Imago

He was not questioned further. No doubt being an elder gave him a few privileges. I wondered how long my influence on him would last, and how he would react to its ending. Best not to find out. I had deliberately not told him about the cave where we were to meet. Willingly or unwillingly, he might lead others to it.

There was a scream suddenly and the sound of a blow. I had lain frozen for some time before I realized it had nothing to do with us. Nearby, a male and female were arguing, cursing each other. The male had hit the female. He did this again several times and she went on screaming. Even Human ears must have been full of the terrible sound.

I crept out of the terraces and into the village.

I was close to Jesusa and TomÁs, close to the building I had been shown from the mountain. I could not go straight to it. There were houses in the way and two more high stone steps that raised the level of the ground. The flattened ridge was not as flat as it had seemed. Stone walls had been built here and there to retain the soil and create the level platforms on which the houses had been built. In that way, the houses as well as the crops were terraced.

There were pathways and stairs to make movement easy, but these were patrolled. I avoided them.

Crouching beneath one of these tiers, I caught Jesusa’s scent. She was just ahead, just above, and there was a faint scent of TomÁs as well.

But there were two others—armed males.

I stood up carefully and peered over the wall of the tier. From where I was, all I could see were more walls—walls of buildings. There were no people outside.

I climbed up slowly, looking everywhere. Someone came out of a doorway abruptly and walked away from me down the path. I flattened my body against a wall of large, smooth stones.

Around me, people slept with slow, even breathing. The angry male, still some distance from me, had stopped beating his mate. I did not stand away from the wall until the person from the doorway—a pregnant female—had crossed the path and taken the stairs down to a lower level.

Farther along the pathway I was confined to, I recognized the round building—a half-cylinder of smooth gray rock. Both Jesusa and TomÁs were inside, though I did not think they were together. I walked toward it, all my sensory tentacles in prestrike knots and my sensory arms coiled against me. If I could do this without noise, we could get away, and it might be morning before anyone knew we were gone.

The building had heavy wooden doors.

In time, I could smash them, but only with a great deal of noise. Someone would shoot me long before I’d finished.

I uncoiled one sensory arm and probed the door. Filaments of my sensory hand could penetrate it as easily as they could penetrate flesh. A wooden door set in a wooden frame, held shut by a massive wooden crossbar that rested in a cradle of iron. Very simple. The iron cradle consisted of four flattened, upturned prongs, two fastened to the door with several metal screws and two fastened to the doorframe.

Quickly, carefully, I rotted the wood that held the prong screws on the door. Through my sensory hand, I injected a corrosive, and the wood began at once to disintegrate. I could not have destroyed the door this way, but getting rid of the small sections of wood that held the screws was no trouble. In effect, I digested them.

After a time, the heavy crossbar slid to the floor.

The two men just inside shouted in surprise, then cursed and made several quick, noisy movements. They came together to examine the door and ask each other what could have caused it to fall apart that way.

When I hit the door, they were exactly where I wanted them to be. The door knocked them down before they could raise their rifles. I stung first one, then the other, with a lashing motion of sensory arms. Both collapsed unconscious. It could only have been reflex that caused one of them to fire his gun.

The bullet glanced off one rock wall and spent itself against another.

And suddenly, everywhere, there were voices.

Jesusa was so close

. But there was no time.

I stepped out through the doorway, meaning to disappear for a while, try again later.

Outside, there was a forest of long wood-and-metal rifles. People had leaped from sleep onto their pathway, some of them naked, but all of them armed.

I jumped back behind the heavy door and slammed it as people fired into it. I grabbed the crossbar and kicked and jammed it into a prop. It wouldn’t hold long against their guns and their bodies, but it would give me a moment.

What to do? They would kill me before I could speak. They would kill me as soon as they reached me. If I went into the area where Jesusa was confined, they might kill her, too.

I reached for the two guards and forced them conscious. I dragged them to their feet, made them stand on either side of me, made them breathe in as much as they could of me.

They struggled a little at first. Then I looped my sensory arms around them and injected my ooloi substance into them. I had to quiet them before the door gave way.

“Save your lives,” I said softly. “Don’t let your people shoot you. Make them listen!”

At that moment the door gave way.

People poured into the room, ready to shoot. I held the two guards in front of me, held them with only my strength hands visible. The less alien I seemed now, the more likely I was to live for a few more moments.

“Don’t shoot us!” the guard under my right hand shouted.

“Don’t shoot!” the other echoed. “It isn’t hurting us.”

“It’s an alien,” someone shouted.

“Oankali!”

“Four-arms!”

“Kill it!”

“No!” my prisoners screamed together.

“It can sting people to death! Kill it!”

“There’s no need to kill me!” I said. I tried consciously to sound the way Nikanj did when it both frightened Humans and got them to cooperate. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you shoot me, I may lose control and kill several of you before I die.”

Silence.

“I mean you no harm.”

Again the curse, and it was, unmistakably, a curse. “Four-arms!”

And from someone else. “They strike like snakes!”

“I didn’t come to strike anyone,” I said. “I mean you no harm.”

“What do you want here!” one of them demanded.

I hesitated and someone else answered for me.

“Isn’t it obvious what the thing wants? The prisoners, that’s what! It’s come for them!”

“I’ve come for them,” I agreed softly.

People began to look uncertain. I was reaching them—probably more with my scent than with anything I was saying. All I had to do was keep them here a little longer. They might go in and get Jesusa and TomÁs for me. The two in my hands would probably do that now if I asked it of them. But I still needed them—for just a while longer.

“If you kill me,” I said, “my people will find out about it. And those who shoot me will never live on a planet or know freedom again. Ask your elders. They remember.”

People began to look at one another doubtfully. Some of them lowered their guns and stood not knowing what to do. There had always been a fear among Humans that we could read their thoughts. No doubt that was why they had feared letting even one of their people go down into the lowland forest. Most had never understood that it was their bodies we read—inside and out. And if we were alert and competent—more so than I had been with Santos—their bodies kept few secrets.

“Who will speak for you?” I asked the crowd. If they had been Oankali or construct, I would never have asked such a question. I could have made my case to anyone, and the people would have joined person-to-person or through their town organisms, and there would have been a consensus.

But these people were Human. I had to find their leaders.

Two males stepped forward out of the crowd.

“Elders?” I asked.

One of them nodded. The other only stared at me in obvious disgust.

“I mean no harm,” I said. “Harm will only be done if you shoot me. Do you accept that?”

“Perhaps,” the one who had nodded said.

I shrugged. “Examine your own memories.” And I kept quiet and left them to their memories. Meanwhile, without drawing attention to the gesture, I took my hands from the two men in front of me. They didn’t move.

“Why do you want Jesusa and TomÁs?” demanded the disgusted elder.

“They are my mates.”

There was a sudden rush of surprised muttering from the people. I heard disbelief and questioning, threats and cursing, honor and disgust.

“Why should you be surprised?” I asked. “Why did you think I wanted them? Why else would I be willing to risk your killing me?” I paused, but no one spoke. “We care for our mates as deeply as you do for yours,” I said.

“It would be better for them to be killed than to be given to you,” the disgusted elder said.

“Your people almost destroyed themselves,” I said, “and you still haven’t had enough killing?”

“Your people want to kill us!” someone said from the crowd.

I spoke into renewed muttering. “My people are coming here, but they won’t kill. They didn’t kill your elders. They plucked them out of the ashes of their war, healed them, mated with those who were willing, and let the others go. If my people were killers, you wouldn’t be here.” I paused to let them think, then I continued. “And there wouldn’t be a Human colony on the planet Mars where Humans live and breed totally free of us. The Humans there are healthy and thriving. Any Human who wants to join them will be given healing, restored fertility if necessary, and transported.”

What happened next was totally irrational, yet somehow, later, I felt that I should have anticipated it.

The disgusted elder’s face twisted with anger and revulsion. He cursed me, called on his god to damn me. Then he fired his gun.

One of the two Human guards whom I had held, and then released, jumped between the elder’s gun and me.

An instant later, the guard lay dying and the two elders struggled for possession of the disgusted one’s rifle.

I saw the murderous elder subdued by his companion and two deformed young people. Then I was on the floor beside the injured man. “Keep them off me,” I told the remaining guard. “His heart is damaged. I can save him, but only if they let me alone.”

I paid no more attention to what they did. The injured guard needed all my attention. By the definition of most Humans, he was already dead. The large-caliber bullet fired at close range had gone through his heart and come out of his back just missing his spine. I had all I could do to keep him alive while I repaired the heart. The Humans would not murder me. The moment for that had passed.

12

I was hungry when I finished the healing. I was almost weak with hunger. And the scent of Jesusa and TomÁs so nearby was tormenting. I could not let the Humans keep them from me much longer.

I began to pay attention to my immediate surroundings again and found myself looking into the eyes of the man I had just healed.

“I was shot,” he said. “I remember

but it doesn’t hurt.”

“You’re healed,” I said. I hugged him. “Thank you for shielding me.”

He said nothing. He sat up when I did and looked around at the people who had gathered around us and sat down. We were the center of a ring of elders and aged fertiles—people who looked ancient, but were not nearly as old as the youthful-looking elders. There were no females present.

“Give me something to eat,” I told them. “Plant material. No meat.”

No one moved or spoke.

I looked at the guard I had just healed. “Get me something, please.”

He nodded. No one stopped him from going out, though everyone was armed.

I sat still and waited. Eventually the Humans would begin to talk to me. They were playing a game now, trying to make me uneasy, trying to put me at more of a disadvantage than I was. A small, Human, hierarchical game. They might not let my guard back in. Well, I was uncomfortably hungry, not desperately hungry. And I didn’t know their game well enough to play it. At some time they would probably take pleasure in telling me what they intended to do to me. I was in no hurry to hear that. I didn’t expect to like it.

I almost slept. My guard came back with a dish of cooked beans and some grain and fruit that I did not recognize. A good meal. I thanked him and sent him away because I was afraid he would speak for me and get into trouble.

Sometime later, Francisco came in. There were three more elders with him. From their looks, they were probably the oldest males in the village. They were gray-haired, and their faces were deeply lined. One of them walked with a severe limp. The other two were gaunt and bent. They had probably been old before the war.

These four sat down facing me, and Francisco spoke quietly. “Are you all right?”

I looked at him, trying to guess what his situation was. Why had he come? It was too late for him to play the part he had promised to play. He was holding himself very tightly, yet trying hard to seem relaxed. I decided not to recognize him—for now.

“My mates are still imprisoned,” I said.

“We’ll let you see them soon. We want you to know first what we’ve decided.”

I waited.

“You’ve said your people will be coming here.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll wait here for them.” His body inclined toward me, full of repressed tension. It was important to him that I accept what he was saying.

I kept quiet, turned my face away from him so that I could watch him without making him feel watched. There was no triumph in him, no slyness, no sign that he was doing anything more than telling me what his people had decided—and perhaps hoping that I didn’t give him away.

“The guards have captured your companion,” Francisco said in the same quiet way. “It will be brought here soon.”

“Aaor?” I asked. “Is it injured? Is anyone injured?”

“Nothing serious. Your companion was shot in the leg, but it seems to have healed itself. One of our people whom you’ve tampered with was injured slightly.”

“Who? Which one?”

“Santos Ibarra Ruiz.”

Of course. I shook my head. Someone in the group of elders groaned. “Is he all right?” I asked.

“Our guards heard him arguing with someone in your companion’s party,” Francisco said. “When they investigated and took prisoners, Santos bit one of them. He was clubbed. He’s all right except for a few bruises and a headache.”

Santos had given Aaor away. Who but Santos would? How many lives had he endangered or destroyed?

“What will happen to the Humans we’ve

tampered with?” I asked.

“We haven’t decided yet,” Francisco said. “Nothing probably.”

“They should be hanged,” someone muttered. “Supposed to be on watch

.”

“They were taken by surprise,” Francisco said. “If I hadn’t decided to come down and sleep in my own bed, I could have been taken myself.”

So that was why he was still free. He had convinced his people that we had arrived after he left. That story might protect him and enable him to help the others. His body expressed his discomfort with the lie, but he told it well.

“Will you keep Aaor here, too?” I asked.

“Yes. It won’t be hurt unless it tries to escape. Neither will you. Our people feel that having you here will assure their safety when your people arrive.”

I nodded. “Was this your idea?”

The elder with the limp spoke up. “It doesn’t matter to you whose idea it was! You’ll stay here. And if your people don’t come

perhaps we’ll be able to think of something to do with you.”

I turned to face him. “Use me to heal your leg,” I said softly. “It must pain you.”

“You’ll never get your poisonous hands on me.”

I would. Of course I would. If they kept Aaor and me here, nothing would stop them for using us to rid them of their many physical problems.

“This wasn’t my idea,” Francisco said. “My only idea was that you shouldn’t be shot. A great many people here would like to shoot you, you know.”

“That would be a serious mistake.”

“I know.” He paused. “Santos was the one who suggested keeping you here.”

I did not shout with laughter. Laughter would have made the elders even more intensely suspicious than they were. But within myself, I howled. Santos was making up for his error. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew his people would use Aaor’s and my healing ability and breathe our scents, and finally, when our people arrived, his would meet them without hostility. In that way, I would, as Francisco had said, assure the mountain people’s safety. People who did not fight would be in no danger at all, would not even be gassed once the shuttle caught Aaor’s and my scents.

“Bring Aaor,” I said.

“Aaor is coming.” Francisco paused. “If you try anything, if you frighten these people in any way at all, they will shoot you. And they won’t stop shooting until there’s nothing living left of you.”

I nodded. There would be a great deal that was living left of me, but it would certainly not survive as me. And it might do harm here—as a disease. It was best for us to die on a ship or in one of our towns. Our substance would be safely absorbed into the larger organism. If it were not absorbed, the Oankali organelles in it would find things to do on their own.

Aaor was brought in by young guards. I looked at its legs for traces of a bullet wound, but could see none. The Humans had let it heal itself completely before they brought it in.

It walked over and sat down beside me on the stone floor. It did not touch me.

“They want us to stay here,” it said in Spanish.

“I know.”

“Shall we?”

“Yes, of course.”

It nodded. “I thought so, too.” It pulled its mouth into something less than a smile. “You were right about being shot. I don’t want to go through it again.”

“Where are your mates?”

“At their home not far from here—under guard.”

I faced Francisco again. “We agree to stay here until our people come, but Aaor should live with its mates. And I should live with mine.”

“You’ll be imprisoned here in this tower!” one of the gaunt old elders said. “Both of you! You’ll stay here under guard. And you’ll have no mates!”

“We’ll live in houses as people should,” I said softly.

Someone spat the words “Four-arms!” and someone else muttered, “Animals!”

“We’ll live with the people you know to be our mates,” I continued. “If we don’t, we’ll become

very dangerous to ourselves and to you.”

Silence.

My scent and Aaor’s probably could not convert these people quickly without direct contact, but our scents could make everyone more likely to believe what we said. We could persuade them to do what they knew they really should do.

“You’ll live with your mates,” Francisco said above much muttering. “Most of us accept that. But wherever you live, you will be guarded. You must be.”

I glanced at Aaor. “All right,” I said. “Guard us. There’s no need for it, but if it comforts you, we’ll put up with it.”

“Guards to keep people from accepting your poison!” muttered the lame elder.

“Give me my mates now,” I said very softly. People leaned forward to hear. “I need them and they need me. We keep one another healthy.”

“Let it be with them,” Aaor supplemented. “Let them comfort one another. They’ve been apart for days now.”

They argued for a while, their hostility slowly decreasing like a wound healing. In the end Francisco himself freed Jesusa and TomÁs. They came out of their prison rooms and took me between them, and the elders and old fertiles watched with conflicting emotions of fear, anger, envy, and fascination.

13

We stayed.

We healed the people in spite of our guards. We healed our guards.

Young people came to us first, and went away without their tumors, sensory losses, limps, paralysis

. People brought their children to us. Jesusa, TomÁs, and I shared a stone house with Aaor, Javier, and Paz. Once we were settled, Jesusa went out and found all the people she remembered as having deformed or disabled children. She badgered them until they began to bring their children to us. The small house was often full of healing children.

And Santos began to grow. I gave him a handsome new nose and he went right on talking too much and risking getting it broken again. But people seemed less inclined to hit him.

The first elder to come to us was female with only one leg. The stump of her amputated leg pained her and she hoped I could stop the pain. I sent her to Aaor because I had more people to heal than I could manage. Over a period of weeks, Aaor grew her a new leg and foot.

After that, everyone came to us. Even the most stubborn elders forgot how much they hated us once we’d touched them. They didn’t suddenly begin to love us, but they stopped spitting as we walked by, stopped muttering curses or threats at us, stopped pointing their guns at us to remind us of their power and their fear. They let us alone. That was enough.

Their people, however, did begin to love us and to believe what we told them and to talk to us about Oankali and construct mates.

14

The shuttle, when it arrived, landed down in the canyon. There it could drink from the river and eat something other than the mountain people’s crops. No one was gassed. There was no panic on the part of the Humans. It was a measure of the Humans’ trust that they let Aaor and me and our mates go down to meet the newcomers. At the last moment, Francisco decided to come with us, but only because, as he had admitted, his long years had not taught him patience.

Seven families had come with the shuttle. Most were from Chkahichdahk, since that was where shuttles lived when they were not in use. They had stopped at Lo, however, to pick up my parents. The first person I spotted in the small crowd was Tino—and I came closer than I should have to grabbing him and hugging him. Too Human a reaction. I hugged Nikanj instead, though Nikanj did not particularly want to be hugged. It tolerated the gesture and used it as an opportunity to sink its sensory tentacles into me and examine me thoroughly. When it had finished, without a word, it reached for Aaor and examined it. It held Aaor longer, then focused on Javier and Paz. They were watching with obvious curiosity but without alarm. They had already passed the stage of extreme avoidance of everyone except Aaor. Now, like Jesusa and TomÁs, they were simply careful.

Neither of them had ever seen an Oankali before. They were fascinated, but they were not afraid.

Nikanj flattened its sensory tentacles to that glittering smoothness it could achieve when it was gleefully happy. “Lelka,” it said, “if you will introduce us to your mates, we may begin to forgive you for staying here and not letting us know you were all right.”

“I’m not sure I’ll forgive it,” Lilith said. But she was smiling, and for a time, everything else had to wait until Javier and Paz were welcomed into the family and the rest of us rewelcomed and forgiven. I saw Jesusa reach out to my mother for the first time since their break. The two embraced and I felt my own sensory tentacles go smooth with pleasure.

“The mountain Humans decided to keep us,” Aaor was explaining to the rest of the family. “Since their only alternative as they saw it was to kill us, we were willing to stay.”

“Is this one of them?” Ahajas asked, looking at Francisco.

I introduced him and he, too, met her with curiosity but no fear.

“Would you have killed them?” she asked with odd amusement.

Francisco smiled, showing very white teeth. “Of course not. Jodahs captured me long before it captured most of my people.”

Ahajas focused on me. “Captured?”

“No one has captured him,” I said. “He wants to go to the Mars colony.”

Ahajas went very smooth. “Do you want that?”

“I did.” Francisco shook his head. “Maybe I still do.”

I looked at him, surprised. He had been one of the holdouts—very certain. Now that the shuttle was here, he was less certain. “Shall we find mates for you?” I asked.

He looked at me, then did something very Oankali. He turned and walked away. He walked quickly, would have gone back to the steep road and up to the village if Ahajas had not spoken.

“Does he have a female mate, Lelka?” she asked me.

I nodded. “Inez. She’s an old fertile.” She had joined Francisco after bearing nine children. Now she was past the age of childbearing. Francisco had brought her to me once and asked me to check her health. She turned out to be one of the healthiest old fertiles I had ever touched, but I understood that Francisco’s real purpose had been to share her with me—and me with her. Yet he had truly wanted to emigrate. Until now.

“Jodahs,” Ahajas said, “I think there are mates for him here, now. Bring him back.”

I went after Francisco, caught him, took him by the arms. “My Oankali mother says there are people here, now, who might mate with you.”

He stood still for a moment, then abruptly tried to wrench free. I held him because his body language told me that he wanted to be held more than he wanted to be let go. He was afraid and confused and ashamed and powerfully drawn to the idea of potential Oankali mates.

After his first effort, he would not shame himself by continuing to struggle against me. I let him go when he truly wanted it. Then I took his right hand loosely and led him back toward Ahajas, who waited with a mated group of strangers—three Oankali. Francisco began to sweat.

“I would give anything at all to have you instead,” he told me.

“You already have all I can give you,” I said. “If you like these new people, their ooloi can give you much more.” I paused. “Do you think Inez will consent to have her fertility restored? Maybe she’s tired of having children.”

He laughed, momentarily decreasing the level of his tension. “She’s been after me to see whether I could get you to make changes in us. She wants to have at least one child with me.”

“A construct child?”

“I don’t know—although if I’m willing after resisting for a century

”

“Take these new people up to see her. Talk to her, and to them.”

He stopped me, turned me to face him. “You’ve done this to me,” he said. “I would have gone to Mars.”

I said nothing.

“I can’t even hate you,” he whispered. “My god, if there had been people like you around a hundred years ago, I couldn’t have become a resister. I think there would be no resisters.” He stared at me a moment longer. “Damn you,” he said slowly, sadly. “Goddamn you.” He walked past me and went to Ahajas and the waiting Oankali family.

“They are your ooan relatives,” Lilith said, and I looked at her with amazement. She had somehow managed to approach me without my noticing.

“You were preoccupied,” she said. She wanted very much to touch me and made no effort to hide it. She looked at me hungrily. “You and Aaor are beautiful,” she said. “Are you both really all right?”

“We are. We need Oankali mates, but other than that we’re fine.”

“And that man, Francisco, is he typical of the people here?”

“He’s one of the old ones. The first one I met.”

“And he loves you.”

“As you said once: pheromones.”

“At first, no doubt. By now, he loves you.”

“

yes.”

“Like JoĂo. Like Marina. You have a strange gift, Lelka.”

I changed the subject abruptly. “Did you say those people with Francisco were my ooan relatives? Nikanj’s relatives?”

“Nikanj’s parents.”

I turned to look at them, remembering their names. I had heard them all my life. The ooloi was Kahguyaht, large for an ooloi—as big as Lilith, who was large for a Human female. Kahguyaht had not given such large size to Nikanj. Its male mate, Jdahya, was of an ordinary size. The placement of his sensory tentacles gave him an oddly Human look. They hung from his head like hair. They were placed on his face in a way that could be mistaken for Human eyes, ears, nose. He was the first Oankali Lilith had ever met. She was looking at him now and smiling. “Francisco will like him,” she said.

Francisco would like them all if he let himself. He was talking now with Tediin, Kahguyaht’s huge female mate—again, bigger than average. She did not look in the slightest Human. He was laughing at something she had said.

“There are people waiting to meet you, Jodahs,” Lilith said.

Oh, yes. They were waiting to meet me and examine me and decide whether I should be allowed to go on running around loose. They were already meeting Aaor.

Three ooloi were investigating Aaor. Two waited to meet me. My ooan parents would be busy for a while with Francisco, but these others must be satisfied. I went to them wearily.

15

It wasn’t bad being examined by so many. It wasn’t uncomfortable. After a time even my ooan family left Francisco to poke and probe us. They took us into the shuttle. Through the shuttle, Oankali and constructs of all sexes could make easy, fast, nonverbal contact with us and with one another. The group had the shuttle fly out of the canyon and up as high as necessary to communicate with the ship. The ship transmitted our messages and those of its own inhabitants to the lowland towns and their messages to us. In that way, the people came together for the second time to share knowledge of construct ooloi who should not exist, and to decide what to do with us.

The shuttle left children and most Humans back in the canyon. Both could have come and participated through their ooloi, but for them the experience would be jarring and disorienting. Everything was too intense, went too fast, was, for the Humans, too alien. Linking into the nervous system of a shuttle, a ship, or a town even through an ooloi was, according to Lilith, one of the worst experiences of her life. Yet she and Tino went up with us, and absorbed what they could of the complex exchange.

The demands of the lowlanders and the people of the ship were surprisingly easy for me to absorb and understand. I could handle the intensity and the complexity. What I wasn’t sure I could handle was the result. The whole business was like Lilith’s rounded black cloud of hair. Every strand seemed to go its own different way, bending, twisting, spiraling, angling. Yet together they formed a symmetrical, recognizable shape, and all were attached to the same head.

Oankali and construct opinion also took on a recognizable shape from apparent chaos. The head that they were attached to was the generally accepted belief that Aaor and I were potentially dangerous and should either go to the ship or stay where we were. The lowland towns were apologetic, but they still felt unsure and afraid of us. We represented the premature adulthood of a new species. We represented true independence—reproductive independence—for that species, and this frightened both Oankali and constructs. We were, as one signaler remarked, frighteningly competent ooloi. We must be watched and understood before any more of us were made— and before we could be permitted to settle in a lowland town.

Continued exile, then. The mountains. We would not go to Chkahichdahk. The people knew that. We let them know it again, Aaor and I together.

“There will be two more of you,” someone signaled from far away. I separated out the signal in my memory and realized that it had come from far to the east and south on the other side of the continent. There, an ooloi in a Mandarin-speaking Jah village was reporting its shameful error, its children going wrong. Both were in metamorphosis now. Both would be ooloi.

“Bring them here as soon as they can travel,” I signaled. “They’ll need mates quickly. It would be best if they had chosen mates already.”

“This is first metamorphosis,” the signaler protested.

“And they are construct! Bring them here or they’ll die. Put them on a shuttle as soon as you can. For now, let them know that there are mates for them here.”

After a time, the signaler agreed.

This produced confusion among the people. One mistake simply focused attention on the ooloi responsible. Two mistakes unconnected, but happening so close together in time after a century of perfection, might indicate something other than ooloi incompetence.

There was much communication about this, but no conclusion. Finally Aaor interrupted.

“This will probably happen again,” it said. “An ooloi subadult who doesn’t want to go to the ship should be sent here. The Humans who want to stay here should be left here and let alone. They want mates and I think there are Oankali and constructs who are willing to come here to mate with them.”

“I believe we will be staying,” Kahguyaht signaled. “We’ve found resisters who might mate with us.” It paused. “I don’t believe they would even consider us if they hadn’t spent these last months living near Jodahs and Aaor.”

“Your ooan children,” someone signaled.

Kahguyaht signaled very slowly. “Where is the flaw in what I’ve said?”

No response. I doubted that anyone really believed Kahguyaht was expressing misplaced family pride. It was simply telling the truth.

“Aaor and I want Oankali mates,” I signaled. “We want to start children. I think once we’ve done that and once you’ve examined our children, you’ll know that we’re not dangerous.”

“You are dangerous,” several people signaled. “There’s no safe way to begin a new species.”

“Then help us. Send us mates and young construct ooloi. Watch us all you like, but don’t hinder us.”

“Have you planted a town?” someone on Chkahichdahk asked.

I signaled negative. “We didn’t know we would be staying here

permanently.”

“Plant a town,” several people signaled. “How can you think of having children with no town to hold them?”

I hesitated, focused on Kahguyaht. It spoke aloud within the shuttle. “Plant a town, Lelka. In less than a hundred years, my mates and I will be dead. You should plant the town that you and your mates and children will leave this world in.”

“If I plant a town,” I signaled the people, “will Aaor and I be permitted Oankali mates? Will Oankali and construct mates come to the Humans here?”

There was a long period of discussion. Some people were mote concerned about us than others. Some, clearly, would have nothing to do with us until we had been stable for several more years, and clearly done no harm. They were in the minority. The majority decided that as long as we stayed where we were, anyone who wanted to join us could do so.

“Plant a town,” they told us. “Prepare a place. People will come.”

A few of them signaled such eagerness that I knew they would be with us as soon as they could get a shuttle. Humans who wanted mates were rare enough and desirable enough to make people dare to face any danger they thought Aaor and I might present. And Aaor and I were interesting enough in our newness to seduce Oankali who needed ooloi mates. People seeking mates were more vulnerable to seduction than they would be at any other time in their lives. They would come.

16

Sometime later, when the visiting families and the mountain Humans had begun to get together and curiously examine one another, I prepared to plant the new town.

I sorted through the vast genetic memory that Nikanj had given me. There was a single cell within that great store—a cell that could be “awakened” from its stasis within yashi and stimulated to divide and grow into a kind of seed. This seed could become a town or a shuttle or a great ship like Chkahichdahk. In fact, my seed would begin as a town and eventually leave Earth as a great ship. It would never be a shuttle, though it would be parent to shuttles.

Over the next few days, I found the cell, awakened it, nourished it, and encouraged it to divide. When it had divided several times, I stopped it, separated one cell from the mass, and returned that cell to stasis. This was work that only an adult ooloi could do, and I found that I enjoyed it immensely.

I took the remaining mass—the seed—still within my body to the place that the Humans and the visiting families had agreed was good for people and towns. Several of the visitors and Humans traveled with me by shuttle, since the chosen place was well upriver from the mountain village. There were scattered stone ruins at the new place where the canyon broadened into a large valley. Plenty of land, plenty of water, easy access to many needed minerals. Less easy access to others, according to what the shuttle’s senses told us when it had landed and tasted the new place. But whether or not the town had to develop a longer and more complex root system than most towns, everything it needed was within its reach. Including us. Here the town could grow and always have the companionship of some of us. It would need that companionship as much as we did during our metamorphoses. Yet we were planting it too far from the mountain people’s crops for it to be tempted to reach them and eat them before it was big enough to feed the people itself. While it was young, it would be particularly voracious. And it would need the space the valley afforded it to grow and mature before it had to deal with mountains.

“This could be a good place to live,” one of the elders commented as she left the shuttle and looked around. She was the woman whose leg Aaor had regenerated. She had decided with most of her people to stay on Earth.

“There’s room here for many people,” Jesusa said, looking at me. She wanted a child even more than I did. It was hard for her to wait for Oankali mates. At least now we knew there were potential mates coming.

I chose a spot near the river. There I prepared the seed to go into the ground. I gave it a thick, nutritious coating, then brought it out of my body through my right sensory hand. I planted it deep in the rich soil of the riverbank. Seconds after I had expelled it, I felt it begin the tiny positioning movements of independent life.