Adulthood Rites

by Octavia E. Butler

  “I’ve been told that I would wander,” he said. “I wander now when I’m on Earth, but I always come home. I’m afraid that when I’m adult, I won’t have a home.”

  “Lo will be your home,” Tiikuchahk said.

  “Not the way it will be yours.” It would almost certainly be female and become part of a family like the one he had been raised in. Or it would mate with a construct male like him or his Oankali-born brothers. Even then, it would have an ooloi and children to live with. But who would he live with? His parents’ home would remain the only true home he knew.

  “When you’re adult,” Dehkiaht said, “you’ll feel what you can do. You’ll feel what you want to do. It will seem good to you.”

  “How would you know!” Akin demanded bitterly.

  “You aren’t flawed. I noticed even before I went to my parents that there was a wholeness to you—a strong wholeness. I don’t know whether you’ll be what your parents wanted you to be, but whatever you become, you’ll be complete. You’ll have within yourself everything you need to content yourself. Just follow what seems right to you.”

  “Walk away from mates and children?”

  “Only if it seems right to you.”

  “Some Human men do it. It doesn’t seem right to me, though.”

  “Do what seems right. Even now.”

  “I’ll tell you what seems right to me. You both should know. It’s what seemed right to me since I was a baby. And it will be right, no matter how my mating situation turns out.”

  “Why should we know?”

  This was not the question Akin had expected. He lay still, silent, thoughtful. Why, indeed? “If you let go of me, will I go out of control again?”

  “No.”

  “Let go, then. Let me see if I still want to tell you.”

  Dehkiaht released him, and he sat up, looking down at the two of them. Tiikuchahk looked as though it belonged beside the ooloi. And Dehkiaht looked … felt frighteningly necessary to him, too. Looking at it made him want to lie down again. He imagined returning to Earth without Dehkiaht, leaving it to another pair of mates. They would mature and keep it, and the scent of them and the feel of them would encourage its body to mature quickly. When it was mature, they would be a family. A Toaht family if it stayed aboard the ship.

  It would mix construct children for other people.

  Akin got down from the bed platform and sat beside it. It was easier to think down there. Before today, he had never had sexual feelings for an ooloi—had not had any idea how such feelings would affect him. The ooloi said it could not bind him to it. Adults apparently wanted to be bound by an ooloi—to be joined and woven into a family. Akin felt confused about what he wanted, but he knew he did not want Dehkiaht stimulated to maturity by other people. He wanted it on Earth with him. Yet he did not want to be bound to it. How much of what he felt was chemical—simply a result of Dehkiaht’s provoking scent and its ability to comfort his body?

  “Humans are freer to decide what they want,” he said softly.

  “They only think they are,” Dehkiaht replied.

  Yes. Lilith was not free. Sudden freedom would have terrified her, although sometimes she seemed to want it. Sometimes she stretched the bonds between herself and the family. She wandered. She still wandered. But she always came home. Tino would probably kill himself if he were freed. But what about the resisters? They did terrible things to each other because they could not have children. But before the war—during the war—they had done terrible things to each other even though they could have children. The Human Contradiction held them. Intelligence at the service of hierarchical behavior. They were not free. All he could do for them, if he could do anything, was to let them be bound in their own ways. Perhaps next time their intelligence would be in balance with their hierarchical behavior, and they would not destroy themselves.

  “Will you come to Earth with us?” he asked Dehkiaht.

  “No,” Dehkiaht said softly.

  Akin stood up and looked at it. Neither it nor Tiikuchahk had moved. “No?”

  “You can’t ask for Tiikuchahk, and Tiikuchahk doesn’t know yet whether it will be male or female. So it can’t ask for itself.”

  “I didn’t ask you to promise to mate with us when we’re all adult. I asked you to come to Earth. Stay with us for now. Later, when I’m adult, I intend to have work that will interest you.”

  “What work?”

  “Giving life to a dead world, then giving that world to the resisters.”

  “The resisters? But—”

  “I want to establish them as Akjai Humans.”

  “They won’t survive.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “There’s no perhaps. They won’t survive their Contradiction.”

  “Then let them fail. Let them have the freedom to do that, at least.”

  Silence.

  “Let me show them to you—not just their interesting bodies and the way they are here and in the trade villages on Earth. Let me show them to you as they are when there are no Oankali around.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you should at least know them before you deny them the assurance that Oankali always claim for themselves.” He climbed onto the platform and looked at Tiikuchahk. “Will you take part?” he asked it.

  “Yes,” it said solemnly. “This will be the first time since before I was born that I’ll be able to take impressions from you without things going wrong.”

  Akin lay down next to the ooloi. He drew close to it, his mouth against the flesh of its neck, its many head and body tentacles linked with him and with Tiikuchahk. Then, carefully, in the manner of a storyteller, he gave it the experience of his abduction, captivity, and conversion. All that he had felt, he made it feel. He did what he had not known he could do. He overwhelmed it so that for a time it was, itself, both captive and convert. He did to it what the abandonment of the Oankali had done to him in his infancy. He made the ooloi understand on an utterly personal level what he had suffered and what he had come to believe. Until he had finished, neither it nor Tiikuchahk could escape.

  But when he had finished, when he had let him go, they both left him. They said nothing. They simply got up and left him.

  10

  THE AKJAI SPOKE TO the people for Akin. Akin had not realized it would do this—an Akjai ooloi telling other Oankali that there must be Akjai Humans. It spoke through the ship and had the ship signal the trade villages on Earth. It asked for a consensus and then showed the Oankali and construct people of Chkahichdahk what Akin had shown Dehkiaht and Tiikuchahk.

  As soon as the experience ended, people began objecting to its intensity, objecting to being so overwhelmed, objecting to the idea that this could have been the experience of such a young child …

  No one objected to the idea of a Human Akjai. For some time, no one mentioned it at all.

  Akin perceived what he could through the Akjai, drawing back whenever the transmission was too fast or too intense. Drawing back felt like coming up for air. He found himself gasping, almost exhausted each time. But each time he went back, needing to feel what the Akjai felt, needing to follow the responses of the people. It was rare for children to take part in a consensus for more than a few seconds. No child who was not deeply concerned would want to take part for longer.

  Akin could feel the people avoiding the subject of Akjai Humans. He did not understand their reactions to it: a turning away, a warding off, a denial, a revulsion. It confused him, and he tried to communicate his confusion to the Akjai.

  The Akjai seemed at first not to notice his wordless questioning. It was fully occupied with its communication with the people. But suddenly, gently, it clasped Akin to it so that he would not break contact. It broadcast his bewilderment, letting people know they were experiencing the emotions of a construct child—a child too Human to understand their reactions naturally. A child too Oankali and too near adulthood to disregard.

  They feared for him, that this se
arch for a consensus would be too much for a child. The Akjai let them see that it was protecting him but that his feelings must be taken into account. The Akjai focused on the adult constructs aboard the ship. It pointed out that the Human-born among them had had to learn the Oankali understanding of life itself as a thing of inexpressible value. A thing beyond trade. Life could be changed, changed utterly. But not destroyed. The Human species could cease to exist independently, blending itself into the Oankali. Akin, it said, was still learning this.

  Someone else cut in: Could Humans be given back their independent lives and allowed to ride their Contradiction to their deaths? To give them back their independent existence, their fertility, their own territory was to help them breed a new population only to destroy it a second time.

  Many answers blended through the ship into one: “We’ve given them what we can of the things they value—long life, freedom from disease, freedom to live as they wish. We can’t help them create more life only to destroy it.”

  “Then let me and those who choose to work with me do it,” Akin told them through the Akjai. “Give us the tools we need, and let us give the Humans the things they need. They’ll have a new world to settle—a difficult world even after we’ve prepared it. Perhaps by the time they’ve learned the skills and bred for the strengths to settle it, the Contradiction will be less. Perhaps this time their intelligence will stop them from destroying themselves.”

  There was nothing. A neurosensory equivalent of silence. Denial.

  He reached through the Akjai once more, struggling against sudden exhaustion. Only the Akjai’s efforts kept him conscious. “Look at the Human-born among you,” he told them. “If your flesh knows you’ve done all you can for Humanity, their flesh should know as mine does that you’ve done almost nothing. Their flesh should know that resister Humans must survive as a separate, self-sufficient species. Their flesh should know that Humanity must live!”

  He stopped. He could have gone on, but it was time to stop. If he had not said enough, shown them enough, if he had not guessed accurately about the Human-born, he had failed. He must try again later when he was an adult, or he must find people who would help him in spite of the majority opinion. That would be difficult, perhaps impossible. But it must be tried.

  As he realized he was about to be cut off, shielded by the Akjai, he felt confusion among the people. Confusion, dissension.

  He had reached some of them, perhaps caused Human-born constructs to start to think, start to examine their Human heritage as they had not before. Toaht constructs could have little reason to pay close attention to their own Humanity. He would go to them if opinion went against him. He would seek them out and teach them about the people they were part of. He would go to them even if opinion did not go against him. Aboard the ship, they were the group most likely to help him.

  “Sleep,” the Akjai advised him. “You’re too young for all this. I’ll argue for you now.”

  “Why?” he asked. He was almost asleep, but the question was like an itch in his mind. “Why do you care so when my own kin-group doesn’t care?”

  “Because you’re right,” the Akjai said. “If I were Human, little construct, I would be a resister myself. All people who know what it is to end should be allowed to continue if they can continue. Sleep.”

  The Akjai coiled part of its body around him so that he lay in a broad curve of living flesh. He slept.

  11

  TIIKUCHAHK AND DEHKIAHT WERE with him when he awoke. The Akjai was there, too, but he realized it had not been with him continually. He had a memory of it going away and coming back with Tiikuchahk and Dehkiaht. As Akin took in his surroundings, he saw the Akjai draw Dehkiaht into an alarming embrace, lifting the ooloi child and clasping it in over a dozen limbs.

  “They wanted to learn about one another,” Tiikuchahk said. These were the first words it had spoken to him since he caused it to experience his memories.

  He sat up and focused on it questioningly.

  “You shouldn’t have been able to grab us and hold us that way,” it said. “Dehkiaht and its parents say no child should be able to do that.”

  “I didn’t know I could do it.”

  “Dehkiaht’s parents say it’s a teaching thing—the way adults teach subadult ooloi sometimes when the ooloi have to learn something they aren’t really ready for. They’ve never heard of a subadult male.”

  “But Dehkiaht says that’s what I am.”

  “It is what you are. Human-born construct females could be called subadults too, I guess. But you’re a first. Again.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t like what I did. I’ll try not to do it again.”

  “Don’t. Not to me. The Akjai says you learned it here.”

  “I must have—without realizing it.” He paused, watching Tiikuchahk. It was sitting next to him in apparent comfort. “Is it all right between us?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “I don’t know.” It focused narrowly on him. “I don’t know what I am yet. I don’t even know what I want to be.”

  “Do you want Dehkiaht?”

  “I like it. It helped us, and I feel better when it’s around. If I were like you, I would probably want to keep it.”

  “I do.”

  “It wants you, too. It says you’re the most interesting person it’s known. I think it will help you.”

  “If you become female, you could join us—mate with it.”

  “And you?”

  He looked away from it. “I can’t imagine how I would feel to have it and not you. What I’ve felt of it was … partly you.”

  “I don’t know. No one knows yet what I’ll be. I can’t feel what you feel yet.”

  He managed to stop himself from arguing. Tiikuchahk was right. He still occasionally thought of it as female, but its body was neuter. It could not feel as he did. He was amazed at his own feelings, although they were natural. Now that Tiikuchahk was no longer a source of irritation and confusion, he could begin to feel about it the way people tended to feel about their closest siblings. He did not know whether he truly wanted to have it as one of his mates—or whether a wandering male of the kind he was supposed to be could be said to have mates. But the idea of mating with it felt right, now. It, Dehkiaht, and himself. That was the way it should be.

  “Do you know what the people have decided?” he asked.

  Tiikuchahk shook its head Humanly. “No.”

  After a time, Dehkiaht and the Akjai separated, and Dehkiaht climbed to the Akjai’s long, broad back.

  “Come join us,” Dehkiaht called.

  Akin got up and started toward it. Behind him, though, Tiikuchahk did not move.

  Akin stopped, turned to face it. “Are you afraid?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You know the Akjai won’t hurt you.”

  “It will hurt me if it thinks hurting me is necessary.”

  That was true. The Akjai had hurt Akin in order to teach him—and had taught Akin much more than he realized.

  “Come anyway,” Akin said. He wanted to touch Tiikuchahk now, draw it to him, comfort it. He had never before wanted to do such a thing. And in spite of the impulse, he found he was not willing to touch it now. It would not want him to. Dehkiaht would not want him to.

  He went back to it and sat next to it. “I’ll wait for you,” he said.

  It focused on him, head tentacles knotting miserably. “Join them,” it said.

  He said nothing. He sat with it, comfortably patient, wondering whether it feared the joining because it might find itself making decisions it did not feel ready to make.

  Dehkiaht simply lay down on the Akjai’s back, and the Akjai squatted, resting on its belly, waiting. Humans said no one knew how to wait better than the Oankali. Humans, perhaps remembering their earlier short life spans, tended to hurry without reason.

  He did not know how much time had passed when Tiikuchahk stood up and he roused and sto
od up beside it. He focused on it, and when it moved, he followed it to the Akjai and Dehkiaht.

  The Akjai drew its body into the familiar curve and welcomed Tiikuchahk and Akin to sit or lie against it. The Akjai gave each a sensory arm and gave Dehkiaht one too when it slid down one of the plates to settle beside them.

  Now Akin learned for the first time what the people had decided. He felt now what he had not been able to feel before. That the people saw him as something they had helped to make.

  He was intended to decide the fate of the resisters. He was intended to make the decision the Dinso and the Toaht could not make. He was intended to see what must be done and convince others.

  He had been abandoned to the resisters when they took him so that he could learn them as no adult could, as no Oankali-born construct could, as no construct who did not look quite Human could. Everyone knew the resisters’ bodies, but no one knew their thinking as Akin did. No one except other Humans. And they had not been allowed to convince Oankali to do the profoundly immoral, antilife thing that Akin had decided must be done. The people had suspected what he would decide—had feared it. They would not have accepted it if he had not been able to stir confusion and some agreement among constructs, both Oankali-born and Human-born.

  They had deliberately rested the fate of the resisters—the fate of the Human species—on him.

  Why? Why not on one of the Human-born females? Some of them were adults before he was born.

  The Akjai supplied him with the answer before he was aware of having asked the question. “You’re more Oankali than you think, Akin—and far more Oankali than you look. Yet you’re very Human. You skirt as close to the Contradiction as anyone has dared to go. You’re as much of them as you can be and as much of us as your ooan dared make you. That leaves you with your own contradiction. It also made you the most likely person to choose for the resisters—quick death or long, slow death.”

  “Or life,” Akin protested.

  “No.”