Imago x-3 Read online

  I liked that. I liked a lot of what I had been able to do recently. It was only the thought of going to Chkahichdahk, and being kept there, that made me feel caged and frantic.

  The next morning that thought drove me into the forest again.

  5

  Aaor had a long metamorphosis. Eleven months. I was afraid every time I went home that it would be awake and the family would be building a raft.

  I began to seek out Humans. I avoided large parties of them, but it was easy to find individuals and small groups.

  I followed them silently, dissected and enjoyed their scents, listened to their conversations. Sometimes they became aware that they were being followed, though they never saw me. My coloring had darkened and I hid easily in the shadows. The forest understory was usually wet or at least damp, and it was easy for me to move silently. The Humans I followed often made much more noise than I did. I watched a Human hunter make so much noise that the feeding peccary he was stalking heard him and ran away. The Human went to the place where the peccary had been feeding and he cursed and kicked the fruit the animal had been feeding on. It never occurred to him to eat the fruit or to collect some for his people. I ate some when he was gone.

  Once three people stalked me. I considered letting them catch me. But I circled around to have a look at them first, and I heard them talking about opening me up and seeing how I looked inside. Since they all had guns and machetes, I decided to avoid them. Three were too many for a subadult to subdue safely.

  I was moving upriver—farther upriver than I had been before—well into the hills. The forest was less varied here, but I had no trouble finding enough to eat, and occasional plants and animals that were new to me. But I found few people in the hills. For several days, I found no one at all. No breeze brought me a Human scent.

  I began to feel loneliness as an almost physical pain. I hadn’t realized how much seeing Humans every few days had meant to me.

  Now I had to go home. I didn’t want to. Surely Aaor would be awake this time. The thought panicked me, brought back the caged feeling so strongly that I could not think.

  I stayed where I was for a while, cleared a space, made a fire, though I did not need one. It comforted me and reminded me of Humans. I let the fire burn down and roasted several wild tubers in the coals. The smell of the food wasn’t enough to mask the smell of the two Humans when they approached. No doubt it was the food smell that drew them.

  They were a male and a female and they smelled

  very strange. Wrong. Injured, perhaps. They were armed. I could smell gunpowder. They might shoot me. I decided to risk it. I would not move. I would let them surprise me.

  My body at this time was covered with fingernail-sized, overlapping scales. It was also inclined to be quadrapedal, but I had resisted that. Hands were much more useful than clawed forefeet.

  Now, while the Humans approached very carefully, very quietly, I prepared for them. My bald, scaly head and scaly face had to look more Human. I didn’t have time to change the rest of me. I could look as though I were wearing unusual clothing, perhaps. In fact, I didn’t wear clothing at all on these trips. It just got in the way.

  The Humans kept to cover and circled around, watching me. They wanted to be behind me. I decided to play dead if they shot me. Best to lure them close and disarm them as quickly as possible.

  Perhaps they would not shoot me. I used a stick to uncover one of the tubers and roll it out of the coals. It was too hot to eat, but I brushed it off and broke it open. It was well cooked, steaming hot, spicy, and sweet. It had not existed before the Humans had their war. Lilith said it was one of the few good-tasting mutations she had eaten. She called it an applesauce fruit. Apples were an extinct fruit that she had especially liked. She didn’t like the taste of the tubers raw, but sometimes when she had baked one she went away by herself to eat it and remember a different time.

  One of the Humans made a small noise behind me—a moan.

  I ran a hand over my face. The hand was more clawlike than I would have preferred, but the face was clear and soft now. If it wasn’t beautiful, it was, at least, not terrifying.

  “Come join me,” I said loudly. It felt unnatural to talk aloud. I hadn’t spoken at all for about thirty days. “There’s more food. You’re welcome to it.” I repeated the words in Spanish, Portuguese, and Swahili. Those, together with French and English, were the most widely known languages. Most people were fluent in at least one of them. Most survivors were from Africa, Australia, and South America.

  The two Humans did not answer me. They did not move, but their heartbeats speeded up. They had heard me and they probably understood that I was talking to them. When had their heartbeats increased? I focused on my memories for a moment. My speaking at all had startled them, but my Spanish had excited them more. My other languages had provoked no further reaction. Spanish, then. I repeated my invitation in Spanish.

  They did not come. I thought they understood, but they did not answer, and they remained hidden.

  I took the rest of the tubers from the coals and put them on a platter of large leaves.

  “They’re yours if you would like them,” I said. I cleared a place well away from the food and lay down to rest. I had not slept in two days. Humans liked regular periods of sleep— preferably at night. Oankali slept when they needed rest. I needed rest now, but I would not sleep until the Humans made some decision—either to go away or to come satisfy their hunger and their curiosity. But I could be still in the Oankali way. I could lie awake using the least possible energy, and as Lilith and Tino said, looking dead. I could do this very comfortably for much longer than most Humans would willingly sit and watch.

  The male left cover first. I watched him with a few of my sensory tentacles. All his body language told me he meant to grab the food and run with it. I was prepared to let him do that until I got a good look at him.

  He was diseased. His face was half obscured by a large growth. He wore no shirt and I could see that his back and chest were covered with tumorous growths, large and small. One of his eyes was completely covered. The other seemed endangered. If the facial tumor continued to grow, he would soon be unable to see.

  I couldn’t let him go. I don’t think any ooloi could have let him go. No living being should be left to wander without care in his condition.

  I waited until his attention was totally focused on the food. At first he kept flickering back and forth between the food and me. Finally, though, the food was in reach. He put out his hands to take it.

  I had him before he realized I was up. At once, I turned him to face the female, whom I could see now. She was aiming a rifle at me. Let her aim it at him.

  He struggled, first wildly, then with calculation, meaning to hurt me and get free. I held him still and investigated him quickly.

  He had a genetic disorder. Its effects were worsening slowly. As I had suspected, he would be blind if it were allowed to continue. The disorder had deformed even the bones of his face. He was deaf in one ear. Eventually he would be deaf in the other. His spine was becoming involved. Already he could not turn his head freely. One shoulder was completely covered with fleshy growths. The arm was still useful, but it wouldn’t be for long. And there was something else wrong. Something I didn’t understand. This man was already dying. He was using up his life the way mice did, swallowing it in a few quick gulps, then dying. The disorder threatened to invade his brain and spine. But even without continued tumor growth, he would die in just a few decades. He was genetically programmed to use himself up obscenely quickly.

  How could he have such a disorder? An ooloi had examined him before he was set free. Ooloi had examined every Human, correcting defects, slowing aging, strengthening resistance to disease. But perhaps the ooloi had only controlled the disorder—imperfectly—and not tried to correct it. Ooloi had done that with some genetic disorders. Such disorders were complicated and best corrected by mates. Resisters had been altered so that they could not have children without ooloi ma
tes, and thus could not pass their disorder on. Controlling it should have been enough.

  I spoke into the male’s one good ear as I held him. “You’ll be completely blind soon. After that you’ll go deaf. Eventually you won’t be able to use your right arm—and that’s the arm you prefer to use. That’s not all. That’s not even the worst. Do you understand me?”

  He had stopped struggling. Now he rocked back, trying to get a look at me in spite of his uncooperative neck.

  “I can help you,” I said. “I will help you if you let me. And if your friend doesn’t shoot me.” I would help him whether the female shot me or not, but I wanted to avoid being shot if I could. Bullet wounds hurt more than I wanted to think about, and I still wasn’t very good at controlling my own pain.

  The man was feeling calmer now. I did not dare drug him much. I could please him a little, relax him a little, but I could not put him to sleep. If he lost consciousness in my arms, the female would surely misunderstand, and shoot me.

  “I can help,” I repeated. “All I ask in return is that you not try to kill me.”

  “Why should you do anything?” he demanded. “Just let me go!”

  I shifted to a more comfortable grip. “Why should you become more and more disabled?” I asked. “Why should you die when you can live and be well? Let me help you.”

  “Let go of me!”

  “Will you stay, and at least hear me?”

  He hesitated. “Yes. All right.” His body was tense—ready to run.

  I made a sighing sound so that he would hear it. “If you lie to me, I can’t help knowing.”

  That frightened him and made him stiffly resentful in my grasp, but he said nothing.

  The female came completely out of her cover and faced us. I kept the male’s body between my own and her rifle. Looking at her, I had absolutely no doubt that she would shoot. But I needed a few moments more with the male before I could have anything serious to show them. The female had tumors, too, though hers were not as big as the male’s. Her face, arms, and legs—all that was visible of her—were covered with small irregularly spaced growths.

  “Let him go,” she said quietly. “I won’t shoot you if you let him go.” That was true at least. She was afraid, but she meant what she said.

  I nodded to her, then spoke to the male. “I haven’t hurt you. What will you do if I let you go?”

  Now the male gave a real sigh. “Leave.”

  “You’re hungry. Take the food with you.”

  “I don’t want it.” He no longer trusted it—probably because I wanted him to have it.

  “Do one thing for me before I let you go.”

  “What?”

  “Move your neck.”

  I kept a firm hold on him, but drew back slightly to let him turn and twist the neck that had been all but frozen in place before I touched him. He swore softly.

  “TomÁs?” the female said, her voice filled with doubt.

  “I can move it,” he said unnecessarily. He had not stopped moving it.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No. It just feels

  normal. I had forgotten how it felt to move this way.”

  I let him go and spoke softly. “Perhaps when you’ve been blind for a while, you’ll forget how it feels to see.”

  He almost fell turning to look at me. When he’d gotten a good look, he took a step back. “You won’t touch me again until I see you heal yourself,” he said. “What

  Who are you?”

  “Jodahs,” I said. “I’m a construct, Human and Oankali.”

  He looked startled, then moved around so that he could get a look at all sides of me. “I never heard that they had scales.” He shook his head. “My god, man, you must frighten more people than we do!”

  I laughed. I could feel my sensory tentacles flattening against my scales. “I don’t always look this way,” I said. “If you stay to be healed, I’ll begin to look more like you. More like the way you will look when you’re healed.”

  “We can’t be healed,” the female said. “The tumors can be cut off, but they grow back. The disease

  we were born with it. No one can heal it.”

  “I know you were born with it. You’ll give it to at least some of your children if you decide to go where you can have them. I can correct the problem.”

  They looked at each other. “It isn’t possible,” the male said.

  I focused on him. He had been such a pleasure to touch. Now there was no need to hurry back home. No need to hurry at anything. Two of them. Treasure.

  “Move your neck,” I said again.

  The male moved it, shaking his misshapen head. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What did you say you were called?”

  “Jodahs.”

  “I’m TomÁs. This is Jesusa.” No other names. Very deliberately, no other names. “Tell us how you did this.”

  I took sticks from the pile I had gathered and built up the fire. The two Humans obligingly sat down around it. The male picked up a baked tuber. The female caught his arm and looked at him, but he only grinned, broke open the tuber, and bit into it. His single visible eye opened wide in surprise and pleasure. The tuber was new to him. He ate a little more, then gave a piece to the female. She scooped out a little with one finger and tasted it. She did not take on the same look of surprised pleasure, but she ate, then examined the peeling carefully in the firelight. It was dark now for resisters. The sun had gone down.

  “I haven’t tasted this before. Is it only a lowland plant?”

  “It grows here. I’ll show you tomorrow morning.”

  There was a silence. Of course they would stay the night in this place. Where else could they go in the dark?

  “You’re from the mountains?” I asked softly.

  More silence.

  “I won’t get to the mountains. I wish I could.”

  They were both eating tubers now, and they seemed content to eat and not talk. That was surprising. Nervousness alone should have made at least one of them talkative. How many times had they sat alone in the forest at night with a scaly construct?

  “Will you let me begin to heal you tonight?” I asked TomÁs.

  “Thank you for healing my neck,” TomÁs said aloud while his entire body recoiled from me in tiny movements.

  “It may fuse again if your disorder isn’t cured.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad. Jesusa says it kept me working instead of looking around daydreaming.”

  Jesusa touched his forearm and smiled. “Nothing would keep you from daydreaming, brother.”

  Brother? Not mate—or husband, as the Humans would say. “Blindness will be bad,” I said. “Deafness will be even worse.”

  “Why do you say he’ll go blind or deaf?” Jesusa demanded. “He may not. You don’t know.”

  “Of course I know. I couldn’t touch him and not know. And I know there was a time when he could see out of his right eye and hear with his right ear. There was a time when the mass on his shoulder was smaller and his arm wasn’t involved at all. He will be blind and deaf and without the use of his right arm—and he knows it. So do you.”

  There was a very long silence. I lay down on the cleared ground and closed my eyes. I could still see perfectly well, and most Humans knew it. Somehow, though, they felt more at ease when they were observed only with sensory tentacles. They felt unobserved.

  “Why do you want to heal us?” Jesusa asked. “You waylay us, feed us, and want to heal us. Why?”

  I opened my eyes. “I was feeling very lonely,” I said. “I would have been glad to see

  almost anyone. But when I realized you had something wrong, I wanted to help. I need to help. I’m not an adult yet, but I can’t ignore illness. I’m ooloi.”

  Their mild reaction surprised me. I expected anything from JoĂo’s prejudiced rejection to actually running away into the forest. Only ooloi interacted directly with Humans and produced children. Only ooloi interacted directly with Humans in an utterly non-Human way.

  And only ooloi needed to heal. Males and females could learn to heal if they wanted to. Ooloi had no choice. We exist to make the pe
ople and to unite them and to maintain them.

  Jesusa grabbed TomÁs’s hand and stared at me with terror. TomÁs looked at her, touched his neck thoughtfully, and looked at her again. “So it isn’t true, what they say,” he whispered.

  She gave him a look more forceful than a scream.

  He drew back a little, touched his neck again, and said nothing else.

  “I had thought

  ” Jesusa’s voice shook and she paused for a moment. When she began again, the quiver was gone. “I thought that all ooloi had four arms—two with bones and two without.”

  “Strength arms and sensory arms,” I said. “Sensory arms come with maturity. I’m not old enough to have them yet.”

  “You’re a child? A child as big as an adult?”

  “I’m as big as I’ll get except for my sensory arms. But I still have to develop in other ways. I’m not exactly a child, though. Young children have no sex. They’re potentially any sex. I’m definitely ooloi—a subadult, or as my parents would say, an ooloi child.”

  “Adolescent,” Jesusa decided.

  “No. Human adolescents are sexually mature. They can reproduce. I can’t.” I said this to reassure them, but they didn’t seem to be reassured.

  “How can you heal us if you’re just a kid?” TomÁs asked.

  I smiled. “I’m old enough to do that.” My gaze seemed to confuse him, but it only annoyed her. She frowned at me. She would be the difficult one. I looked forward to touching her, learning her body, curing the disorder she never should have had. Some ooloi had wronged her and TomÁs more than I would have imagined was possible.

  I changed the subject abruptly. “Tomorrow I’ll show you some of the things you can eat here in the forest. The tuber was one of many. If you keep moving, the forest will sustain you very comfortably.” I paused. “Can you see well enough to make pallets for yourselves or will you sleep on the bare ground?”

  TomÁs sighed and looked around. “Bare ground, I suppose. We’ll do the local insects a good turn.” The pupil of his eye was large, but I doubted that he could see beyond the light of the fire. The moon had not yet risen, and starlight was useful to Humans only in boats on the rivers. Very little of it reached the forest understory.