“What about those who didn’t watch?”
“To them you’ll be an Oankali, I think.”
He sighed. “There’ll be fewer immigrants because of me.”
“Because of us,” she said.
Because of Gabe, she meant.
“He thought I was dead, Akin. He panicked.”
“I know.”
“I’ve talked to him. We’ll help you gather people. We’ll go to the villages—alone, with you, or with other constructs. Just tell us what you want us to do.”
His sensory tentacles smoothed again with pleasure. “Will you let me improve your ability to survive injuries and heal?” he asked. “Will you let someone correct your Huntington’s disease genetically?”
She hesitated. “The Huntington’s?”
“You don’t want to pass that on to your children.”
“But genetic changes … That will mean time with an ooloi. A lot of time.”
“The disease had become active, Tate. It was active when I healed you. I thought perhaps … you had noticed.”
“You mean I’m going to get sick with it? Crazy?”
“No. I fixed it again. A temporary fix. The deactivation of a gene that should have been replaced long ago.”
“I … couldn’t have gone through that.”
“The disease may be the reason you fell.”
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “That’s the way it happened with my mother. She kept falling. And she had … personality changes. And I read that the disease causes brain damage—irreversible …”
“An ooloi can reverse it. It isn’t serious yet, anyway.”
“Any brain damage is serious!”
“It can be repaired.”
She looked at him, clearly wanting to believe.
“You can’t introduce this to the Mars colony. You know you can’t. It would spread through the population in a few generations.”
“I know.”
“You’ll let it be corrected, then?”
“Yes.” The word was hardly more than a moving of her lips, but Akin saw it and believed her.
Relieved and surprisingly tired, he drifted off to sleep. With her help and the help of others in Phoenix, he had a chance of making the Mars colony work.
7
WHEN HE AWOKE, THE house was aflame.
He thought at first that the sound he heard was rain. The smoke scent forced him to recognize it as fire. There was no one with him. The room was dark, and he had only a stored memory of Macy Wilton sitting beside him, a short, thick gun across his knees. A double-barreled gun of a type Akin had not seen before. He had gotten up and gone to investigate a strange noise just outside the house. Akin replayed his memory of the noise. Even asleep, he had heard what Macy probably had not.
People whispering.
“Don’t pour that there. Throw it against the wall where it will do some good. And throw it on the porch.”
“Shut up. They’re not deaf in there.”
Footsteps, oddly unsteady.
“Go pour some under the mongrel’s window, Babe.”
Footsteps coming closer to Akin’s window—almost stumbling closer. And someone fell. That was the sound Macy heard: a grunt of pain and a body landing heavily.
Akin knew all this as soon as he was fully awake. And he knew the people outside had been drinking. One of them was the man who had wanted to get past Gabe to see Akin.
The other was Neci. She had graduated from attempting mutilation to attempting murder.
What had happened to Macy? Where were Tate and Gabe? How could the fire make so much noise and light and not awaken everyone? It had crept up outside one window now. The windows were high off the ground. The fire he could see must already be eating its way through the wall and floor.
He began to shout Tate’s name, Gabe’s name. He could move a little now, but not enough to make a difference.
No one came.
The fire ate its way into the room, making choking smoke that Akin discovered he could breathe easier if he did not breathe through his mouth. He had a sair at his throat now, surrounded by large and strong sensory tentacles. These moved automatically to filter the smoke from the air he breathed.
But, still, no one came to help him. He would burn. He had no protection against fire.
He would die. Neci and her friend would destroy Human chances at a new world because they were drunk and out of their minds.
He would end.
He shouted and choked because he did not quite understand yet how to talk through a familiar orifice and breathe through an unfamiliar one.
Why was he being left to burn? People heard him. They must have heard! He could hear them now—running, shouting, their sounds blending into the snapping and roaring of the fire.
He managed to fall off the bed.
Landing was only a small shock. His sensory tentacles automatically protected themselves by flattening into his body. Once he was on the wood floor, he tried to roll toward the door.
Then he stopped, trying to understand what his senses were telling him. Vibrations. Someone coming.
Someone running toward the room he was in. Gabe’s footsteps.
He shouted, hoping to guide the man in the smoke. He saw the door open, felt hands on him.
With an effort that was almost painful, Akin managed not to sink his sensory tentacles into the man’s flesh. The man’s touch was like an invitation to investigate him with enhanced adult senses. But now was not the time for such things. He must do all he could not to hinder Gabe.
He let himself become a thing—a sack of vegetables to be thrown over someone’s shoulder. For once, he was glad to be small.
Gabe fell once, coughing, seared by the heat. He dropped Akin, picked him up, and again threw him over one shoulder.
The front door was blocked by sheets of fire. The back would be blocked in a moment. Gabe kicked it open and ran down the steps, for a moment actually plunging through flames. His hair caught fire, and Akin shouted at him to put it out.
Gabe stopped once he was clear of the house, dropped Akin into the dirt, and collapsed, beating at himself and coughing.
The tree they had stopped under had caught fire from the house. They had to move again, quickly, to avoid burning branches. Once Gabe had put out his own fire, he picked Akin up and staggered farther away toward the forest.
“Where are you going?” Akin asked him.
He did not answer. It seemed all he could do to breathe and move.
Behind them, the house was totally engulfed. Nothing could be alive in there now.
“Tate!” Akin said suddenly. Where was she? Gabe would never save him and leave Tate to burn.
“Ahead,” Gabe wheezed.
She was all right, then.
Gabe fell again, this time half-atop Akin. Hurt, Akin locked into him in helpless reflex. He immediately paralyzed the man, stopping significant messages of movement between the brain and the rest of the body.
“Lie still,” he said, hoping to give Gabe the illusion of choice. “Just lie there and let me help you.”
“You can’t help yourself,” Gabe whispered, struggling to breathe, to move.
“I can help myself by healing you! If you fall on me again, I might sting you. Now shut up and stop trying to move. Your lungs are damaged and you’re burned.” The lung damage was serious and could kill him. The burns were only very painful. Yet Gabe would not be quiet.
“The town … Can they see us?”
“No. There’s a cornfield between us and Phoenix now. The fire is still visible, though. And it’s spreading.” At least one other house was burning now. Perhaps it had caught from the burning tree.
“If it doesn’t rain, half the town might burn. Fools.”
“It isn’t going to rain. Now be quiet, Gabe.”
“If they catch us, they’ll probably kill us!”
“What? Who?”
“People from town. Not everybody. Just troublemakers.”
r /> “They’ll be too busy trying to put out the fire. It hasn’t rained for days. They chose the wrong season for all this. Just be quiet and let me help you. I won’t make you sleep, so you might feel something. But I won’t hurt you.”
“I hurt so bad already, I probably wouldn’t know if you did.”
Akin interrupted the messages of pain that Gabe’s nerves were sending to his brain and encouraged his brain to secrete specific endorphins.
“Jesus Christ!” the man said, gasping, coughing. For him the pain had abruptly ceased. He felt nothing. It was less confusing for him that way. For Akin, it meant sudden, terrible pain, then slow alleviation. Not euphoria. He did not want Gabe drunk on his own endorphins. But the man could be made to feel good and alert. It was almost like making music—balancing endorphins, silencing pain, maintaining sobriety. He made simple music. Ooloi made great harmonies, interweaving people and sharing pleasure. And ooloi contributed substances of their own to the union. Akin would feel that soon when Dehkiaht changed. For now, there was the pleasure of healing.
Gabe began to breathe easier as his lungs improved. He did not notice when his flesh began to heal. Akin let the useless burned flesh slough off. Gabe would need water and food soon. Akin would finish by stimulating feelings of hunger and thirst in the man so that he would be willing to eat or drink whatever Akin could spot for him. It was especially important that he drink soon.
“Someone’s coming,” Gabe whispered.
“Gilbert Senn,” Akin said into his ear. “He’s been searching for some time. If we’re still, he may not find us.”
“How do you know it’s—?”
“Footsteps. He still sounds the same as he did when I was here before. He’s alone.”
Silently Akin finished his work and withdrew the filaments of his sensory tentacles from Gabe. “You can move now,” he whispered. “But don’t.”
Akin could move too, a little more, although he doubted that he could walk.
Abruptly Gilbert Senn found them—all but stumbled over them in the moonlight and the firelight. He leaped back, his rifle aimed at them.
Gabe sat up. Akin used Gabe to pull himself up and managed not to fall when he let go. He could hurry everyone’s bodily processes but his own. Gilbert Senn looked at him, then carefully avoided looking at him. He lowered the rifle.
“Are you all right, Gabe?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re burned.”
“I was.” Gabe glanced at Akin.
Gilbert Senn carefully did not look at Akin. “I see.” He turned toward the fire. “I wish that hadn’t happened. We would never have burned your home.”
“For all I know, you did,” Gabe muttered.
“Neci did,” Akin said quickly. “She and the man who wanted to get into the house to see me. I heard them.”
The rifle came up again, aimed only at Akin this time. “You will be quiet,” he said.
“If he dies, we all die,” Gabe said softly.
“We all die no matter what. Some of us choose to die free!”
“There will be freedom on Mars, Gil.”
The corners of Gilbert Senn’s mouth turned down. Gabe shook his head. To Akin he said, “He believes your Mars idea is a trick. A way of gathering in the resisters easily to use them on the ship or in the Oankali villages on Earth. A lot of people feel that way.”
“This is my world,” Gilbert Senn said. “I was born here, and I’ll die here. And if I can’t have Human children—fully Human children—I’ll have no children at all.”
This was a man who would have helped cut sensory tentacles from Amma and Shkaht. He had not wanted to do such things to children, to females, but he honestly believed it was the right thing to do.
“Mars is not for you,” Akin told him.
The gun wavered. “What?”
“Mars isn’t for anyone who doesn’t want it. It will be hard work, risk, and challenge. It will be a Human world someday. But it will never be Earth. You need Earth.”
“You think your childish psychology will influence me?”
“No,” Akin said.
“I don’t want to hear it from you or from Yori.”
“If you kill me now, no Humans will go to Mars.”
“None will go anyway.”
“Humanity will live or die by what you do now.”
“No!”
The man wanted to shoot Akin. Perhaps he had never wanted anything as much. He might even have come into the field hoping to find Akin and shoot him. Now he could not shoot Akin because Akin might possibly somehow be telling the truth.
After a long time, Gilbert Senn turned and went back toward the fire.
After a moment, Gabe stood up and shook himself. “If that was psychology, it was damn good,” he said.
“It was literal truth,” Akin told him.
“I was afraid it might be. Gil almost shot you.”
“I thought he might.”
“Could he have killed you?”
“Yes, with enough ammunition and enough persistence. Or perhaps he could have made me kill him.”
He bent to pick Akin up. “You’ve made yourself too valuable to take risks like that. I know guys who wouldn’t have hesitated.” He shook himself again, shaking Akin. “God, what’s this stuff you’ve smeared me with? Goddamn slimy shit!”
Akin did not answer.
“What is it?” Gabe insisted. “It stinks.”
“Cooked flesh.”
Gabe shuddered and said nothing.
8
TATE WAITED AT THE edge of the forest amid a cluster of other people. Mateo and Pilar Leal were there. How would Tino take seeing them again? How would they take seeing him with Nikanj? Would he stay with his mates and his children or go with his parents’ people? It was not likely that Nikanj could let him go or that he could survive long without Nikanj. Mars might even make Tino’s choice of the Oankali more acceptable to Tino. He would no longer be helping Humanity breed itself out of existence. But he would not be helping it shape its new world either.
Yori was there, standing with Kolina Wilton and Stancio Roybal. Sober now, Stancio looked tired and ill. There were people Akin did not recognize—new people. There was Abira—an arm reaching out of a hammock, lifting him in.
“Where’s Macy?” Gabe asked as he put Akin down.
“He hasn’t come,” Kolina answered. “We hoped he was helping you with Akin.”
“He went out when he heard Neci and her friend setting the fire,” Akin said. “I lost track of him after that.”
“Was he hurt?” Kolina demanded.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
She thought about this for a moment. “We have to wait for him!”
“We’ll wait,” Tate said. “He knows where to meet us.”
They moved deeper into the forest as the light from the fire grew brighter.
“My home is burning,” Abira said as everyone watched. “I didn’t think I would have to watch my home burn again.”
“Just be glad you aren’t in it,” one of the strangers said. Akin knew at once that this man disliked Abira. Humans would carry their dislikes with them to be shut up together on Mars.
The fire burned through the night, but Macy did not come. A few other people arrived. Yori had asked most of them to come. It was she who kept others from shooting them as they were spotted. If they shot anyone, they would have to leave quickly before the sound drew enemies.
“I have to go back,” Kolina said finally.
No one said anything. Perhaps they had been waiting for this.
“They could be holding him,” Tate said finally. “They could be waiting for you.”
“No. Not with the fire. They wouldn’t think about me.”
“There are those who would. The kind who would hold you and sell you if they thought they could get away with it.”
“I’ll go,” Stancio said. “Probably no one’s even noticed that I’ve left town. I’l
l find him.”
“I can’t leave without him,” she said.
“But we have to leave soon,” Gabe said. “Gil Senn nearly killed Akin back there in the field. If he gets another chance, he might pull the trigger. I know there are others who wouldn’t hesitate, and they’ll be out hunting as soon as it’s light.”
“Someone give me a gun,” Stancio said.
One of the strangers handed him one.
“I want one, too,” Kolina said. She was staring at the fire, and when Yori thrust a rifle at her, she took it without turning her head. “Keep Akin safe,” she said.
Yori hugged her. “Keep yourself safe. Bring Macy to us. You can find the way.”
“North to the big river, then east along the river. I know.”
No one said anything to Stancio, so Akin called him over. Gabe had propped Akin against a tree, and now Stancio squatted before him, clearly not bothered by his appearance.
“Would you let me check you?” Akin asked. “You don’t look well, and for this you may need to be … very healthy.”
Stancio shrugged. “I don’t have anything you can cure.”
“Let me have a look. It won’t hurt.”
Stancio stood up. “Is this Mars thing real?”
“It’s real. Another chance for Humanity.”
“You see to that, then. Don’t worry about me.” He put his gun on his shoulder and walked with Kolina back toward the fire.
Akin watched them until they disappeared around the edge of the cornfield. He never saw either of them again.
After a while, Gabe lifted him, hung him over one shoulder, and began to walk. Akin would be able to walk himself tomorrow or the day after. For now, he watched from Gabe’s shoulder as the others fell in, single file. They headed north toward the river. There, they would turn east toward Lo. In less time than they probably realized, some of them would be aboard shuttles headed for Mars, there to watch the changes begin and be witnesses for their people.
He was perhaps the last to see the smoke cloud behind them and Phoenix still burning.
Imago
Octavia Butler