Butler, Octavia - Dawn

"They'll cut the trees down, you know," she said softly. "They'll make boats or rafts. They think they're on Earth."

"Some of them believe otherwise," Nikanj told her. "They believe because you do."

"That won't stop the boat building."

"No. We won't try to stop it. Let them row their boats to the walls and back. There's no way out for them except the way we offer: to learn to feed and shelter themselves in this environment-to become self-sustaining. When they've done that, we'll take them to Earth and let them go."

It knew they would run, she thought. It must know. Yet it talked about mixed settlements, human and Oankali-trade partner settlements within which ooloi would control the fertility and "mix" the children of both groups.

She looked up at the sloping, wedge-shaped buttresses. Semi-enclosed as she was, she could not see Nikanj or the river. There was only brown and green forest-the illusion of wilderness and isolation.

Nikanj left her the illusion for a while. It said nothing, made no sound. Her feet tired and she looked around for something to sit on. She did not want to go back to the others any sooner than she had to. They could tolerate one another again now; the most difficult phase of their bonding was over. There was very little drugging still going on. Curt and Gabriel were still drugged along with a few others. Lilith worried about these. Oddly, she also admired them for being able to resist conditioning. Were they strong, then? Or simply unable to adapt?

"Lilith?" Nikanj said softly.

She did not answer.

"Let's go back."

She had found a dry, thick liana root to sit on. It hung like a swing, dropping down from the canopy, then curving upward again to lock itself into the branches of a nearby smaller tree before dropping to the ground and digging in. The root was thicker than some trees and the few insects on it looked harmless. It was an uncomfortable seat-twisted and hard-but Lilith was not yet ready to leave it.

"What will you do with the humans who can't adapt?" she asked.

"If they aren't violent, we'll take them to Earth with the rest of you." Nikanj came around the buttress, destroying her sense of solitude and home. Nothing that looked and moved as Nikanj did could come from home. She got up wearily and walked with it.

"Have the ants bitten you?" it asked.

She shook her head. It did not like her to conceal small injuries. It considered her health very much its business, and looked after her insect bites-especially her mosquito bites-at the end of each day. She thought it would have been easier to have left mosquitoes out of this small simulation of Earth. But Oankali did not think that way. A simulation of a tropical forest of Earth had to be complete with snakes, centipedes, mosquitoes and other things Lilith would have preferred to live without. Why should the Oankali worry, she thought cynically. Nothing bit them.

"There are so few of you," Nikanj said as they walked. "No one wants to give up on any of you."

She had to think back to realize what it was talking about.

"Some of us thought we should hold off bonding with you until you were brought here," it told her. "Here it would have been easier for you to band together, become a family."

Lilith glanced at it uneasily, but said nothing. Families had children. Was Nikanj saying children should be conceived and born here?

"But most of us couldn't wait," it continued. It wrapped a sensory arm around her neck loosely. "It might be better for both our peoples if we were not so strongly drawn to you."

2

Tools, when they were finally handed out, were waterproof tarpaulins, machetes, axes, shovels, hoes, metal pots, rope, hammocks, baskets, and mats. Lilith spoke privately with each of the most dangerous humans before they were given their tools.

One more try, she thought wearily.

"I don't care what you think of me," she told Curt. "You're the kind of man the human race is going to need down on Earth. That's why I woke you. I want you to live to get down there." She hesitated. "Don't go Peter's way, Curt."

He stared at her. Only recently free of the drug, only recently capable of violence, he stared.

"Make him sleep again!" Lilith told Nikanj. "Let him forget! Don't give him a machete and wait for him to use it on someone."

"Yahjahyi thinks he'll be all right," Nikanj said. Yahjahyi was Curt's ooloi.

"Does it?" Lilith said. "What did Peter's ooloi think?"

"It never told anyone what it thought. As a result, no one realized it was in trouble. Incredible behavior. I said it would be better if we weren't so drawn to you."

She shook her head. "If Yahjahyi thinks Curt is all right, it's deluding itself."

"We've observed Curt and Yahjahyi," Nikanj said. "Curt will go through a dangerous time now, but Yahjahyi is ready. Even Celene is ready."

"Celene!" Lilith said with contempt.

"You did a good job matching them. Much better than with Peter and Jean."

"I didn't match Peter and Jean. Their own temperaments did-like fire and gasoline."

"...yes. Anyway, Celene is not ready to lose another mate. She'll hold on to him. And Curt, since he sees her as much more vulnerable than she is, will have good reason not to risk himself, not to chance leaving her alone. They'll be all right."

"They won't," Gabriel told her later. He too was free of the drug, finally, but he was handling it better. Kahguyaht, who had been so eager to push Lilith, coerce her, ridicule her, seemed to be infinitely patient with Tate and Gabriel.

"Look at things from Curt's point of view," Gabriel said. "He's not in control even of what his own body does and feels. He's taken like a woman and.. . . No, don't explain!" He held up his hand to stop her from interrupting. "He knows the ooloi aren't male. He knows all the sex that goes on is in his head. It doesn't matter. It doesn't fucking matter! Someone else is pushing all his buttons. He can't let them get away with that."

Honestly frightened, Lilith asked, "How have you... made your peace with it?"

"Who says I have?"

She stared at him. "Gabe, we can't lose you, too."

He smiled. Beautiful, perfect, white teeth. They made her think of some predator. "I don't take the next step," he said, "until I see where I'm standing now. You know I still don't believe this isn't Earth."

"I know."

"A tropical forest in a space ship. Who'd believe that?"

"But the Oankali. You can see that they're not of Earth."

"Sure. But they're here now on what sure looks, sounds, and smells like Earth."

"It isn't."

"So you say. Sooner or later I'll find out for myself."

"Kahguyaht could show you things that would make you sure now. They might even convince Curt."

"Nothing will convince Curt. Nothing will reach him."

"You think he'll do what Peter did?"

"Much more efficiently."

"Oh god. Did you know they put Jean back into suspended animation? She won't even remember Peter when she wakes up."

"I heard. That will make it easier on her when they put her with another guy, I guess."

"Is that what you would want for Tate?" He shrugged, turned, and walked away.

3

Lilith taught all the humans to make thatch shingles and place them in overlapping rows on rafters so that they would not leak. She showed them the best trees to cut for flooring and frame. They all worked several days to construct a large thatch-roofed cabin on stilts, well above the river's highwater mark. The cabin was a twin to the one they had all squeezed into so far-the one Lilith and the ooloi had constructed then the ooloi brought them all through the miles of corridors to the training room.

The ooloi left this second construction strictly to the humans. They watched or sat talking among themselves or disappeared on errands of their own. But when the work was finished they brought in a small feast to celebrate.