Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  “Give me something to eat,” I told them. “Plant material. No meat.”

  No one moved or spoke.

  I looked at the guard I had just healed. “Get me something, please.”

  He nodded. No one stopped him from going out, though everyone was armed.

  I sat still and waited. Eventually the Humans would begin to talk to me. They were playing a game now, trying to make me uneasy, trying to put me at more of a disadvantage than I was. A small, Human, hierarchical game. They might not let my guard back in. Well, I was uncomfortably hungry, not desperately hungry. And I didn’t know their game well enough to play it. At some time they would probably take pleasure in telling me what they intended to do to me. I was in no hurry to hear that. I didn’t expect to like it.

  I almost slept. My guard came back with a dish of cooked beans and some grain and fruit that I did not recognize. A good meal. I thanked him and sent him away because I was afraid he would speak for me and get into trouble.

  Sometime later, Francisco came in. There were three more elders with him. From their looks, they were probably the oldest males in the village. They were gray-haired, and their faces were deeply lined. One of them walked with a severe limp. The other two were gaunt and bent. They had probably been old before the war.

  These four sat down facing me, and Francisco spoke quietly. “Are you all right?”

  I looked at him, trying to guess what his situation was. Why had he come? It was too late for him to play the part he had promised to play. He was holding himself very tightly, yet trying hard to seem relaxed. I decided not to recognize him—for now.

  “My mates are still imprisoned,” I said.

  “We’ll let you see them soon. We want you to know first what we’ve decided.”

  I waited.

  “You’ve said your people will be coming here.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll wait here for them.” His body inclined toward me, full of repressed tension. It was important to him that I accept what he was saying.

  I kept quiet, turned my face away from him so that I could watch him without making him feel watched. There was no triumph in him, no slyness, no sign that he was doing anything more than telling me what his people had decided—and perhaps hoping that I didn’t give him away.

  “The guards have captured your companion,” Francisco said in the same quiet way. “It will be brought here soon.”

  “Aaor?” I asked. “Is it injured? Is anyone injured?”

  “Nothing serious. Your companion was shot in the leg, but it seems to have healed itself. One of our people whom you’ve tampered with was injured slightly.”

  “Who? Which one?”

  “Santos Ibarra Ruiz.”

  Of course. I shook my head. Someone in the group of elders groaned. “Is he all right?” I asked.

  “Our guards heard him arguing with someone in your companion’s party,” Francisco said. “When they investigated and took prisoners, Santos bit one of them. He was clubbed. He’s all right except for a few bruises and a headache.”

  Santos had given Aaor away. Who but Santos would? How many lives had he endangered or destroyed?

  “What will happen to the Humans we’ve … tampered with?” I asked.

  “We haven’t decided yet,” Francisco said. “Nothing probably.”

  “They should be hanged,” someone muttered. “Supposed to be on watch. …”

  “They were taken by surprise,” Francisco said. “If I hadn’t decided to come down and sleep in my own bed, I could have been taken myself.”

  So that was why he was still free. He had convinced his people that we had arrived after he left. That story might protect him and enable him to help the others. His body expressed his discomfort with the lie, but he told it well.

  “Will you keep Aaor here, too?” I asked.

  “Yes. It won’t be hurt unless it tries to escape. Neither will you. Our people feel that having you here will assure their safety when your people arrive.”

  I nodded. “Was this your idea?”

  The elder with the limp spoke up. “It doesn’t matter to you whose idea it was! You’ll stay here. And if your people don’t come … perhaps we’ll be able to think of something to do with you.”

  I turned to face him. “Use me to heal your leg,” I said softly. “It must pain you.”

  “You’ll never get your poisonous hands on me.”

  I would. Of course I would. If they kept Aaor and me here, nothing would stop them for using us to rid them of their many physical problems.

  “This wasn’t my idea,” Francisco said. “My only idea was that you shouldn’t be shot. A great many people here would like to shoot you, you know.”

  “That would be a serious mistake.”

  “I know.” He paused. “Santos was the one who suggested keeping you here.”

  I did not shout with laughter. Laughter would have made the elders even more intensely suspicious than they were. But within myself, I howled. Santos was making up for his error. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew his people would use Aaor’s and my healing ability and breathe our scents, and finally, when our people arrived, his would meet them without hostility. In that way, I would, as Francisco had said, assure the mountain people’s safety. People who did not fight would be in no danger at all, would not even be gassed once the shuttle caught Aaor’s and my scents.

  “Bring Aaor,” I said.

  “Aaor is coming.” Francisco paused. “If you try anything, if you frighten these people in any way at all, they will shoot you. And they won’t stop shooting until there’s nothing living left of you.”

  I nodded. There would be a great deal that was living left of me, but it would certainly not survive as me. And it might do harm here—as a disease. It was best for us to die on a ship or in one of our towns. Our substance would be safely absorbed into the larger organism. If it were not absorbed, the Oankali organelles in it would find things to do on their own.

  Aaor was brought in by young guards. I looked at its legs for traces of a bullet wound, but could see none. The Humans had let it heal itself completely before they brought it in.

  It walked over and sat down beside me on the stone floor. It did not touch me.

  “They want us to stay here,” it said in Spanish.

  “I know.”

  “Shall we?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  It nodded. “I thought so, too.” It pulled its mouth into something less than a smile. “You were right about being shot. I don’t want to go through it again.”

  “Where are your mates?”

  “At their home not far from here—under guard.”

  I faced Francisco again. “We agree to stay here until our people come, but Aaor should live with its mates. And I should live with mine.”

  “You’ll be imprisoned here in this tower!” one of the gaunt old elders said. “Both of you! You’ll stay here under guard. And you’ll have no mates!”

  “We’ll live in houses as people should,” I said softly.

  Someone spat the words “Four-arms!” and someone else muttered, “Animals!”

  “We’ll live with the people you know to be our mates,” I continued. “If we don’t, we’ll become … very dangerous to ourselves and to you.”

  Silence.

  My scent and Aaor’s probably could not convert these people quickly without direct contact, but our scents could make everyone more likely to believe what we said. We could persuade them to do what they knew they really should do.

  “You’ll live with your mates,” Francisco said above much muttering. “Most of us accept that. But wherever you live, you will be guarded. You must be.”

  I glanced at Aaor. “All right,” I said. “Guard us. There’s no need for it, but if it comforts you, we’ll put up with it.”

  “Guards to keep people from accepting your poison!” muttered the lame elder.

  “Give me my mates now,” I said very softly.
People leaned forward to hear. “I need them and they need me. We keep one another healthy.”

  “Let it be with them,” Aaor supplemented. “Let them comfort one another. They’ve been apart for days now.”

  They argued for a while, their hostility slowly decreasing like a wound healing. In the end Francisco himself freed Jesusa and Tomás. They came out of their prison rooms and took me between them, and the elders and old fertiles watched with conflicting emotions of fear, anger, envy, and fascination.

  13

  WE STAYED.

  We healed the people in spite of our guards. We healed our guards.

  Young people came to us first, and went away without their tumors, sensory losses, limps, paralysis. … People brought their children to us. Jesusa, Tomás, and I shared a stone house with Aaor, Javier, and Paz. Once we were settled, Jesusa went out and found all the people she remembered as having deformed or disabled children. She badgered them until they began to bring their children to us. The small house was often full of healing children.

  And Santos began to grow. I gave him a handsome new nose and he went right on talking too much and risking getting it broken again. But people seemed less inclined to hit him.

  The first elder to come to us was female with only one leg. The stump of her amputated leg pained her and she hoped I could stop the pain. I sent her to Aaor because I had more people to heal than I could manage. Over a period of weeks, Aaor grew her a new leg and foot.

  After that, everyone came to us. Even the most stubborn elders forgot how much they hated us once we’d touched them. They didn’t suddenly begin to love us, but they stopped spitting as we walked by, stopped muttering curses or threats at us, stopped pointing their guns at us to remind us of their power and their fear. They let us alone. That was enough.

  Their people, however, did begin to love us and to believe what we told them and to talk to us about Oankali and construct mates.

  14

  THE SHUTTLE, WHEN IT arrived, landed down in the canyon. There it could drink from the river and eat something other than the mountain people’s crops. No one was gassed. There was no panic on the part of the Humans. It was a measure of the Humans’ trust that they let Aaor and me and our mates go down to meet the newcomers. At the last moment, Francisco decided to come with us, but only because, as he had admitted, his long years had not taught him patience.

  Seven families had come with the shuttle. Most were from Chkahichdahk, since that was where shuttles lived when they were not in use. They had stopped at Lo, however, to pick up my parents. The first person I spotted in the small crowd was Tino—and I came closer than I should have to grabbing him and hugging him. Too Human a reaction. I hugged Nikanj instead, though Nikanj did not particularly want to be hugged. It tolerated the gesture and used it as an opportunity to sink its sensory tentacles into me and examine me thoroughly. When it had finished, without a word, it reached for Aaor and examined it. It held Aaor longer, then focused on Javier and Paz. They were watching with obvious curiosity but without alarm. They had already passed the stage of extreme avoidance of everyone except Aaor. Now, like Jesusa and Tomás, they were simply careful.

  Neither of them had ever seen an Oankali before. They were fascinated, but they were not afraid.

  Nikanj flattened its sensory tentacles to that glittering smoothness it could achieve when it was gleefully happy. “Lelka,” it said, “if you will introduce us to your mates, we may begin to forgive you for staying here and not letting us know you were all right.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll forgive it,” Lilith said. But she was smiling, and for a time, everything else had to wait until Javier and Paz were welcomed into the family and the rest of us rewelcomed and forgiven. I saw Jesusa reach out to my mother for the first time since their break. The two embraced and I felt my own sensory tentacles go smooth with pleasure.

  “The mountain Humans decided to keep us,” Aaor was explaining to the rest of the family. “Since their only alternative as they saw it was to kill us, we were willing to stay.”

  “Is this one of them?” Ahajas asked, looking at Francisco.

  I introduced him and he, too, met her with curiosity but no fear.

  “Would you have killed them?” she asked with odd amusement.

  Francisco smiled, showing very white teeth. “Of course not. Jodahs captured me long before it captured most of my people.”

  Ahajas focused on me. “Captured?”

  “No one has captured him,” I said. “He wants to go to the Mars colony.”

  Ahajas went very smooth. “Do you want that?”

  “I did.” Francisco shook his head. “Maybe I still do.”

  I looked at him, surprised. He had been one of the holdouts—very certain. Now that the shuttle was here, he was less certain. “Shall we find mates for you?” I asked.

  He looked at me, then did something very Oankali. He turned and walked away. He walked quickly, would have gone back to the steep road and up to the village if Ahajas had not spoken.

  “Does he have a female mate, Lelka?” she asked me.

  I nodded. “Inez. She’s an old fertile.” She had joined Francisco after bearing nine children. Now she was past the age of childbearing. Francisco had brought her to me once and asked me to check her health. She turned out to be one of the healthiest old fertiles I had ever touched, but I understood that Francisco’s real purpose had been to share her with me—and me with her. Yet he had truly wanted to emigrate. Until now.

  “Jodahs,” Ahajas said, “I think there are mates for him here, now. Bring him back.”

  I went after Francisco, caught him, took him by the arms. “My Oankali mother says there are people here, now, who might mate with you.”

  He stood still for a moment, then abruptly tried to wrench free. I held him because his body language told me that he wanted to be held more than he wanted to be let go. He was afraid and confused and ashamed and powerfully drawn to the idea of potential Oankali mates.

  After his first effort, he would not shame himself by continuing to struggle against me. I let him go when he truly wanted it. Then I took his right hand loosely and led him back toward Ahajas, who waited with a mated group of strangers—three Oankali. Francisco began to sweat.

  “I would give anything at all to have you instead,” he told me.

  “You already have all I can give you,” I said. “If you like these new people, their ooloi can give you much more.” I paused. “Do you think Inez will consent to have her fertility restored? Maybe she’s tired of having children.”

  He laughed, momentarily decreasing the level of his tension. “She’s been after me to see whether I could get you to make changes in us. She wants to have at least one child with me.”

  “A construct child?”

  “I don’t know—although if I’m willing after resisting for a century …”

  “Take these new people up to see her. Talk to her, and to them.”

  He stopped me, turned me to face him. “You’ve done this to me,” he said. “I would have gone to Mars.”

  I said nothing.

  “I can’t even hate you,” he whispered. “My god, if there had been people like you around a hundred years ago, I couldn’t have become a resister. I think there would be no resisters.” He stared at me a moment longer. “Damn you,” he said slowly, sadly. “Goddamn you.” He walked past me and went to Ahajas and the waiting Oankali family.

  “They are your ooan relatives,” Lilith said, and I looked at her with amazement. She had somehow managed to approach me without my noticing.

  “You were preoccupied,” she said. She wanted very much to touch me and made no effort to hide it. She looked at me hungrily. “You and Aaor are beautiful,” she said. “Are you both really all right?”

  “We are. We need Oankali mates, but other than that we’re fine.”

  “And that man, Francisco, is he typical of the people here?”

  “He’s one of the old ones. The first one I
met.”

  “And he loves you.”

  “As you said once: pheromones.”

  “At first, no doubt. By now, he loves you.”

  “… yes.”

  “Like João. Like Marina. You have a strange gift, Lelka.”

  I changed the subject abruptly. “Did you say those people with Francisco were my ooan relatives? Nikanj’s relatives?”

  “Nikanj’s parents.”

  I turned to look at them, remembering their names. I had heard them all my life. The ooloi was Kahguyaht, large for an ooloi—as big as Lilith, who was large for a Human female. Kahguyaht had not given such large size to Nikanj. Its male mate, Jdahya, was of an ordinary size. The placement of his sensory tentacles gave him an oddly Human look. They hung from his head like hair. They were placed on his face in a way that could be mistaken for Human eyes, ears, nose. He was the first Oankali Lilith had ever met. She was looking at him now and smiling. “Francisco will like him,” she said.

  Francisco would like them all if he let himself. He was talking now with Tediin, Kahguyaht’s huge female mate—again, bigger than average. She did not look in the slightest Human. He was laughing at something she had said.

  “There are people waiting to meet you, Jodahs,” Lilith said.

  Oh, yes. They were waiting to meet me and examine me and decide whether I should be allowed to go on running around loose. They were already meeting Aaor.

  Three ooloi were investigating Aaor. Two waited to meet me. My ooan parents would be busy for a while with Francisco, but these others must be satisfied. I went to them wearily.

  15

  IT WASN’T BAD BEING examined by so many. It wasn’t uncomfortable. After a time even my ooan family left Francisco to poke and probe us. They took us into the shuttle. Through the shuttle, Oankali and constructs of all sexes could make easy, fast, nonverbal contact with us and with one another. The group had the shuttle fly out of the canyon and up as high as necessary to communicate with the ship. The ship transmitted our messages and those of its own inhabitants to the lowland towns and their messages to us. In that way, the people came together for the second time to share knowledge of construct ooloi who should not exist, and to decide what to do with us. The shuttle left children and most Humans back in the canyon. Both could have come and participated through their ooloi, but for them the experience would be jarring and disorienting. Everything was too intense, went too fast, was, for the Humans, too alien. Linking into the nervous system of a shuttle, a ship, or a town even through an ooloi was, according to Lilith, one of the worst experiences of her life. Yet she and Tino went up with us, and absorbed what they could of the complex exchange.