“We made a town. We even had a couple of mills for power. That made building easier. We built like crazy. If you were really busy, you didn’t have to think that maybe you were doing it all for nothing. Maybe all we were going to do was sit in our handsome houses and pray in our nice church and watch everybody not getting old.
“Then in one week, two guys and a woman hung themselves. Four others just disappeared. It would hit us like that—like a disease that one person caught and spread. We never had one suicide or one murder or one disappearance. Somebody else always caught the disease. I guess I finally caught it. Where do people go when they disappear? Someplace like this?” He looked around, sighed, then frowned. His tone changed abruptly. “You people have all the advantages. The Oankali can get you anything. Why do you live this way?”
“We’re comfortable,” Akin’s oldest sister Ayre said. “This isn’t a terrible way to live.”
“It’s primitive! You live like savages! I mean …” He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. It’s just that … I don’t know any polite way to ask this: Why don’t you at least build real houses and get rid of these shacks! You should see what we have! And … Hell, you have spaceships. How can you live this way!”
Lilith spoke softly to him. “How many of those real houses of yours were empty when you left, Tino?”
He faced her angrily. “My people never had a chance! They didn’t make the war. They didn’t make the Oankali. And they didn’t make themselves sterile! But you can be damn sure that everything they did make was good and it worked and they put their hearts into it. Hey, I thought, ‘If we made a town, the … traders … must have made a city!’ And what do I find? A village of huts with primitive gardens. This place is hardly even a clearing!” His voice had risen again. He looked around with disapproval. “You’ve got kids to plan for and provide for, and you’re going to let them slide right back to being cavemen!”
A Human woman named Leah spoke up. “Our kids will be okay,” she said. “But I wish we could get more of your people to come here. They’re as close to immortal as a Human being has ever been, and all they can think of to do is build useless houses and kill one another.”
“It’s time we offered the resisters a way back to us,” Ahajas said. “I think we’ve been too comfortable here.”
Several Oankali made silent gestures of agreement.
“Leave them alone,” Tino said. “You’ve done enough to them! I’m not going to tell you where they are!”
Nikanj, still holding Akin, got up and moved through the seated people until it could sit with no one between itself and Tino. “None of the resister villages are hidden from us,” it said softly. “We wouldn’t have asked you where Phoenix was. And we don’t mean to focus on Phoenix. It’s time for us to approach all the resister villages and invite them to join us. It’s only to remind them that they don’t have to live sterile, pointless lives. We won’t force them to come to us, but we will let them know they’re still welcome. We let them go originally because we didn’t want to hold prisoners.”
Tino laughed bitterly. “So everyone here is here of their own free will, huh?”
“Everyone here is free to leave.”
Tino gave Nikanj another of his unreadable looks and turned deliberately so that he faced Lilith. “How many men are there here?” he asked.
Lilith looked around, found Wray Ordway who kept the small guest house stocked with food and other supplies. This was where newly arrived men lived until they paired off with one of the village women. It was the only house in the village that had been built of cut trees and palm thatch. Tino might sleep there tonight. Wray kept the guest house because he had chosen not to wander. He had paired with Leah and apparently never tired of her. The two of them with their three Oankali mates had nine Human-born daughters and eleven Oankali-born children.
“How many men have we got now, Wray?” Lilith asked.
“Five,” he said. “None in the guest house, though. Tino can have it all to himself if he wants.”
“Five men.” Tino shook his head. “No wonder you haven’t built anything.”
“We build ourselves,” Wray said. “We’re building a new way of life here. You don’t know anything about us. Why don’t you ask questions instead of shooting off your mouth!”
“What is there to ask? Except for your garden—which barely looks like a garden—you don’t grow anything. Except for your shacks, you haven’t built anything! And as for building yourselves, the Oankali are doing that. You’re their clay, that’s all!”
“They change us and we change them,” Lilith said. “The whole next generation is made up of genetically engineered people, Tino—constructs, whether they’re born to Oankali or to Human mothers.” She sighed. “I don’t like what they’re doing, and I’ve never made any secret of it. But they’re in this with us. When the ships leave, they’re stuck here. And with their own biology driving them, they can’t not blend with us. But some of what makes us Human will survive, just as some of what makes them Oankali will survive.” She paused, looked around the large room. “Look at the children here, Tino. Look at the construct adults. You can’t tell who was born to whom. But you can see some Human features on every one of them. And as for the way we live … well, we’re not as primitive as you think—and not as advanced as we could be. It was all a matter of how much like the ship we wanted our homes to be. The Oankali made us learn to live here without them so that if we did resist, we could survive. So that people like your parents would have a choice.”
“Some choice,” Tino muttered.
“Better than being a prisoner or a slave,” she said. “They should have been ready for the forest. I’m surprised they ate the palm fruit that made them sick.”
“We were city people, and we were hungry. My father didn’t believe something could be poison raw but okay to eat cooked.”
Lilith shook her head. “I was a city person, too, but there were some things I was willing not to learn from experience.” She returned to her original subject. “Anyway, once we had learned to live in the forest on our own, the Oankali told us we didn’t have to. They meant to live in homes as comfortable as the ones they had on the ship, and we were free to do the same. We accepted their offer. Believe me, weaving thatch and tying logs together with lianas doesn’t hold any more fascination for me than it does for you—and I’ve done my share of it.”
“This place has a thatched roof,” Tino argued. “In fact, it looks freshly thatched.”
“Because the leaves are green? Hell, they’re green because they’re alive. We didn’t build this house, Tino, we grew it. Nikanj provided the seed; we cleared the land; everyone who was going to live here trained the walls and made them aware of us.”
Tino frowned. “What do you mean, ‘aware’ of you? I thought you were telling me it was a plant.”
“It’s an Oankali construct. Actually, it’s a kind of larval version of the ship. A neotenic larva. It can reproduce without growing up. It can also get a lot bigger without maturing sexually. This one will have to do that for a while. We don’t need more than one.”
“But you’ve got more than one. You’ve got—”
“Only one in this village. And a lot of that one is underground. What you see of it appears to be houses, grasses, shrubs, nearby trees, and, to some extent, riverbank. It allows some erosion, traps some newly arrived silt. Its inclination, though, is to become a closed system. A ship. We can’t let it do that here. We still have a lot of growing to do ourselves.”
Tino shook his head. He looked around at the large room, at the people watching, eating, feeding children, some small children stretched out asleep with their heads on adults’ laps.
“Look up, Tino.”
Tino jumped at the sound of Nikanj’s soft voice so close to him. He seemed about to move away, shrink away. He had probably not been this close to an Oankali since he was a child. Somehow, he managed to keep still.
; “Look up,” Nikanj repeated.
Tino looked up into the soft yellow glow of the ceiling.
“Didn’t you even wonder where the light was coming from?” Nikanj asked. “Is that the ceiling of a primitive dwelling?”
“It wasn’t like that when I came in,” Tino said.
“No. It wasn’t as much needed when you came in. There was plenty of light from outside. Look at the smooth walls. Look at the floor. Feel the floor. I don’t think a floor of dead wood would be as comfortable. You’ll have a chance to make comparisons if you choose to stay in the guest house. It really is the rough wood and thatch building you thought this was. It has to be. Strangers wouldn’t be able to control the walls of the true houses here.”
Wray Ordway said mildly, “Nika, if that man sleeps in the guest house tonight, I’ll lose all faith in you.”
Nikanj’s body went helplessly smooth, and everyone laughed. The glass-smooth flattening of head and body tentacles normally indicated humor or pleasure, Akin knew, but what Nikanj was feeling now was neither of those emotions. It was more like a huge, consuming hunger, barely under control. If Nikanj had been Human, it would have been trembling. After a moment it managed to return its appearance to normal. It focused a cone of head tentacles on Lilith, appealing to her. She had not laughed, though she was smiling.
“You people are not nice,” she said, keeping her smile. “You should be ashamed. Go home now, all of you. Have interesting dreams.”
6
TINO WATCHED IN CONFUSION as people began to leave. Some of them were still laughing—at a joke Tino was not sure he understood, not sure he wanted to understand. Some stopped to talk to the woman who had brought him into the village. Lilith her name was. Lilith. Unusual name loaded with bad connotations. She should have changed it. Almost anything would have been better.
Three Oankali and several children clustered around her, talking to the departing guests. Much of the conversation was in some other language—almost certainly Oankali, since Lilith had said the villagers had no other Human languages in common.
The group, family and guests, was a menagerie, Tino thought. Human; nearly Human with a few visible sensory tentacles; half-Human, gray with strangely jointed limbs and some sensory tentacles; Oankali with Human features contrasting jarringly with their alienness; Oankali who might possibly be part Human; and Oankali like the ooloi who had spoken to him, who obviously had no Humanity at all.
Lilith amid the menagerie. He had liked her looks when he spotted her in the garden. She was an amazon of a woman, tall and strong, but with no look of hardness to her. Fine, dark skin. Breasts high in spite of all the children—breasts full of milk. He had never before seen a woman nursing a child. He had almost had to turn his back on her to stop himself from staring as Lilith fed Akin. The woman was not beautiful. Her broad, smooth face was usually set in an expression of solemnity, even sadness. It made her look—and Tino winced at the thought—it made her look saintly. A mother. Very much a mother. And something else.
And she had no man, apparently. She had said Akin’s father was long dead. Was she looking for someone? Was that what all the laughter was about? After all, if he stayed with Lilith, he would also be staying with her Oankali family, with the ooloi whose reaction had provoked so much laughter. Especially with that ooloi. And what would that mean?
He was looking at it when the man Lilith had called Wray came up to him.
“I’m Wray Ordway,” he said. “I live here permanently. Come around when you can. Anyone here can head you toward my house.” He was a small, blond man with nearly colorless eyes that caught Tino’s attention. Could anyone really see out of such eyes? “Do you know Nikanj?” the man asked.
“Who?” Tino asked, though he thought he knew.
“The ooloi who spoke to you. The one you’re watching.”
Tino stared at him with the beginnings of dislike.
“I think it recognized you,” Wray said. “It’s an interesting creature. Lilith thinks very highly of it.”
“Is it her mate?” Of course it was.
“It’s one of her mates. She hasn’t had a man stay with her for a long time, though.”
Was this Nikanj the mate who had forced pregnancy on her? It was an ugly creature with too many head tentacles and not enough of anything that could be called a face. Yet there was something compelling about it. Perhaps he had seen it before. Perhaps it was the last ooloi he had seen before he and his parents had been set down on Earth and let go. That ooloi … ?
A very Human-looking young woman brushed past Tino on her way out. Tino’s attention was drawn to her, and he stared as she walked away. He saw her join another very similar young woman, and the two both turned to look at him, smile at him. They were completely alike, pretty, but so startling in their similarity that he was distracted from their beauty. He found himself searching his memory for a word he had had no occasion to use since childhood.
“Twins?” he asked Wray.
“Those two? No.” Wray smiled. “They were born within a day of one another, though. One of them should have been a boy.”
Tino stared at the well-shaped young women. “Neither of them is in any way like a boy.”
“Do you like them?”
Tino glanced at him and smiled.
“They’re my daughters.”
Tino froze, then shifted his gaze from the girls uneasily. “Both?” he asked after a moment.
“Human mother, Oankali mother. Believe me, they weren’t identical when they were born. I think they are now because Tehkorahs wanted to make a point—that the nine children Leah and I have produced are true siblings of the children of our Oankali mates.”
“Nine children?” Tino whispered. “Nine?” He had lived since childhood among people who would almost have given their lives to produce one child.
“Nine,” Wray confirmed. “And listen.” He stopped, waited until Tino’s eyes focused on him. “Listen, I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. Those girls wear more clothing than most constructs because they have concealable differences. Neither of them is as Human as she looks. Let them alone if you can’t accept that.”
Tino looked into the pale, blind-seeming eyes. “What if I can accept it?”
Wray looked at the two girls, his expression gentling. “That’s between you and them.” The girls were exchanging words with Nikanj. Another ooloi came up to them, and as the exchange continued, it put one strength arm around each girl.
“That’s Tehkorahs,” Wray said, “my ooloi mate. That’s Tehkorahs being protective, I think. And Nikanj … being impatient if anyone can believe that.”
Tino watched the two ooloi and the two girls with interest. They did not seem to be arguing. In fact, they had ceased to speak at all—or ceased to speak aloud. Tino suspected they were still communicating somehow. There had always been a rumor that Oankali could read minds. He had never believed it, but clearly something was happening.
“One thing,” Wray said softly. “Listen.”
Tino faced him questioningly.
“You can do as you please here. As long as you don’t hurt anyone, you can stay or go as you like; you can choose your own friends, your own lovers. No one has the right to demand anything from you that you don’t want to give.” He turned and walked away before Tino could ask what this really meant when it came to the Oankali.
Wray joined his daughters and Tehkorahs and led them out of the house. Tino found himself watching the young women’s hips. He did not realize until they were gone that Nikanj and Lilith had come over to him.
“We’d like you to stay with us,” Lilith said softly. “At least for the night.”
He looked at her lineless face, her cap of dark hair, her breasts, now concealed beneath a simple gray shirt. He had had only a glimpse of them as she had settled herself to nurse Akin.
She took his hand, and he remembered seizing her hand to examine it. She had large, strong, calloused hands, warm and Human. Almost unconsci
ously, he turned his back to Nikanj. What did it want? Or rather, how did it go about getting what it wanted? What did the ooloi actually do to Humans? What would it want of him? And did he really want Lilith badly enough to find out?
But why had he left Phoenix if not for this?
But so quickly? Now?
“Sit with us,” Lilith said. “Let’s talk for a while.” She drew him toward a wall—toward the place they had sat when he spoke to the people. They sat cross-legged—or the two Humans crossed their legs—their bodies forming a tight triangle. Tino watched the other two Oankali in the room as they herded the children away. Akin and the small gray child who now held him clearly wanted to stay. Tino could see that, though neither child was speaking English. The larger of the two Oankali lifted both children easily and managed to interest them in something else. All three vanished with the others through a doorway that seemed to grow shut behind them—the way doorways had closed so long ago aboard the ship. The room was sealed and empty except for Tino, Lilith, and Nikanj.
Tino made himself look at Nikanj. It had folded its legs under it the way the Oankali did. Many of its head tentacles were trained on him, seeming almost to be straining toward him. He suppressed a shudder—not a response of fear or disgust. Those feelings would not have surprised him. He felt … He did not know what he felt about this ooloi.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes,” Nikanj admitted. “You’re unusual. I’ve never known a Human to remember before.”
“To remember his conditioning?”
Silence.
“To remember his conditioner,” Tino said nodding. “I don’t think anyone could forget his conditioning. But … I don’t know how I recognized you. I met you so long ago, and … well, I don’t mean to offend you, but I still can’t tell your people apart.”