Imago

“All right.”

I held her a little longer, then left her. I asked Tehkorahs to check her and make the necessary adjustment.

It stood with Wray Ordway, its male Human mate, and Wray smiled and gave me a look of understanding and amusement. He was one of the few people in Lo to speak for me when the exile decision was being made. “A child is a child,” he said through Tehkorahs. “The more you treat it like a freak, the more it will behave like one.” I think people like him eased things for me. They made Earth exile feel less objectionable to the truly frightened people who wanted me safely shut away on the ship.

“You know I’ll take care of the female,” Tehkorahs said. “She seemed to like you very much.”

I felt my head and body tentacles flatten to my skin in remembered pleasure. “Very much.”

Wray laughed. “I told you it would be sexually precocious— just like the construct males and females.”

Tehkorahs looped a sensory tentacle around his neck. “I’m not surprised. Every gene trade brings change. Jodahs, let me check you. The female won’t want to see me for a while. You’ve left too much of yourself with her.”

I stepped close to it and it released Wray and examined me quickly, thoroughly. I felt its surprise before it let me go. “You’re much more in control now,” it said. “I can’t find anything wrong with you. And if your memories of the female are accurate—”

“Of course they are!”

“Then I probably won’t find anything wrong with her either. Except for the genetic problem.”

“She’ll cooperate when you’re ready to correct that.”

“Good. You look like her, you know.”

“What?”

“Your body has been striving to please her. You’re more brown now—less gray. Your face is changed subtly.”

“You look like a male version of her,” Wray said. “She probably thought you were very handsome.”

“She said so,” I admitted amid Wray’s laughter. “I didn’t know I was changing.”

“All ooloi change a little when they mate,” Tehkorahs said. “Our scents change. We fit ourselves into our mates’ kin group. You may fit in better than most of us—just as your descendants will fit more easily when they find a new species for the gene trade.”

If I ever had descendants.

The next day, the family gathered new supplies and left Lo for the second time. I had had one more night to sleep in the family house. I slept with Aaor the way I always used to before my metamorphosis. I think I made it as lonely as I felt myself now that Marina was gone. And that night I gave Aaor, Lo, and myself large, foul-smelling sores.

1

We didn’t stop at the island we had intended to live on. It was too close to Pascual. Living there would have made us targets for more Human fear and frustration. We followed the river west, then south, traveling when we wanted to, resting when we were tired—drifting, really. I was restless, and drifting suited me. The others simply seemed not content with any likely campsite we found. I suspected that they wouldn’t be content again until they returned to Lo to stay.

We edged around Human habitations very carefully. Humans who saw us either stared from a distance or followed us until we left their territory. None approached us.

Twelve days from Lo, we were still drifting. The river was long with many tributaries, many curves and twists. It was good to walk along the shaded forest floor, following the sound and smell of it, and thinking about nothing at all. My fingers and toes became webbed on the third day, and I didn’t bother to correct them. I was wet at least as often as I was dry. My hair fell out and I developed a few more sensory tentacles. I stopped wearing clothing, and my coloring changed to gray-green.

“What are you doing?” my Human mother asked. “Letting your body do whatever it wants to?” Her voice and posture expressed stiff disapproval.

“As long as I don’t develop an illness,” I said.

She frowned. “I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. Deformity is as bad as illness.”

I walked away from her. I had never done that before.

Fifteen days out of Lo, someone shot at us with arrows. Only Lilith was hit. Nikanj caught the archer, drugged him unconscious, destroyed all his weapons, and changed the color of his hair. It had been deep brown. It would be colorless from now on. It would look all white. Finally Nikanj encouraged his face to fall into the permanent creases that this male’s behavior and genetic heritage had dictated for his old age. He would look much older. He would not be weaker or in any way infirm, but appearances were important to Humans. When this male awoke—sometime the next day—his eyes and his fingers would tell him he had paid a terrible price for attacking us. More important, his people would see. They would misunderstand what they saw, and it would frighten them into letting us alone.

Lilith had no special trouble with the arrow. It damaged one of her kidneys and gave her a great deal of pain, but her life was in no danger. Her improved body would have healed quickly even without Nikanj’s help, since the arrow was not poisoned. But Nikanj did not leave her to heal herself. It lay beside her and healed her completely before it returned to whiten the drugged archer’s hair and wrinkle his face. Mates took care of one another.

I watched them, wondering who I would take care of. Who would take care of me?

Twenty-one days out, the bed of our river turned south and we turned with it. Dichaan veered off the trail, and left us for some time, and came back with a male Human who had broken his leg. The leg was grotesque—swollen, discolored, and blistered. The smell of it made Nikanj and me look at one another.

We camped and made a pallet for the injured Human. Nikanj spoke to me before it went to him.

“Get rid of your webbing,” it said. “Try to look less like a frog or you’ll scare him.”

“Are you going to let me heal him?”

“Yes. And it will take a while for you to do it right. Your first regeneration

. Go eat something while I ease his pain.”

“Let me do that,” I said. But it had already turned away and gone back to the male. The male’s leg was worse than worthless. It was poisoning his body. Portions of it were already dead. Yet the thought of taking it disturbed me.

Ahajas and Aaor brought me food before I could look around for it, and Aaor sat with me while I ate.

“Why are you afraid?” it said.

“Not exactly afraid, but

To take the leg

”

“Yes. It will give you a chance to grow something other than webbing and sensory tentacles.”

“I don’t want to do it. He’s old like Marina. You don’t know how I hated letting her go.”

“Don’t I?”

I focused on it. “I didn’t think you did. You didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t want me to. You should eat.”

When I didn’t eat, it moved closer to me and leaned against me, linking comfortably into my nervous system. It had not done that for a while. It wasn’t afraid of me anymore. It had not exactly abandoned me. It had allowed me to isolate myself—since I seemed to want to. It let me know this in simple neurosensory impressions.

“I was lonely,” I protested aloud.

“I know. But not for me.” It spoke with confidence and contentment that confused me.

“You’re changing,” I said.

“Not yet. But soon, I think.”

“Metamorphosis? We’ll lose each other when you change.”

“I know. Share the Human with me. It will give the two of us more time together.”

“All right.”

Then I had to go to the Human. I had to heal him alone. After that, Aaor and I could share him.

People remembered their ooloi siblings. I had heard Ahajas and Dichaan talk about theirs. But they had not seen it for decades. An ooloi belonged to the kin group of its mates. Its siblings were lost to it.

The Human male had lost consciousness by the time I lay down beside him. The moment I touched him, I knew he must have broken his leg in a fall—probably from a tree. He had puncture wounds and deep bruises on the left side of his body. The left leg was, as I had expected, a total loss, foul and poisonous. I separated it from the rest of his body above the damaged tissue. First I stopped the circulation of bodily fluids and poisons to and from the leg. Then I encouraged the growth of a skin barrier at the hip. Finally I helped his body let go of the rotting limb.