Butler, Octavia - Imago

“See it and smell it and taste it,” Aaor said.

Everyone focused on it.

“I can change to look the way Jodahs does,” it said. “There must be two more or at least one more sick Human among the Mother’s people who would join me.”

Silence. Jesusa and TomÁs looked startled.

“You don’t understand how strongly we’re taught against you,” TomÁs said. “And most of us believe. Jesusa and I came down to the lowlands to see a little of the world before she began to have child after child, and before I became too crippled. No one else we know of had done such a thing. I don’t think anyone else would.”

“If I could reach them,” Aaor said, “I could convince them.”

I could see the hunger in it, the desperation. Ayodele and Yedik moved to sit on either side of it and ease its discomfort as best they could. They seemed to do this automatically, as though they had finally adapted to having ooloi siblings.

But Aaor was not comforted. “I’m one more mistake!” it said. “One more ooloi who shouldn’t exist. There’s no other place on Earth for me to find mates. And if their people are collected and given the choice of Mars, union with us, or sterility where they are, I’ll never get near them! Even the ones who choose union with us will be directed to other mates. Mates who are not accidents.”

“None of them will accept union,” Jesusa said. “I know them. I know what they believe.”

“But you don’t know us well enough yet,” Aaor said. “Did you know what you would do

before Jodahs reached you?”

“I know I won’t lead you or anyone else to my people,” she told it. “If your people can find mine without us as Jodahs said, we can’t stop you. But nothing you can say would make us help you.”

“You don’t understand!” it said, leaning toward her.

“I know that,” she admitted, “and I’m sorry.”

They said more as I drifted into sleep, but they found no common ground. Throughout the argument, Jesusa never let go of my hand. When Nikanj saw that I had fallen asleep, it said I should be taken to the small room that had been set aside for Aaor’s metamorphosis.

“There are too many distractions for it out here,” it told Jesusa and TomÁs. “Too much stimulation. It should be isolated and allowed to focus inward on the changes its body must make.”

“Does it have to be isolated from us?” TomÁs asked.

“Of course not. The room is large enough for three, and Jodahs will always need the companionship of at least one person. If you both have to leave it for a while, tell Aaor or tell me. The room is over there.” It pointed with a strength hand.

TomÁs lifted my unconscious body, Jesusa helping him with me now that I was deadweight. I have a clear, treasured memory of the two of them carrying me into the small room. They did not know then that my memory went on recording everything my senses perceived even when I was unconscious. Yet they handled me with great gentleness and care, as they had from the beginning of my change. They did not know that this was exactly what Oankali mates did at these times. And they did not see Aaor watching them with a hunger that was so intense that its face was distorted and its head and body tentacles elongated toward us.

1

During my metamorphosis, Aaor lost its coat of gray fur. Its skin turned the same soft, bright brown as Jesusa’s, TomÁs’s and my own. It grew long, black Human-looking hair and began to wear it as Tino wore his—bound with a twist of grass into a long tail down his back. I wore mine loose.

“Apart from that,” Jesusa told me during one of my waking times, “the two of you could be twins.”

Yet she avoided Aaor—as did TomÁs. It smelled more like me than anyone else alive. But it did not smell exactly like me. Their Human noses had no trouble perceiving the difference. They didn’t know that was what they were perceiving, but they avoided Aaor.

And it did not want to be avoided.

I found its loneliness and need agonizing when it touched me. It awoke me several times as I lay changing. It didn’t mean to, but my body perceived it as an unhealed wound, and I could not rest until I had erased its pain and given

not healing, but momentary relief. What I gave was inadequate and short-lived, but Aaor came back for it again and again.

Once, lying linked with me, it asked if I could give it one of the young Humans.

I hurt it. I didn’t mean to, but what it said provoked reaction before I could control myself. Direct neural stimulation. Pure pain. As pure as any sensation can be. I did manage not to loop the pain between us and keep it going. Yet afterward, Aaor needed more healing. I kept it with me to give it comfort and ease its loneliness. It stayed until I fell asleep.

I never gave Aaor a verbal answer to its question. It never repeated the question. It seemed to realize that I could no longer separate myself deliberately from TomÁs and Jesusa. They could still leave me, but they wouldn’t. Jesusa took the promises she gave very seriously. She would not try to leave until I was on my feet again. And TomÁs would not leave without her. By the time they were prepared to go, it would be too late.

My only fear was that someone in the family would tell them. My mother believed she should, but she had not, so far. She loved me, and yet, until now, she had been able to do nothing to help me. She had not been able to make herself destroy the only chance I was likely to get of having the mates I needed.

Yet she was weighted with guilt. One more betrayal of her own Human kind for people who were not Human, or not altogether Human. She spoke to Jesusa as a much older sister—or as a same-sex parent. She advised her.

“Listen to Jodahs,” I heard her say on one occasion. “Listen carefully. It will tell you what it wants you to know. It won’t lie to you. But it will withhold information. Once you’ve heard what it has to say, get away from it. Get out of the house. Go to the river or a short way into the forest. Do your thinking there about what it’s told you, and decide what questions you still need answers to. Then come home and ask.”

“Home?” Jesusa whispered so softly I almost failed to hear. They were outside the house, replacing the roof thatch. They were not near my room, but my mother probably knew I could hear them.

“You live here,” my mother said. “That makes this home. It isn’t a permanent home for any of us.” She was good at evasion and withholding information herself.

“Would you go to Mars if you could?” Jesusa asked.

“Leave my family?”

“If you were as I am. If you had no family.”

My mother did not answer for a long time. She sighed finally. “I don’t know how to answer that. I’m content with these people. More than content. I lost my husband and my son before the war. They died in an accident. When the war came, I lost everything else. We all did, we elders, as you call us. I couldn’t give up and die, but I expected almost nothing. Food and shelter, maybe. An absence of pain. Nikanj said it knew I needed children, so it took seed from the man I had then and made me pregnant. I didn’t think I would ever forgive it for that.”

“But

you have forgiven it?”

“I’ve understood it. I’ve accepted it. I wouldn’t have believed I could do that much. Back when I met my first mature ooloi, Nikanj’s parent Kahguyaht, I found it alien, arrogant, and terrifying. I hated it. I thought I hated all ooloi.”

She paused. “Now I feel as though I’ve loved Nikanj all my life. Ooloi are dangerously easy to love. They absorb us, and we don’t mind.”

“Yes,” Jesusa agreed, and I smiled. “I’m afraid, though, because I don’t understand them. I’ll go to Mars if I don’t stay with Jodahs. I can understand settling a new place. I know what to expect from a Human husband.”