Imago x-3 Read online

  In one way, the Mars colony freed both my Human parents to find what pleasure they could find in their lives. In another it hadn’t helped at all. They still feel guilt, feel as though they’ve deserted their people for aliens, as though they still suspect that they are the betrayers the resisters accused them of being. No Human could see the genetic conflict that made them such a volcanic species—so certain to destroy themselves. Thus, perhaps no Human completely believed it.

  “I was always glad when they took whole plants,” Lilith was saying, “Something to feed them now and something to transplant later.”

  “There are some peanuts here that survived,” Tino said. “Do you want them?” He bent to pull a few of the small plants from the loose soil I had watched Lilith prepare for them.

  “Leave them,” she said. “I have some.” She turned back to face the garden, watched the Oankali members of the family place what they had gathered on a blanket of overlapping banana leaves. Ahajas stopped Oni from eating a salvaged papaya and sent her to tell Lo what had happened and that the food was being left. Oni was Human-born, and so deceptively Human-looking that I had gone on thinking of her as female— though it would be more than ten years before she would have any sex at all.

  “Wait,” Lilith said.

  Oni stopped near her, stood looking up at her.

  Lilith walked over to Dichaan. “Will you go instead?” she asked him.

  “The people who did this are gone, Lilith,” he told her. “They’ve been gone for over a day. There’s no sound of them, no fresh scent.”

  “I know. But

  just for my peace of mind, will you go?”

  “Yes.” He turned and went. He would go only to the edge of Lo where some of the trees and smaller plants were not what they appeared to be. There he could signal Lo by touch, and Lo would pass the message on exactly to the next several people to open a wall or request food or in some other way come into direct contact with the Lo entity. Lo would pass the message on eight or ten times, then stop and store the message away. It couldn’t forget any more than we could, but unless someone requested the memory, it would never bother anyone with it again. Humans could neither leave nor receive such messages. Even though Lilith and a few others had learned some of what they called Oankali codes, their fingers were not sensitive enough to receive messages or fine and penetrating enough to send them.

  Oni watched Dichaan go, then returned to Hozh, who had finished her papaya. She stood close to him. He was no more male than she female, but it was easier to go on thinking of them the way I always had. The two of them slipped automatically into silent communication. Whenever they stood close together that way, Hozh’s sensory tentacles immediately found Oni’s sensory spots—she had very few sensory tentacles of her own—and established communication. Paired siblings.

  Watching them made me lonely, and I looked around for Aaor. I caught it watching me. It had avoided me carefully since I got up from my metamorphosis. I had let it keep its distance in spite of what Tehkorahs had told me because Aaor obviously did not want contact. It did not seem to need me as much as I needed it. As I watched, it turned away from me and focused its attention on a large beetle.

  Lilith and Tino joined the family group where it had settled to wait for Dichaan. “This is just the beginning,” Lilith said to no one in particular. “We’ll be meeting people like the ones who destroyed this garden. Sooner or later they’ll spot us and come after us.”

  “You have your machete,” Nikanj said.

  It could not have gotten more attention if it had screamed. I focused on it to the exclusion of everything, felt pulled around to face it. Oankali did not suggest violence. Humans said violence was against Oankali beliefs. Actually it was against their flesh and bone, against every cell of them. Humans had evolved from hierarchical life, dominating, often killing other life. Oankali had evolved from acquisitive life, collecting and combining with other life. To kill was not simply wasteful to the Oankali. It was as unacceptable as slicing off their own healthy limbs. They fought only to save their lives and the lives of others. Even then, they fought to subdue, not to kill. If they were forced to kill, they resorted to biological weapons collected genetically on thousands of worlds. They could be utterly deadly, but they paid for it later. It cost them so dearly that they had no history at all of striking out in anger, frustration, jealousy, or any other emotion, no matter how keenly they felt it. When they killed even to save life, they died a little themselves.

  I knew all this because it was as much a part of me as it was of them. Life was treasure. The only treasure. Nikanj was the one who had made it part of me. How could Nikanj be the one to suggest that anyone kill?

  “

  Nika?” Ahajas whispered. She sounded the way I felt. Uncomprehending, disbelieving.

  “They have to protect their lives and the family,” Nikanj whispered. “If this were only a journey, we could guard them. We’ve guarded them before. But we’re leaving home. We’ll live cut off from others for

  I don’t know, perhaps a long time. There will be times when we aren’t with them. And there are resisters who would kill them on sight.”

  “I don’t want anyone to die because of me,” I said. “I thought we were leaving to save life.”

  It focused on me, reached out a sensory arm, and drew me to its side. “We’re leaving because the forest is the only place where we can live together as a family,” it said. “No one will die because of you.”

  “But—”

  “If they die, it will only be because they work very hard to make us kill them.”

  My siblings and other parents began to focus away from it. It had never said such things before. I stared at it and saw what they had missed. It was almost making itself sick with this talk. It would have been happier holding its hand in fire.

  “There are easier ways to say these things,” it admitted. “But some things shouldn’t be said easily.” It hesitated as Dichaan rejoined us. “We will leave the group only in pairs. We won’t leave if it isn’t necessary. You children—all of you— look out for one another. There will be new things everywhere to taste and understand. If your sibling is tasting something, you stand guard. If you see or smell Humans, hide. If you’re caught in the open, run—even if it means being shot. If you’re brought down, scream. Make as much noise as you can. Don’t let them carry you away. Struggle. Make yourselves inconvenient to hold. If they seem intent on killing you, sting.”

  My siblings stood with head and body tentacles hanging undirected. The stings of males, females, and children were lethal.

  “Once you’re free, come to me or call me. I may be able to save whoever you’ve stung.” It paused. “These are terrible things. If you stay with the group and stay alert, you won’t have to do them.”

  They began to come alive again, focusing a few tentacles on it and understanding why it was speaking so bluntly to them. We were all hard to kill. Even our Human parents had been modified, made strong, more able to survive injury. The main danger was in being overwhelmed and abducted. Once we were taken away from the family, anything could be done to us. Perhaps Oni and Hozh would only be adopted for a time by Humans who were desperate for children. The rest of us looked too much like adult Humans—or adult Oankali. Those who looked female would be raped. Those who looked male would be killed. The Humans would have all the time they needed to beat, cut, and shoot us until we died. Unless we killed them.

  Best never to get into such a position.

  Nikanj focused on Lilith and Tino for several seconds, but said nothing. It knew them. It knew they would make every effort not to kill their own people—and it knew they would resent being told to take care. I had seen Oankali make the mistake of treating Humans like children. It was an easy mistake to make. Most Humans were more vulnerable than their own half-grown children. The Oankali tried to take care of them. The Humans reacted with anger, resentment, and withdrawal. Nikanj’s way was better.

  Nikanj focused for a moment on me. I still stood next to it, a coil of its right sensory arm around my
neck. With its left sensory arm, it gestured to Aaor.

  “No!” I whispered.

  It ignored me. Aaor came toward us slowly, its whole body echoing my “no.” It was afraid of me. Afraid of being hurt?

  “Do you understand what you feel?” Nikanj asked when Aaor was close enough for it to loop its left sensory arm around Aaor’s neck.

  Aaor shook its head Humanly. “No. I don’t want to avoid Jodahs. I don’t know why I do it.”

  “I understand,” Nikanj said. “But I don’t know whether I can help you. This is something new.”

  That caught Aaor’s attention. Anything new was of interest.

  “Think, Eka. When has an ooloi ever had a paired sibling?”

  I almost missed seeing Aaor’s surprise, I was so involved with my own. Of course ooloi did not have paired siblings in the usual sense. In Oankali families, females had three children, one right after the other. One became male, one female, and one ooloi. Their own inclinations decided which became which. The male and the female metamorphosed and found an unrelated ooloi to mate with. The ooloi still had its subadult phase to mature through. It was still called a child—the only child who knew its sex. And it was alone until it neared its second metamorphosis and found mates. I should have had only my parents around me now. But where would that leave Aaor?

  “Stop running away from one another,” Nikanj said. “Find out what’s comfortable for you. Do what your bodies tell you is right. This is a new relationship. You’ll be finding the way for others as well as for yourselves.”

  “If it touches me, you’ll have to heal it,” I said.

  “I know.” It flattened its head and body tentacles in something other than amusement. “Or at least, I think I know. This is new to me, too. Aaor, come to me every day for examination and healing. Come even if you believe nothing is wrong. Jodahs can make very subtle, important changes. Come immediately if you feel pain or if you notice anything wrong.”

  “Ooan, help me understand it,” Aaor said. “Let me reach it through you.”

  “Shall I?” Nikanj asked me silently.

  “Yes,” I answered in the same way.

  It wove us into seamless neurosensory union.

  And it was as though Aaor and I were touching again with nothing between us. I savored Aaor’s unique taste. It was like part of me, long numb, long out of touch, yet so incredibly welcome back that I could only submerge myself in it.

  Aaor said nothing to me. It only wanted to know me again—know me as an ooloi. It wanted to understand as deeply as it could the changes that had taken place in me. And I came to understand from it without words how lonely it had been, how much it wanted me back. It was totally unnatural for paired siblings to be near one another, and yet avoid touching.

  Aaor asked wordlessly for release, and Nikanj released us both. For a second I was aware only of frog and insect sounds, the rain dropping from the trees, the sun breaking through the clouds. No one in the family moved or spoke. I hadn’t realized they were all focused on us. I started to look around, then Aaor stepped up to me and touched me. I reached for it with every sensory tentacle I had, and its own more numerous tentacles strained toward me. This was normal. This was what paired siblings were supposed to be able to do whenever they wanted to.

  For a moment relief overwhelmed me again. My underarms itched just about where my sensory arms would grow someday. If I had already had the arms, I couldn’t have kept them off Aaor.

  “It’s about time,” Ahajas said. “You two look after each other.”

  “Let’s go.” Tino said.

  We followed him out of the ruined garden, moving single file through the forest. He knew of a place that sounded as though it would make a good campsite—plenty of space, far from other settlements of any kind. Everyone’s fear was that I would make changes in the plant and animal life. These changes could spread like diseases—could actually be diseases. The adults in the family did not know whether they could detect and disarm every change. Sooner or later other people would have to deal with some of them. The idea was for us to isolate ourselves, to minimize and localize any cleaning up that would have to be done later. The place Tino had found years before was an island—a big island with a new growth of cecropia trees at one end and a mix of old growth over the rest. It was moving slowly downstream the way river islands did—mud taken from one end was deposited downstream at the other. All the adults remembered a place like this created aboard the ship and used to train Humans to live in the forest. None of them had liked it. Now they were headed for the real thing— because of me.

  Sometime during the afternoon, Aaor’s underarms began to itch and hurt. By the time it went to Nikanj for healing, swellings had begun to appear. I had apparently caused Aaor’s unsexed, immature body to try to grow sensory arms. Instead, it was growing potentially dangerous tumors.

  “I’m sorry,” I said when Nikanj had finished with it.

  “Just figure out what you did wrong,” it said unhappily. “Find out how to avoid doing it again.”

  That was the problem. I hadn’t been aware of doing anything to Aaor. If I had felt myself doing it, I would have stopped myself. I thought I had been careful. I was like a blind Human, trampling what I could not see. But a blind Human’s eyesight could be restored. What I was missing was something I had never had—or at least, something I had never discovered.

  “Learn as quickly as you can so we can go home,” Aaor said.

  I focused on the trail ahead—on scenting or hearing strangers. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  7

  The island should have been three days’ walk upriver. We thought we might make it in five days, since we had to circle around Pascual, an unusually hostile riverine resister settlement. People from Pascual were probably the ones who had destroyed Lilith’s garden. Now we would go far out of our way to avoid repaying them. Too many of them might not survive contact with me.

  We never thought we were in danger from Pascual because its people knew better than most resisters what happened to anyone who attacked us. Their village, already shrunken by emigration, would be gassed, and the attackers hunted out by scent. They would be found and exiled to the ship. There, if they had killed, they would be kept either unconscious or drugged to pleasure and contentment. They would never be allowed to awaken completely. They would be used as teaching aids, subjects for biological experiments, or reservoirs of Human genetic material. The people of Pascual knew this, and thus committed only what Lilith called property crimes. They stole, they burned, they vandalized. They had not come as close to Lo as the garden before. They had confined their attentions to travelers.

  We did not understand how extreme their behavior had become until we met some of them on our first night away from Lo. We stopped walking at dusk, cooked and ate some of the food Lilith and Tino had brought, and hung our hammocks between trees. We didn’t bother erecting a shelter, since the adults agreed that it wasn’t going to rain.

  Only Nikanj cleared a patch of ground and spread its hammock on the bare earth. Because of the connections it had to make with sensory arms and tentacles, it was not comfortable sharing a hanging hammock with anyone. It wanted us to feel free to come to it with whatever wounds, aches, or pains we had developed. It gestured to me first, though I had not intended to go to it at all.

  “Come every night until you learn to control your abilities,” it told me. “Observe what I do with you. Don’t drowse.”

  “All right.”

  It could not heal without giving pleasure. People tended simply to relax and enjoy themselves with it. Instead, this time I observed, as it wished, saw it investigate me almost cell by cell, correcting the flaws it found—flaws I had not noticed. It was as though I had gained an understanding of the complexity of the outside world and lost even my child’s understanding of my inner self. I used to notice quickly when something was wrong. Now my worst problem was uncontrolled, unnecessary cell division. Cancers. They began and grew very quickly—many, many times faster than they could have in a Human. I was supposed to
be able to control and use them in myself and in others. Instead, I couldn’t even spot my own when they began. And they began with absolutely no conscious encouragement from me.

  “Do you see?” Nikanj asked.

  “Yes. But I didn’t before you showed me.”

  “I’ve left one.”

  I hunted for it and after some time found it growing in my throat, where it would surely kill me if it were allowed to continue. I did not readjust the genetic message of the cells and deactivate the part that was in error. That was what Nikanj had done to the others, but I did not trust my ability to follow its example. I might accidentally reprogram other genes. Instead, I destroyed the few malignant cells.

  Then I put my head against Nikanj, let my head tentacles link with its own. I spoke to it silently.

  “I’m not learning. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Wait.”

  “I don’t want to keep being dangerous, hurting Aaor, being afraid of myself.”

  “Give yourself time. You’re a new kind of being. There’s never been anyone like you before. But there’s no flaw in you. You just need time to find out more about yourself.”

  Its certainty fed me. I rested against it for a while, enjoying the easy, safe contact—my only one now. It nudged me after a while, and I went back to my hammock. Lilith was lying with it when the resisters made themselves known to us.

  First they screamed. A female Human screamed again and again, first cursing someone, then begging, then making hoarse, wordless noises. There were also male voices—at least three of them shouting, laughing, cursing.

  “Real and not real,” Dichaan said when the screaming began.

  “What is it?” Oni demanded.

  “The female is being hurt now,” Nikanj said. “And she’s afraid. But something is wrong about this. Her first screams were false. She was not afraid then.”