Adulthood Rites

It focused on her, its body tentacles smoothed to invisibility against its flesh. That meant it was pleased, Tino remembered. Pleased or even happy. “Ahajas says that,” it told her. “I don’t think it’s true, but it may be.”

Tino turned toward Lilith but spoke to Nikanj. “Did you make her pregnant against her will?”

“Against one part of her will, yes,” Nikanj admitted. “She had wanted a child with Joseph, but he was dead. She was

more alone than you could imagine. She thought I didn’t understand.”

“It’s your fault she was alone!”

“It was a shared fault.” Nikanj’s head and body tentacles hung limp. “We believed we had to use her as we did. Otherwise we would have had to drug newly awakened Humans much more than was good for them because we would have had to teach them everything ourselves. We did that later because we saw

that we were damaging Lilith and the others we tried to use.

“In the first children, I gave Lilith what she wanted but could not ask for. I let her blame me instead of herself. For a while, I became for her a little of what she was for the Humans she had taught and guided. Betrayer. Destroyer of treasured things. Tyrant. She needed to hate me for a while so that she could stop hating herself. And she needed the children I mixed for her.”

Tino stared at the ooloi, needing to look at it to remind himself that he was hearing an utterly un-Human creature. Finally, he looked at Lilith.

She looked back, smiling a bitter, humorless smile. “I told you it was talented,” she said.

“How much of that is true?” he asked.

“How should I know!” She swallowed. “All of it might be. Nikanj usually tells the truth. On the other hand, reasons and justifications can sound just as good when they’re made up as an afterthought. Have your fun, then come up with a wonderful-sounding reason why it was the right thing for you to do.”

Tino pulled away from the ooloi and went to Lilith. “Do you hate it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I have to leave it to hate it. Sometimes I go away for a while—explore, visit other villages, and hate it. But after a while, I start to miss my children. And, heaven help me, I start to miss it. I stay away until staying away hurts more than the thought of coming

home.”

He thought she should be crying. His mother would never have contained that much passion without tears—would never have tried. He took her by the arms, found her stiff and resistant. Her eyes rejected any comfort before he could offer it.

“What shall I do?” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”

She hugged him suddenly, holding him hard against her. “Will you stay?” she said into his ear.

“Shall I?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” She was not Lilith Iyapo. She was a quiet, expressive, broad face. She was dark, smooth skin and warm, work-calloused hands. She was breasts full of milk. He wondered how he had resisted her earlier.

And what about Nikanj? He did not look at it, but he imagined he felt its attention on him.

“If you decide to leave,” Lilith said, “I’ll help you.”

He could not imagine wanting to leave her.

Something cool and rough and hard attached itself to his upper arm. He froze, not having to look to know it was one of the ooloi’s sensory arms.

It stood close to him, one sensory arm on him and one on Lilith. They were like elephants’ trunks, those arms. He felt Lilith release him, felt Nikanj drawing him to the floor. He let himself be pulled down only because Lilith lay down with them. He let Nikanj position his body alongside its own. Then he saw Lilith sit up on Nikanj’s opposite side and watch the two of them solemnly.

He did not understand why she watched, why she did not take part. Before he could ask, the ooloi slipped its sensory arm around him and pressed the back of his neck in a way that made him shudder, then go limp.

He was not unconscious. He knew when the ooloi drew closer to him, seemed to grasp him in some way he did not understand.

He was not afraid.

The splash of icy-sweet pleasure, when it reached him, won him completely. This was the half-remembered feeling he had come back for. This was the way it began.

Before the long-awaited rush of sensation swallowed him completely, he saw Lilith lie down alongside the ooloi, saw the second sensory arm loop around her neck. He tried to reach out to her across the body of the ooloi, to touch her, touch the warm Human flesh. It seemed to him that he reached and reached, yet she remained too far away to touch.

He thought he shouted as the sensation deepened, as it took him. It seemed that she was with him suddenly, her body against his own. He thought he said her name and repeated it, but he could not hear the sound of his own voice.

7

Akin took his first few steps toward Tino’s outstretched hands. He learned to take food from Tino’s plate, and he rode on Tino’s back whenever the man would carry him. He did not forget Dichaan’s warning not to be alone with Tino, but he did not take it seriously. He came to trust Tino very quickly. Eventually everyone came to trust Tino.

Thus, as it happened, Akin was alone with Tino when a party of raiders came looking for children to steal.

Tino had gone out to cut wood for the guest house. He was not yet able to perceive the borders of Lo. He had gotten into the habit of taking Akin along to spot for him after breaking an ax he had borrowed from Wray Ordway on a tree that was not a tree. The Lo entity shaped itself according to the desires of its occupants and the patterns of the surrounding vegetation. Yet it was the larval form of a space-going entity. Its hide and its organs were better protected than any living thing native to Earth. No ax or machete could mark it. Until it was older, no native vegetation would grow within its boundaries. That was why Lilith and a few other people had gardens far from the village. Lo would have provided good food from its own substance—the Oankali could stimulate food production and separate the food from Lo. But most Humans in the village did not want to be dependent on the Oankali. Thus, Lo had a broad fringe of Human-planted gardens, some in use and some fallow. Akin had had, at times, to keep Tino from tramping right into them, then realizing too late that he had slashed his way through food plants and destroyed someone’s work. It was as though he could not see at all.

Akin could not help knowing when he passed the borders of Lo. Even the smell of the air was different. The vegetation that touched him made him cringe at first because it was abruptly not-home. Then, for exactly the same reason, it drew him, called to him with its strangeness. He deliberately let Tino walk farther than was necessary until something he had not tasted before chanced to brush across his face.

“Here,” he said, tearing leaves from the sapling that had touched him. “Don’t cut that tree, but you can cut any of the others.”

Tino put him down and grinned at him. “May I?” he said.

“I like this one,” Akin said. “When it’s older, I think we’ll be able to eat from it.”

“Eat what?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one like this before. But even if it doesn’t bear fruit, the leaves are good to eat. My body likes them.”

Tino rolled his eyes toward the forest canopy and shook his head. “Everything goes into your mouth,” he said. “I’m surprised you haven’t poisoned yourself ten times.”

Akin ignored this and began investigating the bark on the sapling and looking to see what insects or fungi might be eating it and what might be eating them. Tino had been told why Akin put things in his mouth. He did not understand, but he never tried to keep things out of Akin’s mouth the way other visitors did. He could accept without understanding. Once he had seen that a strange thing did no harm, he no longer feared it. He said Akin’s tongue looked like a big gray slug, but somehow this did not seem to bother him. He allowed himself to be probed and studied when he carried Akin about. Lilith worried that he was concealing disgust or resentment, but he could not have concealed such strong emotions even from Akin. He certainly could not have concealed them from Nikanj.