Butler, Octavia - Imago

“Look at my family, Jesusa—and realize you’re only seeing six of our children. This is what you can expect if you mate with Jodahs. There’s closeness here that I didn’t have with the family I was born into or with my husband and son.”

“But you have Oankali mates other than Nikanj.”

“You will, too, eventually. With Jodahs, I mean. And your children will look much like mine. And half of them will be born to an Oankali female, but will inherit from all five of you.”

After a time, Jesusa said, “Ahajas and Dichaan aren’t so bad. They seem

very gentle.”

“Good mates. I was with Nikanj before they were—like you with Jodahs. That’s best, I think. An ooloi is probably the strangest thing any Human will come into contact with. We need time alone with it to realize it’s probably also the best thing.”

“Where would we live?”

“You and your new family? In one of our towns. I think any one of them would eventually welcome the three of you. You’d be something brand-new—the center of a lot of attention. Oankali and constructs love new things.”

“Jodahs says it had to go into exile because it was a new thing.”

“Is that what it said, really?”

Silence. What was Jesusa doing? Searching her memory for exactly what I had said? “It said it was the first of its kind,” she said finally. “The first construct ooloi.”

“Yes.”

“It said there weren’t supposed to be any construct ooloi yet, so the people didn’t trust it. They were afraid it would not be able to control itself as an ooloi must. They were afraid it would hurt people.”

“It did hurt some people, Jesusa. But it’s never hurt Humans. And it’s never hurt anyone when it’s had Humans with it.”

“It told me that.”

“Good. Because if it hadn’t, I would have. It needs you more than Nikanj ever needed me.”

“You want me to stay with it.”

“Very much.”

“I’m afraid. This is all so different

. How did you ever

? I mean

with Nikanj

. How did you decide?”

My mother said nothing at all.

“You didn’t have a choice, did you?”

“I did, oh, yes. I chose to live.”

“That’s no choice. That’s just going on, letting yourself be carried along by whatever happens.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” my mother said.

After that, there was no talk for a while. My mother had not shouted those last words, as some Humans would have. She had almost whispered them. Yet they carried such feeling, they would have silenced me, too—and I did know much of what my birth mother had survived. And it was so much more than she had said that Jesusa would not have wanted to hear it. Yet, in a way, in my mother’s voice she had heard it. It was not until I had almost drifted off to sleep that they spoke again. Jesusa began.

“It’s flattering to think that Jodahs needs us. It seems so powerful, so able to endure anything. At first I couldn’t understand why it even wanted us. I was suspicious.”

“It can endure a great deal of physical suffering. And it will have to if you leave it.”

“There are other Humans for it to mate with.”

“No, there aren’t. There’s Mars now. Resisters choose to go there. Ordinary resisters are too old for Jodahs anyway. As for the few young Humans born on the ship, they’re rare and spoken for.”

“So

what will happen to Jodahs if we leave?”

“I don’t know. Just as I don’t know what’s going to happen to Aaor, period. It’s Aaor that I’m most worried about now.”

“It asked me if I would tell it where my people were—tell it alone so that it could go to them and try to persuade two of them to mate with it.”

“What was your answer?”

“That they would kill it. They would kill it as soon as they realized what it was.”

“And?”

“It said it didn’t care. It said Jodahs had us, but it was starving.”

“Did you tell it what it wanted to know?”

“I couldn’t. Even if I didn’t know how my people would greet it, I couldn’t betray them that way. They’ll already think of me as a traitor when the Oankali come for them.”

“I know. Aaor knows, too, really. But it’s desperate.”

“TomÁs says it asked him, too.”

“That’s unusual. Has it asked you more than once?”

“Three times.”

“That goes beyond unusual. I’ll talk to Nikanj about it.”

“I don’t mean to make trouble for it. I wish I could help it.”

“It’s already in trouble. And right now, Nikanj is probably the only one who can help it.”

I stopped fighting sleep and let myself drift off. I would talk to Aaor when I awoke again. It was starving. I didn’t know what I could do about that, but there must be something.

2

But I had no chance to talk to Aaor before my second metamorphosis ended. It left home as I had. It wandered, perhaps looking for some sign of Jesusa and TomÁs’s people.

It found only aged, hostile, infertile resisters who had nothing to offer it except bullets and arrows.

It changed radically: grew fur again, lost it, developed scales, lost them, developed something very like tree bark, lost that, then changed completely, lost its limbs, and went into a tributary of our river.

When it realized it could not force itself back to a Human or Oankali form, could not even become a creature of the land again, it swam home. It swam in the river near our cabin for three days before anyone realized what it was. Even its scent had changed.

I was awake, but not yet strong enough to get up. My sensory arms were fully developed, but I had not yet used them. By the time Oni and Hozh found Aaor in the river, I was just learning to coordinate them as lifting and handling limbs.

Hozh showed me what Aaor had become—a kind of near mollusk, something that had no bones left. Its sensory tentacles were intact, but it no longer had eyes or other Human sensory organs. Its skin, very smooth, was protected by a coating of slime. It could not speak or breathe air or make any sound at all. It had attracted Hozh’s attention by crawling up the bank and forcing part of its body out of the water. Very difficult. Painful. Its altered flesh was very sensitive to sunlight.

“I would never have recognized it if I hadn’t touched it,” Hozh told me. “It didn’t even smell the same. In fact, it hardly smelled at all.”

“I don’t understand that,” I said. “It isn’t an adult yet. How can it change its scent?”

“Suppressed. It suppressed its scent. I don’t think it intended to.”

“It doesn’t sound as though it intended to become what it has in any way. When it can be brought to the house, tell Ooan to bring it to me.”

“Ooan has taken it back into the water to help it change back. Ooan says it almost lost itself. It was becoming more and more what it appeared to be.”

“Hozh, are Jesusa and TomÁs around the house?”

“They’re at the river. Everyone is.”

“Ask them to come to me.”

“Can you help Aaor?”

“I think so.”

It went away. A short time later Jesusa and TomÁs came to me and sat on either side of me. I thought about sitting up to say what I had to say to them, but that would have been exhausting, and there were other things I wanted to do with the energy I had.

“You saw Aaor?” I asked them.

TomÁs nodded. Jesusa shuddered and said, “It was a

a great slug.”

“I think we can help it,” I said. “I wish it had come to me before it went away. I think we could have helped it even then.”

“We?” TomÁs said.

“One of you on one side of me and Aaor on the other. I think I can bring you and it together enough to satisfy it. I think I can do that with no discomfort to you.” I touched each of them with a sensory arm. “In fact, I hope I can arrange things so that you enjoy it.”