Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) (23 page)

“You knew that one, didn’t you?”

She looked at Gabriel. “Yes, I knew her.”

“I thought so. Your tone and the way you looked when you talked to her … You relaxed more, seemed almost wistful.”

“She knows I never wanted this job.”

“Was she a friend?”

“As much as it’s possible to be friends with someone of a totally different species.” She gave a humorless laugh. “It’s hard enough for human beings to be friends with each other.”

Yet she did think of Ahajas as a friend—Ahajas, Dichaan, Nikanj … But what was she to them? A tool? A pleasurable perversion? An accepted member of the household? Accepted as what? Round and round. It would have been easier not to care. Down on Earth, it would not matter. The Oankali used her relentlessly for their own purposes, and she worried about what they thought of her.

“How can you be this strong?” Tate demanded. “How can you do all this?”

Lilith rubbed a hand over her face wearily. “The same way I can open walls,” she said. “The Oankali changed me a little. I’m strong. I move fast. I heal fast. And all that is supposed to help me get as many of you as possible through this experience and back on Earth.” She looked around. “Where’s Allison?”

“Here.” The woman stepped forward. She had already cleaned most of the blood from her face and now seemed to be trying to look as though nothing had happened. That was Allison. She would not be seen at anything less than her best for a moment longer than necessary.

Lilith nodded. “Well, I can see you’re all right.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Allison hesitated. “Look, I really am grateful to you no matter what the truth turns out to be, but …”

“But?”

Allison looked down, then seemed to force herself to face Lilith again. “There isn’t any nice way of saying this, but I’ve got to ask. Are you really human?”

Lilith stared at her, tried to raise indignation, but managed only weariness. How many times would she have to answer that question? And why did she bother? Would her words ease anyone’s suspicions?

“This would be so goddamn much easier if I weren’t human,” she said. “Think about it. If I weren’t human, why the hell would I care whether you got raped?”

She turned once more toward her room, then stopped, turned back, remembering. “I’m Awakening ten more people tomorrow. The final ten.”

T
HERE WAS A SHUFFLING
of people. Some avoided Lilith because they were afraid of her—afraid she was not human, or not human enough. Others came to her because they believed that she would win. They did not know what that would mean, but they thought it would be better to be with her than to have her as an enemy.

Her core group, Joseph, Tate and Gabriel, Leah and Wray did not change. Peter’s core group shifted. Victor was added. He was a strong personality and he had been Awake longer than most people. That encouraged a few of the newer people to follow him.

Peter himself was replaced by Curt. Peter’s broken arm kept him quiet, sullen, and usually alone in his room. Curt was brighter and more physically impressive anyway. He would probably have led the group from the first if he had moved a little faster.

Peter’s arm remained broken, swollen, painful and useless for two days. On the night of the second day, he was healed. He slept late, missed breakfast, but when he awoke, his arm was no longer broken—and he was a badly frightened man. He could not simply pass off two days of debilitating pain as illusion or trickery. The bones of his arm had been broken, and badly broken. Everyone who looked at it had seen the displacement, the swelling, the discoloration. Everyone had seen that he could not use his hand.

Now everyone saw a whole arm, undistorted, normal, and a hand that worked easily and well. Peter’s own people looked askance at him.

Following lunch on the day of his healing, Lilith told the people carefully censored stories of her life among the Oankali. Peter did not stay to listen.

“You need to hear these things more than the others do,” she told him later. “The Oankali will be a shock even if you’re prepared. They fixed your arm while you were asleep because they didn’t want you terrified and fighting them while they tried to help you.”

“Tell them how grateful I am,” he muttered.

“They want sanity, not gratitude,” she said. “They want—and I want—you to be bright enough to survive.”

He stared at her with contempt so great that it made his face almost unrecognizable.

She shook her head, spoke softly. “I hurt you because you were trying to hurt another person. No one else has hurt you at all. The Oankali have saved your life. Eventually, they’ll send you back to Earth to make a new life for yourself.” She paused. “A little thought, Pete. A little sanity.”

She got up to leave him. He said nothing to her, only watched her with hatred and contempt. “Now there are forty-three of us,” she said. “The Oankali could show themselves anytime. Don’t do anything that will make them keep you here alone.”

She left him, hoping he would begin to think. Hoping, but not believing.

Five days after Peter’s healing, the evening meal was drugged.

Lilith was not warned. She ate with the others, sitting off to one side with Joseph. She was aware as she ate of growing relaxation, a particular kind of comfort that made her think of—

She sat up straight. What she felt now she had felt before only when she was with Nikanj, when it had established a neural link with her.

And the sweet fog of anticipation dissipated. Her body seemed to shrug it off and she was alert again. Nearby, other people still spoke to one another, laughing a little more than they had before. Laughter had never quite disappeared from the group, though at times it had been rare. There had been more fighting, more bed-hopping and less laughter for the past few days.

Now men and women had begun to hold hands, to sit closer to one another. They slipped arms around one another and sat together probably feeling better than they had since they had been Awakened. It was unlikely that any of them could shake off the feeling the way Lilith had. No ooloi had modified them.

She looked around to see whether the Oankali were coming in yet. There was no sign of them. She turned to Joseph who was sitting next to her frowning.

“Joe?”

He looked at her. The frown smoothed away and he reached for her.

She let him draw her closer, then spoke into his ear. “The Oankali are about to come in. We’ve been drugged.”

He shook off the drug. “I thought …” He rubbed his face. “I thought something was wrong.” He breathed deeply, then looked around. “There,” he said softly.

She followed the direction of his gaze and saw that the wall between the food cabinets was rippling, opening. In at least eight places, Oankali were coming in.

“Oh no,” Joseph said, stiffening, looking away. “Why didn’t you leave me comfortably drugged?”

“Sorry,” she said, and rested her head on his arm. He had had only one brief experience with one Oankali. Whatever happened might be almost as hard on him as it was on the others. “You’re modified,” she said. “I don’t think the drug could have held you once things got interesting.”

More Oankali came through the openings. Lilith counted twenty-eight altogether. Would that be enough to handle forty-three terrified humans when the drug wore off?

People seemed to react to the nonhuman presence in slow motion. Tate and Gabriel stood up together, leaning on each other, staring at the Oankali. An ooloi approached them and they drew back. They were not terrified as they could have been, but they were frightened.

The ooloi spoke to them and Lilith realized it was Kahguyaht.

She stood up, staring at the trio. She could not distinguish individual words in what Kahguyaht was saying, but its tone was not one she would have associated with Kahguyaht. The tone was quiet, calming, oddly compelling. It was a tone Lilith had learned to associate with Nikanj.

Somewhere else in the room, a scuffle broke out. Curt, in spite of the drug, had attacked the ooloi that approached him. All the Oankali present were ooloi.

Peter tried to go to Curt’s aid, but behind him, Jean screamed, and he turned back to help her.

Beatrice fled from her ooloi. She managed to run several steps before it caught her. It wrapped one sensory arm around her and she collapsed unconscious.

Around the room, other people collapsed—all the fighters, all the runners. No form of panic was tolerated.

Tate and Gabriel were still awake. Leah was awake, but Wray was unconscious. An ooloi seemed to be calming her, probably assuring her that Wray was all right.

Jean was still awake in spite of her momentary panic, but Peter was down.

Celene was awake and frozen in place. An ooloi touched her, then jerked away as though in pain. Celene had fainted.

Victor Dominic and Hilary Ballard were awake and together, holding one another, though they had shown no interest in one another until now.

Allison screamed and threw food at her ooloi, then turned and ran. Her ooloi caught her, but kept her conscious, probably because she did not struggle. She went rigid, but seemed to listen as her ooloi spoke soothingly.

Elsewhere in the room, small groups of people, supporting one another, confronted the ooloi without panic. The drug had quieted them just enough. The room was a scene of quiet, strangely gentle chaos.

Lilith watched Kahguyaht with Tate and Gabriel. The ooloi was sitting down now, facing them, talking to them, even giving them time to stare at the way its joints bent and the way its sensory tentacles followed movement. When it moved, it moved very slowly. When it spoke, Lilith could hear none of the hectoring contempt or amused tolerance that she was used to.

“You know that one?” Joseph asked.

“Yes. It’s one of Nikanj’s parents. I never got along with it.”

Across the room, Kahguyaht’s head tentacles swept in her direction for a moment and she knew it had heard. She considered saying more, giving it an earful—figuratively.

But before she could begin, Nikanj arrived. It stood before Joseph and looked at him critically. “You’re doing very well,” it said. “How do you feel?”

“I’m all right.”

“You will be.” It glanced at Tate and Gabriel. “Your friends won’t be, I think. Not both of them, anyway.”

“What? Why not?”

Nikanj rustled its tentacles. “Kahguyaht will try. I warned it, and it admits I have a talent for humans, but it wants them badly. The woman will survive, but the man may not.”

“Why!” Lilith demanded.

“He may choose not to. But Kahguyaht is skillful. Those two humans are the calmest in the room apart from you two.” It focused for a moment on Joseph’s hands, on the fact that he had gouged one with the nails of the other and that the gouged hand was dripping blood onto the floor.

Nikanj shifted its attention, even turning its body away from Joseph. Its instinct was to help, to heal a wound, stop pain. Yet it knew enough to let Joseph go on hurting himself for now.

“What are you doing, foretelling the future?” Joseph asked. His voice was a harsh whisper. “Gabe will kill himself?”

“Indirectly, he might. I hope not. I can’t foretell anything. Maybe Kahguyaht will save him. He’s worth saving. But his past behavior says he will be hard to work with.” It reached out and took Joseph’s hands, apparently unable to stand the gouging any longer.

“You were only given a weak, ooloi-neutral drug in your food,” it told him. “I can help you with something better.”

Joseph tried to pull away, but it ignored his effort. It examined the hand he had injured, then further tranquilized him, all the while talking to him quietly.

“You know I won’t hurt you. You’re not afraid of being hurt or of pain. And your fear of my strangeness will pass eventually. No, be still. Let your body go limp. Let it relax. If your body is relaxed, it will be easier for you to handle your fear. That’s it. Lean back against this wall. I can help you maintain this state without blurring your intellect. You see?”

Joseph turned his head to look at Nikanj, then turned away, his movements slow, almost languid, belying the emotion behind them. Nikanj moved to sit next to him and maintain its hold on him. “Your fear is less than it was,” it said. “And even what you feel now will pass quickly.”

Lilith watched Nikanj work, knowing that it would drug Joseph only lightly—perhaps stimulate the release of his own endorphins and leave him feeling relaxed and slightly high. Nikanj’s words, spoken with quiet assurance, only reinforced new feelings of security and well-being.

Joseph sighed. “I don’t understand why the sight of you should scare me so,” Joseph said. He did not sound frightened. “You don’t look that threatening. Just … very different.”

“Different
is
threatening to most species,” Nikanj answered. “Different is dangerous. It might kill you. That was true to your animal ancestors and your nearest animal relatives. And it’s true for you.” Nikanj smoothed its head tentacles. “It’s safer for your people to overcome the feeling on an individual basis than as members of a large group. That’s why we’ve handled this the way we have.” It looked around at individuals and pairs of humans, each with an ooloi.

Nikanj focused on Lilith. “It would have been easier for you to be handled this way—with drugs, with an adult ooloi.”

“Why wasn’t I?”

“You were being prepared for me, Lilith. Adults believed you would be best paired with me during my subadult stage. Jdahya believed he could bring you to me without drugs, and he was right.”

Lilith shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to go through anything like that again.”

“You won’t. Look at your friend Tate.”

Lilith turned and saw that Tate had extended a hand to Kahguyaht. Gabriel grabbed it and hauled it back, arguing.

Tate said only a few words while Gabriel said many, but after a while, he let her go. Kahguyaht had not moved or spoken. It waited. It let Tate look at it again, perhaps build up her courage again. When she extended her hand again, it seized the hand in a coil of sensory arm in a move that seemed impossibly swift, yet gentle, nonthreatening. The arm moved like a striking cobra, yet there was that strange gentleness. Tate did not even seem startled.