Butler, Octavia - Imago

“What’s the second reason?” TomÁs asked.

I hugged myself with my strength arms. “Aaor is ill. It should not keep sliding away from us the way it does. It should stabilize the way my siblings used to help me stabilize. But it can’t.” I looked at his face—thinner than it should have been, though he got plenty to eat. The effects of his sessions with Aaor were beginning to show. And Jesusa looked older than she should have. The vertical lines between her eyes had deepened and become set. When all this was over I would erase them.

She and TomÁs looked at one another bleakly.

“What is it?” I asked.

Jesusa moved uncomfortably. “What will happen to Aaor?” she asked. “How long will we have to keep helping it?” She leaned back against the cabin wall. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.”

“If we can get it through metamorphosis,” I said, “it might stabilize just because its body is mature.”

“Do you think you would have without us?” Jesusa asked.

I didn’t answer. After a moment, no answer was necessary.

“What will happen to it?” she insisted.

“Ship exile, probably. We’ll take it back to Lo, and it will be sent to the ship. There it may find Oankali or construct mates who can stabilize it. Or perhaps it will finally be

be allowed to dissolve. Its life now is terrible. If it has nothing better to look forward to

”

They turned simultaneously and looked at each other again. They were paired siblings, after all, though they did not think in such terms. They were like Aaor and me. Between them a look said a great deal. That same look excluded me.

Jesusa took one of my sensory arms between her hands and coaxed out the sensory hand. She seemed to do this as naturally as my male and female parents did it with Nikanj. She rarely touched my strength arms now that my sensory arms had grown.

“Nikanj has talked to us about Aaor,” she said softly.

I focused narrowly on her. “Nikanj?”

“It told us what you’ve just told us. It said Aaor probably would dissolve. Die.”

“Not exactly die.”

“Yes! Yes, die. It will not be Aaor any longer no matter how many of its cells live. Aaor will be gone!”

I was startled by her sudden vehemence. I resisted the impulse to calm her chemically because she did not want to be calmed.

“We know more about dying than you do,” she said bitterly. “And, I tell you, I know death when I see it.”

I put my strength arm around her, but could not think of anything to say.

TomÁs spoke finally. “At home, she was made to help with the sick and the dying. She hated it, but people trusted her. They knew she would do what was necessary, no matter how she felt.” He sighed. “Like you, I suppose. There must be something wrong with me—to love only serious, duty-bound people.”

I smiled and extended my free sensory arm to him.

He came to sit with us and accepted the arm. No intensity now. Only comfort in being together. We’d had little of that lately.

“If Aaor had a chance to mate with a pair of Humans,” Jesusa said, “would it survive?”

She felt frightened and sick to her stomach. She spoke as though the words had been beaten out of her. Both TomÁs and I stared at her.

“Well, Jodahs? Would it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Almost certainly.”

She nodded. “What I was thinking is that if you could fix our faces back the way they were, we could go home. I can think of people who might be willing to join us once they know what we’ve found—what we’ve learned.”

“We’d be locked up and bred!” TomÁs protested.

“I don’t think any elders or parents would have to see us. You were always good at coming and going without being seen when you thought you might be put to work.”

“That was nothing. This is serious.” He paused. “With a name like yours, sister, this isn’t a role you should play.”

She turned her face away from him, rested her head against my shoulder. “I don’t want to do it,” she said. “But why should Aaor die? We know our people will be taken and moved or absorbed or sterilized. It’s too late to prevent that. How can we watch Aaor suffer and know it will probably die and just do nothing? It’s true that our people will think badly of us when they find out that we’ve joined the Oankali. But they will find out eventually, no matter what.”

“They’ll kill us if they get the chance,” TomÁs said.

Jesusa shook her head. “Not if we look the way we used to look. Jodahs will have to change us back in every way. Even your neck must be stiff again. That will give us a chance to get out again sooner or later, even if we’re caught.” She thought for a moment. “They can’t know yet what we’ve done, can they, Jodahs?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “Nikanj has avoided sending word to the ship or to any of the towns.”

“Because it hoped we would do just what we’re doing.”

I nodded. “It would not ask either of you. It only hoped.”

“And you?”

“I couldn’t ask either. You had already refused. We understood your refusal.”

She said nothing for a while. She sat utterly still, staring at the floor. Adrenaline flowed into her system, and she began to shake.

“Jesusa?” I said.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she said. “You think you understand. You don’t. You can’t.”

I held her and stroked her until she stopped shaking. TomÁs touched her hair, reaching across me to do it, and making me want to grab his hand and stop him. Oankali male and female mates had no need to do this. I had to learn to endure it in Human mates.

“Shall we do it?” she asked him suddenly.

He drew back from her, looked from one of us to the other, then looked away.

She looked at me. “Shall we?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to say yes, she should, of course. Then I closed it. “I don’t want you to destroy yourself,” I said after a while. “I don’t want to trade my sibling’s life for yours.” I felt what she felt. She could not give me multisensory illusions. Humans did not have that kind of control. But I could feel how tightly she held herself, how her stomach hurt her and her muscles ached. I had to keep stopping myself from giving her relief. She didn’t need or want that from me now. Both my mother and Nikanj had warned me that not every pain should be immediately healed. Her body language would tell me when she wanted relief.

“I won’t die,” she whispered. “I’m not that fragile. Or maybe

not that lucky. If I can save your sibling, I will. But I think it would be easier for me to break several of my bones.”

Now she and I both looked at TomÁs.

He shook his head. “I hate that place,” he said softly. “Full of pain and sickness and duty and false hope. I meant to die rather than see it again. You both know that.”

I nodded. Jesusa made no move at all. She watched him.

“Yet I love those people,” he said. “I don’t want to do this to them. Isn’t there any other way?”

“None that anyone’s thought of,” I said. “If you can do this, you’ll save Aaor. If you can’t, we’ll get it to the ship and

hope for the best.”

“We’ve already betrayed our people,” Jesusa said softly. “We did that with you, Jodahs. All we’re doing now is arguing about whether to bring two more of our people out early or let them all wait until the Oankali arrive.”

“Is that all?” TomÁs said with bitter irony.

“Will you go with me?” she asked.

He sighed. “Didn’t I promise you I’d get you back there?” He ran a hand through his own hair. After a moment he got up, and went outside.

4

There were complications.

We couldn’t leave until Aaor’s metamorphosis ended. Jesusa and TomÁs thought I would give them back their disfigurement and they would go back to the mountains alone. They couldn’t have done that, even if I had been willing to let them try. They couldn’t leave me now.