Imago x-3

Imago x-3 Page 8

by Butler, Octavia

  When the leg fell away, I withdrew enough of my attention from the male to ask the family to get rid of it. I didn’t want the male to see it.

  Then I settled down to healing the many smaller injuries and neutralizing the poisons that had already begun to destroy the health of his body. I spent much of the evening healing him. Finally I focused again on his leg and began to reprogram certain cells. Genes that had not been active since well before the male was born had to be awakened and set to work telling the body how to grow a leg. A leg, not a cancer. The regeneration would take many days and would have to be monitored. We would camp here and keep the man with us until regeneration was complete.

  It had been dark for some time when I detached myself from the male. My Human parents and my siblings were asleep nearby. Ahaj as and Dichaan sat near one another guarding the camp and conversing aloud so softly that even I could not hear all they said. A Human intruder would have heard nothing at all. Oankali and construct hearing was so acute that some resisters imagined we could read their thoughts. I wished we could have so that I would have some idea how the male I had healed would react to me. I would have to spend as much time with him as new mates often spent together. That would be hard if he hated or feared me.

  “Do you like him, Oeka?” Nikanj asked softly.

  I had known it was behind me, sitting, waiting to check my work. Now it came up beside me and settled a sensory arm around my neck. I still enjoyed its touch, but I held stiff against it because I thought it would next touch the male.

  “Thorny, possessive ooloi child,” it said, pulling me against it in spite of my stiffness. “I must examine him this once. But if what you tell me and show me matches what I find in him, I won’t touch him again until it’s time for him to go—unless something goes wrong.”

  “Nothing will go wrong!”

  “Good. Show me everything.”

  I obeyed, stumbling now and then because I understood the working of the male’s body better than I understood the vocabulary, silent or vocal, for discussing it. But with neurosensory illusions, I could show it exactly what I meant.

  “There are no words for some things,” Nikanj told me as it finished. “You and your children will create them if you need them. We’ve never needed them.”

  “Did I do all right with him?”

  “Go away. I’ll find out for sure.”

  I went to sit with Ahajas and Dichaan and they gave me some of the wild figs and nuts they had been eating. The food did not take my mind off Nikanj touching the Human, but I ate anyway, and listened while Ahajas told me how hard it had been for Nikanj when its ooan Kahguyaht had had to examine Lilith.

  “Kahguyaht said ooloi possessiveness during subadulthood is a bridge that helps ooloi understand Humans,” she said. “It’s as though Human emotions were permanently locked in ooloi subadulthood. Humans are possessive of mates, potential mates, and property because these can be taken from them.”

  “They can be taken from anyone,” I said. “Living things can die. Nonliving things can be destroyed.”

  “But Human mates can walk away from one another,” Dichaan said. “They never lose the ability to do that. They can leave one another permanently and find new mates. Humans can take the mates of other Humans. There’s no physical bond. No security. And because Humans are hierarchical, they tend to compete for mates and property.”

  “But that’s built into them genetically,” I said. “It isn’t built into me.”

  “No,” Ahajas said. “But, Oeka, you won’t be able to bond with a mate—Human, construct, or Oankali—until you’re adult. You can feel needs and attachments. I know you feel more at this stage than an Oankali would. But until you’re mature, you can’t form a true bond. Other ooloi can seduce potential mates away from you. So other ooloi are suspect.”

  That sounded right—or rather, it sounded true. It didn’t make me feel any better, but it helped me understand why I felt like tearing Nikanj loose from the male and standing guard to see that it did not approach him again.

  Nikanj came over to me after a while, smelling of the male, tasting of him when it touched me. I flinched in resentment.

  “You’ve done a good job,” it said. “How can you do such a good job with Humans and such a poor one with yourself and Aaor?”

  “I don’t know,” I said bleakly. “But Humans steady me somehow. Maybe it’s just that Marina and this male are alone—mateless.”

  “Go rest next to him. If you want to sleep, sleep linked with him so that he won’t wake up until you do.”

  I got up to go.

  “Oeka.”

  I focused on Nikanj without turning.

  “Tino made crutches for him to use for the next few days. They’re near his foot.”

  “All right.” I had never seen a crutch, but I had heard of them from the Humans in Lo.

  “There’s clothing with the crutches. Lilith says put some of it on and give the rest to him.”

  Now I did turn to look at it.

  “Put the clothing on, Jodahs. He’s a resister male. It will be hard enough for him to accept you.”

  It was right, of course. I wasn’t even sure why I had stopped wearing clothes—except perhaps that I didn’t have anyone to wear them for. I dressed and lay down alongside the male.

  2

  The male and I awoke together. He saw me and tried at once to scramble away from me. I held him, spoke softly to him. “You’re safe,” I said. “No one will hurt you here. You’re being helped.”

  He frowned, watched my mouth. I could read no understanding in his expression, though the softness of my voice seemed to ease him.

  “EspaŃol?” I asked.

  “PortuguĘs?” he asked hopefully.

  Relief. “Sim, senhor. Falo portuguĘs.”

  He sighed with relief of his own. “Where am I? What has happened to me?”

  I sat up, but with a hand on his shoulder encouraged him to go on lying down. “We found you badly injured, alone in the forest. I think you had fallen from a tree.”

  “I remember

  my leg. I tried to get home.”

  “You can go home in a few days. You’re still healing now.” I paused. “You did a great deal of damage to yourself, but we can fix it all.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jodahs Iyapo Leal Kaalnikanjlo. I’m the one who has to see that you walk home on two good legs.”

  “It was broken, my leg. Will it be crooked?”

  “No. It will be new and straight. What’s your name?”

  “Excuse me. I am JoĂo. JoĂo Eduardo Villas da Silva.”

  “JoĂo, your leg was too badly injured to be saved. But your new leg has already begun to grow.”

  He groped in sudden terror for the missing leg. He stared at me. Abruptly he tried again to scramble away.

  I caught his arms and held him still, held him until he stopped struggling. “You are well and healthy,” I told him softly. “In a few days you will have a new leg. Don’t do yourself any more harm now. You’re all right.”

  He stared at my face, shook his head, stared again.

  “It is true,” I said. “A few days of crutches, then a whole leg again. Look at it.”

  He looked, twisting so that I could not see—as though he thought his body still held secrets from me.

  “It doesn’t look like a new leg,” he said.

  “It’s only a few hours old. Give it time to grow.”

  He sat where he was and looked around at the rest of the family. “Who are you all? Why are you here?”

  “We’re travelers. One family from Lo, traveling south.”

  “My home is to the west in the hills.”

  “We won’t leave you until you can go there.”

  “Thank you.” He stared at me a little longer. “I mean no offense, but

  I’ve met very few of your people—Human and not Human.”

  “Construct.”

  “Yes. But I don’t know

  Are you a man or a woman?”

  “I’m not an adult yet.”

  “No? You appear to be an adult. You appear to be a young woman—too t
hin, perhaps, but very lovely.”

  I wasn’t surprised this time. My body wanted him. My body sought to please him. What would happen to me when I had two or more mates? Would I be like the sky, constantly changing, clouded, clear, clouded, clear? Would I have to be hateful to one partner in order to please the other? Nikanj looked the same all the time and yet all four of my other parents treasured it. How well would my looks please anyone when I had four arms instead of two?

  “No male or female could regenerate your leg,” I told JoĂo. “I am ooloi.”

  It was as though the air between us became a crystalline wall—transparent, but very hard. I could not reach him through it anymore. He had taken refuge behind it and even if I touched him, I would not reach him.

  “You have nothing to fear from us,” I said, meaning he had nothing to fear from me. “And even though I’m not adult, I can complete your regeneration.”

  “Thank you,” he said from behind his cold new shield. “I’m very grateful.” He was not. He did not believe me.

  My head and body tentacles drew themselves into tight prestrike coils, and I moved back from JoĂo. It would have been easier if he had leaped away from me the way Marina had almost done. Fear was easier to deal with than this

  this cold rejection—this revulsion.

  “Why do you hate me?” I whispered. “You would have died without an ooloi to save your life. Why do you hate me for saving your life?”

  JoĂo’s face underwent several changes. Surprise, regret, shame, anger, renewed hatred and revulsion. “I did not ask you to save me.”

  “Why do you hate me?”

  “I know what you do—your kind. You take men as though they were women!”

  “No! We—”

  “Yes! Your kind and your Human whores are the cause of all our trouble! You treat all mankind as your woman!”

  “Is that how I’ve treated you?”

  He became sullen. “I don’t know what you’ve done.”

  “Your body tells you what I’ve done.” I sat for a time and looked at him with my eyes. When he looked away, I said, “That male over there is my Human father. The female is my Human mother. I came from her body. I didn’t heal you so that you could insult these people.”

  He only stared at me. But there was doubt in him now. Lilith was putting something into a Lo cloth pot that she had suspended between two trees. She had not yet made a fire beneath it. Tino was some distance away cutting palm branches. We would build a shelter of sapling trees, Lo cloth, and palm branches and hang our hammocks in it. We had not done that for a while.

  My Human parents must have looked much like the people of JoĂo’s home village. When lone resisters had to live among us, they usually found themselves identifying with the mated Humans around them and choosing an Oankali or a construct “protector.” They became temporary mates or temporary adopted siblings. Marina had chosen a kind of temporary mate status, staying with me and hardly speaking at all to anyone else except Aaor. That was what I wanted of JoĂo, too. But I would have to encourage him more, and at the same time convince him that his manhood was not threatened. I had heard that males often felt this way about ooloi. I would have to talk to Tino. He could help me understand the fear and ease it. Reason would clearly not be enough.

  “No one will guard you,” I told JoĂo. “You are not a prisoner. But I have to monitor your leg. If you leave before the regeneration is complete, before I make certain the growth process had stopped, you could wind up with a monstrous tumor. It would eventually kill you. If someone cut it away for you, it would grow again.”

  He did not want to believe me, but I had frightened him. I had intended to. All that I’d said was true.

  I stood up and pointed. “Your crutches are there. And my Human mother has left you clean clothing.” I paused. “Anyone here will give you any help you need if you don’t insult them.”

  I wanted to hold my hand out to him, but all of his body language said he would not take it as Marina had. He sat where he was, staring at the place where his leg had been. He made no effort to get up.

  I brought him a bowl of fruit and nut porridge and he only sat staring at it. I sat with him and ate mine, but he hardly moved. No, he moved once. When I touched him, he flinched and turned to stare at me. There was nothing in his expression except hatred.

  I went away and bathed in the river. Aaor was with JoĂo when I got back to camp. They were not talking, but the stiffness had gone out of JoĂo’s back. Perhaps he was simply tired.

  I saw Aaor push the bowl of porridge toward him. He took the bowl and ate. When Aaor touched him, he did not flinch.

  3

  JoĂo chose Aaor. He accepted help from it and talked to it and caressed its small breasts once he realized that neither it nor anyone else minded this. The breasts did not represent true mammary glands. Aaor would probably lose them when it metamorphosed. Most constructs did, even when they became female. But JoĂo liked them. Aaor simply enjoyed the contact.

  At night, JoĂo endured me. I think his greatest shame was that his body did not find me as repellent as he wanted to believe I was. This frightened him as much as it shamed him. Perhaps it told him what I had already realized—that given time he could learn to accept me, to enjoy me very much. I think he hated me more for that than for anything.

  In twenty-one days JoĂo’s leg had grown. I had made him eat huge amounts of food—had stimulated his appetite so that he could not stubbornly refuse meals. Also, I chemically encouraged him to be sedentary. He needed all his energy to grow his leg.

  I had grown breasts myself, and developed an even more distinctly Human female appearance. I neither directed my body nor attempted to control it. It developed no diseases, no abnormal growths or changes. It seemed totally focused on JoĂo, who ignored it during the day, but caressed it at night and investigated it before I put him to sleep.

  I kept him with me for three extra days to help him regain his strength and to be absolutely certain the leg had stopped growing and worked as well as his old one. It was smooth and soft-skinned and very pale. The foot was so tender that I folded lengths of Lo cloth and pressed them together to make sandals for him.

  “I haven’t worn anything on my feet since long before you were born,” he told me.

  “Wear these back to your home or you’ll damage the new foot badly,” I said.

  “You’re really going to let me go?”

  “Tomorrow.” It was our twenty-fifth night together. He still pretended to ignore me during the day, but it had apparently become so much trouble for him to manufacture hatred against me at night. He accepted what I did for him and he did not insult me. He didn’t insult anyone. Once I found him telling Aaor, Lilith, and Tino about SĂo Paulo, where he had been born. He had been only nineteen when the war came. He had been a student. He would have become a doctor like his father. “People shook their heads over the war at first,” he told them. “They said it would kill off the north—Europe, Asia, North America. They said the northerners had lost their minds. No one realized we would suffer from sickness, hunger, blindness

  .”

  He had known I was listening. He hadn’t cared, but he would not have volunteered to tell me anything of his past. He answered my questions, but he volunteered nothing.

  The name of his resister village was SĂo Paulo, in memory of his home city, which had once existed far to the east. He had just traveled back to the site of the city—through thick forests and hostile people, across many rivers. Before the war and the coming of the Oankali, SĂo Paulo was a city of millions of Humans and the forests of buildings, large and small. But what the war and its aftermath had not destroyed, the Oankali fed to their shuttles. Shuttles ate whatever they landed on. There were a few ruins left, but the forest now covered most of what had been SĂo Paulo.

  JoĂo had talked about his past to Ahajas and Dichaan as well. He avoided Nikanj, at least. I could accept everything he did as long as he avoided Nikanj.

  “Tomorrow,” he repeated now, lying beside me. He moved warningly, then sat up. I had
told him always to move a little to warn me that he intended to change position or get up—in case I had sensory tentacles linked into him. He had ignored me once. The pain of that had made him scream aloud and roll himself into a tight fetal knot for some time, sweating and gasping. He hurt me as badly as he hurt himself, but I managed not to react as much. I never said anything, but he always made me a small, warning move after that.

  He looked down at me. “I didn’t believe you.”

  “Your leg is complete and strong. It’s tender. You need to protect it. But you’re whole. Why shouldn’t you leave?”

  His mouth said nothing. His face said he wasn’t sure he wanted to go. He wasn’t even sure he appreciated my telling him he could go. But his pride kept him silent.

  “All right!” he said finally. “Tomorrow I go. Tomorrow morning.”

  I drew him down to our pallet and kissed his face, then his mouth. “I won’t be glad to see you go,” I said. “If you were younger

  ” I rubbed the back of his neck. My underarms didn’t itch. They hurt.

  “I didn’t know my age was important,” he said. He sighed. “I shouldn’t care. I should be grateful. I haven’t changed my opinion

  of ooloi.”

  “You have, I think.”

  “No. I’ve only changed my feelings toward you. I wouldn’t have believed I could do even that.”

  “Before you leave, go to Nikanj. Have it check you to be certain that I haven’t missed anything.”

  “No!”

  “It will only touch you for a moment. Only for a moment. Come to me afterward

  to say goodbye.”

  “No. I can’t let that thing touch me. I would rather trust you.”

  “It’s one of my parents.”

  “I know. I mean no offense. But I cannot do that.”

  “I won’t send you away to die from some mistake of mine that could have been corrected. You will let it touch you.”

  Silence.

  “Do it for my sake, JoĂo. Don’t leave me wondering whether I’ve killed you.”

 

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