Imago x-3 Read online

  He sighed. After a moment, he nodded.

  I put him to sleep. He did not realize it, but I was responsible for strengthening his aversion to Nikanj. No male or female who spent as much time with an ooloi as he had with me would feel comfortable touching another ooloi. JoĂo was not bound to me, but he was chemically oriented toward me and away from others. And adult ooloi could seduce him from me if he truly disliked me and was interested in finding another ooloi. But otherwise, he would stay with me. Lilith had begun this way with Nikanj.

  The next morning, I took JoĂo to Nikanj. As I had promised, Nikanj touched him briefly, then let him go.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong with him,” he told me. “I wish he could stay and keep you from becoming a frog again.” I was grateful that it spoke in English and JoĂo did not understand.

  I gave JoĂo food and a hammock and my machete. He had lost whatever gear he had had with him when he fell.

  “There are older Oankali who would mate with you,” I told him. “They could give you pleasure. You could have children.”

  “Which of them would look like someone I used to dream about when I was young?” he asked.

  “I don’t really look like this, JoĂo. You know I don’t. I didn’t look this way when we met.”

  “You look like this for me,” he said. “Tell me who else could do that?”

  I shook my head. “No one.”

  “You see?”

  “Then go to Mars. Find someone who does really look this way. Have Human children.”

  “I’ve thought about Mars. It seemed a fantasy, though. To live on another world.

  ”

  “Oankali have lived on many other worlds. Why shouldn’t Humans live on at least one other?”

  “Why should the Oankali have the one world that’s ours?”

  “They do have it. And you can’t take it back from them. You can stay here and die uselessly, resisting. You can go to Mars and help found a new Human society. Or you can join us in the trade. We will go to the stars eventually. If you join us, your children will go with us.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been among Oankali before. We all have, we resisters. Oankali never made me doubt what I should do.” He smiled. “Before I met you, Jodahs, I knew myself much better.”

  He went away undecided. “I don’t even know what I want from you,” he said as he was leaving. “It isn’t the usual thing, certainly, but I don’t want to leave you.”

  But, of course, he did leave.

  4

  Two days after JoĂo had gone, Aaor went into metamorphosis. It did not seem to edge in slowly as I had—though I had been so preoccupied with JoĂo that I could easily have missed the signs. It simply went to its pallet and went to sleep. I was the one who touched it and realized that it was in metamorphosis. And that it was becoming ooloi.

  There would be two of us, then. Two dangerous uncertainties who might never be allowed to mate normally, who might spend the rest of our lives in one kind of exile or another.

  We had not begun to travel again on the day JoĂo left us. Now we could not. There was no good reason to carry Aaor through the forest, forcing it to assimilate new sensations when it should be isolated and focusing inward on the growth and readjustment of its own body.

  We could have put together a raft and traveled down the river to Lo in a fraction of the time it had taken us to reach this point. In an emergency, Nikanj could even signal for help. But what help? A shuttle to take us back to Lo, where we could not stay? A shuttle to take us to Chkahichdahk, where we did not want to go?

  We sat grouped around the sleeping Aaor and agreed to do the only thing we really could do: move to higher ground to avoid the rainy season floods and build a more permanent house. My Human mother said it was time to plant a garden.

  Nikanj and I stayed with Aaor while the others went to find the site of our new home.

  “Do you realize you’ve already lost most of your hair?” Nikanj asked me as we sat on opposite sides of Aaor’s sleeping body.

  I touched my head. It still had a very thin covering of hair, but as Nikanj had said, I was nearly bald. Again. I had not noticed. Now I could see that my skin was changing, too, losing the softness it had taken on for JoĂo, losing its even brown coloring. I could not tell yet whether I would return to my natural gray-brown or take on the greenish coloring I’d had just before JoĂo.

  “You should be at least as good at monitoring your own body as you are at monitoring a Human,” Nikanj said.

  “Will Aaor be like me?” I asked.

  It let all its sensory tentacles hang limp. “I’m afraid it might be.” It was silent for a while. “Yes, I believe it will be,” it said finally.

  “So now you have two same-sex children to need you

  and to resent you.”

  It focused on me for a long time with an intensity that first puzzled me, then began to scare me. It had rested one sensory arm across Aaor’s chest, examining, checking.

  “Is it all right?” I asked.

  “As much as you are.” It rustled its tentacles. “Perfect, but imperfect. It has all that it should have. It can do all that it should be able to do. But that won’t be enough. You’ll have to go to the ship, Oeka. You and Aaor.”

  “No!” I felt the way I had once when an apparently friendly Human had hit me in the face.

  “You need mates,” it said softly. “No one will mate with you here except old Humans who would steal perhaps four fifths of your life. On the ship, you may be able to get young mates—perhaps even young Humans.”

  “And bring them back to Earth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I won’t go then. I won’t take the chance of being held there. I don’t think Aaor will either.”

  “It will. You both will when it finishes its metamorphosis.”

  “No!”

  “Oeka, you’ve seen it yourself. With a potential mate—even a very unsuitable one—your control is flawless. Without a potential mate, you have no control. You were surprised when I told you you were losing your hair. You’ve been surprised by your body again and again. Yet nothing it does should surprise you. Nothing it does should be beyond your control.”

  “But I didn’t even grow that hair deliberately. I just

  On some level I realized JoĂo would like it. I think I became all the things he liked, even though he never told me what they were.”

  “His body told you. His every look, his reactions, his touch, his scent. He never stopped telling you what he wanted. And since he was the sole focus of your attention, you gave him everything he asked for.” It lay down beside Aaor. “We do that, Jodahs. We please them so that they’ll stay and please us. You’re better at it with Humans than I ever was. I was bred for this trade, but you, you’re part of the trade. You can understand both Human and Oankali by looking inside yourself.” It paused, rustled its tentacles. “I don’t believe we would have had many resisters if we had made construct ooloi earlier.”

  “You think that, and you still want to send me away?”

  “I believe it, yes. But no one else does. We must teach them.”

  “I don’t want to teach—. We? We, Ooan?”

  “For a while, we’ll all relocate to the ship.”

  I almost said no again, but it wouldn’t have paid any attention to me. When it began telling me what I would do, it had decided. Our interests—Aaor’s and mine—and our needs would be best served on Chkahichdahk, even if we were never allowed to come home. The family would stay with us until we were adults, but then it would leave us on the ship. No more forests or rivers. No more wildness filled with things I had not yet tasted. The planet itself was like one of my parents. I would leave it, and I would gain nothing.

  No, that wasn’t true. I would gain mates. Eventually. Perhaps. Nikanj would do all it could to get the mates. There were young Humans born and raised on the ship because there had been so few salvageable Humans left after their war and their resulting disease and atmospheric disturbances. There had not been enough for a good trade. Also most of those who wanted to return
to Earth had been allowed to return. That left the Toaht Oankali—those who wanted to trade and to leave with the ship—too few Human mates. They had been breeding more Humans as well as accepting violent ones from Earth. But even so, there were not enough for everyone who wanted them. Not yet. How likely would the Toaht be to let me mate with even one?

  I shook my head. “Don’t desert me, Ooan.”

  It focused on me, its manner questioning. “You know I won’t.”

  “I won’t go to Chkahichdahk. I won’t take what they decide to give me and stay if they decide to keep me. I would rather stay here and mate with old Humans.”

  It did not shout at me as my Human parents would have. It did not tell me what I already knew. It did not even turn away from me.

  “Lie here with me,” it said softly.

  I went over and lay down next to it, felt it link into me with more sensory tentacles than I had on my entire body. It looped a sensory arm around my neck.

  “Such despair in you,” it said silently. “You could not throw away so much life.”

  “Your life will be shorter because of Tino and Lilith,” I told it. “Do you feel that you’re throwing something away?”

  “On Chikahichdahk, there are Humans who will live as long as you would normally.”

  “So many that a pair would be allowed to come to me? And what about Aaor?”

  It began to feel despair of its own. “I don’t know.”

  “But you don’t think so. Neither do I.”

  “You know I’ll speak for you.”

  “Ooan

  ”

  “Yes. I know. I’ve produced two construct ooloi children. No one else has produced any. Who will listen to me?”

  “Will anyone?”

  “Not many.”

  “Why did you threaten to send me to Chkahichdahk, then?”

  “You will go, Oeka. There’s no place for you here, and you know it.”

  “No! ”

  “There’s life there for you. Life!” It paused. “You’re more adaptable than you think. I made you. I know. You could live there. You could find construct or Oankali mates and learn to be content with shipboard life.”

  I spoke aloud. “You’re probably right. There used to be Humans who adapted to not being able to see or hear or walk or move. They adapted. But I don’t think any of them chose to be so limited.”

  “But think!” It tightened its grip on me. “Where will you live with old Human mates? Will resisters let you join them in one of their villages? How many attacks on you will it take for them to force a lethal response from you? What will happen then? And, Jodahs, what will happen to your children—your Human children? Will you make them sterile or let them mate together without an ooloi and create deformity and disease? Will you try to force them to go to one of our villages? They may not want to join us any more than you want to go to Chkahichdahk. They’ll want the land and the people they know. And if you do a good job when you make them, they could outlive all other resisters. They could outlive this world. If they manage to elude us, they could die when we break the Earth and go our ways.”

  I withdrew from it, signaling it to withdraw from me. When the Earth was divided and the new ship entities scattered to the stars, Nikanj would be long dead. If I mated with an Old Human, I would be dead, too. I would not be able to safeguard my children even if they were willing, as adults, to be guided by a parent.

  I went away from Nikanj, into the forest. I didn’t go far. Aaor was helpless and Nikanj might need help protecting it. Aaor was more my paired sibling now than ever. Had it known what was happening to it? Had it wanted to be ooloi? Since it was Oankali-born, would it be willing to live on Chkahichdahk?

  What difference would it make what Aaor wanted—or what I wanted? We would go to Chkahichdahk. And we would probably not be allowed to come home.

  When my parents and siblings returned to move Aaor to the new home site they had chosen, I went down to the river, went in, and crossed.

  I wandered for three days, my body green, scaly, and strange. No one came near me. I lived off the plants I found, picking and choosing according to the needs of my body. I ate everything raw. Humans liked fire. They valued cooked food much more than we did. Also, Humans were less able to get the nutrition they needed from the leaves, grasses, seeds, and fungi that were so abundant in the forest. We could digest what we needed from wood if we had to.

  I wandered, tasting the forest, tasting the Earth that I would soon be taken from.

  After three days, I went back to the family. I spent a couple of days sitting with Aaor, then left again.

  That was my pattern during the rest of Aaor’s metamorphosis. Sometimes I brought Nikanj a few cells of some plant or animal that I had run across for the first time. We all did that— brought the adult ooloi of the family living samples of whatever we encountered. Ooloi generally learned a great deal from what their mates and unmated children brought them. And whatever we gave Nikanj, it remembered. It could still recall and re-create a rare mountain plant that one of my brothers had introduced it to over fifty years before. Someday it was supposed to duplicate the cells of its vast store of biological information and pass the copies along to its same-sex children. We were to receive it when we were fully adult and mated. What would that mean, really, for Aaor and me? Someday on Chkahichdahk? Never?

  I had always enjoyed bringing Nikanj things. I had enjoyed sharing the pleasure it felt in new tastes, new sensations. Now I needed contact with it more than ever. But I no longer enjoyed the contact. I didn’t blame it for pointing out the obvious: that Aaor and I had to go to the ship. It was our same-sex parent, doing its duty. But every time it touched me, all I could feel was stress. Distress. Its own and mine. I brought out the worst in it.

  I began to stay away even longer.

  I met resisters occasionally, but I looked so un-Human and so un-Oankali most of the time that they fled. Twice they shot me, then fled. But no matter how my body distorted itself, I could always heal wounds.

  My family never tried to control my goings and comings. They accepted my feelings whether they understood them or not. They wanted to help me, and suffered because they could not. When I was at home I sat with them sometimes—with Ayodele and Yedik when they guarded at night. People guarded in pairs except for Nikanj, who stayed with Aaor, and Oni and Hozh, who were too young to guard.

  But I could touch Oni and Hozh. I could touch Ayodele and Yedik. They were still children, neutral-scented, and not yet forbidden to me. When I came out of the forest, looking like nothing anyone on Earth would recognize, one or the other pair of them took me between them and stayed with me until I looked like myself again. If I touched only one of them, I would change that one, make it what I was. But if they both stayed with me, they changed me.

  “We shouldn’t be able to do this to you,” Yedik said as we guarded one night.

  “You make it easy for me not to wander,” I told it. “My body wanders. Even when I come home, it wants to go on wandering.”

  “We shouldn’t be able to stop it,” Yedik insisted. “We shouldn’t influence you at all. We’re too young.”

  “I want you to influence me.” I looked from one of them to the other. Ayodele looked female and Yedik looked male. I hoped they would be more strongly influenced by the way they looked than I had. Humans said they were beautiful.

  “I can change myself,” I told them. “But it’s an effort. And it doesn’t last. It’s easier to do as water does: allow myself to be contained, and take on the shape of my containers.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ayodele said.

  “You help me do what I want to do.”

  “What do Humans do?”

  “Shape me according to their memories and fantasies.”

  “But—” They both spoke at once. Then, by mutual consent, Ayodele spoke. “Then you’re either out of control or contained by us or forced into a false Human shape.”

  “Not forced.”

  “When can you be yourself?”

  I thought about that. I understood it because I remembered b
eing their age and having a strong awareness of the way my face and body looked, and of that look being me. It never had been, really.

  “Changing doesn’t bother me anymore,” I said. “At least, not this kind of deliberate, controlled changing. I wish it didn’t bother other people. I’ve never deformed plants or animals the way people said I might.”

  “Just people,” Yedik said quietly. “People and Lo.”

  “Lo was barely annoyed. It would have survived that war the Humans killed each other with.”

  “It’s part of you and vulnerable to you. You hurt it.”

  “I know. And I confused it. But I don’t think I could injure it seriously if I tried—and I wouldn’t try. As for people, have you noticed that the Humans, the people I’m supposed to be the greatest danger to, are the ones I’ve never hurt?”

  Silence.

  “Does it bother you to have me here with you?”

  “It did,” Ayodele said. “We thought your life must be terrible. We can feel your distress when we link with you.”

  “This is my place,” I told them. “This world. I don’t belong on the ship—except perhaps for a visit. People go there to absorb more of our past sometimes. I wouldn’t mind that. But I can’t live there. No matter what Ooan says, I can’t live there. It’s a finished place. The people are still making themselves, but the place

  ”

  “It’s still dividing in two to make a ship for the Toaht and a ship for the Akjai.”

  “And the two halves will be smaller finished places. No wildness. No newness. I’m Dinso like you, not Toaht or Akjai.”

  Again they were silent.

  “You two sit together.” I withdrew from them and started to get up.

  They watched me with their eyes and their few sensory tentacles. Silently they took my hands and drew me down to sit between them again. They acted more in perfect unison than any of my siblings. Ahajas said they would certainly become mates if they developed as male and female. They did not want me between them. I made them uncomfortable because they wanted to help me and couldn’t help much. On the other hand, they did want me between them because they could help a little, and they knew they would lose me soon, and they liked the way I made their bodies feel. I wasn’t as able to make people feel good as Nikanj was, but I could give them something. And I was old enough to read internal and external body language and understand more of what they were feeling.