Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  Tate showed Akin the house where he was to sleep—a house filled with mats and hammocks, cluttered with small objects the salvagers had dug up, and distinguished by a large, cast-iron woodstove. It made the one in Tate’s kitchen seem child-sized.

  “Stay away from that,” Tate said. “Even when it’s cold. Make a habit of staying away from it, you hear?”

  “All right. I wouldn’t touch anything hot by accident, though. And I’m finally too old to poison, so—”

  “You just poisoned yourself!”

  “No. I was careless, and it hurt, but I wouldn’t have gotten very sick or died. It was like when you hit your toe and stumbled on the trail. It didn’t mean you don’t know how to walk. You were just careless.”

  “Yeah. That may or may not be a good analogy. You stay away from the stove anyway. You want something to eat or has everyone already stuffed you with food?”

  “I’ll have to get rid of some of what I’ve already eaten so that I can eat some more protein.”

  “Want to eat with us or would you rather go out and eat leaves?”

  “I’d rather go out and eat leaves.”

  She frowned at him for a second, then began to laugh. “Go,” she said. “And be careful.”

  17

  NECI ROYBAL WANTED ONE of the girls. And she had not given up the idea of having both girls’ tentacles removed. She had begun again to campaign for that among the salvagers. The tentacles looked more like slugs than worms most of the time, she said. It was criminal to allow little girls to be afflicted with such things. Girl children who might someday be the mothers of a new Human race ought to look Human—ought to see Human features when they looked in the mirror …

  “They’re not Oankali,” Akin heard her tell Abira one night. “What happened to the man Tate and Gabe knew—that might only happen with Oankali.”

  “Neci,” Abira told her, “if you go near those kids with a knife, and they don’t finish you, I will.”

  Others were more receptive. A pair of salvagers named Senn converted quickly to Neci’s point of view. Akin spent much of his third night at the salvage camp lying in Abira’s hammock, listening as in the next house Neci and Gilbert and Anne Senn strove to convert Yori Shinizu and Sabina Dobrowski. Yori, the doctor, was obviously the person they hoped would remove the girls’ tentacles.

  “It’s not just the way the tentacles look,” Gil said in his soft voice. Everyone called him Gil. He had a soft, ooloilike voice. “Yes, they are ugly, but it’s what they represent that’s important. They’re alien. Un-Human. How can little girls grow up to be Human women when their own sense organs betray them?”

  “What about the boy?” Yori asked. “He has the same alien senses, but they’re located in his tongue. We couldn’t remove that.”

  “No,” Anne said, soft-voiced like her husband. She looked and sounded enough like him to be his sister, but Humans did not marry their siblings, and these two had been married before the war. They had come from a place called Switzerland and had been visiting a place called Kenya when the war happened. They had gone to look at huge, fabulous animals, now extinct. In her spare time, Anne painted pictures of the animals on cloth or paper or wood. Giraffes, she called them, lions, elephants, cheetahs … She had already shown Akin some of her work. She seemed to like him.

  “No,” she repeated. “But the boy must be taught as any child should be taught. It’s wrong to let him always put things into his mouth. It’s wrong to let him eat grass and leaves like a cow. It’s wrong to let him lick people. Tate says he calls it tasting them. It’s disgusting.”

  “She lets him give in to any alien impulse,” Neci said. “She had no children before. I heard there was some sickness in her family so that she didn’t dare have children. She doesn’t know how to care for them.”

  “The boy loves her,” Yori said.

  “Because she spoils him,” Neci said. “But he’s young. He can learn to love other people.”

  “You?” Gil asked.

  “Why not me! I had two children before the war. I know how to bring them up.”

  “We also had two,” Anne said. “Two little girls.” She gave a low laugh. “Shkaht and Amma look nothing like them, but I would give anything to make one of those girls my daughter.”

  “With or without tentacles?” Sabina said.

  “If Yori would do it, I would want them removed.”

  “I don’t know whether I’d do it,” Yori said. “I don’t believe Tate was lying about what she saw.”

  “But what she saw was between a Human and an adult Oankali,” Anne said. “These are children. Almost babies. And they’re almost Human.”

  “They look almost Human,” Sabina put in. “We don’t know what they really are.”

  “Children,” Anne said. “They’re children.”

  Silence.

  “It should be done,” Neci said. “Everyone knows it should be done. We don’t know how to do it yet, but, Yori, you should be finding out how. You should study them. You came along to guard their health. Doesn’t that mean you should spend time with them, get to know more about them?”

  “That won’t help,” Yori said. “I already know they’re venomous. Perhaps I could protect myself, and perhaps I couldn’t. But … this is cosmetic surgery, Neci. Unnecessary. And I’m no surgeon anyway. Why should we risk the girls’ health and my life just because they have what amounts to ugly birthmarks? Tate says the tentacles grow back, anyway.” She drew a deep breath. “No, I won’t do it. I wasn’t sure before, but I am now. I won’t do it.”

  Silence. Sounds of moving about, someone walking—Yori’s short, light steps. Sound of a door being opened.

  “Good night,” Yori said.

  No one wished her a good night.

  “It’s not that complicated,” Neci said moments later. “Especially not with Amma. She has so few tentacles—eight or ten—and they’re so small. Anyone could do it—with gloves for protection.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Anne said. “I couldn’t use a knife on anyone.”

  “I could,” Gil said. “But …if only they weren’t such little girls.”

  “Is there any liquor here?” Neci asked. “Even that foul cassava stuff the wanderers drink would do.”

  “We make the corn whiskey here, too,” Gil said. “There’s always plenty. Too much.”

  “So we give it to the girls and then do it.”

  “I don’t know,” Sabina said. “They’re so young. And if they get sick …”

  “Yori will care for them if they get sick. She’ll care for them, even if she doesn’t like what we’ve done. And it will be done, as it should be.”

  “But—”

  “It must be done! We must raise Human children, not aliens who don’t even understand how we see things.”

  Silence.

  “Tomorrow, Gil? Can it be done tomorrow?”

  “I … don’t know”

  “We can collect the kids when they’re out eating plants. No one will notice for a while that they’re gone. Sabina, you’ll get the liquor, won’t you?”

  “Are there very sharp knives here? It should be done quickly and cleanly. And we’ll need clean cloths for bandages, gloves for all of us, just in case, and that antiseptic Yori has. I’ll get that. There probably won’t be any infection, but we won’t take chances.” She stopped abruptly, then spoke one word harshly. “Tomorrow!”

  Silence.

  Akin got up, managed to struggle out of the hammock. Abira awoke, but only mumbled something and went back to sleep. Akin headed toward the next room where Amma and Shkaht shared a hammock. They met him coming out. All three linked instantly and spoke without sound.

  “We have to go,” Shkaht said sadly.

  “You don’t,” Akin argued. “They’re only a few, and not that strong. We have Tate and Gabe, Yori, Abira, Macy and Kolina. They would help us!”

  “They would help us tomorrow. Neci would wait and recruit and try again later.”

&
nbsp; “Tate could talk to the salvagers the way she talked to the camp on the way up here. People believe her when she talks.”

  “Neci didn’t.”

  “Yes she did. She just wants to have everything her way—even if her way is wrong. And she’s not very smart. She’s seen me taste metal and flesh and wood, but she thinks gloves will protect her hands from being tasted or stung when she cuts you.”

  “Plastic gloves?”

  Surprised, Akin thought for a moment. “They might have gloves made of some kind of plastic. I haven’t seen plastic that soft, but it could exist. But once you understand the plastic it can’t hurt you.”

  “Neci probably doesn’t realize that. You said she wasn’t smart. That makes her more dangerous. Maybe if other people stop her from cutting us tomorrow, she’ll get angrier. She’ll want to hurt us just to prove she can.”

  After a time, Akin agreed. “She would.”

  “We have to go.”

  “I want to go with you!”

  Silence.

  Frightened, Akin linked more deeply with them. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

  More silence. Very gently, they held him between them and put him to sleep. He understood what they were doing and resisted them angrily at first, but they were right. They had a chance without him. They were stronger, larger, and could travel faster and farther without rest. Communication between them was quicker and more precise. They could act almost as though they shared a single nervous system. Only paired siblings and adult mates came to know each other that well. Akin would hamper them, probably get them recaptured. He knew this, and they could feel his contradictory feelings. They knew he knew. Thus, there was no need to argue. He must simply accept the reality.

  He accepted it finally and allowed them to send him into a deep sleep.

  18

  HE SLEPT NAKED ON the floor until Tate found him the next morning. She awoke him by lifting him and was startled when he grabbed her around the neck and would not let go. He did not cry or speak. He tasted her but did not study her. Later he realized he had actually tried to become her, to join with her as he might with his closest sibling. It was not possible. He was reaching for a union the Humans had denied him. It seemed to him that what he needed was just beyond his grasp, just beyond that final crossing he could not make, as with his mother. As with everyone. He could know so much and no more, feel so much and no more, join so close and no closer.

  Desperately, he took what he could get. She could not comfort him or even know how deeply he perceived her. But she could, simply by permitting the attachment, divert his attention from himself, from his own misery.

  Aside from her original jerk of surprise, Tate did not try to detach him. He did not know what she did. All his senses were focused on the worlds within the cells of her body. He did not know how long he was frozen to her, not thinking, not knowing or caring what she did as long as she did not disturb him.

  When he finally drew away from her, he found that she was sitting on a mat on the floor, leaning against a wall. She had gone on holding him on her arm and resting her arm on her knees. Now as he straightened and reoriented himself, she took his chin between her fingers and turned his face toward hers.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  He said nothing for a moment, looked around the room.

  “Everyone’s at breakfast,” she said. “I’ve had my regularly scheduled lecture about how I spoil you and a little extra to boot. Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened.”

  She put him down beside her and stared down at him, waiting. Clearly she did not know the girls were gone. Perhaps no one had noticed yet, thanks to the morning grazing habits of all three children. He could not tell. Amma and Shkaht should have as much of a start as possible.

  “It’s too late for me to bond with my sibling,” he said truthfully. “I was thinking about that last night. I was feeling … Lonely wouldn’t really be the right word. This was more like … something died.” Every word was true. His answer was simply incomplete. Amma and Shkaht had started his feelings—their union, their leaving …

  “Where are the girls?” Tate asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have they gone, Akin?”

  He looked away. Why was she always so hard to hide things from? Why did he hesitate so to lie to her?

  “Good god,” she said, and started to get up.

  “Wait!” Akin said. “They were going to cut them this morning. Neci and her friends were going to grab them while they were eating and hide them and cut off their sensory tentacles.”

  “The hell they were!”

  “They were! We heard them last night! Yori wouldn’t help them, but they were going to do it anyway. They were going to give them corn whiskey and—”

  “Moonshine?”

  “What?”

  “They were going to make the girls drunk?”

  “They couldn’t.”

  Tate frowned. “Were they going to give them the moonshine—the whiskey?”

  “Yes. But it wouldn’t make them drunk. I’ve seen drunk Humans. I don’t think anything we could drink would make us like that. Our bodies would reject the drink.”

  “What would it have done to them?”

  “Make them vomit or urinate a lot. It isn’t strong or deadly. Probably they would just pass it through almost unchanged. They would urinate a lot.”

  “That stuff’s damn strong.”

  “I mean … I mean it’s not a deadly poison. Humans can drink it without dying. We can drink it without vomiting it up wrapped in part of our flesh to keep it from injuring us.”

  “So it wouldn’t hurt them—just in case Neci caught them.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt them. They wouldn’t like it, though. And Neci hasn’t caught them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve heard her. She’s been asking people where the girls are. No one’s seen them. She’s getting worried.”

  Tate stared at nothing, believing, absorbing. “We wouldn’t have let her do it. All you had to do was tell me.”

  “You would have stopped her this time,” he agreed. “She would have kept trying. People believe her after a while. They do what she wants them to.”

  She shook her head. “Not this time. Too many of us were against her on this. Little girls, for godsake! Akin, we could waste days searching for them, but you could track them faster with your Oankali hearing and sight.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes! How far do you think those girls will get before something happens to them? They’re not much bigger than you are. They’ll die out there!”

  “I wouldn’t. Why should they?”

  Silence. She frowned down at him. “You mean you could get home from here?”

  “I could if no Humans stopped me.”

  “And you think no Humans will stop the girls?”

  “I think … I think they’re afraid. I think they’re frightened enough to sting.”

  “Oh, god.”

  “What if someone were going to cut your eyes out, and you had a gun?”

  “I thought the new species was supposed to be above that kind of thing.”

  “They’re afraid. They only want to go home. They don’t want to be cut.”

  “No.” She sighed. “Get dressed. Let’s go to breakfast. The riot should be starting any time now.”

  “I don’t think they’ll find the girls.”

  “If what you say is true, I hope they don’t. Akin?”

  He waited, knowing what she would ask.

  “Why didn’t they take you with them?”

  “I’m too small.” He walked away from her, found his pants in the next room, and put them on. “I couldn’t work with them the way they could work with each other. I would have gotten them caught.”

  “You wanted to go?”

  Silence. If she did not know he had wanted to go, wanted d
esperately to go, she was stupid. And she was not stupid.

  “I wonder why the hell your people don’t come for you,” she said. “They must know better than I do what they’re putting you through.”

  “What they’re putting me through?” he asked, amazed.

  She sighed. “We, then. Whatever good that admission does you. Oankali drove us to become what we are. If they hadn’t tampered with us, we’d have children of our own. We could live in our own ways, and they could live in theirs.”

  “Some of you would attack them,” Akin said softly. “I think some Humans would have to attack them.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did Humans attack one another?”

  Suddenly there was shouting outside.

  “Okay,” Tate said. “They’ve realized the girls are gone. They’ll be here in a moment.”

  Almost before she had finished speaking, Macy Wilton and Neci Roybal were at the door, looking around the room.

  “Have you seen the girls?” Macy demanded.

  Tate shook her head. “No, we haven’t been out.”

  “Did you see them at all this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Akin?”

  “No.” If Tate thought it was best to lie, then he would lie—although neither of them had begun lying yet.

  “I heard you were sick, Akin,” Neci said.

  “I’m all right now.”

  “What made you sick?”

  He stared at her with quiet dislike, wondering what it might be safe to say.

  Tate spoke up with uncharacteristic softness. “He had a dream that upset him. A dream about his mother.”

  Neci raised an eyebrow skeptically. “I didn’t know they dreamed.”

  Tate shook her head, smiled slightly. “Neci, why not? He’s at least as Human as you are.”

  The woman drew back. “You should be out helping to search for the girls!” she said. “Who knows what’s happened to them!”

  “Maybe someone decided to follow your advice, grab them, and cut off their sensory tentacles.”

  “What!” demanded Macy. He had gone into the room where he and the girls and his wife had slept. Now he came out, staring at Tate.

  “She has an obscene sense of humor,” Neci said.