Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis, #1-3)

by Octavia E. Butler

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? She lay on her bed platform, staring at a picture of a man. Five-seven, his statistics said. One hundred and forty pounds, thirty-two years old, missing the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of his left hand. He had lost the fingers in a childhood accident with a lawn mower, and he was self-conscious about the incomplete hand. His name was Victor Dominic—Vidor Domonkos, really. His parents had come to the United States from Hungary just before he was born. He had been a lawyer. The Oankali suspected he had been a good one. They had found him intelligent, talkative, understandably suspicious of unseen questioners, and very creative at lying to them. He had probed constantly for their identity, but was, like Lilith, one of the few native English-speakers who had never expressed the suspicion that they might be extraterrestrials. He had been married three times already, but had fathered no children due to a biological problem the Oankali believed they had corrected. Not fathering children had bothered him intensely, and he had blamed his wives, all the while refusing to see a doctor himself.