Which was fine if she could spot the trouble and seal herself in in time.
Better to choose the right people, bring them along slowly, and Awaken new ones only when she was sure of the ones already Awake.
She drew two walls to within about eighteen inches of each other. That left a narrow doorway—one that would preserve as much privacy as possible without a door. She also turned one wall inward, forming a tiny entrance hall that concealed the room itself from casual glances. There would be nothing among the people she Awoke to borrow or steal, and anyone who thought now was a good time to play Peeping Tom would have to be disciplined by the group. Lilith might be strong enough now to handle troublemakers herself, but she did not want to do that unless she had to. It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter.
Within the new room, Lilith raised a bed platform, a table platform, and three chair platforms around the table. The table and chairs would be at least a small change from what they were all used to in the Oankali isolation rooms. A more human arrangement.
Creating the room took some time. Afterward Lilith gathered all but eleven of the dossiers and sealed them inside her own table platform. Some of these eleven would be her core group, first Awake, and first to show her just how much of a chance she had to survive and do what was necessary.
Tate Marah first. Another woman. No sexual tension.
Lilith took the picture, went to the long, featureless stretch of wall opposite the rest rooms and stood for a moment, staring at the face.
Once people were Awake, she would have no choice but to live with them. She could not put them to sleep again. And in some ways, Tate Marah would probably be hard to live with.
Lilith rubbed her hand across the surface of the picture, then placed the picture flat against the wall. She began at one end of the wall and walked slowly toward the other, far away, keeping the face of the picture against the wall. She closed her eyes as she moved, remembering that it had been easier when she practiced this with Nikanj if she ignored her other senses as much as possible. All her attention should be focused on the hand that held the picture flat against the wall. Male and female Oankali did this with head tentacles. Oankali did it with their sensory arms. Both did it from memory, without pictures impregnated with prints. Once they read someone’s print or examined someone and took a print, they remembered it, could duplicate it. Lilith would never be able to read prints or duplicate them. That required Oankali organs of perception. Her children would have them, Kahguyaht had said.
She stopped now and then to rub one sweaty hand over the picture, renewing her own chemical signature.
More than halfway down the hall, she began to feel a response, a slight bulging of the surface against the picture, against her hand.
She stopped at once, not certain at first that she had felt anything at all. Then the bulge was unmistakable. She pressed against it lightly, maintaining the contact until the wall began to open beneath the picture. Then she drew back to let the wall disgorge its long, green plant. She went to a space at one end of the great room, opened a wall, and took out a jacket and a pair of pants. These people would probably welcome clothing as eagerly as she had.
The plant lay, writhing slowly, still surrounded by the foul odor that had followed it through the wall. She could not see well enough through its thick, fleshy body to know which end concealed Tate Marah’s head, but that did not matter. She drew her hands along the length of the plant as though unzipping it, and it began to come apart.
There was no possibility this time of the plant trying to swallow her. She would be no more palatable to it now than Nikanj would.
Slowly, the face and body of Tate Marah became visible. Small breasts. Figure like that of a girl who had barely reached puberty. Pale, translucent skin and hair. Child’s face. Yet Tate was twenty-seven.
She would not awaken until she was lifted completely clear of the suspended animation plant. Her body was wet and slippery, but not heavy. Sighing, Lilith lifted her clear.
2
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Tate said the moment she opened her eyes. “Who are you? What are you doing?”
“Trying to get you dressed,” Lilith said. “You can do it yourself now—if you’re strong enough.”
Tate was beginning to tremble, beginning to react to being awakened from suspended animation. It was surprising that she had been able to speak her few coherent words before succumbing to the reaction.
Tate made a tight, shuddering fetal knot of her body and lay moaning. She gasped several times, gulping air as she might have gulped water.
“Shit!” she whispered minutes later when the reaction began to wane. “Oh shit. It wasn’t a dream, I see.”
“Finish dressing,” Lilith told her. “You knew it wasn’t a dream.”
Tate looked up at Lilith, then down at her own half naked body. Lilith had managed to get pants on her, but had only gotten one of her arms into the jacket. She had managed to work that arm free as she suffered through the reaction. She picked up the jacket, put it on, and in a moment, had discovered how to close it. Then she turned to watch silently as Lilith closed the plant, opened the wall nearest to it, and pushed the plant through. In seconds the only sign left of it was a rapidly drying spot on the floor.
“And in spite of all that,” Lilith said, facing Tate, “I’m a prisoner just as you are.”
“More like a trustee,” Tate said quietly.
“More like. I have to Awaken at least thirty-nine more people before any of us are allowed out of this room. I chose to start with you.”
“Why?” She was incredibly self-possessed—or seemed to be. She had only been Awakened twice before—average among people not chosen to parent a group—but she behaved almost as though nothing unusual were happening. That was a relief to Lilith, a vindication of her choice of Tate.
“Why did I begin with you?” Lilith said. “You seemed least likely to try to kill me, least likely to fall apart, and most likely to be able to help with the others as they Awaken.”
Tate seemed to think about that. She fiddled with her jacket, reexamining the way the front panels adhered to one another, the way they pulled apart. She felt the material itself, frowning.
“Where the hell are we?” she asked.
“Some distance beyond the orbit of the moon.”
Silence. Then finally, “What was that big green slug-thing you pushed into the wall?”
“A … a plant. Our captors—our rescuers—use them for keeping people in suspended animation. You were in the one you saw. I took you out of it.”
“Suspended animation?”
“For over two hundred and fifty years. The Earth is just about ready to have us back now.”
“We’re going back!”
“Yes.”
Tate looked around at the vast, empty room. “Back to what?”
“Tropical forest. Somewhere in the Amazon basin. There are no more cities. “
“No. I didn’t think there would be.” She drew a deep breath. “When are we fed?”
“I put some food in your room before I Awoke you. Come on.”
Tate followed. “I’m hungry enough to eat even that plaster of Paris garbage they served me when I was Awake before.”
“No more plaster. Fruit, nuts, a kind of stew, bread, something like cheese, coconut milk …”
“Meat? A steak?”
“You can’t have everything.”
Tate was too good to be true. Lilith worried for a moment that at some point she would break—begin to cry or be sick or scream or beat her head against the wall—lose that seemingly easy control. But whatever happened to her, Lilith would try to help. Just these few minutes of apparent normality were worth a great deal of trouble. She was actually speaking with and being understood by another human being—after so long.
Tate dove into the food, eating until she was satisfied, not wasting time talking. She had not, Lilith t
hought, asked one very important question. Of course there was a great deal she had not asked, but one thing in particular made Lilith wonder.
“What’s your name, by the way?” Tate asked, finally resting from her eating. She sipped coconut milk tentatively, then drank it all.
“Lilith Iyapo.”
“Lilith. Lil?”
“Lilith, I’ve never had a nickname. Never wanted one. Is there anything apart from your name that you’d like to be called?”
“No. Tate will do. Tate Marah. They told you my name, didn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. All those damn questions. They kept me Awake and in solitary for … it must have been two or three months. Did they tell you that? Or were you watching?”
“I was either asleep or in solitary myself, but yes, I knew about your confinement. It was three months in all. Mine was just over two years.”
“It took them that long to make a trustee of you, did it?”
Lilith frowned, took a few nuts and ate them. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.
For an instant, Tate looked uncomfortable, uncertain. The expression appeared and vanished so quickly that Lilith could have missed it through just a moment’s inattention.
“Well, why should they keep you awake and alone for so long?” Tate demanded.
“I wouldn’t talk to them at first. Then later when I began to talk, apparently a number of them were interested in me. They weren’t trying to make a trustee of me at that point. They were trying to decide whether I was fit to be one. If I had had a vote, I’d still be asleep.”
“Why wouldn’t you talk to them? Were you military?”
“God, no. I just didn’t like the idea of being locked up, questioned, and ordered around by I-didn’t-know-who. And Tate, it’s time you knew who—even though you’ve been careful not to ask.”
She drew a deep breath, rested her forehead on her hand and stared down at the table. “I asked them. They wouldn’t tell me. After a while I got scared and stopped asking.”
“Yeah. I did that too.”
“Are they … Russians?”
“They’re not human.”
Tate did not move, did not say anything for so long that Lilith continued.
“They call themselves Oankali, and they look like sea creatures, though they are bipedal. They … are you taking any of this in?”
“I’m listening.”
Lilith hesitated. “Are you believing?”
Tate looked up at her, seemed to smile a little. “How can I?”
Lilith nodded. “Yeah. But you’ll have to sooner or later, of course, and I’m supposed to do what I can to prepare you. The Oankali are ugly. Grotesque. But we can get used to them, and they won’t hurt us. Remember that. Maybe it will help when the time comes.”
3
FOR THREE DAYS, TATE slept a great deal, ate a great deal, and asked questions that Lilith answered completely honestly. Tate also talked about her life before the war. Lilith saw that it seemed to relax her, ease that shell of emotional control she usually wore. That made it worthwhile. It meant Lilith felt obligated to talk a little about herself—her past before the war—something she would not normally have been inclined to do. 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. She had tried to talk to Nikanj about humans in general, only occasionally bringing in personal anecdotes. Her father, her brothers, her sister, her husband and son. … She chose now to talk about her return to college.
“Anthropology,” Tate said disparagingly. “Why did you want to snoop through other people’s cultures? Couldn’t you find what you wanted in your own?”
Lilith smiled and noticed that Tate frowned as though this were the beginning of a wrong answer. “I started out wanting to do exactly that,” Lilith said. “Snoop. Seek. It seemed to me that my culture—ours—was running headlong over a cliff. And, of course, as it turned out, it was. I thought there must be saner ways of life.”
“Find any?”
“Didn’t have much of a chance. It wouldn’t have mattered much anyway. It was the cultures of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that counted.”
“I wonder.”
“What?”
“Human beings are more alike than different—damn sure more alike than we like to admit. I wonder if the same thing wouldn’t have happened eventually, no matter which two cultures gained the ability to wipe one another out along with the rest of the world.”
Lilith gave a bitter laugh. “You might like it here. The Oankali think a lot like you do.”
Tate turned away, suddenly disturbed. She wandered over to look at the new third and fourth rooms Lilith had grown on either side of the second restroom. One of them was back to back with her own room, and in part, an extension of one of her walls. She had watched the walls growing—watched first with disbelief, then anger, refusing to believe she was not being tricked somehow. Then she began to keep her distance from Lilith, to watch Lilith suspiciously, to be jumpy and silent.
That had not lasted long. Tate was adaptable if nothing else. “I don’t understand,” she had said softly, though by then, Lilith had explained why she could control the walls, how she could find and Awaken specific individuals.
Now, Tate wandered back and said again, “I don’t understand. None of this makes sense!”
“I had an easier time believing,” Lilith said. “An Oankali sealed himself in my isolation room and refused to leave until I got used to him. You can’t look at them and doubt that they’re alien.”
“Maybe you can’t.”
“I won’t argue with you about it. I’ve been Awake a lot longer than you have. I’ve lived among the Oankali and I accept them as what they are.”
“What they say they are.”
Lilith shrugged. “I want to start Awakening more people. Two new ones today. Will you help me?”
“Who are you Awakening?”
“Leah Bede and Celene Ivers.”
“Two more women? Why don’t you wake up a man?”
“I will eventually.”
“You’re still thinking about your Paul Titus, aren’t you?”
“He wasn’t mine.” She wished she had not told Tate about him.
“Awaken a man next, Lilith. Awaken the guy who was found protecting the kids.”
Lilith turned to look at her. “On the theory that if you fall off a horse, you should immediately get back on?”
“Yes.”
“Tate, once he’s Awake, he stays Awake. He’s six-three, he weighs two-twenty, he’s been a cop for seven years, and he’s used to ordering people around. He can’t save us or protect us here, but he can damn sure screw us up. All he has to do to hurt us is refuse to believe we’re on a ship. After that, everything he does will be wrong and potentially deadly.”
“So what? You’re going to wait until you can Awaken him to a kind of harem?”
“No. Once we’ve got Leah and Celene awake and reasonably stable, I’m going to Awaken Curt Loehr and Joseph Shing.”
“Why wait?”
“I’m going to get Celene out first. You take care of her while I get Leah out. I think Celene might be someone for Curt to take care of.”
She went to her room, brought back pictures of both women, and was about to begin hunting for Celene when Tate caught her arm.
“We’re being watched, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Yes. I don’t know that we’re watched every minute, but now, when we’re both Awake, yes, I’m sure they’re watching.”
“If there’s trouble, will they help?”
“If they decide it’s bad enough. I think there were some who would have let Titus rape me. I don’t think they would have let him kill me. They might have been too slow to prevent it, though.”
“Wonderful,” Tate muttered bitterly. “We’re on our own.”
“Exactly.”
Tate shook her head. “I don’t know whether I should be shedding the constraints of civilization and getting ready to fight for my life or keeping and enhancing them for the sake of our future.”
“We’ll do what’s necessary,” Lilith said. “Sooner or later, that will probably mean fighting for our lives.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Tate said. “What have we learned if all we can do now is go on fighting among ourselves?” She paused. “You didn’t have kids, did you Lilith?”
Lilith began to walk slowly along the wall, eyes closed, Celene’s picture flat between the wall and her hand. Tate walked along beside her, distracting her.
“Wait until I call you,” Lilith told her. “Searching like this takes all my attention.”
“It’s really hard for you to talk about your life before, isn’t it?” Tate said, with sympathy Lilith did not begin to trust.
“Pointless,” Lilith said. “Not hard. I lived in those memories for my two years of solitary. By the time the Oankali showed up in my room, I was ready to move into the present and stay there. My life before was a lot of groping around, looking for I-didn’t-know-what. And, as for kids, I had a son. He was killed in an auto accident before the war.” Lilith took a deep breath. “Let me alone now. I’ll call you when I’ve found Celene.”
Tate moved away, settled against the opposite wall near one of the rest rooms. Lilith closed her eyes and began inching along again. She let herself lose track of time and distance, felt as though she were almost flowing along the wall. The illusion was familiar—as physically pleasing and emotionally satisfying as a drug—a needed drug at this moment.