Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis, #2)

by Octavia E. Butler

Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status.

There was so much suppressed emotion in her, so much deadly tension in her body.

And I can see the conflict in their genes—the new intelligence put at the service of ancient hierarchical tendencies.

“I liked the acting. It scared me at first, and I couldn’t understand a lot of it, but . . . It’s like what we do—constructs and Oankali. It’s like when we touch each other and talk with feelings and pressures. Sometimes you have to remember a feeling you haven’t had for a long time and bring it back so you can transmit it to someone else or use a feeling you have about one thing to help someone understand something else.”

I don’t know whether you’ll be what your parents wanted you to be, but whatever you become, you’ll be complete. You’ll have within yourself everything you need to content yourself.

Humans seemed almost not to be there when they closed their eyes. They could close off all visual awareness and shut them-selves too completely within their own flesh.

Now there was nothing to do but wait. Wait and know that when Humans disagreed, they sometimes fought, and when they fought, all too often they killed one another.

“Yori, Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is—what your genes say it is.”

He wished she were Oankali so that he could show her he meant what he was saying. He had not spoken in response to her condescension, as she clearly believed. He had responded instead to the falseness of her manner. But communication with Humans was always incomplete.

More misunderstanding. “Take me literally,” Akin said. “Assume that I mean exactly what I say.”