Adulthood Rites

by Octavia E. Butler

  Akin said nothing. He needed someone like Yori who knew the resisters and who seemed not to be afraid of the Oankali. But she must convince herself. She must see that helping Humanity move to its new world was more important than setting broken bones and treating bullet wounds. She probably already knew this, but it would take time for her to accept it. He changed the subject.

  “How do I look, Yori? How much have I changed?”

  “Completely.”

  “What?”

  “You look like an Oankali. You don’t sound like one, but if I didn’t know who you were, I would assume you were a small Oankali. Perhaps a child.”

  “Shit!”

  “Will you change any more?”

  “No.” He closed his eyes. “My senses aren’t as sharp as they will be. But the shape I have is the shape I will have.”

  “Do you mind, really?”

  “Of course I mind. Oh, god. How many resisters will trust me now? How many will even believe I’m a construct?”

  “It doesn’t matter. How many of them trust each other? And they know they’re Human.”

  “It’s not like that everywhere. There are resister settlements close to Lo that don’t fight so much.”

  “You might have to take them, then, and give up on some of the people here.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “I can.”

  He looked at her. She had placed herself so that he could see her with his eyes even though he could not move. She would go back to Lo with him. She would advise him and observe the metamorphosis of Mars.

  “Do you need food yet?” she asked.

  The idea disgusted him. “No. Soon, perhaps, but not now.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No. But thank you for seeing that I was never left alone.”

  “I had heard it was important.”

  “Very. I should begin to move in a few more days. I’ll still need people around.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “Did you choose the people who’ve been sitting with me—other than the Rinaldis, I mean?”

  “Tate and I did.”

  “You did a good job. Will they all immigrate to Mars, do you think?”

  “That’s not why we chose them.”

  “Will they immigrate?”

  After a while she nodded. “They will. So will a few others.”

  “Send me the others—if you don’t think my looks now will scare them.”

  “They’ve all seen Oankali before.”

  Did she mean to insult him? he wondered. She spoke in such a strange tone. Bitterness and something else. She stood up.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She paused, not changing expression.

  “My perception isn’t what it will be eventually. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  She stared at him with unmistakable hostility. “I was thinking that so many people have suffered and died,” she said. “So many have become … unsalvageable. So many more will be lost.” She stopped, breathed deeply. “Why did the Oankali cause this? Why didn’t they offer us Mars years ago?”

  “They would never offer you Mars. I offer you Mars.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m part of you. Because I say you should have one more chance to breed yourselves out of your genetic Contradiction.”

  “And what do the Oankali say?”

  “That you can’t grow out of it, can’t resolve it in favor of intelligence. That hierarchical behavior selects for hierarchical behavior, whether it should or not. That not even Mars will be enough of a challenge to change you.” He paused. “That to give you a new world and let you procreate again would … would be like breeding intelligent beings for the sole purpose of having them kill one another.”

  “That wouldn’t be our purpose,” she protested.

  He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth. “Yori, Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is—what your genes say it is.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “… yes.”

  “Then why—”

  “Chance exists. Mutation. Unexpected effects of the new environment. Things no one has thought of. The Oankali can make mistakes.”

  “Can we?”

  He only looked at her.

  “Why are the Oankali letting you do this?”

  “I want to do it. Other constructs think I should. Some will help me. Even those who don’t think I should understand why I want to. The Oankali accept this. There was a consensus. The Oankali won’t help, except to teach. They won’t set foot on Mars once we’ve begun. They won’t transport you.” He tried to think of a way to make her understand. “To them, what I’m doing is terrible. The only thing that would be more terrible would be to murder you all with my own hands.”

  “Not reasonable,” she whispered.

  “You can’t see and read genetic structure the way they do. It isn’t like reading words on a page. They feel it and know it. They … There’s no English word for what they do. To say they know is completely inadequate. I was made to perceive this before I was ready. I understand it now as I couldn’t then.”

  “And you’ll still help us.”

  “I’ll still help. I have to.”

  She left him. The expression of hostility was gone from her face when she looked back at him before closing the wooden door. She looked confused, yet hopeful.

  “I’ll send someone to you,” she said, and closed the door.

  6

  AKIN SLEPT AND KNEW only peripherally that Gabe came in to sit with him. The man spoke to him for the first time, but he did not awaken to answer. “I’m sorry,” Gabe said once he was certain Akin was asleep. He did not repeat the words or explain them.

  Gabe was still there some time later when the noise began outside. It wasn’t loud or threatening, but Gabe went out to see what had happened. Akin awoke and listened.

  Rudra had been rescued, but she was dead. Her captors had beaten and raped her until she was so badly hurt that her rescuers could not get her home alive. They had not even been able to catch or kill any of her captors. They were tired and angry. They had brought back Rudra’s body to be buried with her husband. Two more people lost. The men cursed all raiders and tried to figure out where this group had come from. Where should the reprisal raid take place?

  Someone—not Gabe—brought up Mars.

  Someone else told him to shut up.

  A third person asked how Akin was.

  “Fine,” Gabe said. There was something wrong with the way he said it, but Akin could not tell what it was.

  The men were silent for a while.

  “Let’s have a look at him,” one of them said suddenly.

  “He didn’t steal Rudra or kill Mehtar,” Gabe said.

  “Did I say he did? I just want to look at him.”

  “He looks like an Oankali now. Just like an Oankali. Yori says he’s not too thrilled about that, but there’s nothing he can do about it.”

  “I heard they could change their shapes after metamorphosis,” someone said. “I mean, like those chameleon lizards that used to be able to change color.”

  “They hoped to use something they got from us to be able to do that,” Gabe said. “Cancer, I think. But I haven’t seen any sign that they’ve been able to do it.”

  It could not be done. It would not be tried until people felt more secure about constructs like Akin—Human-born males—whom they thought were most likely to cause trouble. It could not be done until there were construct ooloi.

  “Let’s all go see him.” That voice again. The same man who had suggested before that he wanted to see Akin. Who was he? Akin thought for a moment, searching his memory.

  He did not know the man.

  “Hold on,” Gabe was saying. “This is my home. You don’t just goddamn walk in when you feel like it!”

  “What
are you hiding in there? We’ve all seen the goddamn leeches before.”

  “Then you don’t need to see Akin.”

  “It’s just one more worm come to feed on us.”

  “He saved my wife’s life,” Gabe said. “What the hell did you ever save?”

  “Hey, I just wanted to look at him … make sure he’s okay.”

  “Good. You can look at him when he’s able to get up and look back at you.”

  Akin began to worry at once that the other man would find his way into the house. Obviously, Humans were strongly tempted to do things they were warned not to do. And Akin was more vulnerable now than he had been since infancy. He could be tormented from a distance. He could be shot. If an attacker was persistent enough, Akin could be killed. And at this moment, he was alone. No companion. No guardian.

  He began trying to move again—trying desperately. But only his new sensory tentacles moved. They writhed and knotted helplessly.

  Then Tate came in. She stopped, stared at the many moving sensory tentacles, then settled down in the chair Gabe had occupied. Across her lap, she held a long, dull-gray rifle.

  “You heard that crap, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “I was afraid you would. Relax. Those people know us. They won’t come in here unless they’re feeling suicidal.” She had been so strongly against guns once. Yet she held the thing in her lap as though it were a friend. And he had to be glad she did, glad of her protection. Confused, he kept silent until she said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m afraid someone will be killed on my account.”

  She said nothing for a while. Finally she asked, “How soon before you can walk?”

  “A few days. Three or four. Maybe.”

  “I hope that will be soon enough. If you’re mobile, they won’t dare give you trouble. You look thoroughly Oankali.”

  “When I can walk, I’ll leave.”

  “We’re going with you. It’s past time for us to leave this place.”

  He looked at her and thought he smiled.

  She laughed. “I wondered if you could do that.”

  He realized then by the sudden muting of his senses that his new sensory tentacles had flattened against his body, had smoothed like a second skin and seemed more painted on than real. He had seen this all his life in Oankali and constructs. Now, it felt utterly natural to do it himself.

  She touched him.

  He saw her reach out, felt the warmth of her hand long before she laid it on his shoulder and rubbed it over the smooth tentacles. For a second, he was able to keep them smooth. Then they locked into her hand. Her femaleness tormented him more than ever, but he could only taste it, savor it. Even if she had been interested in him sexually, he would have been helpless.

  “Let go,” she said. She was not frightened or angry. She simply waited for him to let her go. She had no idea how difficult it was for him to draw his sensory tentacles back, to break the deep, frustrating contact.

  “What was that all about?” she asked when she had her hand back.

  He was not quick enough to think of an innocuous answer before she began to laugh.

  “I thought so,” she said. “We should definitely get you home. Do you have mates waiting?”

  Chagrined, he said nothing.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s been a long time since I was an adolescent.”

  “Humans called me that before I changed.”

  “Young adult, then.”

  “How can you condescend to me and still follow me?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know. I haven’t worked out my feelings toward the new you yet.”

  Something about her manner was a lie. Nothing she said was a direct lie, but there was something wrong.

  “Will you go to Mars, Tate, or stay on Earth?” he asked.

  She seemed to pull back from him without moving.

  “You’ll be as free to stay as you will be to go.” She had Oankali mates who would be overjoyed to have her stay. If she did not, they might never settle on Earth.

  “Truce,” Tate said quietly.

  He wished she were Oankali so that he could show her he meant what he was saying. He had not spoken in response to her condescension, as she clearly believed. He had responded instead to the falseness of her manner. But communication with Humans was always incomplete.

  “Goddamn you,” Tate said softly.

  “What?”

  She looked away from him. She stood up, paced across to a window, and stared out. She stood to one side, making it difficult for anyone outside to see her. But there was no one outside that window. She paced around the room, restless, grim.

  “I thought I’d made my decision,” she said. “I thought leaving here would be enough for now.”

  “It is,” Akin said. “There’s no hurry. You don’t have to make any other decisions yet.”

  “Who’s patronizing whom?” she said bitterly.

  More misunderstanding. “Take me literally,” Akin said. “Assume that I mean exactly what I say.”

  She looked at him with disbelief and distrust.

  “You can decide later,” he insisted.

  After a while she sighed. “No,” she said, “I can’t.”

  He did not understand, so he said nothing.

  “That’s my problem, really,” she continued. “I don’t have a choice anymore. I have to go.”

  “You don’t.”

  She shook her head. “I made my choice a long time ago—the way Lilith made hers. I chose Gabe and Phoenix and Humanity. My own people disgust me sometimes, but they’re still my people. I have to go with them.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat down again after a while and put the gun on her lap and closed her eyes.

  “Tate?” he said, when she seemed calm.

  She opened her eyes but said nothing.

  “Does the way I look now bother you?”

  The question seemed to annoy her at first. Then she shrugged. “If anyone had asked me how I would feel if you changed so completely, I would have said it would upset me, at least. It doesn’t. I don’t think it bothers the others either. We all watched you change.”

  “What about those who didn’t watch?”

  “To them you’ll be an Oankali, I think.”

  He sighed. “There’ll be fewer immigrants because of me.”

  “Because of us,” she said.

  Because of Gabe, she meant.

  “He thought I was dead, Akin. He panicked.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve talked to him. We’ll help you gather people. We’ll go to the villages—alone, with you, or with other constructs. Just tell us what you want us to do.”

  His sensory tentacles smoothed again with pleasure. “Will you let me improve your ability to survive injuries and heal?” he asked. “Will you let someone correct your Huntington’s disease genetically?”

  She hesitated. “The Huntington’s?”

  “You don’t want to pass that on to your children.”

  “But genetic changes … That will mean time with an ooloi. A lot of time.”

  “The disease had become active, Tate. It was active when I healed you. I thought perhaps … you had noticed.”

  “You mean I’m going to get sick with it? Crazy?”

  “No. I fixed it again. A temporary fix. The deactivation of a gene that should have been replaced long ago.”

  “I … couldn’t have gone through that.”

  “The disease may be the reason you fell.”

  “Oh my god,” she whispered. “That’s the way it happened with my mother. She kept falling. And she had … personality changes. And I read that the disease causes brain damage—irreversible …”

  “An ooloi can reverse it. It isn’t serious yet, anyway.”

  “Any brain damage is serious!”

  “It can be repaired.”

  She looked at
him, clearly wanting to believe.

  “You can’t introduce this to the Mars colony. You know you can’t. It would spread through the population in a few generations.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll let it be corrected, then?”

  “Yes.” The word was hardly more than a moving of her lips, but Akin saw it and believed her.

  Relieved and surprisingly tired, he drifted off to sleep. With her help and the help of others in Phoenix, he had a chance of making the Mars colony work.

  7

  WHEN HE AWOKE, THE house was aflame.

  He thought at first that the sound he heard was rain. The smoke scent forced him to recognize it as fire. There was no one with him. The room was dark, and he had only a stored memory of Macy Wilton sitting beside him, a short, thick gun across his knees. A double-barreled gun of a type Akin had not seen before. He had gotten up and gone to investigate a strange noise just outside the house. Akin replayed his memory of the noise. Even asleep, he had heard what Macy probably had not.

  People whispering.

  “Don’t pour that there. Throw it against the wall where it will do some good. And throw it on the porch.”

  “Shut up. They’re not deaf in there.”

  Footsteps, oddly unsteady.

  “Go pour some under the mongrel’s window, Babe.”

  Footsteps coming closer to Akin’s window—almost stumbling closer. And someone fell. That was the sound Macy heard: a grunt of pain and a body landing heavily.

  Akin knew all this as soon as he was fully awake. And he knew the people outside had been drinking. One of them was the man who had wanted to get past Gabe to see Akin.

  The other was Neci. She had graduated from attempting mutilation to attempting murder.

  What had happened to Macy? Where were Tate and Gabe? How could the fire make so much noise and light and not awaken everyone? It had crept up outside one window now. The windows were high off the ground. The fire he could see must already be eating its way through the wall and floor.

  He began to shout Tate’s name, Gabe’s name. He could move a little now, but not enough to make a difference.

  No one came.

  The fire ate its way into the room, making choking smoke that Akin discovered he could breathe easier if he did not breathe through his mouth. He had a sair at his throat now, surrounded by large and strong sensory tentacles. These moved automatically to filter the smoke from the air he breathed.