Adulthood Rites x-2 Read online

  “Do the walls really seal?” she asked.

  “Yes, except at the guest house. You’ve never been there?”

  “Never. Traders and raiders have told us about it, but never that it was

  What is it, for godsake! A baby ship?”

  Akin frowned. “It could be someday. There are so many on Earth, though. Maybe Lo will be one of the males inside one of those that become ships.”

  “But

  but someday it will leave Earth?”

  Akin knew the answer to this question, but he realized he must not give it. Yet he liked her and found it difficult to lie to her. He said nothing.

  “I thought so,” she said. “So someday the people of Lo—or their descendants—will be in space again, looking for some other people to infect or afflict or whatever you call it.”

  “Trade.”

  “Oh, yeah. The goddamn gene trade! And you want to know why I can’t go back to Kahguyaht.”

  She walked away, leaving him to make his own way back to the village. He made no effort to keep up with her, knowing he could not. The little she had guessed had upset her enough to make her not care that he, valuable being that he was, was left alone in the groves and gardens where he might be stolen. How would she have reacted if he had told her all he knew—that it was not only the descendants of Humans and Oankali who would eventually travel through space in newly mature ships. It was also much of the substance of Earth. And what was left behind would be less than the corpse of a world. It would be small, cold, and as lifeless as the moon. Maturing Chkahichdahk left nothing useful behind. They had to be worlds in themselves for as long as it took the constructs in each one to mature as a species and find another partner species to trade with.

  The salvaged Earth would finally die. Yet in another way, it would live on as single-celled animals lived on after dividing. Would that comfort Tate? Akin was afraid to find out.

  He was tired, but he had nearly reached the houses when Tate returned for him. She had already put away her basket of fruit. Now she picked him up without a word and carried him back to her home. He fell asleep in her arms before they reached it.

  12

  No one came for him.

  No one would take him home or let him go.

  He felt both unwanted and wanted too much. If his parents could not come because of his sibling’s birth, then others should have come. His parents had done this kind of service for other families, other villages who had had their children stolen. People helped each other in searching for and recovering children.

  And yet, his presence seemed to delight the people of Phoenix. Even those who were disturbed by the contrast between his tiny body and his apparent maturity grew to like having him around. Some always had a bit of food ready for him. Some asked question after question about his life before he was brought to them. Others liked to hold him or let him sit at their feet and tell him stories of their own prewar lives. He liked this best. He learned not to interrupt them with questions. He could learn afterward what kangaroos, lasers, tigers, acid rain, and Botswana were. And since he remembered every word of their stories, he could easily think back and insert explanations where they should go.

  He liked it less when people told him stories that were clearly not true—stories peopled by beings called witches or elves or gods. Mythology, they said; fairy tales.

  He told them stories from Oankali history—past partnerships that contributed to what the Oankali were or could become today. He had heard such stories from all three of his Oankali parents. All were absolutely true, yet the Humans believed almost none of them. They liked them anyway. They would gather around close so that they could hear him. Sometimes they let their work go and came to listen. Akin liked the attention, so he accepted their fairy tales and their disbelief in his stories. He also accepted the pairs of short pants that Pilar Leal made for him. He did not like them. They cut off some of his perception, and they were harder than skin to clean once they were soiled. Yet it never occurred to him to ask anyone else to wash them for him. When Tate saw him washing them, she gave him soap and showed him how to use it on them. Then she smiled almost gleefully and went away.

  People let him watch them make shoes and clothing and paper. Tate persuaded Gabe to take him up to the mills—one where grain was ground and one where wooden furniture, tools, and other things were being made. The man and woman there were making a large canoe when Akin arrived.

  “We could build a textile mill,” Gabe told him. “But foot-powered spinning wheels, sewing machines, and looms are enough. We already make more than we need, and people need to do some things at their own pace with their own designs.”

  Akin thought about this and decided he understood it. He had often watched people spinning, weaving, sewing, making things they did not need in the hope of being able to trade with villages that had little or no machinery. But there was no urgency. They could stop in the middle of what they were doing and come to listen to his stories. Much of their work was done simply to keep them busy.

  “What about metal?” he asked.

  Gabe stared down at him. “You want to see the blacksmith’s shop?”

  “Yes.”

  Gabe picked him up and strode off with him. “I wonder how much you really understand,” he muttered.

  “I usually understand,” Akin admitted. “What I don’t understand, I remember. Eventually I understand.”

  “Jesus! I wonder what you’ll be like when you grow up.”

  “Not as big as you,” Akin said wistfully.

  “Really? You know that?”

  Akin nodded. “Strong, but not very big.”

  “Smart, though.”

  “It would be terrible to be small and foolish.”

  Gabe laughed. “It happens,” he said. “But probably not to you.”

  Akin looked at him and smiled himself. He was still pleased when he could make Gabe laugh. It seemed that the man was beginning to accept him. It was Tate who had suggested that Gabe take him up the hill and show him the mills. She pushed them together when she could, and Akin understood that she wanted them to like each other.

  But if they did what would happen when his people finally came for him? Would Gabe fight? Would he kill? Would he die?

  Akin watched the blacksmith make a machete blade, heating, pounding, shaping the metal. There was a wooden crate of machete blades in one corner. There were also scythes, sickles, axes, hammers, saws, nails, hooks, chains, coiled wire, picks

  And yet there was no clutter. Everything, work tools and products, had their places.

  “I work here sometimes,” Gabe said. “And I’ve helped salvage a lot of our raw materials.” He glanced at Akin. “You might get to see the salvage site.”

  “In the mountains?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “When things start to get warm around here.”

  It took Akin several seconds to realize that he was not talking about the weather. He would be hidden at the salvage site when his people came looking for him.

  “We’ve found artifacts of glass, plastic, ceramic, and metal. We’ve found a lot of money. You know what money is?”

  “Yes. I’ve never seen any, but people have told me about it.”

  Gabe reached into his pocket with his free hand. He brought out a bright, golden disk of metal and let Akin hold it. It was surprisingly heavy for its size. On one side was something that looked like a large letter t and the words, “He is risen. We shall rise.” On the other side there was a picture of a bird flying up from fire. Akin studied the bird, noticing that it was a kind he had never seen pictured before.

  “Phoenix money,” Gabe said. “That’s a phoenix rising from its own ashes. A phoenix was a mythical bird. You understand?”

  “A lie,” Akin said thoughtlessly.

  Gabe took the disk from him, put it back into his pocket and put Akin down.

  “Wait!” Akin said. “I’m sorry. I call myths that in my mind. I didn’t mean to say it out loud.”

  Gabe looked down at him. “If you’re a
lways going to be small, you ought to learn to be careful with that word,” he said.

  “But

  I didn’t say you were lying.”

  “No. You said my dream, the dream of everyone here, was a lie. You don’t even know what you said.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gabe stared at him, sighed, and picked him up again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I ought to be relieved.”

  “At what?”

  “That in some ways you really are just a kid.”

  13

  Weeks later, traders arrived bringing two more stolen children. Both appeared to be young girls. The traders took away not a woman but as many metal tools and as much gold as they could carry, plus books that were more valuable than gold. Two couples in Phoenix worked together with occasional help from others to make paper and ink and print the books most likely to be desired by other villages. Bibles—using the memories of every village they could reach, Phoenix researchers had put together the most complete Bible available. There were also how-to books, medical books, memories of prewar Earth, listings of edible plants, animals, fish, and insects and their dangers and advantages, and propaganda against the Oankali.

  “We can’t have kids, so we make all this stuff,” Tate told Akin as they watched the traders bargain for a new canoe to carry all their new merchandise in. “Those guys are now officially rich. For all the good it will do them.”

  “Can I see the girls?” Akin asked.

  “Why not? Let’s go over.”

  She walked slowly and let him follow her over to the Wilton house where the girls were staying. Macy and Kolina Wilton had been quick enough to seize both children for themselves. They were one half of Phoenix’s publishers. They would probably be expected to give up one child to another couple, but for now they were a family of four.

  The girls were eating roasted almonds and cassava bread with honey. Kolina Wilton was spooning a salad of mixed fruit into small bowls for them.

  “Akin,” she said when she saw him. “Good. These little girls don’t speak English. Maybe you can talk to them.”

  They were brown girls with long, thick black hair and dark eyes. They wore what appeared to be men’s shirts, belted with light rope and cut off to fit them. The bigger of the two girls had already managed to free her arms from the makeshift garment. She had a few body tentacles around her neck and shoulders, and confining them was probably blinding, itching torment. Now all her small tentacles focused on Akin, while the rest of her seemed to go on concentrating on the food. The smaller girl had a cluster of tentacles at her throat, where they probably protected a sair breathing orifice. That meant her small, normal-looking nose was probably ornamental. It might also mean the girl could breathe underwater. Oankali-born, then, in spite of her human appearance. That was unusual. If she was Oankali-born, then she was she only by courtesy. She could not know yet what her sex would be. But such children, if they had Human-appearing sex organs at all, tended to look female. The children were perhaps three and four years old.

  “You’ll have to go into their gardens and into the forest to find enough protein,” Akin told them in Oankali. “They try, but they never seem to give us enough.”

  Both girls climbed down from their chairs, came to touch him and taste him and know him. He became so totally focused on them and on getting to know them that he could not perceive anything else for several minutes.

  They were siblings—Human-born and Oankali-born. The smaller one was Oankali-born and the more androgenous-looking of the two. It would probably become male in response to its sibling’s apparent femaleness. Its name, it had signaled, was Shkaht—Kaalshkaht eka Jaitahsokahldahktohj aj Dinso. It was a relative. They were both relatives through Nikanj, whose people were Kaal. Happily, Akin gave Shkaht the Human version of his own name, since the Oankali version did not give enough information about Nikanj. Akin Iyapo Shing Kaalnikanjlo.

  Both children knew already that he was Human-born and expected to become male. That made him an object of intense curiosity. He discovered that he enjoyed their attention, and he let them investigate him thoroughly.

  “

  not like kids at all,” one of the Humans was saying. “They’re all over each other like a bunch of dogs.” Who was speaking? Akin made himself focus on the room again, on the Humans. Three more had come into the room. The speaker was Neci, a woman who had always seen him as a valuable property, but who had never liked him.

  “If that’s the worst thing they do, we’ll get along fine with them,” Tate said. “Akin, what are their names?”

  “Shkaht and Amma,” Akin told her. “Shkaht is the younger one.”

  “What kind of name is Shkaht?” Gabe said. He had come in with Neci and Pilar.

  “An Oankali name,” Akin said.

  “Why? Why give her an Oankali name?”

  “Three of her parents are Oankali. So are three of mine.” He would not tell them Shkaht was Oankali-born. He would not let Shkaht tell them. What if they found out and decided they only wanted the Human-born sibling? Would they trade Shkaht away later or return her to the raiders? Best to let them go on believing that both Amma and Shkaht were Human-born and truly female. He must think of them that way himself so that his thoughts did not become words and betray him. He had already warned both children that they must not tell this particular truth. They did not understand yet, but they had agreed.

  “What languages do they speak?” Tate asked.

  “They want to know what languages you speak,” Akin said in Oankali.

  “We speak French and Twi,” Amma said. “Our Human father and his brothers come from France. They were traveling in our mother’s country when the war came. Many people in her country spoke English, but in her home village people spoke mostly Twi.”

  “Where was her village?”

  “In Ghana. Our mother comes from Ghana.”

  Akin relayed this to Tate.

  “Africa again,” she said. “It probably didn’t get hit at all. I wonder whether the Oankali have started settlements there. I thought people in Ghana all spoke English.”

  “Ask them what trade village they’re from,” Gabe said.

  “From Kaal,” Akin said without asking. Then he turned to the children. “Is there more than one Kaal village?”

  “There are three,” Shkaht said. “We’re from Kaal-Osei.”

  “Kaal-Osei,” Akin relayed.

  Gabe shook his head. “Kaal

  ” He looked at Tate, but she shook her head.

  “If they don’t speak English there,” she said, “nobody we know would be there.”

  He nodded. “Talk to them, Akin. Find out when they were taken and where their village is—if they know. Can they remember things the way you can?”

  “All constructs remember.”

  “Good. They’re going to stay with us, so start teaching them English.”

  “They’re siblings. Very close. They need to stay together.”

  “Do they? We’ll see.”

  Akin did not like that. He would have to warn Amma and Shkaht to get sick if they were separated. Crying would not work. The Humans had to be frightened, had to think they might lose one or two of their new children. They had now what they had probably never had before: children they thought might eventually be fertile together. From what he had heard about resisters, he had no doubt that some of them really believed they could soon breed new, Human-trained, Human-looking children.

  “Let’s go outside,” he told them. “Are you still hungry?”

  “Yes.” They spoke in unison.

  “Come on. I’ll show you where the best things grow.”

  14

  The next day, all three children were arranged in backpacks and carried toward the mountains. They were not allowed to walk. Gabe carried Akin atop a bundle of supplies, and Tate walked behind, carrying even more supplies. Amma rode on Macy Wilton’s back and surreptitiously tasted him with one of her small body tentacles. She had a normal Human tongue, but each of her tentacles would serve her as well as Akin’s long, gray Oankali tongue. Shkaht’s throat tent
acles gave her a more sensitive sense of smell and taste than Akin, and she could use her hands for tasting. Also, she had slender, dark tentacles on her head, mixed with her hair. She could see with these. She could not see with her eyes. She had learned, though, to seem to look at people with her eyes—to turn and face them and to move her slender head tentacles as she moved her head so that Humans were not disturbed by her hair seeming to crawl about. She would have to be very careful because Humans, for some reason, liked to cut people’s hair. They cut their own, and they had cut Akin’s. Even back in Lo, men in particular either cut their own hair or got others to cut it. Akin did not want to think about what it might feel like to have sensory tentacles cut off. Nothing could hurt worse. Nothing would be more likely to cause an Oankali or a construct to sting reflexively, fatally.

  The Humans walked all day, stopping for rest and food only once at noon. They did not talk about where they were going or why, but they walked quickly, as though they feared pursuit.

  They were a party of twenty, armed, in spite of Tate’s efforts, with the four guns of Akin’s captors. Damek was still alive, but he could not walk. He was being cared for back at Phoenix. Akin suspected that he had no idea what was going on—that his gun was gone, that Akin was gone. What he did not know, he could not resent or tell.

  That night the Humans erected tents and made beds of blankets and branches or bamboo—whatever they could find. Some stretched hammocks between trees and slept outside the tents since they saw no sign of rain. Akin asked to sleep outside with someone and a woman named Abira simply reached out of her hammock and lifted him in. She seemed glad to have him in spite of the heat and humidity. She was a short, very strong woman who carried a pack as heavy as those of men half again her size, yet she handled him with gentleness.

  “I had three little boys before the war,” she said in her strangely accented English. She had come from Israel. She gave his head a quick rub—her favorite caress—and went to sleep, leaving him to find his own most comfortable position.

  Amma and Shkaht slept together on their own bed of blanket-covered bamboo. Humans valued them, fed them, sheltered them, but they did not like the girls’ tentacles—would not deliberately allow themselves to be touched by the small sensory organs. Amma had only managed to taste Macy Wilton because she was riding on his back and her tentacles were able to burrow through the clothing he had put between himself and her.