Imago x-3

by Butler, Octavia

  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.

&nb
sp; “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 RamÓn, Rafael’s brother. RamÓn 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.

  “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 RamÓn, 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.