Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  “No. It will be done our way. Not yours.”

  “It ought to be done the way that works. But what the hell. You want to spend two or three times as long teaching me, you go right ahead.”

  “I don’t.”

  She shrugged, not caring whether it missed the gesture or failed to understand it.

  “Ooan was upset with me, Lilith, not with you.”

  “But because of me. Because I’m not learning fast enough.”

  “No. Because … because I’m not teaching you as it thinks I should. It fears for me.”

  “Fears … ? Why?”

  “Come here. Sit here. I will tell you.”

  After a time, she shrugged again and went to sit beside it.

  “I’m growing up,” it told her. “Ooan wants me to hurry with you so that you can be given your work and I can mate.”

  “You mean … the faster I learn, the sooner you mate?”

  “Yes. Until I have taught you, shown that I can teach you, I won’t be considered ready to mate.”

  There it was. She was not just its experimental animal. She was, in some way she did not fully understand, its final exam. She sighed and shook her head. “Did you ask for me Nikanj, or did we just get dumped on one another?”

  It said nothing. It doubled one of its arms backward in a way natural to it, but still startling to Lilith, and rubbed its armpit. She tilted her head to one side to examine the place it was rubbing.

  “Do you grow the sensory arms after you’ve mated or before?” she asked.

  “They will come soon whether I mate or not.”

  “Should they grow in after you’re mated?”

  “Mates like them to come in afterward. Males and females mature more quickly than ooloi. They like to feel that they have … how do you say? Helped their ooloi out of childhood.”

  “Helped raise them,” Lilith said, “or helped rear them.”

  “… rear?”

  “The word has multiple meanings.”

  “Oh. There’s no logic to such things.”

  “There probably is, but you’d need an etymologist to explain it. Is there going to be trouble between you and your mates?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. I’ll go to them when I can. I’ve told them that.” It paused. “Now I must tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “Ooan wanted me to act and say nothing … to … surprise you. I won’t do that.”

  “What!”

  “I must make small changes—a few small changes. I must help you reach your memories as you need them.”

  “What do you mean? What is it you want to change?”

  “Very small things. In the end, there will be a tiny alteration in your brain chemistry.”

  She touched her forehead in an unconsciously protective gesture. “Brain chemistry?” she whispered.

  “I would like to wait, do it when I’m mature. I could make it pleasurable for you then. It should be pleasurable. But Ooan … I understand what it feels. It says I have to change you now.”

  “I don’t want to be changed!”

  “You would sleep through it the way you did when Ooan Jdahya corrected your tumor.”

  “Ooan Jdahya? Jdahya’s ooloi parent did that? Not Kahguyaht?”

  “Yes. It was done before my parents were mated.”

  “Good.” No reason at all to be grateful to Kahguyaht.

  “Lilith?” Nikanj laid a many-fingered hand—a sixteen-fingered hand—on her arm. “It will be like this. A touch. Then a … a small puncture. That’s all you’ll feel. When you wake up the change will be made.”

  “I don’t want to be changed!”

  There was a long silence. Finally it said, “Are you afraid?”

  “I don’t have a disease! Forgetting things is normal for most humans! I don’t need anything done to my brain!”

  “Would it be so bad to remember better? To remember the way Sharad did—the way I do?”

  “What’s frightening is the idea of being tampered with.” She drew a deep breath. “Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain. I don’t want—”

  “Who you are won’t be changed. I’m not old enough to make the experience pleasant for you, but I’m old enough to function as an ooloi in this way. If I were unfit, others would have noticed by now.”

  “If everyone’s so sure you’re fit, why do you have to test yourself with me?”

  It refused to answer, remained silent for several minutes. When it tried to pull her down beside it, she broke away and got up, paced around the room. Its head tentacles followed her with more than their usual lazy sweep. They kept sharply pointed at her and eventually she fled to the bathroom to end the staring.

  There, she sat on the floor, arms folded, hands clutching her forearms.

  What would happen now? Would Nikanj follow orders and surprise her sometime when she was asleep? Would it turn her over to Kahguyaht? Or would they both—please heaven—let her alone!

  6

  SHE HAD NO IDEA how much time passed. She found herself thinking of Sam and Ayre, her husband and son, both taken from her before the Oankali, before the war, before she realized how easily her life—any human life—could be destroyed.

  There had been a carnival—a cheap little vacant-lot carnival with rides and noise and scabby ponies. Sam had decided to take Ayre to see it while Lilith spent time with her pregnant sister. It had been an ordinary Saturday on a broad, dry street in bright sunshine. A young girl, just learning to drive, had rammed head-on into Sam’s car. She had swerved to the wrong side of the road, had perhaps somehow lost control of the car she was driving. She’d had only a learner’s permit and was not supposed to drive alone. She died for her mistake. Ayre died—was dead when the ambulance arrived, though paramedics tried to revive him.

  Sam only half died.

  He had head injuries—brain damage. It took him three months to finish what the accident had begun. Three months to die.

  He was conscious some of the time—more or less—but he did not know anyone. His parents came from New York to be with him. They were Nigerians who had lived in the United States long enough for their son to be born and grow up there. Still, they had not been pleased at his marriage to Lilith. They had let Sam grow up as an American, but had sent him to visit their families in Lagos when they could. They had hoped he would marry a Yoruban girl. They had never seen their grandchild. Now they never would.

  And Sam did not know them.

  He was their only son, but he stared through them as he stared through Lilith, his eyes empty of recognition, empty of him. Sometimes Lilith sat alone with him, touched him, gained the empty attention of those eyes briefly. But the man himself had already gone. Perhaps he was with Ayre, or caught between her and Ayre—between this world and the next.

  Or was he aware, but isolated in some part of his mind that could not make contact with anyone outside—trapped in the narrowest, most absolute solitary confinement—until, mercifully, his heart stopped.

  That was brain damage—one form of brain damage. There were other forms, many worse. She saw them in the hospital over the months of Sam’s dying.

  He was lucky to have died so quickly.

  She had never dared speak that thought aloud. It had come to her even as she wept for him. It came to her again now. He was lucky to have died so quickly.

  Would she be equally lucky?

  If the Oankali damaged her brain, would they have the decency to let her die—or would they keep her alive, a prisoner, permanently locked away in that ultimate solitary confinement?

  She became aware abruptly that Nikanj had come into the bathroom silently and sat down opposite her. It had never intruded on her this way before. She stared at it, outraged.

  “It isn’t my ability to cope with your physiology that anyone questions,” it said softly. “If I couldn’t do that, my defects would have been noticed long ago.”

  “Get out of here!” she shouted. “
Get away from me!”

  It did not move. It continued to speak in the same soft voice. “Ooan says humans won’t be worth talking to for at least a generation.” Its tentacles writhed. “I don’t know how to be with someone I can’t talk to.”

  “Brain damage isn’t going to improve my conversation,” she said bitterly.

  “I would rather damage my own brain than yours. I won’t damage either.” It hesitated. “You know you must accept me or Ooan.”

  She said nothing.

  “Ooan is an adult. It can give you pleasure. And it is not as … as angry as it seems.”

  “I’m not looking for pleasure. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I just want to be let alone.”

  “Yes. But you must trust me or let Ooan surprise you when it’s tired of waiting.”

  “You won’t do that yourself—won’t just spring it on me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s something wrong with doing it that way—surprising people. It’s … treating them as though they aren’t people, as though they aren’t intelligent.”

  Lilith laughed bitterly. “Why should you suddenly start to worry about that?”

  “Do you want me to surprise you?”

  “Of course not!”

  Silence.

  After a while, she got up and went to the bed platform. She lay down and eventually managed to fall asleep.

  She dreamed of Sam and awoke in a cold sweat. Empty, empty eyes. Her head ached. Nikanj had stretched out beside her as usual. It looked limp and dead. How would it be to awaken with Kahguyaht there instead, lying beside her like a grotesque lover instead of an unhappy child? She shuddered, fear and disgust almost overwhelming her. She lay still for several minutes, calming herself, forcing herself to make a decision, then to act on it before fear could silence her.

  “Wake up!” she said harshly to Nikanj. The raw sound of her own voice startled her. “Wake up and do whatever it is you claim you have to do. Get it over with.”

  Nikanj sat up instantly, rolled her over onto her side and pulled away the jacket she had been sleeping in to expose her back and neck. Before she could complain or change her mind, it began.

  On the back of her neck, she felt the promised touch, a harder pressure, then the puncture. It hurt more than she had expected, but the pain ended quickly. For a few seconds she drifted in painless semiconsciousness.

  Then there were confused memories, dreams, finally nothing.

  7

  WHEN SHE AWOKE, AT ease and only mildly confused, she found herself fully clothed and alone. She lay still, wondering what Nikanj had done to her. Was she changed? How? Had it finished with her? She could not move at first, but by the time this penetrated her confusion, she found the paralysis wearing off. She was able to use her muscles again. She sat up carefully just in time to see Nikanj coming through a wall.

  Its gray skin was as smooth as polished marble as it climbed onto the bed beside her. “You’re so complex,” it said, taking both her hands. It did not point its head tentacles at her in the usual way, but placed its head close to hers and touched her with them. Then it sat back, pointing at her. It occurred to her distantly that this behavior was unusual and should have alarmed her. She frowned and tried to feel alarmed.

  “You’re filled with so much life and death and potential for change,” Nikanj continued. “I understand now why some people took so long to get over their fear of your kind.”

  She focused on it. “Maybe it’s because I’m still drugged out of my mind, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes. You’ll never really know. But when I’m mature, I’ll try to show you a little.” It brought its head close to hers again and touched her face and burrowed into her hair with its tentacles.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, still not really disturbed.

  “Making sure you’re all right. I don’t like what I had to do to you.”

  “What did you do? I don’t feel any different—except a little high.”

  “You understand me.”

  It dawned on her slowly that Nikanj had come to her speaking Oankali and she had responded in kind—had responded without really thinking. The language seemed natural to her, as easy to understand as English. She remembered all that she had been taught, all that she had picked up on her own. It was even easy for her to spot the gaps in her knowledge—words and expressions she knew in English, but could not translate into Oankali; bits of Oankali grammar that she had not really understood; certain Oankali words that had no English translation, but whose meaning she had grasped.

  Now she was alarmed, pleased, and frightened. … She stood slowly, testing her legs, finding them unsteady, but functional. She tried to clear the fog from her mind so that she could examine herself and trust her findings.

  “I’m glad the family decided to put the two of us together,” Nikanj was saying. “I didn’t want to work with you. I tried to get out of it. I was afraid. All I could think of was how easy it would be for me to fail and perhaps damage you.”

  “You mean … you mean you weren’t sure of what you were doing just now?”

  “That? Of course I was sure. And your ‘just now’ took a long time. Much longer than you usually sleep.”

  “But what did you mean about failing—”

  “I was afraid I could never convince you to trust me enough to let me show you what I could do—show you that I wouldn’t hurt you. I was afraid I would make you hate me. For an ooloi to do that … it would be very bad. Worse than I can tell you.”

  “But Kahguyaht doesn’t think so.”

  “Ooan says humans—any new trade partner species—can’t be treated the way we must treat each other. It’s right up to a point. I just think it goes too far. We were bred to work with you. We’re Dinso. We should be able to find ways through most of our differences.”

  “Coercion,” she said bitterly. “That’s the way you’ve found.”

  “No. Ooan would have done that. I couldn’t have. I would have gone to Ahajas and Dichaan and refused to mate with them. I would have looked for mates among the Akjai since they’ll have no direct contact with humans.”

  It smoothed its tentacles again. “But now when I go to Ahajas and Dichaan, it will be to mate—and you’ll go with me. We’ll send you to your work when you’re ready. And you’ll be able to help me through my final metamorphosis.” It rubbed its armpit. “Will you help?”

  She looked away from it. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just stay with me. There will be times when having Ahajas and Dichaan near me would be tormenting. I would be … sexually stimulated, and unable to do anything about it. Very stimulated. You can’t do that to me. Your scent, your touch is different, neutral.”

  Thank god, she thought.

  “It would be bad for me to be alone while I change. We need others close to us, more at that time than at any other.”

  She wondered what it would look like with its second pair of arms, what it would be like as a mature being. More like Kahguyaht? Or maybe more like Jdahya and Tediin. How much did sex determine personality among the Oankali? She shook her head. Stupid question. She did not know how much sex determined personality even among human beings.

  “The arms,” she said, “they’re sexual organs, aren’t they?”

  “No,” Nikanj told her. “They protect sexual organs: the sensory hands.”

  “But …” She frowned. “Kahguyaht doesn’t have anything like a hand at the end of its sensory arms.” In fact, it had nothing at all at the end of its sensory arms. There was only a blunt cap of hard, cool skin—like a large callus.

  “The hand is inside. Ooan will show you if you ask.”

  “Never mind.”

  It smoothed. “I’ll show you myself—when I have something to show. Will you stay with me while they grow?”

  Where else was she going? “Yes. Just make sure I know anything I might need to know abou
t you and them before they start.”

  “Yes. I’ll sleep most of the time, but still, I’ll need someone there. If you’re there, I’ll know and I’ll be all right. You … you might have to feed me.”

  “That’s all right.” There was nothing unusual about the way Oankali ate. Not on the surface, anyway. Several of their front teeth were pointed, but their size was well within the human range. She had, twice, on her walks, seen Oankali females extend their tongues all the way down to their throat orifices, but normally, the long gray tongues were kept inside the mouths and used as humans used tongues.

  Nikanj made a sound of relief—a rubbing together of body tentacles in a way that sounded like stiff paper being crumpled. “Good,” it said. “Mates know what we feel when they stay near us, they know the frustration. Sometimes they think it’s funny.”

  Lilith was surprised to find herself smiling. “It is, sort of.”

  “Only for the tormentors. With you there, they’ll torment me less. But before all that …” It stopped, aimed a loose point at her. “Before that, I’ll try to find an English-speaking human for you. One as much like you as possible. Ooan will not stand in the way of your meeting one now.”

  8

  A DAY, LILITH HAD decided long ago, was what her body said it was. Now it became what her newly improved memory said it was as well. A day was long activity, then long sleep. And now, she remembered every day that she had been awake. And she counted the days as Nikanj searched for an English-speaking human for her. It went alone to interview several. Nothing she said could induce it to take her along or at least tell her about the people it had talked to.

  Finally Kahguyaht found someone. Nikanj had a look, then accepted its parent’s judgment. “It will be one of the humans who has chosen to stay here,” Nikanj told her.

  She had expected that from what Kahguyaht had said earlier. It was still hard to believe, though. “Is it a man or a woman?” she asked.

  “Male. A man.”

  “How … how could he not want to go home?”