Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) (37 page)

She moved closer to him, rested warm, calloused hands on his forearms. He could smell her. Crushed plants—the way a fresh-cut lawn used to smell. Food, pepper and sweet. Woman. He reached out to her, touched the large breasts. He could not help himself. He had wanted to touch them since he had first seen them. She lay down on her side, drawing him down facing her. It occurred to him a moment later that Nikanj was behind him. That she had deliberately positioned him so that Nikanj would be behind him.

He sat up abruptly, turned to look at the ooloi. It had not moved. It gave no sign that it was even alive.

“Lie here with me for a while,” she said.

“But—”

“We’ll go to Nikanj in a little while. Won’t we.”

“I don’t know.” He lay down again, now glad to keep his back to it. “I still don’t understand what it does. I mean, so it gives me good dreams. How? And what else will it do? Will it use me to make you pregnant?”

“Not now. Akin is too young. It … might collect some sperm from you. You won’t be aware of it. When they have the chance, they stimulate a woman to ovulate several eggs. They collect the eggs, store them, collect sperm, store it. They can keep sperm and eggs viable and separate in their bodies for decades. Akin is the child of a man who died nearly thirty years ago.”

“I heard there was a time limit—that they could only keep sperm and eggs alive for a few months.”

“Progress. Before I left the ship, someone came up with a new method of preservation. Nikanj was one of the first to learn it.”

Tino looked at her closely, searched her smooth, broad face. “So you’re what? In your fifties?”

“Fifty-five.”

He sighed, shook his head against the arm he had rested it on. “You look younger than I do. I’ve at least got a few gray hairs. I remember I used to worry that I really was the Human the Oankali had failed with, fertile and aging normally, and that all I’d really get out of it was old.”

“Nikanj wouldn’t have failed with you.”

She was so close to him that he couldn’t help touching her, moving his fingers over the fine skin. He drew back, though, when she mentioned the ooloi’s name.

“Can’t it go?” he whispered. “Just for a while.”

“It chooses not to,” she said in a normal voice. “And don’t bother whispering. It can hear your heartbeat from where it’s sitting. It can hear your subvocalizations—the things you … say to yourself in words but not quite out loud. That may be why you thought it could read minds. And it obviously will not go away.”

“Can we?”

“No.” She hesitated. “It isn’t Human, Tino. This isn’t like having another man or woman in the room.”

“It’s worse.”

She smiled wearily, leaned over him, and kissed him. Then she sat up. “I understand,” she said. “I felt the way you do once. Maybe it’s just as well.” She hugged herself and looked at him almost angrily. Frustration? How long had it been for her? Well, the damned ooloi could not
always
be there.
Why
wouldn’t it go away, wait its turn? Failing that, why was he so shy of it? Its presence did bother him more than another Human’s would have. Much more.

“We’ll join Nikanj, Tino, once I’ve told you one more thing,” she said. “That is, we’ll join it if you decide you still want anything to do with me.”

“With you? But it wasn’t you I was having trouble with. I mean—”

“I know. This is something else—something I’d rather never mention to you. But if I don’t, someone else will.” She drew a deep breath. “Didn’t you wonder about me? About my name?”

“I thought you should have changed it. It isn’t a very popular name.”

“I know. And changing it wouldn’t do much good. Too many people know me. I’m not just someone stuck with an unpopular name, Tino. I’m the one who made it unpopular. I’m Lilith Iyapo.”

He frowned, began to shake his head, then stopped. “You’re not the one who … who …”

“I awakened the first three groups of Humans to be sent back to Earth. I told them what their situation was, what their options were, and they decided I was responsible for it all. I helped teach them to live in the forest, and they decided it was my fault they had to give up civilized life. Sort of like blaming me for the goddamn war! Anyway, they decided I had betrayed them to the Oankali, and the nicest thing some of them called me was Judas. Is that the way you were taught to think of me?”

“I … Yes.”

She shook her head. “The Oankali either seduced them or terrified them, or both. I, on the other hand, was nobody. It was easy for them to blame me. And it was safe.

“So now and then when we get ex-resisters traveling through Lo and they hear my name, they assume I have horns. Some of the younger ones have been taught to blame me for everything—as though I were a second Satan or Satan’s wife or some such idiocy. Now and then one of them will try to kill me. That’s one of the reasons I’m so touchy about weapons here.”

He stared at her for a while. He had watched her closely as she spoke, trying to see guilt in her, trying to see the devil in her. In Phoenix, people had said things like that—that she was possessed of the devil, that she had sold first herself, then Humanity, that she was the first to go willingly to an Oankali bed to become their whore and to seduce other Humans …

“What do your people say about me?” she asked.

He hesitated, glanced at Nikanj. “That you sold us.”

“For what currency?”

There had always been some debate about that. “For the right to stay on the ship and for … powers. They saw you were born Human, but the Oankali made you like a construct.”

She made a sound that she may have intended as a laugh. “I begged to go to Earth with the first group I awakened. I was supposed to have gone. But when the time came, Nika wouldn’t let me. It said the people would kill me once they got me away from the Oankali. They probably would have. And they would have felt virtuous and avenged.”

“But … you are different. You’re very strong, fast …”

“Yes. That wasn’t the Oankali way of paying me off. It was their way of giving me some protection. If they hadn’t changed me a little, someone in the first group would have killed me while I was still awakening people. I’m somewhere between Human and construct in ability. I’m stronger and faster than most Humans, but not as strong or as fast as most constructs. I heal faster than you could, and I’d recover from wounds that would kill you. And of course I can control walls and raise platforms here in Lo. All Humans who settle here are given that ability. That’s all. Nikanj changed me to save my life, and it succeeded. Instead of killing me, the first group I awakened killed Akin’s father, the man I had paired with … might still be with. One of them killed him. The others watched, then went on following that one.”

There was a long silence. Finally Tino said, “Maybe they were afraid.”

“Is that what you were told?”

“No. I didn’t know about that part at all. I even heard … that … perhaps you didn’t like men at all.”

She threw back her head in startling, terrible laughter. “Oh, god. Which of my first group is in Phoenix?”

“A guy named Rinaldi.”

“Gabe? Gabe and Tate. Are they still together?”

“Yes. I didn’t realize … Tate never said anything about being with him then. I thought they had gotten together here on Earth.”

“I awoke them both. They were my best friends for a while. Their ooloi was Kahguyaht—ooan Nikanj.”

“What Nikanj?”

“Nikanj’s ooloi parent. It stayed aboard the ship with its mates and raised another trio of children. Nikanj told it Gabe and Tate wouldn’t be leaving the resisters any time soon. It was finally willing to acknowledge Nikanj’s talent, and it couldn’t bring itself to accept other Humans.”

Tino looked at Nikanj. After a while, he got up and went over to it, sat down opposite it. “What is your talent?” he asked.

Nikanj did not speak or acknowledge his presence.

“Talk to me!” he demanded. “I know you hear.”

The ooloi seemed to come to life slowly. “I hear.”

“What is your talent!”

It leaned toward him and took his hands in its strength hands, keeping its sensory arms coiled. Oddly, the gesture reminded him of Lilith, was much like what Lilith tended to do. He did not mind, somehow, that now hard, cool gray hands held his.

“I have a talent for Humans,” it said in its soft voice. “I was bred to work with you, taught to work with you, and given one of you as a companion during one of my most formative periods.” It focused for a moment on Lilith. “I know your bodies, and sometimes I can anticipate your thinking. I knew that Gabe Rinaldi couldn’t accept a union with us when Kahguyaht wanted him. Tate could have, but she would not leave Gabe for an ooloi—no matter how badly she wanted to. And Kahguyaht would not simply keep her with it when the others were sent to Earth. That surprised me. It always said there was no point in paying attention to what Humans said. It knew Tate would eventually have accepted it, but it listened to her and let her go. And it wasn’t raised as I was in contact with Humans. I think your people affect us more than we realize.”

“I think,” Lilith said quietly, “that you may be better at understanding us than you are at understanding your own people.”

It focused on her, its body tentacles smoothed to invisibility against its flesh. That meant it was pleased, Tino remembered. Pleased or even happy. “Ahajas says that,” it told her. “I don’t think it’s true, but it may be.”

Tino turned toward Lilith but spoke to Nikanj. “Did you make her pregnant against her will?”

“Against one part of her will, yes,” Nikanj admitted. “She had wanted a child with Joseph, but he was dead. She was … more alone than you could imagine. She thought I didn’t understand.”

“It’s your fault she was alone!”

“It was a shared fault.” Nikanj’s head and body tentacles hung limp. “We believed we had to use her as we did. Otherwise we would have had to drug newly awakened Humans much more than was good for them because we would have had to teach them everything ourselves. We did that later because we saw … that we were damaging Lilith and the others we tried to use.

“In the first children, I gave Lilith what she wanted but could not ask for. I let her blame me instead of herself. For a while, I became for her a little of what she was for the Humans she had taught and guided. Betrayer. Destroyer of treasured things. Tyrant. She needed to hate me for a while so that she could stop hating herself. And she needed the children I mixed for her.”

Tino stared at the ooloi, needing to look at it to remind himself that he was hearing an utterly un-Human creature. Finally, he looked at Lilith.

She looked back, smiling a bitter, humorless smile. “I told you it was talented,” she said.

“How much of that is true?” he asked.

“How should I know!” She swallowed. “All of it might be. Nikanj usually tells the truth. On the other hand, reasons and justifications can sound just as good when they’re made up as an afterthought. Have your fun, then come up with a wonderful-sounding reason why it was the right thing for you to do.”

Tino pulled away from the ooloi and went to Lilith. “Do you hate it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I have to leave it to hate it. Sometimes I go away for a while—explore, visit other villages, and hate it. But after a while, I start to miss my children. And, heaven help me, I start to miss it. I stay away until staying away hurts more than the thought of coming … home.”

He thought she should be crying. His mother would never have contained that much passion without tears—would never have tried. He took her by the arms, found her stiff and resistant. Her eyes rejected any comfort before he could offer it.

“What shall I do?” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”

She hugged him suddenly, holding him hard against her. “Will you stay?” she said into his ear.

“Shall I?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” She was not Lilith Iyapo. She was a quiet, expressive, broad face. She was dark, smooth skin and warm, work-calloused hands. She was breasts full of milk. He wondered how he had resisted her earlier.

And what about Nikanj? He did not look at it, but he imagined he felt its attention on him.

“If you decide to leave,” Lilith said, “I’ll help you.”

He could not imagine wanting to leave her.

Something cool and rough and hard attached itself to his upper arm. He froze, not having to look to know it was one of the ooloi’s sensory arms.

It stood close to him, one sensory arm on him and one on Lilith. They
were
like elephants’ trunks, those arms. He felt Lilith release him, felt Nikanj drawing him to the floor. He let himself be pulled down only because Lilith lay down with them. He let Nikanj position his body alongside its own. Then he saw Lilith sit up on Nikanj’s opposite side and watch the two of them solemnly.

He did not understand why she watched, why she did not take part. Before he could ask, the ooloi slipped its sensory arm around him and pressed the back of his neck in a way that made him shudder, then go limp.

He was not unconscious. He knew when the ooloi drew closer to him, seemed to grasp him in some way he did not understand.

He was not afraid.

The splash of icy-sweet pleasure, when it reached him, won him completely. This was the half-remembered feeling he had come back for. This was the way it began.

Before the long-awaited rush of sensation swallowed him completely, he saw Lilith lie down alongside the ooloi, saw the second sensory arm loop around her neck. He tried to reach out to her across the body of the ooloi, to touch her, touch the warm Human flesh. It seemed to him that he reached and reached, yet she remained too far away to touch.

He thought he shouted as the sensation deepened, as it took him. It seemed that she was with him suddenly, her body against his own. He thought he said her name and repeated it, but he could not hear the sound of his own voice.

A
KIN TOOK HIS FIRST
few steps toward Tino’s outstretched hands. He learned to take food from Tino’s plate, and he rode on Tino’s back whenever the man would carry him. He did not forget Dichaan’s warning not to be alone with Tino, but he did not take it seriously. He came to trust Tino very quickly. Eventually everyone came to trust Tino.