Imago x-3

by Butler, Octavia

  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 JoĂo. 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 ordin
ary 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.

  The demands of the lowlanders and the people of the ship were surprisingly easy for me to absorb and understand. I could handle the intensity and the complexity. What I wasn’t sure I could handle was the result. The whole business was like Lilith’s rounded black cloud of hair. Every strand seemed to go its own different way, bending, twisting, spiraling, angling. Yet together they formed a symmetrical, recognizable shape, and all were attached to the same head.

  Oankali and construct opinion also took on a recognizable shape from apparent chaos. The head that they were attached to was the generally accepted belief that Aaor and I were potentially dangerous and should either go to the ship or stay where we were. The lowland towns were apologetic, but they still felt unsure and afraid of us. We represented the premature adulthood of a new species. We represented true independence—reproductive independence—for that species, and this frightened both Oankali and constructs. We were, as one signaler remarked, frighteningly competent ooloi. We must be watched and understood before any more of us were made— and before we could be permitted to settle in a lowland town.

  Continued exile, then. The mountains. We would not go to Chkahichdahk. The people knew that. We let them know it again, Aaor and I together.

  “There will be two more of you,” someone signaled from far away. I separated out the signal in my memory and realized that it had come from far to the east and south on the other side of the continent. There, an ooloi in a Mandarin-speaking Jah village was reporting its shameful error, its children going wrong. Both were in metamorphosis now. Both would be ooloi.

  “Bring them here as soon as they can travel,” I signaled. “They’ll need mates quickly. It would be best if they had chosen mates already.”

  “This is first metamorphosis,” the signaler protested.

  “And they are construct! Bring them here or they’ll die. Put them on a shuttle as soon as you can. For now, let them know that there are mates for them here.”

  After a time, the signaler agreed.

  This produced confusion among the people. One mistake simply focused attention on the ooloi responsible. Two mistakes unconnected, but happening so close together in time after a century of perfection, might indicate something other than ooloi incompetence.

  There was much communication about this, but no conclusion. Finally Aaor interrupted.

  “This will probably happen again,” it said. “An ooloi subadult who doesn’t want to go to the ship should be sent here. The Humans who want to stay here should be left here and let alone. They want mates and I think there are Oankali and constructs who are willing to come here to mate with them.”

  “I believe we will be staying,” Kahguyaht signaled. “We’ve found resisters who might mate with us.” It paused. “I don’t believe they would even consider us if they hadn’t spent these last months living near Jodahs and Aaor.”

  “Your ooan children,” someone signaled.

  Kahguyaht signaled very slowly. “Where is the flaw in what I’ve said?”

  No response. I doubted that anyone really believed Kahguyaht was expressing misplaced family pride. It was simply telling the truth.

  “Aaor and I want Oankali mates,” I signaled. “We want to start children. I think once we’ve done that and once you’ve examined our children, you’ll know that we’re not dangerous.”

  “You are dangerous,” several people signaled. “There’s no safe way to begin a new species.”

  “Then help us. Send us mates and young construct ooloi. Watch us all you like, but don’t hinder us.”

  “Have you planted a town?” someone on Chkahichdahk asked.

  I signaled negative. “We didn’t know we would be staying here

  permanently.”

  “Plant a town,” several people signaled. “How can you think of having children with no town to hold them?”

  I hesitated, focused on Kahguyaht. It spoke aloud within the shuttle. “Plant a town, Lelka. In less than a hundred years, my mates and I will be dead. You should plant the town that you and your mates and children will leave this world in.”

  “If I plant a town,” I signaled the people, “will Aaor and I be permitted Oankali mates? Will Oankali and construct mates come to the Humans here?”

  There was a long period of discussion. Some people were mote concerned about us than others. Some, clearly, would have nothing to do with us until we had been stable for several more years, and clearly done no harm. They were in the minority. The majority decided that as long as we stayed where we were, anyone who wanted to join us could do so.

  “Plant a town,” they told us. “Prepare a place. People will come.”

  A few of them signaled such eagerness that I knew they would be with us as soon as they could get a shuttle. Humans who wanted mates were rare enough and desirable enough to make people dare to face any danger they thought Aaor and I might present. And Aaor and I were interesting enough in our newness to seduce Oankali who needed ooloi mates. People seeking mates were more vulnerable to seduction than they would be at any other time in their lives. They would come.

  16

  Sometime later, when the visiting families and the mountain Humans had begun to get together and curiously examine one another, I prepared to plant the new town.

  I sorted through the vast genetic memory that Nikanj had given me. There was a single cell within that great store—a cell that could be “awakened” from its stasis within yashi and stimulated to divide and grow into a kind of seed. This seed could become a town or a shuttle or a great ship like Chkahichdahk. In fact, my seed would begin as a town and eventually leave Earth as a great ship. It would never be a shuttle, though it would be parent to shuttles.

  Over the next few days, I found the cell, awakened it, nourished it, and encouraged it to divide. When it had divided several times, I stopped it, separated one cell from the mass, and returned that cell to stasis. This was work that only an adult ooloi could do, and I found that I enjoyed it immensely.

  I took the remaining mass—the seed—still within my body to the
place that the Humans and the visiting families had agreed was good for people and towns. Several of the visitors and Humans traveled with me by shuttle, since the chosen place was well upriver from the mountain village. There were scattered stone ruins at the new place where the canyon broadened into a large valley. Plenty of land, plenty of water, easy access to many needed minerals. Less easy access to others, according to what the shuttle’s senses told us when it had landed and tasted the new place. But whether or not the town had to develop a longer and more complex root system than most towns, everything it needed was within its reach. Including us. Here the town could grow and always have the companionship of some of us. It would need that companionship as much as we did during our metamorphoses. Yet we were planting it too far from the mountain people’s crops for it to be tempted to reach them and eat them before it was big enough to feed the people itself. While it was young, it would be particularly voracious. And it would need the space the valley afforded it to grow and mature before it had to deal with mountains.

  “This could be a good place to live,” one of the elders commented as she left the shuttle and looked around. She was the woman whose leg Aaor had regenerated. She had decided with most of her people to stay on Earth.

  “There’s room here for many people,” Jesusa said, looking at me. She wanted a child even more than I did. It was hard for her to wait for Oankali mates. At least now we knew there were potential mates coming.

  I chose a spot near the river. There I prepared the seed to go into the ground. I gave it a thick, nutritious coating, then brought it out of my body through my right sensory hand. I planted it deep in the rich soil of the riverbank. Seconds after I had expelled it, I felt it begin the tiny positioning movements of independent life.

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