Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  “It’s what I said it was. A trade. The ooloi will make changes in your reproductive cells before conception and they’ll control conception.”

  “How?”

  “The ooloi will explain that when the time comes.”

  She spoke quickly, trying to blot out thoughts of more surgery or some sort of sex with the damned ooloi. “What will you make of us? What will our children be?”

  “Different, as I said. Not quite like you. A little like us.”

  She thought of her son—how like her he had been, how like his father. Then she thought of grotesque, Medusa children. “No!” she said. “No. I don’t care what you do with what you’ve already learned—how you apply it to yourselves—but leave us out of it. Just let us go. If we have the problem you think we do, let us work it out as human beings.”

  “We are committed to the trade,” he said, softly implacable.

  “No! You’ll finish what the war began. In a few generations—”

  “One generation.”

  “No!”

  He wrapped the many fingers of one hand around her arm. “Can you hold your breath, Lilith? Can you hold it by an act of will until you die?”

  “Hold my—?”

  “We are as committed to the trade as your body is to breathing. We were overdue for it when we found you. Now it will be done—to the rebirth of your people and mine.”

  “No!” she shouted. “A rebirth for us can only happen if you let us alone! Let us begin again on our own.”

  Silence.

  She pulled at her arm, and after a moment he let her go. She got the impression he was watching her very closely.

  “I think I wish your people had left me on Earth,” she whispered. “If this is what they found me for, I wish they’d left me.” Medusa children. Snakes for hair. Nests of night crawlers for eyes and ears.

  He sat down on the bare ground, and after a minute of surprise, she sat opposite him, not knowing why, simply following his movement.

  “I can’t unfind you,” he said. “You’re here. But there is … a thing I can do. It is … deeply wrong of me to offer it. I will never offer it again.”

  “What?” she asked barely caring. She was tired from the walk, overwhelmed by what he had told her. It made no sense. Good god, no wonder he couldn’t go home—even if his home still existed. Whatever his people had been like when they left it, they must be very different by now—as the children of the last surviving human beings would be different.

  “Lilith?” he said.

  She raised her head, stared at him.

  “Touch me here now,” he said, gesturing toward his head tentacles, “and I’ll sting you. You’ll die—very quickly and without pain.”

  She swallowed.

  “If you want it,” he said.

  It was a gift he was offering. Not a threat.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  He would not answer.

  She stared at his head tentacles. She raised her hand, let it reach toward him almost as though it had its own will, its own intent. No more Awakenings. No more questions. No more impossible answers. Nothing.

  Nothing.

  He never moved. Even his tentacles were utterly still. Her hand hovered, wanting to fall amid the tough, flexible, lethal organs. It hovered, almost brushing one by accident.

  She jerked her hand away, clutched it to her. “Oh god,” she whispered. “Why didn’t I do it? Why can’t I do it?”

  He stood up and waited uncomplaining for several minutes until she dragged herself to her feet.

  “You’ll meet my mates and one of my children now,” he said. “Then rest and food, Lilith.”

  She looked at him, longing for a human expression. “Would you have done it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “For you.”

  II

  FAMILY

  1

  SLEEP.

  She barely remembered being presented to three of Jdahya’s relatives, then guided off and given a bed. Sleep. Then a small, confused awakening.

  Now food and forgetting.

  Food and pleasure so sharp and sweet it cleared everything else from her mind. There were whole bananas, dishes of sliced pineapple, whole figs, shelled nuts of several kinds, bread and honey, a vegetable stew filled with corn, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, herbs, and spices.

  Where had all this been, Lilith wondered. Surely they could have given her a little of this instead of keeping her for so long on a diet that made eating a chore. Could it all have been for her health? Or had there been some other purpose—something to do with their damned gene trade?

  When she had eaten some of everything, savored each new taste lovingly, she began to pay attention to the four Oankali who were with her in the small, bare room. They were Jdahya and his wife Tediin—Kaaljdahyatediin lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso. And there was Jdahya’s ooloi mate Kahguyaht—Ahtrekahguyahtkaal lel Jdayhatediin aj Dinso. Finally there was the family’s ooloi child Nikanj—Kaalnikanj oo Jdahyatediinkahguyaht aj Dinso.

  The four sat atop familiar, featureless platforms eating Earth foods from their several small dishes as though they had been born to such a diet.

  There was a central platform with more of everything on it, and the Oankali took turns filling one another’s dishes. One of them could not, it seemed, get up and fill only one dish. Others were immediately handed forward, even to Lilith. She filled Jdahya’s with hot stew and returned it to him, wondering when he had eaten last—apart from the orange they had shared.

  “Did you eat while we were in that isolation room?” she asked him.

  “I had eaten before I went in,” he said. “I used very little energy while I was there so I didn’t need any more food.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Six days, your time.”

  She sat down on her platform and stared at him. “That long?”

  “Six days,” he repeated.

  “Your body has drifted away from your world’s twenty-four-hour day,” the ooloi Kahguyaht said. “That happens to all your people. Your day lengthens slightly and you lose track of how much time has passed.”

  “But—”

  “How long did it seem to you?”

  “A few days … I don’t know. Fewer than six.”

  “You see?” the ooloi asked softly.

  She frowned at it. It was naked as were the others except for Jdahya. This did not bother her even at close quarters as much as she had feared it might. But she did not like the ooloi. It was smug and it tended to treat her condescendingly. It was also one of the creatures scheduled to bring about the destruction of what was left of humanity. And in spite of Jdahya’s claim that the Oankali were not hierarchical, the ooloi seemed to be the head of the house. Everyone deferred to it.

  It was almost exactly Lilith’s size—slightly larger than Jdahya and considerably smaller than the female Tediin. And it had four arms. Or two arms and two arm-sized tentacles. The big tentacles, gray and rough, reminded her of elephants’ trunks—except that she could not recall ever being disgusted by the trunk of an elephant. At least the child did not have them yet—though Jdahya had assured her that it was an ooloi child. Looking at Kahguyaht, she took pleasure in the knowledge that the Oankali themselves used the neuter pronoun in referring to the ooloi. Some things deserved to be called “it.”

  She turned her attention back to the food. “How can you eat all this?” she asked. “I couldn’t eat your foods, could I?”

  “What do you think you’ve eaten each time we’ve Awakened you?” the ooloi asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said coldly. “No one would tell me what it was.”

  Kahguyaht missed or ignored the anger in her voice. “It was one of our foods—slightly altered to meet your special needs,” it said.

  Thought of her “special needs” made her realize that this might be Jdahya’s “relative” who had cured her cancer. She had somehow
not thought of this until now. She got up and filled one of her small bowls with nuts—roasted, but not salted—and wondered wearily whether she had to be grateful to Kahguyaht. Automatically she filled with the same nuts, the bowl Tediin had thrust forward to her.

  “Is any of our food poison to you?” she asked flatly.

  “No,” Kahguyaht answered. “We have adjusted to the foods of your world.”

  “Are any of yours poison to me?”

  “Yes. A great many of them. You shouldn’t eat anything unfamiliar that you find here.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Why should you be able to come from so far away—another world, another star system—and eat our food?”

  “Haven’t we had time to learn to eat your food?” the ooloi asked.

  “What?”

  It did not repeat the question.

  “Look,” she said, “how can you learn to eat something that’s poison to you?”

  “By studying teachers to whom it isn’t poison. By studying your people, Lilith. Your bodies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then accept the evidence of your eyes. We can eat anything you can. It’s enough for you to understand that.”

  Patronizing bastard, she thought. But she said only, “Does that mean that you can learn to eat anything at all? That you can’t be poisoned?”

  “No. I didn’t mean that.”

  She waited, chewing nuts, thinking. When the ooloi did not continue, she looked at it.

  It was focused on her, head tentacles pointing. “The very old can be poisoned,” it said. “Their reactions are slowed. They might not be able to recognize an unexpected deadly substance and remember how to neutralize it in time. The seriously injured can be poisoned. Their bodies are distracted, busy with self-repair. And the children can be poisoned if they have not yet learned to protect themselves.”

  “You mean … just about anything might poison you if you weren’t somehow prepared for it, ready to protect yourselves against it?”

  “Not just anything. Very few things, really. Things we were especially vulnerable to before we left our original homeworld.”

  “Like what?”

  “Why do you ask, Lilith? What would you do if I told you? Poison a child?”

  She chewed and swallowed several peanuts, all the while staring at the ooloi, making no effort to conceal her dislike. “You invited me to ask,” she said.

  “No. That isn’t what I was doing.”

  “Do you really imagine I’d hurt a child?”

  “No. You just haven’t learned yet not to ask dangerous questions.”

  “Why did you tell me as much as you did?”

  The ooloi relaxed its tentacles. “Because we know you, Lilith. And, within reason, we want you to know us.”

  2

  THE OOLOI TOOK HER to see Sharad. She would have preferred to have Jdahya take her, but when Kahguyaht volunteered, Jdahya leaned toward her and asked very softly, “Shall I go?”

  She did not imagine that she was intended to miss the unspoken message of the gesture—that Jdahya was indulging a child. Lilith was tempted to accept the child’s role and ask him to come along. But he deserved a vacation from her—and she from him. Maybe he wanted to spend some time with the big, silent Tediin. How, she wondered, did these people manage their sex lives, anyway? How did the ooloi fit in? Were its two arm-sized tentacles sexual organs? Kahguyaht had not used them in eating—had kept them either coiled against its body, under its true arms or draped over its shoulders.

  She was not afraid of it, ugly as it was. So far it had inspired only disgust, anger, and dislike in her. How had Jdahya connected himself with such a creature?

  Kahguyaht led her through three walls, opening all of them by touching them with one of its large tentacles. Finally they emerged into a wide, downward-sloping, well-lighted corridor. Large numbers of Oankali walked or rode flat, slow, wheel-less conveyances that apparently floated a fraction of an inch above the floor. There were no collisions, no near-misses, yet Lilith saw no order to the traffic. People walked or drove wherever they could find an opening and apparently depended on others not to hit them. Some of the vehicles were loaded with unrecognizable freight—transparent beachball-sized blue spheres filled with some liquid, two-foot-long centipede-like animals stacked in rectangular cages, great trays of oblong, green shapes about six feet long and three feet thick. These last writhed slowly, blindly.

  “What are those?” she asked the ooloi.

  It ignored her except to take her arm and guide her where traffic was heavy. She realized abruptly that it was guiding her with the tip of one of its large tentacles.

  “What do you call these?” she asked, touching the one wrapped around her arm. Like the smaller ones it was cool and as hard as her fingernails, but clearly very flexible.

  “You can call them sensory arms,” it told her.

  “What are they for?”

  Silence.

  “Look, I thought I was supposed to be learning. I can’t learn without asking questions and getting answers.”

  “You’ll get them eventually—as you need them.”

  In anger she pulled loose from the ooloi’s grip. It was surprisingly easy to do. The ooloi did not touch her again, did not seem to notice that twice it almost lost her, made no effort to help her when they passed through a crowd and she realized she could not tell one adult ooloi from another.

  “Kahguyaht!” she said sharply.

  “Here.” It was beside her, no doubt watching, probably laughing at her confusion. Feeling manipulated, she grasped one of its true arms and stayed close to it until they had come into a corridor that was almost empty. From there they entered a corridor that was empty. Kahguyaht ran one sensory arm along the wall for several feet, then stopped, and flatted the tip of the arm against the wall.

  An opening appeared where the arm had touched and Lilith expected to be led into one more corridor or room. Instead the wall seemed to form a sphincter and pass something. There was even a sour smell to enhance the image. One of the big semitransparent green oblongs slid into view, wet and sleek.

  “It’s a plant,” the ooloi volunteered. “We store it where it can be given the kind of light it thrives best under.”

  Why couldn’t it have said that before, she wondered.

  The green oblong writhed very slowly as the others had while the ooloi probed it with both sensory arms. After a time, the ooloi paid attention only to one end. That end, it massaged with its sensory arms.

  Lilith saw that the plant was beginning to open, and suddenly she knew what was happening.

  “Sharad is in that thing, isn’t he?”

  “Come here.”

  She went over to where it had sat on the floor at the now-open end of the oblong. Sharad’s head was just becoming visible. The hair that she recalled as dull black now glistened, wet and plastered to his head. The eyes were closed and the look on the face peaceful—as though the boy were in a normal sleep. Kahguyaht had stopped the opening of the plant at the base of the boy’s throat, but she could see enough to know Sharad was only a little older than he had been when they had shared an isolation room. He looked healthy and well.

  “Will you wake him?” she asked.

  “No.” Kahguyaht touched the brown face with a sensory arm. “We won’t be Awakening these people for a while. The human who will be guiding and training them has not yet begun his own training.”

  She would have pleaded with it if she had not had two years of dealing with the Oankali to tell her just how little good pleading did. Here was the one human being she had seen in those two years, in two hundred and fifty years. And she could not talk to him, could not make him know she was with him.

  She touched his cheek, found it wet, slimy, cool. “Are you sure he’s all right?”

  “He’s fine.” The ooloi touched the plant where it had drawn aside and it began slowly to close around Sharad again. She watched the face until it was completely co
vered. The plant closed seamlessly around the small head.

  “Before we found these plants,” Kahguyaht said, “they used to capture living animals and keep them alive for a long while, using their carbon dioxide and supplying them with oxygen while slowly digesting nonessential parts of their bodies: limbs, skin, sensory organs. The plants even passed some of their own substance through their prey to nourish the prey and keep it alive as long as possible. And the plants were enriched by the prey’s waste products. They gave a very, very long death.

  Lilith swallowed. “Did the prey feel what was being done to it?”

  “No. That would have hastened death. The prey … slept.”

  Lilith stared at the green oblong, writhing slowly like an obscenely fat caterpillar. “How does Sharad breathe?”

  “The plant supplies him with an ideal mix of gasses.”

  “Not just oxygen?”

  “No. It suits its care to his needs. It still benefits from the carbon dioxide he exhales and from his rare waste products. It floats in a bath of nutrients and water. These and the light supply the rest of its needs.”

  Lilith touched the plant, found it firm and cool. It yielded slightly under her fingers. Its surface was lightly coated with slime. She watched with amazement as her fingers sank more deeply into it and it began to engulf them. She was not frightened until she tried to pull away and discovered it would not let go—and pulling back hurt sharply.

  “Wait,” Kahguyaht said. With a sensory arm, it touched the plant near her hand. At once, she felt the plant begin to let go. When she was able to raise her hand, she found it numb, but otherwise unharmed. Feeling returned to the hand slowly. The print of it was still clear on the surface of the plant when Kahguyaht first rubbed its own hands with its sensory arms, then opened the wall and pushed the plant back through it.

  “Sharad is very small,” it said when the plant was gone. “The plant could have taken you in as well.”

  She shuddered. “I was in one … wasn’t I?”

  Kahguyaht ignored the question. But of course she had been in one of the plants—had spent most of the last two and a half centuries within what was basically a carnivorous plant. And the thing had taken good care of her, kept her young and well.