Adulthood Rites

  “I remember Akin telling me about a Human who bled to death from ulcers,” he said to Nikanj. “One of his captors.”

  “Yes. He gave the man’s identity. I found the ooloi who had conditioned the man and learned that he had had ulcers since adolescence. The ooloi tried to keep him for his own sake, but the man wouldn’t stay.”

  “What was his name?” Tino demanded.

  “Joseph Tilden. I’m going to put you to sleep, Tino.”

  “I don’t care,” Tino muttered. After a time, he drifted off to sleep.

  “What did you say to him?” Nikanj asked Dichaan.

  “I asked him about Akin’s disappearances.”

  “Ah. You should have asked Lilith.”

  “I thought Tino would know.”

  “He does. And it disturbs him very much. He thinks Akin is more loyal to Humanity than Tino himself. He doesn’t understand why Akin is so focused on the resisters.”

  “I didn’t realize how focused he was,” Dichaan admitted. “I should have.”

  “The people deprived Akin of closeness with his sibling and handed him a compensating obsession. He knows this.”

  “What will he do?”

  “Chkah, he’s your child, too. What do you think he’ll do?”

  “Try to save them—what’s left of them—from their empty, unnecessary deaths. But how?”

  Nikanj did not answer.

  “It’s impossible. There’s nothing he can do.”

  “Maybe not, but the problem will occupy him until his metamorphosis. Then I hope the other sexes will occupy him.”

  “But there must be more to it than that!”

  Nikanj smoothed its body tentacles in amusement. “Anything to do with Humans always seems to involve contradictions.” It paused. “Examine Tino. Inside him, so many very different things are working together to keep him alive. Inside his cells, mitochondria, a previously independent form of life, have found a haven and trade their ability to synthesize proteins and metabolize fats for room to live and reproduce. We’re in his cells too now, and the cells have accepted us. One Oankali organism within each cell, dividing with each cell, extending life, and resisting disease. Even before we arrived, they had bacteria living in their intestines and protecting them from other bacteria that would hurt or kill them. They could not exist without symbiotic relationships with other creatures. Yet such relationships frighten them.”

  “Nika …” Dichaan deliberately tangled his head tentacles with those of Nikanj. “Nika, we aren’t like mitochondria or helpful bacteria, and they know it.”

  Silence.

  “You shouldn’t lie to them. It would be better to say nothing.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. When we keep quiet, they suppose it’s because the truth is terrible. I think we’re as much symbionts as their mitochondria were originally. They could not have evolved into what they are without mitochondria. Their earth might still be inhabited only by bacteria and algae. Not very interesting.”

  “Is Tino going to be all right?”

  “No. But I’ll take care of him.”

  “Can’t you do something to stop him from hurting himself?”

  “I could make him forget some of his past again.”

  “No!”

  “You know I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even if I hadn’t seen the pleasant, empty man he was before his memories came back. I wouldn’t do it. I don’t like to tamper with them that way. They lose too much of what I value in them.”

  “What will you do, then? You just go on repairing him until finally he leaves us and maybe kills himself?”

  “He won’t leave us.”

  It meant it would not let him go, could not. Ooloi could be that way when they found a Human they were strongly attracted to. Nikanj certainly could not let Lilith go, no matter how much it let her wander.

  “Will Akin be all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dichaan detached himself from Nikanj and sat up, folding his legs under him. “I’m going to separate him from the resisters.”

  “Why?”

  “Sooner or later, one of them will kill him. We’ve collected their guns twice since they took him. They always make more, and the new ones are always more effective. Greater range, greater accuracy, greater safety for the Humans using them … Humans are too dangerous. And they’re only one part of him. Let him learn what else he is.”

  Nikanj drew its body tentacles in, upset, but it said nothing. If it had favorites among its children, Akin was one of them. It had no same-sex children, and that was a real deprivation. Akin was unique, and when he was at home, he spent much of his time with Nikanj. But Dichaan was still his same-sex parent.

  “Not for long, Chkah,” Dichaan said softly. “I won’t keep him from you long. And he’ll bring you all the changes he finds in Chkahichdahk.”

  “He always brings me things,” Nikanj whispered. It seemed to relax, accepting Dichaan’s decision. “He goes out of his way to find unusual things to taste and bring back. There’s so little time until he metamorphoses and begins giving all his acquisitions to his mates.”

  “A year,” Dichaan said. “I’ll bring him back in only a year.” He lay down again to comfort Nikanj and was not surprised to find that the ooloi needed comfort. It had been upset by the way Tino continually took his frustration and confusion out on his own body. Now it was even more upset. It was to lose a year of Akin’s childhood. In its home with its large family all around, it felt alone and tired.

  Dichaan linked himself into the nervous system of the ooloi. He could feel his own deep family bond stimulating Nikanj’s. These bonds expanded and changed over the years, but they did not weaken. And they never failed to capture Nikanj’s most intense interest.

  Later Dichaan would tell Lo to signal the ship and have it send a shuttle. Later he would tell Akin it was time for him to learn more about the Oankali side of his heritage.

  2

  SOMETIMES IT SEEMED TO Akin that his world was made up of tight units of people who treated him kindly or coldly as they chose, but who could not let him in, no matter how much they might want to.

  He could remember a time when blending into others seemed not only possible but inevitable—when Tiikuchahk was still unborn and he could reach out and taste it and know it as his closest sibling. Now, though, because he had not been able to bond with it, it was perhaps his least interesting sibling. He had spent as little time as possible with it.

  Now it wanted to go to Chkahichdahk with him.

  “Let it go and let me stay here,” he had told Dichaan.

  “It is alone, too,” Dichaan had answered. “You and it both need to learn more about what you are.”

  “I know what I am.”

  “Yes. You are my same-sex child, near his metamorphosis.”

  Akin had not been able to answer this. It was time for him to listen to Dichaan, learn from him, prepare to be a mature male. He felt strongly inclined to obey.

  Yet he had lost himself in the forest for days, resisting the inclination and deeply resenting it each time it returned to nag him.

  No one came after him. And no one seemed surprised when he came home. The shuttle had eaten a new clearing waiting for him.

  He stood staring at it. It was a great green-shelled thing—a male itself to the degree that the ship-entities could be of one sex or the other. Each one had the capacity to become female. But as long as it received a controlling substance from the body of Chkahichdahk, it would remain small and male. It would extend the reach of Chkahichdahk by investigating planets and moons of solar systems, bringing back information, supplies of minerals, life. It would carry passengers and work with them in exploration. And it would ferry people to the ship and back.

  Akin had never been inside one. He would not be allowed to link into one’s nervous system until he was an adult. So much had to wait until he was an adult.

  When he was an adult, he could speak for the resisters. Now, his voice could be ignore
d, would not even be heard without the amplification provided by one of the adult members of his family. He remembered Nikanj’s stories of its own childhood—of being right, knowing it was right, and yet being ignored because it was not adult. Lilith had occasionally been hurt during those years because people did not listen to Nikanj, who knew her better than they did.

  Akin would not make Nikanj’s mistake. He had decided that long ago. But now … Why had Dichaan decided to send him to Chkahichdahk? Was it only to keep him out of danger or was there some other reason?

  He moved closer to the shuttle, waiting to go inside but wanting first to walk around the thing, look at it, appreciate it with the senses he and the Humans shared.

  It looked from every angle like a perfectly symmetrical high hill. Once it was airborne, it would be spherical. Its shell plates would slide around and lock—three layers of them—and nothing would get in or out.

  “Akin.”

  He looked around without moving his body and saw Ahajas coming from the direction of Lo. Everyone else made some noise when they walked, but Ahajas, larger, taller than almost everyone else, seemed to flow along, sixteen-toed feet hardly seeming to touch the ground. If she did not want to be heard, no one heard her. Females had to be able to hide if possible and to fight if hiding was impossible or useless. Nikanj had said that.

  He would not see Nikanj for a year. Perhaps longer.

  She came towering over him, then folded herself into a sitting position opposite him the way some Humans used to stoop or kneel to talk to him when he was younger. Now his head and hers were at the same level.

  “I wanted to see you before you left. You might not still be a child when you come back.”

  “I will be.” He put his hand in among her head tentacles and felt them grasp and penetrate. “I’m still years away from changing.”

  “Your body can change faster than you think. The stress of having to adjust to a new environment could make things go more quickly. You should see everyone now.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I know. You don’t want to leave so you don’t want to say goodbye. You didn’t even go to your resister friends.”

  She didn’t smell them on him. He had been particularly embarrassed to realize that she and others knew by scent when he had been with a woman. He washed, of course, but still they knew.

  “You should have gone to them. You might change a great deal during your metamorphosis. Humans don’t accept that easily.”

  “Lilith?”

  “You know better. In spite of the things she says, I’ve never seen her reject one of her children. But would you want to leave without seeing her?”

  Silence.

  “Come on, Eka.” She released his hand and stood up.

  He followed her back to the village, feeling resentful and manipulated.

  3

  AN OUTDOOR FEAST WAS arranged for him. The people stopped their activities and came together in the center of the village for him and for Tiikuchahk. Tiikuchahk seemed to enjoy the party, but Akin simply endured it. Margit, who was known to be on the verge of her metamorphosis, came to sit beside him. She was still his favorite sibling, although she spent more time with her own paired sibling. She held out a gray hand to him, and he almost took it between his own before he noticed what she was showing him. She had always had too many fingers for a Human-born child—seven on each hand. But the hand she held out to him now had only five long, slender, gray fingers.

  He stared at her, then carefully took the offered hand and examined it. There was no wound, no scars.

  “How … ?” he asked.

  “I woke up this morning, and they were gone. Nothing left but the nail and some shriveled, dead skin.”

  “Did your hand hurt?”

  “It felt fine. It still does. I’m sleepy, but that’s all so far.” She hesitated. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  He hugged her and was barely able to stop himself from crying. “I won’t even know you when I come back. You’ll be someone else, probably mated and pregnant.”

  “I may be mated and pregnant, but you’ll know me. I’ll see to that!”

  He only looked at her. Everyone changed, but, irrationally, he did not want her to change.

  “What is it?” Tiikuchahk asked.

  Akin did not understand why he did it, but after looking to see that it was all right with Margit, he took her hand and showed it to Tiikuchahk.

  Tiikuchahk, who looked a great deal more Human than Margit did in spite of being Oankali-born, began to cry. It kissed her hand and let it go sadly. “Things are going to change too much while we’re gone,” it said, silent tears sliding down its gray face. “We’ll be strangers when we come back.” Its few small sensory tentacles tightened into lumps against its body, making it look the way Akin felt.

  Now others wanted to know what was wrong, and Lilith came to them, looking as though she already knew.

  “Margit?” she said softly.

  Margit held up her hands and smiled. “I thought so,” Lilith said. “Now this is your party, too. Come on.” She led Margit away to show others.

  Akin and Tiikuchahk got up together without speaking. They did sometimes act in unison in the way of paired siblings, but the phenomenon always startled them and somehow never gave the comfort it seemed to give to sibling pairs who had bonded properly in infancy. Now, though, they moved together toward Ayre, their oldest sister. She was a construct adult—the oldest construct adult in Lo—and she had been watching them, training several head tentacles on them as she sat talking to one of Leah’s Oankali-born sons. She had been born in Chkahichdahk. She had passed her metamorphosis on Earth, mated, and borne several children. The things that they still faced, she had already survived.

  “Sit with me,” Ayre said as they came up to her. “Sit here.” She positioned them on either side of her. She immediately tangled her long head tentacles with Tiikuchahk’s. Akin had come to find having only one true sensory tentacle, and that one in his mouth, very inconvenient. Resisters liked it because they did not have to look at it, but it inhibited communication with Oankali and constructs. He had quickly grown too large to be held in someone’s arms.

  But Ayre, being Ayre, simply took him under one arm and pulled him against her so that it was easy for him to link with her as she used her body tentacles to link with him.

  “We don’t know what will happen to us,” both he and Tiikuchahk said in silent unison. It was a cry of fear from both of them and, for Akin, also a cry of frustration. Time was being stolen from him. He knew the people and languages of a Chinese resister village, an Igbo village, three Spanish-speaking villages made up of people from many countries, a Hindu village, and two villages of Swahili-speaking people from different countries. So many resisters. Yet there were so many more. He had been driven out of, of all things, a village of English-speaking people because he was browner than the villagers were. He did not understand this, and he had not dared to ask anyone in Lo. But still, there were resisters he had never seen, resisters whose ideas he had not heard, resisters who believed their only hope was to steal construct children or to die as a species. There were stories now of a village whose people had gathered in their village square and drunk poison. No one Akin had talked to knew the name of this village, but everyone had heard about it.

  Would there be any Humans left to save when he was finally old enough to have his opinions respected?

  And would he still look Human enough to persuade them?

  Or was all that foolishness? Would he truly be able to help them at all, no matter what happened? The Oankali would not stop him from doing anything they did not consider harmful. But if there were no consensus, they would not help him. And he could not help the Humans alone.

  He could not, for instance, give them a ship entity. As long as they remained Human enough to satisfy their beliefs, they could not communicate with a ship. Some of them insisted on believing the ships were not alive—tha
t they were metal things that anyone could learn to control. They had not understood at all when Akin tried to explain that ships controlled themselves. You either joined with them, shared their experiences, and let them share yours, or there was no trade. And without trade, the ships ignored your existence.

  “You know you must help each other,” Ayre said.

  Akin and Tiikuchahk drew back reflexively.

  “You can’t be what you should have been, but you can help each other.” Akin could not miss the certainty Ayre felt. “You’re both alone. You’ll both be strangers. And you’re like one pea cut in half. Let yourselves depend on each other a little.”

  Neither Akin nor Tiikuchahk responded.

  “Is a pea cut in half one wounded thing or two?” she asked softly.

  “We can’t heal each other,” Tiikuchahk said.

  “Metamorphosis will heal you, and it may be closer than you think.”

  And they were afraid again. Afraid of changing, afraid of returning to a changed, unrecognizable home. Afraid of going to a place even less their own than the one they were leaving. Ayre sought to divert them. “Ti, why do you want to go to Chkahichdahk?” she asked.

  Tiikuchahk did not want to answer the question. Both Akin and Ayre received only a strong negative feeling from it.

  “There are no resisters there,” Ayre said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Tiikuchahk said nothing.

  “Has Ahajas said you would be female?” Ayre asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you want to be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think you might want to be male?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If you want to be male, you should stay here. Let Akin go. Spend your time with Dichaan and Tino and with your sisters. Male parents, female siblings. Your body will know how to respond.”