Imago

I began to stay away even longer.

I met resisters occasionally, but I looked so un-Human and so un-Oankali most of the time that they fled. Twice they shot me, then fled. But no matter how my body distorted itself, I could always heal wounds.

My family never tried to control my goings and comings. They accepted my feelings whether they understood them or not. They wanted to help me, and suffered because they could not. When I was at home I sat with them sometimes—with Ayodele and Yedik when they guarded at night. People guarded in pairs except for Nikanj, who stayed with Aaor, and Oni and Hozh, who were too young to guard.

But I could touch Oni and Hozh. I could touch Ayodele and Yedik. They were still children, neutral-scented, and not yet forbidden to me. When I came out of the forest, looking like nothing anyone on Earth would recognize, one or the other pair of them took me between them and stayed with me until I looked like myself again. If I touched only one of them, I would change that one, make it what I was. But if they both stayed with me, they changed me.

“We shouldn’t be able to do this to you,” Yedik said as we guarded one night.

“You make it easy for me not to wander,” I told it. “My body wanders. Even when I come home, it wants to go on wandering.”

“We shouldn’t be able to stop it,” Yedik insisted. “We shouldn’t influence you at all. We’re too young.”

“I want you to influence me.” I looked from one of them to the other. Ayodele looked female and Yedik looked male. I hoped they would be more strongly influenced by the way they looked than I had. Humans said they were beautiful.

“I can change myself,” I told them. “But it’s an effort. And it doesn’t last. It’s easier to do as water does: allow myself to be contained, and take on the shape of my containers.”

“I don’t understand,” Ayodele said.

“You help me do what I want to do.”

“What do Humans do?”

“Shape me according to their memories and fantasies.”

“But—” They both spoke at once. Then, by mutual consent, Ayodele spoke. “Then you’re either out of control or contained by us or forced into a false Human shape.”

“Not forced.”

“When can you be yourself?”

I thought about that. I understood it because I remembered being their age and having a strong awareness of the way my face and body looked, and of that look being me. It never had been, really.

“Changing doesn’t bother me anymore,” I said. “At least, not this kind of deliberate, controlled changing. I wish it didn’t bother other people. I’ve never deformed plants or animals the way people said I might.”

“Just people,” Yedik said quietly. “People and Lo.”

“Lo was barely annoyed. It would have survived that war the Humans killed each other with.”

“It’s part of you and vulnerable to you. You hurt it.”

“I know. And I confused it. But I don’t think I could injure it seriously if I tried—and I wouldn’t try. As for people, have you noticed that the Humans, the people I’m supposed to be the greatest danger to, are the ones I’ve never hurt?”

Silence.

“Does it bother you to have me here with you?”

“It did,” Ayodele said. “We thought your life must be terrible. We can feel your distress when we link with you.”

“This is my place,” I told them. “This world. I don’t belong on the ship—except perhaps for a visit. People go there to absorb more of our past sometimes. I wouldn’t mind that. But I can’t live there. No matter what Ooan says, I can’t live there. It’s a finished place. The people are still making themselves, but the place

”

“It’s still dividing in two to make a ship for the Toaht and a ship for the Akjai.”

“And the two halves will be smaller finished places. No wildness. No newness. I’m Dinso like you, not Toaht or Akjai.”

Again they were silent.

“You two sit together.” I withdrew from them and started to get up.

They watched me with their eyes and their few sensory tentacles. Silently they took my hands and drew me down to sit between them again. They acted more in perfect unison than any of my siblings. Ahajas said they would certainly become mates if they developed as male and female. They did not want me between them. I made them uncomfortable because they wanted to help me and couldn’t help much. On the other hand, they did want me between them because they could help a little, and they knew they would lose me soon, and they liked the way I made their bodies feel. I wasn’t as able to make people feel good as Nikanj was, but I could give them something. And I was old enough to read internal and external body language and understand more of what they were feeling.

I liked that. I liked a lot of what I had been able to do recently. It was only the thought of going to Chkahichdahk, and being kept there, that made me feel caged and frantic.

The next morning that thought drove me into the forest again.

5

Aaor had a long metamorphosis. Eleven months. I was afraid every time I went home that it would be awake and the family would be building a raft.

I began to seek out Humans. I avoided large parties of them, but it was easy to find individuals and small groups.

I followed them silently, dissected and enjoyed their scents, listened to their conversations. Sometimes they became aware that they were being followed, though they never saw me. My coloring had darkened and I hid easily in the shadows. The forest understory was usually wet or at least damp, and it was easy for me to move silently. The Humans I followed often made much more noise than I did. I watched a Human hunter make so much noise that the feeding peccary he was stalking heard him and ran away. The Human went to the place where the peccary had been feeding and he cursed and kicked the fruit the animal had been feeding on. It never occurred to him to eat the fruit or to collect some for his people. I ate some when he was gone.

Once three people stalked me. I considered letting them catch me. But I circled around to have a look at them first, and I heard them talking about opening me up and seeing how I looked inside. Since they all had guns and machetes, I decided to avoid them. Three were too many for a subadult to subdue safely.

I was moving upriver—farther upriver than I had been before—well into the hills. The forest was less varied here, but I had no trouble finding enough to eat, and occasional plants and animals that were new to me. But I found few people in the hills. For several days, I found no one at all. No breeze brought me a Human scent.

I began to feel loneliness as an almost physical pain. I hadn’t realized how much seeing Humans every few days had meant to me.

Now I had to go home. I didn’t want to. Surely Aaor would be awake this time. The thought panicked me, brought back the caged feeling so strongly that I could not think.

I stayed where I was for a while, cleared a space, made a fire, though I did not need one. It comforted me and reminded me of Humans. I let the fire burn down and roasted several wild tubers in the coals. The smell of the food wasn’t enough to mask the smell of the two Humans when they approached. No doubt it was the food smell that drew them.

They were a male and a female and they smelled

very strange. Wrong. Injured, perhaps. They were armed. I could smell gunpowder. They might shoot me. I decided to risk it. I would not move. I would let them surprise me.

My body at this time was covered with fingernail-sized, overlapping scales. It was also inclined to be quadrapedal, but I had resisted that. Hands were much more useful than clawed forefeet.

Now, while the Humans approached very carefully, very quietly, I prepared for them. My bald, scaly head and scaly face had to look more Human. I didn’t have time to change the rest of me. I could look as though I were wearing unusual clothing, perhaps. In fact, I didn’t wear clothing at all on these trips. It just got in the way.