called me was Judas. Is that the way you were taught to think of me?”

  “I … Yes.”

  She shook her head. “The Oankali either seduced them or terrified them, or both. I, on the other hand, was nobody. It was easy for them to blame me. And it was safe.

  “So now and then when we get ex-resisters traveling through Lo and they hear my name, they assume I have horns. Some of the younger ones have been taught to blame me for everything—as though I were a second Satan or Satan’s wife or some such idiocy. Now and then one of them will try to kill me. That’s one of the reasons I’m so touchy about weapons here.”

  He stared at her for a while. He had watched her closely as she spoke, trying to see guilt in her, trying to see the devil in her. In Phoenix, people had said things like that—that she was possessed of the devil, that she had sold first herself, then Humanity, that she was the first to go willingly to an Oankali bed to become their whore and to seduce other Humans …

  “What do your people say about me?” she asked.

  He hesitated, glanced at Nikanj. “That you sold us.”

  “For what currency?”

  There had always been some debate about that. “For the right to stay on the ship and for … powers. They saw you were born Human, but the Oankali made you like a construct.”

  She made a sound that she may have intended as a laugh. “I begged to go to Earth with the first group I awakened. I was supposed to have gone. But when the time came, Nika wouldn’t let me. It said the people would kill me once they got me away from the Oankali. They probably would have. And they would have felt virtuous and avenged.”

  “But … you are different. You’re very strong, fast …”

  “Yes. That wasn’t the Oankali way of paying me off. It was their way of giving me some protection. If they hadn’t changed me a little, someone in the first group would have killed me while I was still awakening people. I’m somewhere between Human and construct in ability. I’m stronger and faster than most Humans, but not as strong or as fast as most constructs. I heal faster than you could, and I’d recover from wounds that would kill you. And of course I can control walls and raise platforms here in Lo. All Humans who settle here are given that ability. That’s all. Nikanj changed me to save my life, and it succeeded. Instead of killing me, the first group I awakened killed Akin’s father, the man I had paired with … might still be with. One of them killed him. The others watched, then went on following that one.”

  There was a long silence. Finally Tino said, “Maybe they were afraid.”

  “Is that what you were told?”

  “No. I didn’t know about that part at all. I even heard … that … perhaps you didn’t like men at all.”

  She threw back her head in startling, terrible laughter. “Oh, god. Which of my first group is in Phoenix?”

  “A guy named Rinaldi.”

  “Gabe? Gabe and Tate. Are they still together?”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize … Tate never said anything about being with him then. I thought they had gotten together here on Earth.”

  “I awoke them both. They were my best friends for a while. Their ooloi was Kahguyaht—ooan Nikanj.”

  “What Nikanj?”

  “Nikanj’s ooloi parent. It stayed aboard the ship with its mates and raised another trio of children. Nikanj told it Gabe and Tate wouldn’t be leaving the resisters any time soon. It was finally willing to acknowledge Nikanj’s talent, and it couldn’t bring itself to accept other Humans.”

  Tino looked at Nikanj. After a while, he got up and went over to it, sat down opposite it. “What is your talent?” he asked.

  Nikanj did not speak or acknowledge his presence.

  “Talk to me!” he demanded. “I know you hear.”

  The ooloi seemed to come to life slowly. �
��I hear.”

  “What is your talent!”

  It leaned toward him and took his hands in its strength hands, keeping its sensory arms coiled. Oddly, the gesture reminded him of Lilith, was much like what Lilith tended to do. He did not mind, somehow, that now hard, cool gray hands held his.

  “I have a talent for Humans,” it said in its soft voice. “I was bred to work with you, taught to work with you, and given one of you as a companion during one of my most formative periods.” It focused for a moment on Lilith. “I know your bodies, and sometimes I can anticipate your thinking. I knew that Gabe Rinaldi couldn’t accept a union with us when Kahguyaht wanted him. Tate could have, but she would not leave Gabe for an ooloi—no matter how badly she wanted to. And Kahguyaht would not simply keep her with it when the others were sent to Earth. That surprised me. It always said there was no point in paying attention to what Humans said. It knew Tate would eventually have accepted it, but it listened to her and let her go. And it wasn’t raised as I was in contact with Humans. I think your people affect us more than we realize.”

  “I think,” Lilith said quietly, “that you may be better at understanding us than you are at understanding your own people.”

  It focused on her, its body tentacles smoothed to invisibility against its flesh. That meant it was pleased, Tino remembered. Pleased or even happy. “Ahajas says that,” it told her. “I don’t think it’s true, but it may be.”

  Tino turned toward Lilith but spoke to Nikanj. “Did you make her pregnant against her will?”

  “Against one part of her will, yes,” Nikanj admitted. “She had wanted a child with Joseph, but he was dead. She was … more alone than you could imagine. She thought I didn’t understand.”

  “It’s your fault she was alone!”

  “It was a shared fault.” Nikanj’s head and body tentacles hung limp. “We believed we had to use her as we did. Otherwise we would have had to drug newly awakened Humans much more than was good for them because we would have had to teach them everything ourselves. We did that later because we saw … that we were damaging Lilith and the others we tried to use.