Adulthood Rites

by Octavia E. Butler

  “A chance for life.”

  “Only for a while.”

  “You’re certain of that … and yet you spoke for me?”

  “I’m Akjai. How can I deny another people the security of an Akjai group? Even though for this people it’s a cruelty. Understand that, Akin; it is a cruelty. You and those who help you will give them the tools to create a civilization that will destroy itself as certainly as the pull of gravity will keep their new world in orbit around its sun.”

  Akin felt absolutely no sign of doubt or uncertainty in the Akjai. It meant what it was saying. It believed it knew factually that Humanity was doomed. Now or later.

  “It’s your life work to decide for them,” the Akjai continued, “and then to act on your decision. The people will allow you to do what you believe is right. But you’re not to do it in ignorance.”

  Akin shook his head. He could feel the attention of Tiikuchahk and Dehkiaht on him. He thought for some time, trying to digest the indigestible certainty of the Akjai. He had trusted it, and it had not failed him. It did not lie. It could be mistaken, but only if all Oankali were mistaken. Its certainty was an Oankali certainty. A certainty of the flesh. They had read Human genes and reviewed Human behavior. They knew what they knew.

  Yet …

  “I can’t not do it,” he said. “I keep trying to decide not to do it, and I can’t.”

  “I’ll help you do it,” Dehkiaht said at once.

  “Find a female mate that you can be especially close to,” the Akjai told it. “Akin will not stay with you. You know that.”

  “I know.”

  Now the Akjai turned its attention to Tiikuchahk. “You are not as much a child as you want to be.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll be,” it said.

  “What do you feel about the resisters?”

  “They took Akin. They hurt him, and they hurt me. I don’t want to care about them.”

  “But you do care.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You’re part Human. You shouldn’t carry such feelings for such a large group of Humans.”

  Silence.

  “I’ve found teachers for Akin and Dehkiaht. They’ll teach you, too. You’ll learn to prepare a lifeless world for life.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I … don’t know.”

  “Then do this. The knowledge won’t harm you if you decide not to use it. You need to do this. You’ve taken refuge too long in doing nothing at all.”

  And that was that. Somehow, Tiikuchahk could not bring itself to go on arguing with the Akjai. Akin was reminded that in spite of the way the Akjai looked, it was an ooloi. With scent and touch and neural stimulation, ooloi manipulated people. He focused warily on Dehkiaht, wondering whether he would know when it began to move him with things other than words. The idea disturbed him, and for the first time, he looked forward to wandering.

  IV

  HOME

  1

  FOR A TIME, EARTH seemed wild and strange to Akin—a profusion of life almost frightening in its complexity. On Chkahichdahk, there was only a potential profusion stored in people’s memories and in seed, cell, and gene-print banks. Earth was still a huge biological bank itself, balancing its own ecology with little Oankali help.

  Akin could do nothing on the fourth planet—Mars, the Humans called it—until after his metamorphosis. His training too had gone as far as it could until his metamorphosis. His teachers had sent him home. Tiikuchahk, now at peace with him and with itself, seemed glad to come home. And Dehkiaht had simply attached itself to Akin. When Dichaan came for Akin and Tiikuchahk, even he did not suggest leaving Dehkiaht behind.

  Once they reached Earth, however, Akin had to get away from Dehkiaht, away from everyone for a while. He wanted to see some of his resister friends before his metamorphosis—before he changed beyond recognition. He had to let them know what had happened, what he had to offer them. Also, he needed respected Human allies. He first thought of people he had visited during his wanderings—men and women who knew him as a small, nearly Human man. But he did not want to see them. Not yet. He felt drawn toward another place—a place where the people would hardly know him. He had not been there since his third year. He would go to Phoenix—to Gabe and Tate Rinaldi, where his obsession with the resisters had begun.

  He settled Dehkiaht with his parents and noticed that Tiikuchahk seemed to be spending more and more time with Dichaan. He watched this sadly, knowing that he was losing his closest sibling for the second time, the final time. If it chose later to help with the changing of Mars, it would not do so as a mate or a potential mate. It was becoming male.

  He went to see Margit, who was brown now and mated and pregnant and content.

  He asked his parents to find a female mate for Dehkiaht.

  Then he left for Phoenix. He especially wanted to see Tate again while he still looked Human. He wanted to tell her he had kept his promise.

  2

  PHOENIX WAS STILL MORE a town than a village, but it was a shabbier town. Akin could not help comparing Phoenix as he remembered it to Phoenix now.

  There was trash in the street. Dead weeds, food waste, scrap wood, cloth, and paper. Some of the houses were obviously vacant. A couple of them had been partially torn down. Others seemed ready to fall down.

  Akin walked into town openly as he had always walked into resister settlements. He had been shot doing this only once. That once had been nothing more than a painful nuisance. A Human would have died. Akin had simply run away and healed himself. Lilith had warned him that he must not let resisters see how his body healed—that the sight of wounds healing before their eyes could frighten them. And Humans were most dangerous, most unpredictable when they were afraid.

  There were rifles pointed at him as he walked down the street of Phoenix. So Phoenix was armed now. He could see guns and people through the windows, although it seemed the people were trying not to be seen. A few people working or loitering in the street stared at him. At least two were too drunk to notice him.

  Hidden guns and open drunkenness.

  Phoenix was dying. One of the drunken men was Macy Wilton, who had acted as father to Amma and Shkaht. The other was Stancio Roybal, husband of Neci, the woman who had wanted to amputate Amma’s and Shkaht’s sensory tentacles. And where were Kolina Wilton and Neci? How could they let their mates—their husbands—lie in the mud half-conscious or unconscious?

  And where was Gabe?

  He reached the house that he had shared with Tate and Gabe, and for a moment he was afraid to climb the stairs to the porch and rap his knuckles against the door Human-fashion. The house was shut and looked well-kept, but … who might live there now?

  A man with a gun came out onto the porch and looked down. Gabe.

  “You speak English?” he demanded, pointing his rifle at Akin.

  “I always have, Gabe.” He paused, giving the man time to look at him. “I’m Akin.”

  The man stood staring at him, peering first from one angle, then moving slightly to peer from another. Akin had changed after all, had grown up. Gabe looked the same.

  “I worried that you would be in the hills or out at another village,” Akin said. “I never thought to worry that you might not recognize me. I’ve come back to keep a promise I made to Tate.”

  Gabe said nothing.

  Akin sighed and settled to wait. It was not likely that anyone would shoot him as long as he stood still, hands in sight, unthreatening.

  Men gathered around Akin, waiting for some sign from Gabe.

  “Check him,” Gabe said to one of them.

  The man rubbed rough hands over Akin’s body. He was Gilbert Senn. He and his wife Anne had once stood with Neci, feeling that sensory tentacles should be removed. Akin did not speak to him. Instead, he waited, eyes on Gabe. Humans needed the steady, visible gaze of eyes. Males respected it. Females found it sexually interesting.

  �
��He says he’s that kid we bought almost twenty years ago,” Gabe said to the men. “He says he’s Akin.”

  The men stared at Akin with hostility and suspicion. Akin gave no indication that he saw this.

  “No worms,” one man said. “Shouldn’t he have them by now?”

  No one answered. Akin did not answer because he did not want to be told to be quiet. He wore only a pair of short pants as he had when these people knew him. Insects no longer bit him. He had learned to make his body unpalatable to them. He was a dark, even brown, small, but clearly not weak. And clearly not afraid.

  “Are you an adult?” Gabe asked him.

  “No,” he said softly.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not old enough.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “To see you and Tate. You were my parents for a while.”

  The rifle wavered slightly. “Come closer.”

  Akin obeyed.

  “Show me your tongue.”

  Akin smiled, then showed his tongue. It did not look any more Human now than it had when Gabe had first seen it.

  Gabe drew back, then took a deep breath. He let the rifle point toward the ground. “So it is you.”

  Almost shyly, Akin extended a hand. Human beings often shook one another’s hands. Several had refused to shake his.

  Gabe took the hand and shook it, then seized Akin by both shoulders and hugged him. “I don’t believe it,” he kept saying. “I don’t fucking believe it.

  “It’s okay,” he told the other men. “It’s really him!”

  The men watched for a moment longer, then began to drift away. Watching them without turning, Akin got the impression that they were disappointed—that they would have preferred to beat him, perhaps kill him.

  Gabe took Akin into the house, where everything looked the same—cool and dark and clean.

  Tate lay on a long bench against a wall. She turned her head to look at him, and he read pain in her face. Of course, she did not recognize him.

  “She took a fall,” Gabe said. There was deep pain in his voice. “Yori’s been taking care of her. You remember Yori?”

  “I remember,” Akin said. “Yori once said she’d leave Phoenix if the people here made guns.”

  Gabe gave him an odd look. “Guns are necessary. Raids taught everyone that.”

  “Who … ?” Tate asked. And then, amazingly, “Akin?”

  He went to her, knelt beside her, and took her hand. He did not like the slightly sour smell of her or the lines around her eyes. How much harm had been done to her?

  How much help would she and Gabe tolerate?

  “Akin,” he echoed. “How did you fall? What happened?”

  “You’re the same,” she said, touching his face. “I mean, you’re not grown up yet.”

  “No. But I have kept my promise to you. I’ve found … I’ve found what may be the answer for your people. But tell me how you got hurt.”

  He had forgotten nothing about her. Her quick mind, her tendency to treat him like a small adult, the feeling she projected of being not quite trustworthy—just unpredictable enough to make him uneasy. Yet he had accepted her, liked her from his first moments with her. It troubled him more than he could express that she seemed so changed now. She had lost weight, and her coloring, like her scent, had gone wrong. She was too pale. Almost gray. Her hair, too, seemed to be graying. It was much less yellow than it had been. And she was far too thin.

  “I fell,” she said. Her eyes were the same. They examined his face, his body. She took one of his hands and looked at it. “My god,” she whispered.

  “We were exploring,” Gabe said. “She lost her footing, fell down a hill. I carried her back to Salvage.” He paused. “The old camp’s a town itself now. People live there permanently. But they don’t have their own doctor. Some of them helped me bring her down to Yori. That was … That was bad. But she’s getting better now.” She was not. He knew she was not.

  She had closed her eyes. She knew it as well as he did. She was dying.

  Akin touched her face so that she would open her eyes. Humans seemed almost not to be there when they closed their eyes. They could close off all visual awareness and shut themselves too completely within their own flesh. “When did it happen?” he asked.

  “God. Two, almost three months ago.”

  She had suffered that long. Gabe had not found an ooloi to help her. Any ooloi would have done it at no cost to the Humans. Even some males and females could help. He believed he could. It was clear that she would die if nothing was done.

  What was the etiquette of asking to save someone’s life in an unacceptable way? If Akin asked in the wrong way, Tate would die.

  Best not to ask at all. Not yet. Perhaps not at all. “I came back to tell you I’d kept my promise to you,” he said. “I don’t know if you and the others can accept what I have to offer, but it would mean restored fertility and … a place of your own.”

  Now her eyes were wide and intent on him. “What place?” she whispered. Gabe had come to stand near them and stare down.

  “Where!” he demanded.

  “It can’t be here,” Akin said. “You would have to build whole new towns in a new environment, learn new ways to live. It would be hard. But I’ve found people—other constructs—to help me make it possible.”

  “Akin, where?” she whispered.

  “Mars,” he said simply. They stared at him, wordless. He did not know what they might know about Mars, so he began to reassure them. “We can enable the planet to support Human life. We’ll start as soon as I’m mature. The work has been given to me. No one else felt the need to do it as strongly as I did.”

  “Mars?” Gabe said. “Leave Earth to the Oankali? All of Earth?”

  “Yes.” Akin turned his face toward Gabe again. The man must understand as quickly as possible that Akin was serious. He needed to have reason to trust Akin with Tate. And Tate needed a reason to continue to live. It had occurred to Akin that she might be weary of her long, pointless life. That, he realized, was something that would not occur to the Oankali. They would not understand even if they were told. Some would accept without understanding. Most would not.

  Akin turned his face to Tate again. “They left me with you for so long so that you could teach me whether what they had done with you was right. They couldn’t judge. They were so … disturbed by your genetic structure that they couldn’t do, couldn’t even consider doing what I will do.”

  “Mars?” she said. “Mars?”

  “I can give it to you. Others will help me. But … you and Gabe have to help me convince resisters.”

  She looked up at Gabe. “Mars,” she whispered, and managed to shake her head.

  “I’ve studied it,” Akin told them. “With protection, you could live there now, but you would have to live underground or inside some structure. There’s too much ultraviolet light, an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, and no liquid water. And it’s cold. It will always be colder than it is here, but we can make it warmer than it is now.”

  “How?” Gabe asked.

  “With modified plants and, later, modified animals. The Oankali have used them all before to make lifeless planets livable.”

  “Oankali plants?” Gabe demanded. “Not Earth plants?”

  Akin sighed. “If something the Oankali have modified belongs to them, then you and all your people belong to them now.”

  Silence.

  “The modified plants and animals work much faster than anything that could be found on Earth naturally. We need them to prepare the way for you relatively quickly. The Oankali won’t allow your fertility to be restored here on Earth. You’re older now than most Humans used to get. You can still live a long time, but I want you to leave as soon as possible so that you can still raise children there the way my mother has here and teach them what they are.”

  Tate’s eyes had closed again. She put one hand over them, and Akin restrained an impulse to move it away. Was she
crying?

  “We’ve lost almost everything already,” Gabe said. “Now we lose our world and everything on it.”

  “Not everything. You’ll be able to take whatever you want. And plant life from Earth will be added as the new environment becomes able to support it.” He hesitated. “The plants that grow here … Not many of them will grow there outdoors. But a lot of the mountain plants will eventually grow there.”

  Gabe shook his head. “All that in our lifetimes?”

  “If you keep yourselves safe, you’ll live about twice as long as you already have. You’ll live to see plants from Earth growing unprotected on Mars.”

  Tate took her hand away from her face and looked at him. “Akin, I probably won’t live another month,” she said. “Before now, I didn’t want to. But now … Can you get help for me?”

  “No!” Gabe protested. “You don’t need help. You’ll be okay!”

  “I’ll be dead!” She managed to glare at him. “Do you believe Akin?” she asked.

  He looked from her to Akin, stared at Akin as he answered. “I don’t know.”

  “What, you think he’s lying?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just a kid. Kids lie.”

  “Yes. And men lie. But don’t you think you can lie to me after all these years. If there’s something to live for, I want to live! Are you saying I should die?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then let me get the only help available. Yori had given up on me.”

  Gabe looked as though he still wanted to protest, but he only looked at her. After a time, he spoke to Akin. “Get someone to help her,” he said. Akin could recall hearing him curse in that same tone of voice. Only Humans could do that: say, “Get someone to help her,” with their mouths, and “Damn her to hell!” with their voices and bodies.

  “I can help her,” Akin said.

  And both Humans were suddenly looking at him with a suspicion he didn’t understand at all.

  “I asked for training,” he said. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “If you aren’t ooloi,” Gabe said, “how can you heal anyone?”