Adulthood Rites

a place of your own.”

Now her eyes were wide and intent on him. “What place?” she whispered. Gabe had come to stand near them and stare down.

“Where!” he demanded.

“It can’t be here,” Akin said. “You would have to build whole new towns in a new environment, learn new ways to, live. It would be hard. But I’ve found people—other constructs—to help me make it possible.”

“Akin, where?” she whispered.

“Mars,” he said simply. They stared at him, wordless. He did not know what they might know about Mars, so he began to reassure them. “We can enable the planet to support Human life. We’ll start as soon as I’m mature. The work has been given to me. No one else felt the need to do it as strongly as I did.”

“Mars?” Gabe said. “Leave Earth to the Oankali? All of Earth?”

“Yes.” Akin turned his face toward Gabe again. The man must understand as quickly as possible that Akin was serious. He needed to have reason to trust Akin with Tate. And Tate needed a reason to continue to live. It had occurred to Akin that she might be weary of her long, pointless life. That, he realized, was something that would not occur to the Oankali. They would not understand even if they were told. Some would accept without understanding. Most would not.

Akin turned his face to Tate again. “They left me with you for so long so that you could teach me whether what they had done with you was right. They couldn’t judge. They were so

disturbed by your genetic structure that they couldn’t do, couldn’t even consider doing what I will do.”

“Mars?” she said. “Mars?”

“I can give it to you. Others will help me. But

you and Gabe have to help me convince resisters.”

She looked up at Gabe. “Mars,” she whispered, and managed to shake her head.

“I’ve studied it,” Akin told them. “With protection, you could live there now, but you would have to live underground or inside some structure. There’s too much ultraviolet light, an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, and no liquid water. And it’s cold. It will always be colder than it is here, but we can make it warmer than it is now.”

“How?” Gabe asked.

“With modified plants and, later, modified animals. The Oankali have used them all before to make lifeless planets livable.”

“Oankali plants?” Gabe demanded. “Not Earth plants?”

Akin sighed. “If something the Oankali have modified belongs to them, then you and all your people belong to them now.”

Silence.

“The modified plants and animals work much faster than anything that could be found on Earth naturally. We need them to prepare the way for you relatively quickly. The Oankali won’t allow your fertility to be restored here on Earth. You’re older now than most Humans used to get. You can still live a long time, but I want you to leave as soon as possible so that you can still raise children there the way my mother has here and teach them what they are.”

Tate’s eyes had closed again. She put one hand over them, and Akin restrained an impulse to move it away. Was she crying?

“We’ve lost almost everything already,” Gabe said. “Now we lose our world and everything on it.”

“Not everything. You’ll be able to take whatever you want. And plant life from Earth will be added as the new environment becomes able to support it.” He hesitated. “The plants that grow here

Not many of them will grow there outdoors. But a lot of the mountain plants will eventually grow there.”

Gabe shook his head. “All that in our lifetimes?”

“If you keep yourselves safe, you’ll live about twice as long as you already have. You’ll live to see plants from Earth growing unprotected on Mars.”

Tate took her hand away from her face and looked at him. “Akin, I probably won’t live another month,” she said. “Before now, I didn’t want to. But now

Can you get help for me?”

“No!” Gabe protested. “You don’t need help. You’ll be okay!”

“I’ll be dead!” She managed to glare at him. “Do you believe Akin?” she asked.

He looked from her to Akin, stared at Akin as he answered. “I don’t know.”

“What, you think he’s lying?”

“I don’t know. He’s just a kid. Kids lie.”

“Yes. And men lie. But don’t you think you can lie to me after all these years. If there’s something to live for, I want to live! Are you saying I should die?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then let me get the only help available. Yori had given up on me.”

Gabe looked as though he still wanted to protest, but he only looked at her. After a time, he spoke to Akin. “Get someone to help her,” he said. Akin could recall hearing him curse in that same tone of voice. Only Humans could do that: say, “Get someone to help her,” with their mouths, and “Damn her to hell!” with their voices and bodies.

“I can help her,” Akin said.

And both Humans were suddenly looking at him with a suspicion he didn’t understand at all.

“I asked for training,” he said. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“If you aren’t ooloi,” Gabe said, “how can you heal anyone?”

“I told you, I asked to be taught. My teacher was ooloi. I can’t do everything it could do, but I can help your flesh and your bones heal. I can encourage your organs to repair themselves, even if they wouldn’t normally.”

“I’ve never heard that males could do that,” Gabe said.

“An ooloi could do it better. You would enjoy what it did. The safest thing for me to do is make you sleep.”

“That’s what you’d do if you were an ooloi child, isn’t it?” Tate asked.

“Yes. But it’s what I’ll always do, even as an adult. Ooloi change and become physically able to do more.”

“I don’t want more done,” Tate said. “I want to be healed—healed of everything. And that’s all.”

“I can’t do anything else.”

Gabe made a short, wordless sound. “You can still sting, can’t you?”

Akin suppressed an urge to stand up, to face Gabe. His body was almost tiny compared to Gabe’s. Even if he had been larger, physical confrontation would have been pointless. He simply stared at the man.

After a time, Gabe came closer and bent to face Tate. “You really want to let him do this?”

She sighed, closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m dying. Of course I’m going to let him do it.”

And he sighed, stroked her hair lightly. “Yeah.” He turned to glare at Akin. “All right, do whatever it is you do.”

Akin did not speak or move. He continued to watch Gabe, resenting the man’s attitude, knowing that it did not come only from fear for Tate.

“Well?” Gabe said, standing straight and looking down. Tall men did this. They meant to intimidate. Some of them wanted to fight. Gabe simply intended to make a point he was in no position to make.

Akin waited.

Tate said, “Get out of here, Gabe. Leave us alone for a while.”

“Leave you with him!”

“Yes. Now. I’m sick of feeling like shit that’s been stepped in. Go.”

He went. It was better for him to go because she wanted it than for him to give in to Akin. Akin would have preferred to let him go silently, but he did not dare.

“Gabe,” he said as the man was going outside.

Gabe stopped but did not turn.

“Guard the door. An interruption could kill her.”

Gabe closed the door behind him without speaking. Immediately, Tate let her breath out in a kind of moan. She looked at the door, then at Akin. “Do I have to do anything?”

“No. Just put up with having me on that bench with you.”

This did not seem to disturb her. “You’re small enough,” she said. “Come on.”

He was no smaller than she was.

Carefully, he settled himself between her and the wall. “I still have only my tongue to work with,” he said. “That means this will look like I’m biting you on the neck.”

“You used to do that whenever I’d let you.”