Butler, Octavia - Dawn

The man's name was Wray Ordway and a few days after his Awakening, he was sleeping with Leah with her full consent.

Two days after that, Peter Van Weerden and six followers seized Lilith and held her while a seventh follower, Derrick Wolski, swept a dozen or so leftover biscuits out of one of the food cabinets and climbed into it before it could close.

When Lilith realized what Derrick was doing she stopped struggling. There was no need to hurt anyone. The Oankali would take care of Derrick.

"What does he think he's going to do?" she asked Curt. He had taken part in holding her, though, of course Celene had not. He still held one of her arms.

Watching him, she shook the others off. Now that Derrick was gone from sight, they did not try hard to hold her. She knew now that if she had been willing to hurt or kill them, they could not have held her. She was not stronger than all six combined, but she was stronger than any two. And faster than any of them. The knowledge was not as comforting as it should have been.

"What's he supposed to be doing?" she repeated.

Curt released the arm she had left in his hands. "Finding out what's really going on," he said. "There are people refilling those cabinets and we intend to find out who they are. We want to get a look at them before they're ready to be seen-before they're ready to convince us they're Martians."

She sighed. He had been told that the cabinets refilled automatically. Just one more thing he had decided not to believe. "They're not Martians," she said.

He crooked his mouth in something less than a smile. "I knew that. I never believed your fairy tales."

"They're from another solar system," she said. "I don't know which one. It doesn't matter. They left it so long ago, they don't even know whether it still exists."

He cursed her and turned away.

"What's going to happen?" another voice asked.

Lilith looked around, saw Celene, and sighed. Wherever Curt was, Celene was trembling nearby. Lilith had matched them as well as Nikanj had matched her with Joseph. "I don't know," she said. "The Oankali won't let him get hurt, but I don't know whether they'll put him back in here."

Joseph strode up to her, obviously concerned. Someone had apparently gone to his room and told him what was going on.

"It's all right," she said. "Derrick has gone out to look at the Oankali." She shrugged at his look of alarm. "I hope they send back-or bring him back. These people are going to have to see for themselves."

"That could start a panic!" he whispered.

"I don't care. They'll recover. But if they keep doing stupid things like this, they'll eventually manage to hurt themselves."

Derrick was not sent back.

Eventually even Peter and Jean did not object when Lilith went to the wall and opened the cabinet to prove that Derrick had not asphyxiated inside. She had to open every cabinet in the general area of the one he had used because most of the others could not locate the individual cabinet on the broad, unmarked expanse of wall. Lilith had at first been surprised at her own ability to locate each one easily and exactly. Once she found them the first time she remembered their distance from floor and ceiling, from right and left walls. Some people, since they could not do this themselves, found the ability suspicious.

Some people found everything about her suspicious.

"What happened to Derrick!" Jean Pelerin demanded.

"He did something stupid," Lilith told her. "And while he was doing it, you helped hold me so that I couldn't stop him."

Jean drew back a little, spoke louder. "What happened to him?"

"I don't know."

"Liar!" The volume increased again. "What did your friends do to him? Kill him?"

"What ever happened to him, you're partly to blame," Lilith said. "Handle your own guilt." She looked around at other equally guilty, equally accusing faces. Jean never made her complaints privately. She needed an audience.

Lilith turned and went to her room. She was about to seal herself in when Tate and Joseph joined her. A moment later, Gabriel followed them in. He sat on the corner of Lilith's table and faced her.

"You're losing," he said flatly.

"You're losing," she countered. "If I lose, everyone loses."

"That's why we're here."

"If you have an idea, I'll listen."

"Give them a better show. Get your friends to help you impress them."

"My friends?"

"Look, I don't care. You say they're extraterrestrials. Okay. They're extraterrestrials. What the hell are they going to gain if those assholes out there kill you?"

"I agree. I was hoping they would send or bring Derrick back. They might still. But their timing is terrible."

"Joe says you can talk to them."

She turned to stare at Joseph in betrayal and surprise.

"Your enemies are gathering allies," he said. "Why should you be alone?"

She looked at Tate and the woman shrugged. "Those people out there are assholes," she said. "If they had a brain between them they'd shut up and open their eyes and ears until they had some idea what was really going on."

"That's all I hoped for," Lilith said. "I didn't expect it, but I hoped for it."

"Those are frightened people looking for someone to save them," Gabriel said. "They don't want reason or logic or your hopes or expectations. They want Moses or somebody to come and lead them into lives they can understand."

"Van Weerden can't do that," Lilith said.

"Of course he can't. But right now they think he can, and they're following. Next, he'll tell them the only way to get out of here is to knock you around until you tell all your secrets. He'll say you know the way out. And by the time its clear that you don't, you'll be dead."

Would she? He had no idea how long it would take to torture her to death. Her and Joseph. She looked at him bleakly.

"Victor Dominic," Joseph said. "And Leah and that guy she's picked up and Beatrice Dwyer and-"

"Potential allies?" Lilith asked.

"Yes, and we'd better hurry. I saw Beatrice with one of the guys from the other side this morning."

"Loyalties can change according to who people are sleeping with," Lilith said.

"So what!" demanded Gabriel. "So you don't trust anybody? So you wind up in pieces on the floor?"

Lilith shook her head. "I know it has to be done. So stupid, isn't it. It's like 'Let's play Americans against the Russians. Again.'"

"Talk to your friends," Gabriel said. "Maybe that's not the show they had in mind. Maybe they'll help you rewrite the script."

She stared at him, frowning. "Do you really talk like that?"

"Whatever works," he said.

11

The Oankali did not choose to play the part of Lilith's friends. When she sealed herself into her room and spoke to them, they neither appeared nor answered her calls. And they continued to hold Derrick. Lilith thought he had probably been made to sleep again.

None of this surprised her. She would organize the humans into a coherent unit or she would serve as a scapegoat for whoever else organized them. Nikanj and its mates would save her life if they could-if it seemed her life was in immediate danger. But beyond that, she was on her own.

But she did have powers. Or that was the way people thought of the things she could do with the walls and the suspended animation plants. Peter Van Weerden had nothing. Some people believed he had caused Derrick's disappearance, perhaps his death. Fortunately Peter was not eloquent enough, not charismatic enough to shift blame for this to Lilith-though he tried.

What he did manage to do was portray Derrick as a hero, a martyr who had acted for the group, who had at least tried to do something. What the hell was Lilith doing, he would demand. What was her group doing? Sitting on their hands, talking and talking, waiting for their captors to tell them what to do next.