Imago

JoĂo had talked about his past to Ahajas and Dichaan as well. He avoided Nikanj, at least. I could accept everything he did as long as he avoided Nikanj.

“Tomorrow,” he repeated now, lying beside me. He moved warningly, then sat up. I had told him always to move a little to warn me that he intended to change position or get up—in case I had sensory tentacles linked into him. He had ignored me once. The pain of that had made him scream aloud and roll himself into a tight fetal knot for some time, sweating and gasping. He hurt me as badly as he hurt himself, but I managed not to react as much. I never said anything, but he always made me a small, warning move after that.

He looked down at me. “I didn’t believe you.”

“Your leg is complete and strong. It’s tender. You need to protect it. But you’re whole. Why shouldn’t you leave?”

His mouth said nothing. His face said he wasn’t sure he wanted to go. He wasn’t even sure he appreciated my telling him he could go. But his pride kept him silent.

“All right!” he said finally. “Tomorrow I go. Tomorrow morning.”

I drew him down to our pallet and kissed his face, then his mouth. “I won’t be glad to see you go,” I said. “If you were younger

” I rubbed the back of his neck. My underarms didn’t itch. They hurt.

“I didn’t know my age was important,” he said. He sighed. “I shouldn’t care. I should be grateful. I haven’t changed my opinion

of ooloi.”

“You have, I think.”

“No. I’ve only changed my feelings toward you. I wouldn’t have believed I could do even that.”

“Before you leave, go to Nikanj. Have it check you to be certain that I haven’t missed anything.”

“No!”

“It will only touch you for a moment. Only for a moment. Come to me afterward

to say goodbye.”

“No. I can’t let that thing touch me. I would rather trust you.”

“It’s one of my parents.”

“I know. I mean no offense. But I cannot do that.”

“I won’t send you away to die from some mistake of mine that could have been corrected. You will let it touch you.”

Silence.

“Do it for my sake, JoĂo. Don’t leave me wondering whether I’ve killed you.”

He sighed. After a moment, he nodded.

I put him to sleep. He did not realize it, but I was responsible for strengthening his aversion to Nikanj. No male or female who spent as much time with an ooloi as he had with me would feel comfortable touching another ooloi. JoĂo was not bound to me, but he was chemically oriented toward me and away from others. And adult ooloi could seduce him from me if he truly disliked me and was interested in finding another ooloi. But otherwise, he would stay with me. Lilith had begun this way with Nikanj.

The next morning, I took JoĂo to Nikanj. As I had promised, Nikanj touched him briefly, then let him go.

“You’ve done nothing wrong with him,” he told me. “I wish he could stay and keep you from becoming a frog again.” I was grateful that it spoke in English and JoĂo did not understand.

I gave JoĂo food and a hammock and my machete. He had lost whatever gear he had had with him when he fell.

“There are older Oankali who would mate with you,” I told him. “They could give you pleasure. You could have children.”

“Which of them would look like someone I used to dream about when I was young?” he asked.

“I don’t really look like this, JoĂo. You know I don’t. I didn’t look this way when we met.”

“You look like this for me,” he said. “Tell me who else could do that?”

I shook my head. “No one.”

“You see?”

“Then go to Mars. Find someone who does really look this way. Have Human children.”

“I’ve thought about Mars. It seemed a fantasy, though. To live on another world.

”

“Oankali have lived on many other worlds. Why shouldn’t Humans live on at least one other?”

“Why should the Oankali have the one world that’s ours?”

“They do have it. And you can’t take it back from them. You can stay here and die uselessly, resisting. You can go to Mars and help found a new Human society. Or you can join us in the trade. We will go to the stars eventually. If you join us, your children will go with us.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been among Oankali before. We all have, we resisters. Oankali never made me doubt what I should do.” He smiled. “Before I met you, Jodahs, I knew myself much better.”

He went away undecided. “I don’t even know what I want from you,” he said as he was leaving. “It isn’t the usual thing, certainly, but I don’t want to leave you.”

But, of course, he did leave.

4

Two days after JoĂo had gone, Aaor went into metamorphosis. It did not seem to edge in slowly as I had—though I had been so preoccupied with JoĂo that I could easily have missed the signs. It simply went to its pallet and went to sleep. I was the one who touched it and realized that it was in metamorphosis. And that it was becoming ooloi.

There would be two of us, then. Two dangerous uncertainties who might never be allowed to mate normally, who might spend the rest of our lives in one kind of exile or another.

We had not begun to travel again on the day JoĂo left us. Now we could not. There was no good reason to carry Aaor through the forest, forcing it to assimilate new sensations when it should be isolated and focusing inward on the growth and readjustment of its own body.

We could have put together a raft and traveled down the river to Lo in a fraction of the time it had taken us to reach this point. In an emergency, Nikanj could even signal for help. But what help? A shuttle to take us back to Lo, where we could not stay? A shuttle to take us to Chkahichdahk, where we did not want to go?

We sat grouped around the sleeping Aaor and agreed to do the only thing we really could do: move to higher ground to avoid the rainy season floods and build a more permanent house. My Human mother said it was time to plant a garden.

Nikanj and I stayed with Aaor while the others went to find the site of our new home.

“Do you realize you’ve already lost most of your hair?” Nikanj asked me as we sat on opposite sides of Aaor’s sleeping body.

I touched my head. It still had a very thin covering of hair, but as Nikanj had said, I was nearly bald. Again. I had not noticed. Now I could see that my skin was changing, too, losing the softness it had taken on for JoĂo, losing its even brown coloring. I could not tell yet whether I would return to my natural gray-brown or take on the greenish coloring I’d had just before JoĂo.

“You should be at least as good at monitoring your own body as you are at monitoring a Human,” Nikanj said.

“Will Aaor be like me?” I asked.

It let all its sensory tentacles hang limp. “I’m afraid it might be.” It was silent for a while. “Yes, I believe it will be,” it said finally.

“So now you have two same-sex children to need you

and to resent you.”

It focused on me for a long time with an intensity that first puzzled me, then began to scare me. It had rested one sensory arm across Aaor’s chest, examining, checking.

“Is it all right?” I asked.

“As much as you are.” It rustled its tentacles. “Perfect, but imperfect. It has all that it should have. It can do all that it should be able to do. But that won’t be enough. You’ll have to go to the ship, Oeka. You and Aaor.”

“No!” I felt the way I had once when an apparently friendly Human had hit me in the face.

“You need mates,” it said softly. “No one will mate with you here except old Humans who would steal perhaps four fifths of your life. On the ship, you may be able to get young mates—perhaps even young Humans.”

“And bring them back to Earth?”

“I don’t know.”