Adulthood Rites

“You heard that crap, didn’t you?” she said.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“I was afraid you would. Relax. Those people know us. They won’t come in here unless they’re feeling suicidal.” She had been so strongly against guns once. Yet she held the thing in her lap as though it were a friend. And he had to be glad she did, glad of her protection. Confused, he kept silent until she said, “Are you all right?”

“I’m afraid someone will be killed on my account.”

She said nothing for a while. Finally she asked, “How soon before you can walk?”

“A few days. Three or four. Maybe.”

“I hope that will be soon enough. If you’re mobile, they won’t dare give you trouble. You look thoroughly Oankali.”

“When I can walk, I’ll leave.”

“We’re going with you. It’s past time for us to leave this place.”

He looked at her and thought he smiled.

She laughed. “I wondered if you could do that.”

He realized then by the sudden muting of his senses that his new sensory tentacles had flattened against his body, had smoothed like a second skin and seemed more painted on than real. He had seen this all his life in Oankali and constructs. Now, it felt utterly natural to do it himself.

She touched him.

He saw her reach out, felt the warmth of her hand long before she laid it on his shoulder and rubbed it over the smooth tentacles. For a second, he was able to keep them smooth. Then they locked into her hand. Her femaleness tormented him more than ever, but he could only taste it, savor it. Even if she had been interested in him sexually, he would have been helpless.

“Let go,” she said. She was not frightened or angry. She simply waited for him to let her go. She had no idea how difficult it was for him to draw his sensory tentacles back, to break the deep, frustrating contact.

“What was that all about?” she asked when she had her hand back.

He was not quick enough to think of an innocuous answer before she began to laugh.

“I thought so,” she said. “We should definitely get you home. Do you have mates waiting?”

Chagrined, he said nothing.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s been a long time since I was an adolescent.”

“Humans called me that before I changed.”

“Young adult, then.”

“How can you condescend to me and still follow me?”

She smiled. “I don’t know. I haven’t worked out my feelings toward the new you yet.”

Something about her manner was a lie. Nothing she said was a direct lie, but there was something wrong.

“Will you go to Mars, Tate, or stay on Earth?” he asked. She seemed to pull back from him without moving.

“You’ll be as free to stay as you will be to go.” She had Oankali mates who would be overjoyed to have her stay. If she did not, they might never settle on Earth.

“Truce,” Tate said quietly.

He wished she were Oankali so that he could show her he meant what he was saying. He had not spoken in response to her condescension, as she clearly believed. He had responded instead to the falseness of her manner. But communication with Humans was always incomplete.

“Goddamn you,” Tate said softly.

“What?”

She looked away from him. She stood up, paced across to a window, and stared out. She stood to one side, making it difficult for anyone outside to see her. But there was no one outside that window. She paced around the room, restless, grim.

“I thought I’d made my decision,” she said. “I thought leaving here would be enough for now.”

“It is,” Akin said. “There’s no hurry. You don’t have to make any other decisions yet.”

“Who’s patronizing whom?” she said bitterly.

More misunderstanding. “Take me literally,” Akin said. “Assume that I mean exactly what I say.”

She looked at him with disbelief and distrust.

“You can decide later,” he insisted.

After a while she sighed. “No,” she said, “I can’t.”

He did not understand, so he said nothing.

“That’s my problem, really,” she continued. “I don’t have a choice anymore. I have to go.”

“You don’t.”

She shook her head. “I made my choice a long time ago—the way Lilith made hers. I chose Gabe and Phoenix and Humanity. My own people disgust me sometimes, but they’re still my people. I have to go with them.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

She sat down again after a while and put the gun on her lap and closed her eyes.

“Tate?” he said, when she seemed calm.

She opened her eyes but said nothing.

“Does the way I look now bother you?”

The question seemed to annoy her at first. Then she shrugged. “If anyone had asked me how I would feel if you changed so completely, I would have said it would upset me, at least. It doesn’t. I don’t think it bothers the others either. We all watched you change.”

“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.