Adulthood Rites x-2 Read online

  But, still, they did know that at some point an ooloi must take the information and coordinate it so that the people could use it. At some point, an ooloi must give them the sensation that only an ooloi could give. Even Humans were vulnerable to this enticement. They could not deliberately gather the kind of specific biological information the ooloi wanted, but they could share with an ooloi all that they had recently eaten, breathed, or absorbed through their skins. They could share any changes in their bodies since their last contact with the ooloi. They did not understand what they gave the ooloi. But they knew what the ooloi gave them. Akin understood exactly what he was giving to Nikanj. And for the first time, he began to understand what an ooloi could give him. It did not take the place of an ongoing closeness like Amma’s and Shkaht’s. Nothing could do that. But this was better than anything he had ever known. It was an easing of pain for now and a foreshadowing of healing for the distant, adult future.

  Sometime later, Akin became aware again of the three Humans. They were sitting on the ground talking to one another. On the hill behind them, the hill that concealed them from the salvage camp, Gabe stood. Apparently, none of the Humans had seen him yet. All the Oankali must be aware of him. He was watching Tate, no doubt focusing on her yellow hair.

  “Don’t say anything,” Nikanj told him silently. “Let them talk.”

  “He’s her mate,” Akin whispered aloud. “He’s afraid she’ll come with us and leave him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me go and get him.”

  “No, Eka.”

  “He’s a friend. He took me all around the hills. It was because of him that I had so much information to give you.”

  “He’s a resister. I won’t give him the chance to use you as a hostage. You don’t realize how valuable you are.”

  “He wouldn’t do it.”

  “What if he simply picked you up and stepped over the hill and called his friends. There are guns in that camp, aren’t there?”

  Silence. Gabe might do such a thing if he thought he was losing both Akin and Tate. He might. Just as Tino’s father had gathered his friends and killed so many even though he believed nothing he could do would bring Tino back or even properly avenge him.

  “Come with us!” Lilith was saying. “You like kids? Have some of your own. Teach them everything you know about what Earth used to be.”

  “That’s not what you used to say,” Tate said softly.

  Lilith nodded. “I used to think you resisters would find an answer. I hoped you would. But, Jesus, your only answer has been to steal kids from us. The same kids you’re too good to have yourselves. What’s the point?”

  “We thought

  we thought they would be able to have children without an ooloi.”

  Lilith took a deep breath. “No one does it without the ooloi. They’ve seen to that.”

  “I can’t come back to them.”

  “It’s not bad,” Tino said. “It’s not what I thought.”

  “I know what it is! I know exactly what it is. So does Gabe. And I don’t think anything I could say would make him go through that again.”

  “Call him,” Lilith said. “He’s there on the hill.”

  Tate looked up, saw Gabe. She stood up. “I have to go.”

  “Tate!” Lilith said urgently.

  Tate looked back at her.

  “Bring him to us. Let’s talk. What harm can it do?”

  But Tate would not. Akin could see that she would not. “Tate,” he called to her.

  She looked at him, then looked away quickly.

  “I’ll do what I said I would,” he told her. “I don’t forget things.”

  She came over to him, and kissed him. The fact that Nikanj was still holding him seemed not to bother her.

  “If you ask,” Nikanj said, “my parents will come from the ship. They haven’t found other Human mates.”

  She looked at Nikanj but did not speak to it. She walked away up the hill and over it, not stopping even to speak to Gabe. He followed her, and both disappeared over the hill.

  1

  The boy wanders too much,” Dichaan said as he sat sharing a meal with Tino. “It’s too early for the wandering phase of his life to begin.” Dichaan ate with his fingers from a large salad of fruits and vegetables that he had prepared himself. Only he knew best what he felt like eating and exactly what his current nutritional needs were.

  Tino ate a corn and bean dish and had beside him a sliced melon with sweet orange flesh and dishes of fried plantains and roasted nuts. He was, Dichaan thought, paying more attention to his food than to what Dichaan was saying.

  “Tino, listen to me!”

  “I hear.” The man swallowed and licked his lips. “He’s twenty, ‘Chaan. If he weren’t showing some independence by now, I would be the one who was worried.”

  “No.” Dichaan rustled his tentacles. “His Human appearance is deceiving you. His twenty years are like

  like twelve Human years. Less in some ways. He isn’t fertile now. He won’t be until his metamorphosis is complete.”

  “Four or five more years?”

  “Perhaps. Where does he go, Tino?”

  “I won’t tell you. He’s asked me not to.”

  Dichaan focused sharply on him. “I haven’t wanted to follow him.”

  “Don’t follow him. He isn’t doing any harm.”

  “I’m his only same-sex parent. I should understand him better. I don’t because his Human inheritance makes him do things that I don’t expect.”

  “What would a twenty-year-old Oankali be doing?”

  “Developing an affinity for one of the sexes. Beginning to know what it would become.”

  “He knows that. He doesn’t know how he’ll look, but he knows he’ll become male.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, a twenty-year-old Human male in a place like this would be exploring and hunting and chasing girls and showing off. He’d be trying to see to it that everyone knew he was a man and not a kid anymore. That’s what I was doing.”

  “Akin is still a kid, as you say.”

  “He doesn’t look like one, in spite of his small size. And he probably doesn’t feel like one. And whether he’s fertile or not, he’s damned interested in girls. And they don’t seem to mind.”

  “Nikanj said he would go through a phase of quasi-Human sexuality.”

  Tino laughed. “This must be it, then.”

  “Later he’ll want an ooloi.”

  “Yeah. I can understand that, too.”

  Dichaan hesitated. He had come to the question he most wanted to ask, and he knew Tino would not appreciate his asking. “Does he go to the resisters, Tino? Are they the reason for his wandering?”

  Tino looked startled, then angry. “If you knew, why did you ask?”

  “I didn’t know. I guessed. He must stop!”

  “No.”

  “They could kill him, Tino! They kill each other so easily!”

  “They know him. They look after him. And he doesn’t go far.”

  “You mean they know him as a construct man?”

  “Yes. He’s picked up some of their languages. But he hasn’t hidden his identity from them. His size disarms them. Nobody that small could be dangerous, they think. On the other hand, that means he’s had to fight a few times. Some guys think if he’s small, he’s weak, and if he’s weak, he’s fair game.”

  “Tino, he is too valuable for this. He’s teaching us what a Human-born male can be. There are still so few like him because we’re too unsure to form a consensus—”

  “Then learn from him! Let him alone and learn!”

  “Learn what? That he enjoys the company of resisters? That he enjoys fighting?”

  “He doesn’t enjoy fighting. He had to learn to do it in self-defense, that’s all. And as for the resisters, he says he has to know them, has to understand them. He says they’re part of him.”

  “What is there still for him to learn?”

  Tino straightened his back and stared at Dichaan. “Does he know everything about the Oankali?”

  “

  no.” Dichaan let his head and body tentacles hang limp. “I’
m sorry. The resisters don’t seem very complex—except biologically.”

  “Yet they resist. They would rather die than come here and live easy, pain-free lives with you.”

  Dichaan put his food aside and focused a cone of head tentacles on Tino. “Is your life pain-free?”

  “ Sometimes—biologically.”

  He did not like Dichaan to touch him. It had taken Dichaan a while to realize that this was not because Dichaan was Oankali, but because he was male. He touched hands with or threw an arm around other Human males, but Dichaan’s maleness disturbed him. He had finally gone to Lilith for help in understanding this.

  “You’re one of his mates,” she had told him solemnly. “Believe me, ‘Chaan, he never expected to have a male mate. Nikanj was difficult enough for him to get used to.”

  Dichaan didn’t see that Tino had found it difficult to get used to Nikanj. People got used to Nikanj very quickly. And in the long, unforgettable group matings, Tino had not seemed to have any difficulty with anyone. Though afterward, he did tend to avoid Dichaan. Yet Lilith did not avoid Ahajas.

  Dichaan got up from his platform, left his salad, and went to Tino. The man started to draw back, but Dichaan took his arms.

  “Let me try to understand you, Chkah. How many children have we had together? Be still.”

  Tino sat still and allowed Dichaan to touch him with a few long, slender head tentacles. They had had six children together. Three boys from Ahajas and three girls from Lilith. The old pattern.

  “You chose to come here,” Dichaan said. “And you’ve chosen to stay. I’ve been very glad to have you here—a Human father for the children and a Human male to balance group mating. A partner in every sense. Why does it hurt you to stay here?”

  “How could it not hurt?” Tino asked softly. “And how could you not know? I’m a traitor to my people. Everything I do here is an act of betrayal. Someday, my people won’t exist at all, and I will have helped their destroyers. I’ve betrayed my parents

  everyone.” His voice had all but vanished even before he finished speaking. His stomach hurt him, and he was developing a pain in his head. He got very bad pains in his head sometimes. And he would not tell Nikanj. He would go away by himself and suffer. If someone found him, he might curse them. He would not struggle against help, though.

  Dichaan moved closer to the platform on which Tino sat. He penetrated the flesh’ of the platform—of the Lo entity—and asked it to send Nikanj. It liked doing such things. Nikanj always pleasured it when it passed along such a message.

  “Chkah, does Lilith feel the way you do?” he asked Tino.

  “Do you really not know the answer to that?”

  “I know she did at first. But she knows that resisters’ genes are just as available to us as any other Human genes. She knows there are no resisters, living or dead, who are not already parents to construct children. The difference between them and her—and you—is that you have decided to act as parents.”

  “Does Lilith really believe that?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  Tino looked away, head throbbing. “I guess I believe it. But it doesn’t matter. The resisters haven’t betrayed themselves or their Humanity. They haven’t helped you do what you’re doing. They may not be able to stop you, but they haven’t helped you.”

  “If all Humans were like them, our construct children would be much less Human, no matter how they looked. They would know only what we could teach them of Humans. Would that be better?”

  “I tell myself it wouldn’t,” Tino said. “I tell myself there’s some justification for what I’m doing. Most of the time, I think I’m lying. I wanted kids. I wanted

  the way Nikanj makes me feel. And to get what I wanted, I’ve betrayed everything I once was.”

  Dichaan moved Tino’s food off his platform and told him to lie down. Tino only looked at him. Dichaan rustled his body tentacles uncomfortably. “Nikanj says you prefer to endure your pain. It says you need to make yourself suffer so that you can feel that your people are avenged and you’ve paid your debt to them.”

  “That’s shit!”

  Nikanj came through a wall from the outside. It looked at the two of them and shot them a bad smell.

  “He insists on hurting himself,” Dichaan said. “I wonder if he hasn’t convinced Akin to hurt himself, too.”

  “Akin does as he pleases!” Tino said. “He understands what I feel better than either of you could, but it’s not what he feels. He has his own ideas.”

  “You aren’t part of his body,” Nikanj said, pushing him backward so that he would lie down. He did lie down this time. “But you’re part of his thoughts. You’ve done more than Lilith would have to make him feel that the resisters have been wronged and betrayed.”

  “Resisters have been wronged and betrayed,” Tino said. “I never told Akin that, though. I never had to. He saw it for himself.”

  “You’re working on another ulcer,” Nikanj said.

  “So what?”

  “You want to die. And yet you want to live. You love your children and your parents and that is a terrible conflict. You even love us—but you don’t think you should.” It climbed onto the platform and lay down alongside Tino. Dichaan touched the platform with his head tentacles, encouraging it to grow, to broaden and make room for him. He was not needed, but he wanted to know firsthand what happened to Tino.

  “I remember Akin telling me about a Human who bled to death from ulcers,” he said to Nikanj. “One of his captors.”

  “Yes. He gave the man’s identity. I found the ooloi who had conditioned the man and learned that he had had ulcers since adolescence. The ooloi tried to keep him for his own sake, but the man wouldn’t stay.”

  “What was his name?” Tino demanded.

  “Joseph Tilden. I’m going to put you to sleep, Tino.”

  “I don’t care,” Tino muttered. After a time, he drifted off to sleep.

  “What did you say to him?” Nikanj asked Dichaan.

  “I asked him about Akin’s disappearances.”

  “Ah. You should have asked Lilith.”

  “I thought Tino would know.”

  “He does. And it disturbs him very much. He thinks Akin is more loyal to Humanity than Tino himself. He doesn’t understand why Akin is so focused on the resisters.”

  “I didn’t realize how focused he was,” Dichaan admitted. “I should have.”

  “The people deprived Akin of closeness with his sibling and handed him a compensating obsession. He knows this.”

  “What will he do?”

  “Chkah, he’s your child, too. What do you think he’ll do?”

  “Try to save them—what’s left of them—from their empty, unnecessary deaths. But how?”

  Nikanj did not answer.

  “It’s impossible. There’s nothing he can do.”

  “Maybe not, but the problem will occupy him until his metamorphosis. Then I hope the other sexes will occupy him.”

  “But there must be more to it than that!”

  Nikanj smoothed its body tentacles in amusement. “Anything to do with Humans always seems to involve contradictions.” It paused. “Examine Tino. Inside him, so many very different things are working together to keep him alive. Inside his cells, mitochondria, a previously independent form of life, have found a haven and trade their ability to synthesize proteins and metabolize fats for room to live and reproduce. We’re in his cells too now, and the cells have accepted us. One Oankali organism within each cell, dividing with each cell, extending life, and resisting disease. Even before we arrived, they had bacteria living in their intestines and protecting them from other bacteria that would hurt or kill them. They could not exist without symbiotic relationships with other creatures. Yet such relationships frighten them.”

  “Nika

  ” Dichaan deliberately tangled his head tentacles with those of Nikanj. “Nika, we aren’t like mitochondria or helpful bacteria, and they know it.”

  Silence.

  “You shouldn’t lie to them. It would be better to say nothing.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. When we keep quiet, they suppose
it’s because the truth is terrible. I think we’re as much symbionts as their mitochondria were originally. They could not have evolved into what they are without mitochondria. Their earth might still be inhabited only by bacteria and algae. Not very interesting.”

  “Is Tino going to be all right?”

  “No. But I’ll take care of him.”

  “Can’t you do something to stop him from hurting himself?”

  “I could make him forget some of his past again.”

  “No!”

  “You know I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even if I hadn’t seen the pleasant, empty man he was before his memories came back. I wouldn’t do it. I don’t like to tamper with them that way. They lose too much of what I value in them.”

  “What will you do, then? You just go on repairing him until finally he leaves us and maybe kills himself?”

  “He won’t leave us.”

  It meant it would not let him go, could not. Ooloi could be that way when they found a Human they were strongly attracted to. Nikanj certainly could not let Lilith go, no matter how much it let her wander.

  “Will Akin be all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dichaan detached himself from Nikanj and sat up, folding his legs under him. “I’m going to separate him from the resisters.”

  “Why?”

  “Sooner or later, one of them will kill him. We’ve collected their guns twice since they took him. They always make more, and the new ones are always more effective. Greater range, greater accuracy, greater safety for the Humans using them

  Humans are too dangerous. And they’re only one part of him. Let him learn what else he is.”

  Nikanj drew its body tentacles in, upset, but it said nothing. If it had favorites among its children, Akin was one of them. It had no same-sex children, and that was a real deprivation. Akin was unique, and when he was at home, he spent much of his time with Nikanj. But Dichaan was still his same-sex parent.

  “Not for long, Chkah,” Dichaan said softly. “I won’t keep him from you long. And he’ll bring you all the changes he finds in Chkahichdahk.”

  “He always brings me things,” Nikanj whispered. It seemed to relax, accepting Dichaan’s decision. “He goes out of his way to find unusual things to taste and bring back. There’s so little time until he metamorphoses and begins giving all his acquisitions to his mates.”