Butler, Octavia - Imago

She took my hand and put it on her breasts, and I remembered what it had been like to have breasts for JoĂo, and to drink from Lilith’s breasts. Jesusa’s breasts, covered by rough cloth that scratched against the top of my hand, were small and wonderfully sensitive. How had she become accustomed to the rough cloth? Probably she had never worn anything else.

She moaned and shared with me the pleasure of her body until I took my hand away and reluctantly detached from her.

“No!” she said.

“I know. We’ll sleep together tonight. I have to talk to you, though, and I wanted you to experience a little of that first. I wanted you to live in my skin for a while.”

She sat up and glanced at TomÁs, who slept on. “Is that what you do?” she asked. She meant was that all I did.

“For now. When I’m an adult, I’ll be able to do more. And also

even now, if I spend much time with you, I’ll heal you. I can’t help it.”

“I can’t go home if you heal me.”

“Jesusa

that doesn’t really matter.”

“My people matter. They matter very much to me.”

“Your people are tormenting themselves unnecessarily. They don’t even know about the Mars colony, do they?”

“The what?”

“I thought not. And with their background in high-altitude living, they may be better suited to it than most Humans. The Mars colony is exactly what it sounds like: a colony of Humans living and reproducing on the planet Mars. We transport them and we’ve given them the tools to make Mars livable.”

“Why?”

“There are no Oankali living on Mars. It’s a Human world.”

“This should be a Human world!”

“It isn’t anymore. It won’t ever be again.”

Silence.

“That’s a hard thing to think about, but it’s true. Humans who are sent to Mars are healed completely of any disease or defect. They’ll pass only good health on to their children.”

“What else had been done to them?”

“Nothing. Not even what I’ve already done with you. Their healing won’t be done by some hungry ooloi child. It will be done by people who are adult and mated and not especially interested in them. That’s good if they want to go to Mars. That’s safe.”

“And I think what we did is not safe.”

“Not safe at all.”

“Then you must tell me what you want of me—and of TomÁs?”

I turned my face away from her for a moment. I could still lose her. I stood a good chance of losing her. “You know what I want of you. Your people must have warned you. I want to mate with you. With both of you. I want you to stay with me.”

“To

to marry? But you’re

we’re strangers.”

“Are we? Not really. Not after what we’ve shared. I don’t think one of your priests would make us a marriage ceremony, but Oankali and constructs don’t have much of a ceremony. For us, mating is biological

neurochemical.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Our bodies please one another and depend on one another. We keep one another well and make children together. We—”

“Have children with my brother!”

“Jesusa

” I shook my head. “Your flesh is so like his that I could transplant some of it to his body, and with only a small adjustment, it would live and grow on him as well as it does on you. Your people have been breeding brother to sister and parent to child for generations.”

“Not anymore! We don’t have to do that anymore!”

“Because there are more of you now—all closely related. Isn’t that so?”

She said nothing.

“And unfortunately there was a mutation. Or perhaps one of your founding parents had a serious genetic defect that was controlled, but not corrected. That wouldn’t have mattered if they’d had an ooloi to clear the way for them, but they didn’t.” I touched her face. “You have one now, so why should you be separated from TomÁs?”

She drew back from me. “We’ve never touched one another that way!”

“I know.”

“People had to do what they did in the past. Like the children of Adam and Eve. There wasn’t anyone else.”

“On Mars there are already a great many others. Why should your people want to stay here and breed dead children or disabled children? They should go to Mars or come to us. We would welcome them.”

She shook her head slowly. “They told us you were of the devil.”

Now it was my turn to keep quiet. She didn’t believe in devils. In spite of her name, she probably didn’t believe strongly in gods. She believed in her people and in what her senses told her.

“Your people won’t be hurt,” I assured her. “People who spend as much time as we do living inside one another’s skins are very slow to kill. And if we injure people, we heal them.”

“You should let them alone.”

“No. We shouldn’t.”

“They own themselves. They don’t belong to you.”

“They can’t survive as they are. Their gene pool is too small. It’s only a matter of time before some disease or defect wipes them out.” I stopped for a moment, thinking. “I’m Human enough to understand what they’re trying to do. One of my brothers began the Mars colony because he understood the need of Humans to live as themselves, not to blend completely with the Oankali.”

“You have brothers?” She was frowning at me as though it had never occurred to her that she and I had anything in common.

“I have brothers and sisters. I even have one ooloi sibling.” Had it completed its first metamorphosis yet? Was the family simply waiting for me to return so that Aaor and I could begin our extraterrestrial exile? Let them wait.

I focused on Jesusa. I couldn’t lie to her, yet I couldn’t tell her everything. I was desperate to keep her and TomÁs with me. The people would almost certainly not allow me to find Human mates on the ship, but they would not take away mates I had found on my own. And perhaps they would not exile me at all if they saw that with these two Humans, I was stable—not changing others, not changing myself except in a deliberate, controlled way. And Aaor could get mates from among Jesusa’s people. It would want them. I had no doubt of that.

So what to do?

“My people will fight,” Jesusa said.

“They’ll be gassed and taken,” I said. “My people like to get that kind of thing over quickly so that they don’t have to hurt anyone.”

She looked at me with anger—almost with hatred. “I won’t tell you where my people are. I would drown myself before I would tell you.”

“I wouldn’t have asked.”

“Why? How will you find out?”

“I won’t. My people will. Once they know that your people exist, they’ll find them.”

She did not look toward the broken gun. She probably could not have seen it in the darkness now, but her body wanted to turn and look. Her hands wanted the gun. Her muscles twitched. If she killed me, no one would find out what I knew. No one would look for her hidden people.

I made up my mind abruptly. She had to know everything or she might die defending her people. She probably could not kill me, but she could force me to act reflexively and kill her.

“Jesusa,” I said, “come over here.”

She stared at me with hostility.

“Come. I’m going to tell you something my own Human mother didn’t learn until she had given birth to two construct children. Your people are not usually told this at all. I

I should not tell it to you, but I think I have to. Come.”

Her muscles wanted to move her toward me. My scent and her memory of comfort and pleasure drew her, but she moved deliberately away. “Tell me,” she said. “Just tell me. Don’t touch me again.”

I said nothing for a while. It would be easier for her to believe what I said if we were in contact. Humans did not usually understand why being linked into our nervous systems enabled them to feel the truth of what we said, but they did feel it. Now she would not. All her body language told me she would not be persuaded.