Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

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

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.”

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.”

“Then you’re either out of control or contained by us or forced into a false Human shape.”

“When can you be yourself?”

“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.”

“For the others!” she whispered. “For all of the others, we must go!”

Silence. Sounds of a machete hacking. And sometime later, Tomás’s voice, “I would rather stay here and be rained on every day and starve every other day.” There was a pause. “I would almost rather cut my own throat than go back.” “We will go back,” Jesusa said softly. “I know.” Tomás sighed. “Who else would have us anyway—except Jodahs’s people.”

“You don’t have to think about it. It won’t happen to you.” He paused, then continued with sad irony. “That leaves you free to worry about bearing child after child after child, watching most of them die, and being told by some smooth-faced elder who looks younger than you do that you’re ready to do it all again—when she’s never done it at all.”

“Maybe not if you can’t see it or hear it. I don’t want that life, Jesusa. I don’t think I can stand it. Why should I help give the people more ugly cripples anyway? Will my children thank me? I don’t think they will.” Jesusa made no comment.

“We’ll both get back,” she said with uncharacteristic harshness. “You know your duty as well as I know mine.”

“I thought not. And with their background in high-altitude living, they may be better suited to it than most Humans. The Mars colony is exactly what it sounds like: a colony of Humans living and reproducing on the planet Mars. We transport them and we’ve given them the tools to make Mars livable.”

“Come. I’m going to tell you something my own Human mother didn’t learn until she had given birth to two construct children. Your people are not usually told this at all. I… I should not tell it to you, but I think I have to. Come.”

I spoke to her very softly. “You and your brother mean life to me.” I paused. “And in a different way, I mean life to your people. They’ll die if they stay where they are. They’ll all die.”

“Nothing will be able to live on what we leave,” I said. “If your people stay where they are and keep breeding, they’ll be destroyed. Every one of them. There’s life for them on Mars, and there’s life here with us. But if they insist on staying where they are… they won’t be allowed to keep having children. That way, by the time we break away from Earth, your people will have died of age.” She shook her head slowly as I spoke. “I don’t believe you. Even your people can’t destroy all the Earth.” “Not all of it, no. It’s like… when you eat a piece of fruit that has an inedible core or inedible seeds. There will be a rocky core of the Earth left—a great mass of material, useful for mining, but not for living on. We’ll be scattering in a great many ships. Each one will have to be self-sustaining in interstellar space perhaps for thousands of years.” “Self-sustaining in…?” “Just think of it as being beyond any possible help or dependable resupply.” “In space… between the stars. That’s what you mean. No sun. Almost nothing.” “Yes.” “The elders who raised us when our mother died… they knew about such things. One used to write about them before the war to help others understand.” I said nothing. Let her think for a while. She sat silent, frowning, sometimes

“You’ve saved him,” I said. “You’ve saved his life and your people’s lives. You’ve saved yourself from a life of unnecessary misery.”

Nikanj had warned me. Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.

I looked at her and understood that she was asking me for more than a description of the disorder. Her face was set and grim, as it had been since Jesusa promised to stay with me through metamorphosis. She wanted to know what reason there might be apart from her love for me for not telling the Humans how bound to me they were becoming. She wanted to know why she should betray her own kind with silence.

“Sometimes,” Tomás was saying, “people have only brown spots and no tumors. Sometimes they have both. And sometimes their minds are affected. Sometimes there are other troubles and they die. Children die.” He let his voice vanish away.

“No more!” Lilith said. “That misery will soon be over for them.” Tomás turned to face her. “You must know they won’t thank me or Jesusa for that. They’ll hate us as traitors.” “I know.” “Was it that way for you?” Lilith looked downward for a moment, moving only her eyes. “Has Jodahs told you about the Mars colony?” “Yes.” “It didn’t exist as an alternative for me.” “My people may not see it as an alternative either.” “If they’re wise, they will.”

neurofibromatosis.

“I can change to look the way Jodahs does,” it said. “There must be two more or at least one more sick Human among the Mother’s people who would join me.” Silence. Jesusa and Tomás looked startled. “You don’t understand how strongly we’re taught against you,” Tomás said. “And most of us believe. Jesusa and I came down to the lowlands to see a little of the world before she began to have child after child, and before I became too crippled. No one else we know of had done such a thing. I don’t think anyone else would.” “If I could reach them,” Aaor said, “I could convince them.”

But Aaor was not comforted. “I’m one more mistake!” it said. “One more ooloi who shouldn’t exist. There’s no other place on Earth for me to find mates. And if their people are collected and given the choice of Mars, union with us, or sterility where they are, I’ll never get near them! Even the ones who choose union with us will be directed to other mates. Mates who are not accidents.” “None of them will accept union,” Jesusa said. “I know them. I know what they believe.” “But you don’t know us well enough yet,” Aaor said. “Did you know what you would do… before Jodahs reached you?” “I know I won’t lead you or anyone else to my people,” she told it. “If your people can find mine without us as Jodahs said, we can’t stop you. But nothing you can say would make us help you.” “You don’t understand!” it said, leaning toward her. “I know that,” she admitted, “and I’m sorry.”

They did not know that this was exactly what Oankali mates did at these times. And they did not see Aaor watching them with a hunger that was so intense that its face was distorted and its head and body tentacles elongated toward us.

During my metamorphosis, Aaor lost its coat of gray fur. Its skin turned the same soft, bright brown as Jesusa’s, Tomás’s and my own. It grew long, black Human-looking hair and began to wear it as Tino wore his—bound with a twist of grass into a long tail down his back. I wore mine loose.

My only fear was that someone in the family would tell them. My mother believed she should, but she had not, so far. She loved me, and yet, until now, she had been able to do nothing to help me. She had not been able to make herself destroy the only chance I was likely to get of having the mates I needed. Yet she was weighted with guilt. One more betrayal of her own Human kind for people who were not Human, or not altogether Human. She spoke to Jesusa as a much older sister—or as a same-sex parent. She advised her.

Nikanj said it knew I needed children, so it took seed from the man I had then and made me pregnant. I didn’t think I would ever forgive it for that.” “But… you have forgiven it?” “I’ve understood it. I’ve accepted it. I wouldn’t have believed I could do that much. Back when I met my first mature ooloi, Nikanj’s parent Kahguyaht, I found it alien, arrogant, and terrifying. I hated it. I thought I hated all ooloi.” She paused. “Now I feel as though I’ve loved Nikanj all my life. Ooloi are dangerously easy to love. They absorb us, and we don’t mind.”

After a time, Jesusa said, “Ahajas and Dichaan aren’t so bad. They seem… very gentle.” “Good mates. I was with Nikanj before they were—like you with Jodahs. That’s best, I think. An ooloi is probably the strangest thing any Human will come into contact with. We need time alone with it to realize it’s probably also the best thing.”

“You and your new family? In one of our towns. I think any one of them would eventually welcome the three of you. You’d be something brand-new—the center of a lot of attention. Oankali and constructs love new things.”

“It did hurt some people, Jesusa. But it’s never hurt Humans. And it’s never hurt anyone when it’s had Humans with it.” “It told me that.” “Good. Because if it hadn’t, I would have. It needs you more than Nikanj ever needed me.” “You want me to stay with it.” “Very much.” “I’m afraid. This is all so different.… How did you ever…? I mean… with Nikanj.… How did you decide?” My mother said nothing at all. “You didn’t have a choice, did you?” “I did, oh, yes. I chose to live.” “That’s no choice. That’s just going on, letting yourself be carried along by whatever happens.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” my mother said.

Tomás was stronger than Jesusa. He lasted longer before he tired. Just before I put him to sleep, he said, “I never intended to let you get away from me. Now I know you never will.”

We called our need for contact with others and our need for mates hunger. The word had not been chosen frivolously. One who could hunger could starve.

Humans were genetically inclined to be intolerant of difference. They could overcome the inclination, but it was a reality of the Human conflict that they often did not.

After a while, Aaor nodded. “I’ll come back for you if you don’t meet us.” “It might be better for you if you didn’t,” I said. “Don’t ask the impossible of me,” it said, and guided its mates back into the stone cabin.

to Mars if you still want to go.” “I’d rather leave with you.” “You’re welcome to come with us. Just don’t get killed trying to do it. You’re much older than I am. You’re supposed to have learned patience.” He laughed without humor. “I haven’t learned it, little ooloi. I probably never will. Watch for me on the river trail.”

Their people, however, did begin to love us and to believe what we told them and to talk to us about Oankali and construct mates.

At the last moment, Francisco decided to come with us, but only because, as he had admitted, his long years had not taught him patience.

“Lelka,” it said, “if you will introduce us to your mates, we may begin to forgive you for staying here and not letting us know you were all right.”

“I can’t even hate you,” he whispered. “My god, if there had been people like you around a hundred years ago, I couldn’t have become a resister. I think there would be no resisters.” He stared at me a moment longer. “Damn you,” he said slowly, sadly. “Goddamn you.” He walked past me and went to Ahajas and the waiting Oankali family.

“And that man, Francisco, is he typical of the people here?” “He’s one of the old ones. The first one I met.” “And he loves you.” “As you said once: pheromones.” “At first, no doubt. By now, he loves you.” “… yes.” “Like João. Like Marina. You have a strange gift, Lelka.”

We represented the premature adulthood of a new species. We represented true independence—reproductive independence—for that species, and this frightened both Oankali and constructs. We were, as one signaler remarked, frighteningly competent ooloi. We must be watched and understood before any more of us were made—and before we could be permitted to settle in a lowland town.