Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) (7 page)

“What are those?” she asked the ooloi.

It ignored her except to take her arm and guide her where traffic was heavy. She realized abruptly that it was guiding her with the tip of one of its large tentacles.

“What do you call these?” she asked, touching the one wrapped around her arm. Like the smaller ones it was cool and as hard as her fingernails, but clearly very flexible.

“You can call them sensory arms,” it told her.

“What are they for?”

Silence.

“Look, I thought I was supposed to be learning. I can’t learn without asking questions and getting answers.”

“You’ll get them eventually—as you need them.”

In anger she pulled loose from the ooloi’s grip. It was surprisingly easy to do. The ooloi did not touch her again, did not seem to notice that twice it almost lost her, made no effort to help her when they passed through a crowd and she realized she could not tell one adult ooloi from another.

“Kahguyaht!” she said sharply.

“Here.” It was beside her, no doubt watching, probably laughing at her confusion. Feeling manipulated, she grasped one of its true arms and stayed close to it until they had come into a corridor that was almost empty. From there they entered a corridor that was empty. Kahguyaht ran one sensory arm along the wall for several feet, then stopped, and flatted the tip of the arm against the wall.

An opening appeared where the arm had touched and Lilith expected to be led into one more corridor or room. Instead the wall seemed to form a sphincter and pass something. There was even a sour smell to enhance the image. One of the big semitransparent green oblongs slid into view, wet and sleek.

“It’s a plant,” the ooloi volunteered. “We store it where it can be given the kind of light it thrives best under.”

Why couldn’t it have said that before, she wondered.

The green oblong writhed very slowly as the others had while the ooloi probed it with both sensory arms. After a time, the ooloi paid attention only to one end. That end, it massaged with its sensory arms.

Lilith saw that the plant was beginning to open, and suddenly she knew what was happening.

“Sharad is in that thing, isn’t he?”

“Come here.”

She went over to where it had sat on the floor at the now-open end of the oblong. Sharad’s head was just becoming visible. The hair that she recalled as dull black now glistened, wet and plastered to his head. The eyes were closed and the look on the face peaceful—as though the boy were in a normal sleep. Kahguyaht had stopped the opening of the plant at the base of the boy’s throat, but she could see enough to know Sharad was only a little older than he had been when they had shared an isolation room. He looked healthy and well.

“Will you wake him?” she asked.

“No.” Kahguyaht touched the brown face with a sensory arm. “We won’t be Awakening these people for a while. The human who will be guiding and training them has not yet begun his own training.”

She would have pleaded with it if she had not had two years of dealing with the Oankali to tell her just how little good pleading did. Here was the one human being she had seen in those two years, in two hundred and fifty years. And she could not talk to him, could not make him know she was with him.

She touched his cheek, found it wet, slimy, cool. “Are you sure he’s all right?”

“He’s fine.” The ooloi touched the plant where it had drawn aside and it began slowly to close around Sharad again. She watched the face until it was completely covered. The plant closed seamlessly around the small head.

“Before we found these plants,” Kahguyaht said, “they used to capture living animals and keep them alive for a long while, using their carbon dioxide and supplying them with oxygen while slowly digesting nonessential parts of their bodies: limbs, skin, sensory organs. The plants even passed some of their own substance through their prey to nourish the prey and keep it alive as long as possible. And the plants were enriched by the prey’s waste products. They gave a very, very long death.

Lilith swallowed. “Did the prey feel what was being done to it?”

“No. That would have hastened death. The prey … slept.”

Lilith stared at the green oblong, writhing slowly like an obscenely fat caterpillar. “How does Sharad breathe?”

“The plant supplies him with an ideal mix of gasses.”

“Not just oxygen?”

“No. It suits its care to his needs. It still benefits from the carbon dioxide he exhales and from his rare waste products. It floats in a bath of nutrients and water. These and the light supply the rest of its needs.”

Lilith touched the plant, found it firm and cool. It yielded slightly under her fingers. Its surface was lightly coated with slime. She watched with amazement as her fingers sank more deeply into it and it began to engulf them. She was not frightened until she tried to pull away and discovered it would not let go—and pulling back hurt sharply.

“Wait,” Kahguyaht said. With a sensory arm, it touched the plant near her hand. At once, she felt the plant begin to let go. When she was able to raise her hand, she found it numb, but otherwise unharmed. Feeling returned to the hand slowly. The print of it was still clear on the surface of the plant when Kahguyaht first rubbed its own hands with its sensory arms, then opened the wall and pushed the plant back through it.

“Sharad is very small,” it said when the plant was gone. “The plant could have taken you in as well.”

She shuddered. “I was in one … wasn’t I?”

Kahguyaht ignored the question. But of course she had been in one of the plants—had spent most of the last two and a half centuries within what was basically a carnivorous plant. And the thing had taken good care of her, kept her young and well.

“How did you make them stop eating people?” she asked.

“We altered them genetically—changed some of their requirements, enabled them to respond to certain chemical stimuli from us.”

She looked at the ooloi. “It’s one thing to do that to a plant. It’s another to do it to intelligent, self-aware beings.”

“We do what we do, Lilith.”

“You could kill us. You could make mules of our children—sterile monsters.”

“No,” it said. “There was no life at all on your Earth when our ancestors left our original homeworld, and in all that time we’ve never done such a thing.”

“You wouldn’t tell me if you had,” she said bitterly.

It took her back through the crowded corridors to what she had come to think of as Jdahya’s apartment. There it turned her over to the child, Nikanj.

“It will answer your questions and take you through the walls when necessary,” Kahguyaht said. “It is half again your age and very knowledgeable about things other than humans. You will teach it about your people and it will teach you about the Oankali.”

Half again her age, three-quarters her size, and still growing. She wished it were not an ooloi child. She wished it were not a child at all. How could Kahguyaht first accuse her of wanting to poison children, then leave her in the care of its own child?

At least Nikanj did not look like an ooloi yet.

“You do speak English, don’t you?” she asked when Kahguyaht had opened a wall and left the room. The room was the one they had eaten in, empty now except for Lilith and the child. The leftover food and the dishes had been removed and she had not seen Jdahya or Tediin since her return.

“Yes,” the child said. “But … not much. You teach.”

Lilith sighed. Neither the child nor Tediin had said a word to her beyond greeting, though both had occasionally spoken in fast, choppy Oankali to Jdahya or Kahguyaht. She had wondered why. Now she knew.

“I’ll teach what I can,” she said.

“I teach. You teach.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Outside?”

“You want me to go outside with you?”

It seemed to think for a moment. “Yes,” it said finally.

“Why?”

The child opened its mouth, then closed it again, head tentacles writhing. Confusion? Vocabulary problem?

“It’s all right,” Lilith said. “We can go outside if you like.”

Its tentacles smoothed flat against its body briefly, then it took her hand and would have opened the wall and led her out but she stopped it.

“Can you show me how to make it open?” she asked.

The child hesitated, then took one of her hands and brushed it over the forest of its long head tentacles, leaving the hand slightly wet. Then it touched her fingers to the wall, and the wall began to open.

More programmed reaction to chemical stimuli. No special areas to press, no special series of pressures. Just a chemical the Oankali manufactured within their bodies. She would go on being a prisoner, forced to stay wherever they chose to leave her. She would not be permitted even the illusion of freedom.

The child stopped her once they were outside. It struggled through a few more words. “Others,” it said, then hesitated. “Others see you? Others not see human … never.”

Lilith frowned, certain she was being asked a question. The child’s rising inflection seemed to indicate questioning if she could depend on such clues from an Oankali. “Are you asking me whether you can show me off to your friends?” she asked.

The child turned its face to her. “Show you … off?”

“It means … to put me on display—take me out to be seen.”

“Ah. Yes. I show you off?”

“All right,” she said smiling.

“I talk … more human soon. You say … if I speak bad.”

“Badly,” she corrected.

“If I speak badly?”

“Yes.”

There was a long silence. “Also, goodly?” it asked.

“No, not goodly. Well.”

“Well.” The child seemed to taste the word. “I speak well soon,” it said.

N
IKANJ’S FRIENDS POKED AND
prodded her exposed flesh and tried to persuade her through Nikanj to take off her clothing. None of them spoke English. None seemed in the least childlike, though Nikanj said all were children. She got the feeling some would have enjoyed dissecting her. They spoke aloud very little, but there was much touching of tentacles to flesh or tentacles to other tentacles. When they saw that she would not strip, no more questions were addressed to her. She was first amused, then annoyed, then angered by their attitude. She was nothing more than an unusual animal to them. Nikanj’s new pet.

Abruptly she turned away from them. She had had enough of being shown off. She moved away from a pair of children who were reaching to investigate her hair, and spoke Nikanj’s name sharply.

Nikanj disentangled its long head tentacles from those of another child and came back to her. If it had not responded to its name, she would not have known it. She was going to have to learn to tell people apart. Memorize the various head-tentacle patterns, perhaps.

“I want to go back,” she said.

“Why?” it asked.

She sighed, decided to tell as much of the truth as she thought it could understand. Best to find out now just how far the truth would get her. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t want to be shown off anymore to people I can’t even talk to.”

It touched her arm tentatively. “You … anger?”

“I’m angry, yes. I need to be by myself for a while.”

It thought about that. “We go back,” it said finally.

Some of the children were apparently unhappy about her leaving. They clustered around her and spoke aloud to Nikanj, but Nikanj said a few words and they let her pass.

She discovered she was trembling and took deep breaths to relax herself. How was a pet supposed to feel? How did zoo animals feel?

If the child would just take her somewhere and leave her for a while. If it would give her a little more of what she had thought she would never want again: Solitude.

Nikanj touched her forehead with a few head tentacles, as though sampling her sweat. She jerked her head away, not wanting to be sampled anymore by anyone.

Nikanj opened a wall into the family apartment and led her into a room that was a twin of the isolation room she thought she had left behind. “Rest here,” it told her. “Sleep.”

There was even a bathroom, and on the familiar table platform, there was a clean set of clothing. And replacing Jdahya was Nikanj. She could not get rid of it. It had been told to stay with her, and it meant to stay. Its tentacles settled into ugly irregular lumps when she shouted at it, but it stayed.

Defeated, she hid for a while in the bathroom. She rinsed her old clothing, though no foreign matter stuck to it—not dirt, not sweat, not grease or water. It never stayed wet for more than a few minutes. Some Oankali synthetic.

Then she wanted to sleep again. She was used to sleeping whenever she felt tired, and not used to walking long distances or meeting new people. Surprising how quickly the Oankali had become people to her. But then, who else was there?

She crawled into the bed and turned her back to Nikanj, who had taken Jdahya’s place on the table platform. Who else would there be for her if the Oankali had their way—and no doubt they were used to having their way. Modifying carnivorous plants … What had they modified to get their ship? And what useful tools would they modify human beings into? Did they know yet, or were they planning more experiments? Did they care? How would they make their changes? Or had they made them already—done a little extra tampering with her while they took care of her tumor? Had she ever had a tumor? Her family history led her to believe she had. They probably had not lied about that. Maybe they had not lied about anything. Why should they bother to lie? They owned the Earth and all that was left of the human species.

How was it that she had not been able to take what Jdahya offered?

She slept, finally. The light never changed, but she was used to that. She awoke once to find that Nikanj had come onto the bed with her and lay down. Her first impulse was to push the child away in revulsion or get up herself. Her second, which she followed, wearily indifferent, was to go back to sleep.

I
T BECAME IRRATIONALLY IMPORTANT
to her to do two things: First, to talk to another human being. Any human would do, but she hoped for one who had been Awake longer than she had, one who knew more than she had managed to learn.