Imago

. I did it for him. I didn’t even want to come here.” Tears streamed down her face, but she made no sound of crying, no move to wipe her face.

I reached over TomÁss, caught her by the waist, and lifted her. She wasn’t heavy at all. I put her down beside me so that I was between the two of them—where I belonged.

“You’ve saved him,” I said. “You’ve saved his life and your people’s lives. You’ve saved yourself from a life of unnecessary misery.”

“Have I done so much good? Then how is it that my people would kill me if they found out?”

She believed me. It didn’t make her feel any better, but she did believe.

“We can’t go home,” she said. “The elders always told us that if even one of your people learned the truth about us, they would find us, and the thing we were trying to rebuild would be destroyed.”

“Perhaps it will only be healed and transported to Mars. Everyone who wants to go will be sent.”

“They won’t believe you. They wouldn’t even believe me. Even if I went home now, when your people came to collect us, my people would know who had betrayed them.”

“That’s not what you’ve done. Anyway, I want you to stay with me.”

She studied me, vertical frowns forming between her eyes where there was a small expanse of clear skin. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said.

“You’re with me now.” I lay down and moved close against TomÁs so that all the sensory tentacles on his side of my body could reach him. Linking into him was such a sharp, sweet shock that for a moment, I could not see. When the shock had traveled through me, I became aware of Jesusa watching. I reached up and pulled her down with us. She gasped as the contact was completed. Then she groaned and twisted her body so that she could bring more of it into contact with me. TomÁs, not really awake yet, did the same, and we lay utterly submerged in one another.

8

By the next morning, most of Jesusa’s small tumors had vanished, reabsorbed into her body. She was not truly healed yet, but her skin was soft and smooth for the first time since her early childhood. She cried as she ate the breakfast I prepared from my basket. She examined herself over and over.

TomÁs’s tumors had been bigger and would take longer to get rid of, but they had clearly begun to shrink.

We had all awakened together—which meant they had awakened when I did. I didn’t want to take a chance on Jesusa rationalizing and running again, or worse, deciding to try to kill me again.

They awoke content and rested and in better physical shape than they’d been in for years. Both were fascinated by the obvious changes in Jesusa.

I lay between them, comfortably exhausted on a brand-new level. My body had been working hard all night on two people. And yet, I’d never felt this well, this complete before.

Jesusa, after touching her face and her arms and her legs and finding only smooth skin and beginning to cry, leaned down and kissed me.

“I have,” TomÁs said, “a very strange compulsion to do that, too.” He kept his tone light, but there was real confusion behind it.

I sat up and kissed him, savoring the healing that had taken place so far. Invisible healing as well as shrinkage of visible tumors. His optic nerve was being restored—against the original genetic advice of his body. Insanely one bit of genetic information said the nerve was complete and the genes controlling its development were not to become active again. Yet his genetic disorder went on causing the growth of more and more useless, dangerous tissue on such finished organs and preventing them from carrying on their function.

TomÁs had grown patches of hair on his face overnight. When I touched one of them, he smiled. “I have to shave,” he said. “I’d grow a beard if I could, but when I tried, Jesusa said it looked like an alpaca sheared by a five-year-old-child.”

I frowned. “Alpaca?”

“A highland animal. We raise them for wool to make clothing.”

“Oh.” I smiled. “I think your beard will grow more evenly when I’ve finished with you,” I said.

“Do you think you’ll ever do that?” he asked. “Finish with us?”

My free head and body tentacles tightened flat to my skin with pleasurable sexual tension. “No,” I said softly. “I don’t think so.”

He had to be told everything. He and Jesusa and I talked and rested all that day, then lay together to share the night. The next morning we began several days of walking—drifting, really—back toward my family’s camp. We were in no hurry. I taught them to find and make safe use of wild forest foods. They talked about their people and worried about them. Jesusa talked with real horror about the breaking apart of the planet, but TomÁs seemed less concerned.

“It isn’t real to me,” he said simply. “It will happen long after I’m dead. And if you’re telling us the truth, Jodahs, there’s nothing we can do to prevent it.”

“Will you stay with me?” I asked.

He looked at Jesusa, and Jesusa looked away. “I don’t know,” he said softly.

“If you stay with me, you’ll almost certainly live past the time of separation.”

He stared at me, frowning, thinking. They both had their silent, thoughtful times.

We wandered downstream, walking and resting and enjoying one another for seven days. Seven very good days. TomÁs’s tumors vanished and the sight of his eye returned. His hearing improved. He looked at himself in the water of a small pond and said, “I don’t know how I’ll get used to being so beautiful.”

Jesusa threw a handful of mud at him.

On the morning of our eighth day together, I was more tired than I should have been. I didn’t understand why until I realized that the flesh under my arms itched more than usual, and that it was swollen a little. Just a little.

I was beginning my second metamorphosis. Soon, in the middle of the forest, far from even our temporary home, I would fall into a sleep so deep that TomÁs and Jesusa would not be able to awaken me.

9

“Will you stay with me?” I asked TomÁs and Jesusa as we ate that morning. I had not asked either of them that question since we began to travel together. I had slept in a cocoon of their bodies every night. Perhaps that had helped bring on the change. Oankali ooloi usually made the final change after they had found mates. Mates gave them the security to change. Mates would look after them while they were helpless and be there for them when they awoke. Now, looking at Jesusa and TomÁs, I felt afraid, desperate. They had no idea how much I needed them.

Jesusa looked at TomÁs, and TomÁs spoke.

“I want to stay with you. I don’t really know what that will mean, but I want it. There’s no place else for me. But you want us both, don’t you?”

“Want?” I whispered, and shook my head. “I need you both very much.”

I think that surprised them. Jesusa leaned toward me. “You’ve known Human beings all your life,” she said. “But we’ve never known anyone like you. And

you want me to have children with my brother.”

Ah. “Touch him.”

“What?”

I waited. They had not touched one another since their first night with me. They were not aware of it, but they were avoiding contact.

TomÁs reached out toward Jesusa’s arm. She flinched, then kept still. TomÁs’s hand did not quite reach her. He frowned, then drew back. He turned to face me.

“What is it?”

“Nothing harmful. You can touch her. You won’t enjoy it, but you can do it. If she were drowning, you could save her.”