Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)

by Octavia E. Butler

At an earlier Awakening, she had decided that reality was whatever happened, whatever she perceived.

Opening and closing her jacket, her hand touched the long scar across her abdomen. She had acquired it somehow between her second and third Awakenings, had examined it fearfully, wondering what had been done to her. What had she lost or gained, and why? And what else might be done? She did not own herself any longer. Even her flesh could be cut and stitched without her consent or knowledge.

They operated on her, they later say that she had an accident when she was Awakened for the first time.

If there were an afterworld, what a crowded place it must be now.

Unconcerned, her captors began a complex new series of questions and exercises.

“I did consider it,” Lilith whispered. “Along with the possibility that I might be in prison, in an insane asylum, in the hands of the FBI, the CIA, or the KGB. The other possibilities seemed marginally less ridiculous.”

“This is my home. You could call it a ship—a vast one compared to the ones your people have built. What it truly is doesn’t translate. You’ll be understood if you call it a ship. It’s in orbit around your Earth, somewhat beyond the orbit of Earth’s moon. As for how many humans are here: all of you who survived your war. We collected as many as we could.

The ones we didn’t find in time died of injury, disease, hunger, radiation, cold. … We found them later.”

Humanity in its attempt to destroy itself had made th...

“Kaaltediinjdahya lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso.”

“Jdahya,”

You may begin to know how much we value it when I tell you that by your way of measuring time, it has been several million years since we dared to interfere in another people’s act of self-destruction.

They don't normally save beings in need of help?

“Some of the people we picked up had been hiding deep underground. They had created much of the destruction.” “And they’re still alive?” “Some of them are.” “And you plan to send them back to Earth?” “No.” “What?” “The ones still alive are very old now. We’ve used them slowly, learned biology, language, culture from them. We Awakened them a few at a time and let them live their lives here in different parts of the ship while you slept.”

“You never told me how long you kept me asleep.” “About … two hundred and fifty of your years.” This was more than she could assimilate at once. She said nothing for so long that he broke the silence.

“We didn’t know what to think when some of your people killed themselves. Some of us believed it was because they had been left out of the mass suicide—that they simply wanted to finish the dying. Others said it was because we kept them isolated. We began putting two or more together, and many injured or killed one another. Isolation cost fewer lives.”

“I have a scar,” she said, touching her abdomen. “I didn’t have it when I was on Earth. What did your people do to me?” “You had a growth,” he said. “A cancer. We got rid of it. Otherwise, it would have killed you.”

A true xenophobia—and apparently she was not alone in it.

Your people contain incredible potential, but they die without using much of it.”

They had never before seen so much life and so much death in one being. It hurt some of them to touch her.”

“There must be ruins,” she said softly. “There were. We’ve destroyed many of them.” She seized his arm without thinking. “You destroyed them? There were things left and you destroyed them?” “You’ll begin again. We’ll put you in areas that are clean of radioactivity and history. You will become something other than you were.”

“We’ll divide here. We’re like mature asexual animals in that way, but we divide into three: Dinso to stay on Earth until it is ready to leave generations from now; Toaht to leave in this ship; and Akjai to leave in the new ship.”

“You have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics. Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species. But the two together are lethal. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed you.”

And your people were in a similar position. If they had been able to perceive and solve their problem, they might have been able to avoid destruction. Of course, they too would have to remember to reexamine themselves periodically.”

“You are intelligent,” he said. “That’s the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we’ve found, though your focus is different from ours. Still, you had a good start in the life sciences, and even in genetics.”

“You are hierarchical. That’s the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It’s a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all …” The rattling sounded again. “That was like ignoring cancer. I think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were doing.”

But we are powerfully acquisitive. We acquire new life—seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a minuscule cell within a cell—a tiny organelle within every cell of our bodies. Do you understand me?”

“One of the meanings of Oankali is gene trader. Another is that organelle—the essence of ourselves, the origin of ourselves. Because of that organelle, the ooloi can perceive DNA and manipulate it precisely.”

Future Oankali may be much less frightening to potential trade partners if they’re able to reshape themselves and look more like the partners before the trade. Even increased longevity, though compared to what you’re used to, we’re very long-lived now.”

They were Jdahya and his wife Tediin—Kaaljdahyatediin lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso. And there was Jdahya’s ooloi mate Kahguyaht—Ahtrekahguyahtkaal lel Jdayhatediin aj Dinso. Finally there was the family’s ooloi child Nikanj—Kaalnikanj oo Jdahyatediinkahguyaht aj Dinso.

It was almost exactly Lilith’s size—slightly larger than Jdahya and considerably smaller than the female Tediin. And it had four arms. Or two arms and two arm-sized tentacles.

Looking at Kahguyaht, she took pleasure in the knowledge that the Oankali themselves used the neuter pronoun in referring to the ooloi. Some things deserved to be called “it.”

How much did sex determine personality among the Oankali? She shook her head. Stupid question. She did not know how much sex determined personality even among human beings.

“When they woke me up, I thought the ooloi acted like men and women while the males and females acted like eunuchs. I never really lost the habit of thinking of ooloi as male or female.” That, Lilith thought, was a foolish way for someone who had decided to spend his life among the Oankali to think—a kind of deliberate, persistent ignorance.

“None. No hospital either. Just something called a birthing center—a place for pregnant women who don’t like the idea of being treated as though they were sick.”

Ahajas alone could have carried it. She was big like most Oankali females—slightly larger than Tediin. She and Dichaan were brother and sister as usual in Oankali matings.

Males and females were closely related and ooloi were outsiders. One translation of the world ooloi was “treasured strangers.”

A man like that could make Titus’ predictions self-fulfilling. He could undermine what little civilization might be left in the minds of those he Awoke. He could make them a gang. Or a herd. What would she make them?

Perhaps because they wanted to see how far human beings had to be pushed before they broke. Perhaps they even wanted to see how each individual broke. Or perhaps the Oankali version of stubbornness was so extreme from a human point of view that very few humans tried their patience. Lilith had not. Leah had.

The Oankali had given her information, increased physical strength, enhanced memory, and an ability to control the walls and the suspended animation plants. These were her tools. And every one of them would make her seem less human.

He was, the Oankali said, twenty-seven, thin, physically stronger than he looked, stubborn and not as bright as he liked to think. That last, Lilith thought, could be said of most people.

The survival of the group should never depend on her—but then it should not depend on any one person. The fact that it did was not the fault of human beings.

The wife had been killed in one of the riots that began shortly after the last missile exchange. Thousands had been killed even before it began to get cold. Thousands had simply trampled one another or torn one another apart in panic.

In fact, Tate had not known the picture was being made. And the pictures were not photographs. They were paintings, impressions of the inner person as well as the outer physical reality. Each contained print memories of their subjects. Oankali interrogators had painted these pictures with sensory tentacles or sensory arms, using deliberately produced bodily fluids. Lilith knew this, but the pictures looked like, even felt like photos. They had been done on some kind of plastic, not on paper. The pictures looked alive enough to speak. In each one, there was nothing except the head and shoulders of the subject against a gray background. None of them had that blank, wanted-poster look that snapshots could have produced. These pictures had a lot to say even to non-Oankali observers about who their subjects were—or who the Oankali thought they were.

It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter.

Tate Marah first. Another woman. No sexual tension.

Heteronormative

“Where the hell are we?” she asked. “Some distance beyond the orbit of the moon.”

She had learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones whose memories might overwhelm her.

We’re all alone. We’ve got each other, and nobody else. We’ll become a community—friends, neighbors, husbands, wives—or we won’

“We’re protected from one another,” Lilith said. “We’re an endangered species—almost extinct. If we’re going to survive, we need protection.”

An increasing number of bored, caged humans could not help finding destructive things to do.

“A partner must be biologically interesting, attractive to us, and you are fascinating. You are horror and beauty in rare combination. In a very real way, you’ve captured us, and we can’t escape. But you’re more than only the composition and the workings of your bodies. You are your personalities, your cultures. We’re interested in those too. That’s why we saved as many of you as we could.”