Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis, #2)

by Octavia E. Butler

“Oh, yes. But if I had the strength not to ask, it should have had the strength to let me alone.”

It was an ugly creature with too many head tentacles and not enough of anything that could be called a face.

“Trade!” Tino said scornfully. “I don’t know what I’d call what you’re doing to us, but it isn’t trade. Trade is when two people agree to an exchange.”

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

“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.

On the other hand, reasons and justifications can sound just as good when they’re made up as an afterthought. Have your fun, then come up with a wonderful-sounding reason why it was the right thing for you to do.”

“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

“How could it not hurt?” Tino asked softly. “And how could you not know? I’m a traitor to my people. Everything I do here is an act of betrayal. Someday, my people won’t exist at all, and I will have helped their destroyers. I’ve betrayed my parents … everyone.”

“Resisters have been wronged and betrayed,” Tino said. “I never told Akin that, though. I never had to. He saw it for himself.”

“Nika, we aren’t like mitochondria or helpful bacteria, and they know it.”

SOMETIMES IT SEEMED TO Akin that his world was made up of tight units of people who treated him kindly or coldly as they chose, but who could not let him in, no matter how much they might want to.

“But we will be Oankali. They will only be … something we consumed.”

“They are consumed,” he said quietly. “And it was wrong and unnecessary.” “They live, Eka. In you.” “Let them live in themselves!” Silence. “What are we that we can do this to whole peoples? Not predators? Not symbionts? What then?”

“How can it be good for me to be treated as though I were younger than I am?” he asked. “What lesson is condescension supposed to teach me about this group of my people?”

“Yet you’ll do the work that was chosen for you?” “I will. But for the Humans and for the Human part of me. Not for the Oankali.”

He did not want to feel so drawn to anyone who was clearly already on good terms with Tiikuchahk.

“Humans are freer to decide what they want,” he said softly. “They only think they are,” Dehkiaht replied. Yes. Lilith was not free. Sudden freedom would have terrified her, although sometimes she seemed to want it. Sometimes she stretched the bonds between herself and the family. She wandered. She still wandered. But she always came home. Tino would probably kill himself if he were freed. But what about the resisters? They did terrible things to each other because they could not have children. But before the war—during the war—they had done terrible things to each other even though they could have children. The Human Contradiction held them. Intelligence at the service of hierarchical behavior. They were not free. All he could do for them, if he could do anything, was to let them be bound in their own ways.

“They won’t survive.” “Perhaps not.” “There’s no perhaps. They won’t survive their Contradiction.” “Then let them fail. Let them have the freedom to do that, at least.” Silence.

Let me show them to you as they are when there are no Oankali around.” “Why?” “Because you should at least know them before you deny them the assurance that Oankali always claim for themselves.”

“Look at the Human-born among you,” he told them. “If your flesh knows you’ve done all you can for Humanity, their flesh should know as mine does that you’ve done almost nothing. Their flesh should know that resister Humans must survive as a separate, self-sufficient species. Their flesh should know that Humanity must live!”

“Sleep,” the Akjai advised him. “You’re too young for all this. I’ll argue for you now.” “Why?” he asked. He was almost asleep, but the question was like an itch in his mind. “Why do you care so when my own kin-group doesn’t care?” “Because you’re right,” the Akjai said. “If I were Human, little construct, I would be a resister myself. All people who know what it is to end should be allowed to continue if they can continue. Sleep.”

“Then do this. The knowledge won’t harm you if you decide not to use it. You need to do this. You’ve taken refuge too long in doing nothing at all.”

Earth was still a huge biological bank itself, balancing its own ecology with little Oankali help.

“They left me with you for so long so that you could teach me whether what they had done with you was right. They couldn’t judge. They were so … disturbed by your genetic structure that they couldn’t do, couldn’t even consider doing what I will do.”

“They would never offer you Mars. I offer you Mars.” “Why?” “Because I’m part of you. Because I say you should have one more chance to breed yourselves out of your genetic Contradiction.”