Butler, Octavia - Imago

From the moment I said my name, he was never afraid. “Will you heal me?” he whispered in his last moments of consciousness.

“I will,” I said. “Completely.”

He closed his eye, trusting himself to me in a way that made it hard for me to withdraw from him and turn to attend to Jesusa.

When I did turn, it was almost too late. She was awake, her eyes full of confusion and terror. She drew back as I turned, and she almost pulled the trigger on the rifle she was holding.

“I’m Jodahs,” I told her.

She shot me.

The bullet went through one of my hearts and I had all I could do to stop myself from lunging at her reflexively and stinging her to death. I grabbed the gun from her and threw it against a nearby tree. It broke into two pieces, the wooden stock splintering and separating from the metal, and the metal bending.

I grasped her wrists so she couldn’t run. I couldn’t trust myself to put her to sleep until I had my own problem under control.

She struggled and shouted for TomÁs to wake up and help her. She managed to bite me twice, managed to kick me between the legs, then stopped her struggling for a moment to absorb the reality that I had only smooth skin between my legs, and that her kick did not bother me at all.

She twisted frantically and tried to gouge my eyes. I held on. I had to hold her. She couldn’t see in the dark. She might run into the surrounding forest and hurt herself—or run toward the river and fall down the high, steep bluff there. Or perhaps she meant to try to shoot me again with what was left of the gun or use the machete on me. I could not let her hurt herself or hurt me again and perhaps make me kill her. Nothing would be more irrational than that.

She stopped struggling abruptly and stared at one of the bite wounds she had inflicted on my left arm. In the firelight, even Human eyes could see it. It was healing, and that seemed to fascinate her. She watched until there was no visible sign of injury. Just a little smeared blood and saliva.

“You’re doing that inside,” she said, “healing your wound.”

I lay down, dragging her with me. She lay facing me, watching me with fear and distrust.

“I can heal myself as well as most adults,” I said. “I’m not very good at controlling pain in myself, though.”

She looked concerned, then deliberately hardened her expression. “What did you do to TomÁs?”

“He’s only asleep.”

“No! He would have awakened.”

“I drugged him a little. He didn’t mind. I promised I would heal him.”

“We don’t want your healing!”

The worst of the pain from my wound was over. I relaxed in relief and drew a long breath. I let go of her hands and she drew them away, looked at them, then back to me.

I grinned at her. “You’re not afraid of me now. And you don’t want to hurt me again.”

I could feel her face grow warmer. She sat up abruptly, very much against her own will. My scent was at work on her. She would probably have difficulty resisting it because she was not consciously aware of it.

“We truly don’t want your healing,” she repeated. “Though

I’m sorry I shot you.” She sat still, looking down at me. “You look like TomÁs, you know? You look the way he should look. You could be our brother—or perhaps our sister.”

“Neither.”

“I know. Why did you follow us?”

“Why did you run from me?”

She stared at the machete. She would have to get over or around both TomÁs and me to get it.

“No, Jesusa,” I said. “Stay here. Let me talk to you.”

“You know about us, don’t you?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

“I knew you would—once you’d touched us both.”

“I should have known from your scent alone. I let your disorder and my own inexperience confuse me. But, no, I didn’t learn what I know from touching you just now. I learned it from following you and hearing you and TomÁs talk.”

Her face took on a look of outrage. “You listened? You hid in the bushes and listened to what I said to my brother!”

“Yes. I’m sorry. We don’t usually do such things, but I needed to know about you. I needed to understand you.”

“You needed nothing!”

“You were new to me. New, different, in need of help with your genetic disorder, and alone. You knew I could help you, yet you ran away. When you know us better, you may understand that it was as though you were dragging me by several ropes. The question wasn’t whether I would follow you, but how long I could follow before I joined you again.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I like your people if you’re all compelled to do such things.”

“It’s been a century since anyone in my family has seen anyone like you. And you

perhaps you won’t have to worry about attracting the attention of others of my people.”

“What will you do, now that you know about us? What do you want of us?”

“That we must talk about,” I said, “you, TomÁs, and me. But I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Yes?” she said.

I looked at her for some time, simply enjoying the look and the scent of her. She still might leave me. She no longer wanted to, but she was capable of causing herself pain if she thought it was the right thing to do.

“Lie here with me,” I said, knowing she would not. Not yet.

“Why?” she asked, frowning.

“We’re very tactile. We don’t just enjoy contact, we need it.”

“Not with me.”

At least she did not move away from me. My left heart was not yet healed so I did not get up. I took her hand and held it for a while, examined it with body tentacles. This startled her, but did not bring out the phobic terror some Humans are subject to when we touch them that way. Instead, she bent to get a better look at my body tentacles. They were widely scattered now, and the same brown as the rest of my skin. My head tentacles, all hidden in my hair now, were as black as my hair.

“Can you move them all at will?” she asked.

“Yes. As easily as you move your fingers. You’ve never seen them before, have you?”

“I’ve heard of them. All my life, I’ve heard that they were like snakes and the Oankali were covered with them.”

“Some are. No Oankali has as few of them as I do now. Even I have the potential to develop a great many more.”

She looked at her own arm and its dozens of small tumors. “Actually I think mine are uglier,” she said.

I laughed and, with great relief, pulled her down beside me again. She didn’t really mind. She was wary, but not afraid.

“You have to tell me what will happen,” she said. “I’m afraid for my people. You have to tell me.”

I put her head on my shoulder so that I could reach her with both head and body tentacles. She let me position her, then lay relaxed and alert against me. I eased her weariness, but did not let her become drowsy. She was younger than I had thought. She had never had a mate in the Human way. Now she never would. I felt as though I could absorb her into myself. And yet she seemed too far away. If I could just bring her closer, touch her with more sensory tentacles, touch her with

with what I did not yet possess.

“This is wonderful,” she said. “But I don’t know why it should be.” She said nothing for a while. On her own, she discovered that if she touched me now with her hand, she felt the touch as though on her own skin, felt pleasure or discomfort just as she made me feel.

“Touch me,” she said.

I touched her thigh, and her body flared with sexual feeling. This surprised and frightened her and she caught my free hand and held it in her own. “You haven’t told me anything,” she said.

“In a way, I’ve told you everything,” I said, “and all without words.”

She let go of my hand and touched me again, let the sensation we shared guide her so that her fingertips slid around the bases of some of my sensory tentacles. She stopped an instant before I would have stopped her. The sensation was too intense.