Adulthood Rites x-2

Adulthood Rites x-2 Page 25

by Butler, Octavia

  It could not be done. It would not be tried until people felt more secure about constructs like Akin—Human-born males—whom they thought were most likely to cause trouble. It could not be done until there were construct ooloi.

  “Let’s all go see him.” That voice again. The same man who had suggested before that he wanted to see Akin. Who was he? Akin thought for a moment, searching his memory.

  He did not know the man.

  “Hold on,” Gabe was saying. “This is my home. You don’t just goddamn walk in when you feel like it!”

  “What are you hiding in there? We’ve all seen the goddamn leeches before.”

  “Then you don’t need to see Akin.”

  “It’s just one more worm come to feed on us.”

  “He saved my wife’s life,” Gabe said. “What the hell did you ever save?”

  “Hey, I just wanted to look at him

  make sure he’s okay.”

  “Good. You can look at him when he’s able to get up and look back at you.”

  Akin began to worry at once that the other man would find his way into the house. Obviously, Humans were strongly tempted to do things they were warned not to do. And Akin was more vulnerable now than he had been since infancy. He could be tormented from a distance. He could be shot. If an attacker was persistent enough, Akin could be killed. And at this moment, he was alone. No companion. No guardian.

  He began trying to move again—trying desperately. But only his new sensory tentacles moved. They writhed and knotted helplessly.

  Then Tate came in. She stopped, stared at the many moving sensory tentacles, then settled down in the chair Gabe had occupied. Across her lap, she held a long, dull-gray rifle.

  “You heard that crap, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “I was afraid you would. Relax. Those people know us. They won’t come in here unless they’re feeling suicidal.” She had been so strongly against guns once. Yet she held the thing in her lap as though it were a friend. And he had to be glad she did, glad of her protection. Confused, he kept silent until she said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m afraid someone will be killed on my account.”

  She said nothing for a while. Finally she asked, “How soon before you can walk?”

  “A few days. Three or four. Maybe.”

  “I hope that will be soon enough. If you’re mobile, they won’t dare give you trouble. You look thoroughly Oankali.”

  “When I can walk, I’ll leave.”

  “We’re going with you. It’s past time for us to leave this place.”

  He looked at her and thought he smiled.

  She laughed. “I wondered if you could do that.”

  He realized then by the sudden muting of his senses that his new sensory tentacles had flattened against his body, had smoothed like a second skin and seemed more painted on than real. He had seen this all his life in Oankali and constructs. Now, it felt utterly natural to do it himself.

  She touched him.

  He saw her reach out, felt the warmth of her hand long before she laid it on his shoulder and rubbed it over the smooth tentacles. For a second, he was able to keep them smooth. Then they locked into her hand. Her femaleness tormented him more than ever, but he could only taste it, savor it. Even if she had been interested in him sexually, he would have been helpless.

  “Let go,” she said. She was not frightened or angry. She simply waited for him to let her go. She had no idea how difficult it was for him to draw his sensory tentacles back, to break the deep, frustrating contact.

  “What was that all about?” she asked when she had her hand back.

  He was not quick enough to think of an innocuous answer before she began to laugh.

  “I thought so,” she said. “We should definitely get you home. Do you have mates waiting?”

  Chagrined, he said nothing.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s been a long time since I was an adolescent.”

  “Humans called me that before I changed.”

  “Young adult, then.”

  “How can you condescend to me and still follow me?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know. I haven’t worked out my feelings toward the new you yet.”

  Something about her manner was a lie. Nothing she said was a direct lie, but there was something wrong.

  “Will you go to Mars, Tate, or stay on Earth?” he asked. She seemed to pull back from him without moving.

  “You’ll be as free to stay as you will be to go.” She had Oankali mates who would be overjoyed to have her stay. If she did not, they might never settle on Earth.

  “Truce,” Tate said quietly.

  He wished she were Oankali so that he could show her he meant what he was saying. He had not spoken in response to her condescension, as she clearly believed. He had responded instead to the falseness of her manner. But communication with Humans was always incomplete.

  “Goddamn you,” Tate said softly.

  “What?”

  She looked away from him. She stood up, paced across to a window, and stared out. She stood to one side, making it difficult for anyone outside to see her. But there was no one outside that window. She paced around the room, restless, grim.

  “I thought I’d made my decision,” she said. “I thought leaving here would be enough for now.”

  “It is,” Akin said. “There’s no hurry. You don’t have to make any other decisions yet.”

  “Who’s patronizing whom?” she said bitterly.

  More misunderstanding. “Take me literally,” Akin said. “Assume that I mean exactly what I say.”

  She looked at him with disbelief and distrust.

  “You can decide later,” he insisted.

  After a while she sighed. “No,” she said, “I can’t.”

  He did not understand, so he said nothing.

  “That’s my problem, really,” she continued. “I don’t have a choice anymore. I have to go.”

  “You don’t.”

  She shook her head. “I made my choice a long time ago—the way Lilith made hers. I chose Gabe and Phoenix and Humanity. My own people disgust me sometimes, but they’re still my people. I have to go with them.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat down again after a while and put the gun on her lap and closed her eyes.

  “Tate?” he said, when she seemed calm.

  She opened her eyes but said nothing.

  “Does the way I look now bother you?”

  The question seemed to annoy her at first. Then she shrugged. “If anyone had asked me how I would feel if you changed so completely, I would have said it would upset me, at least. It doesn’t. I don’t think it bothers the others either. We all watched you change.”

  “What about those who didn’t watch?”

  “To them you’ll be an Oankali, I think.”

  He sighed. “There’ll be fewer immigrants because of me.”

  “Because of us,” she said.

  Because of Gabe, she meant.

  “He thought I was dead, Akin. He panicked.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve talked to him. We’ll help you gather people. We’ll go to the villages—alone, with you, or with other constructs. Just tell us what you want us to do.”

  His sensory tentacles smoothed again with pleasure. “Will you let me improve your ability to survive injuries and heal?” he asked. “Will you let someone correct your Huntington’s disease genetically?”

  She hesitated. “The Huntington’s?”

  “You don’t want to pass that on to your children.”

  “But genetic changes

  That will mean time with an ooloi. A lot of time.”

  “The disease had become active, Tate. It was active when I healed you. I thought perhaps

  you had noticed.”

  “You mean I’m going to get sick with it? Crazy?”

  “No. I fixed it again. A temporary fix. The deactivation of a gene that should have been replaced long ago.”

  “I

  couldn’t have gone through that.”
/>   “The disease may be the reason you fell.”

  “Oh my god,” she whispered. “That’s the way it happened with my mother. She kept falling. And she had

  personality changes. And I read that the disease causes brain damage—irreversible

  ”

  “An ooloi can reverse it. It isn’t serious yet, anyway.”

  “Any brain damage is serious!”

  “It can be repaired.”

  She looked at him, clearly wanting to believe.

  “You can’t introduce this to the Mars colony. You know you can’t. It would spread through the population in a few generations.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll let it be corrected, then?”

  “Yes.” The word was hardly more than a moving of her lips, but Akin saw it and believed her.

  Relieved and surprisingly tired, he drifted off to sleep. With her help and the help of others in Phoenix, he had a chance of making the Mars colony work.

  7

  When he awoke, the house was aflame.

  He thought at first that the sound he heard was rain. The smoke scent forced him to recognize it as fire. There was no one with him. The room was dark, and he had only a stored memory of Macy Wilton sitting beside him, a short, thick gun across his knees. A double-barreled gun of a type Akin had not seen before. He had gotten up and gone to investigate a strange noise just outside the house. Akin replayed his memory of the noise. Even asleep, he had heard what Macy probably had not.

  People whispering.

  “Don’t pour that there. Throw it against the wall where it will do some good. And throw it on the porch.”

  “Shut up. They’re not deaf in there.”

  Footsteps, oddly unsteady.

  “Go pour some under the mongrel’s window, Babe.”

  Footsteps coming closer to Akin’s window—almost stumbling closer. And someone fell. That was the sound Macy heard: a grunt of pain and a body landing heavily.

  Akin knew all this as soon as he was fully awake. And he knew the people outside had been drinking. One of them was the man who had wanted to get past Gabe to see Akin.

  The other was Neci. She had graduated from attempting mutilation to attempting murder.

  What had happened to Macy? Where were Tate and Gabe? How could the fire make so much noise and light and not awaken everyone? It had crept up outside one window now. The windows were high off the ground. The fire he could see must already be eating its way through the wall and floor.

  He began to shout Tate’s name, Gabe’s name. He could move a little now, but not enough to make a difference.

  No one came.

  The fire ate its way into the room, making choking smoke that Akin discovered he could breathe easier if he did not breathe through his mouth. He had a sair at his throat now, surrounded by large and strong sensory tentacles. These moved automatically to filter the smoke from the air he breathed.

  But, still, no one came to help him. He would burn. He had no protection against fire.

  He would die. Neci and her friend would destroy Human chances at a new world because they were drunk and out of their minds.

  He would end.

  He shouted and choked because he did not quite understand yet how to talk through a familiar orifice and breathe through an unfamiliar one.

  Why was he being left to burn? People heard him. They must have heard! He could hear them now—running, shouting, their sounds blending into the snapping and roaring of the fire.

  He managed to fall off the bed.

  Landing was only a small shock. His sensory tentacles automatically protected themselves by flattening into his body. Once he was on the wood floor, he tried to roll toward the door.

  Then he stopped, trying to understand what his senses were telling him. Vibrations. Someone coming.

  Someone running toward the room he was in. Gabe’s footsteps.

  He shouted, hoping to guide the man in the smoke. He saw the door open, felt hands on him.

  With an effort that was almost painful, Akin managed not to sink his sensory tentacles into the man’s flesh. The man’s touch was like an invitation to investigate him with enhanced adult senses. But now was not the time for such things. He must do all he could not to hinder Gabe.

  He let himself become a thing—a sack of vegetables to be thrown over someone’s shoulder. For once, he was glad to be small.

  Gabe fell once, coughing, seared by the heat. He dropped Akin, picked him up, and again threw him over one shoulder.

  The front door was blocked by sheets of fire. The back would be blocked in a moment. Gabe kicked it open and ran down the steps, for a moment actually plunging through flames. His hair caught fire, and Akin shouted at him to put it out.

  Gabe stopped once he was clear of the house, dropped Akin into the dirt, and collapsed, beating at himself and coughing.

  The tree they had stopped under had caught fire from the house. They had to move again, quickly, to avoid burning branches. Once Gabe had put out his own fire, he picked Akin up and staggered farther away toward the forest.

  “Where are you going?” Akin asked him.

  He did not answer. It seemed all he could do to breathe and move.

  Behind them, the house was totally engulfed. Nothing could be alive in there now.

  “Tate!” Akin said suddenly. Where was she? Gabe would never save him and leave Tate to burn.

  “Ahead,” Gabe wheezed.

  She was all right, then.

  Gabe fell again, this time half-atop Akin. Hurt, Akin locked into him in helpless reflex. He immediately paralyzed the man, stopping significant messages of movement between the brain and the rest of the body.

  “Lie still,” he said, hoping to give Gabe the illusion of choice. “Just lie there and let me help you.”

  “You can’t help yourself,” Gabe whispered, struggling to breathe, to move.

  “I can help myself by healing you! If you fall on me again, I might sting you. Now shut up and stop trying to move. Your lungs are damaged and you’re burned.” The lung damage was serious and could kill him. The burns were only very painful. Yet Gabe would not be quiet.

  “The town

  Can they see us?”

  “No. There’s a cornfield between us and Phoenix now. The fire is still visible, though. And it’s spreading.” At least one other house was burning now. Perhaps it had caught from the burning tree.

  “If it doesn’t rain, half the town might burn. Fools.”

  “It isn’t going to rain. Now be quiet, Gabe.”

  “If they catch us, they’ll probably kill us!”

  “What? Who?”

  “People from town. Not everybody. Just troublemakers.”

  “They’ll be too busy trying to put out the fire. It hasn’t rained for days. They chose the wrong season for all this. Just be quiet and let me help you. I won’t make you sleep, so you might feel something. But I won’t hurt you.”

  “I hurt so bad already, I probably wouldn’t know if you did.”

  Akin interrupted the messages of pain that Gabe’s nerves were sending to his brain and encouraged his brain to secrete specific endorphins.

  “Jesus Christ!” the man said, gasping, coughing. For him the pain had abruptly ceased. He felt nothing. It was less confusing for him that way. For Akin, it meant sudden, terrible pain, then slow alleviation. Not euphoria. He did not want Gabe drunk on his own endorphins. But the man could be made to feel good and alert. It was almost like making music—balancing endorphins, silencing pain, maintaining sobriety. He made simple music. Ooloi made great harmonies, interweaving people and sharing pleasure. And ooloi contributed substances of their own to the union. Akin would feel that soon when Dehkiaht changed. For now, there was the pleasure of healing.

  Gabe began to breathe easier as his lungs improved. He did not notice when his flesh began to heal. Akin let the useless burned flesh slough off. Gabe would need water and food soon. Akin would finish by stimulating feelings of hunger and thirst in the man so that he would be willing to eat or drink whatever Akin co
uld spot for him. It was especially important that he drink soon.

  “Someone’s coming,” Gabe whispered.

  “Gilbert Senn,” Akin said into his ear. “He’s been searching for some time. If we’re still, he may not find us.”

  “How do you know it’s—?”

  “Footsteps. He still sounds the same as he did when I was here before. He’s alone.”

  Silently Akin finished his work and withdrew the filaments of his sensory tentacles from Gabe. “You can move now,” he whispered. “But don’t.”

  Akin could move too, a little more, although he doubted that he could walk.

  Abruptly Gilbert Senn found them—all but stumbled over them in the moonlight and the firelight. He leaped back, his rifle aimed at them.

  Gabe sat up. Akin used Gabe to pull himself up and managed not to fall when he let go. He could hurry everyone’s bodily processes but his own. Gilbert Senn looked at him, then carefully avoided looking at him. He lowered the rifle.

  “Are you all right, Gabe?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re burned.”

  “I was.” Gabe glanced at Akin.

  Gilbert Senn carefully did not look at Akin. “I see.” He turned toward the fire. “I wish that hadn’t happened. We would never have burned your home.”

  “For all I know, you did,” Gabe muttered.

  “Neci did,” Akin said quickly. “She and the man who wanted to get into the house to see me. I heard them.”

  The rifle came up again, aimed only at Akin this time. “You will be quiet,” he said.

  “If he dies, we all die,” Gabe said softly.

  “We all die no matter what. Some of us choose to die free!”

  “There will be freedom on Mars, Gil.”

  The corners of Gilbert Senn’s mouth turned down. Gabe shook his head. To Akin he said, “He believes your Mars idea is a trick. A way of gathering in the resisters easily to use them on the ship or in the Oankali villages on Earth. A lot of people feel that way.”

  “This is my world,” Gilbert Senn said. “I was born here, and I’ll die here. And if I can’t have Human children—fully Human children—I’ll have no children at all.”

  This was a man who would have helped cut sensory tentacles from Amma and Shkaht. He had not wanted to do such things to children, to females, but he honestly believed it was the right thing to do.

 

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