“We should stop for the night,” she said when the sun told her it was late afternoon. “We should make camp here and tomorrow, we should start to build a boat.”
“Have you been here before?” Joseph asked her.
“No. But I’ve been near here. The opposite bank is as close to us as it gets in this area. Let’s see what we can do about shelter. It’s going to rain again.”
“Wait a minute,” Gabriel said.
She looked at him and knew what was coming. She had taken charge out of habit. Now she would hear about it.
“I didn’t invite you along to tell us what to do,” he said. “We’re not in the prison room now. We don’t take orders from you.”
“You brought me along because I had knowledge you didn’t have. What do you want to do? Keep walking until it’s too late to put up a shelter? Sleep in the mud tonight? Find a wider section of river to cross?”
“I want to find the others—if they’re still free.”
Lilith hesitated for a moment in surprise. “And if they’re together.” She sighed. “Is that what the rest of you want?”
“I want to get as far from the Oankali as I can,” Tate said. “I want to forget what it feels like when they touch me.”
Lilith pointed. “If that’s land over there instead of some kind of illusion, then that’s your goal. Your first goal anyway.”
“We find the others first!” Gabriel insisted.
Lilith looked at him with interest. He was in the open now. Probably in his mind he was in some kind of struggle with her. He wanted to lead and she did not—yet she had to. He could easily get someone killed.
“If we build a shelter now,” she said, “I’ll find the others tomorrow if they’re anywhere nearby.” She held up her hand to stop the obvious objection. “One or all of you can come with me and watch if you want to. It’s just that I can’t get lost. If I leave you and you don’t move, I’ll be able to find you again. If we all travel together, I can bring you back to this spot. After all, it’s just possible that some or all of the others have already crossed the river. They’ve had time.”
People were nodding.
“Where do we camp?” Allison asked.
“It’s early,” Leah protested.
“Not to me it isn’t,” Wray said. “Between the mosquitoes and my feet, I’m glad to stop.”
“The mosquitoes will be bad tonight,” Lilith told him. “Sleeping with an ooloi was better than any mosquito repellant. Tonight, they’ll probably eat us alive.”
“I can stand it,” Tate said.
Had she hated Kahguyaht so much? Lilith wondered. Or was she only beginning to miss it and trying to defend herself against her own feelings?
“We can clear here,” she said aloud. “Don’t cut those two saplings. Wait a minute.” She looked to see if either young tree were home to colonies of stinging ants. “Yes, these are all right. Find two more of this size or a little bigger and cut them. And cut aerial roots. Thin ones to use as rope. Be careful. If anything stings or bites you out here … We’re on our own. You could die. And don’t go out of sight of this area. It’s easier to get lost than you think.”
“But you’re so good you can’t get lost,” Gabriel said.
“Good has nothing to do with it. I have an eidetic memory and I’ve had more time to get used to the forest.” She had never told them why she had an eidetic memory. Every Oankali change she had told them about had diminished her credibility with them.
“Too good to be true,” Gabriel said softly.
They chose the highest ground they could find and built a shelter. They believed they would be using it for a few days, at least. The shelter was wall-less—no more than a frame with a roof. They could hang hammocks from it or spread mats beneath it on mattresses of leaves and branches. It was just large enough to keep everyone out of the rain. They roofed it with the tarpaulins some of them had brought. Then they used branches to sweep the ground beneath clean of leaves, twigs and fungi.
Wray managed to get a fire going with a bow Leah had brought along, but he swore he would never do it again. “Too much work,” he said.
Leah had brought corn from the garden. It was dark when they roasted it along with some of Lilith’s yams. They ate these along with the last of the breadnuts. The meal was filling, though not satisfying.
“Tomorrow we can fish,” Lilith told them.
“Without even a safety pin, a string, and a stick?” Wray said.
Lilith smiled. “Worse than that. The Oankali wouldn’t teach me how to kill anything, so the only fish I caught were the ones stranded in some of the little streams. I cut a slender, straight sapling pole, sharpened one end, hardened it in the fire, and taught myself to spear fish. I actually did it—speared several of them.”
“Ever try it with bow and arrow?” Wray asked.
“Yes. I was better with the spear.”
“I’ll try it,” he said. “Or maybe I can even put together a jungle version of a safety pin and string. Tomorrow, while the rest of you look for the others, I’ll start learning to fish.”
“We’ll fish,” Leah said.
He smiled and took her hand—then let it go in almost the same motion. His smile faded and he stared into the fire. Leah looked away into the darkness of the forest.
Lilith watched them, frowning. What was going on? Was it just trouble between them—or was it something else?
It began to rain suddenly, and they sat dry and united by the darkness and the noise outside. The rain poured down and the insects took shelter with them, biting them and sometimes flying into the fire which had been built up again for light and comfort once the cooking was done.
Lilith tied her hammock to two crossbeams and lay down. Joseph hung his hammock near her—too near for a third person to lie between them. But he did not touch her. There was no privacy. She did not expect to make love. But she was bothered by the care he took not to touch her. She reached out and touched his face to make him turn toward her.
Instead, he drew away. Worse, if he had not drawn away, she would have. His flesh felt wrong somehow, oddly repellant. It had not been this way when he came to her before Nikanj moved in between them. Joseph’s touch had been more than welcome. He had been water after a very long drought. But then Nikanj had come to stay. It had created for them the powerful threefold unity that was one of the most alien features of Oankali life. Had that unity now become a necessary feature of their human lives? If it had, what could they do? Would the effect wear off?
An ooloi needed a male and female pair to be able to play its part in reproduction, but it neither needed nor wanted two-way contact between that male and female. Oankali males and females never touched each other sexually. That worked fine for them. It could not possibly work for human beings.
She reached out and took Joseph’s hand. He tried to jerk away reflexively, then he seemed to realize something was wrong. He held her hand for a long, increasingly uncomfortable moment. Finally it was she who drew away, shuddering with revulsion and relief.
6
THE NEXT MORNING JUST after dawn, Curt and his people found the shelter.
Lilith started awake, knowing that something was not right. She sat up awkwardly in the hammock and put her feet on the ground. Near Joseph, she saw Victor and Gregory. She turned toward them, relieved. Now there would be no need to look for the others. They could all get busy building the boat or raft they would need to cross the river. Everyone would find out for certain whether the other side was forest or illusion.
She looked around to see who else had arrived. That was when she saw Curt.
An instant later, Curt hit her across the side of the head with the flat of his machete.
She dropped to the ground, stunned. Nearby, she heard Joseph shout her name. There was the sound of more blows.
She heard Gabriel swearing, heard Allison scream.
She tried desperately to get up, and someone hit her again. This time she lost consciou
sness.
Lilith awoke to pain and solitude. She was alone in the small shelter she had helped build.
She got up, ignoring her aching head as best she could. It would stop soon.
Where was everyone?
Where was Joseph? He would not have deserted her even if the others did.
Had he been taken away by force? If so, why? Had he been injured and left as she had been?
She stepped out of the shelter and looked around. There was no one. Nothing.
She looked for some sign of where they had gone. She knew nothing in particular about tracking, but the muddy ground did show marks of human feet. She followed them away from the camp. Eventually, she lost them.
She stared ahead, trying to guess which way they had gone and wondering what she would do if she found them. At this point, all she really wanted to do was see that Joseph was all right. If he had seen Curt hit her, he would surely have tried to intervene.
She remembered now what Nikanj had said about Joseph having enemies. Curt had never liked him. Nothing had happened between the two of them in the great room or at the settlement. But what if something had happened now?
She must go back to the settlement and get help from the Oankali. She must get nonhumans to help her against her own people in a place that might or might not be on Earth.
Why couldn’t they have left her Joseph? They had taken her machete, her ax, her baskets—everything except her hammock and her extra clothing. They could at least have left Joseph to see that she was all right. He would have stayed to do that if they had let him.
She walked back to the shelter, collected her clothing and hammock, drank water from a small, clear stream that fed into the river, and started back toward the settlement.
If only Nikanj were still there. Perhaps it could spy on the human camp without the humans’ knowing, without fighting. Then if Joseph were there, he could be freed … if he wanted to be. Would he want it? Or would he choose to stay with the others who were trying to do the thing she had always wanted them all to do? Learn and run. Learn to live in this country, then lose themselves in it, go beyond the reach of the Oankali. Learn to touch one another as human beings again.
If they were on Earth as they believed, they might have a chance. If they were aboard a ship, nothing they did would matter.
If they were aboard a ship, Joseph would definitely be restored to her. But if they were on Earth …
She walked quickly, taking advantage of the path cleared the day before.
There was a sound behind her, and she turned quickly. Several ooloi emerged from the water and waded onto the bank to thrash their way through the thick bank undergrowth.
She turned and went back to them, recognizing Nikanj and Kahguyaht among them.
“Do you know where they’ve gone?” she asked Nikanj.
“We know,” it said. It settled a sensory arm around her neck.
She put her hand to the arm, securing it where it was, welcoming it in spite of herself. “Is Joe all right?”
It did not answer, and that frightened her. It released her and led her through the trees, moving quickly. The other ooloi followed, all of them silent, all clearly knowing where they were going and probably knowing what they would find there.
Lilith no longer wanted to know.
She kept their fast pace easily, staying close to Nikanj. She almost slammed into it when it stopped without warning near a fallen tree.
The tree had been a giant. Even on its side, it was high and hard to climb, rotten and covered with fungi. Nikanj leaped onto it and off the other side with an agility Lilith could not match.
“Wait,” it said as she began to climb the trunk. “Stay there.” Then it focused on Kahguyaht. “Go on,” it urged. “There could be more trouble while you wait here with me.”
Neither Kahguyaht nor any of the other ooloi moved. Lilith noticed Curt’s ooloi among them, and Allison’s and—
“Come over now, Lilith.”
She climbed over the trunk, jumped down on the other side. And there was Joseph.
He had been attacked with an ax.
She stared, speechless, then rushed to him. He had been hit more than once—blows to the head and neck. His head had been all but severed from his body. He was already cold.
The hatred that someone must have felt for him … “Curt?” she demanded of Nikanj. “Was it Curt?”
“It was us,” Nikanj said very softly.
After a time, she managed to turn from the grisly corpse and face Nikanj. “What?”
“Us,” Nikanj repeated. “We wanted to keep him safe, you and I. He was slightly injured and unconscious when they took him away. He had fought for you. But his injuries healed. Curt saw the flesh healing. He believed Joe wasn’t human.”
“Why didn’t you help him!” she screamed. She had begun to cry. She turned again to see the terrible wounds and did not understand how she could even look at Joseph’s body so mutilated, dead. She had had no last words from him, no memory of fighting alongside him, no chance to protect him. Her last memory was of him flinching away from her too-human touch.
“I’m more different than he was,” she whispered. “Why didn’t Curt kill me?”
“I don’t believe he meant to kill anyone,” Nikanj said. “He was angry and afraid and in pain. Joseph had injured him when he hit you. Then he saw Joseph healing, saw the flesh mending itself before his eyes. He screamed. I’ve never heard a human scream that way. Then he … used his ax.”
“Why didn’t you help?” she demanded. “If you could see and hear everything, why—”
“We don’t have an entrance near enough to this place.”
She made a sound of anger and despair.
“And there was no sign that Curt meant to kill. He blames you for almost everything, yet he didn’t kill you. What happened here was … totally unplanned.”
She had stopped listening. Nikanj’s words were incomprehensible to her. Joseph was dead—hacked to death by Curt. It was all some kind of mistake. Insanity!
She sat on the ground beside the corpse, first trying to understand, then doing nothing at all; not thinking, no longer crying. She sat. Insects crawled over her and Nikanj brushed them off. She did not notice.
After a time, Nikanj lifted her to her feet, managing her weight easily. She meant to push it away, make it let her alone. It had not helped Joseph. She did not need anything from it now. Yet she only twisted in its grasp.
It let her pull free and she stumbled back to Joseph. Curt had walked away and left him as though he were a dead animal. He should be buried.
Nikanj came to her again, seemed to read her thoughts. “Shall we pick him up on our way back and have him sent to Earth?” it asked. “He can end as part of his homeworld.”
Bury him on Earth? Let his flesh be part of the new beginning there? “Yes,” she whispered.
It touched her experimentally with a sensory arm. She glared at it, wanting desperately to be let alone.
“No!” it said softly. “No, I let you alone once, the two of you, thinking you could look after one another. I won’t let you alone now.”
She drew a deep breath, accepted the familiar loop of sensory arm around her neck. “Don’t drug me,” she said. “Leave me … leave me what I feel for him, at least.”
“I want to share, not mute or distort.”
“Share? Share my feelings now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Lilith …” It began to walk and she walked beside it automatically. The other ooloi moved silently ahead of them. “Lilith, he was mine too. You brought him to me.”
“You brought him to me.”
“I would not have touched him if you had rejected him.”
“I wish I had. He’d be alive.”
Nikanj said nothing.
“Let me share what you feel,” she said.
It touched her face in a startlingly human gesture. “Move the sixteenth finger of your left str
ength hand,” it said softly. One more case of Oankali omniscience: We understand your feelings, eat your food, manipulate your genes. But we’re too complex for you to understand.
“Approximate!” she demanded. “Trade! You’re always talking about trading. Give me something of yourself!”
The other ooloi focused back toward them and Nikanj’s head and body tentacles drew themselves into lumps of some negative emotion. Embarrassment? Anger? She did not care. Why should it feel comfortable about parasitizing her feelings for Joseph—her feelings for anything? It had helped set up a human experiment. One of the humans had been lost. What did it feel? Guilty for not having been more careful with valuable subjects? Or were they even valuable?
Nikanj pressed the back of her neck with a sensory hand—warning pressure. It would give her something then. They stopped walking by mutual consent and faced one another.
It gave her … a new color. A totally alien, unique, nameless thing, half seen, half felt or … tasted. A blaze of something frightening, yet overwhelmingly, compelling.
Extinguished.
A half known mystery beautiful and complex. A deep, impossibly sensuous promise.
Broken.
Gone.
Dead.
The forest came back around her slowly and she realized she was still standing with Nikanj, facing it, her back to the waiting ooloi.
“That’s all I can give you,” Nikanj said. “That’s what I feel. I don’t even know whether there are words in any human language to speak of it.”
“Probably not,” she whispered. After a moment, she let herself hug it. There was some comfort even in cool, gray flesh. Grief was grief, she thought. It was pain and loss and despair—an abrupt end where there should have been a continuing.
She walked more willingly with Nikanj now, and the other ooloi no longer isolated them in front or behind.
7
CURT’S CAMP BOASTED A bigger shelter, not as well made. The roof was a jumble of palm leaves—not thatch, but branches crisscrossed and covering one another. No doubt it leaked. There were walls, but no floor. There was an indoor fire, hot and smoky. That was the way the people looked. Hot, smoky, dirty, angry.