Adulthood Rites

by Octavia E. Butler

  “Why not me! I had two children before the war. I know how to bring them up.”

  “We also had two,” Anne said. “Two little girls.” She gave a low laugh. “Shkaht and Amma look nothing like them, but I would give anything to make one of those girls my daughter.”

  “With or without tentacles?” Sabina said.

  “If Yori would do it, I would want them removed.”

  “I don’t know whether I’d do it,” Yori said. “I don’t believe Tate was lying about what she saw.”

  “But what she saw was between a Human and an adult Oankali,” Anne said. “These are children. Almost babies. And they’re almost Human.”

  “They look almost Human,” Sabina put in. “We don’t know what they really are.”

  “Children,” Anne said. “They’re children.”

  Silence.

  “It should be done,” Neci said. “Everyone knows it should be done. We don’t know how to do it yet, but, Yori, you should be finding out how. You should study them. You came along to guard their health. Doesn’t that mean you should spend time with them, get to know more about them?”

  “That won’t help,” Yori said. “I already know they’re venomous. Perhaps I could protect myself, and perhaps I couldn’t. But … this is cosmetic surgery, Neci. Unnecessary. And I’m no surgeon anyway. Why should we risk the girls’ health and my life just because they have what amounts to ugly birthmarks? Tate says the tentacles grow back, anyway.” She drew a deep breath. “No, I won’t do it. I wasn’t sure before, but I am now. I won’t do it.”

  Silence. Sounds of moving about, someone walking—Yori’s short, light steps. Sound of a door being opened.

  “Good night,” Yori said.

  No one wished her a good night.

  “It’s not that complicated,” Neci said moments later. “Especially not with Amma. She has so few tentacles—eight or ten—and they’re so small. Anyone could do it—with gloves for protection.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Anne said. “I couldn’t use a knife on anyone.”

  “I could,” Gil said. “But …if only they weren’t such little girls.”

  “Is there any liquor here?” Neci asked. “Even that foul cassava stuff the wanderers drink would do.”

  “We make the corn whiskey here, too,” Gil said. “There’s always plenty. Too much.”

  “So we give it to the girls and then do it.”

  “I don’t know,” Sabina said. “They’re so young. And if they get sick …”

  “Yori will care for them if they get sick. She’ll care for them, even if she doesn’t like what we’ve done. And it will be done, as it should be.”

  “But—”

  “It must be done! We must raise Human children, not aliens who don’t even understand how we see things.”

  Silence.

  “Tomorrow, Gil? Can it be done tomorrow?”

  “I … don’t know”

  “We can collect the kids when they’re out eating plants. No one will notice for a while that they’re gone. Sabina, you’ll get the liquor, won’t you?”

  “Are there very sharp knives here? It should be done quickly and cleanly. And we’ll need clean cloths for bandages, gloves for all of us, just in case, and that antiseptic Yori has. I’ll get that. There probably won’t be any infection, but we won’t take chances.” She stopped abruptly, then spoke one word harshly. “Tomorrow!”

  Silence.

  Akin got up, managed to struggle out of the hammock. Abira awoke, but only mumbled something and went back to sleep. Akin headed toward the next room where Amma and Shkaht shared a hammock. They met him coming out. All three linked instantly and spoke without sound.

  “We have to go,” Shkaht said sadly.

  “You don’t,” Akin argued. “They’re only a few, and not that strong. We have Tate and Gabe, Yori, Abira, Macy and Kolina. They would help us!”

  “They would help us tomorrow. Neci would wait and recruit and try again later.”

  “Tate could talk to the salvagers the way she talked to the camp on the way up here. People believe her when she talks.”

  “Neci didn’t.”

  “Yes she did. She just wants to have everything her way—even if her way is wrong. And she’s not very smart. She’s seen me taste metal and flesh and wood, but she thinks gloves will protect her hands from being tasted or stung when she cuts you.”

  “Plastic gloves?”

  Surprised, Akin thought for a moment. “They might have gloves made of some kind of plastic. I haven’t seen plastic that soft, but it could exist. But once you understand the plastic it can’t hurt you.”

  “Neci probably doesn’t realize that. You said she wasn’t smart. That makes her more dangerous. Maybe if other people stop her from cutting us tomorrow, she’ll get angrier. She’ll want to hurt us just to prove she can.”

  After a time, Akin agreed. “She would.”

  “We have to go.”

  “I want to go with you!”

  Silence.

  Frightened, Akin linked more deeply with them. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

  More silence. Very gently, they held him between them and put him to sleep. He understood what they were doing and resisted them angrily at first, but they were right. They had a chance without him. They were stronger, larger, and could travel faster and farther without rest. Communication between them was quicker and more precise. They could act almost as though they shared a single nervous system. Only paired siblings and adult mates came to know each other that well. Akin would hamper them, probably get them recaptured. He knew this, and they could feel his contradictory feelings. They knew he knew. Thus, there was no need to argue. He must simply accept the reality.

  He accepted it finally and allowed them to send him into a deep sleep.

  18

  HE SLEPT NAKED ON the floor until Tate found him the next morning. She awoke him by lifting him and was startled when he grabbed her around the neck and would not let go. He did not cry or speak. He tasted her but did not study her. Later he realized he had actually tried to become her, to join with her as he might with his closest sibling. It was not possible. He was reaching for a union the Humans had denied him. It seemed to him that what he needed was just beyond his grasp, just beyond that final crossing he could not make, as with his mother. As with everyone. He could know so much and no more, feel so much and no more, join so close and no closer.

  Desperately, he took what he could get. She could not comfort him or even know how deeply he perceived her. But she could, simply by permitting the attachment, divert his attention from himself, from his own misery.

  Aside from her original jerk of surprise, Tate did not try to detach him. He did not know what she did. All his senses were focused on the worlds within the cells of her body. He did not know how long he was frozen to her, not thinking, not knowing or caring what she did as long as she did not disturb him.

  When he finally drew away from her, he found that she was sitting on a mat on the floor, leaning against a wall. She had gone on holding him on her arm and resting her arm on her knees. Now as he straightened and reoriented himself, she took his chin between her fingers and turned his face toward hers.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  He said nothing for a moment, looked around the room.

  “Everyone’s at breakfast,” she said. “I’ve had my regularly scheduled lecture about how I spoil you and a little extra to boot. Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened.”

  She put him down beside her and stared down at him, waiting. Clearly she did not know the girls were gone. Perhaps no one had noticed yet, thanks to the morning grazing habits of all three children. He could not tell. Amma and Shkaht should have as much of a start as possible.

  “It’s too late for me to bond with my sibling,” he said truthfully. “I was thinking about that last night. I was feeling … Lonely wouldn’t
really be the right word. This was more like … something died.” Every word was true. His answer was simply incomplete. Amma and Shkaht had started his feelings—their union, their leaving …

  “Where are the girls?” Tate asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have they gone, Akin?”

  He looked away. Why was she always so hard to hide things from? Why did he hesitate so to lie to her?

  “Good god,” she said, and started to get up.

  “Wait!” Akin said. “They were going to cut them this morning. Neci and her friends were going to grab them while they were eating and hide them and cut off their sensory tentacles.”

  “The hell they were!”

  “They were! We heard them last night! Yori wouldn’t help them, but they were going to do it anyway. They were going to give them corn whiskey and—”

  “Moonshine?”

  “What?”

  “They were going to make the girls drunk?”

  “They couldn’t.”

  Tate frowned. “Were they going to give them the moonshine—the whiskey?”

  “Yes. But it wouldn’t make them drunk. I’ve seen drunk Humans. I don’t think anything we could drink would make us like that. Our bodies would reject the drink.”

  “What would it have done to them?”

  “Make them vomit or urinate a lot. It isn’t strong or deadly. Probably they would just pass it through almost unchanged. They would urinate a lot.”

  “That stuff’s damn strong.”

  “I mean … I mean it’s not a deadly poison. Humans can drink it without dying. We can drink it without vomiting it up wrapped in part of our flesh to keep it from injuring us.”

  “So it wouldn’t hurt them—just in case Neci caught them.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt them. They wouldn’t like it, though. And Neci hasn’t caught them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve heard her. She’s been asking people where the girls are. No one’s seen them. She’s getting worried.”

  Tate stared at nothing, believing, absorbing. “We wouldn’t have let her do it. All you had to do was tell me.”

  “You would have stopped her this time,” he agreed. “She would have kept trying. People believe her after a while. They do what she wants them to.”

  She shook her head. “Not this time. Too many of us were against her on this. Little girls, for godsake! Akin, we could waste days searching for them, but you could track them faster with your Oankali hearing and sight.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes! How far do you think those girls will get before something happens to them? They’re not much bigger than you are. They’ll die out there!”

  “I wouldn’t. Why should they?”

  Silence. She frowned down at him. “You mean you could get home from here?”

  “I could if no Humans stopped me.”

  “And you think no Humans will stop the girls?”

  “I think … I think they’re afraid. I think they’re frightened enough to sting.”

  “Oh, god.”

  “What if someone were going to cut your eyes out, and you had a gun?”

  “I thought the new species was supposed to be above that kind of thing.”

  “They’re afraid. They only want to go home. They don’t want to be cut.”

  “No.” She sighed. “Get dressed. Let’s go to breakfast. The riot should be starting any time now.”

  “I don’t think they’ll find the girls.”

  “If what you say is true, I hope they don’t. Akin?”

  He waited, knowing what she would ask.

  “Why didn’t they take you with them?”

  “I’m too small.” He walked away from her, found his pants in the next room, and put them on. “I couldn’t work with them the way they could work with each other. I would have gotten them caught.”

  “You wanted to go?”

  Silence. If she did not know he had wanted to go, wanted desperately to go, she was stupid. And she was not stupid.

  “I wonder why the hell your people don’t come for you,” she said. “They must know better than I do what they’re putting you through.”

  “What they’re putting me through?” he asked, amazed.

  She sighed. “We, then. Whatever good that admission does you. Oankali drove us to become what we are. If they hadn’t tampered with us, we’d have children of our own. We could live in our own ways, and they could live in theirs.”

  “Some of you would attack them,” Akin said softly. “I think some Humans would have to attack them.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did Humans attack one another?”

  Suddenly there was shouting outside.

  “Okay,” Tate said. “They’ve realized the girls are gone. They’ll be here in a moment.”

  Almost before she had finished speaking, Macy Wilton and Neci Roybal were at the door, looking around the room.

  “Have you seen the girls?” Macy demanded.

  Tate shook her head. “No, we haven’t been out.”

  “Did you see them at all this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Akin?”

  “No.” If Tate thought it was best to lie, then he would lie—although neither of them had begun lying yet.

  “I heard you were sick, Akin,” Neci said.

  “I’m all right now.”

  “What made you sick?”

  He stared at her with quiet dislike, wondering what it might be safe to say.

  Tate spoke up with uncharacteristic softness. “He had a dream that upset him. A dream about his mother.”

  Neci raised an eyebrow skeptically. “I didn’t know they dreamed.”

  Tate shook her head, smiled slightly. “Neci, why not? He’s at least as Human as you are.”

  The woman drew back. “You should be out helping to search for the girls!” she said. “Who knows what’s happened to them!”

  “Maybe someone decided to follow your advice, grab them, and cut off their sensory tentacles.”

  “What!” demanded Macy. He had gone into the room where he and the girls and his wife had slept. Now he came out, staring at Tate.

  “She has an obscene sense of humor,” Neci said.

  Tate made a wordless sound. “These days, I have no sense of humor at all where you’re concerned.” She looked at Macy. “She was still pushing to have the girls’ tentacles amputated. She’s been talking to the salvagers about it.” Now she looked directly at Neci. “Deny it.”

  “Why should I? They would be better off without them—more Human!”

  “Just as much better off as you would be without your eyes! Let’s go look for them, Macy. I hope to god they never heard the things Neci’s been saying.”

  Amazed, Akin followed her out. She had put the blame for the girls’ flight exactly where it belonged without involving him at all. She left him with a salvager who had injured his knee and joined the search as though she had every expectation of finding the girls quickly.

  19

  AMMA AND SHKAHT WERE not found. They were simply gone—perhaps found by other resisters, perhaps safe in some trade village. Most of the resisters seemed to think they were dead—eaten by caimans or anacondas, bitten by poisonous snakes or insects. The idea that such young children could find their way to safety seemed completely impossible to them.

  And most of the resisters blamed Neci. Tate seemed to find that satisfying. Akin did not care. If Neci left him alone, he was content with her. And she did leave him alone—but only after planting the idea that he must be watched more carefully. She was not the only one who believed this, but she was the only one to suggest that he be kept out of the pit, kept away from the river, be harnessed and tied outside the cabins when everyone was too busy to watch him.

  He would not have stood for that. He would have stung the rope or chain that they tied him with until it rotted or corroded through, and he would have run away—up the mount
ain, not down. They might not find him higher up. He would probably not make it back to Lo. He was too far from it now, and there were so many resister villages between it and him that he would probably be picked up once he headed down from the hills. But he would not stay with people who tied him.

  He was not tied. He was watched more closely than before, but it seemed the resisters had as great an aversion to tying or confining people as he did.

  Neci finally left with a group of salvagers going home—men and women carrying wealth on their backs. They took two of the guns with them. There had been a general agreement among new salvagers and old that Phoenix would begin to manufacture guns. Tate was against it. Yori was so strongly against it that she threatened to move to another resister village. Nevertheless, guns would be made.

  “We’ve got to protect ourselves,” Gabe said. “Too many of the raiders have guns now, and Phoenix is too rich. Sooner or later, they’ll realize it’s easier to steal from us than carry on honest trade.”

  Tate slept several nights alone or with Akin once the decision was made. Sometimes she hardly slept at all, and Akin wished he could comfort her the way Amma and Shkaht had comforted him. Sleep could be a great gift. But he could have given it only with the help of a close Oankali-born sibling.

  “Would raiders begin raiding you the way they raid us?” he asked her one night as they lay together in a hammock.

  “Probably.”

  “Why haven’t they already?”

  “They have occasionally—trying to steal metal or women. But Phoenix is a strong town—plenty of people willing to fight if they have to. There are smaller, weaker settlements that are easier pickings.”

  “Are guns really a bad idea, then?”

  In the dark she tried to stare at him. She couldn’t have seen him—although he saw her clearly. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I like a lot of the people in Phoenix. And I remember what raiders did to Tino. They didn’t have to. They just did it. Later, though, while I was with them, they didn’t really seem … I don’t know. Most of the time, they were like the men in Phoenix.”

  “They probably came from someplace like Phoenix—some village or town. They got sick of one pointless, endless existence and chose another.”