Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis, #2)

by Octavia E. Butler

“I awakened the first three groups of Humans to be sent back to Earth. I told them what their situation was, what their options were, and they decided I was responsible for it all. I helped teach them to live in the forest, and they decided it was my fault they had to give up civilized life. Sort of like blaming me for the goddamn war! Anyway, they decided I had betrayed them to the Oankali, and the nicest thing some of them called me was Judas. Is that the way you were taught to think of me?”

“The Oankali either seduced them or terrified them, or both. I, on the other hand, was nobody. It was easy for them to blame me. And it was safe.

“So now and then when we get ex-resisters traveling through Lo and they hear my name, they assume I have horns. Some of the younger ones have been taught to blame me for everything—as though I were a second Satan or Satan’s wife or some such idiocy. Now and then one of them will t...

begged to go to Earth with the first group I awakened. I was supposed to have gone. But when the time came, Nika wouldn’t let me. It said the people would kill me once they got me away from the Oankali. They probably would have. And they would have felt virtuous and avenged.”

“Yes. That wasn’t the Oankali way of paying me off. It was their way of giving me some protection. If they hadn’t changed me a little, someone in the first group would have killed me while I was still awakening people. I’m somewhere between Human and construct in ability. I’m stronger and faster than most Humans, but not as strong or as fast as most constructs. I heal faster than you could, and I’d recover from wounds that would kill you. And of course I can control walls and raise platforms here in Lo. All Humans who settle here are given that ability. That’s all. Nikanj changed me to save my life, and it succeeded. Instead of killing me, the first group I awakened killed Akin’s father, the man I had paired with… might still be with. One of them killed him. The others watched, then went on following that one.”

“Nikanj’s ooloi parent. It stayed aboard the ship with its mates and raised another trio of children. Nikanj told it Gabe and Tate wouldn’t be leaving the resisters any time soon. It was finally willing to acknowledge Nikanj’s talent, and it couldn’t bring itself to accept other Humans.”

I knew that Gabe Rinaldi couldn’t accept a union with us when Kahguyaht wanted him. Tate could have, but she would not leave Gabe for an ooloi—no matter how badly she wanted to.

“I think,” Lilith said quietly, “that you may be better at understanding us than you are at understanding your own people.”

“Against one part of her will, yes,” Nikanj admitted. “She had wanted a child with Joseph, but he was dead. She was… more alone than you could imagine. She thought I didn’t understand.”

“It was a shared fault.” Nikanj’s head and body tentacles hung limp. “We believed we had to use her as we did. Otherwise we would have had to drug newly awakened Humans much more than was good for them because we would have had to teach them everything ourselves. We did that later because we saw… that we were damaging Lilith and the others we tried to use.

“In the first children, I gave Lilith what she wanted but could not ask for. I let her blame me instead of herself. For a while, I became for her a little of what she was for the Humans she had taught and guided. Betrayer. Destroyer of treasured things. Tyrant. She needed to hate me for a while so th...

Tino stared at the ooloi, needing to look at it to remind himself that he was hearing an ...

“I have to leave it to hate it. Sometimes I go away for a while—explore, visit other villages, and hate it. But after a while, I start to miss my children. And, heaven help me, I start to miss it. I stay away until staying away hurts more than the thought of coming… home.”

Thus, as it happened, Akin was alone with Tino when a party of raiders came looking for children to steal.

The vegetation that touched him made him cringe at first because it was abruptly not-home.

He deliberately let Tino walk farther than was necessary until something he had not tasted before chanced to brush across his face. “Here,” he said, tearing leaves from the sapling that had touched him. “Don’t cut that tree, but you can cut any of the others.” Tino put him down and grinned at him. “May I?” he said. “I like this one,” Akin said. “When it’s older, I think we’ll be able to eat from it.” “Eat what?” “I don’t know. I’ve never seen one like this before. But even if it doesn’t bear fruit, the leaves are good to eat. My body likes them.”

He could accept without understanding.

“He’s more adaptable than most Humans,” Nikanj had told Akin. “So is Lilith.”

“He calls me ‘son’,” Akin said.

“He won’t go. He’s not a wanderer. He was looking for a home where he could have a family, and he’s found one.”

Tino needed to be touched more. It had been painfully hard for him when he discovered that his entry into the family meant he could not touch Lilith.

This was something Akin did not understand. Human beings liked to touch one another—needed to. But once they mated through an ooloi, they could not mate with each other in the Human way—could not even stroke and handle one another in the Human way. Akin did not understand why they needed this, but he knew they did, knew it frustrated and embittered them that they could not.

Now he was like Lilith. Very much attached to the family and content with it most of the time, yet poisonously resentful and bitter sometimes.

Akin was tasting a large caterpillar. He had allowed it to crawl onto his forearm. It was, in fact, almost as large as his forearm. It was bright red and spotted with what appeared to be tufts of long, stiff black fur. The tufts, Akin knew, were deadly. The animal did not have to sting. It had only to be touched on one of the tufts. The poison was strong enough to kill a large Human. Apparently Tino knew this. His hand moved toward the caterpillar, then stopped.

“Never do anything so crazy again! Never! That thing could kill you! It could kill me!”

Someone grabbed him from behind. Someone else grabbed Akin from his arms. Now, far too late, Akin saw, heard, and smelled the intruders. Strangers. Human males with no scent of the Oankali about them. Resisters. Raiders. Child thieves! Akin screamed and twisted in the arms of his captor. But physically, he was still little more than a baby. He had let his attention be absorbed by Tino and the caterpillar, and now he was caught. The man who held him was large and strong. He held Akin without seeming to notice Akin’s struggles.

And these men knew Tino. One of them knew Tino. And Tino did not like that one. Tino was afraid. Akin had never seen him more afraid.

“There were no guns in Phoenix when I left,” Tino was saying. So the sticks were guns. “No, and you didn’t want there to be any, did you?” the same man asked. He made a point of jabbing Tino with his gun.

“To have a family,” Tino said softly. “To have children.” He looked at Akin. “To have at least part of myself continue.”

“This kid is as human as any I’ve seen since the war. I can’t find anything wrong with him.” “No tentacles?” one of the four asked. “Not a one.” “What’s he got between his legs?” “Same thing you’ve got. Little smaller, maybe.”

Akin was afraid to speak, afraid to show the raiders his un-Human characteristics: his tongue, his ability to speak, his intelligence.

Akin began to twist in the man’s arm and to whimper. He had not cried so far. That had been a mistake. Humans always marveled at how little construct babies cried. Clearly a Human baby would have cried more. Akin opened his mouth and wailed.

Akin, who had not thought of this, cried louder. Oankali had hearing more sensitive than most Humans realized.

“He’s just a baby,” Tino said. “You can’t get a baby to shut up by scaring him. Give him to me.” He had begun to step toward Akin, holding his arms out to take him. Akin reached toward him, thinking that the resisters would be less likely to hurt the two of them together. Perhaps he could shield Tino to some degree. In Tino’s arms he would be quiet and cooperative. They would see that Tino was useful.

Akin screamed in terror and anguish. He knew Human anatomy well enough to know that if Tino were not dead, he would die soon unless an Oankali helped him. And there was no Oankali nearby. The resisters left Tino where he lay and strode away into the forest, carrying Akin who still screamed and struggled.

Dichaan had made his way out of the mud, his body still savoring the taste of the lake—rich in plant and animal life—when he heard a cry.

Then he knew where it was and who it was, and he began to run. He had been underwater all morning. What had been happening in the air?

The scent of Akin and of strange Human males was there. Tino’s scent was there—very strong.

It hardly seemed a Human sound at all, yet to Dichaan, it was unmistakably Tino.

The man was dying—would die in a moment unless Dichaan could keep him alive. It had been good having a Human male in the family. It had been a balance found after painful years of imbalance, and no one had felt the imbalance more than Dichaan. He had been born to work with a Human male parallel—to help raise children with the aid of such a person, and yet he had had to limp along without this essential other. How were children to learn to understand the Human male side of themselves—a side they all possessed whatever their eventual sex? Now, here was Tino, childless and unused to children, but quickly at ease with them, quickly accepted by them. Now, here was Tino, nearly dead at the hands of his own kind. Dichaan linked with his nervous system and kept his heart beating. The man was a beautiful, terrible physical contradiction, as all Humans were. He was a walking seduction, and he would never understand why. He would not be lost. He could not be another Joseph.

There was some brain damage. Dichaan could perceive it, but he could not heal it. Nikanj would have to do that. But Dichaan could keep the damage from growing worse.

He stopped the blood loss, which was not as bad as it looked, and made certain the living brain cells had intact blood vessels to nourish them. He found damage to the skull and perceived that the damaged bone was exerting abnormal pressure on the brain. This, he did not tamper with. Nikanj would handle it. Nikanj could do it faster and more certainly than a male or female could. Dichaan waited until Tino was as stable as he could be, then left him for a moment. He went to the edge of Lo to one of the larger buttresses of a pseudotree and struck it several times in the code of pressures he would have used to supplement exchanged sensory impressions. The pressures would normally be used very rapidly, soundlessly, against another person’s flesh. It would take a moment for this drumming to be perceived as communication. But ...

Akin was gone—had been gone for some time. His abductors had been Human males—resisters. They had run toward the river. No doubt they had already headed up- or downriver toward their village—or perhaps they had crossed the river and traveled over land.

The man honestly did not seem to understand why murder and abduction should disturb Akin or stop him from following orders.

How stupid to be sick and know where there was healing and decide to stay sick.

Akin sat still where he had landed, wondering whether Human babies had been thrown about this way—and if so, how they had survived? Then he followed the men as quickly as he could. If he were mature, he would run away. He would go back to the river and let it take him home. If he were mature he could breathe underwater and fend off predators with a simple chemical repellant—the equivalent of a bad smell. But then, if he were mature, the resisters would not want him. They wanted a helpless infant—and they had very nearly gotten one. He could think, but his body was so small and weak that he could not act. He would not starve in the forest, but he might be poisoned by something that bit or stung him unexpectedly. Near the river, he might be eaten by an anaconda or a caiman.

The men did not stop him, but one of them watched him. When he reentered the shelter, wet and glistening, carrying broad, flat wild banana leaves to sleep on, the men all stared at him. “Whatever it is,” one of them said, “it isn’t as Human as we thought. Who knows what it can do? I’ll be glad to get rid of it.”

“A mongrel baby. I’ll bet it can do a lot more that we haven’t seen.”

These men not only frightened him, they made him agonizingly lonely.

But it was aloneness that really frightened him. The caimans and the anacondas could probably be avoided. Most stinging or biting insects were not deadly. But to be alone in the forest… He longed for Lilith, for her to hold him and give him her sweet milk.