Butler, Octavia - Imago

“Are you?” he asked quietly.

“Of course I am. So are you. You’ve said you want to stay.”

“Yes, but—”

“Something is not right. Jodahs sleeps with us and heals us and pleasures us—and asks only for the opportunity to go on doing these things.” She paused, shook her head. “When I think of leaving Jodahs, finding other Human beings, or perhaps going to the colony on Mars, my stomach knots. It wants us to stay and I want to stay and so do you, and we shouldn’t! Something is wrong.”

I fell asleep at that point. It was not deliberate, but it could not have been better timed. Second metamorphosis, I had been told, was not one long sleep as the first one had been. It was a series of shorter sleeps—sleeps several days long.

I frightened them. Jesusa thought first that I was faking, then that I was dead. Only when they were able to get some reaction from my body tentacles did they decide I was alive and probably all right. They carried me down to the river and left me under a tree while they found other, small trees to chop down with their machete. Slow, hard work. I perceived and remembered everything in latent memories, stored away for consideration later when I was conscious.

They took good care of me, moving me when they moved, keeping me near them. Without realizing it, they became a torment to me when they touched me, when I could smell them. But they were a much worse torment when they went too far away. My only salvation was the certainty that they would not abandon me and the knowledge that this, uncomfortable as it was, was normal. It would be the same if I were being cared for by a pair of Oankali or a pair of constructs. Nikanj had warned me. Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.

I endured, grateful to Jesusa and TomÁs for their loyalty.

The raft took four days to finish. Not only was the machete not the best tool for the job, but Jesusa and TomÁs had never built such a thing before. They were not sure what would work and they would not load me onto a craft that would come apart in the water or one they could not control. They spent time learning to control it with long poles and with paddles. They worried that in some places the river might be too deep for poles. They worried about hostile people, too. We would be very visible on the river. People with guns could pick us off if they wanted to. What could we do about that?

I awoke as they were loading me and baskets of food onto the raft. Figs, nuts, bean pods with edible pulp, and several baked applesauce tubers.

“Are you all right?” TomÁs asked when he saw my eyes open. He was carrying me toward the raft. I felt as though I could sink into him, merge with him, become him. Yet I felt as though he were days away from me and beyond my reach completely.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t drop you. Jesusa might, but I won’t.”

“Don’t say that!” Jesusa said quickly. “Jodahs may not know you’re joking.”

TomÁs put me down on the raft. They had made a pallet for me there of large leaves covering soft grasses. I made myself relax and not clutch at TomÁs as he put me down.

He sat down next to me for a moment. “Is there anything you need? You haven’t eaten for days.”

“People don’t eat much during metamorphosis,” I said. “On the other hand, eating can take my mind off

other things. Do you see the bush there with the deep green leaves?”

He looked around, then pointed.

“Yes, that one. Pull several branches of young leaves from it. I eat the leaves.”

“Truly? They’re good for you?”

“Yes, but not for you, so don’t ever eat them. I can digest them and use their nutrients.”

“Eat some nuts.”

“No. You eat the nuts. Bring me the leaves.”

He obeyed, though slowly.

I ate the first few leaves while he watched incredulously. “I don’t understand enough about you,” he said.

“Because I eat leaves? I can eat almost anything. Some things are more worth the effort than others.”

“More than that. Something I’ve been trying to figure out. How do you

? I don’t mean to offend you, but I can’t figure this out on my own.” He hesitated, looked around to see where Jesusa was. She was out of sight among the trees. “How do you shit?” he demanded. “How do you piss? You’re all closed up.”

I laughed aloud. My Human mother had been with Nikanj for almost a year before she asked that question. “We’re very thorough,” I said. “What we leave behind would make poor fertilizer—except for our ships. We shed what we don’t need.”

“The way we shed hair or dead skin?”

“Yes. At home, the ship or the town would take it as soon as it was shed. Here, it’s dust. I leave it behind when I sleep—when I sleep normally, anyway. People in metamorphosis leave almost nothing behind.”

“I’ve never seen anything.”

“Dust.”

“And water?”

I smiled. “Easiest to shed when I’m in it, though I can sweat as you do.”

“And?”

“That’s all. Think TomÁs. When did you last see me drink water? I can drink, of course, but normally I get all the moisture I need from what I eat. We use everything that we take in much more thoroughly than you do.”

“Why aren’t you ever covered in mud?”

“I do one thing at a time.”

“And

our children would be like you?”

“Not at first. Human-born children look very Human at first. They eliminate in Human ways until metamorphosis.” I changed the subject abruptly. “TomÁs, I’m going to stay awake through as much of this trip as I can. I should be able to warn you if we’re near people so that we can at least stay close to the opposite shore. And I’ll have to stop you at my family’s camp. You won’t be able to see it from the river.”

“All right,” he said.

“If I do fall asleep, make camp. Wait for me to wake up. This is a very long river, and I’m not up to backtracking.”

“All right,” he repeated.

Jesusa arrived them. She had found a cacao tree the night before, and today had climbed it again for one last harvest. I had pointed a cacao tree out to her as we traveled together, and she had discovered she especially liked the pulp of the pods. She put her basket, stuffed with pods, onto the raft, then helped TomÁs push off. They poled us into the current not far from shore.

“Listen,” I said to them once the raft was moving easily.

Both glanced around to show me they were listening.

“If we’re attacked or we have to abandon the raft for any reason, push me off into the water—whether I’m awake or not. I can breathe in the water and nothing that lives there will be interested in eating me. Get me out later if you can. If you can’t, don’t worry about me. Get yourselves out and keep each other safe. I’m much harder to kill than you are.”

They didn’t argue. Jesusa gave me an odd look, and I remembered her shooting me. Her gun had not been salvageable. The metal parts had been too damaged. Was she remembering how hard I was to kill—or how I had destroyed their most powerful weapon? After a time, she left poling the raft to TomÁs. He seemed to have no trouble letting the current carry us and preventing us from drifting too close to either bank, where fallen trees and sandbars made progress slow and dangerous.

Jesusa sat with me and fed me cacao pulp and did not talk to me at all.

10

We drifted for days on the river.

I could not help with paddles or poles. It took all the energy I had just to stay awake. I could and did sit up and spot barely submerged sandbars for them and keep them aware of the general depth of the water. I kept quiet about the animals I could see in the water. The Humans could see almost nothing through the brown murk, but we often drifted past animals that would eat Human flesh if they could get it. Fortunately the worst of the carnivorous fish preferred slow, quieter waters, and were no danger to us.