Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  Nikanj closed to within about ten feet of Jean. It stopped there and waited until she saw it.

  She trembled, but did not try to cringe farther into her corner.

  “I won’t come closer,” Nikanj said softly. “Others will come to help you. You aren’t alone.”

  “But … But I am alone,” she whispered. “They’re dead. I saw them.”

  “One is dead,” Nikanj corrected, keeping its voice low.

  She hid her face in her hands and shook her head from side to side.

  “Peter is dead,” Nikanj told her, “but Tehjaht is only … injured. And you have siblings coming to help.”

  “What?”

  “They’ll help you.”

  She sat down on the floor, head down, voice muffled when she spoke. “I’ve never had any brothers or sisters. Not even before the war.”

  “Tehjaht has mates. They’ll take care of you.”

  “No. They’ll blame me … because Tehjaht is hurt.”

  “They’ll help you.” Very softly. “They’ll help both you and Tehjaht. They will help.”

  She frowned, looking more childlike than ever as she tried to understand. Then her face changed. Curt, heavily drugged, edged along the wall toward her. He kept himself comfortably far from Nikanj, but moved a little too close to Jean. She cringed back from him.

  Curt shook his head, took a step backward. “Jeanie?” he called, his heavy voice sounding too loud, sounding drunk.

  Jean jumped, but said nothing.

  Curt faced Nikanj. “She’s one of ours! We should be the ones to take care of her!”

  “It isn’t possible,” Nikanj said.

  “It should be possible! It should be! Why isn’t it?”

  “Her bonding with her ooloi is too strong, too heavily reinforced—as yours is with your ooloi. Later when the bond is more relaxed, you’ll be able to go near her again. Later. Not now.”

  “Goddammit, she needs us now!”

  “No.”

  Curt’s ooloi came up to him, took him by the arm. Curt would have pulled away, but suddenly his strength seemed to leave him. He stumbled, fell to his knees. Nearby, Lilith looked away. Curt was as unlikely to forgive any humbling as Peter had been. And he would not always be drugged. He would remember.

  Curt’s ooloi helped Curt to his feet and led him away to the room he now shared with it and with Celene. As he left, the wall opened at the far end of the room and a male and female Oankali came in.

  Nikanj gestured to the pair and they came toward it. They held on to one another, walking as though wounded, as though holding one another up. They were two when they should have been three, missing an essential part.

  The male and female made their way to Nikanj, and past it to Jean. Frightened, Jean stiffened. Then she frowned as though something had been said, and she had not quite heard.

  Lilith watched sadly, knowing that the first signals Jean received were olfactory. The male and female smelled good, smelled like family, all brought together by the same ooloi. When they took her hands, they felt right. There was a real chemical affinity.

  Jean seemed still to be afraid of the two strangers, but she was also relieved. They were what Nikanj had said they would be. People who could help. Family.

  She let them lead her into the room where Tehjaht sat frozen. No words had been spoken. Strangers of a different species had been accepted as family. A human friend and ally had been rejected.

  Lilith stood staring after Jean, hardly aware of Joseph’s coming to stand beside her. He was drugged, but the drug had only made him reckless.

  “Peter was right,” he said angrily.

  She frowned. “Peter? Right to try to kill? Right to die?”

  “He died human! And he almost managed to take one of them with him!”

  She looked at him. “So what? What’s changed? On Earth we can change things. Not here.”

  “Will we want to by then? What will we be, I wonder? Not human. Not anymore.”

  IV

  THE TRAINING FLOOR

  1

  THE TRAINING ROOM WAS brown and green and blue. Brown, muddy ground was visible through thin, scattered leaf litter. Brown, muddy water flowed past the land, glittering in the light of what seemed to be the sun. The water was too laden with sediment to appear blue, though above it, the ceiling—the sky—was a deep, intense blue. There was no smoke, no smog, only a few clouds—remains of a recent rain.

  Across the wide river, there was the illusion of a line of trees on the opposite bank. A line of green. Away from the river, the predominant color was green. Above was the very real green canopy—trees of all sizes, many burdened with a profusion of other life: bromeliads, orchids, ferns, mosses, lichens, lianas, parasitic vines, plus a generous complement of insect life and a few frogs, lizards, and snakes.

  One of the first things Lilith had learned during her own earlier training period was not to lean against the trees.

  There were few flowers, and those mainly bromeliads and orchids, high in the trees. On the ground, a colorful stationary object was likely to be a leaf or some kind of fungus. Green was everywhere. The undergrowth was thin enough to walk through without difficulty except near the river where in some places a machete was essential—and not yet permitted.

  “Tools will come later,” Nikanj told Lilith. “Let the humans get used to being here now. Let them explore and see for themselves that they are in a forest on an island. Let them begin to feel what it’s like to live here.” It hesitated. “Let them settle more firmly into their places with their ooloi. They can tolerate one another now. Let them learn that it isn’t shameful to be together with one another and with us.”

  It had gone with Lilith to the riverbank at a place where a great piece of earth had been undercut and had fallen into the river, taking several trees and much undergrowth with it. There was no trouble here in reaching the water, though there was a sharp drop of about ten feet. At the edge of the drop was one of the giants of the island—a huge tree with buttresses that swept well over Lilith’s head and, like walls, separated the surrounding land into individual rooms. In spite of the great variety of life that the tree supported, Lilith stood between a pair of buttresses, two-thirds enclosed by the tree. She felt enveloped in a solidly Earthly thing. A thing that would soon be undercut as its neighbors had been, that would soon fall into the river and die.

  “They’ll cut the trees down, you know,” she said softly. “They’ll make boats or rafts. They think they’re on Earth.”

  “Some of them believe otherwise,” Nikanj told her. “They believe because you do.”

  “That won’t stop the boat building.”

  “No. We won’t try to stop it. Let them row their boats to the walls and back. There’s no way out for them except the way we offer: to learn to feed and shelter themselves in this environment—to become self-sustaining. When they’ve done that, we’ll take them to Earth and let them go.”

  It knew they would run, she thought. It must know. Yet it talked about mixed settlements, human and Oankali—trade-partner settlements within which ooloi would control the fertility and “mix” the children of both groups.

  She looked up at the sloping, wedge-shaped buttresses. Semi-enclosed as she was, she could not see Nikanj or the river. There was only brown and green forest—the illusion of wilderness and isolation.

  Nikanj left her the illusion for a while. It said nothing, made no sound. Her feet tired and she looked around for something to sit on. She did not want to go back to the others any sooner than she had to. They could tolerate one another again now; the most difficult phase of their bonding was over. There was very little drugging still going on. Curt and Gabriel were still drugged along with a few others. Lilith worried about these. Oddly, she also admired them for being able to resist conditioning. Were they strong, then? Or simply unable to adapt?

  “Lilith?” Nikanj said softly.

  She did not answer.

  “Let’s go back.”


  She had found a dry, thick liana root to sit on. It hung like a swing, dropping down from the canopy, then curving upward again to lock itself into the branches of a nearby smaller tree before dropping to the ground and digging in. The root was thicker than some trees and the few insects on it looked harmless. It was an uncomfortable seat—twisted and hard—but Lilith was not yet ready to leave it.

  “What will you do with the humans who can’t adapt?” she asked.

  “If they aren’t violent, we’ll take them to Earth with the rest of you.” Nikanj came around the buttress, destroying her sense of solitude and home. Nothing that looked and moved as Nikanj did could come from home. She got up wearily and walked with it.

  “Have the ants bitten you?” it asked.

  She shook her head. It did not like her to conceal small injuries. It considered her health very much its business, and looked after her insect bites—especially her mosquito bites—at the end of each day. She thought it would have been easier to have left the mosquitoes out of this small simulation of Earth. But Oankali did not think that way. A simulation of a tropical forest of Earth had to be complete with snakes, centipedes, mosquitoes and other things Lilith would have preferred to live without. Why should the Oankali worry, she thought cynically. Nothing bit them.

  “There are so few of you,” Nikanj said as they walked. “No one wants to give up on any of you.”

  She had to think back to realize what it was talking about.

  “Some of us thought we should hold off bonding with you until you were brought here,” it told her. “Here it would have been easier for you to band together, become a family.”

  Lilith glanced at it uneasily, but said nothing. Families had children. Was Nikanj saying children should be conceived and born here?

  “But most of us couldn’t wait,” it continued. It wrapped a sensory arm around her neck loosely. “It might be better for both our peoples if we were not so strongly drawn to you.”

  2

  TOOLS, WHEN THEY WERE finally handed out, were waterproof tarpaulins, machetes, axes, shovels, hoes, metal pots, rope, hammocks, baskets, and mats. Lilith spoke privately with each of the most dangerous humans before they were given their tools.

  One more try, she thought wearily.

  “I don’t care what you think of me,” she told Curt. “You’re the kind of man the human race is going to need down on Earth. That’s why I woke you. I want you to live to get down there.” She hesitated. “Don’t go Peter’s way, Curt.”

  He stared at her. Only recently free of the drug, only recently capable of violence, he stared.

  “Make him sleep again!” Lilith told Nikanj. “Let him forget! Don’t give him a machete and wait for him to use it on someone.”

  “Yahjahyi thinks he’ll be all right,” Nikanj said. Yahjahyi was Curt’s ooloi.

  “Does it?” Lilith said. “What did Peter’s ooloi think?”

  “It never told anyone what it thought. As a result, no one realized it was in trouble. Incredible behavior. I said it would be better if we weren’t so drawn to you.”

  She shook her head. “If Yahjahyi thinks Curt is all right, it’s deluding itself.”

  “We’ve observed Curt and Yahjahyi,” Nikanj said. “Curt will go through a dangerous time now, but Yahjahyi is ready. Even Celene is ready.”

  “Celene!” Lilith said with contempt.

  “You did a good job matching them. Much better than with Peter and Jean.”

  “I didn’t match Peter and Jean. Their own temperaments did—like fire and gasoline.”

  “… yes. Anyway, Celene is not ready to lose another mate. She’ll hold on to him. And Curt, since he sees her as much more vulnerable than she is, will have good reason not to risk himself, not to chance leaving her alone. They’ll be all right.”

  “They won’t,” Gabriel told her later. He too was free of the drug, finally, but he was handling it better. Kahguyaht, who had been so eager to push Lilith, coerce her, ridicule her, seemed to be infinitely patient with Tate and Gabriel.

  “Look at things from Curt’s point of view,” Gabriel said. “He’s not in control even of what his own body does and feels. He’s taken like a woman and. … No, don’t explain!” He held up his hand to stop her from interrupting. “He knows the ooloi aren’t male. He knows all the sex that goes on is in his head. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter! Someone else is pushing all his buttons. He can’t let them get away with that.”

  Honestly frightened, Lilith asked, “How have you … made your peace with it?”

  “Who says I have?”

  She stared at him. “Gabe, we can’t lose you, too.”

  He smiled. Beautiful, perfect, white teeth. They made her think of some predator. “I don’t take the next step,” he said, “until I see where I’m standing now. You know I still don’t believe this isn’t Earth.”

  “I know.”

  “A tropical forest in a space ship. Who’d believe that?”

  “But the Oankali. You can see that they’re not of Earth.”

  “Sure. But they’re here now on what sure looks, sounds, and smells like Earth.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “So you say. Sooner or later I’ll find out for myself.”

  “Kahguyaht could show you things that would make you sure now. They might even convince Curt.”

  “Nothing will convince Curt. Nothing will reach him.”

  “You think he’ll do what Peter did?”

  “Much more efficiently.”

  “Oh god. Did you know they put Jean back into suspended animation? She won’t even remember Peter when she wakes up.”

  “I heard. That will make it easier on her when they put her with another guy, I guess.”

  “Is that what you would want for Tate?”

  He shrugged, turned, and walked away.

  3

  LILITH TAUGHT ALL THE humans to make thatch shingles and place them in overlapping rows on rafters so that they would not leak. She showed them the best trees to cut for flooring and frame. They all worked several days to construct a large thatch-roofed cabin on stilts, well above the river’s high-water mark. The cabin was a twin to the one they had all squeezed into so far—the one Lilith and the ooloi had constructed when the ooloi brought them all through the miles of corridors to the training room.

  The ooloi left this second construction strictly to the humans. They watched or sat talking among themselves or disappeared on errands of their own. But when the work was finished they brought in a small feast to celebrate.

  “We won’t provide food for much longer,” one of them told the group. “You’ll learn to live on what grows here and to cultivate gardens.”

  No one was surprised. They had already been cutting hands of green bananas from existing trees and hanging them from beams or from the porch railing. As the bananas ripened, the humans discovered they had to compete with the insects for them.

  A few people had also been cutting pineapples and picking papayas and breadfruits from existing trees. Most people did not like the breadfruit until Lilith showed them the seeded form of the fruit, the breadnut. When they roasted the seeds as she instructed and ate them, they realized they had been eating them all along back in the great room.

  They had pulled sweet cassava from the ground and dug up the yams Lilith had planted during her own training.

  Now it was time for them to begin planting their own crops.

  And, perhaps, now it was time for the Oankali to begin to see what they would harvest in their human crop.

  Two men and a woman took their allotted tools and vanished into the forest. They did not really know enough yet to be on their own, but they were gone. Their ooloi did not go after them.

  The group of ooloi put their head tentacles and sensory arms together for a moment and seemed to come to a very fast agreement: None of them would pay any attention to the three missing people.

  “No one has escaped,” Nikanj told Josep
h and Lilith when they asked what would be done. “The missing people are still on the island. They’re being watched.”

  “Watched through all these trees?” Joseph demanded.

  “The ship is keeping track of them. If they’re hurt, they’ll be taken care of.”

  Other humans left the settlement. As the days passed, some of their ooloi seemed acutely uncomfortable. They kept to themselves, sat rock still, their head and body tentacles drawn into thick, dark lumps that looked, as Leah said, like grotesque tumors. These ooloi could be shouted at, rained on, tripped over. They never moved. When their head tentacles ceased to follow the movements of those around them, their mates arrived to tend them.

  Male and female Oankali came out of the forest and took charge of their particular ooloi. Lilith never saw any of them called, but she saw one pair arrive.

  She had gone alone to a place on the river where there was a heavily laden breadnut tree. She had climbed the tree, not only to get the fruit, but to enjoy the solitude and the beauty of the tree. She had never been much of a climber even as a child, but during her training, she had developed climbing skill and confidence—and a love of being so close to something so much of Earth.

  From the tree, she saw two Oankali come out of the water. They did not seem to swim in toward land, but simply stood up near shore and walked in. Both focused on her for a moment, then headed inland toward the settlement.

  She had watched them in utter silence, but they had known she was there. One more male and female, come to rescue a sick, abandoned ooloi.

  Would it give the humans a feeling of power to know that they could make their ooloi feel sick and abandoned? Ooloi did not endure well when bereft of all those who carried their particular scent, their particular chemical marker. They lived. Metabolisms slowed, they retreated deep within themselves until called back by their families or, less satisfactorily, by another ooloi behaving as a kind of physician. So why didn’t they go to their mates when their humans left? Why did they stay and get sick?

  Lilith walked back to the settlement, a long crude basket filled with breadnuts on her back. She found the male and female ministering to their ooloi holding it between them and entangling its head and body tentacles with their own. Wherever the three touched, tentacles joined them. It was an intimate, vulnerable position, and other ooloi lounged nearby, guarding without seeming to guard. There were also a few humans watching. Lilith looked around the settlement, wondering how many of the humans not present would not come back from their day of wandering or food gathering. Did those who left come together on some other part of the island? Had they built a shelter? Were they building a boat? A wild thought struck her: What if they were right? What if they somehow were on Earth? What if it were possible to row a boat to freedom? What if, in spite of all she had seen and felt, this was some kind of hoax? How would it be perpetrated? Why would it be perpetrated? Why would the Oankali go to so much trouble?