Butler, Octavia - Dawn

When Nikanj went into the apartment to get food for them both, she got up and walked away. She wandered, freer than she ever had before through the parklike area outside the living quarters-the pseudotrees. Oankali saw her, but seemed to pay no more than momentary attention to her. She had become absorbed in looking around when abruptly Nikanj was beside her.

"You must stay with me," it said in a tone that reminded her of a human mother speaking to her five-year-old. That, she thought, was about right for her rank in its family.

After that incident she slipped away whenever she could. Either she would be stopped, punished, and/or confined, or she would not be.

She was not. Nikanj seemed to get used to her wandering. Abruptly, it ceased to show up at her elbow minutes after she had escaped it. It seemed willing to give her an occasional hour or two out of its sight. She began to take food with her, saving easily portable items from her meals-a highly seasoned rice dish wrapped in an edible, high-protein envelope, nuts, fruit or quatasayasha, a sharp, cheeselike Oankali food that Kahguyaht had said was safe. Nikanj had acknowledged its acceptance of her wandering by advising her to bury any uneaten food she did not want. "Feed it to the ship" was the way it put the suggestion.

She would fashion her extra jacket into a bag and put her lunch into it, then wander alone, eating and thinking. There was no real comfort in being alone with her thoughts, her memories, but somehow the illusion of freedom lessened her despair.

Other Oankali tried to talk with her sometimes, but she could not understand enough of their language to hold a conversation. Sometimes even when they spoke slowly, she would not recognize words she should have known and did know moments after the encounter had ended. Most of the time she wound up resorting to gestures-which did not work very well-and feeling impenetrably stupid. The only certain communication she managed was in enlisting help from strangers when she was lost.

Nikanj had told her that if she could not find her way "home" she was to go to the nearest adult and say her name with new Oankali additions: Dhokaaltediinjdahyalilith eka Kahguyaht aj Dinso. The Dho used as prefix indicated an adopted non-Oankali. KaaI was a kinship group name. Then Tediin's and Jdahya's names with Jdahya's last because he had brought her into the family. Eka meant child. A child so young it literally had no sex-as very young Oankali did not. Lilith had accepted this designation hopefully. Surely sexless children were not used in breeding experiments. Then there was Kahguyaht's name. It was her third "parent," after all. Finally there was the trade status name. The Dinso group was staying on Earth, changing itself by taking part of humanity's genetic heritage, spreading its own genes like a disease among unwilling humans... Dinso. It wasn't a surname. It was a terrible promise, a threat.

Yet if she said this long name-all of it-people immediately understood not only who she was but where she should be, and they pointed her toward "home." She was not particularly grateful to them.

On one of these solitary walks, she heard two Oankali use one of their words for humans--kaizidi--and she slowed down to listen. She assumed the two were talking about her. She often supposed people she walked among were discussing her as though she were an unusual animal. These two confirmed her fears when they fell silent at her approach and continued their conversation silently with mutual touching of head tentacles. She had all but forgotten this incident when, several walks later, she heard another group of people in the same area speaking again of a kaizidi-a male they called Fukumoto.

Again everyone fell silent at her approach. She had tried to freeze and listen, just hidden by the trunk of one of the great pseudotrees, but the moment she stopped there, conversation went silent among the Oankali. Their hearing, when they chose to focus their attention on it, was acute. Nikanj had complained early on in her stay about the loudness of her heartbeat.

She walked on, ashamed in spite of herself of having been caught eavesdropping. There was no sense to such a feeling. She was a captive. What courtesy did a captive owe beyond what was necessary for self-preservation?

And where was Fukumoto?

She replayed in her mind what she remembered of the fragments she had heard. Fukumoto had something to do with the Tiej kinship group-also a Dinso people. She knew vaguely where their area was, though she had never been there.

Why had people in Kaal been discussing a human in Tiej? What had Fukumoto done? And how could she reach him?

She would go to Tiej. She would do her wandering there if she could-if Nikanj did not appear to stop her. It still did that occasionally, letting her know that it could follow her anywhere, approach her anywhere, and seem to appear from nowhere. Maybe it liked to see her jump.

She began to walk toward Tiej. She might manage to see the man today if he happened to be outside-addicted to wandering as she was. And if she saw him, he might speak English. If he spoke English, his Oankali jailers might not prevent him from speaking to her. If the two of them spoke together, he might prove as ignorant as she was. And if he were not ignorant, if they met and spoke and all went well, the Oankali might decide to punish her. Solitary confinement again? Suspended animation? Or just closer confinement with Nikanj and its family? If they did either of the first two she would simply be relieved of a responsibility she did not want and could not possibly handle. If they did the third, what difference would it really make? What difference balanced against the chance to see and speak with one of her own kind again, finally?

None at all.

She never considered going back to Nikanj and asking it or its family to let her meet Fukumoto. They had made it clear to her that she was not to have contact with humans or human artifacts.

The walk to Tiej was longer than she had expected. She had not yet learned to judge distances aboard the ship. The horizon, when it was not obscured by pseudotrees and hill-like entrances to other levels, seemed startlingly close. But how close, she could not have said.

At least no one stopped her. Oankali she passed seemed to assume that she belonged wherever she happened to be. Unless Nikanj appeared, she would be able to wander in Tiej for as long as she liked.

She reached Tiej and began her search. The pseudotrees in Tiej were yellow-brown rather than the gray-brown of Kaal, and their bark looked rougher-more like what she expected of tree bark. Yet people opened them in the way to come and go. She peered through the openings they made when she got the chance. This trip, she felt, would be worthwhile if she could just catch a glimpse of Fukumoto- of any human Awake and aware. Anyone at all.

She had not realized until she actually began looking how important it was for her to find someone. The Oankali had removed her so completely from her own people-only to tell her they planned to use her as a Judas goat. And they had done it all so softly, without brutality, and with patience and gentleness so corrosive of any resolve on her part.

She walked and looked until she was too tired to continue. Finally, discouraged and more disappointed than even she thought reasonable, she sat down against a pseudotree and ate the two oranges she had saved from the lunch she had eaten earlier in Kaal.

Her search, she admitted finally, had been ridiculous. She could have stayed in Kaal, daydreamed about meeting an-other human, and gotten more satisfaction from it. She could not even be certain how much of Tiej she had covered. There were no signs that she could read. Oankali did not use such things. Their kinship group areas were clearly scent-marked. Each time they opened a wall, they enhanced the local scent markers-or they identified themselves as visitors, members of a different kinship group. Ooloi could change their scent, and did when they left home to mate. Males and females kept the scents they were born with and never lived outside their kinship area. Lilith could not read scent signs. As far as she was concerned Oankali had no odor at all.