Butler, Octavia - Adulthood Rites

“It could be fixed again.”

“I think he’d cut his own throat before he’d let one of those things touch him again. I know I would.”

Akin looked at the man, tried to understand his new expression of revulsion and hatred. Did he feel these things toward Akin as well as toward the Oankali? He was looking at Akin.

“What the hell are you?” he said.

Akin did not know what to say. The man knew what he was.

“How old are you really?”

“Seventeen months.”

“Crap! Jesus, what are the worms doing to us? What kind of mother did you have?”

“I was born to a Human woman.” That was what he really wanted to know. He did not want to hear that Akin had two female parents just as he had two male parents. He knew this, though he probably did not understand it. Tino had been intensely curious about it, had asked Akin questions he was too embarrassed to ask his new mates. This man was curious, too, but it was like the kind of curiosity that made some Humans turn over rotting logs—so they could enjoy being disgusted by what lived there.

“Was that Phoenix your father?”

Akin began to cry in spite of himself. He had thought of Tino many times, but he had not had to speak of him. It hurt to speak of him. “How could you hate him so much and still want me? He was Human like you, and I’m not, but one of you killed him.”

“He was a traitor to his own kind. He chose to be a traitor.”

“He never hurt other Humans. He wasn’t even trying to hurt anyone when you killed him. He was just afraid for me.”

Silence.

“How can what he did be wrong if I’m valuable?”

The man looked at him with deep disgust. “You may not be valuable.”

Akin wiped his face and stared his own dislike back at this man who defended the killing of Tino, who had never harmed him. “I will be valuable to you,” he said. “All I have to do is be quiet. Then you can be rid of me. And I can be rid of you.”

The man got up and walked away.

Akin stayed where he was. The men would not leave him. They would come this way when they went down to the river. He was frightened and miserable and shaking with anger. He had never felt such a mix of intense emotions. And where had his last words come from? They made him think of Lilith when she was angry. Her anger had always frightened him, yet here it was inside him. What he had said was true enough, but he was not Lilith, tall and strong. It might have been better for him not to speak his feelings.

Yet there had been some fear in the red-haired man’s expression before he went away.

“Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.”

Akin had not understood, but she had said, “It’s all right. Just remember.” And of course, he had remembered every word. It was one of the few times she had encouraged him to express Oankali characteristics. But now

How could he embrace Humans who, in their difference, not only rejected him but made him wish he were strong enough to hurt them?

He climbed down from his log and found fungi and fallen fruit to eat. There were also fallen nuts, but he ignored them because he could not crack them. He could hear the men talking occasionally, though he could not hear what they said. He was afraid to try to run away again. When they caught him this time, they might beat him. If Red-Hair told them how well he could talk and understand, they might want to hurt him.

When he had eaten his fill he watched several ants, each the size of a man’s forefinger. These were not deadly, but adult Humans found their sting agonizing and debilitating. Akin was gathering his courage to taste one, to explore the basic structure of it, when the men arrived, snatched him up, and stumbled and slipped down the path to the river. Three men carried the boat. One man carried Akin. There was no sign of the fifth man.

Akin was placed alone on the fifth seat in the center of the boat. No one spoke to him or paid any particular attention to him as they threw their gear into the boat, pushed the boat into deeper water, and jumped in.

The men rowed without speaking. Tears streamed down the face of one. Tears for a man who seemed to hate everyone, and who had apparently died because he would not ask an ooloi for help.

What had they done with his body? Had they buried it? They had left Akin alone for a long time—long enough, perhaps, even to escape if he had dared. They were getting a very late start in spite of their knowledge that they were being pursued. They had had time to bury a body.

Now they were dangerous. They were like smoldering wood that might either flare into flames or gradually cool and become less deadly. Akin made no sound, hardly moved. He must not trigger a flaring.

5

Dichaan helped Ahajas to a sitting position, then placed himself behind her so that she could rest against him if she wished. She never had before. But she needed him near her, needed contact with him during this one act—the birth of her child. She needed all her mates near her, touching her, needed to be able to link into them and feel the parts of her child that had come from them. She could survive without this contact, but that would not be good for her or for the child. Solitary births produced children with tendencies to become ooloi. It was too soon for construct ooloi. Such a child would have been sent to the ship to grow up among Lo relatives there.

Lilith had accepted this. She had shared all Ahajas’s births as Ahajas had shared all of hers. She knelt now beside Dichaan, slightly behind Ahajas. She waited with false patience for the child to find its way out of Ahajas’s body. First Tino had had to be transported to the ship for healing. He would probably not die. He would heal physically and emotionally during a short period in suspended animation. He might, however, lose some of his memory.

Then, when he was gone and Lilith was ready to join those already looking for Akin, Ahajas’s child decided to be born. That was the way with children, Human or Oankali. When their bodies were ready, they insisted on being born. Eleven months for the Human-born instead of their original nine. Fifteen months for the Oankali-born instead of the original eighteen. Humans were so quick about everything. Quick and potentially deadly. Construct births on both sides had to be more carefully conventional than Human or Oankali births. Missing parents had to be simulated by the ooloi. The world had to be introduced very slowly after the child had gotten to know its parents. Lilith could not simply assist at the birth, then leave. Nikanj had all it could do simulating Joseph and being itself for the child. More would be uncertain—unsafe for the construct child.

Nikanj sat searching with its sensory arms for the place from which the child would eventually emerge. Lilith’s Human way of giving birth was simpler. He child emerged from an existing orifice—the same one each time. Its birth hurt Lilith, but Nikanj always took away her pain. Ahajas had no birth orifice. Her child had to make its own way out of her body.

This did not hurt Ahajas, but it weakened her momentarily, made her want to sit down, made her focus her whole attention on following the child’s progress, helping it if it seemed in distress. It was the duty of her mates to protect her from interference and reassure her that they were with her—all part of her child that was part of her. All interconnected, all united—a network of family into which each child should fall. This should be the best possible time for a family. But with Tino badly injured and Akin abducted, it was a time of confused feelings. The moments of union and anticipation were squeezed between moments of fear for Akin and worry that the Tino they got back might not know them or want them.