Adulthood Rites x-2 Page 20

  The adults came together silently, head and body tentacles tangling together, locking together in intense feeling. After a time, probably after feelings and communications had slowed, cooled to something a child could tolerate, they drew Tiikuchahk in, handling and examining it with great curiosity. It examined them as well and made their acquaintance. Akin envied it its head tentacles. When the adults released it and took him into their midst, he could taste only one of them at a time, and there was no time to savor them all as he wished. Children and resisters were easier to cope with.

  Yet these people welcomed him. They could see themselves in him and see his alien Humanity. The latter fascinated them, and they chose to take the time to perceive themselves through his senses.

  The ooloi was particularly fascinated by him. Taishokaht its name was—Jahtaishokahtlo lei Surohahwahj aj Toaht. He had never touched a Jah ooloi before. It was shorter and stockier than ooloi from the Kaal or Lo. In fact, it was built rather like Akin himself, although it was taller than Akin. Everyone was taller than Akin. There was a feeling of intensity and confidence to the ooloi and a feeling almost of humor—as though he amused it very much, but it liked him.

  “You don’t know what an intricate mix you are,” it told him silently. “If you’re the prototype for Human-born males, there are going to be a great many of us who settle for daughters only from our Human mates. And that would be a loss.”

  “There are several others now,” Dichaan told it aloud. “Study him. Maybe you’ll mix the first for Lo Toaht.”

  “I don’t know whether I’d want to.”

  Akin, still in contact with it, broke the contact and drew back to look at it. It wanted to. It wanted to badly. “Study me all you want,” he said. “But share what you learn with me as much as you can.”

  “Trade, Eka,” it said with amusement. “I’ll be interested to see how much you can perceive.”

  Akin was not sure he liked the ooloi. It had a soft, paper-dry voice and an attitude that irritated Akin. The ooloi did not care that Akin was clearly going to be male and was close to metamorphosis. To it, he was eka: sexless child. Child trying to make adult bargains. Amusing. But that was what Dichaan had promised Tiikuchahk. They would be helped and taught with a certain lack of seriousness. In a sense, they would be humored. Children who lived in the safety of the ship did not have to grow up as quickly as those on Earth. Except for young ooloi who underwent two metamorphoses with their subadult years between, everyone was allowed a long, easy childhood. Even the ooloi were not seriously challenged until they proved they were to be ooloi—until they reached the subadult stage. No one abducted them in infancy or carried them around by their arms and legs. No one threatened them. They did not have to keep themselves alive among well-meaning but ignorant resisters.

  Akin looked at Dichaan. “How can it be good for me to be treated as though I were younger than I am?” he asked. “What lesson is condescension supposed to teach me about this group of my people?”

  He would not have spoken so bluntly if Lilith had been with him. She insisted on more respect for adults. Dichaan, though, simply answered his questions as he had expected. “Teach them who you are. Now they only know what you are. Both of you.” He focused for a moment on Tiikuchahk. “You’re here to teach as well as to learn.” Which was just about what Taishokaht had said, but Taishokaht had said it as though to a much younger child.

  At that moment, for no reason he could understand, Tiikuchahk touched him, and they fell into their grating, dissonant near-synchronization.

  “This is what we are, too,” he said to Taishokaht—only to hear the same words coming from Tiikuchahk. “This is what we need help with!”

  The three Oankali tasted them, then drew back. The female, Suroh, drew her body tentacles tight against her and seemed to speak for all of them.

  “We heard about that trouble. It’s worse than I thought.”

  “It was wrong to separate them,” Dichaan said softly.

  Silence. What was there to say? The thing had been done by consensus years before. Adults of Earth and Chkahichdahk had made the decision.

  “I know a Tiej family with an ooloi child,” Suroh said. There could be no boy children, no girl children among the Oankali, but a subadult ooloi was often referred to as an ooloi child. Akin had heard the words all his life. Now adults would find an ooloi child for him and for Tiikuchahk. The thought made him shudder.

  “My closest siblings have an ooloi child,” Taishokaht said. “It’s young, though. Just through its first metamorphosis.”

  “Too young,” Dichaan said. “We need one who understands itself. Shall I stay and help choose?”

  “We’ll choose,” the male said, smoothing his body tentacles flat against his skin. “There’s more than one problem to be solved here. You’ve brought us something very interesting.”

  “I’ve brought you my children,” Dichaan said quietly.

  At once the three of them touched him, reassured him directly, drawing Akin and Tiikuchahk in to let him know that they had a home here, that they would be cared for.

  Akin wanted desperately to go back to his true home. When food was served, he did not eat. Food did not interest him. When Dichaan left, it was all Akin could do to keep himself from following and demanding to be taken home to Earth. Dichaan would not have taken him. And no one present would have understood why he was making the gesture. Nikanj would understand, but Nikanj was back on Earth. Akin looked at the Toaht ooloi and saw that it was paying no attention to him.

  Alone, and more lonely than he had been since the raiders abducted him, he lay down on his platform and went to sleep.

  6

  Are you afraid?” Taishokaht asked. “Humans are always afraid of them.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Akin said. They were in a large, dark, open area. The walls glowed softly with the body heat of Chkahichdahk. There was only body heat to see by here, deep inside the ship. Living quarters and travel corridors were above—or Akin thought of their direction as above. He had passed through areas where gravity was less, even where it was absent. Words like up and down were meaningless, but Akin could not keep himself from thinking them.

  He could see Taishokaht by its body heat—less than his own and greater than that of Chkahichdahk. And he could see the other person in the room.

  “I’m not afraid,” he repeated. “Can this one hear?”

  “No. Let it touch you. Then taste the limb it offers.”

  Akin stepped toward what his sense of smell told him was an ooloi. His sight told him it was large and caterpillarlike, covered with smooth plates that made a pattern of bright and dark as body heat escaped between the plates rather than through them. From what Akin had heard, this ooloi could seal itself within its shell and lose little or no air or body heat. It could slow its body processes and induce suspended animation so that it could survive even drifting in space. Others like it had been the first to explore the war-ruined Earth.

  It had mouth parts vaguely like those of some terrestrial insects. Even if it had possessed ears and vocal cords, it could not have formed anything close to Human or Oankali speech.

  Yet it was as Oankali as Dichaan or Nikanj. It was as Oankali as any intelligent being constructed by an ooloi to incorporate the Oankali organelle within its cells. As Oankali as Akin himself.

  It was what the Oankali had been, one trade before they found Earth, one trade before they used their long memories and their vast store of genetic material to construct speaking, hearing, bipedal children. Children they hoped would seem more acceptable to Human tastes. The spoken language, an ancient revival, had been built in genetically. The first Human captives awakened had been used to stimulate the first bipedal children to talk—to “remember” how to talk.

  Now, most of the caterpillarlike Oankali were Akjai like the ooloi that stood before Akin. It or its children would leave the vicinity of Earth physically unchanged, carrying nothing of Earth or Humanity with it except knowledge and memory.

  The Akjai extended one slender forelimb. Akin took th
e limb between his hands as though it were a sensory arm—and it seemed to be just that, although Akin learned in the first instant of contact that this ooloi had six sensory limbs instead of only two.

  Its language of touch was the one Akin had first felt before his birth. The familiarity of this comforted him, and he tasted the Akjai, eager to understand the mixture of alienness and familiarity.

  There was a long period of getting to know the ooloi and understanding that it was as interested in him as he was in it. At some point—Akin was not certain when—Taishokaht joined them. Akin had to use sight to find out for certain whether Taishokaht had touched him or touched the Akjai. There was an utter blending of the two ooloi—greater than any blending Akin had perceived between paired siblings. This, he thought, must be what adults achieved when they reached for a consensus on some controversial subject. But if it was, how did they continue to think at all as individuals? Taishokaht and Kohj, the Akjai, seemed completely blended, one nervous system communicating within itself as any nervous system did.

  “I don’t understand,” he communicated.

  And, just for an instant, they showed him, brought him into that incredible unity. He could not even manage terror until the moment had ended.

  How did they not lose themselves? How was it possible to break apart again? It was as though two containers of water had been poured together, then separated—each molecule returned to its original container.

  He must have signaled this. The Akjai responded. “Even at your stage of growth, Eka, you can perceive molecules. We perceive subatomic particles. Making and breaking this contact is no more difficult for us than clasping and releasing hands is for Humans.”

  “Is that because you’re ooloi?” Akin asked.

  “Ooloi perceive and, within reproductive cells, manipulate. Males and females only perceive. You’ll understand soon.”

  “Can I learn to care for animals while I’m so

  limited?”

  “You can learn a little. You can begin. First, though, because you don’t have adult perception, you must learn to trust us. What we let you feel, briefly, wasn’t such a deep union. We use it for teaching or for reaching a consensus. You must learn to tolerate it a little early. Can you do that?”

  Akin shuddered. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll try to help you. Shall I?”

  “If you don’t, I won’t be able to do it. It scares me.”

  “I know that. You won’t be so afraid now.”

  It was delicately controlling his nervous system, stimulating the release of certain endorphins in his brain—in effect, causing him to drug himself into pleasurable relaxation and acceptance. His body was refusing to allow him to panic. As he was enfolded in a union that felt more like drowning than joining, he kept jerking toward panic only to have the emotion smothered in something that was almost pleasure. He felt as though something were crawling down his throat and he could not manage a reflexive cough to bring it up.

  The Akjai could have helped him more, could have suppressed all discomfort. It did not, Akin realized, because it was already teaching. Akin strove to control his own feelings, strove to accept the self-dissolving closeness.

  Gradually, he did accept it. He discovered he could, with a shift of attention, perceive as the Akjai perceived—a silent, mainly tactile world. It could see—see far more than Akin could in the dim room. It could see most forms of electromagnetic radiation. It could look at a wall and see great differences in the flesh, where Akin saw none. And it knew—could see—the ship’s circulatory system. It could see, somehow, the nearest outside plates. As it happened, the nearest outside plates were some distance above their heads where Akin’s Earth-trained senses told him the sky should be. The Akjai knew all this and more simply by sight. Tactilely, though, it was in constant contact with Chkahichdahk. If it chose to, it could know what the ship was doing in any part of the huge shipbody at any time. In fact, it did know. It simply did not care because nothing required its attention. All the many small things that had gone wrong or that seemed about to go wrong were being attended to by others. The Akjai could know this through the contact of its many limbs with the floor.

  The startling thing was, Taishokaht knew it, too. The thirty-two toes of its two bare feet told it exactly what the Akjai’s limbs told it. He had never noticed Oankali doing this at home. He had certainly never done it himself with his very Human, five-toed feet.

  He was no longer afraid.

  No matter how closely he was joined to the two ooloi, he was aware of himself. He was equally aware of them and their bodies and their sensations. But, somehow, they were still themselves, and he was still himself. He felt as though he were a floating, disembodied mind, like the souls some resisters spoke of in their churches, as though he looked from some impossible angle and saw everything, including his own body as !t leaned against the Akjai. He tried to move his left hand and saw it move. He tried to move one of the Akjai’s limbs, and once he understood the nerves and musculature, the limb moved.

  “You see?” the Akjai said, its touches feeling oddly like Akin touching his own skin. “People don’t lose themselves. You can do this.”

  He could. He examined the Akjai’s body, comparing it to Taishokaht’s and to his own. “How can Dinso and Toaht people give up such strong, versatile bodies to trade with Humans?” he asked.

  Both ooloi were amused. “You only ask that because you don’t know your own potential,” the Akjai told him. “Now I’ll show you the structure of a tilio. You don’t know it even as completely as a child can. When you understand it, I’ll show you the things that go wrong with it and what you can do about them.”

  7

  Akin lived with the Akjai as it traveled around the ship. The Akjai taught him, withholding nothing that he could absorb. He learned to understand not only the animals of Chkahichdahk and Earth, but the plants. When he asked for information on the resisters’ bodies, the Akjai found several visiting Dinso ooloi. It learned in a matter of minutes all that they could teach it. Then it fed the information to Akin in a long series of lessons.

  “Now you know more than you realize,” the Akjai said when it had given its information on Humans. “You have information you won’t even be able to use until after your own metamorphosis.”

  “I know more than I thought I could learn,” Akin said. “I know enough to heal ulcers in a resister’s stomach or cuts or puncture wounds in flesh and in organs.”

  “Eka, I don’t think they’ll let you.”

  “Yes, they will. At least, they will until I change. Some will.”

  “What do you want for them, Eka? What would you give them?”

  “What you have. What you are.” Akin sat with his back against the Akjai’s curved side. It could touch him with several limbs and give him one sensory limb to signal into. “I want a Human Akjai,” he told it.

  “I’ve heard that you did. But your kind can’t exist alongside them. Not separately. You know that.”

  Akin took the slender, glowing limb from his mouth and looked at it. He liked the Akjai. It had been his teacher for months now. It had taken him into parts of the ship that most people never saw. It had enjoyed his fascination and deliberately suggested new things that he might be interested in learning. He was, it said, more energetic than the older students it had had.

  It was a friend. Perhaps he could talk to it, reach it as he had not been able to reach his family. Perhaps he could trust it. He tasted the limb again.

  “I want to make a place for them,” he said. “I know what will happen to Earth. But there are other worlds. We could change the second one or the fourth one—make one of them more like Earth. A few of us could do it. I’ve heard that there is nothing living on either world.”

  “There’s nothing living there. The fourth world could be more easily transformed than the second.”

  “It could be done?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was so obvious

  . I thought I might be wrong, thought I had missed something.”

  “Time, Akin.”
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  “Get things started and turn them over to the resisters. They need metal, machinery, things they can control.”

  “No.”

  Akin focused his whole attention on the Akjai. It was not saying, no, the Humans could not have their machines. Its signals did not communicate that at all. It was saying, no, Humans did not need machines.

  “We can make it possible for them to live on the fourth world,” it said. “They wouldn’t need machines. If they wanted them, they would have to build them themselves.”

  “I would help. I would do whatever was needed.”

  “When you change, you’ll want to mate.”

  “I know. But—”

  “You don’t know. The urge is stronger than you can understand now.”

  “It’s

  ” He projected amusement. “It’s pretty strong now. I know it will be different after metamorphosis. If I have to mate, I have to mate. I’ll find people who’ll work with me on this. There must be others that I can convince.”

  “Find them now.”

  Startled, Akin said nothing for a moment. Finally he asked, “Do you mean I’m close to metamorphosis now?”

  “Closer than you think. But that isn’t what I meant.”

  “You agree with me that it can be done? The resisters can be transplanted? Their Human-to-Human fertility can be restored?”

  “It’s possible if you can get a consensus. But if you get a consensus, you may find that you’ve chosen your life’s work.”

  “Wasn’t that work chosen for me years ago?”

  The Akjai hesitated. “I know about that. The Akjai had no part in the decision to leave you so long with the resisters.”

  “I didn’t think you had. I’ve never been able to talk about it to anyone I felt had taken part—who had chosen to break me from my nearest sibling.”