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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.”
“Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.”
it. “That’s what Humans are, too, don’t forget. People who poison each other, then disclaim all responsibility. In a way, that’s how the war happened.”
Who among the Oankali was speaking for the interests of resister Humans? Who had seriously considered that it might not be enough to let Humans choose either union with the Oankali or sterile lives free of the Oankali? Trade-village Humans said it, but they were so flawed, so genetically contradictory that they were often not listened to. He did not have their flaw. He had been assembled within the body of an ooloi. He was Oankali enough to be listened to by other Oankali and Human enough to know that resister Humans were being treated with cruelty and condescension.
The Human Contradiction again. The Contradiction, it was more often called among Oankali. Intelligence and hierarchical behavior. It was fascinating, seductive, and lethal. It had brought Humans to their final war.
“I’m Akjai. How can I deny another people the security of an Akjai group? Even though for this people it’s a cruelty. Understand that, Akin; it is a cruelty. You and those who help you will give them the tools to create a civilization that will destroy itself as certainly as the pull of gravity will keep their new world in orbit around its sun.”
Earth was still a huge biological bank itself, balancing its own ecology with little Oankali help.
What was the etiquette of asking to save someone’s life in an unacceptable way? If Akin asked in the wrong way, Tate would die. Best not to ask at all. Not yet. Perhaps not at all.
“And what do the Oankali say?” “That you can’t grow out of it, can’t resolve it in favor of intelligence. That hierarchical behavior selects for hierarchical behavior, whether it should or not. That not even Mars will be enough of a challenge to change you.” He paused. “That to give you a new world and let you procreate again would … would be like breeding intelligent beings for the sole purpose of having them kill one another.”
