Butler, Octavia - Imago

“Do your people meet this way because they would like to be mated?” I asked.

“Some of them,” TomÁs said. “Others only feel a temporary attraction.”

“It would be good to get a pair for Aaor who already care for one another.”

“We thought that, too,” Jesusa said. “We meant to go to the village and bring away the people we would have been married to. But they wouldn’t be coming out here to be together. They’re brother and sister, too. A brother and two sisters, really.”

“It would be better, safer to go after people who have already slipped away from your village. Is there a place where such people often meet?”

TomÁs sighed. “Change us back tonight. Make us as ugly as we were, just in case. Tomorrow night, we’ll show you some of the places where lovers meet. If you go there at all, it will have to be at night.”

But the next night we were spotted.

6

We did not know we had been seen. As we rounded the final bend before the mountain people’s village, we kept hidden in the trees and undergrowth. All we could see of their village were occasional stonework terraces cut into the sides of forested mountains. Crops grew on the terraces—a great deal of corn, some large melons, more than one species of potato, and other things that I did not recognize at all—foods neither I nor Nikanj had ever collected or stored memories of. These were surprisingly distracting—new things just sitting and waiting to be tasted, remembered. Yashi, between my hearts and protected now by a broad, flat slab of bone that no Human would have recognized as a sternum, did twist—or rather, it contracted like a long-empty Human stomach. Any perception of new living things attracted it and distracted me. I looked at Aaor and saw that it was utterly focused on the village itself, the people.

Its desperation had sharpened and directed its perceptions.

The Humans had built their village well above the river, had stretched it along a broad flattened ridge that extended between two mountains. We could not see it from where we were, but we could see signs of it—a great deal more terracing high up. These terraces could not be reached from where we were, but there was probably a way up nearby. All we could see between the canyon floor and the terraces was a great deal of sheer rock, much of it overgrown with vegetation. It was nothing I would have chosen to climb.

The scent of the Humans was strong now. Aaor, perhaps caught up in it, stumbled and stepped on a dry stick as it regained its balance. The sharp snap of the wood was startling in the quiet night. We all froze. Those stalking us did not freeze—or not quickly enough.

“Humans behind us!” I whispered.

“Are they coming?” TomÁs demanded.

“Yes. Several of them.”

“The guard,” TomÁs said. “They will have guns.”

“You two get away!” Jesusa said. “We’ll have a better chance without you. Wait for us at the cave we passed two days ago. Go!”

The guard meant to catch us against their mountains. We were trapped now, really. If we ran to the river, we would have to go around them or through them, and probably be shot. There was nowhere for us to go except up the sheer cliff. Or down like insects to hide in the thickest vegetation. We could not get away, but we could hide. And if the guard found Jesusa and TomÁs, perhaps they would not look for us.

I pulled Aaor down with me, fearing for it more than I feared for any of us. It was probably right in suspecting that it could not survive being shot.

In the darkness, Humans passed on either side of where Aaor and I lay hidden. They knew the terrain, but they could not see very well at night. Jesusa and TomÁs led them a short distance away from us. They did this by simply walking down the slope toward the river until they walked into the arms of their captors.

Then there was shouting—Jesusa shouting her name, TomÁs demanding that he be let go, that Jesusa be let go, guards shouting that they had caught the intruders.

“Where are the rest of you?” a male voice said. “There were more than two.”

“Make a light, Luis,” Jesusa said with deliberate disgust. “Look at us, then tell me when there has been more than one Jesusa and more than one TomÁs.”

There was silence for a while. Jesusa and TomÁs were walked farther from us—perhaps taken where the moonlight would show more of their faces. Their tumors looked exactly as they had when I met them, so I wasn’t worried about them not being recognized. But still, they had said they would be separated, imprisoned, questioned.

How long would they be imprisoned? If they were separated, they wouldn’t be able to help one another break free. And what might be done to them if they gave answers that their people did not believe? They had, with obvious distaste for lying, created a story of being captured by a small group of resisters and held by separate households so that neither knew the details of the other’s captivity. Resisters actually did such things, though most often, their captives were female. TomÁs would say he had been made to work for his captors. He had done planting, harvesting, hauling, building, cutting wood, whatever needed to be done. Since he had actually done these things while he was with us, he could give accurate descriptions of them. He would say that his sister was held hostage to ensure his good behavior while his captivity kept her in line. Finally the two had been able to get together and escape their resister captors.

This could have happened. If Jesusa and TomÁs could tell it convincingly, perhaps they would not be imprisoned for long.

The two had been recognized now. There were no more hostile cries—only Jesusa’s anguished “Hugo, please let me go. Please! I won’t run away. I’ve just run all the way home. Hugo!”

The last word was a scream. He was touching her, this Hugo. She had known they would touch her. She had not known until now how difficult it would be to endure their touch. She could touch other females in comfort. TomÁs could touch males. They would have to protect one another as best they could.

“Let her alone!” TomÁs said. “You don’t know what she’s been through.” His voice said she had already been released. He was only warning.

“Everyone said you two were dead,” one guard told them.

“Some hoped they were dead,” another voice said softly. “Better them than all of us.”

“No one will die because of us,” TomÁs said.

“We haven’t come home to die,” Jesusa said. “We’re tired. Take us up.”

“Does everyone know them?” the softer voice asked. It sounded almost like an ooloi voice. “Does anyone dispute their identity?”

“We could strip them down here,” someone said. “Just to be sure.”

TomÁs said, “Bring your sister down, Hugo. We’ll strip her, too.”

“My sister stays home where she belongs!”

“And if she didn’t, how would you want her treated? With justice and decency? Or should she be stripped by seven men?”

Silence.

“Let’s go up,” Jesusa said. “Hugo, do you remember the big yellow water jar we used to hide in?”

More silence.

“You know me,” she said. “We were ten years old when we broke that jar, and I got caught and you didn’t and I never told. You know me.”

There was a pause, then the Hugo voice said, “Let’s take them up. Someone will probably have some dinner left over.”

They were taken away.

Aaor and I followed to see the path they would use and to see as much as we could of the guards.

Of the seven, four were obviously distorted by their genetic disorder. They had large tumors on their heads or arms. They looked different enough to be shot on sight by lowland resisters.

We followed as long as there was forest cover, then watched as they went up a pathway that was mostly rough stone stairs leading up the steep slope to the village.