Butler, Octavia - Dawn

Nikanj had shifted its attention from one of them to the other. Now it focused on Joseph. "Shall I make the change in you?" it asked.

Joseph released Lilith's hands. "What is it? Surgery? Something to do with blood or bone marrow?"

"You will be made to sleep. When you awake, the change will have been made. There won't be any pain or illness, no surgery in the usual sense of the word."

"How will you do it?"

"These are my tools." It extended both sensory arms. "Through them, I'll study you, then make the necessary adjustments. My body and yours will produce any substances I need."

Joseph shuddered visibly. "I. . . I don't think I could let you touch me."

Lilith looked at him until he turned to face her. "I was shut up for days with one of them before I could touch him," she said. "There were times... I'd rather take a beating than go through anything like that again."

Joseph moved closer to her, his manner protective. It was easier for him to give comfort than to ask for it. Now he managed to do both at once.

"How long are you going to stay here now?" he demanded of Nikanj.

"Not much longer. I'll come back. You'll probably feel less afraid when you see me again." It paused. "Eventually you must touch me. You must show at least that much control before I change you."

"I don't know. Maybe I don't want you to change me. I don't really understand what it is you do with those. . . those tentacles."

"Sensory arms, we call them in English. They're more than arms-much more-but the term is convenient." It focused its attention on Lilith and spoke in Oankali. "Do you think it would help if he saw a demonstration?"

"I'm afraid he would be repelled," she said.

"He's an unusual male. I think he might surprise you."

"No."

"You should trust me. I know a great deal about him."

"No! Leave him to me."

It stood up, unfolding itself dramatically. When she saw that it was about to leave, she almost relaxed. Then in a single swift sweep of motion, it stepped to her and looped a sensory arm around her neck forming an oddly comfortable noose. She was not afraid. She had been through this often enough to be used to it. Her first thoughts were concern for Joseph and anger at Nikanj.

Joseph had not moved. She stood between the two of them.

"It's all right," she told him. "It wanted you to see. This is all the contact it would need."

Joseph stared at the coil of sensory arm, looked from the arm to Nikanj and back to the arm again where it rested against Lilith's flesh. After a moment, he raised his hand toward it. He stopped. His hand twitched, drew back, then slowly reached out again. With only a moment's hesitation, he touched the cool, hard flesh of the sensory arm. His fingers rested on its hornlike tip and that tip twisted to grasp his wrist.

Now Lilith was no longer their intermediary. Joseph stood rigid and silent, sweating, but not trembling, his hand upright, fingers clawlike, a noose of sensory tentacle settled in a painless, unbreakable grip around the wrist.

With a sound that could have been the beginning of a scream, Joseph collapsed.

Lilith stepped to him quickly, but Nikanj caught him. He was unconscious. She said nothing until she had helped Nikanj put him on the bed. Then she caught it by the shoulders and turned it to face her.

"Why couldn't you let him alone!" she demanded. "I'm supposed to be in charge of them. Why didn't you just leave him to me?"

"Do you know," it said, "that no undrugged human has ever done that before? Some have touched us by accident this soon after meeting us, but no one has done it deliberately. I told you he was unusual."

"Why couldn't you let him alone!"

It unfastened Joseph's jacket and began to remove it. "Because there are already two human males speaking against him, trying to turn others against him. One has decided he's something called a faggot and the other dislikes the shape of his eyes. Actually, both are angry about the way he's allied himself with you. They would prefer to have you without allies. Your mate needs any extra protection I can give him now."

She listened, appalled. Joseph had talked about the danger to her. Had he known how immediate his own danger was?

Nikanj threw the jacket aside and lay down beside Joseph. It wrapped one sensory tentacle around Joseph's neck and the other around his waist, drawing Joseph's body close against its own.

"Did you drug him, or did he faint?" she asked-then wondered why she cared.

"I drugged him as soon as I grasped his arm. He had reached his breaking point, though. He might have fainted on his own. This way, he can be angry with me for drugging him, not for making him look weak in front of you."

She nodded. "Thank you."

"What is a faggot?" it asked.

She told it.

"But they know he's not that. They know he's mated with you."

"Yes. Well, there's been some doubt about me, too, I hear."

"None of them really believe it."

"Yet."

"Serve them by leading them, Lilith. Help us send as many of them borne as we can."

She stared at it for a long time, feeling frightened and empty. It sounded so sincere-not that that mattered. How could she become the leader of people who saw her as their jailer? On some level, a leader had to be trusted. Yet every act she performed that proved the truth of what she said also made her loyalties, and even her humanity suspect.

She sat down on the floor, cross-legged and at first stared at nothing. Eventually, her eyes were drawn to Nikanj holding Joseph on the bed. The pair did not move, though once she heard Joseph sigh. Was he no longer completely unconscious, then? Was he already learning the lesson all adult ooloi eventually taught? So much in only one day.

''Lilith?''

She jumped. Both Joseph and Nikanj had spoken her name, though clearly, only Nikanj was enough awake to know what it was saying. Joseph, drugged and under the influence of multiple neural links, would shadow everything Nikanj said or did unless Nikanj split its attention enough to stop him. Nikanj did not bother.

"I have adjusted him, even strengthened him a little, though he'll have to exercise to be able to use that to his best advantage. He will be more difficult to injure, faster to heal, and able to survive and recover from injuries that would have killed him before." Joseph unknowing, spoke every word exactly in unison with Nikanj.

"Stop that!" Lilith said sharply.

Nikanj altered its connection without missing a beat. "Lie here with us," it said, speaking alone. "Why should you be down there by yourself?"

She thought there could be nothing more seductive than an ooloi speaking in that particular tone, making that particular suggestion. She realized she had stood up without meaning to and taken a step toward the bed. She stopped, stared at the two of them. Joseph's breathing now became a gentle snore and he seemed to sleep comfortably against Nikanj as she had awakened to find him sleeping comfortably against her many times. She did not pretend outwardly or to herself that she would resist Nikanj's invitation-or that she wanted to resist it. Nikanj could give her an intimacy with Joseph that was beyond ordinary human experience. And what it gave, it also experienced. This was what had captured Paul Titus, she thought. This, not sorrow over his losses or fear of a primitive Earth.

She clenched her fists, holding back. "This won't help me," she said. "It will just make it harder for me when you're not around."

Nikanj freed one sensory arm from Joseph's waist and extended it toward her.

She stayed where she was for a moment longer, proving to herself that she was still in control of her behavior. Then she tore off her jacket and seized the ugly, ugly elephant's trunk of an organ, letting it coil around her as she climbed onto the bed. She sandwiched Nikanj's body between her own and Joseph's, placing it for the first time in the ooloi position between two humans. For an instant, this frightened her. This was the way she might someday be made pregnant with an other-than-human child. Not now while Nikanj wanted other work from her, but someday. Once it plugged into her central nervous system it could control her and do whatever it wanted.