Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  “I could talk to them,” he said. “But the guards wouldn’t let me take them out. Everyone is too nervous. Two of the guards last night swear they saw four people, not two. That’s why we were sent up here. Some people thought Paz and Javier might have seen something, or worse, might be in trouble.” He looked at Paz and Javier. They had come in and gone straight to Aaor, who coiled a sensory tentacle around each of their necks and welcomed them as though they had been away for days.

  Jesusa and Tomás had been away from me for two days. I was not yet desperate for them, but I might be in two more days if I didn’t get them out. Knowing that made me uneasy, anxious to get started. I left the too-crowded cabin and went to sit on the bare rock of the ledge outside. It was dusk, and the two brothers, Rafael and Ramon, had gotten into the cabin’s food stores and begun to prepare a meal.

  Francisco and Santos came out with me and settled on either side of me. We could see the village below through a haze of smoke from cooking fires.

  “When will you leave?” Santos asked.

  “After dark, before moonrise.”

  “Are you going to help?” he asked Francisco.

  Francisco frowned. “I’ve been trying to think of what I could do. I think I’ll go down and just wait. If Jodahs needs help, if it’s caught, perhaps I can give it the time it needs to prove it isn’t a dangerous animal.”

  Santos grinned. “It is a dangerous animal.”

  Francisco looked at him with distaste.

  “You should be looking at Jodahs that way. Its people will come and destroy everything you’ve spent your life building.”

  “Go back up to your cave, Santos. Rot there.”

  “I’ll follow Jodahs,” Santos said. “I don’t mind. In fact, it’s a pleasure. But I’m not asleep. These people probably won’t kill us, but they’ll swallow us whole.”

  Francisco shook his head. “How’s your breathing these days, Santos? How many times have you had that nose of yours broken? And what has it taught you?”

  Santos stared at him for a moment, then screeched with laughter.

  I looped a sensory arm around Santos’s neck, pulled him against me. He didn’t try to say anything more. He didn’t really seem to be out to do harm. He just enjoyed having the advantage, knowing something a century-old elder didn’t know—something I had overlooked, too. He was laughing at both of us. He kept quiet and held still, though, while I fixed his nose. In the short time I had, I couldn’t make it look much better. That would mean altering bone as well as cartilage. I did a little of that so he could breathe with his mouth closed if he wanted to. But the main thing I did was repair nerve damage. Santos hadn’t just been hit on the nose. He had been thoroughly beaten about the head. His body could “taste” and enjoy the ooloi substance I could not help giving when I penetrated his skin. That had won him over to me. But he could smell almost nothing.

  “What are you doing to him?” Francisco asked with no particular concern. His sense of smell was excellent.

  “Repairing him a little more,” I said. “It keeps him quiet, and I promised him I’d do it. Eventually he’ll be almost as tall as you are.”

  “Seal up his mouth while you’re at it,” Francisco said. “I’ll walk down now.”

  “Do you still want to come with us?”

  “Of course.”

  I smiled, liking him. It seemed I couldn’t help liking the people I seduced. Even Santos. “You’ll go to Mars, won’t you?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “Yes, I think so. I might not if you were looking for mates. I wish you were.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “If you change your mind, I can help you find Oankali or construct mates.”

  “Like you?”

  “Your ooloi would be Oankali.”

  He shook his head. “Mars, then. With my fertility restored.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Where shall I meet you once you’ve gotten Tomás and Jesusa out?”

  “Follow the trail downriver. Come as quickly as you can, but come carefully. If you can’t get away, remember that my people will be coming here soon anyway. They won’t hurt you, and they will send you to Mars if you still want to go.”

  “I’d rather leave with you.”

  “You’re welcome to come with us. Just don’t get killed trying to do it. You’re much older than I am. You’re supposed to have learned patience.”

  He laughed without humor. “I haven’t learned it, little ooloi. I probably never will. Watch for me on the river trail.”

  He left us, and I sat repairing Santos until it was time for me to go. I left him with a fairly good sense of smell.

  “Don’t make trouble,” I told him. “Use that good mind of yours to help these people get away.”

  “Francisco wouldn’t have minded what you’re doing to us,” he said. “I figured it out, and I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll do experiments when my mates’ lives are not at stake. Until we’re away from this place, Santos, try to be quiet unless you have something useful to say.”

  I went into the cabin and told Aaor I was leaving.

  It left its mates and the meal it had been eating. It had used more energy than I had in healing the Humans. It probably needed food.

  Now it settled all four of its arms around me and linked. “I will come back if you don’t follow us,” it said silently.

  “I’ll follow. Francisco is going to help me—if necessary.”

  “I know. I heard. And I still inherit Santos.”

  “Use his mind and push his body hard. This trip should do that. You should start down now, too.”

  “All right.”

  I left it and headed down the mountain, using the path when it was convenient, and ignoring it otherwise. The Humans with Aaor would find it dark and would have to be careful. For me it was well lit with the heat of all the growing plants. I had to climb down past the flattened ridge on which the village had been built. I had to travel along the broad, flat part of the ridge below the level of sight of any guard watching from the village. I had to come up where terraces filled with growing things would conceal me for as long as possible.

  11

  WHEN I REACHED THE village, I lay on a terrace until the sounds of people talking and moving around had all but ceased. I calculated by hearing and smell where the guards patrolled. I tried to hear Jesusa or Tomás, or her people talking about them, but there was almost nothing. Two males were wondering what they had seen in their wanderings. A female was explaining to a sleepy child that they had been “very, very bad” and were locked up as punishment. And somewhere far from where I lay, Francisco was explaining to someone that five guards on the mountain were enough, and that he wanted to sleep in his own bed, not on a stone floor.

  He was not questioned further. No doubt being an elder gave him a few privileges. I wondered how long my influence on him would last, and how he would react to its ending. Best not to find out. I had deliberately not told him about the cave where we were to meet. Willingly or unwillingly, he might lead others to it.

  There was a scream suddenly and the sound of a blow. I had lain frozen for some time before I realized it had nothing to do with us. Nearby, a male and female were arguing, cursing each other. The male had hit the female. He did this again several times and she went on screaming. Even Human ears must have been full of the terrible sound.

  I crept out of the terraces and into the village.

  I was close to Jesusa and Tomás, close to the building I had been shown from the mountain. I could not go straight to it. There were houses in the way and two more high stone steps that raised the level of the ground. The flattened ridge was not as flat as it had seemed. Stone walls had been built here and there to retain the soil and create the level platforms on which the houses had been built. In that way, the houses as well as the crops were terraced.

  There were pathways and stairs to make movement easy, but these were patrolled. I avoided them.

  Crouching beneath
one of these tiers, I caught Jesusa’s scent. She was just ahead, just above, and there was a faint scent of Tomás as well.

  But there were two others—armed males.

  I stood up carefully and peered over the wall of the tier. From where I was, all I could see were more walls—walls of buildings. There were no people outside.

  I climbed up slowly, looking everywhere. Someone came out of a doorway abruptly and walked away from me down the path. I flattened my body against a wall of large, smooth stones.

  Around me, people slept with slow, even breathing. The angry male, still some distance from me, had stopped beating his mate. I did not stand away from the wall until the person from the doorway—a pregnant female—had crossed the path and taken the stairs down to a lower level.

  Farther along the pathway I was confined to, I recognized the round building—a half-cylinder of smooth gray rock. Both Jesusa and Tomás were inside, though I did not think they were together. I walked toward it, all my sensory tentacles in prestrike knots and my sensory arms coiled against me. If I could do this without noise, we could get away, and it might be morning before anyone knew we were gone.

  The building had heavy wooden doors.

  In time, I could smash them, but only with a great deal of noise. Someone would shoot me long before I’d finished.

  I uncoiled one sensory arm and probed the door. Filaments of my sensory hand could penetrate it as easily as they could penetrate flesh. A wooden door set in a wooden frame, held shut by a massive wooden crossbar that rested in a cradle of iron. Very simple. The iron cradle consisted of four flattened, upturned prongs, two fastened to the door with several metal screws and two fastened to the doorframe.

  Quickly, carefully, I rotted the wood that held the prong screws on the door. Through my sensory hand, I injected a corrosive, and the wood began at once to disintegrate. I could not have destroyed the door this way, but getting rid of the small sections of wood that held the screws was no trouble. In effect, I digested them.

  After a time, the heavy crossbar slid to the floor.

  The two men just inside shouted in surprise, then cursed and made several quick, noisy movements. They came together to examine the door and ask each other what could have caused it to fall apart that way.

  When I hit the door, they were exactly where I wanted them to be. The door knocked them down before they could raise their rifles. I stung first one, then the other, with a lashing motion of sensory arms. Both collapsed unconscious. It could only have been reflex that caused one of them to fire his gun.

  The bullet glanced off one rock wall and spent itself against another.

  And suddenly, everywhere, there were voices.

  Jesusa was so close. … But there was no time.

  I stepped out through the doorway, meaning to disappear for a while, try again later.

  Outside, there was a forest of long wood-and-metal rifles. People had leaped from sleep onto their pathway, some of them naked, but all of them armed.

  I jumped back behind the heavy door and slammed it as people fired into it. I grabbed the crossbar and kicked and jammed it into a prop. It wouldn’t hold long against their guns and their bodies, but it would give me a moment.

  What to do? They would kill me before I could speak. They would kill me as soon as they reached me. If I went into the area where Jesusa was confined, they might kill her, too.

  I reached for the two guards and forced them conscious. I dragged them to their feet, made them stand on either side of me, made them breathe in as much as they could of me.

  They struggled a little at first. Then I looped my sensory arms around them and injected my ooloi substance into them. I had to quiet them before the door gave way.

  “Save your lives,” I said softly. “Don’t let your people shoot you. Make them listen!”

  At that moment the door gave way.

  People poured into the room, ready to shoot. I held the two guards in front of me, held them with only my strength hands visible. The less alien I seemed now, the more likely I was to live for a few more moments.

  “Don’t shoot us!” the guard under my right hand shouted.

  “Don’t shoot!” the other echoed. “It isn’t hurting us.”

  “It’s an alien,” someone shouted.

  “Oankali!”

  “Four-arms!”

  “Kill it!”

  “No!” my prisoners screamed together.

  “It can sting people to death! Kill it!”

  “There’s no need to kill me!” I said. I tried consciously to sound the way Nikanj did when it both frightened Humans and got them to cooperate. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you shoot me, I may lose control and kill several of you before I die.”

  Silence.

  “I mean you no harm.”

  Again the curse, and it was, unmistakably, a curse. “Four-arms!”

  And from someone else. “They strike like snakes!”

  “I didn’t come to strike anyone,” I said. “I mean you no harm.”

  “What do you want here!” one of them demanded.

  I hesitated and someone else answered for me.

  “Isn’t it obvious what the thing wants? The prisoners, that’s what! It’s come for them!”

  “I’ve come for them,” I agreed softly.

  People began to look uncertain. I was reaching them—probably more with my scent than with anything I was saying. All I had to do was keep them here a little longer. They might go in and get Jesusa and Tomás for me. The two in my hands would probably do that now if I asked it of them. But I still needed them—for just a while longer.

  “If you kill me,” I said, “my people will find out about it. And those who shoot me will never live on a planet or know freedom again. Ask your elders. They remember.”

  People began to look at one another doubtfully. Some of them lowered their guns and stood not knowing what to do. There had always been a fear among Humans that we could read their thoughts. No doubt that was why they had feared letting even one of their people go down into the lowland forest. Most had never understood that it was their bodies we read—inside and out. And if we were alert and competent—more so than I had been with Santos—their bodies kept few secrets.

  “Who will speak for you?” I asked the crowd. If they had been Oankali or construct, I would never have asked such a question. I could have made my case to anyone, and the people would have joined person-to-person or through their town organisms, and there would have been a consensus.

  But these people were Human. I had to find their leaders.

  Two males stepped forward out of the crowd.

  “Elders?” I asked.

  One of them nodded. The other only stared at me in obvious disgust.

  “I mean no harm,” I said. “Harm will only be done if you shoot me. Do you accept that?”

  “Perhaps,” the one who had nodded said.

  I shrugged. “Examine your own memories.” And I kept quiet and left them to their memories. Meanwhile, without drawing attention to the gesture, I took my hands from the two men in front of me. They didn’t move.

  “Why do you want Jesusa and Tomás?” demanded the disgusted elder.

  “They are my mates.”

  There was a sudden rush of surprised muttering from the people. I heard disbelief and questioning, threats and cursing, honor and disgust.

  “Why should you be surprised?” I asked. “Why did you think I wanted them? Why else would I be willing to risk your killing me?” I paused, but no one spoke. “We care for our mates as deeply as you do for yours,” I said.

  “It would be better for them to be killed than to be given to you,” the disgusted elder said.

  “Your people almost destroyed themselves,” I said, “and you still haven’t had enough killing?”

  “Your people want to kill us!” someone said from the crowd.

  I spoke into renewed muttering. “My people are coming here, but they won’t kill. They didn’
t kill your elders. They plucked them out of the ashes of their war, healed them, mated with those who were willing, and let the others go. If my people were killers, you wouldn’t be here.” I paused to let them think, then I continued. “And there wouldn’t be a Human colony on the planet Mars where Humans live and breed totally free of us. The Humans there are healthy and thriving. Any Human who wants to join them will be given healing, restored fertility if necessary, and transported.”

  What happened next was totally irrational, yet somehow, later, I felt that I should have anticipated it.

  The disgusted elder’s face twisted with anger and revulsion. He cursed me, called on his god to damn me. Then he fired his gun.

  One of the two Human guards whom I had held, and then released, jumped between the elder’s gun and me.

  An instant later, the guard lay dying and the two elders struggled for possession of the disgusted one’s rifle.

  I saw the murderous elder subdued by his companion and two deformed young people. Then I was on the floor beside the injured man. “Keep them off me,” I told the remaining guard. “His heart is damaged. I can save him, but only if they let me alone.”

  I paid no more attention to what they did. The injured guard needed all my attention. By the definition of most Humans, he was already dead. The large-caliber bullet fired at close range had gone through his heart and come out of his back just missing his spine. I had all I could do to keep him alive while I repaired the heart. The Humans would not murder me. The moment for that had passed.

  12

  I WAS HUNGRY WHEN I finished the healing. I was almost weak with hunger. And the scent of Jesusa and Tomás so nearby was tormenting. I could not let the Humans keep them from me much longer.

  I began to pay attention to my immediate surroundings again and found myself looking into the eyes of the man I had just healed.

  “I was shot,” he said. “I remember … but it doesn’t hurt.”

  “You’re healed,” I said. I hugged him. “Thank you for shielding me.”

  He said nothing. He sat up when I did and looked around at the people who had gathered around us and sat down. We were the center of a ring of elders and aged fertiles—people who looked ancient, but were not nearly as old as the youthful-looking elders. There were no females present.