Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  “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 left 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.”

  “I 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 outsold 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 …”

  Leah’s charge, a small blond man, grabbed her, hung on, and might have raped her if he had been bigger or she smaller. She stopped him from doing any harm, but Gabriel had to help her get him off. She was surprisingly tolerant of the man’s efforts. She seemed more amused than angry.

  Nothing the new people did for the first few minutes was taken seriously or held against them. Leah’s attacker was simply held until he stopped trying to get to her, until he grew quiet and began to look around at the many human faces, until he began to cry.

  The man’s name was Wray Ordway and a few days after his Awakening, he was sleeping with Leah with her full consent.

  Two days after that, Peter Van Weerden and six followers seized Lilith and held her while a seventh follower, Derrick Wolski, swept a dozen or so leftover biscuits out of one of the food cabinets and climbed into it before it could close.

  When Lilith realized what Derrick was doing she stopped struggling. There was no need to hurt anyone. The Oankali would take care of Derrick.

  “What does he think he’s going to do?” she asked Curt. He had taken part in holding her, though, of course Celene had not. He still held one of her arms.

  Watching him, she shook the others off. Now that Derrick was gone from sight, they did not try hard to hold her. She knew now that if she had been willing to hurt or kill them, they could not have held her. She was not stronger than all six combined, but she was stronger than any two. And faster than any of them. The knowledge was not as comforting as it should have been.

  “What’s he supposed to be doing?” she repeated.

  Curt released the arm she had left in his hands. “Finding out what’s really going on,” he said. “There are people refilling those cabinets and we intend to find out who they are. We want to get a look at them before they’re ready to be seen—before they’re ready to convince us they’re Martians.”

  She sighed. He had been told that the cabinets refilled automatically. Just one more thing he had decided not to believe. “They’re not Martians,” she said.

  He crooked his mouth in something less than a smile. “I knew that. I never believed your fairy tales.”

  “They’re from another solar system,” she said. “I don’t know which one. It doesn’t matter. They left it so long ago, they don’t even know whether it still exists.”

  He cursed her and turned away.

  “What’s going to happen?” another voice asked.

  Lilith looked around, saw Celene, and sighed. Wherever Curt was, Celene was trembling nearby. Lilith had matched them as well as Nikanj had matched her with Joseph. “I don’t know,” she said. “The Oankali won’t let him get hurt, but I don’t know whether they’ll put him back in here.”

  Joseph strode up to her, obviously concerned. Someone had apparently gone to his room and told him what was going on.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Derrick has gone out to look at the Oankali.” She shrugged at his look of alarm. “I hope they send him back—or bring him back. These people are going to have to see for themselves.”

  “That could start a panic!” he whispered.

  “I don’t care. They’ll recover. But if they keep doing stupid things like this, they’ll eventually manage to hurt themselves.”

  Derrick was not sent back.

  Eventually even Peter and Jean did not object when Lilith went to the wall and opened the cabinet to prove that Derrick had not asphyxiated inside. She had to open every cabinet in the general area of the one he had used because most of the others could not locate the individual cabinet on the broad, unmarked expanse of wall. Lilith had at first been surprised at her own ability to locate each one easily and exactly. Once she found them the first time she remembered their distance from floor and ceiling, from right and left walls. Some people, since they could not do this themselves, found the ability suspicious.

  Some people found everything about her suspicious.

  “What happened to Derrick!” Jean Pelerin demanded.

  “He did something stupid,” Lilith told her. “And while he was doing it, you helped hold me so that I couldn’t stop him.”

  Jean drew back a little, spoke louder. “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Liar!” The volume increased again. “What did your friends do to him? Kill him?”

  “What ever happened to him, you’re partly to blame,” Lilith said. “Handle your own guilt.” She looked around at other equally guilty, equally accusing faces. Jean never made her complaints privately. She needed an audience.

  Lilith turned and went to her room. She was about to seal herself in when Tate and Joseph joined her. A moment later, Gabriel followed them in. He sat on the corner of Lilith’s table and fa
ced her.

  “You’re losing,” he said flatly.

  “You’re losing,” she countered. “If I lose, everyone loses.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “If you have an idea, I’ll listen.”

  “Give them a better show. Get your friends to help you impress them.”

  “My friends?”

  “Look, I don’t care. You say they’re extraterrestrials. Okay. They’re extraterrestrials. What the hell are they going to gain if those assholes out there kill you?”

  “I agreed. I was hoping they would send or bring Derrick back. They might still. But their timing is terrible.”

  “Joe says you can talk to them.”

  She turned to stare at Joseph in betrayal and surprise.

  “Your enemies are gathering allies,” he said. “Why should you be alone?”

  She looked at Tate and the woman shrugged. “Those people out there are assholes,” she said. “If they had a brain between them they’d shut up and open their eyes and ears until they had some idea what was really going on.”

  “That’s all I hoped for,” Lilith said. “I didn’t expect it, but I hoped for it.”

  “Those are frightened people looking for someone to save them,” Gabriel said. “They don’t want reason or logic or your hopes or expectations. They want Moses or somebody to come and lead them into lives they can understand.”

  “Van Weerden can’t do that,” Lilith said.

  “Of course he can’t. But right now they think he can, and they’re following. Next, he’ll tell them the only way to get out of here is to knock you around until you tell all your secrets. He’ll say you know the way out. And by the time it’s clear that you don’t, you’ll be dead.”

  Would she? He had no idea how long it would take to torture her to death. Her and Joseph. She looked at him bleakly.

  “Victor Dominic,” Joseph said. “And Leah and that guy she’s picked up and Beatrice Dwyer and—”

  “Potential allies?” Lilith asked.

  “Yes, and we’d better hurry. I saw Beatrice with one of the guys from the other side this morning.”