Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  “Did you think you were dreaming last night?” I asked.

  “I haven’t had time to think.”

  “Who will come up here today?”

  He blinked. “Here? No one.”

  “Who will visit the cabin below?”

  “I don’t know. I lose track with them. Are you going down there?”

  “Eventually. Have your breakfast if you like.”

  “What are you called?”

  “Jodahs.”

  He nodded. “I’ve heard that some of your kind had four arms. I didn’t believe it.”

  “Ooloi have four arms.”

  He stared for some time at my sensory arms, then asked, “Are you really going to take me away with you and make me grow?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled, showing several bad teeth. I would fix those, too—have him shed them and grow more.

  Later that morning we went down to the stone cabin. The male and female there were sharing their breakfast with Aaor. Santos and I startled them, but they seemed comfortably at home with Aaor. And Aaor looked better than it had since its first metamorphosis. It looked stable and secure in itself. It looked satisfied.

  “Will they come with us?” I asked in Oankali.

  “They’ll come,” it answered in Spanish. “I’ve begun to heal them. I’ve told them about you.”

  The two Human stared at me curiously.

  “This is Jodahs, my closest sibling,” Aaor said. “Without it I would already be dead.” It actually said, “my closest brother-sister,” because that was the best either of us could do in Spanish. No wonder people like Santos thought we were hermaphroditic.

  “These are Javier and Paz,” Aaor said. “They are already mates.”

  They were also close relatives, of course. They looked as much alike as Jesusa and Tomás did, and they looked like Jesusa and Tomás—strong, brown, black-haired, deep-chested people.

  Santos and I were given dried fruit, tea, and bread. Javier and Paz seemed most interested in Santos. He was their relative, too, of course.

  “Do you feel well, Santos?” Paz asked.

  “What do you care?” Santos demanded.

  Paz looked at me. “Why do you want him? Wish him a good day, and he’ll spit on you.”

  “He needs more healing than I can give him here,” I said. I turned my head so that he would know I was looking at him. “He’ll have less reason to spit when I’m finished with him, so maybe he’ll do less spitting. Perhaps then I’ll find mates for him.”

  He watched me while I spoke, then let his eyes slide away from me. He stared, unseeing, I think, at the rough wooden table.

  “Will others come up here today?” I asked Paz.

  “No,” she said. “Today is still our watch. Juana and Santiago will come tomorrow to relieve us.”

  Santos spoke abruptly, urgently. “Are you really going with them?”

  “Of course,” Paz said.

  “Why? You should be afraid of them. You should be terrified. When we were children they told us the devil had four arms.”

  “We’re not children anymore,” Javier said. “Look at my right hand.” He held it up, pale brown and smooth. “I have a right hand again. It’s been a frozen claw for years, and now—”

  “Not enough!”

  Javier opened his mouth, his expression suddenly angry. Then, without speaking, he closed his mouth.

  “I want to go,” Paz said quietly. “I’m tired of telling myself lies about this place and watching my children die.” She pushed very long black hair from her face. As she sat at the table, most of her hair hung to the floor behind her. “Santos, if you had seen our last child before it died, you would thank God for the beauty you had even before your healing.”

  Santos looked away from her, shamefaced but stubborn. “I know all that,” he said. “I don’t mean to be cruel. I do know. But … we have been taught all our lives that the aliens would destroy us if they found us. Why did our belief and our fear slip away so quickly?”

  Javier sighed. “I don’t know.” He looked at Aaor. “They’re not very fearsome, are they? And they are … very interesting. I don’t know why.” He looked up. “Santos, do you believe we are building a new people here?”

  Santos shook his head. “I’ve never believed it. I have eyes. But that’s no reason for us to consent to go away with people we’ve been taught were evil.”

  “Did you consent?” Paz asked.

  “… yes.”

  “What else is there, then?”

  “Why are they here!” He turned to me. “Why are you here?”

  “To get Human mates for Aaor,” I said. “And now I have to get my own Human mates back. They are—”

  “Jesusa and Tomás, we know,” Paz said. “Aaor said they were imprisoned below. We can show you where they’re probably being held but I don’t know how you can get them out.”

  “Show us,” I said.

  We went outside where the stone village lay below us, spread like a Human-made map. The buildings seemed tiny in the distance, but they could all be seen. The whole flattened ridge was visible.

  “See the round building there,” Javier said, pointing.

  I didn’t see it at first. So many gray buildings with gray-brown thatched roofs, all tiny in the distance. Then it was clear to me—a stone half-cylinder built against a stone wall.

  “There are rooms in it and under it,” Paz said. “Prisoners are kept there. The elders believe people who travel must be made to spend time alone to be questioned and prove they are who they say they are, and that they have not betrayed the people.” She stopped, looked at Javier. “They would say that we’ve betrayed the people.”

  “We didn’t bring the aliens here,” he said. “And why do the people need us to produce more dead children?”

  “They won’t say that if they catch us.”

  “What will they do to you?” I asked.

  “Kill us,” Paz whispered.

  Aaor stepped between them, one sensory arm around each. “Jodahs, can we take them out, then come back for Jesusa and Tomás?”

  I stared down at the village, at the hundreds of green terraces. “I’m afraid for them. The longer we’re separated, the more likely they are to give themselves away. If only they had told us … Paz, did people watch the canyon from up here before Jesusa and Tomás left home?”

  “No,” she said. “We do this now because they left. The elders were afraid we would be invaded. We made more guns and ammunition, and we posted new guards. Many new guards.”

  “This isn’t really a good place to watch from,” Javier said. “We’re too high and the canyon is too heavily forested. People would have to almost make an effort to attract our attention. Light a fire or something.”

  I nodded. We had made cold camps for days before we reached the village. Yet we had been spotted. New guards. More vigilance. “You have to help us get you away from here,” I said. “You know where the guards are. We don’t want to hurt them, but we have to get you away and I have to get Jesusa and Tomás out.”

  “We can help you get away,” Paz said. “But we can’t help you reach Tomás and Jesusa. You’ve seen that they’re guarded and in the middle of town.”

  “If they’re where you say, I can get almost to them by climbing around the slope. It looks steep, but there’s good cover.”

  “But you can’t get Jesusa and Tomás out that way.”

  I looked at her, liking the way she stood close to Aaor, the way she had put one hand up to hold the sensory arm that encircled her throat. And, though she was a few years older, she was painfully like Jesusa.

  I spoke in Oankali to Aaor. “Take your mates tonight and get clear of this place. Wait at the cave down the canyon.”

  “You didn’t desert me,” Aaor said obstinately in Spanish.

  “I can reach them,” I said. “Alone and focused, I can come up through the terraces and avoid the guards—or surprise them and sting them unconscious. And no door
will keep me from Jesusa and Tomás. I can take them down the slope to the canyon. You’ve seen them climb. Especially Jesusa. I’ll carry Tomás on my back if I have to—whether he wants me to or not. So tonight, you take your mates to safety. And take Santos for me. I intend to keep my promise to him.”

  After a while, Aaor nodded. “I’ll come back for you if you don’t meet us.”

  “It might be better for you if you didn’t,” I said.

  “Don’t ask the impossible of me,” it said, and guided its mates back into the stone cabin.

  9

  WE MEANT TO LEAVE LATE that night—Aaor with the Humans down their back-and-forth pathway, then down terraces and a neglected, steep, overgrown path to the canyon floor. I meant to go down the other side of the mountain and work my way around as close as possible to the place where Jesusa and Tomás were being held.

  It would have worked. The mountain village would be free of us and able to continue in isolation until Nikanj sent a shuttle to gas it and collect the people.

  But that afternoon a party of armed males came up the trail to the stone cabin.

  We heard them, smelled their sweat and their gunpowder long before we saw them. There was no time for Aaor to change Javier and Paz, give them back the deformities it had taken from them.

  “Were their faces distorted?” I asked Aaor.

  It nodded. “Small tumors. Very visible.”

  And nowhere to hide. We could climb up to Santos’s cave, but what good would that do? If villagers found no one in the cabin, they would be bound to check the cave. If we began to climb down the other side of the mountain, we could be picked off. There was nothing to do but wait.

  “Four of them?” I asked Aaor.

  “I smell four.”

  “We let them in and we sting them.”

  “I’ve never stung anyone.”

  I glanced toward its mates. “Didn’t you make at least one of them unconscious last night?”

  Its sensory tentacles knotted against his body in embarrassment, and its mates looked at one another and smiled.

  “You can sting,” I said. “And I hope you can stand being shot now. You might be.”

  “I feel as though I can stand it. I feel as though I could survive almost anything now.”

  It was healthy, then. If we could keep its Humans alive, it would stay healthy.

  “Is there a signal you should give?” I asked Javier.

  “One of us should be outside, keeping watch,” he said. “They won’t be surprised that we’re not, though. On this duty, I think only the elders watch as much as they should. I mean, Jesusa and Tomás left two years ago and there’s been no trouble. Until now.”

  Laxity. Good.

  The cabin was small and there was nowhere in it to hide. I sent the three Humans up the crooked pathway to Santos’s cave. Vegetation was thick even this near the summit, and once they went around one of the turns, they could not be seen from the stone cabin. They would not be found unless someone went up after them. Aaor and I had to see that no one did. We waited inside the cabin. If we could get the newcomers in, there was less chance of accidentally killing one of them by having him fall down the slope.

  I touched Aaor as I heard the men reach our level. “For Jesusa and Tomás’s sake,” I said silently, “we can’t let any of them escape.”

  Aaor gave back wordless agreement.

  “Javier!” called one of the newcomers before he reached the cabin door. “Hey, Javier, where are you?”

  The cabin windows were high and small and the walls were thick. It would have been no easy matter to look in and see whether anyone was inside, so we were not surprised when one of the Humans kicked the door open.

  Human eyes adjust slowly to sudden dimness. We stood behind the door and waited, hoping at least two of the men would stumble in, half blind.

  Only one did. I stung him just before he would have shouted. To his friends he seemed to collapse without reason. Two of them called to him, stepped up to help him. Aaor got one of them. I just missed the other, struck again, and caught him just outside the door.

  The fourth was aiming his rifle at me. I dived under it as he fired. The bullet plowed up the ground next to the face of one of his fallen friends.

  I held him with my strength hands, took the gun from him with my sensory arms, emptied it, and threw it far out so that it would clear the slope and fall to the canyon floor. Aaor was getting rid of the others in the same way.

  The man in my strength arms struggled wildly, shouting and cursing me, but I did not sting him. He was a tall, unusually strong male, gray-haired and angular. He was one of the sterile old Humans—one of the ones the people here called elders. I wanted to see how he responded to our scent when he got over his first fear. And I wanted to find out why he and the three fertile young males had come up. I wanted to know what he knew about Jesusa and Tomás.

  I dragged him into the cabin and made him sit beside me on the bed. When he stopped struggling, I let go of him.

  His sudden freedom seemed to confuse him. He looked at me, then at Aaor, who was just dragging one of his friends into the cabin. Then he lurched to his feet and tried to run.

  I caught him, lifted him, and sat him on the bed again. This time, he stayed.

  “So those damned little Judases did betray us,” he said. “They’ll be shot! If we don’t return, they’ll be shot!”

  I got up and shut the door, then touched Aaor to signal it silently. “Let’s let our scent work on them for a while.”

  It consented to do this, though it saw no reason. It turned one of the males over and stripped his shirt. The male’s body and face were distorted by tumors. His mouth was so distorted it seemed unlikely that he could speak normally.

  “We have time,” Aaor said aloud. “I don’t want to leave them this way.”

  “If you repair them, they won’t be able to go home,” I reminded it. “Their own people might kill them.”

  “Then let them come with us!” It lay down next to the male with the distorted mouth and sank a sensory hand and many sensory tentacles into him.

  The elder stared, then stood up and stepped toward Aaor. His body language said he was confused, afraid, hostile. But he only watched.

  After a while, some of the tumors began to shrink visibly, and the elder stepped back and crossed himself.

  “Shall we take them with us, once we’ve healed them?” I asked him. “Would your people kill them?”

  He looked at me. “Where are the people who were in this house?”

  “With Santos. We were afraid they might be shot by accident.”

  “You’ve healed them?”

  “And Santos.”

  He shook his head. “And what will be the price for all this kindness? Sterility? Long, slow death? That’s what your kind gave me.”

  “We aren’t making them sterile.”

  “So you say!”

  “Our people will be here soon. You will have to decide whether to mate with us, join the Human colony on Mars, or stay here sterile. If these males choose to mate with us or to go to Mars, why should they be sterilized? If they decide to stay here, others can sterilize them. It isn’t a job I’d want.”

  “Mars colony? You mean Humans without Oankali are living on Mars? The planet Mars?”

  “Yes. Any Humans who want to go. The colony is about fifty years old now. If you go, we’ll give you back your fertility and see that you’re able to father healthy children.”

  “No!”

  I shrugged.

  “This is our world. Your people can go to Mars.”

  “You know we won’t.”

  Silence.

  He looked again at what Aaor was doing. Several of the smallest visible tumors had already vanished. His expression, his body language were oddly false. He was fascinated. He did not want to be. He wanted to be disgusted. He pretended to be disgusted.

  He was more than fascinated. He was envious. He must have experienced the touch of
an ooloi back before he was released to become a resister. All Humans of his age had been handled by ooloi. Did he remember and want it again, or was it only our scent working on him? Oankali ooloi frightened Humans because they looked so different. Aaor and I were much less frightening. Perhaps that allowed Humans to respond more freely to our scent. Or perhaps, being part Human ourselves, we had a more appealing scent.

  When I had checked the two Humans on the floor, seen that they were truly unconscious and likely to stay that way for a while, I took the elder by the shoulder and led him back to the bed.

  “More comfortable than the floor,” I said.

  “What will you do?” he asked.

  “Just have a look at you—make sure you’re as healthy as you appear to be.”

  He had been resisting for a century. He had been teaching children that people like me were devils, monsters, that it was better to endure a disfiguring, disabling genetic disorder than to go down from the mountains and find the Oankali.

  He lay down on the bed, eager rather than afraid, and when I lay down beside him, he reached out and pulled me to him, probably in the same way he reached out for his human mate when he was especially eager for her.

  10

  BY THE TIME IT began to get dark, our captives had become our allies. They were Rafael, whose tumors Aaor had healed and whose mouth Aaor had improved, and Ramon, Rafael’s brother. Ramon was a hunchback, but he knew now that he didn’t have to be. And even though we had had not nearly enough time to change him completely, we had already straightened him a little. There was also Natal, who had been deaf for years. He was no longer deaf.

  And there was the elder, Francisco, who was still confused in the way Santos had been. It frightened him that he had accepted us so quickly—but he had accepted us. He did not want to go back down the mountain to his people. He wanted to stay with us. I sent him up to bring Santos, Paz, and Javier back to us. He sighed and went, thinking it was a test of his new loyalty. He was the only one, after all, who had not needed our healing.

  Not until he brought them back did I ask him whether he could get Jesusa and Tomás out.