Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) (27 page)

The rain ceased eventually. The group walked on until the sun was directly overhead. Then they sat on the wet trunk of a fallen tree, ignoring fungi and brushing away insects. They ate breadnuts and the ripest of the bananas Tate had brought. They drank from the river, having long ago learned to ignore the sediment. It couldn’t be seen in the handfuls of water that they drank, and it was harmless.

There was strangely little conversation. Lilith went aside to relieve herself and when she stepped clear of the tree that had concealed her, every eye was on her. Then abruptly everyone found something else to notice—one another, a tree, a piece of food, their fingernails.

“Oh god,” Lilith muttered. And more loudly: “Let’s talk, people.” She stood before the fallen tree that they either sat or leaned on. “What is it?” she asked. “Are you waiting for me to desert you and go back to the Oankali? Or maybe you think I have some magic way of signaling them from here? What is it you suspect me of?”

Silence.

“What is it, Gabe?”

He met her gaze levelly. “Nothing.” He spread his hands. “We’re nervous. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re scared. You shouldn’t have to take the brunt of our feelings, but … but you’re the different one. Nobody knows how different.”

“She’s here!” Joseph said, moving to stand beside her. “That should tell you how much like us she is. Whatever we risk, she risks it too.”

Allison slid down off the log. “What is it we risk?” she demanded. She spoke directly to Lilith. “What will happen to us?”

“I don’t know. I’ve guessed, but my guesses aren’t worth much.”

“Tell us!”

Lilith looked at the others, saw them all waiting. “I think these are our final tests,” she said. “People leave camp when they feel ready. They live as best they can. If they can sustain themselves here, they can sustain themselves on Earth. That’s why people have been allowed to walk away. That’s why no one chases them.”

“We don’t know that no one chases them,” Gabriel said.

“No one is chasing us.”

“We don’t even know that.”

“When will you let yourself know it?”

He said nothing. He stared upriver with an air of impatience.

“Why did you want me on this trip, Gabe? Why did you personally want me here?”

“I didn’t. I just—”

“Liar.”

He frowned, glared at her. “I just thought you deserved a chance to get away from the Oankali—if you wanted it.”

“You thought I might be useful! You thought you’d eat better and be better able to survive out here. You didn’t think you were doing me a favor, you thought you were doing yourself one. It could work out that way.” She looked around at the others. “But it won’t. Not if everyone’s sitting around waiting for me to play Judas.” She sighed. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Allison said as people were getting up. “You still think we’re on a ship, don’t you?” she asked Lilith.

Lilith nodded. “We are on a ship.”

“Does anyone else here think so?” Allison demanded.

Silence.

“I don’t know where we are,” Leah said. “I don’t see how all this could be part of a ship, but whatever it is, wherever it is, we’re going to explore it and figure it out. We’ll know soon.”

“But she already knows,” Allison insisted. “Lilith
knows
this is a ship no matter what the truth is. So what’s she doing here?”

Lilith opened her mouth to answer but Joseph spoke first. “She’s here because I wanted her here. I want to explore this place as badly as you all do. And I want her with me.”

Lilith wished she had come from behind her tree and pretended not to notice all the eyes and all the silence. All the suspicion.

“Is that it?” Gabriel asked. “You came because Joe asked you to?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Otherwise you would have stayed with the Oankali?”

“I would have stayed at camp. After all, I know I can live out here. If these are final tests, I’ve already passed mine.”

“And what kind of grade did the Oankali give you?” It was probably the most honest question he had ever asked her—filled with hostility, suspicion, and contempt.

“It was a pass-fail course, Gabe. A live-die course.” She turned and began walking upriver, breaking trail. After a while, she heard them following.

U
PRIVER WAS THE OLDEST
part of the island, the part with the greatest number of huge old trees, many with broad buttresses. This land had once been connected to the mainland—had become first a peninsula, then an island as the river changed course and cut through the connecting neck of land. Or that was what was supposed to have happened. That was the Oankali illusion. Or was it an illusion?

Lilith found her moments of doubt coming more often as she walked. She had not been along this bank of the river. Like the Oankali, she had not worried about getting lost. She and Nikanj had walked through the interior several times, and she had found it easier to look up at the green canopy and believe herself within a vast room.

But the river seemed so large. As they followed the bank, the far bank changed, seemed nearer, seemed more heavily forested here, more deeply eroded there, ranged from low bluffs to flat bank that slipped into the river, blending almost seamlessly with its reflection. She could pick out individual trees—treetops anyway. Those that towered above the canopy.

“We should stop for the night,” she said when the sun told her it was late afternoon. “We should make camp here and tomorrow, we should start to build a boat.”

“Have you been here before?” Joseph asked her.

“No. But I’ve been near here. The opposite bank is as close to us as it gets in this area. Let’s see what we can do about shelter. It’s going to rain again.”

“Wait a minute,” Gabriel said.

She looked at him and knew what was coming. She had taken charge out of habit. Now she would hear about it.

“I didn’t invite you along to tell us what to do,” he said. “We’re not in the prison room now. We don’t take orders from you.”

“You brought me along because I had knowledge you didn’t have. What do you want to do? Keep walking until it’s too late to put up a shelter? Sleep in the mud tonight? Find a wider section of river to cross?”

“I want to find the others—if they’re still free.”

Lilith hesitated for a moment in surprise. “And if they’re together.” She sighed. “Is that what the rest of you want?”

“I want to get as far from the Oankali as I can,” Tate said. “I want to forget what it feels like when they touch me.”

Lilith pointed. “If that’s land over there instead of some kind of illusion, then that’s your goal. Your first goal anyway.”

“We find the others first!” Gabriel insisted.

Lilith looked at him with interest. He was in the open now. Probably in his mind he was in some kind of struggle with her. He wanted to lead and she did not—yet she had to. He could easily get someone killed.

“If we build a shelter now,” she said, “I’ll find the others tomorrow if they’re anywhere nearby.” She held up her hand to stop the obvious objection. “One or all of you can come with me and watch if you want to. It’s just that I can’t get lost. If I leave you and you don’t move, I’ll be able to find you again. If we all travel together, I can bring you back to this spot. After all, it’s just possible that some or all of the others have already crossed the river. They’ve had time.”

People were nodding.

“Where do we camp?” Allison asked.

“It’s early,” Leah protested.

“Not to me it isn’t,” Wray said. “Between the mosquitoes and my feet, I’m glad to stop.”

“The mosquitoes will be bad tonight,” Lilith told him. “Sleeping with an ooloi was better than any mosquito repellant. Tonight, they’ll probably eat us alive.”

“I can stand it,” Tate said.

Had she hated Kahguyaht so much? Lilith wondered. Or was she only beginning to miss it and trying to defend herself against her own feelings?

“We can clear here,” she said aloud. “Don’t cut those two saplings. Wait a minute.” She looked to see if either young tree were home to colonies of stinging ants. “Yes, these are all right. Find two more of this size or a little bigger and cut them. And cut aerial roots. Thin ones to use as rope. Be careful. If anything stings or bites you out here … We’re on our own. You could die. And don’t go out of sight of this area. It’s easier to get lost than you think.”

“But you’re so good you can’t get lost,” Gabriel said.

“Good has nothing to do with it. I have an eidetic memory and I’ve had more time to get used to the forest.” She had never told them why she had an eidetic memory. Every Oankali change she had told them about had diminished her credibility with them.

“Too good to be true,” Gabriel said softly.

They chose the highest ground they could find and built a shelter. They believed they would be using it for a few days, at least. The shelter was wall-less—no more than a frame with a roof. They could hang hammocks from it or spread mats beneath it on mattresses of leaves and branches. It was just large enough to keep everyone out of the rain. They roofed it with the tarpaulins some of them had brought. Then they used branches to sweep the ground beneath clean of leaves, twigs and fungi.

Wray managed to get a fire going with a bow Leah had brought along, but he swore he would never do it again. “Too much work,” he said.

Leah had brought corn from the garden. It was dark when they roasted it along with some of Lilith’s yams. They ate these along with the last of the breadnuts. The meal was filling, though not satisfying.

“Tomorrow we can fish,” Lilith told them.

“Without even a safety pin, a string, and a stick?” Wray said.

Lilith smiled. “Worse than that. The Oankali wouldn’t teach me how to kill anything, so the only fish I caught were the ones stranded in some of the little streams. I cut a slender, straight sapling pole, sharpened one end, hardened it in the fire, and taught myself to spear fish. I actually did it—speared several of them.”

“Ever try it with bow and arrow?” Wray asked.

“Yes. I was better with the spear.”

“I’ll try it,” he said. “Or maybe I can even put together a jungle version of a safety pin and string. Tomorrow, while the rest of you look for the others, I’ll start learning to fish.”

“
We’ll
fish,” Leah said.

He smiled and took her hand—then let it go in almost the same motion. His smile faded and he stared into the fire. Leah looked away into the darkness of the forest.

Lilith watched them, frowning. What was going on? Was it just trouble between them—or was it something else?

It began to rain suddenly, and they sat dry and united by the darkness and the noise outside. The rain poured down and the insects took shelter with them, biting them and sometimes flying into the fire which had been built up again for light and comfort once the cooking was done.

Lilith tied her hammock to two crossbeams and lay down. Joseph hung his hammock near her—too near for a third person to lie between them. But he did not touch her. There was no privacy. She did not expect to make love. But she was bothered by the care he took not to touch her. She reached out and touched his face to make him turn toward her.

Instead, he drew away. Worse, if he had not drawn away, she would have. His flesh felt wrong somehow, oddly repellant. It had not been this way when he came to her before Nikanj moved in between them. Joseph’s touch had been more than welcome. He had been water after a very long drought. But then Nikanj had come to stay. It had created for them the powerful threefold unity that was one of the most alien features of Oankali life. Had that unity now become a necessary feature of their human lives? If it had, what could they do? Would the effect wear off?

An ooloi needed a male and female pair to be able to play its part in reproduction, but it neither needed nor wanted two-way contact between that male and female. Oankali males and females never touched each other sexually. That worked fine for them. It could not possibly work for human beings.

She reached out and took Joseph’s hand. He tried to jerk away reflexively, then he seemed to realize something was wrong. He held her hand for a long, increasingly uncomfortable moment. Finally it was she who drew away, shuddering with revulsion and relief.

T
HE NEXT MORNING JUST
after dawn, Curt and his people found the shelter.

Lilith started awake, knowing that something was not right. She sat up awkwardly in the hammock and put her feet on the ground. Near Joseph, she saw Victor and Gregory. She turned toward them, relieved. Now there would be no need to look for the others. They could all get busy building the boat or raft they would need to cross the river. Everyone would find out for certain whether the other side was forest or illusion.

She looked around to see who else had arrived. That was when she saw Curt.

An instant later, Curt hit her across the side of the head with the flat of his machete.

She dropped to the ground, stunned. Nearby, she heard Joseph shout her name. There was the sound of more blows.

She heard Gabriel swearing, heard Allison scream.

She tried desperately to get up, and someone hit her again. This time she lost consciousness.

Lilith awoke to pain and solitude. She was alone in the small shelter she had helped build.

She got up, ignoring her aching head as best she could. It would stop soon.

Where was everyone?

Where was Joseph? He would not have deserted her even if the others did.

Had he been taken away by force? If so, why? Had he been injured and left as she had been?

She stepped out of the shelter and looked around. There was no one. Nothing.

She looked for some sign of where they had gone. She knew nothing in particular about tracking, but the muddy ground did show marks of human feet. She followed them away from the camp. Eventually, she lost them.

She stared ahead, trying to guess which way they had gone and wondering what she would do if she found them. At this point, all she really wanted to do was see that Joseph was all right. If he had seen Curt hit her, he would surely have tried to intervene.