Dawn

After a time, Nikanj lifted her to her feet, managing her weight easily. She meant to push it away, make it let her alone. It had not helped Joseph. She did not need anything from it now. Yet she only twisted in its grasp.

It let her pull free and she stumbled back to Joseph. Curt had walked away and left him as though he were a dead animal. He should be buried.

Nikanj came to her again, seemed to read her thoughts. "Shall we pick him up on our way back and have him sent to Earth?" it asked. "He can end as part of his homeworld."

Bury him on Earth? Let his flesh be part of the new beginning there? "Yes," she whispered.

It touched her experimentally with a sensory arm. She glared at it, wanting desperately to be let alone.

"No!" it said softly. "No, I let you alone once, the two of you, thinking you could look after one another. I won't let you alone now."

She drew a deep breath, accepted the familiar loop of sensory arm around her neck. "Don't drug me," she said. "Leave me. . . leave me what I feel for him, at least."

"1 want to share, not mute or distort."

"Share? Share my feelings now?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Lilith.. ." It began to walk and she walked beside it automatically. The other ooloi moved silently ahead of them. "Lilith, he was mine too. You brought him tome."

"You brought him to me."

"I would not have touched him if you had rejected him."

"I wish I had. He'd be alive."

Nikanj said nothing.

"Let me share what you feel," she said.

It touched her face in a startlingly human gesture. "Move the sixteenth finger of your left strength hand," it said softly. One more case of Oankali omniscience: We understand your feelings, eat your food, manipulate your genes. But we're too complex for you to understand.

"Approximate!" she demanded. "Trade! You're always talking about trading. Give me something of yourself!"

The other ooloi focused back toward them and Nikanj's head and body tentacles drew themselves into lumps of some negative emotion. Embarrassment? Anger? She did not care. Why should it feel comfortable about parasitizing her feelings for Joseph-her feelings for anything? It had helped set up a human experiment. One of the humans had been lost. What did it feel? Guilty for not having been more careful with valuable subjects? Or were they even valuable?

Nikanj pressed the back of her neck with a sensory hand-warning pressure. It would give her something then. They stopped walking by mutual consent and faced one another.

It gave her.. . a new color. A totally alien, unique, nameless thing, half seen, half felt or. . . tasted. A blaze of something frightening, yet overwhelmingly, compelling.

Extinguished.

A half known mystery beautiful and complex. A deep, impossibly sensuous promise.

Broken.

Gone.

Dead.

The forest came back around her slowly and she realized she was still standing with Nikanj, facing it, her back to the waiting ooloi.

"That's all I can give you," Nikanj said. "That's what I feel. I don't even know whether there are words in any human language to speak of it."

"Probably not," she whispered. Alter a moment, she let herself hug it. There was some comfort even in cool, gray flesh. Grief was grief, she thought. It was pain and loss and despair-an abrupt end where there should have been a continuing.

She walked more willingly with Nikanj now, and the other ooloi no longer isolated them in front or behind.

7

Curt's camp boasted a bigger shelter, not as well made. The roof was a jumble of palm leaves-not thatch, but branches crisscrossed and covering one another. No doubt it leaked. There were walls, but no floor. There was an indoor fire, hot and smoky. That was the way the people looked. Hot, smoky, dirty, angry.

They gathered outside the shelter with axes, machetes, and clubs, and faced the cluster of ooloi. Lilith found herself standing with aliens, facing hostile, dangerous humans.

She drew back. "I can't fight them," she said to Nikanj. "Curt, yes, but not the others."

"We'll have to fight if they attack," Nikanj said. "But you stay out of it. We'll be drugging them heavily-fighting to subdue without killing in spite of their weapons. Dangerous."

"No closer!" Curt called.

The Oankali stopped.

"This is a human place!" Curt continued. "It's off limits to you and your animals." He stared at Lilith, held his ax ready.

She stared back, afraid of the ax, but wanting him. Wanting to kill him. Wanting to take the ax from him and beat him to death with her own hands. Let him die here and rot in this alien place where he had left Joseph.

"Do nothing," Nikanj whispered to her. "He has lost all hope of Earth. He's lost Celene. She'll be sent to Earth without him. And he's lost mental and emotional freedom. Leave him to us."

She could not understand it at first-literally could not comprehend the words it spoke. There was nothing in her world but a dead Joseph and an obscenely alive Curt.

Nikanj held her until it too had to be acknowledged as part of her world. When it saw that she looked at it, struggled against it instead of simply struggling toward Curt, it repeated its words until she heard them, until they penetrated, until she was still. It never made any attempt to drug her, and it never let her go.

Off to one side, Kahguyaht was speaking to Tate. Tate stood well back from it, holding a machete and staying close to Gabriel who held an ax. It was Gabriel who had convinced her to abandon Lilith. It had to be. And what had convinced Leah? Practicality? A fear of being abandoned alone, left as much an outcast as Lilith?

Lilith found Leah and stared at her, wondering. Leah looked away. Then her attention was drawn back to Tate.

"Go away," Tate was pleading in a voice that did not sound like her. "We don't want you! I don't want you! Let us alone!" She sounded as though she would cry. In fact, tears streamed down her face.

"I have never lied to you," Kahguyaht told her. "If you manage to use your machete on anyone, you'll lose Earth.

You'll never see your homeworld again. Even this place will be denied to you." It stepped toward her. "Don't do this Tate. We're giving you the thing you want most: Freedom and a return home."

"We've got that here," Gabriel said.

Curt came to join him. "We don't need anything else from you!" he shouted.

The others behind him agreed loudly.

"You would starve here," Kahguyaht said. "Even in the short time you've been here, you've had trouble finding food. There isn't enough, and you don't yet know how to use what there is." Kahguyaht raised its voice, spoke to all of them. "You were allowed to leave us when you wished so that you could practice the skills you'd learned and learn more from each other and from Lilith. We had to know how you would behave after leaving us. We knew you might be injured, but we didn't think you would kill one another."

"We didn't kill a human being," Curt shouted. "We killed one of your animals!"

"We?" Kahguyaht said mildly. "And who helped you kill him?"

Curt did not answer.

"You beat him," Kahguyaht continued, "and when he was unconscious, you killed him with your ax. You did it alone, and in doing it, you've exiled yourself permanently from your Earth." It spoke to the others. "Will you join him? Will you be taken from this training room and placed with Toaht families to live the rest of your lives aboard the ship?"

The faces of some of the others began to change---doubts beginning or growing.

Allison's ooloi went to her, became the first to touch the human it had come to retrieve. It spoke very quietly. Lilith could not hear what it said, but after a moment, Allison sighed and offered it her machete.

It declined the knife with a wave of one sensory arm while settling the other arm around her neck. It drew her back behind the line of Oankali where Lilith stood with Nikanj. Lilith stared at her, wondering how Allison could turn against her. Had it only been fear? Curt could frighten just about anyone if he worked at it. And this was Curt with an ax-an ax he had already used on one man...

Allison met her gaze, looked away, then faced her again. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "We thought we could avoid bloodshed by going along with them, doing what they said. We thought. . . I'm sorry."

Lilith turned away, tears blurring her vision again. Somehow, she had been able to put Joseph's death aside for a few minutes. Allison's words brought it back.

Kahguyaht stretched out a sensory arm to Tate but Gabriel snatched her away.

"We don't want you here!" he grated. He thrust Tate behind him.

Curt shouted-a wordless scream of rage, a call to attack. He lunged at Kahguyaht and several of his people joined his attack, lunging at the other ooloi with their weapons.

Nikanj thrust Lilith toward Allison and plunged into the fighting. Allison's ooloi paused only long enough to say, "Keep her out of this!" in rapid Oankali. Then it, too, joined the fight.

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 of 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."

"Why?" Lilith asked.

"Without your gift, it could not have regained full use of the sensory arm. It could not have conceived children." Ahajas hesitated. "When we heard what had happened, we thought we had lost it. It had been with us for so little time. We felt. . . Perhaps we felt what you did when your mate died. There seemed to be nothing at all ahead for us until Ooan Nikanj told us that you were helping it, and that it would recover completely."

"Kahguyaht behaved as though nothing unusual were happening," Lilith said.

"It was frightened for me," Nikanj said. "It knows you dislike it. It thought any instructions from it beyond the essential would anger or delay you. It was badly frightened."

Lilith laughed bitterly. "It's a good actor."

Nikanj rustled its tentacles. It took its sensory arm from Lilith's neck and led the group toward the settlement.

Lilith followed automatically, her thoughts shifting from Nikanj to Joseph to Curt. Curt whose body was to be used to teach the ooloi more about cancer. She could not make herself ask whether he would be conscious and aware during these experiments. She hoped he would be.

8

It was nearly dark when they reached the settlement. People were gathered around fires, talking, eating. Nikanj and its mates were welcomed by the Oankali in a kind of gleeful silence-a confusion of sensory arms and tentacles, a relating of experience by direct neural stimulation. They could give each other whole experiences, then discuss the experience in nonverbal conversation. They had a whole language of sensory images and accepted signals that took the place of words.

Lilith watched them enviously. They didn't lie often to humans because their sensory language had left them with no habit of lying-only of withholding information, refusing contact.

Humans, on the other hand, lied easily and often. They could not trust one another. They could not trust one of their own who seemed too close to aliens, who stripped off her clothing and lay down on the ground to help her jailer.

There was silence at the fire where Lilith chose to sit. Allison, Leah and Wray, Gabriel and Tate. Tate gave her a baked yam and, to her surprise, baked fish. She looked at Wray.

Wray shrugged. "I caught it with my hands. Crazy thing to do. It was half as big as I am. But it swam right up to me just begging to be caught. The Oankali claimed I could have been caught myself by some of the things swimming in the river-electric eels, piranha, caiman.. . They brought all the worst things from Earth. Nothing bothered me, though."

"Victor found a couple of turtles," Allison said. "Nobody knew how to cook them so they cut the meat up and roasted it.''

"How was it?" Lilith asked.

"They ate it." Allison smiled. "And while they were cooking it and eating it, the Oankali kept away from them."

Wray grinned broadly. "You don't see any of them around this fire either, do you?"

"I'm not sure," Gabriel answered.

Silence.

Lilith sighed. "Okay, Gabe, what have you got? Questions, accusations or condemnations?"

"Maybe all three."

"Well?"

"You didn't fight. You chose to stand with the Oankali!"

"Against you?"

Angry silence.

"Where were you standing when Curt hacked Joseph to death?"

Tate laid her hand on Lilith's arm. "Curt just went crazy," she said. She spoke very softly. "No one thought he would do anything like that."

"He did it," Lilith said. "And you all watched."

They picked at their food silently for a while, no longer enjoying the fish, sharing it with people from other fires who came offering Brazil nuts, pieces of fruit or baked cassava.

"Why did you take your clothes off?" Wray demanded suddenly. "Why did you lie down on the ground with an ooloi in the middle of the fighting?"

"The fighting was over," Lilith said. "You know that. And the ooloi I lay down with was Nikanj. Curt had all but severed one of its sensory arms. I think you know that, too. I let it use my body to heal itself."

"But why should you want to help it?" Gabriel whispered harshly. "Why didn't you just let it die?" Every Oankali in the area must have heard him.

"What good would that do?" she demanded. "I've known Nikanj since it was a child. Why should I let it die, then be stuck with some stranger? How would that help me or you or anyone here?"

He drew back from her. "You've always got an answer. And it never quite rings true."

She went over in her mind the things she could have said to him about his own tendency not to ring true. Ignoring them all, she asked, "What is it, Gabe? What do you believe I can do or could have done to set you free on Earth one minute sooner?"

He did not answer, but he remained stubbornly angry. He was helpless and in a situation he found intolerable. Someone must be to blame.

Lilith saw Tate reach out to him, take his hand. For a few seconds they clung to the tips of one another's fingers, reminding Lilith of nothing so much as a very squeamish person suddenly given a snake to hold. They managed to let one another go without seeming to recoil in revulsion, but everyone knew what they felt. Everyone had seen. That was something else Lilith had to answer for, no doubt.

"What about that!" Tate demanded bitterly. She shook the hand Gabriel had touched as though to shake it clean of something. "What do we do about that?"

Lilith let her shoulders slump. "I don't know. It was the same for Joseph and me. I never got around to asking Nikanj what it had done to us. I suggest you ask Kahguyaht."

Gabriel shook his head. "I don't want to see him. . . it, let alone ask it anything."

"Really?" asked Allison. Her voice was so full of honest questioning that Gabriel only glared at her.

"No," Lilith said. "Not really. He wishes he hated Kahguyaht. He tries to hate it. But in the fighting, it was Nikanj he tried to kill. And here, now, it's me he blames and distrusts. Hell, the Oankali set me up to be the focus of blame and distrust, but I don't hate Nikanj. Maybe I can't. We're all a little bit co-opted, at least as far as our individual ooloi are concerned."

Gabriel stood up. He loomed over Lilith, glaring down. The camp had gone quiet, everyone watching him.

"I don't give a shit what you feel!" he said. "You're talking about your feelings, not mine. Strip and screw your Nikanj right here for everyone to see, why don't you. We know you're their whore! Everybody here knows!"

She looked at him, abruptly tired, fed up. "And what are you when you spend your nights with Kahguyaht?"

She believed for a moment that he would attack her. And, for a moment, she wanted him to.

Instead, he turned and stalked away toward the shelters. Tate glared at Lilith for a moment, then went after him.

Kahguyaht left the Oankali fire and came over to Lilith. "You could have avoided that," it said softly.

She did not look up at it. "I'm tired," she said. "I resign."

"What?''

"I quit! No more scapegoating for you; no more being seen as a Judas goat by my own people. I don't deserve any of this."

It stood over her for a moment longer, then went after Gabriel and Tate. Lilith looked after it, shook her head, and laughed bitterly. She thought of Joseph, seemed to feel him beside her, hear him telling her to be careful, asking her what was the point in turning both peoples against her.

There was no point. She was just tired. And Joseph was not there.

9

People avoided Lilith. She suspected they saw her either as a traitor or as a ticking bomb.

She was content to be let alone. Ahajas and Dichaan asked her if she wanted to go home with them when they left, but she declined the offer. She wanted to stay in an Earthlike setting until she went to Earth. She wanted to stay with human beings even though for a time, she did not love them.

She chopped wood for the fire, gathered wild fruits for meals or casual eating, even caught fish by trying a method she remembered reading about. She spent hours binding together strong grass stems and slivers of split cane, fashioning them into a long, loose cone that small fish could swim into, but not out of. She fished the small streams that flowed into the river and eventually provided most of the fish the group ate. She experimented with smoking it and had surprisingly good results. No one refused the fish because she had caught it. On the other hand, no one asked how she made her fish traps-so she did not tell them. She did no more teaching unless people came to her and asked questions. This was more punishing to her than to the Oankali since she had discovered that she liked teaching. But she found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones.

Eventually people did begin to come to her. A few people. Allison, Wray and Leah, Victor. . . . She shared her knowledge of fish traps with Wray finally. Tate avoided her-perhaps to please Gabriel, perhaps because she had adopted Gabriel's way of thinking. Tate had been a friend. Lilith missed her, but somehow could not manage any bitterness against her. There was no other close friend to take Tate's place. Even the people who came to her with questions did not trust her. There was only Nikanj.

Nikanj never tried to make her change her behavior. She had the feeling it would not object to anything she did unless she began hurting people. She lay with it and its mates at night and it pleasured her as it had before she met Joseph. She did not want this at first, but she came to appreciate it.

Then she realized she was able to touch a man again and find pleasure in it.

"Are you so eager to match me with someone else?" she asked Nikanj. That day she had handed Victor an armload of cassava cuttings for planting and she had been surprised, briefly pleased at the feel of his hand, as warm as her own.

"You're free to find another mate," Nikanj told her. "We'll be Awakening other humans soon. I wanted you to be free to choose whether or not to mate."

"You said we would be put down on Earth soon."

"You stopped teaching here. People are learning more slowly. But I think they'll be ready soon." Before she could question it further, other ooloi called it away to swim with them. That probably meant it was leaving the training room for a while. Ooloi liked to use the underwater exits whenever they could. Whenever they were not guiding humans.

Lilith looked around the camp, saw nothing that she wanted to do that day. She wrapped smoked fish and baked cassava banana leaf and put it into one of her baskets with a few bananas. She would wander. Later, she would probably come back with something useful.

It was late when she headed back, her basket filled with bean pods that provided an almost candy-sweet pulp and palm fruit that she had been able to cut from a small tree with her machete. The bean pods-inga, they were called-would be a treat for everyone. Lilith did not like this particular kind of palm fruit as much, but others did.

She walked quickly, not wanting to be caught in the forest after dark. She thought she could probably find her way home in the dark, but she did not want to have to. The Oankali had made this jungle too real. Only they were invulnerable to the things whose bite or sting or sharp spines were deadly.

It was almost too dark to see under the canopy when she arrived back at the settlement.

Yet at the settlement, there was only one fire. This was a time for cooking and talking and working on baskets, nets, and other small things that could be done mindlessly while people enjoyed one another's company. But there was only one fire-and only one person near it.

As she reached the fire, the person stood up, and she saw that it was Nikanj. There was no sign of anyone else.

Lilith dropped her basket and ran the last few steps into camp. "Where are they?" she demanded. "Why didn't someone come to find me?"

"Your friend Tate says she's sorry for the way she behaved," Nikanj told her. "She wanted to talk to you, says she would have done it within the next few days. As it happened, she didn't have a few more days here."

"Where is she?"

"Kahguyaht has enhanced her memory as I have yours. It thinks that will help her survive on Earth and help the other humans."

"But. . ." She stepped closer to it, shaking her head. "But what about me? I did all you asked. I didn't hurt anyone. Why am I still here!"

"To save your life." It took her hand. "I was called away today to hear the threats that had been made against you. I had already heard most of them. Lilith, you would have wound up like Joseph."

She shook her head. No one had threatened her directly. Most people were afraid of her.

"You would have died," Nikanj repeated. "Because they can't kill us, they would have killed you."

She cursed it, refusing to believe, yet on another level, believing, knowing. She blamed it and hated it and wept.

"You could have waited!" she said finally. "You could have called me back before they left."

"I'm sorry," it said.

"Why didn't you call me? Why?"

It knotted its head and body tentacles in distress. "You could have reacted very badly. With your strength, you could have injured or killed someone. You could have earned a place alongside Curt." It relaxed the knots and let its tentacles hang limp. "Joseph is gone. I didn't want to risk losing you too."

And she could not go on hating it. Its words reminded her too much of her own thoughts when she lay down to help it in spite of what other humans might think of her. She went to one of the cut logs that served as benches around the fire and sat down.

"How long do I have to stay here?" she whispered. "Do they ever let the Judas goat go?"

It sat beside her awkwardly, wanting to fold itself onto the log, but not finding enough room to balance there.

"Your people will escape us as soon as they reach Earth," it told her. "You know that. You encouraged them to do it-and of course, we expected it. We'll tell them to take what they want of their equipment and go. Otherwise they might run away with less than they need to live. And we'll tell them they're welcome to come back to us. All of them. Any of them. Whenever they like."

Lilith sighed. "Heaven help anyone who tries."

"You think it would be a mistake to tell them?"

"Why bother asking me what I think?"

"I want to know."

She stared into the fire, got up and pulled a small log onto it. She would not do this again soon. She would not see fire or collect inga and palm fruit or catch a fish...

"Lilith?"

"Do you want them to come back?"

"They will come back eventually. They must."

"Unless they kill one another."

Silence.

"Why must they come back?" she asked.

It turned its face away.

"They can't even touch one another, the men and the women. Is that it?"

"That will pass when they've been away from us for a while. But it won't matter."

"Why not?"

"They need us now. They won't have children without us. Human sperm and egg will not unite without us."

She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. "And what kind of children would they have with you?"

"You haven't answered," it said.

"What?"

"Shall we tell them they can come back to us?"

"No. And don't be too obvious about helping them get away either. Let them decide for themselves what they'll do. Otherwise people who decide later to come back will seem to be obeying you, betraying their humanity for you. That could get them killed. You won't get many back, anyway. Some will think the human species deserves at least a clean death."

"Is it an unclean thing that we want, Lilith?"

"Yes!"

"Is it an unclean thing that I have made you pregnant?"

She did not understand the words at first. It was as though it had begun speaking a language she did not know.

"You... what?"

"I have made you pregnant with Joseph's child. I wouldn't have done it so soon, but I wanted to use his seed, not a print. I could not make you closely enough related to a child mixed from a print. And there's a limit to how long I can keep sperm alive."

She was staring at it, speechless. It was speaking as casually as though discussing the weather. She got up, would have backed away from it, but it caught her by both wrists.

She made a violent effort to break away, realized at once that she could not break its grip. "You said-" She ran out of breath and had to start again. "You said you wouldn't do this. You said-"

"I said not until you were ready."

"I'm not ready! I'll never be ready!"

"You're ready now to have Joseph's child. Joseph's daughter."

"... daughter?"

"I mixed a girl to be a companion for you. You've been very lonely."

"Thanks to you!"

"Yes. But a daughter will be a companion for a long time."

"It won't be a daughter." She pulled again at her arms, but it would not let her go. "It will be a thing-not human." She stared down at her own body in horror. "It's inside me, and it isn't human!"

Nikanj drew her closer, looped a sensory arm around her throat. She thought it would inject something into her and make her lose consciousness. She waited almost eager for the darkness.

But Nikanj only drew her down to the log bench again. "You'll have a daughter," it said. "And you are ready to be her mother. You could never have said so. Just as Joseph could never have invited me into his bed-no matter how much he wanted me there. Nothing about you but your words reject this child."

"But it won't be human," she whispered. "It will be a thing. A monster."

"You shouldn't begin to lie to yourself. It's a deadly habit. The child will be yours and Joseph's, Ajahas' and Dichaan's. And because I've mixed it, shaped it, seen that it will be beautiful and without deadly conflicts, it will be mine. It will be my first child, Lilith. First to be born, at least. Ahajas is also pregnant."

"Ahajas?" When had it found the time? It had been everywhere.

"Yes. You and Joseph are parents to her child as well." It used its free sensory arm to turn her head to face it. The child that comes from your body will look like you and Joseph."

"I don't believe you!"

"The differences will be hidden until metamorphosis."

"Oh god. That too."

"The child born to you and the child born to Ahajas will be siblings."

"The others won't come back for this," she said. "I wouldn't have come back for it."

"Our children will be better than either of us," it continued. "We will moderate your hierarchical problems and you will lessen our physical limitations. Our children won't destroy themselves in a war, and if they need to regrow a limb or to change themselves in some other way they'll be able to do it. And there will be other benefits."

"But they won't be human," Lilith said. "That's what matters. You can't understand, but that is what matters."

Its tentacles knotted. "The child inside you matters." It released her arms, and her hands clutched uselessly at one another.

"This will destroy us," she whispered. "My god, no wonder you wouldn't let me leave with the others."

"You'll leave when I do-you, Ahajas, Dichaan, and our children. We have work to do here before we leave." It stood up. "We'll go home now. Ahajas and Dichaan are waiting for us."

Home? She thought bitterly. When had she last had a true home? When could she hope to have one. "Let me stay here," she said. It would refuse. She knew it would. "This is as close to Earth as it seems you'll let me come."

"You can come back here with the next group of humans. Come home now."

She considered resisting, making it drug her and carry her back. But that seemed a pointless gesture. At least she would get another chance with a human group. A chance to teach them.. . but not a chance to be one of them. Never that. Never?

Another chance to say, "Learn and run!"

She would have more information for them this time. And they would have long, healthy lives ahead of them. Perhaps they could find an answer to what the Oankali had done to them. And perhaps the Oankali were not perfect. A few fertile people might slip through and find one another. Perhaps. Learn and run! If she were lost, others did not have to be. Humanity did not have to be.

She let Nikanj lead her into the dark forest and to one of the concealed dry exits.

About the Author

I'm a 48-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an 80-year-old writer. I'm also comfortably asocial-a hermit in the middle of Los Angeles-a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.

I've had ten novels published so far. Patternmaster, Mind of my Mind, Survivor, Kindred, Wild Seed, Clay's Ark Dawn, Adulthood Rites, imago, and Parable of the Sower, as well as a collection of my shorter work, entitled Bloodchild. I've also had short stories published in anthologies and magazines. One, "Speech Sounds," won a Hugo Award as best short story of 1984. Another, "Bloodchild," won both the 1985 Hugo and the 1984 Nebula awards as best novelette.

-Octavia E. Butler

In 1995 Octavia E. Butler was awarded a MacArthur Grant. In what is popularly called the genius program, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation rewards creative people who push the boundaries of their fields.