Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

general.” He hesitated, thinking. “It will probably provoke the hell out of you. The Council members can question you or the Silks’ representative or anyone either of you call for questioning. So if you get asked the same question ten times or twenty or fifty, give the same answer, briefly and accurately, and don’t let it bother you.”

“I won’t.”

“And never answer an accusation that hasn’t been made. Even if you believe someone is hinting that you’re delusional or otherwise mentally damaged, don’t deny what they say unless they make the accusation out-right.”

“All right.”

“Someone might offer you pity and sympathy for your disability. Make them state the disability. Make them say what they mean. Make them support it with evidence. If they say that you’re delusional or mentally deficient or too grief stricken to know what you’re saying—which, I believe, you definitely would be if your memory were intact—make them explain how they’ve come to that conclusion. Then, by your questions and your behavior, prove them wrong. If, on the other hand, they can’t say what it is they’re pitying you for, they must be the ones who are confused. You see?”

“I see.”

“Someone might pretend to misunderstand you, might misstate what you’ve said, then ask you to agree with them. Don’t let them get away with it. Pay attention.”

“I will.”

“Everything will be recorded. Every Ina family gets to see and hear Council proceedings these days. It didn’t used to be that way, of course, but now that we can keep an accurate audio-visual record, we do. That means you can ask for a replay if anyone tries to insist on a misstatement of anything you’ve said.”

“How likely is that?”

“I don’t know. Most of us have excellent memories. That’s why your amnesia will cause some Council members to distrust you at first. Just be yourself. They’ll know your intellect is all right as soon as they’ve heard your story. Anyway, it’s dangerous for anyone to lie about someone else’s questions or answers. I’ve seen it happen, though. People feel that things are going against them. They’re afraid. We have no prisons, after all.”

I thought about that and found that I knew what prisons were. Humans often locked up their lawbreakers in cages—prisons. “No Ina prisons? Why?”

“None of us are willing to spend our lives in prison with the lawbreakers. Maintaining a prison isn’t quite as unpleasant as being a prisoner in one, but it’s bad enough. And levying fines would be meaningless. It’s too easy for us to get money from the human population. For lesser crimes, most likely we amputate something. An arm, a leg, both arms, both legs . . . If the sentence is death, we decapitate the lawbreakers and burn their bodies.”

“Decapitate?” I stared up at him. “Amputate . . . ? Cut off people’s heads, arms, or legs?”

“That’s right. Amputations and executions are also recorded. Amputations are punishments of pain, humiliation, and inconvenience. Limbs grow back completely in a few months, maybe a year or two for legs taken off at the hip. Of course, when it’s done, people are given nothing for the pain, and the pain is terrible. It hurts for a long time, although once people are returned to their families, the families can help

them with the pain. They’re permitted to, not required to.” “You’re sure that arms and legs cut off . . . grow back?”

He held his left hand in front of me. “I was in a traffic accident ten years ago. I lost three fingers and part of my hand. In about a month and a half, I had a whole hand again.”

“That long?” I hesitated, then asked, “Did you eat raw meat?”

“At first. I don’t digest it well, though. If I had been able to eat more of it, I probably would have healed faster.”

“You probably would have,” I said. And I wondered if he would heal more quickly once he was mated with me. I thought I would like to give him that.

He continued: “The Silks won’t be having anything amputated, though. What they’ve done is too serious for that. If the Council condemns them, they’ll either be killed—the adults will be killed, I mean—or they will be broken up as a family. Their youngest members will be scattered to any families that will have them, and the older ones will be left to wither alone. They might try anything they can think of to avoid those possibilities.”

“They . . . they would lose their children?”

“Yes. They would not be seen as fit to raise them.”

“That seems cruel to the children. And . . . what if they have more children?”

“It might happen. Or their mates might shun them, blame them for the loss of young sons who have been separated and sent to live thousands of miles apart, probably on different continents. Adoption is not cruel, by the way. There are blood exchanges to ease it and seal it. People miss one another, of course, but by letter, phone, and computer, they can keep contact. I hear they tend not to, but they can. Adoptees are truly accepted and accepting once they’re in their new circumstances. But for the adults, it’s the end. What adult wouldn’t fear such a thing and do almost anything to avoid it?”

“If they had let my families alone, they wouldn’t be facing it.”

“They must have felt very strongly compelled to do what they did. And . . . Shori, if you had been anyone else, they would have succeeded. You not only survived twice, but you came to us with what you knew, and you led the fight to destroy most of the assassins and to question the survivors. They thought mixing human genes with ours would weaken us. You proved them very wrong.”

We sat together for a while longer in warm, easy silence. I felt that I had known him much longer than the few days that I’d been living at Punta Nublada.

I turned toward him and opened his shirt.

“What are you doing?” He was shocked, but he did nothing to stop me.

“Looking at you. I wanted to see whether you had hair on your chest.” He didn’t. “We tend not to have much body hair.”

He had very smooth skin. I kissed it and ran my hands over it, loving the feel of him. Then I stopped and slipped down off his lap because I wanted so badly to taste him, drink him, to lie beneath that tall, lean body and feel him inside me.

He watched me, left the decision to me. If I tried to bite him, even now, he would let me do it. And then what? If I died, he, at least, might age and die childless. His brothers might mate elsewhere, but he could not. “How can you risk yourself this way?” I whispered.

“I know what I want,” he said.

I decided that I had better protect him from his wants. He wouldn’t send me away, and he should have. I

took his hands, his broad hands with long, long fingers that were almost unlined, that were like, but unlike, the hands of my symbionts, larger versions of my own. I took his hands and I kissed them. Then I left him.

On the first night of the Council of Judgment, proceedings were to begin at nine. They would be held in a large storage building a few dozen yards beyond the last

house—Henry’s—along the private road. The building had been emptied, and the equipment usually

stored in it was sitting outside in the cold, rainy weather—two pickup trucks, two small tractors, a small crane that I’d heard called a cherry picker. Lesser tools had been stored in other buildings. Stacks of metal folding chairs and tables had been rented and trucked in. All this had been done quickly and efficiently by the Gordons and their symbionts with my symbionts and me helping where we could.

Attending were all thirteen of the Silks, all ten of the Gordons, of course, and two representatives each from the thirteen other families, all strangers to me, or near strangers like the Leontyevs and the Braithwaites. They would judge the Silks ... and me and perhaps make it possible for me to get to know myself again and get on with my life without having to be on guard every day against another attack.