Imago

Nikanj, on the other hand, meant what it said. Its body and its mouth said the same things. It believed that I should want to be what I was. But

“Ooan, could I change if I wanted to?”

It smoothed its head and body tentacles flat against its skin, accepting my curiosity with amusement. “Not now. But when you’re mature, you’ll be able to cause yourself to look male. You wouldn’t be satisfied with a male sexual role, though, and you wouldn’t be able to make a male contribution to reproduction.”

I tried to move, tried to reach toward it, but I was still too weak. Talking was exhausting, most other movement was impossible. My head tentacles swept toward it.

It moved closer and let me touch it, let me examine its flesh so that I could begin to understand the difference between its flesh and my own. I would be the most extreme version of a construct—not just a mix of Human and Oankali characteristics, but able to use my body in ways that neither Human nor Oankali could. Synergy.

I studied a single cell of Nikanj’s arm, comparing it with cells of my own. Apart from my Human admixture, the main difference seemed to be that certain genes of mine had activated and caused my metamorphosis. I wondered what might happen if these genes activated in Nikanj. It was mature. Were there other changes it might undergo?

“Stop,” Nikanj said quietly. It signaled silently and spoke aloud. Its silent signal felt urgent. What was I doing?

“Look what you’ve done.” Now it spoke only silently.

I reexamined the cell I had touched and realized that somehow I had located and activated the genes I had been curious about. These genes were trying to activate others of their kind in other cells, trying to cause Nikanj’s body to begin the secretion of inappropriate hormones that would cause inappropriate growth.

What would grow?

“Nothing would grow in me,” Nikanj said, and I realized it had perceived my curiosity. “The cell will die. You see?”

The cell died as I watched.

“I could have kept it alive,” Nikanj said. “By a conscious act, I could have prevented my body from rejecting it. Without you, though, I could not have activated the dormant genes. My body rejects that kind of behavior as

deeply self-destructive.”

“But it didn’t seem wrong or dangerous,” I said. “It just felt

out of place.”

“Out of place, out of its time. In a Human, that could be enough to kill.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. My curiosity burned away in fear.

“When you touch them, never withdraw without checking to see whether you’ve done harm.”

“I won’t touch them at all.”

“You won’t be able to resist them.”

It didn’t doubt or guess or suspect. It knew. “What shall I do?” I whispered aloud. It couldn’t be wrong about such things. It had lived too long, seen too much.

“For now you can only be careful. After your second metamorphosis, you’ll mate and you won’t be quite so interested in investigating people who aren’t your mates.”

“But that could be two or three years from now.”

“Less, I think. Your body feels as though it will develop quickly now. Until it has, you know how careful you’ll have to be.”

“I don’t know whether I can do it. To be so careful of every touch

”

“Only deep touches.” Touches that penetrated flesh with sensory tentacles or, later, sensory arms. Only Humans could be satisfied with less than deep touches.

“I don’t see how I can be that careful,” I said. “But I have to.”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

It touched my head tentacles with several of its own, agreeing. Then it examined the rest of my body closely, again checking for dangerous flaws, gathering information for the people. I relaxed and let it work, and it said instantly, “No!”

“What?” I asked. I really hadn’t done anything this time. I knew I hadn’t.

“Until you know yourself a great deal better, you can’t afford to relax that way while you’re in contact with another person. Not even with me. You’re too competent, too well able to make tiny, potentially deadly changes in genes, in cells, in organs. What males, females, and even some ooloi must struggle to perceive, you can’t fail to perceive on one level or another. What they must be taught to do, what they must strain to do, you can do almost without thought. You have all the sensitivity I could give you, and that’s a great deal. And you have the latent abilities of your Human ancestors. In you, those abilities are no longer latent. That’s why you were able to activate genes in me that even I can’t reawaken. That’s why the Humans are such treasure. They’ve given us regenerative abilities we had never been able to trade for before, even though we’ve found other species that had such abilities. I’m here because a Human was able to share such ability with me.”

It meant Lilith, my birth mother. Every child in the family had heard that story. One of Nikanj’s sensory arms had been all but severed from its body, but Lilith allowed it to link into her body and activate certain of her highly specialized genes. It used what it learned from these to encourage its own cells to grow and reattach the complex structures of the arm. It could not have done this without the triggering effect of Lilith’s genetic help.

Lilith’s ability had run in her family, although neither she nor her ancestors had been able to control it. It had either lain dormant in them or come to life in insane, haphazard fashion and caused the growth of useless new tissue. New tissue gone obscenely wrong.

Humans called this condition cancer. To them, it was a hated disease. To the Oankali, it was treasure. It was beauty beyond Human comprehension.

Nikanj might have died without Lilith’s help. If it had lived, maimed, it could not have functioned as an ooloi. Its mates would have had to find another ooloi. They were young then. They might have survived the break and managed to accept someone else. But then we wouldn’t exist—we, the children Nikanj had constructed gene by gene, chromosome by chromosome. A different ooloi would have chosen a different mix, would have manufactured a different series of genes to patch the created whole together and make it viable. All our construct uniqueness was the work of our ooloi parent. Until Nikanj’s mistake with me, it had been known for the beauty of its children. It had shared all that it knew about mixing construct children, and it had probably saved other people from pain, trouble, and deadly error. It had been able to do all this because, thanks to Lilith, it had two functioning sensory arms.

“You could give Humans back their cancers,” it said, rousing me from my thoughts. “Or you could affect them genetically. You could damage their immune systems, cause neurological disorders, glandular problems

. You could give them diseases they don’t have names for. You could do all that with just a moment’s inattention.” It paused, wholly focused on me. “Humans will attract you and seduce you without realizing what they’re doing. But they’ll have no defense against you. And you’re probably as sexually precocious as any Human-born construct.”

“I don’t have sensory arms,” I said. “What can I do sexually until they grow?” I had nothing between my legs anymore. No one could see me naked and mistake me for male—or female. I was an ooloi subadult, and I would be one for years—or perhaps only for months if Nikanj was right about the speed of my maturing.

“You’ll be able to take pleasure in new sensation,” Nikanj said. “Especially in the complex, frightening, promising taste of Humans. I didn’t enjoy them often when I was subadult because I could give little in return. I tasted Lilith when I could heal her or make necessary changes. But I couldn’t give pleasure until I was adult. You may be able to give it now with sensory tentacles.”

I drew my sensory tentacles tight against me, wondering. There had been that Human couple I met just before I fell asleep months ago. They were on their way to Mars by now. But what would they have tasted like? The female might have let me find out. But the male