Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) (16 page)

Her family had had money—had owned a very successful real estate business. Part of her problem, the Oankali believed, was that she did not
have
to do anything. She had great energy, but needed some external pressure, some challenge to force her to focus it.

How about the preservation of the human species?

She had attempted suicide twice before the war. After the war, she fought to live. She had been alone, vacationing in Rio de Janeiro when war came. It had not been a good time to be a North American, she felt, but she had survived and managed to help others. She had that in common with Curt Loehr. Under Oankali interrogation, she had engaged in verbal fencing and game playing that eventually exasperated the ooloi questioner. But in the end, the ooloi had admired her. It thought she was more like an ooloi than like a female. She was good at manipulating people—could do it in ways they did not seem to mind. That had bored her too in the past. But boredom had not driven her to do harm to anyone except herself. There had been times when she withdrew from people to protect them from the possible consequences of her own frustration. She had withdrawn from several men this way, occasionally pairing them off with female friends. Couples she brought together tended to marry.

Lilith put Tate Marah’s dossier down slowly, left it by itself on the bed. The only other one that was by itself was Joseph Shing’s. Tate’s dossier fell open, once again displaying the woman’s small, pale, deceptively childlike face. The face was smiling slightly, not as though posing for a picture, but as though sizing up the photographer. In fact, Tate had not known the picture was being made. And the pictures were not photographs. They were paintings, impressions of the inner person as well as the outer physical reality. Each contained print memories of their subjects. Oankali interrogators had painted these pictures with sensory tentacles or sensory arms, using deliberately produced bodily fluids. Lilith knew this, but the pictures looked like, even felt like photos. They had been done on some kind of plastic, not on paper. The pictures looked alive enough to speak. In each one, there was nothing except the head and shoulders of the subject against a gray background. None of them had that blank, wanted-poster look that snapshots could have produced. These pictures had a lot to say even to non-Oankali observers about who their subjects were—or who the Oankali thought they were.

Tate Marah, they thought, was bright, somewhat flexible, and not dangerous except perhaps to the ego.

Lilith left the dossiers, left her private cubicle, and began building another near it.

The walls that would not open to let her out responded to her touch now by growing inward along a line of her sweat or saliva drawn along the floor. Thus the old walls extruded new ones, and the new ones would open or close, advance or retreat as she directed. Nikanj had made very sure she knew how to direct them. And when it finished instructing her, its mates, Dichaan and Ahajas, told her to seal herself in if her people attacked her. They had both spent time interrogating isolated humans and they seemed more worried about her than Nikanj did. They would get her out, they promised. They would not leave her to die for someone else’s miscalculation.

Which was fine if she could spot the trouble and seal herself in in time.

Better to choose the right people, bring them along slowly, and Awaken new ones only when she was sure of the ones already Awake.

She drew two walls to within about eighteen inches of each other. That left a narrow doorway—one that would preserve as much privacy as possible without a door. She also turned one wall inward, forming a tiny entrance hall that concealed the room itself from casual glances. There would be nothing among the people she Awoke to borrow or steal, and anyone who thought now was a good time to play Peeping Tom would have to be disciplined by the group. Lilith might be strong enough now to handle troublemakers herself, but she did not want to do that unless she had to. It would not help the people become a community, and if they could not unite, nothing else they did would matter.

Within the new room, Lilith raised a bed platform, a table platform, and three chair platforms around the table. The table and chairs would be at least a small change from what they were all used to in the Oankali isolation rooms. A more human arrangement.

Creating the room took some time. Afterward Lilith gathered all but eleven of the dossiers and sealed them inside her own table platform. Some of these eleven would be her core group, first Awake, and first to show her just how much of a chance she had to survive and do what was necessary.

Tate Marah first. Another woman. No sexual tension.

Lilith took the picture, went to the long, featureless stretch of wall opposite the rest rooms and stood for a moment, staring at the face.

Once people were Awake, she would have no choice but to live with them. She could not put them to sleep again. And in some ways, Tate Marah would probably be hard to live with.

Lilith rubbed her hand across the surface of the picture, then placed the picture flat against the wall. She began at one end of the wall and walked slowly toward the other, far away, keeping the face of the picture against the wall. She closed her eyes as she moved, remembering that it had been easier when she practiced this with Nikanj if she ignored her other senses as much as possible. All her attention should be focused on the hand that held the picture flat against the wall. Male and female Oankali did this with head tentacles. Oankali did it with their sensory arms. Both did it from memory, without pictures impregnated with prints. Once they read someone’s print or examined someone and took a print, they remembered it, could duplicate it. Lilith would never be able to read prints or duplicate them. That required Oankali organs of perception. Her children would have them, Kahguyaht had said.

She stopped now and then to rub one sweaty hand over the picture, renewing her own chemical signature.

More than halfway down the hall, she began to feel a response, a slight bulging of the surface against the picture, against her hand.

She stopped at once, not certain at first that she had felt anything at all. Then the bulge was unmistakable. She pressed against it lightly, maintaining the contact until the wall began to open beneath the picture. Then she drew back to let the wall disgorge its long, green plant. She went to a space at one end of the great room, opened a wall, and took out a jacket and a pair of pants. These people would probably welcome clothing as eagerly as she had.

The plant lay, writhing slowly, still surrounded by the foul odor that had followed it through the wall. She could not see well enough through its thick, fleshy body to know which end concealed Tate Marah’s head, but that did not matter. She drew her hands along the length of the plant as though unzipping it, and it began to come apart.

There was no possibility this time of the plant trying to swallow her. She would be no more palatable to it now than Nikanj would.

Slowly, the face and body of Tate Marah became visible. Small breasts. Figure like that of a girl who had barely reached puberty. Pale, translucent skin and hair. Child’s face. Yet Tate was twenty-seven.

She would not awaken until she was lifted completely clear of the suspended animation plant. Her body was wet and slippery, but not heavy. Sighing, Lilith lifted her clear.

“G
ET AWAY FROM ME!”
Tate said the moment she opened her eyes. “Who are you? What are you doing?”

“Trying to get you dressed,” Lilith said. “You can do it yourself now—if you’re strong enough.”

Tate was beginning to tremble, beginning to react to being awakened from suspended animation. It was surprising that she had been able to speak her few coherent words before succumbing to the reaction.

Tate made a tight, shuddering fetal knot of her body and lay moaning. She gasped several times, gulping air as she might have gulped water.

“Shit!” she whispered minutes later when the reaction began to wane. “Oh shit. It wasn’t a dream, I see.”

“Finish dressing,” Lilith told her. “You knew it wasn’t a dream.”

Tate looked up at Lilith, then down at her own half naked body. Lilith had managed to get pants on her, but had only gotten one of her arms into the jacket. She had managed to work that arm free as she suffered through the reaction. She picked up the jacket, put it on, and in a moment, had discovered how to close it. Then she turned to watch silently as Lilith closed the plant, opened the wall nearest to it, and pushed the plant through. In seconds the only sign left of it was a rapidly drying spot on the floor.

“And in spite of all that,” Lilith said, facing Tate, “I’m a prisoner just as you are.”

“More like a trustee,” Tate said quietly.

“More like. I have to Awaken at least thirty-nine more people before any of us are allowed out of this room. I chose to start with you.”

“Why?” She was incredibly self-possessed—or seemed to be. She had only been Awakened twice before—average among people not chosen to parent a group—but she behaved almost as though nothing unusual were happening. That was a relief to Lilith, a vindication of her choice of Tate.

“Why did I begin with you?” Lilith said. “You seemed least likely to try to kill me, least likely to fall apart, and most likely to be able to help with the others as they Awaken.”

Tate seemed to think about that. She fiddled with her jacket, reexamining the way the front panels adhered to one another, the way they pulled apart. She felt the material itself, frowning.

“Where the hell are we?” she asked.

“Some distance beyond the orbit of the moon.”

Silence. Then finally, “What was that big green slug-thing you pushed into the wall?”

“A … a plant. Our captors—our rescuers—use them for keeping people in suspended animation. You were in the one you saw. I took you out of it.”

“Suspended animation?”

“For over two hundred and fifty years. The Earth is just about ready to have us back now.”

“We’re going back!”

“Yes.”

Tate looked around at the vast, empty room. “Back to what?”

“Tropical forest. Somewhere in the Amazon basin. There are no more cities. “

“No. I didn’t think there would be.” She drew a deep breath. “When are we fed?”

“I put some food in your room before I Awoke you. Come on.”

Tate followed. “I’m hungry enough to eat even that plaster of Paris garbage they served me when I was Awake before.”

“No more plaster. Fruit, nuts, a kind of stew, bread, something like cheese, coconut milk …”

“Meat? A steak?”

“You can’t have everything.”

Tate was too good to be true. Lilith worried for a moment that at some point she would break—begin to cry or be sick or scream or beat her head against the wall—lose that seemingly easy control. But whatever happened to her, Lilith would try to help. Just these few minutes of apparent normality were worth a great deal of trouble. She was actually speaking with and being understood by another human being—
after so long.

Tate dove into the food, eating until she was satisfied, not wasting time talking. She had not, Lilith thought, asked one very important question. Of course there was a great deal she had not asked, but one thing in particular made Lilith wonder.

“What’s your name, by the way?” Tate asked, finally resting from her eating. She sipped coconut milk tentatively, then drank it all.

“Lilith Iyapo.”

“Lilith. Lil?”

“Lilith, I’ve never had a nickname. Never wanted one. Is there anything apart from your name that you’d like to be called?”

“No. Tate will do. Tate Marah. They told you my name, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. All those damn questions. They kept me Awake and in solitary for … it must have been two or three months. Did they tell you that? Or were you watching?”

“I was either asleep or in solitary myself, but yes, I knew about your confinement. It was three months in all. Mine was just over two years.”

“It took them that long to make a trustee of you, did it?”

Lilith frowned, took a few nuts and ate them. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

For an instant, Tate looked uncomfortable, uncertain. The expression appeared and vanished so quickly that Lilith could have missed it through just a moment’s inattention.

“Well, why should they keep you awake and alone for so long?” Tate demanded.

“I wouldn’t talk to them at first. Then later when I began to talk, apparently a number of them were interested in me. They weren’t trying to make a trustee of me at that point. They were trying to decide whether I was fit to be one. If I had had a vote, I’d still be asleep.”

“Why wouldn’t you talk to them? Were you military?”

“God, no. I just didn’t like the idea of being locked up, questioned, and ordered around by I-didn’t-know-who. And Tate, it’s time you knew who—even though you’ve been careful not to ask.”

She drew a deep breath, rested her forehead on her hand and stared down at the table. “I asked them. They wouldn’t tell me. After a while I got scared and stopped asking.”

“Yeah. I did that too.”

“Are they … Russians?”

“They’re not human.”

Tate did not move, did not say anything for so long that Lilith continued.

“They call themselves Oankali, and they look like sea creatures, though they are bipedal. They … are you taking any of this in?”

“I’m listening.”

Lilith hesitated. “Are you believing?”

Tate looked up at her, seemed to smile a little. “How can I?”

Lilith nodded. “Yeah. But you’ll have to sooner or later, of course, and I’m supposed to do what I can to prepare you. The Oankali are ugly. Grotesque. But we can get used to them, and they won’t hurt us. Remember that. Maybe it will help when the time comes.”

F
OR THREE DAYS, TATE
slept a great deal, ate a great deal, and asked questions that Lilith answered completely honestly. Tate also talked about her life before the war. Lilith saw that it seemed to relax her, ease that shell of emotional control she usually wore. That made it worthwhile. It meant Lilith felt obligated to talk a little about herself—her past before the war—something she would not normally have been inclined to do. She had learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones whose memories might overwhelm her. She had tried to talk to Nikanj about humans in general, only occasionally bringing in personal anecdotes. Her father, her brothers, her sister, her husband and son. … She chose now to talk about her return to college.