Fledgling

by Octavia E. Butler

“All I need is fresh human blood when I’m healthy and everything’s normal. I need fresh meat for healing injuries and illnesses, for sustaining growth spurts, and for carrying a child.”

Was there something in my saliva that pacified people and pleasured them? What else could it be? It must also help them heal. Wright had been surprised with how quickly his hand was healing. That meant healing must normally take longer for him. And that meant I could at least help the people who helped me. That felt important.

What I had killed … and eaten … in the cave had not been an animal. It had been a man.

“I think I’m an experiment. I think I can withstand the sun better than … others of my kind. I burn, but I don’t burn as fast as they do. It’s like an allergy we all have to the sun. I don’t know who the experimenters are, though, the ones who made me black.”

“Did you ever think I was a boy?” I asked him. “I mean when you stopped for me on the road that first time?” “No, I never did,” he said. “I should have, I guess. You were almost bald and wearing filthy, ill-fitting clothes that could have been a man’s. But when I first saw you in the headlights, I thought, ‘What a lovely, elfin little girl. What in hell is she doing out here by herself?’ ”

He was a tall, spidery man, empty-handed, and visibly my kind except that he was blond and very pale-skinned—not just light-skinned like Wright, but as white as the pages of Wright’s books. Even so, apart from color, if I ever grew tall, I would look much like him—tall and lean, probably not elfin at all.

“My name is Iosif Petrescu,” he said. “I’m your father.”

“And I’m … Shori?” “The name your human mother gave you is Shori. Your surname is Matthews. Your Ina mothers were distant relatives of mine named Mateescu, but in the 1950s, when there was a great deal of suspicion about foreign-sounding names, they decided to Anglicize the name to Matthews.”

“Home,” he said. “For you, this was home.” I nodded. “But you don’t live here?” He looked surprised. “No. We don’t live males and females together as humans do.”

I swallowed, then asked the question I had to ask: “What are we?” “Vampires, of course—not that we call ourselves by that name.”

“We have very little in common with the vampire creatures Bram Stoker described in Dracula, but we are long-lived blood drinkers.”

“We live alongside, yet apart from, human beings, except for those humans who become our symbionts. We have much longer lives than humans. Most of us must sleep during the day and, yes, we need blood to live. Human blood is most satisfying to us, and fortunately, we don’t have to injure the humans we take it from. But we are born as we are. We can’t magically convert humans into our kind. We do keep those who join with us healthier, stronger, and harder to kill than they would be without us. In that way, we lengthen their lives by several decades.”

“It is mutualistic symbiosis. You know you’re joined with her.”

“How old is she?” “I thought she was maybe ten or eleven when I met her. Later, I knew she had to be older, even though she didn’t look it. Maybe eighteen or nineteen?” Iosif smiled without humor. “That would make things legal at least.” Wright’s face went red, and I looked from him to Iosif, not understanding.

“In fact, Shori is a child. She has at least one more important growth stage to go through before she’s old enough to bear children. Her child-bearing years will begin when she’s about seventy. In all, she should live about five hundred years. Right now, she’s fifty-three.”

I knew that Wright was twenty-three, sexually mature, and aware of much that went on in the world. If Iosif was telling the truth, I was almost twice Wright’s age, and yet I knew almost nothing. Someone had taken away most of my fifty-three years of life.

“Someone burned your mothers and your sisters as well as all of the human members of your family to death here. They shot the ones who tried to get out, shot them and threw most of them back into the fire. How you escaped, I have no idea, but we found the others, burned, broken … My people and I found them.

“Why did you think she had a better chance of surviving?” “Her dark skin,” Iosif said. “The sun wouldn’t disable her at once. She’s a faster runner than most of us, in spite of her small size. And she would have come awake faster when everything started. She’s a light sleeper, compared to most of us, and she doesn’t absolutely have to sleep during the day.”

“Yes. Some of us have tried for centuries to find ways to be less vulnerable during the day. Shori is our latest and most successful effort in that direction. She’s also, through genetic engineering, part human. We were experimenting with genetic engineering well before humanity learned to do it—before they even learned that it was possible.”

“There’s a recently developed belief among some of our younger people that the Ina landed here from another world thousands of years ago. I think it’s nonsense, but who knows. I suppose that idea’s no worse than one of our oldest legends. It says we were placed here by a great mother goddess who created us and gave us Earth to live on until we became wise enough to come home to live in paradise with her. Actually, I think we evolved right here on Earth alongside humanity as a cousin species like the chimpanzee. Perhaps we’re the more gifted cousin.”

“You’ve been hiding her. Of course you have—lest someone think you were having an improper relationship with a child. Once you’re living with us, there will be no need to hide. And to us, there is nothing improper about your relationship.”

“Something, some chemical, in our saliva?” “Exactly. We addict them to a substance in our saliva—in our venom—that floods our mouths when we feed. I’ve heard it called a powerful hypnotic drug. It makes them highly suggestible and deeply attached to the source of the substance. They come to need it.

“And they die if they can’t have it?” “They die if they’re taken from us or if we die, but their death is caused by another component of the venom. They die of strokes or heart attacks because we aren’t there to take the extra red blood cells that our venom encourages their bodies to make. Their doctors can help them if they understand the problem quickly enough. But their psychological addiction tends to prevent them from going to a doctor. They hunt for their Ina—or any Ina until it’s too late.”

“Then what do you want?” He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. I know I wish I had driven past you on the road eleven nights ago and not stopped. And yet, I know that if I could have you all to myself, I’d stop for you again, even knowing what I know about you.”

Someone had targeted my family. Someone had succeeded in killing all of my relatives. And if this had to do with the experiments that had given me my useful human characteristics—what else could it be?—then it was likely that I was the main target.

Or it’s happening because Shori is black, and racists—probably Ina racists—don’t like the idea that a good part of the answer to your daytime problems is melanin.

“They call me those things, don’t they?” He nodded. “Because I’m dark-skinned?” “And human,” he said. “Ina mixed with some human or maybe human mixed with a little Ina. That’s not supposed to happen. Not ever. Couldn’t let you and you … your kind … your family … breed.”

Preston said, “What else are we, Victor? What else do you know about us?” “That you’re sick. That you’re doing medical experiments on people like the Nazis did. That you are prostituting women and kids. I believed it. Now, I don’t know if it’s true.”

We can see that our Councils aren’t games like the trials humans have. The work of a Council of Judgment is to learn the truth and then decide what to do about it within our law. It isn’t about following laws so strictly that the guilty go unpunished or the innocent are made to suffer. It isn’t about protecting everyone’s rights. It’s about finding the truth, period, and then deciding what to do about it.”

They thought mixing human genes with ours would weaken us. You proved them very wrong.”

“You’re not Ina!” he shouted. He slammed his palm down on the table, making a sound like a gunshot. “You’re not! And you have no more business at this Council than would a clever dog!”

“Shori, there are people in this room who have loved that old man for centuries.” I focused on her and bit back all the things I could have said. She knew them as well as I did. That old man either ordered my families killed or sat by and watched while his sons did it. That old man had just told me I was no better than a dog because I had human as well as Ina genes. That old man is not sane. All true, all obvious.

“The truth is your best weapon,” he said. “Put aside that temper of yours. Use the truth intelligently.”

Katharine Dahlman sat very straight and stared angrily at Preston. “You want your sons to mate with this person. You want them to get black, human children from her. Here in the United States, even most humans will look down on them. When I came to this country, such people were kept as property, as slaves. You are biased in Shori’s favor and not a voting member of this Council. I won’t give up my place because you say so.”

“Alice Rappaport?” “She should go.” Alice looked at Katharine, then looked away and shook her head. “Over the centuries, I’ve seen too much racial prejudice among humans. It isn’t a weed we need growing among us.” “Harold Westfall?” “She should go. I, too, have seen more than enough racism.”