Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis, #2)

by Octavia E. Butler

He is… less Human than your daughters.” “I’d guessed he would be. I know your people still worry about Human-born males.” “They were an unsolved problem. I believe we’ve solved it now.”

“That’s all I can expect, I guess.” A sigh. “Shall I thank you for making him look this way—for making him seem Human so I can love him?… for a while.” “You’ve never thanked me before.” “… no.” “And I think you go on loving them even when they change.” “They can’t help what they are… what they become. You’re sure everything else is all right, too? All the mismatched bits of him fit together as best they can?” “Nothing in him is mismatched. He’s very healthy. He’ll have a long life and be strong enough to endure what he must endure.”

He was Akin.

Nikanj Ooan, Lilith Mother, Ahajas Ty, Dichaan Ishliin, and the one who never came to him even though Nikanj Ooan had taught him that one’s touch and taste and smell. Lilith Mother had shown him a print image of that one, and he had scanned it with all his senses: Joseph Father.

He called for Joseph Father and, instead, Nikanj Ooan came and taught him that Joseph Father was dead. Dead. Ended. Gone away and not coming back. Yet he had been part of Akin, and Akin must know him as he knew all his living parents.

“He’s quicker than most of my girls,” Lilith commented as she held him against her and let him drink.

Nikanj Ooan taught him to use his tongue—his least Human visible organ—to study Lilith when she fed him. Over many feedings, he tasted her flesh as well as her milk. She was a rush of flavors and textures—sweet milk, salty skin smooth in some places, rough in others. He concentrated on one of the smooth places, focused all his attention on probing it, perceiving it deeply, minutely. He perceived the many cells of her skin, living and dead. Her skin taught him what it meant to be dead. Its dead outer layer contrasted sharply with what he could perceive of the living flesh beneath. His tongue was as long and sensitive and malleable as the sensory tentacles of Ahajas and Dichaan. He sent a filament of it into the living tissue of her nipple. He had hurt her the first time he tried this, and the pain had been channeled back to him through his tongue. The pain had been so sharp and startling that he withdrew, screaming and weeping. He refused to be comforted until Nikanj showed him how to probe without causing pain. “That,” Lilith had commented, “was a lot like being stabbed with a hot, blunt needle.” “He won’t do it again,” Nikanj had promised.

Your people have made Human-looking male babies a very valuable commodity.”

“And cheated everyone. Ahajas wants daughters, and I want sons. Other people feel the same way.”

we control children in ways we should not to make them mature as Oankali-born males and Human-born females.

Silence. A sigh. “You say such god-awful things in such a gentle voice. No, hush, I know it’s the only voice you’ve got. Nika, will Akin survive the Human males who will hate him?” “They won’t hate him.” “They will! He isn’t Human. Un-Human women are offensive to them, but they don’t usually try to hurt them, and they do sleep with them—like a racist sleeping with racially different women. But Akin… They’ll see him as a threat. Hell, he is a threat. He’s one of their replacements.”

“Families will change, Lilith—are changing. A complete construct family will be a female, an ooloi, and children. Males will come and go as they wish and as they find welcome.”

“Trade means change. Bodies change. Ways of living must change. Did you think your children would only look different?”

First there were his older siblings, some born to Ahajas and becoming more Human, and some born to Lilith and becoming more Oankali. There were also children of older siblings, and finally, frighteningly, unrelated people. Akin could not understand why some of the unrelated ones were more like Lilith than Joseph had been. And none of them were like Joseph.

His favorite among them was Margit.

She did not have sensory tentacles like his Oankali-born sisters, but she had clusters of sensitive nodules that would probably be tentacles when she grew up. She could match some of these to the smooth, invisible sensory patches on his skin, and the two of them could exchange images and emotions as well as words. She could teach him.

She did not want to give him up, he realized. He did not mind. She was, Humans said, gray and warty—more different than most Human-born children. And she could hear as well as any construct. She caught every whisper whether she wanted to or not, and if she were near Humans, they soon began to talk about her.

Margita Iyapo Domonkos Kaalnikanjlo. Margit.

She had all four of his living parents in common with him. Her Human father, though, was Vidor Domonkos, not the dead Joseph. Vidor—some people called him Victor—had moved to a village several miles upriver when he and Lilith tired of one another. He came back two or three times a year to see Margit. He did not like the way she looked, yet he loved her. She had seen that he did, and Akin was certain she had read his emotion correctly. He had never met Vidor himself. He had been too young for contact with strangers during the man’s last visit.

He realized then that he was in danger. Resisters were Humans who had decided to live without the Oankali—and thus without children. Akin had heard that they sometimes stole construct children, the most Human-looking construct children they could find. But that was stupid because they had no idea what the child might be like after metamorphosis. Oankali never let them keep the children anyway.

“I don’t know,” Lilith told him. “The only adult male constructs we have so far are Oankali-born—born to Oankali mothers. If Akin is like them, he’ll be bright enough, but his interests will be so diverse and, in some cases, so just plain un-Human that he’ll wind up keeping to himself a lot.”

“As it happens, I did have to. I had two construct kids by the time they brought me down from the ship. I never had a chance to run off and pine for the good old days!”

If he stayed long, he would learn that Lilith had these flares of bitterness sometimes. They never seemed to affect her behavior, though often they frightened people.

“It’s as though there’s something in her trying to get out. S...

Whenever the something seemed on the verge of surfacing, Lilith went alone into the forest and stayed away for days. Akin’s oldest sisters said they used to w...

“One of them surprised me,” she said. “It made me pregnant, then told me about it. Said it was giving me what I wanted but would never come out and ask for.” “Was it?” “Yes.” She shook her head from side to side. “Oh, yes. But if I had the stren...

“We’re comfortable,” Akin’s oldest sister Ayre said. “This isn’t a terrible way to live.”

Lilith spoke softly to him. “How many of those real houses of yours were empty when you left, Tino?”

“My people never had a chance! They didn’t make the war. They didn’t make the Oankali. And they didn’t make themselves sterile! But you can be damn sure that everything they did make was good and it worked and they put their hearts into it. Hey, I thought, ‘If we made a town, the… traders… must have made a city!’ And what do I find? A village of huts with primitive gardens. This place is hardly even a clearing!” His voice had risen again. He looked around with disapproval. “You’ve got kids to plan for and provide for, and you’re going to let them slide right back to being cavemen!”

A Human woman named Leah spoke up. “Our kids will be okay,” she said. “But I wish we could get more of your people to come here. They’re as close to immortal as a Human being has ever been, and all they can thin...

Wray Ordway who kept the small guest house stocked with food and other supplies. This was where newly arrived men lived until they paired off with one of the village women. It was the only house in the village that had been built of cut trees and palm thatch. Tino might sleep there tonight. Wray kept the guest house because he had chosen not to wander. He had paired with Leah and apparently never tired of her. The two of them with their three Oankali mates had nine Human-born daughters and eleven Oankali-born children.

“They change us and we change them,” Lilith said. “The whole next generation is made up of genetically engineered people, Tino—constructs, whether they’re born to Oankali or to Human mothers.” She sighed. “I don’t like what they’re doing, and I’ve never made any secret of it. But they’re in this with us. When the ships leave, they’re stuck here. And with their own biology driving them, they can’t not blend with us. But some of what makes us Human will survive, just as some of what makes them Oankali will survive.” She paused, looked around the large room. “Look at the children here, Tino. Look at the construct adults. You can’t tell who was born to whom. But you can see some Human features on every one of them. And as for the way we live… well, we’re not as primitive as you think—and not as advanced as we could be. It was all a matter of how much like the ship we wanted our homes to be. The Oankali made us learn to live here without them so that if we did resist, we could survive. So that people like your parents would have a choice.” “Some choice,” Tino muttered. “Better than being a prisoner or a slave,” she said. “They should have been ready for the forest. I’m surprised they ate the palm fruit that made them sick.”

Nikanj’s body went helplessly smooth, and everyone laughed. The glass-smooth flattening of head and body tentacles normally indicated humor or pleasure, Akin knew, but what Nikanj was feeling now was neither of those emotions. It was more like a huge, consuming hunger, barely under control. If Nikanj had been Human, it would have been trembling. After a moment it managed to return its appearance to normal. It focused a cone of head tentacles on Lilith, appealing to her. She had not laughed, though she was smiling.

She was an amazon of a woman, tall and strong, but with no look of hardness to her. Fine, dark skin.

The woman was not beautiful. Her broad, smooth face was usually set in an expression of solemnity, even sadness. It made her look—and Tino winced at the thought—it made her look saintly. A mother. Very much a mother.

And something else.

“I’m Wray Ordway,” he said. “I live here permanently. Come around when you can. Anyone here can head you toward my house.” He was a small, blond man with nearly colorless eyes that caught Tino’s attention. Could anyone really see out of such eyes?

Tehkorahs wanted to make a point—that the nine children Leah and I have produced are true siblings of the children of our Oankali mates.”

Those girls wear more clothing than most constructs because they have concealable differences. Neither of them is as Human as she looks. Let them alone if you can’t accept that.”

Tino looked into the pale, blind-seeming eyes. “What if I can accept it?” Wray looked at the two girls, his expression gentling. “That’s between you and them.” The girls were exchanging words with Nikanj. Another ooloi came up to them, and as the exchange continued, it put one strength arm around each girl. “That’s Tehkorahs,” Wray said, “my ooloi mate. That’s Tehkorahs being protective, I think. And Nikanj… being impatient if anyone can believe that.”

“You can do as you please here. As long as you don’t hurt anyone, you can stay or go as you like; you can choose your own friends, your own lovers. No one has the right to demand anything from you that you don’t want to give.”

you knew a man was out of his mind, you restrained him. You didn’t give him power.

“For the first time in my life, I had to tell it to be patient. If it were Human, I would say it was infatuated with you.” “You’re joking!” “I am,” she said. “This is worse than infatuation. I’m glad you feel something for it, too, even though you don’t yet know what.”

Nikanj touched you when you were too young to have any defenses. And what it gave you, you won’t ever quite forget—or quite remember, unless you feel it again. You want it again. Don’t you.”

“Direct stimulation of the brain and nervous system.” She held up her hand to stop him from speaking. “There’s no pain. They hate pain more than we do, because they’re more sensitive to it. If they hurt us, they hurt themselves. And there are no harmful side effects. Just the opposite. They automatically fix any problems they find. They get real pleasure from healing or regenerating, and they share that pleasure with us. They weren’t as good at repairs before they found us. Regeneration was limited to wound healing. Now they can grow you a new leg if you lose one. They can even regenerate brain and nervous tissue. They learned that from us, believe it or not. We had the ability, and they knew how to use it. They learned by studying our cancers, of all things. It was cancer that made Humanity such a valuable trade partner.”

Tino shook his head, not believing. “I saw cancer kill both my grandfathers. It’s nothing but a filthy disease.”

That’s why Nikanj is so attracted to you. Cancer killed three close relatives of mine, including my mother. I’m told it would have killed me if the Oankali hadn’t done some work on me. It’s a filthy disease to us, but to the Oankali, it’s the tool they’ve been looking for for generations.” “What will it do to me that has to do with cancer?” “Nothing. It just finds you a lot more attractive than it does most Humans. What can you do with a beautiful woman that you can’t do with an ugly one? Nothing. It’s just a matter of preference. Nikanj and every other Oankali already have all the information they need to use what they’ve learned from us. Even the constructs can use it once they’re mature. But people like you and me are still attractive to them.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m told our children will understand them, but we won’t.”

“So you’re what? In your fifties?” “Fifty-five.”

“I know. And changing it wouldn’t do much good. Too many people know me. I’m not just someone stuck with an unpopular name, Tino. I’m the one who made it unpopular. I’m Lilith Iyapo.”