Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  Genetics memories. Viable copies of cells that Nikanj had received from its own ooloi parent or that it had collected itself or accepted from its mates and children. It had duplicated everything it possessed and now it would pass the whole inheritance on to me. It was time. I was a mated adult.

  Yet as Nikanj stepped away from Ahajas and Dichaan and reached for me with all four arms, I didn’t feel like an adult. I was afraid of this final step, this final touch. It was as though Nikanj were saying, “Here’s your birthright, my final gift/duty/pleasure to you.” Final.

  But Nikanj said nothing at all. When it touched me, I pulled back, resisting. It simply waited until I was calmer. Then it spoke. “You must have this before you go, Lelka.” It paused. “And you must pass it on to Aaor as soon as Aaor is mated and stable. Who knows when the two of you will see me again?”

  I made myself step into its embrace and at once I felt myself held and penetrated, held absolutely still, but not paralyzed. Nikanj had a gentler touch than I had yet managed. And it still gave pleasure. Even to me. Even now.

  Then the world around me seemed to flare brilliant white. I could no longer see beyond myself. All my senses turned inward as Nikanj used both sensory hands to inject a rush of individual cells, each one a plan by which a whole living entity could be constructed. The cells went straight into my newly mature yashi. The organ seemed to gulp and suckle the way I had once at my mother’s breast.

  There was immense newness. Life in more varieties than I could possibly have imagined—unique units of life, most never seen on Earth. Generations of memory to be examined, memorized, and either preserved alive in stasis or allowed to live their natural span and die. Those that I could re-create from my own genetic material, I did not have to maintain alive.

  The flood of information was incomprehensible to me at first. I received it and stored it with only a few bits of it catching my attention. There would be plenty of time for me to examine the rest. I wouldn’t lose any of it, and once I understood it, I wouldn’t forget it.

  When the flood ended and Nikanj was sure I could stand alone, it let me go.

  “Now,” it said, “except for the lack of Oankali or construct mates, you’re an adult.”

  I felt confused, stuffed with information, overwhelmed with new sensation, stupefied, unable to do much more than hold myself up. I heard what Nikanj said, but the meanings of the words did not reach me for what seemed to be a long time. I felt it touch me once more with a sensory arm, then draw me to it and walk me over to Tomás, who was making a pack of the Lo cloth hammock and the other things my parents had given me.

  Tomás got up at once and took me from Nikanj. He was, I recalled later, careful not to touch Nikanj, but no longer concerned about its nearness. Mated adults behaved that way—at ease with one another because they understood where they belonged and what they should and should not do.

  “What did you do to it?” Tomás asked.

  “Passed it information it might need on this dangerous trip with you. It’s a little like a drunk Human right now, but it will be all right in a few moments.”

  Tomás looked at me doubtfully. “Are you sure? We were about to leave.”

  “It will be fine.”

  I recalled all this later, the way I recalled things I perceived while I was asleep. Tomás sat me down next to him, finished putting his pack together and rolling it. Then he took one of my sensory arms between his hands and said, “If you don’t wake up, we’ll leave you here and you can come running after us when you’re sober.”

  He was amused, but he wasn’t joking. He would leave without Aaor and me and let us catch up as best we could. Jesusa would certainly go along with him.

  I groped for him, smelling for him rather than seeing him, hardly able to focus on him at all. He gave me his hand readily enough, and I locked on to it, focused so narrowly on it that I began to see and hear him normally through the incredible confusion of information Nikanj had given me. That information was a weight demanding my attention. It would not begin to “lighten” until I began to understand it. To understand it all could take years, but I must at least begin now.

  “It’s not really like being drunk,” I said when I could speak. “It’s more like having billions of strangers screaming from inside you for your individual attention. Incomprehensible … overwhelming … no word is big enough. Let me stay close to you for a while.”

  “Nikanj said it just gave you information,” he protested.

  “Yes. And if I began now and continued for the rest of our lives, I could only explain a small fraction of it aloud to you. Ooan should have waited until we came back.”

  “Can you travel?” he asked.

  “Yes. Just let me stay close to you.”

  “I thought that was settled. You’ll never get away from me.”

  5

  THERE WAS NO END to the forest. The trees and smaller plants changed. Some varieties vanished, but the forest continued. It was a heavy coat of green fur on the hills and later on the nearly vertical cliffs of the mountains. There were places where we could not have gotten through without machetes.

  There were old trails, ledges along cliff faces that perhaps dated back to a time before the war. Below us, a branch of the river cut through a deep, narrow gorge. Above us the mountains were green and sheer, bordering a blue and white band of sky that broadened ahead of us. The water ran high and fast below us, green and white, breaking over huge rocks. I might survive a fall to it, but it was unlikely that any of the others would.

  But my Human mates were in their own country, surefooted and confident. I had wondered whether they would be able to find their way home. They had traveled this route only once, nearly two years before. But Jesusa in particular was at home as soon as the landscape became more vertical than horizontal. Most often she broke trail for us just because she obviously loved the job and was better at it than any of us could have been. When our trail, narrow ledge that it was, vanished, she was usually the first to spot it above us or below or beginning again some distance away. And if she spotted it, she led the climb toward it. She never waited to see what the rest of us wanted to do—she simply found the best way across. The first time I saw her spread flat against the mountain, finding tiny hand- and footholds in the vegetation and the rock, making her way upward like a spider, I froze in absolute panic.

  “She’s part lizard,” Tomás said, smiling. “It’s disgusting. I’m not clumsy myself, I’ve never even seen her fall.”

  “She’s always done this?” Aaor asked.

  “I’ve seen her go up naked rock,” Tomás said.

  I looked at Aaor and saw that it, too, had reacted with fear. This trip had begun to do it good. The trip had forced it to use its body and focus attention on something other than its own misery. It had made the safety of the two Humans its main concern. It understood the sacrifice they were making for it, and the sacrifice they had already made.

  It was last across the gulf, holding on with both feet and all four arms. “I make a better insect than you do,” it told Tomás as it reached the rest of us and safety.

  Tomás laughed as much with surprise as with pleasure. I don’t think he had ever heard Aaor even try to make a joke before.

  There were times when we could descend to the river and walk alongside it or bathe in it. Jesusa and Tomás caught fish occasionally and cooked and ate them while Aaor and I took ourselves as far away as we could and focused on other things.

  “Why do you let them do that?” Aaor demanded of me the second time it happened. “They shouldn’t be hungry.”

  “They’re not,” I agreed. “Jesusa told me they lost most of their supplies coming out of the mountains—accidentally dropped them into those rapids we passed two days ago.”

  “That was then! They don’t have to kill animals and eat them now!” Aaor sounded petulant and miserable. It brushed away my sensory arm when I reached out to it, then changed its mind and grasped the sensory arm in its strengt
h hands.

  I extended my sensory hand and reached into its body to understand what was wrong with it. As always, it was like reaching into a slightly different version of myself. It was feeling sick—nauseated, disgusted, oddly Human, yet unable to cope with the Humanity of Jesusa and Tomás.

  “When you have Human mates,” I told it, “you have to remember to let them be Human. They’ve killed fish and eaten them all their lives. They know we hate it. They need to do it anyway—for reasons that don’t have much to do with nutrition.”

  Aaor let me soothe it, but still said, “What reasons?”

  “Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things—customs—that are their own.”

  “Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict,” Aaor said.

  “It is,” I agreed. “They’re proving their independence at a time when they’re no longer independent. But if this is the worst thing they do, I’ll be grateful.”

  “Will you sleep with them tonight?”

  “No. And they know it.”

  “They—” It stopped, froze utterly still, and signaled me silently. “There are other Humans nearby!”

  “Where?” I demanded, silent and frozen myself, trying to catch the sight or the scent.

  “Ahead. Can’t you smell them?” It gave me an illusion of scent, faint and strange and dangerous. Even with this prompting, I could not smell the new Humans on my own, but Aaor was completely focused on them.

  “Males,” it said. “Three, I think. Maybe four. Headed away from us. No females.”

  “At least they’re headed away,” I whispered aloud. “Do any of them smell anything like Tomás? I can’t tell from what you gave me.”

  “They all smell very much like Tomás. That’s why I can’t tell how many there are. Like Tomás, but including a certain odd element. The genetic disorder, I suppose. Can’t you smell them?”

  “I can now. They’re so far away, though, I don’t think I would have noticed them on my own. They have a dead animal with them, did you notice?”

  Aaor nodded miserably.

  “They’ve been hunting,” I said. “Now they’re probably heading home. Although I don’t smell anything that could be their home. Do you?”

  “No,” it said. “I’ve been trying. Maybe they’re just looking for a place to camp—a place to cook the animal and eat it.”

  “Whatever their intentions, we’ll have to be careful tomorrow.” I focused on it. “You’ve never been shot, have you?”

  “Never. People always aim at you for some reason.”

  I shook my head. “You’re picking up Tomás’s sense of humor. I don’t know what your new mates will think of that.” I paused. “Being shot hurts more than I would want to show you. I could probably handle the pain better now, but I wouldn’t want to have to. I wouldn’t want you to have to.”

  It moved closer to me and linked into me with its sensory tentacles. “I’m not sure I could survive being shot,” it said. “I think part of me might, but not as me.”

  “You can’t know that for sure.”

  It said nothing, but there was no tenacity to it, no feeling that it could withstand abrupt shock and pain. It thought it would dissolve. It was probably right.

  “They’ve finished eating their fish,” I said. “Let’s go back.”

  We detached from one another and it turned wearily to follow me. “Do you know,” it said, “that before we left home, Ooan still said it couldn’t find the flaw in us, couldn’t see why we needed mates so early—needed, not just wanted? And why we focus so on Humans.” It paused. “Do you want other mates?”

  “Oankali mates,” I said. “Not construct.”

  “Why?”

  “I think … I feel as though it will balance the two parts of me—Human and Oankali. I don’t know what the Oankali will think about that, though.”

  “If they ever accept us and if you find two that you like, don’t let them make their decision from a distance.”

  I smiled. “What about you? Humans and Oankali?”

  It rested one strength arm around my shoulders. It almost never touched me with its sensory arms, though it accepted my own gladly. It behaved as though it were not yet mature. “What about me?” it repeated. “I can’t plan anything. It’s hard for me to believe from one day to the next that I’m even going to survive.” It made a fist with its free strength hand, then relaxed the hand. “Most of the time I feel as though I could just let go like this and dissolve. Sometimes I feel as though I should.”

  I slept with it that night. I couldn’t do as much for it alone, but it couldn’t have tolerated Jesusa or Tomás until they had digested their meal. I couldn’t imagine it not existing, truly gone, never to be touched again—like never being able to touch my own face again.

  Two days later, Jesusa and Tomás told me to give them back the marks of their genetic disorder. We had crawled up the nearly nonexistent trail on the mountain and back down again to the river. We had crossed the trail of the hunters we had scented earlier. There were four of them and they were still ahead of us. And now, when the wind was right, I could scent more Humans. Many more. Aaor’s head and body tentacles kept sweeping forward, controlled by the tantalizing scent.

  “The more Human you can make yourselves look, the less likely you are to be shot if you’re seen,” Tomás told us. He was looking at Aaor as he spoke. Then he faced me. “I’ve seen you both change by accident. Why can’t you change deliberately?”

  “I can,” I said. “But Aaor’s control is just not firm enough. It already looks as Human as it can look.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Then this is as close as it should get. You should change us and camp here.”

  “We can’t even see your town from here,” Aaor protested.

  “And they can’t see you. If you round that next bend, though, part of our settlement will be visible to you. But the way is guarded. You would be shot.”

  Aaor seemed to sink in on itself. We had made a fireless camp. My mates were on either side of me, linked with me. Aaor was alone. “You should change yourself and go with them,” it said. “They’ll function better if they are not separated from you. I can survive alone for a few days.”

  “If we’re caught, we’ll be separated,” Jesusa said. “We’ll be shut up in separate places. We’ll be questioned. I would probably be married off very quickly.” She stopped. “Jodahs, what will happen if someone tries to have sex with me?”

  I shook my head. “You’ll fight. You won’t be able to help fighting. You’ll fight so hard, you might win even if the male is much stronger. Or maybe you’ll just make him hurt or kill you.”

  “Then she can’t go,” Tomás said. “I’ll have to do it alone.”

  “Neither of you should go,” I said. “If hunters come out this far, we should wait. We have time.”

  “That will get you a man,” Jesusa said. “Maybe several men. But women don’t hunt.”

  “What do females do?” I asked. “What might bring them out away from the protection of the settlement?”

  Jesusa and Tomás looked at one another, and Tomás grinned. “They meet,” he said.

  “Meet?” I repeated, uncomprehending.

  “The elders tell us who we must marry,” he said. “But they can’t tell us who we must love.”

  I knew Humans did such things: marry here and mate there and there and there. … There was nothing in Human biology to prevent this. In fact, Human biology encouraged male Humans to have liaisons with more than one female. The male’s investment of time and energy in fathering children was much smaller than the female’s. Still, the concept felt alien to me. To have a mating and somehow put it aside. But then, most construct males never had true mates. They went wherever they found welcome and everyone knew it. There was no permanent bonding, no betrayal, no biological wrongness to contend with.

  “Do your people meet this way be
cause they would like to be mated?” I asked.

  “Some of them,” Tomás said. “Others only feel a temporary attraction.”

  “It would be good to get a pair for Aaor who already care for one another.”

  “We thought that, too,” Jesusa said. “We meant to go to the village and bring away the people we would have been married to. But they wouldn’t be coming out here to be together. They’re brother and sister, too. A brother and two sisters, really.”

  “It would be better, safer to go after people who have already slipped away from your village. Is there a place where such people often meet?”

  Tomás sighed. “Change us back tonight. Make us as ugly as we were, just in case. Tomorrow night, we’ll show you some of the places where lovers meet. If you go there at all, it will have to be at night.”

  But the next night we were spotted.

  6

  WE DID NOT KNOW we had been seen. As we rounded the final bend before the mountain people’s village, we kept hidden in the trees and undergrowth. All we could see of their village were occasional stonework terraces cut into the sides of forested mountains. Crops grew on the terraces—a great deal of corn, some large melons, more than one species of potato, and other things that I did not recognize at all—foods neither I nor Nikanj had ever collected or stored memories of. These were surprisingly distracting—new things just sitting and waiting to be tasted, remembered. Yashi, between my hearts and protected now by a broad, flat slab of bone that no Human would have recognized as a sternum, did twist—or rather, it contracted like a long-empty Human stomach. Any perception of new living things attracted it and distracted me. I looked at Aaor and saw that it was utterly focused on the village itself, the people.

  Its desperation had sharpened and directed its perceptions.

  The Humans had built their village well above the river, had stretched it along a broad flattened ridge that extended between two mountains. “We could not see it from where we were, but we could see signs of it—a great deal more terracing high up. These terraces could not be reached from where we were, but there was probably a way up nearby. All we could see between the canyon floor and the terraces was a great deal of sheer rock, much of it overgrown with vegetation. It was nothing I would have chosen to climb.