Adulthood Rites

by Octavia E. Butler

  Akin looked at Tino’s expression, and he knew he did not recognize her. He was alive, but something was the matter with him.

  “I’m sorry,” Tino said. “I’ve had a head injury. I remember a lot of my past, but … some things are still coming back to me.”

  Tate looked at Lilith. Lilith looked back with no sign of friendliness. “They tried to kill him when they took Akin,” she said. “They clubbed him down, fractured his skull so badly he nearly did die.”

  “Akin said he was dead.”

  “He had good reason to think so.” She paused. “Was it worth his life for you to have my son?”

  “She didn’t do it,” Akin said quickly. “She was my friend. The men who took me tried to sell me in a lot of places before … before Phoenix wanted to buy me.”

  “Most of the men who took him are dead,” Tate said. “The survivor is paralyzed. There was a fight.” She glanced at Tino. “Believe me, you and Tino are avenged.”

  The Oankali began communicating silently among themselves as they heard this. Akin could see his Oankali parents among them, and he wanted to go to them, but he also wanted to go to Tino, wanted to make the man remember him, wanted to make him sound like Tino again.

  “Tate … ?” Tino said staring at her. “Is it … ? Are you … ?”

  “It’s me,” she said quickly. “Tate Rinaldi. You did half of your growing up in my house. Tate and Gabe. Remember?”

  “Kind of.” He thought for a moment. “You helped me. I was going to leave Phoenix and you said … you told me how to get to Lo.”

  Lilith looked surprised. “You did?” she asked Tate.

  “I thought he would be safe in Lo.”

  “He should have been.” Lilith drew a deep breath. “That was our first raid in years. We’d gotten careless.”

  Ahajas, Dichaan, and Nikanj detached themselves from the other Oankali and came over to the Human group. Akin could not wait any longer. He reached toward Dichaan, and Dichaan took him and held him for several minutes of relief and reacquaintance and joy. He did not know what the Humans said while he and Dichaan were locked together by as many of Dichaan’s sensory tentacles as could reach him and by Akin’s own tongue. Akin learned how Dichaan had found Tino and struggled to keep him alive and got home only to discover that Ahajas’s child was soon to be born. The family could not search. But others had searched. At first.

  “Was I left among them for so long so that I could study them?” Akin asked silently.

  Dichaan rustled his free tentacles in discomfort. “There was a consensus,” he said. “Everyone came to believe it was the right thing to do except us. We’ve never been alone that way before. Others were surprised that we didn’t accept the general will, but they were wrong. They were wrong to even want to risk you!”

  “My sibling?”

  Silence. Sadness. “It remembers you as something there then not there. Nikanj kept you in its thoughts for a while, and the rest of us searched. As soon as we could leave it, we began searching. No one would help us until now.”

  “Why now?” Akin asked.

  “The people believed you had learned enough. They knew they had deprived you of your sibling.”

  “It’s … too late for bonding.” He knew it was.

  “Yes.”

  “There was a pair of construct siblings here.”

  “We know. They’re all right.”

  “I saw what they had, how it was for them.” He paused for a moment remembering, longing. “I’ll never have that.” Without realizing it, he had begun to cry.

  “Eka, you’ll have something very like it when you mate. Until then, you have us.” Dichaan did not have to be told how little this was. It would be long years before Akin was old enough to mate. And bonding with parents was not the same as bonding with a close sibling. Nothing he had touched was as sweet as that bonding.

  Dichaan gave him to Nikanj, and Nikanj coaxed from him all the information he had discovered about plant and animal life, about the salvage pit. This could be given with great speed to an ooloi. It was the work of ooloi to absorb and assimilate information others had gathered. They compared familiar forms of life with what had been or should be. They detected changes and found new forms of life that could be understood, assembled, and used as they were needed. Males and females went to the ooloi with caches of biological information. The ooloi took the information and gave in exchange intense pleasure. The taking and the giving were one act.

  Akin had experienced mild versions of this exchange with Nikanj all his life, but this experience taught him he had known nothing about what an ooloi could take and give until now. Locked to Nikanj, he forgot for a time the pain of being denied bonding with his sibling.

  When he was able to think again, he understood why people treasured the ooloi. Males and females did not collect information only to please the ooloi or get pleasure from them. They collected it because the collecting felt necessary to them and pleased them.

  But, still, they did know that at some point an ooloi must take the information and coordinate it so that the people could use it. At some point, an ooloi must give them the sensation that only an ooloi could give. Even Humans were vulnerable to this enticement. They could not deliberately gather the kind of specific biological information the ooloi wanted, but they could share with an ooloi all that they had recently eaten, breathed, or absorbed through their skins. They could share any changes in their bodies since their last contact with the ooloi. They did not understand what they gave the ooloi. But they knew what the ooloi gave them. Akin understood exactly what he was giving to Nikanj. And for the first time, he began to understand what an ooloi could give him. It did not take the place of an ongoing closeness like Amma’s and Shkaht’s. Nothing could do that. But this was better than anything he had ever known. It was an easing of pain for now and a foreshadowing of healing for the distant, adult future.

  Sometime later, Akin became aware again of the three Humans. They were sitting on the ground talking to one another. On the hill behind them, the hill that concealed them from the salvage camp, Gabe stood. Apparently, none of the Humans had seen him yet. All the Oankali must be aware of him. He was watching Tate, no doubt focusing on her yellow hair.

  “Don’t say anything,” Nikanj told him silently. “Let them talk.”

  “He’s her mate,” Akin whispered aloud. “He’s afraid she’ll come with us and leave him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me go and get him.”

  “No, Eka.”

  “He’s a friend. He took me all around the hills. It was because of him that I had so much information to give you.”

  “He’s a resister. I won’t give him the chance to use you as a hostage. You don’t realize how valuable you are.”

  “He wouldn’t do it.”

  “What if he simply picked you up and stepped over the hill and called his friends. There are guns in that camp, aren’t there?”

  Silence. Gabe might do such a thing if he thought he was losing both Akin and Tate. He might. Just as Tino’s father had gathered his friends and killed so many even though he believed nothing he could do would bring Tino back or even properly avenge him.

  “Come with us!” Lilith was saying. “You like kids? Have some of your own. Teach them everything you know about what Earth used to be.”

  “That’s not what you used to say,” Tate said softly.

  Lilith nodded. “I used to think you resisters would find an answer. I hoped you would. But, Jesus, your only answer has been to steal kids from us. The same kids you’re too good to have yourselves. What’s the point?”

  “We thought … we thought they would be able to have children without an ooloi.”

  Lilith took a deep breath. “No one does it without the ooloi. They’ve seen to that.”

  “I can’t come back to them.”

  “It’s not bad,” Tino said. “It’s not what I thought.”

  “I know what it is! I know exactly what it
is. So does Gabe. And I don’t think anything I could say would make him go through that again.”

  “Call him,” Lilith said. “He’s there on the hill.”

  Tate looked up, saw Gabe. She stood up. “I have to go.”

  “Tate!” Lilith said urgently.

  Tate looked back at her.

  “Bring him to us. Let’s talk. What harm can it do?”

  But Tate would not. Akin could see that she would not. “Tate,” he called to her.

  She looked at him, then looked away quickly.

  “I’ll do what I said I would,” he told her. “I don’t forget things.”

  She came over to him, and kissed him. The fact that Nikanj was still holding him seemed not to bother her.

  “If you ask,” Nikanj said, “my parents will come from the ship. They haven’t found other Human mates.”

  She looked at Nikanj but did not speak to it. She walked away up the hill and over it, not stopping even to speak to Gabe. He followed her, and both disappeared over the hill.

  III

  CHKAHICHDAHK

  1

  THE BOY WANDERS TOO much,” Dichaan said as he sat sharing a meal with Tino. “It’s too early for the wandering phase of his life to begin.” Dichaan ate with his fingers from a large salad of fruits and vegetables that he had prepared himself. Only he knew best what he felt like eating and exactly what his current nutritional needs were.

  Tino ate a corn and bean dish and had beside him a sliced melon with sweet orange flesh and dishes of fried plantains and roasted nuts. He was, Dichaan thought, paying more attention to his food than to what Dichaan was saying.

  “Tino, listen to me!”

  “I hear.” The man swallowed and licked his lips. “He’s twenty, ’Chaan. If he weren’t showing some independence by now, I would be the one who was worried.”

  “No.” Dichaan rustled his tentacles. “His Human appearance is deceiving you. His twenty years are like … like twelve Human years. Less in some ways. He isn’t fertile now. He won’t be until his metamorphosis is complete.”

  “Four or five more years?”

  “Perhaps. Where does he go, Tino?”

  “I won’t tell you. He’s asked me not to.”

  Dichaan focused sharply on him. “I haven’t wanted to follow him.”

  “Don’t follow him. He isn’t doing any harm.”

  “I’m his only same-sex parent. I should understand him better. I don’t because his Human inheritance makes him do things that I don’t expect.”

  “What would a twenty-year-old Oankali be doing?”

  “Developing an affinity for one of the sexes. Beginning to know what it would become.”

  “He knows that. He doesn’t know how he’ll look, but he knows he’ll become male.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, a twenty-year-old Human male in a place like this would be exploring and hunting and chasing girls and showing off. He’d be trying to see to it that everyone knew he was a man and not a kid anymore. That’s what I was doing.”

  “Akin is still a kid, as you say.”

  “He doesn’t look like one, in spite of his small size. And he probably doesn’t feel like one. And whether he’s fertile or not, he’s damned interested in girls. And they don’t seem to mind.”

  “Nikanj said he would go through a phase of quasi-Human sexuality.”

  Tino laughed. “This must be it, then.”

  “Later he’ll want an ooloi.”

  “Yeah. I can understand that, too.”

  Dichaan hesitated. He had come to the question he most wanted to ask, and he knew Tino would not appreciate his asking. “Does he go to the resisters, Tino? Are they the reason for his wandering?”

  Tino looked startled, then angry. “If you knew, why did you ask?”

  “I didn’t know. I guessed. He must stop!”

  “No.”

  “They could kill him, Tino! They kill each other so easily!”

  “They know him. They look after him. And he doesn’t go far.”

  “You mean they know him as a construct man?”

  “Yes. He’s picked up some of their languages. But he hasn’t hidden his identity from them. His size disarms them. Nobody that small could be dangerous, they think. On the other hand, that means he’s had to fight a few times. Some guys think if he’s small, he’s weak, and if he’s weak, he’s fair game.”

  “Tino, he is too valuable for this. He’s teaching us what a Human-born male can be. There are still so few like him because we’re too unsure to form a consensus—”

  “Then learn from him! Let him alone and learn!”

  “Learn what? That he enjoys the company of resisters? That he enjoys fighting?”

  “He doesn’t enjoy fighting. He had to learn to do it in self-defense, that’s all. And as for the resisters, he says he has to know them, has to understand them. He says they’re part of him.”

  “What is there still for him to learn?”

  Tino straightened his back and stared at Dichaan. “Does he know everything about the Oankali?”

  “… no.” Dichaan let his head and body tentacles hang limp. “I’m sorry. The resisters don’t seem very complex—except biologically.”

  “Yet they resist. They would rather die than come here and live easy, pain-free lives with you.”

  Dichaan put his food aside and focused a cone of head tentacles on Tino. “Is your life pain-free?”

  “Sometimes—biologically.”

  He did not like Dichaan to touch him. It had taken Dichaan a while to realize that this was not because Dichaan was Oankali, but because he was male. He touched hands with or threw an arm around other Human males, but Dichaan’s maleness disturbed him. He had finally gone to Lilith for help in understanding this.

  “You’re one of his mates,” she had told him solemnly. “Believe me, ’Chaan, he never expected to have a male mate. Nikanj was difficult enough for him to get used to.”

  Dichaan didn’t see that Tino had found it difficult to get used to Nikanj. People got used to Nikanj very quickly. And in the long, unforgettable group matings, Tino had not seemed to have any difficulty with anyone. Though afterward, he did tend to avoid Dichaan. Yet Lilith did not avoid Ahajas.

  Dichaan got up from his platform, left his salad, and went to Tino. The man started to draw back, but Dichaan took his arms.” Let me try to understand you, Chkah. How many children have we had together? Be still.”

  Tino sat still and allowed Dichaan to touch him with a few long, slender head tentacles. They had had six children together. Three boys from Ahajas and three girls from Lilith. The old pattern.

  “You chose to come here,” Dichaan said. “And you’ve chosen to stay. I’ve been very glad to have you here—a Human father for the children and a Human male to balance group mating. A partner in every sense. Why does it hurt you to stay here?”

  “How could it not hurt?” Tino asked softly. “And how could you not know? I’m a traitor to my people. Everything I do here is an act of betrayal. Someday, my people won’t exist at all, and I will have helped their destroyers. I’ve betrayed my parents … everyone.” His voice had all but vanished even before he finished speaking. His stomach hurt him, and he was developing a pain in his head. He got very bad pains in his head sometimes. And he would not tell Nikanj. He would go away by himself and suffer. If someone found him, he might curse them. He would not struggle against help, though.

  Dichaan moved closer to the platform on which Tino sat. He penetrated the flesh of the platform—of the Lo entity—and asked it to send Nikanj. It liked doing such things. Nikanj always pleasured it when it passed along such a message.

  “Chkah, does Lilith feel the way you do?” he asked Tino.

  “Do you really not know the answer to that?”

  “I know she did at first. But she knows that resisters’ genes are just as available to us as any other Human genes. She knows there are no resisters, living or dead, who are not already pare
nts to construct children. The difference between them and her—and you—is that you have decided to act as parents.”

  “Does Lilith really believe that?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  Tino looked away, head throbbing. “I guess I believe it. But it doesn’t matter. The resisters haven’t betrayed themselves or their Humanity. They haven’t helped you do what you’re doing. They may not be able to stop you, but they haven’t helped you.”

  “If all Humans were like them, our construct children would be much less Human, no matter how they looked. They would know only what we could teach them of Humans. Would that be better?”

  “I tell myself it wouldn’t,” Tino said. “I tell myself there’s some justification for what I’m doing. Most of the time, I think I’m lying. I wanted kids. I wanted … the way Nikanj makes me feel. And to get what I wanted, I’ve betrayed everything I once was.”

  Dichaan moved Tino’s food off his platform and told him to lie down. Tino only looked at him. Dichaan rustled his body tentacles uncomfortably. “Nikanj says you prefer to endure your pain. It says you need to make yourself suffer so that you can feel that your people are avenged and you’ve paid your debt to them.”

  “That’s shit!”

  Nikanj came through a wall from the outside. It looked at the two of them and shot them a bad smell.

  “He insists on hurting himself,” Dichaan said. “I wonder if he hasn’t convinced Akin to hurt himself, too.”

  “Akin does as he pleases!” Tino said. “He understands what I feel better than either of you could, but it’s not what he feels. He has his own ideas.”

  “You aren’t part of his body,” Nikanj said, pushing him backward so that he would lie down. He did lie down this time. “But you’re part of his thoughts. You’ve done more than Lilith would have to make him feel that the resisters have been wronged and betrayed.”

  “Resisters have been wronged and betrayed,” Tino said. “I never told Akin that, though. I never had to. He saw it for himself.”

  “You’re working on another ulcer,” Nikanj said.

  “So what?”

  “You want to die. And yet you want to live. You love your children and your parents and that is a terrible conflict. You even love us—but you don’t think you should.” It climbed onto the platform and lay down alongside Tino. Dichaan touched the platform with his head tentacles, encouraging it to grow, to broaden and make room for him. He was not needed, but he wanted to know firsthand what happened to Tino.