Butler, Octavia - Imago

I spoke into the male’s one good ear as I held him. “You’ll be completely blind soon. After that you’ll go deaf. Eventually you won’t be able to use your right arm—and that’s the arm you prefer to use. That’s not all. That’s not even the worst. Do you understand me?”

He had stopped struggling. Now he rocked back, trying to get a look at me in spite of his uncooperative neck.

“I can help you,” I said. “I will help you if you let me. And if your friend doesn’t shoot me.” I would help him whether the female shot me or not, but I wanted to avoid being shot if I could. Bullet wounds hurt more than I wanted to think about, and I still wasn’t very good at controlling my own pain.

The man was feeling calmer now. I did not dare drug him much. I could please him a little, relax him a little, but I could not put him to sleep. If he lost consciousness in my arms, the female would surely misunderstand, and shoot me.

“I can help,” I repeated. “All I ask in return is that you not try to kill me.”

“Why should you do anything?” he demanded. “Just let me go!”

I shifted to a more comfortable grip. “Why should you become more and more disabled?” I asked. “Why should you die when you can live and be well? Let me help you.”

“Let go of me!”

“Will you stay, and at least hear me?”

He hesitated. “Yes. All right.” His body was tense—ready to run.

I made a sighing sound so that he would hear it. “If you lie to me, I can’t help knowing.”

That frightened him and made him stiffly resentful in my grasp, but he said nothing.

The female came completely out of her cover and faced us. I kept the male’s body between my own and her rifle. Looking at her, I had absolutely no doubt that she would shoot. But I needed a few moments more with the male before I could have anything serious to show them. The female had tumors, too, though hers were not as big as the male’s. Her face, arms, and legs—all that was visible of her—were covered with small irregularly spaced growths.

“Let him go,” she said quietly. “I won’t shoot you if you let him go.” That was true at least. She was afraid, but she meant what she said.

I nodded to her, then spoke to the male. “I haven’t hurt you. What will you do if I let you go?”

Now the male gave a real sigh. “Leave.”

“You’re hungry. Take the food with you.”

“I don’t want it.” He no longer trusted it—probably because I wanted him to have it.

“Do one thing for me before I let you go.”

“What?”

“Move your neck.”

I kept a firm hold on him, but drew back slightly to let him turn and twist the neck that had been all but frozen in place before I touched him. He swore softly.

“TomÁs?” the female said, her voice filled with doubt.

“I can move it,” he said unnecessarily. He had not stopped moving it.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. It just feels

normal. I had forgotten how it felt to move this way.”

I let him go and spoke softly. “Perhaps when you’ve been blind for a while, you’ll forget how it feels to see.”

He almost fell turning to look at me. When he’d gotten a good look, he took a step back. “You won’t touch me again until I see you heal yourself,” he said. “What

Who are you?”

“Jodahs,” I said. “I’m a construct, Human and Oankali.”

He looked startled, then moved around so that he could get a look at all sides of me. “I never heard that they had scales.” He shook his head. “My god, man, you must frighten more people than we do!”

I laughed. I could feel my sensory tentacles flattening against my scales. “I don’t always look this way,” I said. “If you stay to be healed, I’ll begin to look more like you. More like the way you will look when you’re healed.”

“We can’t be healed,” the female said. “The tumors can be cut off, but they grow back. The disease

we were born with it. No one can heal it.”

“I know you were born with it. You’ll give it to at least some of your children if you decide to go where you can have them. I can correct the problem.”

They looked at each other. “It isn’t possible,” the male said.

I focused on him. He had been such a pleasure to touch. Now there was no need to hurry back home. No need to hurry at anything. Two of them. Treasure.

“Move your neck,” I said again.

The male moved it, shaking his misshapen head. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What did you say you were called?”

“Jodahs.”

“I’m TomÁs. This is Jesusa.” No other names. Very deliberately, no other names. “Tell us how you did this.”

I took sticks from the pile I had gathered and built up the fire. The two Humans obligingly sat down around it. The male picked up a baked tuber. The female caught his arm and looked at him, but he only grinned, broke open the tuber, and bit into it. His single visible eye opened wide in surprise and pleasure. The tuber was new to him. He ate a little more, then gave a piece to the female. She scooped out a little with one finger and tasted it. She did not take on the same look of surprised pleasure, but she ate, then examined the peeling carefully in the firelight. It was dark now for resisters. The sun had gone down.

“I haven’t tasted this before. Is it only a lowland plant?”

“It grows here. I’ll show you tomorrow morning.”

There was a silence. Of course they would stay the night in this place. Where else could they go in the dark?

“You’re from the mountains?” I asked softly.

More silence.

“I won’t get to the mountains. I wish I could.”

They were both eating tubers now, and they seemed content to eat and not talk. That was surprising. Nervousness alone should have made at least one of them talkative. How many times had they sat alone in the forest at night with a scaly construct?

“Will you let me begin to heal you tonight?” I asked TomÁs.

“Thank you for healing my neck,” TomÁs said aloud while his entire body recoiled from me in tiny movements.

“It may fuse again if your disorder isn’t cured.”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad. Jesusa says it kept me working instead of looking around daydreaming.”

Jesusa touched his forearm and smiled. “Nothing would keep you from daydreaming, brother.”

Brother? Not mate—or husband, as the Humans would say. “Blindness will be bad,” I said. “Deafness will be even worse.”

“Why do you say he’ll go blind or deaf?” Jesusa demanded. “He may not. You don’t know.”

“Of course I know. I couldn’t touch him and not know. And I know there was a time when he could see out of his right eye and hear with his right ear. There was a time when the mass on his shoulder was smaller and his arm wasn’t involved at all. He will be blind and deaf and without the use of his right arm—and he knows it. So do you.”

There was a very long silence. I lay down on the cleared ground and closed my eyes. I could still see perfectly well, and most Humans knew it. Somehow, though, they felt more at ease when they were observed only with sensory tentacles. They felt unobserved.

“Why do you want to heal us?” Jesusa asked. “You waylay us, feed us, and want to heal us. Why?”

I opened my eyes. “I was feeling very lonely,” I said. “I would have been glad to see

almost anyone. But when I realized you had something wrong, I wanted to help. I need to help. I’m not an adult yet, but I can’t ignore illness. I’m ooloi.”

Their mild reaction surprised me. I expected anything from JoĂo’s prejudiced rejection to actually running away into the forest. Only ooloi interacted directly with Humans and produced children. Only ooloi interacted directly with Humans in an utterly non-Human way.

And only ooloi needed to heal. Males and females could learn to heal if they wanted to. Ooloi had no choice. We exist to make the people and to unite them and to maintain them.