Dawn x-1

by Butler, Octavia

  She sat down on the floor, cross-legged and at first stared at nothing. Eventually, her eyes were drawn to Nikanj holding Joseph on the bed. The pair did not move, though once she heard Joseph sigh. Was he no longer completely unconscious, then? Was he already learning the lesson all adult ooloi eventually taught? So much in only one day.

  ''Lilith?''

  She jumped. Both Joseph and Nikanj had spoken her name, though clearly, only Nikanj was enough awake to know what it was saying. Joseph, drugged and under the influence of multiple neural links, would shadow everything Nikanj said or did unless Nikanj split its attention enough to stop him. Nikanj did not bother.

  "I have adjusted him, even strengthened him a little, though he'll have to exercise to be able to use that to his best advantage. He will be more difficult to injure, faster to heal, and able to survive and recover from injuries that would have killed him before." Joseph unknowing, spoke every word exactly in unison with Nikanj.

  "Stop that!" Lilith said sharply.

  Nikanj altered its connection without missing a beat. "Lie here with us," it said, speaking alone. "Why should you be down there by yourself?"

  She thought there could be nothing more seductive than an ooloi speaking in that particular tone, making that particular suggestion. She realized she had stood up without meaning to and taken a step toward the bed. She stopped, stared at the two of them. Joseph's breathing now became a gentle snore and he seemed to sleep comfortably against Nikanj as she had awakened to find him sleeping comfortably against her many times. She did not pretend outwardly or to herself that she would resist Nikanj's invitation-or that she wanted to resist it. Nikanj could give her an intimacy with Joseph that was beyond ordinary human experience. And what it gave, it also experienced. This was what had captured Paul Titus, she thought. This, not sorrow over his losses or fear of a primitive Earth.

  She clenched her fists, holding back. "This won't help me," she said. "It will just make it harder for me when you're not around."

  Nikanj freed one sensory arm from Joseph's waist and extended it toward her.

  She stayed where she was for a moment longer, proving to herself that she was still in control of her behavior. Then she tore off her jacket and seized the ugly, ugly elephant's trunk of an organ, letting it coil around her as she climbed onto the bed. She sandwiched Nikanj's body between her own and Joseph's, placing it for the first time in the ooloi position between two humans. For an instant, this frightened her. This was the way she might someday be made pregnant with an other-than-human child. Not now while Nikanj wanted other work from her, but someday. Once it plugged into her central nervous system it could control her and do whatever it wanted.

  She felt it tremble against her, and knew it was in.

  7

  She did not lose consciousness. Nikanj did not want to cheat itself of sensation. Even Joseph was conscious, though utterly controlled, unafraid because Nikanj kept him tranquil. Lilith was not controlled. She could lift a free hand across Nikanj to take Joseph's cool, seemingly lifeless hand.

  "No," Nikanj said softly into her ear-or perhaps it stimulated the auditory nerve directly. It could do that- stimulate her senses individually or in any combination to make perfect hallucinations. "Only through me," its voice insisted.

  Lilith's hand tingled. She released Joseph's hand and immediately received Joseph as a blanket of warmth and security, a compelling, steadying presence.

  She never knew whether she was receiving Nikanj's approximation of Joseph, a true transmission of what Joseph was feeling, some combination of truth and approximation, or just a pleasant fiction.

  What was Joseph feeling from her?

  It seemed to her that she had always been with him. She had no sensation of shifting gears, no "time alone" to contrast with the present "time together." He had always been there, part of her, essential.

  Nikanj focused on the intensity of their attraction, their union. It left Lilith no other sensation. It seemed, itself, to vanish. She sensed only Joseph, felt that he was aware only of her.

  Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. They seemed to rush upward. A long time later, they seemed to drift down slowly, gradually, savoring a few more moments wholly together.

  Noon, evening, dusk, darkness.

  Her throat hurt. Her first solitary sensation was pain-as though she had been shouting, screaming. She swallowed painfully and raised her hand to her throat, but Nikanj's sensory aim was there ahead of her and brushed her hand away. It laid its exposed sensory hand across her throat. She felt it anchor itself, sensory fingers stretching, clasping. She did not feel the tendrils of its substance penetrate her flesh, but in a moment the pain in her throat was gone.

  "All that and you only screamed once," it told her.

  "How'd you let me do even that?" she asked.

  "You surprised me. I've never made you scream before." She let it withdraw from her throat, then moved languidly to stroke it. "How much of that experience was Joseph's and mine?" she asked. "How much did you make up?"

  "I've never made up an experience for you," it said. "I won't have to for him either. You both have memories filled with experiences."

  "That was a new one."

  "A combination. You had your own experiences and his. He had his and yours. You both had me to keep it going much longer than it would have otherwise. The whole was. . . overwhelming."

  She looked around. "Joseph?"

  "Asleep. Very deeply asleep. I didn't induce it. He's tired. He's all right, though."

  "He.. . felt everything I felt?"

  "On a sensory level. Intellectually, he made his interpretations and you made yours."

  "I wouldn't call them intellectual."

  "You understand me."

  "Yes." She moved her hand over its chest, taking a perverse pleasure in feeling its tentacles squirm, then flatten under her hand.

  "Why do you do that?" it asked.

  "Does it bother you?" she asked stilling her hand.

  "No."

  "Let me do it, then. I didn't used to be able to."

  "I have to go. You should wash, then feed your people. Seal your mate in. Be certain you're the first to talk to him when he wakes."

  She watched it climb over her, joints bending all wrong, and lower itself to the floor. She caught its hand before it could head for a wall. Its head tentacles pointed at her loosely in unspoken question.

  "Do you like him?" she asked.

  The point focused briefly on Joseph. "Ahajas and Dichaan are mystified," it said. "They thought you would choose one of the big dark ones because they're like you. I said you would choose this one-because he's like you."

  "What?"

  "During his testing, his responses were closer to yours than anyone else I'm aware of. He doesn't look like you, but he's like you."

  "He might. . ." She forced herself to voice the thought. "He might not want anything more to do with me when he realizes what I helped you do with him."

  "He'll be angry-and frightened and eager for the next time and determined to see that there won't be a next time. I've told you, I know this one."

  "How do you know him so well? What have you had to do with him before?"

  Its head and body smoothed so that even with its sensory arms, it resembled a slender, hairless, sexless human.

  "He was the subject of one of my first acts of adult responsibility," it said. "I knew you by then, and I set out to find someone for you. Not another Paul Titus, but someone you would want. Someone who would want you. I examined memory records of thousands of males. This one might have been taught to parent a group himself, but when I showed other ooloi the match, they agreed that the two of you should be together."

  "You. . . You chose him for me?"

  "I offered you to one another. The two of you did your own choosing." It opened a wall and le
ft her.

  8

  People gathered around silently, radiating hostility when Lilith called them out to eat. Most were already out, waiting for her sullenly, impatiently, hungrily. Lilith ignored their annoyance.

  "It's about time," Peter Van Weerden muttered as she opened the various wall cabinets and people began to come forward and take food. This was the man who claimed she was not human, she recalled.

  "If you're through screwing, that is," Jean Pelerin added. Lilith turned to look at Jean and managed to examine the woman's bruised, swollen face before Jean turned away.

  Troublemakers. Only two of them out in the open so far. How long would that last?

  "I'll be Awakening ten more people tomorrow," she said before anyone could leave. "You'll all be helping with them singly or in pairs." She paced alongside the food wall, automatically drawing her fingers around the circular cabinet openings, keeping them from closing while people chose what they wanted. Even the newest people were used to this, but Gabriel Rinaldi complained mildly.

  "It's ridiculous for you to have to do that, Lilith. Make them stay open."

  "That's the idea," she said. "They stay open for two or three minutes, then they close unless I touch them again." She stopped, took the last bowl of hot, spicy beans from one cabinet, and let it close. The cabinet would not begin to refill itself until the wall was sealed. She put the beans on the floor to one side for her own meal later. People sat around on the floor, eating from edible dishes. There was comfort in eating together-one of their few comforts. Groups formed and people talked quietly among themselves. Lilith was taking fruit for herself when Peter spoke from his group nearby. His group of Jean, Curt Loehr, and Celene Ivers.

  "If you ask me, the walls are fixed that way to keep us from thinking about what we ought to do to our jailor," Peter said.

  Lilith waited, wondering whether anyone would defend her. No one did,' though silence spread to other groups.

  She drew a deep breath, walked over to Peter's group. "Things can change," she said quietly. "Maybe you can turn everybody here against me. That would make me a failure." She raised her voice slightly, though even her quiet words had carried. "That would mean all of you put back into suspended animation so that you can be separated and put through all this again with other people." She paused. "If that's what you want-to be split up, to begin again alone, to go through this however many times it takes for you to let yourself get all the way through it, keep trying. You might succeed."

  She left him, took her food and joined Tate, Gabriel, and Leah.

  "Not bad," Tate said when people had resumed their own conversations. "Clear warning to everyone. It's overdue."

  "It won't work," Leah said. "These people don't know each other. What do they care if they have to start again?"

  "They care," Gabriel told her. Even with his blue-black beard, he was one of the best looking men Lilith had ever seen. And he was still sleeping exclusively with Tate. Lilith liked him, but she was aware that he did not quite trust her. She could see that in his expression when she caught him watching her sometimes. Yet he was careful to keep her goodwill-keep his options open.

  "They've made personal ties here," he said to Leah. "Think what they had before: War, chaos, family and friends dead. Then solitary. A jail cell and shit to eat. They care very much. So do you."

  She turned to face him angrily, mouth already open, but the handsome face seemed to disarm her. She sighed and nodded sadly. For a moment she seemed close to tears.

  "How many times can you have everyone taken from you and still have the will to start again?" Tate muttered.

  As many times as it took, Lilith thought wearily. As many times as human fear, suspicion, and stubbornness made necessary. The Oankali were as patient as the waiting Earth.

  She realized that Gabriel was staring at her.

  "You're still worried about them, aren't you?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "I think they believed you. All of them, not just Van Weerden and Jean."

  "1 know. They'll believe me for a little while. Then some of them will decide I'm lying to them or that I've been lied to."

  "Are you sure you haven't?" Tate asked.

  "I'm sure I have," Lilith said bitterly. "By omission, at least."

  "But then-"

  "This is what I know," Lilith said: "Our rescuers, our captors are extraterrestrials. We are aboard their ship. I've seen and felt enough-including weightlessness-to be convinced that it is a ship. We're in space. And we're in the hands of people who manipulate DNA as naturally as we manipulate pencils and paintbrushes. That's what I know. That's what I've told you all. And if any of you decide to behave as though it isn't true, we'll all be lucky if we're just put to sleep and split up."

  She looked at the three faces and forced a weary smile.

  "End of speech," she said. "I'd better get something for Joseph."

  "You should have gotten him out here," Tate said.

  "Don't worry about it," Lilith told her.

  "You could bring me a meal now and then," Gabriel said to her as Lilith left them.

  "See what you've done!" Tate called after her.

  Lilith found herself smiling an unforced smile as she took more food from the cabinets.. It was inevitable that some of the people she Awakened would disbelieve her, dislike her, distrust her. At least there were others she could talk to, relax with. There was hope if she could only keep the skeptics from self-destructing.

  9

  For a time, Joseph would not speak or take food from her hands. Once she understood this, she sat with him to wait. She had not Awakened him when she came back to the room, had sealed the room and slept beside him until his movements woke her. Now she sat with him, worried but feeling no real hostility from him. He did not seem to resent her presence.

  He was sorting out his feelings, she thought. He was trying to understand what had happened.

  She had put a few pieces of fruit on the bed between them. She had said, knowing he would not answer, "It was a neurosensory illusion. Nikanj stimulates nerves directly, and we remember or create experiences to suit the sensations. On a physical level, Nikanj feels what we feel. It can't read our thoughts. It can't get away with hurting us-unless it's willing to suffer the same pain." She hesitated. "It said it strengthened you a little. You'll have to be careful at first, and exercise. You won't get hurt easily. if something does happen to you you'll heal the way I do."

  He had not spoken, had not looked at her, but she knew he had heard. There was nothing vacant about him.

  She sat with him, waited, oddly comfortable, nibbling at the fruit now and then. After a time, she lay back, feet on the floor, body stretched across the bed. The movement attracted him.

  He turned, stared at her as though he had forgotten she was there. "You should get up," he said. "The light's coming back. Morning."

  "Talk to me," she said.

  He rubbed his head. "It wasn't real? Not any of it?"

  "We didn't touch each other."

  He grabbed her hand and held it. "That thing. . . did it all."

  "Neural stimulation."

  "How?"

  "They hook into our nervous systems somehow. They're more sensitive than we are. Anything we feel a little, they feel a lot-and they feel it almost before we're conscious of it. That helps them stop doing anything painful before we notice that they've begun."

  "They've done it to you before?"

  She nodded.

  "With. . . other men?"

  "Alone or with Nikanj's mates."

  Abruptly, he got up and began to pace.

  "They aren't human," she said.

  "Then how can they. . .? Their nervous systems can't be like ours. How can they make us feel. . . what I felt?"

  "By pushing the right electrochemical buttons. I don't claim to understand it. It's like a language that they have a special gift for. They know our bodies better than we do."

  "Why do you let them. . . touch you
?"

  "To have changes made. The strength, the fast healing-"

  He stopped in front of her, faced her. "Is that all?" he demanded.

  She stared at him, seeing the accusation in his eyes, refusing to defend herself. "I liked it," she said softly. "Didn't you?"

  "That thing will never touch me again if I have anything to say about it."

  She did not challenge this.

  "I've never felt anything like that in my life," he shouted.

  She jumped, but said nothing.

  "If a thing like that could be bottled, it would have out sold any illegal drug on the market."

  "I'm going to Awaken ten people this morning," she said. "Will you help?"

  "You're still going to do that?"

  "Yes."

  He breathed deeply. "Let's go then." But he did not move. He still stood watching her. "Is it. . . like a drug?" he asked.

  "You mean am I addicted?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't think so. I was happy with you. I didn't want Nikanj here."

  "I don't want him here again."

  "Nikanj isn't male-and I doubt whether it really cares what either of us wants."

  "Don't let him touch you! If you have a choice, keep away from him!"

  The refusal to accept Nikanj's sex frightened her because it reminded her of Paul Titus. She did not want to see Paul Titus in Joseph.

  "It isn't male, Joseph."

  "What difference does that make!"

  "What difference does any self-deception make? We need to know them for what they are, even if there are no human parallels-and believe me, there are none for the ooloi." She got up, knowing that she had not given him the promise he wanted, knowing that he would remember her silence. She unsealed the doorway and left the room.

  10

  Ten new people.

  Everyone was kept busy trying to keep them out of trouble and give them some idea of their situation. The woman Peter was helping laughed in his face and told him he was crazy when he mentioned, as he said, "the possibility that our captors might somehow be extraterrestrials. . ."