All constructs remember.
Good. Theyre going to stay with us, so start teaching them English.
Theyre siblings. Very close. They need to stay together.
Do they? Well see.
Akin did not like that. He would have to warn Amma and Shkaht to get sick if they were separated. Crying would not work. The Humans had to be frightened, had to think they might lose one or two of their new children. They had now what they had probably never had before: children they thought might eventually be fertile together. From what he had heard about resisters, he had no doubt that some of them really believed they could soon breed new, Human-trained, Human-looking children.
Lets go outside, he told them. Are you still hungry?
Yes. They spoke in unison.
Come on. Ill show you where the best things grow.
14
The next day, all three children were arranged in backpacks and carried toward the mountains. They were not allowed to walk. Gabe carried Akin atop a bundle of supplies, and Tate walked behind, carrying even more supplies. Amma rode on Macy Wiltons back and surreptitiously tasted him with one of her small body tentacles. She had a normal Human tongue, but each of her tentacles would serve her as well as Akins long, gray Oankali tongue. Shkahts throat tentacles gave her a more sensitive sense of smell and taste than Akin, and she could use her hands for tasting. Also, she had slender, dark tentacles on her head, mixed with her hair. She could see with these. She could not see with her eyes. She had learned, though, to seem to look at people with her eyesto turn and face them and to move her slender head tentacles as she moved her head so that Humans were not disturbed by her hair seeming to crawl about. She would have to be very careful because Humans, for some reason, liked to cut peoples hair. They cut their own, and they had cut Akins. Even back in Lo, men in particular either cut their own hair or got others to cut it. Akin did not want to think about what it might feel like to have sensory tentacles cut off. Nothing could hurt worse. Nothing would be more likely to cause an Oankali or a construct to sting reflexively, fatally.
The Humans walked all day, stopping for rest and food only once at noon. They did not talk about where they were going or why, but they walked quickly, as though they feared pursuit.
They were a party of twenty, armed, in spite of Tates efforts, with the four guns of Akins captors. Damek was still alive, but he could not walk. He was being cared for back at Phoenix. Akin suspected that he had no idea what was going onthat his gun was gone, that Akin was gone. What he did not know, he could not resent or tell.
That night the Humans erected tents and made beds of blankets and branches or bamboowhatever they could find. Some stretched hammocks between trees and slept outside the tents since they saw no sign of rain. Akin asked to sleep outside with someone and a woman named Abira simply reached out of her hammock and lifted him in. She seemed glad to have him in spite of the heat and humidity. She was a short, very strong woman who carried a pack as heavy as those of men half again her size, yet she handled him with gentleness.
I had three little boys before the war, she said in her strangely accented English. She had come from Israel. She gave his head a quick rubher favorite caressand went to sleep, leaving him to find his own most comfortable position.
Amma and Shkaht slept together on their own bed of blanket-covered bamboo. Humans valued them, fed them, sheltered them, but they did not like the girls tentacleswould not deliberately allow themselves to be touched by the small sensory organs. Amma had only managed to taste Macy Wilton because she was riding on his back and her tentacles were able to burrow through the clothing he had put between himself and her.
No Human wanted to sleep with them. Even now Neci Roybal and her husband Stancio were whispering about the possibility of removing the tentacles while the girls were young.
Alarmed, Akin listened carefully.
Theyll learn to do without the ugly little things if we take them off while theyre so young, Neci was saying.
We have no proper anesthetics, the man protested. It would be cruel. He was his wifes opposite, quiet, steady, kind. People tolerated Neci for his sake. Akin avoided him in order to avoid Neci. But Neci had a way of saying a thing and saying a thing over and over until other people began to say itand believe it.
They wont feel much now, she said. Theyre so young
And those little worm things are so small. Now is the best time to do it.
Stancio said nothing.
Theyll learn to use their Human senses, Neci whispered. Theyll see the world as we do and be more like us.
Do you want to cut them? Stancio asked. Little girls. Almost babies.
Dont talk foolishness. It can be done. Theyll heal. Theyll forget they ever had tentacles.
Maybe theyd grow back.
Cut them off again!
There was a long silence.
How many times, Neci, the man said finally. How many times would you torture children? Would you torture them if they had come from your body? Will you torture them now because they did not?
Nothing more was said. Akin thought Neci cried a little. She made small, wordless sounds. Stancio made only regular breathing sounds. After a time, Akin realized he had fallen asleep.
15
They spent days walking through forest, climbing forested hills. But it was cooler now, and Akin and the girls had to fight off attempts to clothe them more warmly. There was still plenty to eat, and their bodies adjusted quickly and easily to the temperature change. Akin went on wearing the short pants Pilar Leal had made for him. There had been no time for clothing to be made for the girls, so they wore lengths of cloth wrapped around their waists and tied at the top. This was the only clothing they did not deliberately shed and lose.
Akin had begun sleeping with them on the second night of the journey. They needed to learn more English and learn it quickly. Neci was doing as Akin had expectedsaying over and over to different people in quiet, intense conversation that the girls tentacles should be removed now, while they were young, so that they would look more Human, so that they would learn to depend on their Human senses and perceive the world in a Human way. People laughed at her behind her back, but now and then, Akin heard them talking about the tentacleshow ugly they were, how much better the girls would look without them
Will they cut us? Amma asked him when he told them. All her tentacles had flattened invisibly to her flesh.
They might try, Akin said. We have to stop them from trying.
How?
Shkaht touched him with one of her small, sensitive hands. Which Humans do you trust? she asked. She was the younger of the two, but she had managed to learn more.
The woman I live with. Tate. Not her husband. Just her. Im going to tell her the truth.
Can she really do anything?
She can. She might not. She does
strange things sometimes. She
The worst thing she might do now is nothing.
Whats wrong with her?
Whats wrong with them all? Havent you noticed?
yes. But I dont understand.
I dont either, really. But its the way they have to live. They want kids, so they buy us. But we still arent their kids. They want to have kids. Sometimes they hate us because they cant. And sometimes they hate us because were part of the Oankali and the Oankali are the ones who wont let them have kids.
They could have dozens of kids if they stop living by themselves and join us.
They want kids the way they used to have them before the war. Without the Oankali.
Why?
Its their way. He lay in a jumble with them so that sensory spot found sensory spot, so that the girls were able to use their sensory tentacles and he was able to use his tongue. They were almost unaware that the conversation had ceased to be vocal. Akin had already learned that Humans considered them to be asleep half-atop one another when they lay this way.