Adulthood Rites x-2 Read online

  “Yet you’ll do the work that was chosen for you?”

  “I will. But for the Humans and for the Human part of me. Not for the Oankali.”

  “Eka

  ”

  “Shall I show you what I can feel, all I can feel with Tiikuchahk, my nearest sibling? Shall I show you all I’ve ever had with it? All Oankali, all constructs have something that Oankali and constructs came together and decided to deny me.”

  “Show me.”

  Again Akin was startled. But why? What Oankali would decline a new sensation? He remembered for it all the jarring, tearing dissonance of his relationship with Tiikuchahk. He duplicated the sensations in the Akjai’s body along with the revulsion they made him feel and the need he felt to avoid this person whom he should have been closest to.

  “I think it almost wants to be male to avoid any sexual feelings for me,” he finished.

  “Keeping you separated was a mistake,” the Akjai agreed. “I can see now why it was done, but it was a mistake.”

  Only Akin’s family had ever said that before. They had said it because he was one of them, and it hurt them to see him hurt. It hurt them to see the family unbalanced by paired siblings who had failed to pair. People who had never had close siblings or whose closest siblings had died did not damage the balance as much as close siblings who had failed to bond.

  “You should go back to your relatives,” the Akjai said. “Make them find a young ooloi for you and your sibling. You should not go through metamorphosis with so much pain cutting you off from your sibling.”

  “Ti was talking about finding a young ooloi before I left to study

  with you. I don’t think I could stand to share an ooloi with it.”

  “You will,” the Akjai said. “You must. Go back now, Eka. I can feel what you’re feeling, but it doesn’t matter. Some things hurt. Go back and reconcile with your sibling. Then come to me and I’ll find new teachers for you—people who know the processes of changing a cold, dry, lifeless world into something Humans might survive on.”

  The Akjai straightened its body and broke contact with him. When Akin stood still, looking at it, not wanting to leave it, it turned and left him, opening the floor beneath itself and surging into the hole it had made. Akin let the hole seal itself, knowing that once it was sealed he would not find the Akjai again until it wished to be found.

  8

  The ooloi subadult was a relative of Taishokaht. Jahdehkiaht, its personal name was at this stage of its life. Dehkiaht. It had been living with Taishokaht’s family and Tiikuchahk, waiting for him to return from the Akjai.

  The young ooloi looked sexless but did not smell sexless. It would not develop sensory arms until its second metamorphosis. That made its scent all the more startling and disturbing.

  Akin had never been aroused by the scent of an ooloi before. He liked them, but only resister and construct women had interested him sexually. What could an immature ooloi do for anyone sexually, anyway?

  Akin took a step back the moment he caught the ooloi scent. He looked at Tiikuchahk who was with the ooloi, who had introduced it eagerly.

  There was no one else in the room. Akin and Dehkiaht stared at each other.

  “You aren’t what I thought,” it whispered. “Ti told me, showed me

  and I still didn’t understand.”

  “What didn’t you understand?” Akin asked, taking another step backward. He did not want to feel so drawn to anyone who was clearly already on good terms with Tiikuchahk.

  “That you are a kind of subadult yourself,” Dehkiaht said. “Your growth stage now is more like mine than like Ti’s.”

  That was something no one had said before. It almost distracted him from the ooloi’s scent. “I’m not fertile yet, Nikanj says.”

  “Neither am I. But it’s so obvious with ooloi that no one could make a mistake.”

  To Akin’s amazement, he laughed. Just as abruptly, he sobered. “I don’t know how this works.”

  Silence.

  “I didn’t want it to work before. I do now.” He did not look at Tiikuchahk. He could not avoid looking at the ooloi, although he feared it would see that his motives for wanting success had little to do with it or Tiikuchahk. He had never felt as naked as he did before this immature ooloi. He did not know what to do or say.

  It occurred to him that he was reacting exactly as he had the first time he realized a resister woman was trying to seduce him.

  He took a deep breath, smiled, and shook his head. He sat down on a platform. “I’m reacting very Humanly to an un-Human thing,” he said. “To your scent. If you can do anything to suppress it, I wish you would. It’s confusing the hell out of me.”

  The ooloi smoothed its body tentacles and folded itself onto a platform. “I didn’t know constructs talked about hell.”

  “We say what we’ve grown up hearing. Ti, what does its scent do to you?”

  “I like it,” Tiikuchahk said. “It makes me not mind that you’re in the room.”

  Akin tried to consider this through the distracting scent. “It makes me hardly notice that you’re in the room.”

  “See?”

  “But

  It

  I don’t want to feel like this all the time if I can’t do anything about it.”

  “You’re the only one here who could do anything about it,” Dehkiaht said.

  Akin longed to be back with his Akjai teacher, an adult ooloi who had never made him feel this way. No adult ooloi had made him feel this way.

  Dehkiaht touched him.

  He had not noticed the ooloi coming closer. Now he jumped. He felt himself more eager than ever for a satisfaction the ooloi could not give. Knowing this, he almost pushed Dehkiaht away in frustration. But Dehkiaht was ooloi. It did have that incredible scent. He could not push it or hit it. Instead, he twisted away from it. It had touched him only with its hand, but even that was too much. He had moved across the room to an outside wall before he could stop. The ooloi, clearly surprised, only watched him.

  “You don’t have any idea what you’re doing, do you?” he said to it. He was panting a little.

  “I think I don’t,” it admitted. “And I can’t control my scent yet. Maybe I can’t help you.”

  “No!” Tiikuchahk said sharply. “The adults said you could help—and you do help me.”

  “But I hurt Akin. I don’t know how to stop hurting him.”

  “Touch him. Understand him the way you’ve understood me. Then you’ll know how.”

  Tiikuchahk’s voice stopped Akin from urging the ooloi to go. Tiikuchahk sounded

  not just frightened but desperate. It was his sibling, as tormented by the situation as he was. And it was a child. Even more a child than he was—younger and truly eka.

  “All right,” he said unhappily. “Touch me, Dehkiaht. I’ll hold still.”

  It held still itself, watching him silently. He had almost injured it. If he had fled from it only a little less quickly, he would have caused it a great deal of pain. And it probably would have stung him reflexively and caused him a great deal of pain. It needed more than Akin’s words to assure it that he would not do such a thing again.

  He made himself walk over to it. Its scent made him want to run to it and grab it. Its immaturity and its connection with Tiikuchahk made him want to run the other way. Somehow, he crossed the room to it.

  “Lie down,” it told him. “I’ll help you sleep. When I’m finished, I’ll know whether I can help you in any other way.”

  Akin lay down on the platform, eager for the relief of sleep. The light touches of the ooloi’s head tentacles were an almost unendurable stimulant, and sleep was not as quick in coming as it should have been. He realized, finally, that his state of arousal was making sleep impossible.

  The ooloi seemed to realize this at the same time. It did something Akin was not quick enough to catch, and Akin was abruptly no longer aroused. Then he was no longer awake.

  9

  Akin awoke alone.

  He got up feeling slightly drowsy but unchanged and wandered through the Lo Toaht dwelling, looki
ng for Tiikuchahk, for Dehkiaht, for anyone. He found no one until he went outside. There, people went about their business as usual, their surroundings looking like a gentle, incredibly well-maintained forest. True trees did not grow as large as the ship’s treelike projections, but the illusion of rolling, forested land was inescapable. It was, Akin thought, too tame, too planned. No grazing here for exploring children. The ship gave food when asked. Once it was taught how to synthesize a food, it never forgot. There were no bananas or papayas or pineapples to pick, no cassava to pull, no sweet potatoes to dig, no growing, living things except appendages of the ship. Perfect “sweet potatoes” could be made to grow on the pseudotrees if an Oankali or a construct adult asked it of Chkahichdahk.

  He looked up at the limbs above him and saw that nothing other than the usual hairlike, green, oxygen-producing tentacles hung from the huge pseudotrees.

  Why was he thinking about such things? Homesickness? Where were Dehkiaht and Tiikuchahk? Why had they left him?

  He put his face to the pseudotree he had emerged from and probed with his tongue, allowing the ship to identify him so that it would give him any message they had left.

  The ship complied. “Wait,” the message said. Nothing more. They had not abandoned him, then. Most likely, Dehkiaht had taken what it had learned from Akin to some adult ooloi for interpretation. When it came back to him it would probably still smell tormenting. An adult would have to change it—or change him. It would have been simpler for adults to find a solution for him and Tiikuchahk directly.

  He went back in to wait and knew at once that Dehkiaht, at least, had already returned.

  He could have found it without sight. In fact, its scent overwhelmed his senses so completely that he could hardly see, hear, or feel anything. This was worse than before.

  He discovered that his hands were on the ooloi, grasping it as though he expected it to be taken from him, as though it were his own personal property.

  Then, gradually, he was able to let go of it, able to think and focus on something other than its enveloping scent. He realized he was lying down again. Lying alongside Dehkiaht, pressed against it, and comfortable.

  Content.

  Dehkiaht’s scent was still interesting, still enticing, but no longer overwhelming. He wanted to stay near the ooloi, felt possessive of it, but was not so totally focused on it. He liked it. He had felt this way about resister women who let him make love to them and who saw him as something other than a container of sperm they hoped might prove fertile.

  He breathed deeply and enjoyed the many light touches of Dehkiaht’s head and body tentacles.

  “Better,” he whispered. “Will I stay this way, or will you have to keep readjusting me?”

  “If you stayed this way, you’d never do any work,” the ooloi said, flattening its free tentacles in amusement. “This is good, though. Especially after the other. Tiikuchahk is here.”

  “Tip” Akin raised his head to look over the ooloi’s body. “I didn’t

  I don’t feel you.”

  It gave him a Human smile. “I feel you, but no more than I do anyone else I’m near.”

  Feeling oddly bereft, Akin reached over Dehkiaht to touch it.

  Dehkiaht seized his hand and put it back at his side.

  Surprised, Akin focused all his senses on it. “Why should you care whether I touch Ti? You aren’t mature. We aren’t mated.”

  “Yes. I do care, though. It would be better if you don’t touch each other for a while.”

  “I

  I don’t want to be bound to you.”

  “I couldn’t bind you. That’s why you confused me so. I went back to my parents to show them what I had learned about you and ask their advice. They say you can’t be bound. You were not constructed to be bound.”

  Akin moved against Dehkiaht, wanting to move closer, welcoming the inadequate strength arm the ooloi put around him. It was not an Oankali thing to put strength arms around people or to caress with strength hands. Someone must have told Dehkiaht that Humans and constructs found such gestures comforting.

  “I’ve been told that I would wander,” he said. “I wander now when I’m on Earth, but I always come home. I’m afraid that when I’m adult, I won’t have a home.”

  “Lo will be your home,” Tiikuchahk said.

  “Not the way it will be yours.” It would almost certainly be female and become part of a family like the one he had been raised in. Or it would mate with a construct male like him or his Oankali-born brothers. Even then, it would have an ooloi and children to live with. But who would he live with? His parents’ home would remain the only true home he knew.

  “When you’re adult,” Dehkiaht said, “you’ll feel what you can do. You’ll feel what you want to do. It will seem good to you.”

  “How would you know!” Akin demanded bitterly.

  “You aren’t flawed. I noticed even before I went to my parents that there was a wholeness to you—a strong wholeness. I don’t know whether you’ll be what your parents wanted you to be, but whatever you become, you’ll be complete. You’ll have within yourself everything you need to content yourself. Just follow what seems right to you.”

  “Walk away from mates and children?”

  “Only if it seems right to you.”

  “Some Human men do it. It doesn’t seem right to me, though.”

  “Do what seems right. Even now.”

  “I’ll tell you what seems right to me. You both should know. It’s what seemed right to me since I was a baby. And it will be right, no matter how my mating situation turns out.”

  “Why should we know?”

  This was not the question Akin had expected. He lay still, silent, thoughtful. Why, indeed? “If you let go of me, will I go out of control again?”

  “No.”

  “Let go, then. Let me see if I still want to tell you.”

  Dehkiaht released him, and he sat up, looking down at the two of them. Tiikuchahk looked as though it belonged beside the ooloi. And Dehkiaht looked

  felt frighteningly necessary to him, too. Looking at it made him want to lie down again. He imagined returning to Earth without Dehkiaht, leaving it to another pair of mates. They would mature and keep it, and the scent of them and the feel of them would encourage its body to mature quickly. When it was mature, they would be a family. A Toaht family if it stayed aboard the ship.

  It would mix construct children for other people.

  Akin got down from the bed platform and sat beside it. It was easier to think down there. Before today, he had never had sexual feelings for an ooloi—had not had any idea how such feelings would affect him. The ooloi said it could not bind him to it. Adults apparently wanted to be bound by an ooloi—to be joined and woven into a family. Akin felt confused about what he wanted, but he knew he did not want Dehkiaht stimulated to maturity by other people. He wanted it on Earth with him. Yet he did not want to be bound to it. How much of what he felt was chemical—simply a result of Dehkiaht’s provoking scent and its ability to comfort his body?

  “Humans are freer to decide what they want,” he said softly.

  “They only think they are,” Dehkiaht replied.

  Yes. Lilith was not free. Sudden freedom would have terrified her, although sometimes she seemed to want it. Sometimes she stretched the bonds between herself and the family. She wandered. She still wandered. But she always came home. Tino would probably kill himself if he were freed. But what about the resisters? They did terrible things to each other because they could not have children. But before the war—during the war—they had done terrible things to each other even though they could have children. The Human Contradiction held them. Intelligence at the service of hierarchical behavior. They were not free. All he could do for them, if he could do anything, was to let them be bound in their own ways. Perhaps next time their intelligence would be in balance with their hierarchical behavior, and they would not destroy themselves.

  “Will you come to Earth with us?” he asked Dehkiaht.

  “No,” Dehkiaht said softly.

  Akin stood u
p and looked at it. Neither it nor Tiikuchahk had moved. “No?”

  “You can’t ask for Tiikuchahk, and Tiikuchahk doesn’t know yet whether it will be male or female. So it can’t ask for itself.”

  “I didn’t ask you to promise to mate with us when we’re all adult. I asked you to come to Earth. Stay with us for now. Later, when I’m adult, I intend to have work that will interest you.”

  “What work?”

  “Giving life to a dead world, then giving that world to the resisters.”

  “The resisters? But—”

  “I want to establish them as Akjai Humans.”

  “They won’t survive.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “There’s no perhaps. They won’t survive their Contradiction.”

  “Then let them fail. Let them have the freedom to do that, at least.”

  Silence.

  “Let me show them to you—not just their interesting bodies and the way they are here and in the trade villages on Earth. Let me show them to you as they are when there are no Oankali around.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you should at least know them before you deny them the assurance that Oankali always claim for themselves.” He climbed onto the platform and looked at Tiikuchahk. “Will you take part?” he asked it.

  “Yes,” it said solemnly. “This will be the first time since before I was born that I’ll be able to take impressions from you without things going wrong.”

  Akin lay down next to the ooloi. He drew close to it, his mouth against the flesh of its neck, its many head and body tentacles linked with him and with Tiikuchahk. Then, carefully, in the manner of a storyteller, he gave it the experience of his abduction, captivity, and conversion. All that he had felt, he made it feel. He did what he had not known he could do. He overwhelmed it so that for a time it was, itself, both captive and convert. He did to it what the abandonment of the Oankali had done to him in his infancy. He made the ooloi understand on an utterly personal level what he had suffered and what he had come to believe. Until he had finished, neither it nor Tiikuchahk could escape.

  But when he had finished, when he had let him go, they both left him. They said nothing. They simply got up and left him.

  10

  The Akjai spoke to the people for Akin. Akin had not realized it would do this—an Akjai ooloi telling other Oankali that there must be Akjai Humans. It spoke through the ship and had the ship signal the trade villages on Earth. It asked for a consensus and then showed the Oankali and construct people of Chkahichdahk what Akin had shown Dehkiaht and Tiikuchahk.