Some choice, Tino muttered.
Better than being a prisoner or a slave, she said. They should have been ready for the forest. Im surprised they ate the palm fruit that made them sick.
We were city people, and we were hungry. My father didnt believe something could be poison raw but okay to eat cooked.
Lilith shook her head. I was a city person, too, but there were some things I was willing not to learn from experience. She returned to her original subject. Anyway, once we had learned to live in the forest on our own, the Oankali told us we didnt have to. They meant to live in homes as comfortable as the ones they had on the ship, and we were free to do the same. We accepted their offer. Believe me, weaving thatch and tying logs together with lianas doesnt hold any more fascination for me than it does for youand Ive done my share of it.
This place has a thatched roof, Tino argued. In fact, it looks freshly thatched.
Because the leaves are green? Hell, theyre green because theyre alive. We didnt build this house, Tino, we grew it. Nikanj provided the seed; we cleared the land; everyone who was going to live here trained the walls and made them aware of us.
Tino frowned. What do you mean, aware of you? I thought you were telling me it was a plant.
Its an Oankali construct. Actually, its a kind of larval version of the ship. A neotenic larva. It can reproduce without growing up. It can also get a lot bigger without maturing sexually. This one will have to do that for a while. We dont need more than one.
But youve got more than one. Youve got
Only one in this village. And a lot of that one is underground. What you see of it appears to be houses, grasses, shrubs, nearby trees, and, to some extent, riverbank. It allows some erosion, traps some newly arrived silt. Its inclination, though, is to become a closed system. A ship. We cant let it do that here. We still have a lot of growing to do ourselves.
Tino shook his head. He looked around at the large room, at the people watching, eating, feeding children, some small children stretched out asleep with their heads on adults laps.
Look up, Tino.
Tino jumped at the sound of Nikanjs soft voice so close to him. He seemed about to move away, shrink away. He had probably not been this close to an Oankali since he was a child. Somehow, he managed to keep still.
Look up, Nikanj repeated.
Tino looked up into the soft yellow glow of the ceiling.
Didnt you even wonder where the light was coming from? Nikanj asked. Is that the ceiling of a primitive dwelling?
It wasnt like that when I came in, Tino said.
No. It wasnt as much needed when you came in. There was plenty of light from outside. Look at the smooth walls. Look at the floor. Feel the floor. I dont think a floor of dead wood would be as comfortable. Youll have a chance to make comparisons if you choose to stay in the guest house. It really is the rough wood and thatch building you thought this was. It has to be. Strangers wouldnt be able to control the walls of the true houses here.
Wray Ordway said mildly, Nika, if that man sleeps in the guest house tonight, Ill lose all faith in you.
Nikanjs body went helplessly smooth, and everyone laughed. The glass-smooth flattening of head and body tentacles normally indicated humor or pleasure, Akin knew, but what Nikanj was feeling now was neither of those emotions. It was more like a huge, consuming hunger, barely under control. If Nikanj had been Human, it would have been trembling. After a moment it managed to return its appearance to normal. It focused a cone of head tentacles on Lilith, appealing to her. She had not laughed, though she was smiling.
You people are not nice, she said, keeping her smile. You should be ashamed. Go home now, all of you. Have interesting dreams.
6
Tino watched in confusion as people began to leave. Some of them were still laughingat a joke Tino was not sure he understood, not sure he wanted to understand. Some stopped to talk to the woman who had brought him into the village. Lilith her name was. Lilith. Unusual name loaded with bad connotations. She should have changed it. Almost anything would have been better.
Three Oankali and several children clustered around her, talking to the departing guests. Much of the conversation was in some other languagealmost certainly Oankali, since Lilith had said the villagers had no other Human languages in common.
The group, family and guests, was a menagerie, Tino thought. Human; nearly Human with a few visible sensory tentacles; half-Human, gray with strangely jointed limbs and some sensory tentacles; Oankali with Human features contrasting jarringly with their alienness; Oankali who might possibly be part Human; and Oankali like the ooloi who had spoken to him, who obviously had no Humanity at all.
Lilith amid the menagerie. He had liked her looks when he spotted her in the garden. She was an amazon of a woman, tall and strong, but with no look of hardness to her. Fine, dark skin. Breasts high in spite of all the childrenbreasts full of milk. He had never before seen a woman nursing a child. He had almost had to turn his back on her to stop himself from staring as Lilith fed Akin. The woman was not beautiful. Her broad, smooth face was usually set in an expression of solemnity, even sadness. It made her lookand Tino winced at the thoughtit made her look saintly. A mother. Very much a mother. And something else.
And she had no man, apparently. She had said Akins father was long dead. Was she looking for someone? Was that what all the laughter was about? After all, if he stayed with Lilith, he would also be staying with her Oankali family, with the ooloi whose reaction had provoked so much laughter. Especially with that ooloi. And what would that mean?
He was looking at it when the man Lilith had called Wray came up to him.
Im Wray Ordway, he said. I live here permanently. Come around when you can. Anyone here can head you toward my house. He was a small, blond man with nearly colorless eyes that caught Tinos attention. Could anyone really see out of such eyes? Do you know Nikanj? the man asked.
Who? Tino asked, though he thought he knew.
The ooloi who spoke to you. The one youre watching.
Tino stared at him with the beginnings of dislike.
I think it recognized you, Wray said. Its an interesting creature. Lilith thinks very highly of it.
Is it her mate? Of course it was.
Its one of her mates. She hasnt had a man stay with her for a long time, though.
Was this Nikanj the mate who had forced pregnancy on her? It was an ugly creature with too many head tentacles and not enough of anything that could be called a face. Yet there was something compelling about it. Perhaps he had seen it before. Perhaps it was the last ooloi he had seen before he and his parents had been set down on Earth and let go. That ooloi
?
A very Human-looking young woman brushed past Tino on her way out. Tinos attention was drawn to her, and he stared as she walked away. He saw her join another very similar young woman, and the two both turned to look at him, smile at him. They were completely alike, pretty, but so startling in their similarity that he was distracted from their beauty. He found himself searching his memory for a word he had had no occasion to use since childhood.
Twins? he asked Wray.
Those two? No. Wray smiled. They were born within a day of one another, though. One of them should have been a boy.
Tino stared at the well-shaped young women. Neither of them is in any way like a boy.
Do you like them?
Tino glanced at him and smiled.
Theyre my daughters.
Tino froze, then shifted his gaze from the girls uneasily. Both? he asked after a moment.
Human mother, Oankali mother. Believe me, they werent identical when they were born. I think they are now because
Tehkorahs wanted to make a pointthat the nine children Leah and I have produced are
true siblings of the children of our Oankali mates.
Nine children? Tino whispered. Nine? He had lived since childhood among people who would almost have given their lives to produce one child.
Nine, Wray confirmed. And listen. He stopped, waited until Tinos eyes focused on him. Listen, I wouldnt want you to get the wrong idea. Those girls wear more clothing than most constructs because they have concealable differences. Neither of them is as Human as she looks. Let them alone if you cant accept that.
Tino looked into the pale, blind-seeming eyes. What if I can accept it?
Wray looked at the two girls, his expression gentling. Thats between you and them. The girls were exchanging words with Nikanj. Another ooloi came up to them, and as the exchange continued, it put one strength arm around each girl.
Thats Tehkorahs, Wray said, my ooloi mate. Thats Tehkorahs being protective, I think. And Nikanj
being impatient if anyone can believe that.
Tino watched the two ooloi and the two girls with interest. They did not seem to be arguing. In fact, they had ceased to speak at allor ceased to speak aloud. Tino suspected they were still communicating somehow. There had always been a rumor that Oankali could read minds. He had never believed it, but clearly something was happening.
One thing, Wray said softly. Listen.
Tino faced him questioningly.
You can do as you please here. As long as you dont hurt anyone, you can stay or go as you like; you can choose your own friends, your own lovers. No one has the right to demand anything from you that you dont want to give. He turned and walked away before Tino could ask what this really meant when it came to the Oankali.
Wray joined his daughters and Tehkorahs and led them out of the house. Tino found himself watching the young womens hips. He did not realize until they were gone that Nikanj and Lilith had come over to him.
Wed like you to stay with us, Lilith said softly. At least for the night.
He looked at her lineless face, her cap of dark hair, her breasts, now concealed beneath a simple gray shirt. He had had only a glimpse of them as she had settled herself to nurse Akin.
She took his hand, and he remembered seizing her hand to examine it. She had large, strong, calloused hands, warm and Human. Almost unconsciously, he turned his back to Nikanj. What did it want? Or rather, how did it go about getting what it wanted? What did the ooloi actually do to Humans? What would it want of him? And did he really want Lilith badly enough to find out?
But why had he left Phoenix if not for this?
But so quickly? Now?
Sit with us, Lilith said. Lets talk for a while. She drew him toward a walltoward the place they had sat when he spoke to the people. They sat cross-leggedor the two Humans crossed their legstheir bodies forming a tight triangle. Tino watched the other two Oankali in the room as they herded the children away. Akin and the small gray child who now held him clearly wanted to stay. Tino could see that, though neither child was speaking English. The larger of the two Oankali lifted both children easily and managed to interest them in something else. All three vanished with the others through a doorway that seemed to grow shut behind them the way doorways had closed so long ago aboard the ship. The room was sealed and empty except for Tino, Lilith, and Nikanj.
Tino made himself look at Nikanj. It had folded its legs under it the way the Oankali did. Many of its head tentacles were trained on him, seeming almost to be straining toward him. He suppressed a shuddernot a response of fear or disgust. Those feelings would not have surprised him. He felt
He did not know what he felt about this ooloi.
It was you, wasnt it? he asked suddenly.
Yes, Nikanj admitted. Youre unusual. Ive never known a Human to remember before.
To remember his conditioning?
Silence.
To remember his conditioner, Tino said nodding. I dont think anyone could forget his conditioning. But
I dont know how I recognized you. I met you so long ago, and
well, I dont mean to offend you, but I still cant tell your people apart.
You can. You just dont realize it yet. Thats unusual, too. Some Humans never learn to recognize individuals among us.
What did you do to me back then? he demanded. Ive never
never felt anything like that before or since.
I told you then. I checked you for disease and injury, strengthened you against infection, got rid of any problems I found, programmed your body to slow its aging processes after a certain point, and did whatever else I could to improve your chances of surviving your reintroduction to Earth. Those are the things all conditioners did. And we all took prints of youread all that your bodies could tell us about themselves and created a kind of blueprint. I could make a physical copy of you even if you hadnt survived.
A baby?
Yes, eventually. But we prefer you to any copy. We need cultural as well as genetic diversity for a good trade.
Trade! Tino said scornfully. I dont know what Id call what youre doing to us, but it isnt trade. Trade is when two people agree to an exchange.
Yes.
It doesnt involve coercion.
We have something you need. You have something we need.
We didnt need anything before you got here!
You were dying.
Tino said nothing for a moment. He looked away. The war was an insanity he had never understood, and no one in Phoenix had been able to explain it to him. At least, no one had been able to give him a reason why people who had excellent reasons to suppose they would destroy themselves if they did a certain thing chose to do that thing anyway. He thought he understood anger, hatred, humiliation, even the desire to kill a man. He had felt all those things. But to kill everyone
almost to kill the Earth
There were times when he wondered if somehow the Oankali had not caused the war for their own purposes. How could sane people like the ones he had left behind in Phoenix do such a thingor, how could they let insane people gain control of devices that could do so much harm? If you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didnt give him power.
I dont know about the war, Tino admitted. Its never made sense to me. But
maybe you should have left us alone. Maybe some of us would have survived.
Nothing would have survived except bacteria, a few small land plants and animals, and some sea creatures. Most of the life that you see around you we reseeded from prints, from collected specimens from our own creations, and from altered remnants of things that had undergone benign changes before we found them. The war damaged your ozone layer. Do you know what that is?
No.
It shielded life on Earth from the suns ultraviolet rays. Without its protection, above-ground life on Earth would not have been possible. If we had left you on Earth, you would have been blinded. You would have been burnedif you hadnt already been killed by other expanding effects of the warand you would have died a terrible death. Most animals did die, and most plants, and some of us. Were hard to kill, but your people had made their world utterly hostile to life. If we had not helped it, it couldnt have restored itself so quickly. Once it was restored, we knew we couldnt carry on a normal trade. We couldnt let you breed alongside us, coming to us only when you saw the value of what we offered. Stabilizing a trade that way takes too many generations. We needed to free youthe least dangerous of you anyway. But we couldnt let your numbers grow. We couldnt let you begin to become what you were.
You believe we would have had another war?
You would have had many othersagainst each other, against us. Some of the southern resister groups are already making guns.
Tino digested that silently. He had known about the guns of the southerners, had assumed t
hey were to be used against the Oankali. He had not believed people from the stars would be stopped by a few crude firearms, and he had said so, making himself unpopular with those of his people who wanted to believeneeded to believe. Several of these had left Phoenix to join the southerners.
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. Weve told them that. So far, none of them have shot us. A few have shot one another, though.
Lilith looked startled. Youre 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. Weve done that to a few violent Humans. Shall we do it to more?
Lilith only stared at it, her expression unreadable.
You wont do that? Tino asked.
We wont. 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, well offer them our help. Theyre 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. Youve 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 didnt want to go back to my parents. I asked to stay with you. To this day, I dont know why.
I wanted to keep you. If youd been a little older
But weve been told and shown that we arent 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 wouldnt see you again.
Tino caught himself staring at the oolois long, gray sensory arms. Both arms seemed relaxed against the oolois sides, their ends coiled, spiraling upward so that they did not touch the floor.
Adulthood Rites x-2 Page 4
