Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) (86 page)

“I can,” I said. “But Aaor’s control is just not firm enough. It already looks as Human as it can look.”

He drew a deep breath. “Then this is as close as it should get. You should change us and camp here.”

“We can’t even see your town from here,” Aaor protested.

“And they can’t see you. If you round that next bend, though, part of our settlement will be visible to you. But the way is guarded. You would be shot.”

Aaor seemed to sink in on itself. We had made a fireless camp. My mates were on either side of me, linked with me. Aaor was alone. “You should change yourself and go with them,” it said. “They’ll function better if they are not separated from you. I can survive alone for a few days.”

“If we’re caught, we’ll be separated,” Jesusa said. “We’ll be shut up in separate places. We’ll be questioned. I would probably be married off very quickly.” She stopped. “Jodahs, what will happen if someone tries to have sex with me?”

I shook my head. “You’ll fight. You won’t be able to help fighting. You’ll fight so hard, you might win even if the male is much stronger. Or maybe you’ll just make him hurt or kill you.”

“Then she can’t go,” Tomás said. “I’ll have to do it alone.”

“Neither of you should go,” I said. “If hunters come out this far, we should wait. We have time.”

“That will get you a man,” Jesusa said. “Maybe several men. But women don’t hunt.”

“What do females do?” I asked. “What might bring them out away from the protection of the settlement?”

Jesusa and Tomás looked at one another, and Tomás grinned. “They meet,” he said.

“Meet?” I repeated, uncomprehending.

“The elders tell us who we must marry,” he said. “But they can’t tell us who we must love.”

I knew Humans did such things: marry here and mate there and there and there. … There was nothing in Human biology to prevent this. In fact, Human biology encouraged male Humans to have liaisons with more than one female. The male’s investment of time and energy in fathering children was much smaller than the female’s. Still, the concept felt alien to me. To have a mating and somehow put it aside. But then, most construct males never had true mates. They went wherever they found welcome and everyone knew it. There was no permanent bonding, no betrayal, no biological wrongness to contend with.

“Do your people meet this way because they would like to be mated?” I asked.

“Some of them,” Tomás said. “Others only feel a temporary attraction.”

“It would be good to get a pair for Aaor who already care for one another.”

“We thought that, too,” Jesusa said. “We meant to go to the village and bring away the people we would have been married to. But they wouldn’t be coming out here to be together. They’re brother and sister, too. A brother and two sisters, really.”

“It would be better, safer to go after people who have already slipped away from your village. Is there a place where such people often meet?”

Tomás sighed. “Change us back tonight. Make us as ugly as we were, just in case. Tomorrow night, we’ll show you some of the places where lovers meet. If you go there at all, it will have to be at night.”

But the next night we were spotted.

W
E DID NOT KNOW
we had been seen. As we rounded the final bend before the mountain people’s village, we kept hidden in the trees and undergrowth. All we could see of their village were occasional stonework terraces cut into the sides of forested mountains. Crops grew on the terraces—a great deal of corn, some large melons, more than one species of potato, and other things that I did not recognize at all—foods neither I nor Nikanj had ever collected or stored memories of. These were surprisingly distracting—new things just sitting and waiting to be tasted, remembered. Yashi, between my hearts and protected now by a broad, flat slab of bone that no Human would have recognized as a sternum, did twist—or rather, it contracted like a long-empty Human stomach. Any perception of new living things attracted it and distracted me. I looked at Aaor and saw that it was utterly focused on the village itself, the people.

Its desperation had sharpened and directed its perceptions.

The Humans had built their village well above the river, had stretched it along a broad flattened ridge that extended between two mountains. “We could not see it from where we were, but we could see signs of it—a great deal more terracing high up. These terraces could not be reached from where we were, but there was probably a way up nearby. All we could see between the canyon floor and the terraces was a great deal of sheer rock, much of it overgrown with vegetation. It was nothing I would have chosen to climb.

The scent of the Humans was strong now. Aaor, perhaps caught up in it, stumbled and stepped on a dry stick as it regained its balance. The sharp snap of the wood was startling in the quiet night. We all froze. Those stalking us did not freeze—or not quickly enough.

“Humans behind us!” I whispered.

“Are they coming?” Tomás demanded.

“Yes. Several of them.”

“The guard,” Tomás said. “They will have guns.”

“You two get away!” Jesusa said. “We’ll have a better chance without you. Wait for us at the cave we passed two days ago. Go!”

The guard meant to catch us against their mountains. We were trapped now, really. If we ran to the river, we would have to go around them or through them, and probably be shot. There was nowhere for us to go except up the sheer cliff. Or down like insects to hide in the thickest vegetation. We could not get away, but we could hide. And if the guard found Jesusa and Tomás, perhaps they would not look for us.

I pulled Aaor down with me, fearing for it more than I feared for any of us. It was probably right in suspecting that it could not survive being shot.

In the darkness, Humans passed on either side of where Aaor and I lay hidden. They knew the terrain, but they could not see very well at night. Jesusa and Tomás led them a short distance away from us. They did this by simply walking down the slope toward the river until they walked into the arms of their captors.

Then there was shouting—Jesusa shouting her name, Tomás demanding that he be let go, that Jesusa be let go, guards shouting that they had caught the intruders.

“Where are the rest of you?” a male voice said. “There were more than two.”

“Make a light, Luis,” Jesusa said with deliberate disgust.

“Look at us, then tell me when there has been more than one Jesusa and more than one Tomás.”

There was silence for a while. Jesusa and Tomás were walked farther from us—perhaps taken where the moonlight would show more of their faces. Their tumors looked exactly as they had when I met them, so I wasn’t worried about them not being recognized. But still, they had said they would be separated, imprisoned, questioned.

How long would they be imprisoned? If they were separated, they wouldn’t be able to help one another break free. And what might be done to them if they gave answers that their people did not believe? They had, with obvious distaste for lying, created a story of being captured by a small group of resisters and held by separate households so that neither knew the details of the other’s captivity. Resisters actually did such things, though most often, their captives were female. Tomás would say he had been made to work for his captors. He had done planting, harvesting, hauling, building, cutting wood, whatever needed to be done. Since he had actually done these things while he was with us, he could give accurate descriptions of them. He would say that his sister was held hostage to ensure his good behavior while his captivity kept her in line. Finally the two had been able to get together and escape their resister captors.

This could have happened. If Jesusa and Tomás could tell it convincingly, perhaps they would not be imprisoned for long.

The two had been recognized now. There were no more hostile cries—only Jesusa’s anguished “Hugo, please let me go. Please! I won’t run away. I’ve just run all the way home. Hugo!”

The last word was a scream. He was touching her, this Hugo. She had known they would touch her. She had not known until now how difficult it would be to endure their touch. She could touch other females in comfort. Tomás could touch males. They would have to protect one another as best they could.

“Let her alone!” Tomás said. “You don’t know what she’s been through.” His voice said she had already been released. He was only warning.

“Everyone said you two were dead,” one guard told them.

“Some
hoped
they were dead,” another voice said softly. “Better them than all of us.”

“No one will die because of us,” Tomás said.

“We haven’t come home to die,” Jesusa said. “We’re tired. Take us up.”

“Does everyone know them?” the softer voice asked. It sounded almost like an ooloi voice. “Does anyone dispute their identity?”

“We could strip them down here,” someone said. “Just to be sure.”

Tomás said, “Bring your sister down, Hugo. We’ll strip her, too.”

“My sister stays home where she belongs!”

“And if she didn’t, how would you want her treated? With justice and decency? Or should she be stripped by seven men?”

Silence.

“Let’s go up,” Jesusa said. “Hugo, do you remember the big yellow water jar we used to hide in?”

More silence.

“You know me,” she said. “We were ten years old when we broke that jar, and I got caught and you didn’t and I never told. You know me.”

There was a pause, then the Hugo voice said, “Let’s take them up. Someone will probably have some dinner left over.”

They were taken away.

Aaor and I followed to see the path they would use and to see as much as we could of the guards.

Of the seven, four were obviously distorted by their genetic disorder. They had large tumors on their heads or arms. They looked different enough to be shot on sight by lowland resisters.

We followed as long as there was forest cover, then watched as they went up a pathway that was mostly rough stone stairs leading up the steep slope to the village.

When we could no longer hear them, Aaor pulled me close to it and signaled silently, “We can’t just go wait in the cave. We have to get them out!”

“Give them time,” I said. “They’ll try to find a pair of Humans for you.”

“How can they? They’ll be shut up, guarded.”

“Most of these guards were young and fertile. And perhaps Jesusa will be given female guards. What are guards but villagers doing a tiresome, temporary duty?”

Aaor tried to relax, but its body was still tense against mine. “Seeing them walk away was like beginning to dissolve. I feel as though part of me has walked away with them.”

I said nothing. Part of me
had
walked away with them. Both they and I knew what it would be like to be separated for a while—worse, to be kept apart by other people who would do all they could to stand between us. I would not begin to miss them physically for a few days, but with my uncertainty, my realization that I might not get them back, I had all I could do to control myself. I sat down on the ground, my body trembling.

Aaor sat next to me and tried to calm me, but it could not give what it did not feel in itself. The Humans could have caught us easily then—two ooloi sitting on the ground shuddering helplessly.

We recovered slowly. We were in control of our bodies again when Aaor said silently, “We can’t give them more than two days to work—and that might not be long enough for them to do anything.”

I could last longer than two days, but Aaor couldn’t. “We’ll give them the time,” I said. “We’ll get as close as we can and rest alert for two days.”

“Then we’ll have to get them out if they can’t escape on their own.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I said. “Tomás was talking as much to us as to his people when he said no one would die because of him and Jesusa. But if we try to get them out, we could be forced to kill.”

“That’s why it’s best to go in while we’re still in control of ourselves. You know that, Jodahs.”

“I know,” I whispered aloud.

W
E WENT UP A STEEP
, heavily forested slope, crawling up, clinging like caterpillars. Being six-limbed had never been quite so practical.

We climbed to the level of the terraces, and lay near them, hidden, during the next day. When night came, we explored the terraces and compulsively tried bits of the new foods we found growing there. By then, our skins had grown darker and we were harder for the Humans to see—while we could see everything.

We climbed higher up one of the mountains that formed a corner of the settlement. Just over halfway up, we reached the Human settlement with its houses of stone and wood and thatch. This was a prewar place. It had to be. Parts of it looked ancient. But it did not look like a ruin. All the buildings were well kept and there were terraces everywhere, most of them full of growing things. Away from the village, there was an enclosure containing several large animals of a kind I had not seen before—shaggy, long-necked, small-headed creatures who stood or lay at ease around their pen. Alpacas?

We could smell other, smaller animals caged around the village, and we could smell fertile, young Humans everywhere. Even above us on the mountain, we could smell them. What would they be doing up there?

How many were up there? Three, my nose told me. A female and two males, all young, all fertile, two afflicted with the genetic disorder. Why couldn’t it just be those two for Aaor? What would we do with the third one if we went up? Why hadn’t Jesusa and Tomás told us about people living in such isolation? Except for their being one too many of them, they were perfect.

“Up?” I said to Aaor.

It nodded. “But there’s an extra male. What do we do with him?”

“I don’t know yet. Let’s see if we can get a look at them before they see us. Separating them might be easier than we think.”

We climbed the slope, noticing, but for the most part not using, the long serpentine path the Humans had made. There had been Humans on it that day. Perhaps there would be Humans on it the next day. Perhaps it led to a guard post, and the guard changed daily. Anyone on top would have a fine view of all approaches from the mountains or the canyon below. Perhaps the people at the top stayed longer than a day and were resupplied from below at regular intervals—though there were a few terraces near the top.