Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) (29 page)

Things happened almost too quickly to follow. Tate and the few other humans who seemed to want nothing more than to get clear found themselves caught in the middle. Wray and Leah, half supporting one another, stumbled out of the fighting between a pair of ooloi who seemed about to be slashed by three machete-wielding humans. Lilith realized suddenly that Leah was bleeding, and she ran to help get her away from the danger.

The humans shouted. The ooloi did not make a sound. Lilith saw Gabriel swing at Nikanj, narrowly missing it, saw him raise his ax again for what was clearly intended to be a death blow. Then Kahguyaht drugged him from behind.

Gabriel made a small gasp of sound—as though there were not enough strength in him to force out a scream. He collapsed.

Tate screamed, grabbed him, and tried to drag him clear of the fighting. She had dropped her machete, was clearly no threat.

Curt had not dropped his ax. It gave him a long, deadly reach. He swung it like a hatchet, controlling it easily in spite of its weight, and no ooloi risked being hit by it.

Elsewhere a man did manage to swing his ax through part of an ooloi’s chest, leaving a gaping wound. When the ooloi fell, the man closed in for the kill, aided by a woman with a machete.

A second ooloi stung them both from behind. As they fell, the injured ooloi got up. In spite of the cut it had taken, it walked over to where Lilith’s group waited. It sat down heavily on the ground.

Lilith looked at Allison, Wray, and Leah. They stared at the ooloi, but made no move toward it. Lilith went to it, noticing that it focused on her sharply in spite of its wound. She suspected the wound would not have stopped it from stinging her to unconsciousness or death if it felt threatened.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked. Its wound was just about where its heart would have been if it had been human. It was oozing thick clear fluid and blood so bright red that it seemed false. Movie blood. Poster-paint blood. Such a terrible wound should have been awash in bodily fluids, but the ooloi seemed to be losing very little.

“I’ll heal,” it said in its disconcertingly calm voice. “This isn’t serious.” It paused. “I never believed they would try to kill us. I never knew how hard it would be not to kill them.”

“You should have known,” Lilith said. “You’ve had plenty of time to study us. What did you think would happen when you told us you were going to extinguish us as a species by tampering genetically with our children?”

The ooloi focused on her again. “If you had used a weapon, you could probably have killed at least one of us. These others couldn’t, but you could.”

“I don’t want to kill you. I want to get away from you. You know that.”

“I know you think that.”

It turned its attention from her and began doing something to its wound with its sensory arms.

“Lilith!” Allison called.

Lilith looked back at her, then looked where she was pointing.

Nikanj was down, writhing on the ground as no ooloi had so far. Kahguyaht abruptly stopped fencing with Curt, lunged under his ax, hit him, and drugged him. Curt was the last human to go down. Tate was still conscious, still holding Gabriel, who was unconscious from Kahguyaht’s sting. Some distance away, Victor was conscious, weaponless, making his way to the injured ooloi near Lilith—Victor’s ooloi, she realized.

Lilith did not care how the two would meet. They could both take care of themselves. She ran toward Nikanj, avoiding the sensory arms of another ooloi who might have stung her.

Kahguyaht was already kneeling beside Nikanj, speaking to it low-voiced. It fell silent as she knelt on Nikanj’s opposite side. She saw Nikanj’s wound at once. Its left sensory arm had been hacked almost off. The arm seemed to be hanging by little more than a length of tough gray skin. Clear fluid and blood spurted from the wound.

“My god!” Lilith said. “Can it … can it heal?”

“Perhaps,” Kahguyaht answered in its insanely calm voice. She hated their voices. “But you must help it.”

“Yes, of course, I’ll help. What shall I do?”

“Lie beside it. Hold it and hold the sensory arm in place so that it can reattach—if it will.”

“Reattach?”

“Get your clothing off. It may be too weak to burrow through clothing.”

Lilith stripped, refusing to think how she would look to the humans still conscious. They would be certain now that she was a traitor. Stripping naked on the battlefield to lie down with the enemy. Even the few who had accepted her might turn on her now. But she had just lost Joseph. She could not lose Nikanj too. She could not simply watch it die.

She lay down beside it and it strained toward her silently. She looked up for more instructions from Kahguyaht, but Kahguyaht had gone away to examine Gabriel. Nothing important going on for it here. Only its child, horribly wounded.

Nikanj penetrated her body with every head and body tentacle that could reach her, and for once it felt the way she had always imagined it should. It hurt! It was like abruptly being used as a pincushion. She gasped, but managed not to pull away. The pain was endurable, was probably nothing to what Nikanj was feeling—however it experienced pain.

She reached twice for the nearly severed sensory arm before she could make herself touch it. It was covered with slimy bodily fluids and white, blue-gray, and red-gray tissues hung from it.

She grasped it as best she could and pressed it to the stump it had been hacked from.

But surely more was necessary than this. Surely the heavy, complex, muscular organ could not reattach itself with no aid but the pressure of a human hand.

“Breathe deeply,” Nikanj said, hoarsely. “Keep breathing deeply. Use both hands to hold my arm.”

“You’re plugged into my left arm,” she gasped.

Nikanj made a harsh, ugly sound. “I have no control. I’ll have to let you go completely, then begin again. If I can.”

Several seconds later, tens of dozens of “needles” were withdrawn from Lilith’s body. She rearranged Nikanj as gently as she could so that its head was on her shoulder and she could reach the nearly severed limb with both hands. She could support it and hold it where it belonged. She could rest one of her own arms on the ground and the other across Nikanj’s body. This was a position she could hold for a while as long as no one disturbed her.

“All right,” she said, bracing for the pincushion effect again.

Nikanj did nothing.

“Nikanj!” she whispered, frightened.

It stirred, then penetrated her flesh so abruptly in so many places—and so painfully—that she cried out. But she managed not to move beyond an initial reflexive jerk.

“Breathe deeply,” it said. “I … I’ll try not to hurt you anymore.”

“It’s not that bad. I just don’t see how this can help you.”

“Your body can help me. Keep breathing deeply.”

It said nothing more, made no sound of its own pain. She lay with it, eyes closed most of the time, and let the time pass, let herself lose track of it. From time to time, hands touched her. The first time she felt them, she looked to see what they were doing and realized that they were Oankali hands, brushing insects from her body.

Much later when she had lost track of time she was surprised to open her eyes to darkness; she felt someone lift her head and slip something under it.

Someone had covered her body with cloth. Spare clothing? And someone had wedged cloth under the parts of her body that seemed to need easing.

She heard talking, listened for human voices, and could not distinguish any. Parts of her body went numb, then underwent their own painful reawakening with no effort on her part. Her arms ached, then were eased, though she never changed position. Someone put water to her lips and she drank between gasps.

She could hear her own breathing. No one had to remind her to breathe deeply. Her body demanded it. She had begun breathing through her mouth. Whoever was looking after her noticed this and gave her water more often. Small amounts to wet her mouth. The water made her wonder what would happen if she had to go to the bathroom, but the problem never occurred.

Bits of food were put into her mouth. She did not know what it was, could not taste it, but it seemed to strengthen her.

At some point she recognized Ahajas, Nikanj’s female mate as the owner of the hands that gave her food and water. She was confused at first and wondered whether she had been moved out of the forest and back to the quarters the family shared. But when it was light, she could still see the forest canopy—real trees burdened with epiphytes and lianas. A rounded termite nest the size of a basketball hung from a branch just above her. Nothing like that existed in the orderly, self-manicured Oankali living areas.

She drifted away again. Later she realized she was not always conscious. Yet she never felt as though she had slept. And she never let go of Nikanj. She could not let go of it. It had frozen her hands, her muscles into position as a kind of living cast to hold it while it healed.

At times her heart beat fast, thundering in her ears as though she had been running hard.

Dichaan took over the task of giving her food and water and protecting her from insects. He kept flattening his head and body tentacles when he looked at Nikanj’s wound. Lilith managed to look at it to see what was pleasing him.

There first seemed nothing to be pleased about. The wound oozed fluids that turned black and stank. Lilith was afraid that some kind of infection had set in, but she could do nothing. At least none of the local insects seemed attracted to it—and none of the local microorganisms, probably. More likely Nikanj had brought whatever caused its infection into the training room with it.

The infection seemed to heal eventually, though clear fluid continued to leak from the wound. Not until it stopped completely did Nikanj let her go.

She began to rouse slowly, began to realize that she had not been fully conscious for a long time. It was as though she were Awakening again from suspended animation, this time without pain. Muscles that should have screamed when she moved after lying still for so long made no protest at all.

She moved slowly, straightening her arms, stretching her legs, arching her back against the ground. But something was missing.

She looked around, suddenly alarmed, and found Nikanj sitting beside her, focusing on her.

“You’re all right,” it said in its normal neutral voice. “You’ll feel a little unsteady at first, but you’re all right.”

She looked at its left sensory arm. The healing was not yet complete. There was still visible what looked like a bad cut—as though someone had slashed at the arm and managed only a flesh wound.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

It moved the arm easily, normally, used it to stroke her face in an acquired human gesture.

She smiled, sat up, steadied herself for a moment, then stood up and looked around. There were no humans in sight, no Oankali except Nikanj, Ahajas, and Dichaan. Dichaan handed her a jacket and a pair of pants, both clean. Cleaner than she was. She took the clothing, and put it on reluctantly. She was not as dirty as she thought she should have been, but she still wanted to wash.

“Where are the others?” she asked. “Is everyone all right?”

“The humans are back at the settlement,” Dichaan said. “They’ll be sent to Earth soon. They’ve been shown the walls here. They know they’re still aboard the ship.”

“You should have shown them the walls on their first day here.”

“We will do that next time. That was one of the things we had to learn from this group.”

“Better yet, prove to them they’re in a ship as soon as they’re Awakened,” she said. “Illusion doesn’t comfort them for long. It just confuses them, helps them make dangerous mistakes. I had begun to wonder myself where we really were.”

Silence. Stubborn silence.

She looked at Nikanj’s still-healing sensory arm. “Listen to me,” she said. “Let me help you learn about us, or there’ll be more injuries, more deaths.”

“Will you walk through the forest,” Nikanj asked, “or shall we go the shorter way beneath the training room?”

She sighed. She was Cassandra, warning and predicting to people who went deaf whenever she began to warn and predict. “Let’s walk through the forest,” she said.

It stood still, keenly focused on her.

“What?” she asked.

It looped its injured sensory arm around her neck. “No one has ever done what we did here. No one has ever healed a wound as serious as mine so quickly or so completely.”

“There was no reason for you to die or be maimed,” she said. “I couldn’t help Joseph. I’m glad I could help you—even though I don’t have any idea how I did it.”

Nikanj focused on Ahajas and Dichaan. “Joseph’s body?” it said softly.

“Frozen,” Dichaan said. “Waiting to be sent to Earth.”

Nikanj rubbed the back of her neck with the cool, hard tip of its sensory arm. “I thought I had protected him enough,” it said. “It should have been enough.”

“Is Curt still with the others?”

“He’s asleep.”

“Suspended animation?”

“Yes.”

“And he’ll stay here? He’ll never get to Earth?”

“Never.”

She nodded. “That isn’t enough, but it’s better than nothing.”

“He has a talent like yours,” Ahajas said. “The ooloi will use him to study and explore the talent.”

“Talent … ?”

“You can’t control it,” Nikanj said, “but we can. Your body knows how to cause some of its cells to revert to an embryonic stage. It can awaken genes that most humans never use after birth. We have comparable genes that go dormant after metamorphosis. Your body showed mine how to awaken them, how to stimulate growth of cells that would not normally regenerate. The lesson was complex and painful, but very much worth learning.”

“You mean …” She frowned. You mean my family problem with cancer, don’t you?”

“It isn’t a problem anymore,” Nikanj said, smoothing its body tentacles. “It’s a gift. It has given me my life back.”

“Would you have died?”

Silence.

After a while, Ahajas said, “It would have left us. It would have become Toaht or Akjai and left Earth.”