Imago

It found only aged, hostile, infertile resisters who had nothing to offer it except bullets and arrows.

It changed radically: grew fur again, lost it, developed scales, lost them, developed something very like tree bark, lost that, then changed completely, lost its limbs, and went into a tributary of our river.

When it realized it could not force itself back to a Human or Oankali form, could not even become a creature of the land again, it swam home. It swam in the river near our cabin for three days before anyone realized what it was. Even its scent had changed.

I was awake, but not yet strong enough to get up. My sensory arms were fully developed, but I had not yet used them. By the time Oni and Hozh found Aaor in the river, I was just learning to coordinate them as lifting and handling limbs.

Hozh showed me what Aaor had become—a kind of near mollusk, something that had no bones left. Its sensory tentacles were intact, but it no longer had eyes or other Human sensory organs. Its skin, very smooth, was protected by a coating of slime. It could not speak or breathe air or make any sound at all. It had attracted Hozh’s attention by crawling up the bank and forcing part of its body out of the water. Very difficult. Painful. Its altered flesh was very sensitive to sunlight.

“I would never have recognized it if I hadn’t touched it,” Hozh told me. “It didn’t even smell the same. In fact, it hardly smelled at all.”

“I don’t understand that,” I said. “It isn’t an adult yet. How can it change its scent?”

“Suppressed. It suppressed its scent. I don’t think it intended to.”

“It doesn’t sound as though it intended to become what it has in any way. When it can be brought to the house, tell Ooan to bring it to me.”

“Ooan has taken it back into the water to help it change back. Ooan says it almost lost itself. It was becoming more and more what it appeared to be.”

“Hozh, are Jesusa and TomÁs around the house?”

“They’re at the river. Everyone is.”

“Ask them to come to me.”

“Can you help Aaor?”

“I think so.”

It went away. A short time later Jesusa and TomÁs came to me and sat on either side of me. I thought about sitting up to say what I had to say to them, but that would have been exhausting, and there were other things I wanted to do with the energy I had.

“You saw Aaor?” I asked them.

TomÁs nodded. Jesusa shuddered and said, “It was a

a great slug.”

“I think we can help it,” I said. “I wish it had come to me before it went away. I think we could have helped it even then.”

“We?” TomÁs said.

“One of you on one side of me and Aaor on the other. I think I can bring you and it together enough to satisfy it. I think I can do that with no discomfort to you.” I touched each of them with a sensory arm. “In fact, I hope I can arrange things so that you enjoy it.”

TomÁs examined my left sensory arm, his touch bringing it to life as nothing else could. “So you’ll give Aaor a little pleasure,” he said. “What good will that do?”

“Aaor wants Human mates. It must have mates of some kind. Until it can get them, will you share what we have with it?”

Jesusa took my right sensory arm and simply held it. “I couldn’t touch Aaor,” she said.

“No need. I’ll touch it. You touch me.”

“Will it be changed back to what it was? Will Nikanj finish changing it before it brings it to us?”

“It will not be a limbless slug when it’s brought to us. But it won’t be what it was when it left us either. Nikanj will make it a land creature again. That will take days. Nikanj won’t even bring it out of the river until it has developed bones again and can support itself. By the time it’s able to come to us, we’ll be ready for it.”

Jesusa let go of my sensory arm. “I don’t know whether I can be ready for it. You didn’t see it, Jodahs. You don’t know how it looked.”

“Hozh showed me. Very bad, I know. But it’s my paired sibling. It’s also the only other being in existence that’s like me. I don’t know what will happen to it if I don’t help it.”

“But Nikanj could—”

“Nikanj is our parent. It will do all it can. It did all it could for me.” I paused, watching her. “Jesusa, do you understand that what happened to Aaor is what was in the process of happening to me when you found me?”

TomÁs moved against me slightly. “You were still in control of yourself,” he said. “You were even able to help us.”

“I never stayed away from home as long as Aaor has. As it was, I don’t think I would have gotten back without you. I would have gone into the water or into the ground for my second metamorphosis. Our changes don’t go well when we’re alone. I don’t know what I would have become.”

“You think Aaor is in its second metamorphosis?” Jesusa asked.

“Probably.”

“No one said so.”

“They would have if you’d asked them. To them it was obvious. Once we get Aaor stabilized, it can finish its change in here. I’ll be up soon.”

“Where will we sleep?” Jesusa asked.

With me! I thought instantly. But I said, “In the main room. We can build a partition if you like.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ll have to go on spending some of our time with Aaor. If we don’t, its change will go wrong again.”

“Oh, god,” Jesusa whispered.

“Have the two of you eaten recently?”

“Yes,” TomÁs said. “We were having dinner with your Human parents when Oni and Hozh found Aaor.”

“Good.” They could share their meal with me and save me the trouble of eating. “Lie down with me.”

They did that willingly enough. Jesusa cringed a little when for the first time I looped a sensory arm around her neck. When she was still, I settled into her with every sensory tentacle on her side of my body. I could not let her move again for a while.

Then with relief that was beyond anything I had ever felt with her, I extended my sensory hand, grasped the back of her neck with it, and sank filaments of it bloodlessly into her flesh.

For the first time, I injected—could not avoid injecting—my own adult ooloi substance into her.

By the neural messages I intercepted, I knew she would have convulsed if she had been able to move at all. She did shout, and for an instant I was distracted by the abrupt adrenaline scent of TomÁs’s alarm.

With my free sensory arm, I touched the skin of his face. “She’s all right,” I made myself say. “Wait.”

Perhaps he believed me. Perhaps the expression on Jesusa’s face reassured him. Whatever the reason, he grew calm and I focused completely on Jesusa. I should have gone into both of them at once, but this first time as an adult, I wanted to savor their individual essences separately.

Adult awareness felt sharper to me, finer and different in some way I had not yet defined. The smell-taste-feel of Jesusa, the rhythm of her heartbeat, the rush of her blood, the texture of her flesh, the easy, right, life-sustaining working of her organs, her cells, the smallest organelles within her cells—all this was a vast, infinitely absorbing complexity. The genetic error that had caused her and her people so much misery was as obvious to me as a single cloud in an otherwise clear sky. I was tempted to begin now to make repairs. Her body cells would be easy to alter, though the alteration would take time. The sex cells, though, the ova, would have to be replaced. Both her parents had the disorder and about three quarters of her own ova were defective. I would have to cause parts of her body to function as they had not since before her birth. Best to save that kind of work until later. Best simply to enjoy Jesusa now—the complex harmonies of her, the built-in danger of her genetically inevitable Human conflict: intelligence versus hierarchical behavior. There was a time when that conflict or contradiction—it was called both—frightened some Oankali so badly that they withdrew from contact with Humans. They became Akjai—people who would eventually leave the vicinity of Earth without mixing with Humans.