Butler, Octavia - Imago

It was the people who were dangerous.

Twice I directed Jesusa and TomÁs away from potentially hostile people—Humans grouped on one side of the river or the other. Resisters still fought among themselves and sometimes robbed and murdered strangers.

I didn’t scent the third group of Humans in time. And, unlike the first two, the third group spotted us.

There was a shot—a loud crack like the first syllable of a phrase of thunder. We all fell flat to the logs of the raft, Jesusa losing her pole as she fell.

She was wounded. I could smell the blood rushing out of her.

I lost myself then. I was not fully conscious anymore, but my latent memories told me later that I dragged myself toward her, my body still flat against the logs. From shore, the Humans fired several more times, and TomÁs, unaware of Jesusa’s injury, cursed them, cursed the current that was not moving us beyond their reach quickly enough, cursed his own broken rifle

.

I reached Jesusa, unconscious, bleeding from the abdomen, and I locked on to her.

I was literally unconscious now. There was nothing at work except my body’s knowledge that Jesusa was necessary to it, and that she would die from her wound if it didn’t help her. My body sought to do for her what it would have done for itself. Even if I had been conscious and able to choose, I could not have done more. Her right kidney and the large blood vessels leading to it had been severely damaged. Her colon had been damaged. She was bleeding internally and poisoning herself with bodily wastes. Fortunately she was unconscious or her pain might have caused her to move away before I could lock into her. Once I was in, though, nothing could have driven me off.

We drifted beyond the range and apparently beyond the interest of the resisters. I was regaining consciousness as TomÁs crawled back to us. I saw him freeze as he noticed the blood, saw him look at us, saw him lunge toward us, rocking the raft, then stop just short of touching us.

“Is she alive?” he whispered.

It was an effort to speak. “Yes,” I answered after a moment. I couldn’t manage anything else.

“What can I do to help?”

One more word. “Home.”

I was of no use at all to him after that. I had all I could do to keep Jesusa unconscious and alive while my own body insisted on continuing its development and change. I could not heal Jesusa quickly. I wasn’t sure I could heal her at all. I had stopped the blood loss, stopped her bodily wastes from poisoning her. It seemed a very long time, though, before I was able to seal the hole in her colon and begin the complicated process of regenerating a new kidney. The wounded one was not salvageable. I used it to nourish her—which involved me breaking the kidney down to its useful components and feeding them to her intravenously. It was the most nutritious meal she had had in days. That was part of the problem. Neither she nor I was in particularly good condition. I worried that my efforts at regeneration would trigger her genetic disorder, and I tried to keep watch. It occurred to me that I could have left her with one kidney until I was through my metamorphosis and able to look after her properly. That was what I should have done.

I hadn’t done it because on some level, I was afraid Nikanj would take care of her if I didn’t. I couldn’t stand to think of it touching her, or touching TomÁs.

That one thought drove me harder than anything else could have. It almost caused me to let us pass my family’s home site.

The scent of home and relatives got through to me somehow. “TomÁs!” I called hoarsely. And when I saw that I had his attention, I pointed. “Home.”

He managed to bring us to the bank some distance past my family’s cabin. He waded to shore and pulled the raft as close to the bank as he could.

“There’s no one around,” he said. “And no house that I can see.”

“They didn’t want to be easily visible from the river,” I said. I detached myself from Jesusa and examined her visually. No new tumors. Smooth skin beneath her ragged, bloody, filthy clothing. Smooth skin across her abdomen.

“Is she all right?” TomÁs asked.

“Yes. Just sleeping now. I’ve lost track. How long has it been since she was shot?”

“Two days.”

“That long

?” I focused on him with sensory tentacles and saw evidence of the load of worry and work that he had carried. I could think of nothing sufficient to say to him. “Thank you for taking care of us.”

He smiled wearily. “I’ll go look for some of your people.”

“No, they’ll notice my scent if they haven’t already. They’ll be coming. Help Jesusa off, then come back for me. She can walk.”

I shook her and she awoke—or half awoke. She cringed away when TomÁs waded into the shallow water and reached for her. He drew back. After a while, she got up slowly, swayed, and followed TomÁs’s beckoning hand.

“Come on, Jesusita,” he whispered. “Off the raft.” He walked beside her through the water and up the bank where the ground was dry enough to be firm. There, she sat down and seemed to doze again.

When he came back for me, he held something in his fingers—held it up for me to see. An irregularly shaped piece of metal smaller than the end point of his smallest finger. It was the bullet I had caused Jesusa’s body to expel.

“Throw it away,” I said. “It almost took her from us.”

He threw it far out into the river.

11

Some of my family is coming now,” I said. TomÁs had put me on the bank beside Jesusa. He had sat down beside me to rest. Now he became alert again.

“TomÁs,” I said softly.

He glanced at me.

“You won’t feel comfortable about letting them get close to you or letting them surround you. Jesusa won’t either. My family will understand that. And no one will touch you—except the children. You won’t mind their touch.”

He frowned, gave me a longer look. “I don’t understand.”

“I know. It has to do with your being with me, letting me heal you, letting me sleep with you. You’ll feel

drawn to be with Jesusa and me and strongly repelled by others. The feeling won’t last. It’s normal, so don’t let it worry you.”

Lilith, Nikanj, and Aaor came out of the trees together. Aaor. It was awake and strong. The family must only have been waiting for me to get home. Exile—true exile—had been that close.

The three stood near enough to speak normally, but not near enough to make TomÁs uncomfortable.

“I’m going to have to learn not to worry about you,” Lilith said, smiling. “Welcome back.” She had spoken in Oankali. She switched to Spanish, which meant she had heard me talking to TomÁs. “Welcome,” she said to him. “Thank you for caring for our child and bringing it home.” She inserted the English “it” because in English the word was truly neuter. Spanish did not have a word that translated exactly. Spanish-speaking people usually handled the ooloi gender by ignoring it. They used masculine or feminine, whichever felt right to them—when they had to use anything.

I took TomÁs’s hand, felt it grip mine desperately, almost painfully, yet his face betrayed no sign of emotion.

“These are two of my parents,” I told him, gesturing with my free hand. “Lilith is my birth mother and Nikanj is my same-sex parent. This third one is Aaor, my paired sibling.” I enjoyed the sight of it for a moment. It was gray-furred now and, oddly, not that unusual-looking. Perhaps the other siblings helped it stay almost normal. “Aaor has been closer to me than my skin at times,” I said. “I think it turned out to be more like me than it would have preferred.”

Aaor, who was restraining itself with an obvious effort, said, “When I touch you, Jodahs, I won’t let you go for at least a day.”