Butler, Octavia - Dawn

She could not understand it at first-literally could not comprehend the words it spoke. There was nothing in her world but a dead Joseph and an obscenely alive Curt.

Nikanj held her until it too had to be acknowledged as part of her world. When it saw that she looked at it, struggled against it instead of simply struggling toward Curt, it repeated its words until she heard them, until they penetrated, until she was still. It never made any attempt to drug her, and it never let her go.

Off to one side, Kahguyaht was speaking to Tate. Tate stood well back from it, holding a machete and staying close to Gabriel who held an ax. It was Gabriel who had convinced her to abandon Lilith. It had to be. And what had convinced Leah? Practicality? A fear of being abandoned alone, left as much an outcast as Lilith?

Lilith found Leah and stared at her, wondering. Leah looked away. Then her attention was drawn back to Tate.

"Go away," Tate was pleading in a voice that did not sound like her. "We don't want you! I don't want you! Let us alone!" She sounded as though she would cry. In fact, tears streamed down her face.

"I have never lied to you," Kahguyaht told her. "If you manage to use your machete on anyone, you'll lose Earth.

You'll never see your homeworld again. Even this place will be denied to you." It stepped toward her. "Don't do this Tate. We're giving you the thing you want most: Freedom and a return home."

"We've got that here," Gabriel said.

Curt came to join him. "We don't need anything else from you!" he shouted.

The others behind him agreed loudly.

"You would starve here," Kahguyaht said. "Even in the short time you've been here, you've had trouble finding food. There isn't enough, and you don't yet know how to use what there is." Kahguyaht raised its voice, spoke to all of them. "You were allowed to leave us when you wished so that you could practice the skills you'd learned and learn more from each other and from Lilith. We had to know how you would behave after leaving us. We knew you might be injured, but we didn't think you would kill one another."

"We didn't kill a human being," Curt shouted. "We killed one of your animals!"

"We?" Kahguyaht said mildly. "And who helped you kill him?"

Curt did not answer.

"You beat him," Kahguyaht continued, "and when he was unconscious, you killed him with your ax. You did it alone, and in doing it, you've exiled yourself permanently from your Earth." It spoke to the others. "Will you join him? Will you be taken from this training room and placed with Toaht families to live the rest of your lives aboard the ship?"

The faces of some of the others began to change---doubts beginning or growing.

Allison's ooloi went to her, became the first to touch the human it had come to retrieve. It spoke very quietly. Lilith could not hear what it said, but after a moment, Allison sighed and offered it her machete.

It declined the knife with a wave of one sensory arm while settling the other arm around her neck. It drew her back behind the line of Oankali where Lilith stood with Nikanj. Lilith stared at her, wondering how Allison could turn against her. Had it only been fear? Curt could frighten just about anyone if he worked at it. And this was Curt with an ax-an ax he had already used on one man...

Allison met her gaze, looked away, then faced her again. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "We thought we could avoid bloodshed by going along with them, doing what they said. We thought. . . I'm sorry."

Lilith turned away, tears blurring her vision again. Somehow, she had been able to put Joseph's death aside for a few minutes. Allison's words brought it back.

Kahguyaht stretched out a sensory arm to Tate but Gabriel snatched her away.

"We don't want you here!" he grated. He thrust Tate behind him.

Curt shouted-a wordless scream of rage, a call to attack. He lunged at Kahguyaht and several of his people joined his attack, lunging at the other ooloi with their weapons.

Nikanj thrust Lilith toward Allison and plunged into the fighting. Allison's ooloi paused only long enough to say, "Keep her out of this!" in rapid Oankali. Then it, too, joined the fight.

Things happened almost too quickly to follow. Tate and the few other humans who seemed to want nothing more than to get clear found themselves caught in the middle. Wray and Leah, half supporting one another, stumbled out of the fighting between a pair of ooloi who seemed about to be slashed by three machete-wielding humans. Lilith realized suddenly that Leah was bleeding, and she ran to help get her away from the danger.

The humans shouted. The ooloi did not make a sound. Lilith saw Gabriel swing at Nikanj, narrowly missing it, saw him raise his ax again for what was clearly intended to be a death blow. Then Kahguyaht drugged him from behind.

Gabriel made a small gasp of sound-as though there were not enough strength in him to force out a scream. He collapsed.

Tate screamed, grabbed him, and tried to drag him clear of the fighting. She had dropped her machete, was clearly no threat.

Curt had not dropped his ax. It gave him a long, deadly reach. He swung it like a hatchet, controlling it easily in spite of its weight, and no ooloi risked being hit by it.

Elsewhere a man did manage to swing his ax through part of an ooloi's chest, leaving a gaping wound. When the ooloi fell, the man closed in for the kill, aided by a woman with a machete.

A second ooloi stung them both from behind. As they fell, the injured ooloi got up. In spite of the cut it had taken, it walked over to where Lilith's group waited. It sat down heavily on the ground.

Lilith looked at Allison, Wray, and Leah. They stared at the ooloi, but made no move toward it. Lilith went to it, noticing that it focused on her sharply in spite of its wound. She suspected the wound would not have stopped it from stinging her to unconsciousness or death if it felt threatened.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked. Its wound was just about where its heart would have been if it had been human. It was oozing thick clear fluid and blood so bright red that it seemed false. Movie blood. Poster-paint blood. Such a terrible wound should have been awash in bodily fluids, but the ooloi seemed to be losing very little.

"I'll heal," it said in its disconcertingly calm voice. "This isn't serious." It paused. "I never believed they would try to kill us. I never knew how hard it would be not to kill them."

"You should have known," Lilith said. "You've had plenty of time to study us. What did you think would happen when you told us you were going to extinguish us as a species by tampering genetically with our children?"

The ooloi focused on her again. "If you had used a weapon, you could probably have killed at least one of us. These others couldn't, but you could."

"I don't want to kill you. I want to get away from you. You know that."

"I know you think that."

It turned its attention from her and began doing something to its wound with its sensory arms.

"Lilith!" Allison called.

Lilith looked back at her, then looked where she was pointing.

Nikanj was down, writhing on the ground as no ooloi had so far. Kahguyaht abruptly stopped fencing with Curt, lunged under his ax, hit him, and drugged him. Curt was the last human to go down. Tate was still conscious, still holding Gabriel, who was unconscious from Kahguyaht's sting. Some distance away, Victor was conscious, weaponless, making his way to the injured ooloi near Lilith-Victor's ooloi, she realized.

Lilith did not care how the two would meet. They could both take care of themselves. She ran toward Nikanj, avoiding the sensory arms of another ooloi who might have stung her.

Kahguyaht was already kneeling beside Nikanj, speaking to it low-voiced. It fell silent as she knelt on Nikanj's opposite side. She saw Nikanj's wound at once. Its left sensory arm had been hacked almost off. The arm seemed to be hanging by little more than a length of tough gray skin. Clear fluid and blood spurted from the wound.