Butler, Octavia - Adulthood Rites

He shifted his attention from the frustration of what he could not perceive to the fascination of what he could. Lilith’s flesh was much more exciting than the flesh of Nikanj, Ahajas, and Dichaan. There was something wrong with hers—something he did not understand. It was both frightening and seductive. It told him Lilith was dangerous, though she was also essential. Nikanj was interesting but not dangerous. Ahajas and Dichaan were so alike he had to struggle to perceive differences between them. In some ways Joseph had been like Lilith. Deadly and compelling. But he had not been as much like Lilith as Ahajas was like Dichaan. In fact, though he had clearly been Human and native to this place, this Earth, like Lilith, he had not been Lilith’s relative. Ahajas and Dichaan were brother and sister, like most Oankali male and female mates. Joseph was unrelated, like Nikanj—but although Nikanj was Oankali, it was also ooloi, not male or female. Ooloi were supposed to be unrelated to their male and female mates so that they could focus their attention on their mates’ genetic differences and construct children without making dangerous mistakes of overfamiliarity and overconfidence.

“Be careful,” he heard Nikanj say. “He’s studying you again.”

“I know,” Lilith answered. “Sometimes I wish he’d just nurse like Human babies.”

Lilith rubbed Akin’s back, and the flickering of light between and around her fingers broke his concentration. He withdrew his flesh from hers, then released her nipple and looked at her. She closed clothing over her breast but went on holding him on her lap. He was always glad when people held him and talked to each other, allowing him to listen. He had already learned more words from them than he had yet had occasion to use. He collected words and gradually assembled them into questions. When his questions were answered, he remembered everything he was told. His picture of the world grew.

“At least he isn’t any stronger or faster in physical development than other babies,” Lilith said. “Except for his teeth.”

“There have been babies born with teeth before,” Nikanj said. “Physically, he’ll look his Human age until his metamorphosis. He’ll have to think his way out of any problems his precocity causes.”

“That won’t do him much good with some Humans. They’ll resent him for not being completely Human and for looking more Human than their kids. They’ll hate him for looking much younger than he sounds. They’ll hate him because they haven’t been allowed to have sons. Your people have made Human-looking male babies a very valuable commodity.”

“We’ll allow more of them now. Everyone feels more secure about mixing them. Before now, too many ooloi could not perceive the necessary mixture. They could have made mistakes and their mistakes could be monsters.”

“Most Humans think that’s what they’ve been doing.”

“Do you still?”

Silence.

“Be content, Lilith. One group of us believed it would be best to dispense with Human-born males altogether. We could construct female children for Human females and male children for Oankali females. We’ve done that until now.”

“And cheated everyone. Ahajas wants daughters, and I want sons. Other people feel the same way.”

“I know. And we control children in ways we should not to make them mature as Oankali-born males and Human-born females. We control inclinations that should be left to individual children. Even the group that suggested we go on this way knows we shouldn’t. But they were afraid. A male who’s Human enough to be born to a Human female could be a danger to us all. We must try though. We’ll learn from Akin.”

Akin felt himself held closer to Lilith. “Why is he such an experiment?” she demanded. “And why should Human-born men be such a problem? I know most prewar men don’t like you. They feel you’re displacing them and forcing them to do something perverted. From their point of view, they’re right. But you could teach the next generation to love you, no matter who their mothers are. All you’d have to do is start early. Indoctrinate them before they’re old enough to develop other opinions.”

“But

” Nikanj hesitated. “But if we had to work that blindly, that clumsily, we couldn’t have trade. We would have to take your children from you soon after they were born. We wouldn’t dare trust you to raise them. You would be kept only for breeding—like nonsentient animals.”

Silence. A sigh. “You say such god-awful things in such a gentle voice. No, hush, I know it’s the only voice you’ve got. Nika, will Akin survive the Human males who will hate him?”

“They won’t hate him.”

“They will! He isn’t Human. Un-Human women are offensive to them, but they don’t usually try to hurt them, and they do sleep with them—like a racist sleeping with racially different women. But Akin

They’ll see him as a threat. Hell, he is a threat. He’s one of their replacements.”

“Lilith, they will not hate him.” Akin felt himself lifted from Lilith’s arms and held close to Nikanj’s body. He gasped at the lovely shock of contact with Nikanj’s sensory tentacles, many of which held him while others burrowed painlessly into his flesh. It was so easy to connect with Nikanj and to learn. “They will see him as beautiful and like themselves,” Nikanj said. “By the time he’s old enough for his body to reveal what he actually is, he’ll be an adult and able to hold his own.”

“Able to fight?”

“Only to save his life. He’ll tend to avoid fighting. He’ll be like Oankali-born males now—a solitary wanderer when he’s not mated.”

“He won’t settle down with anyone?”

“No. Most Human males aren’t particularly monogamous. No construct males will be.”

“But—”

“Families will change, Lilith—are changing. A complete construct family will be a female, an ooloi, and children. Males will come and go as they wish and as they find welcome.”

“But they’ll have no homes.”

“A home like this would be a prison to them. They’ll have what they want, what they need.”

“The ability to be fathers to their kids?”

Nikanj paused. “They might choose to keep contact with their children. They won’t live with them permanently—and no construct, male or female, young or old, will feel that as a deprivation. It will be normal to them, and purposeful, since there will always be many more females and ooloi than males.” It rustled its head and body tentacles. “Trade means change. Bodies change. Ways of living must change. Did you think your children would only look different?”

3

Akin spent some part of the day with each of his parents. Lilith fed him and taught him. The others only taught him, but he went to them all eagerly. Ahajas usually held him after Lilith.

Ahajas was tall and broad. She carried him without seeming to notice his weight. He had never felt weariness in her. And he knew she enjoyed carrying him. He could feel pleasure the moment she sank filaments of her sensory tentacles into him. She was the first person to be able to reach him this way with more than simple emotions. She was the first to give him multisensory images and signaling pressures and to help him understand that she was speaking to him without words. As he grew, he realized that Nikanj and Dichaan also did this. Nikanj had done it even before he was born, but he had not understood. Ahajas had reached him and taught him quickly. Through the images she created for him, he learned about the child growing within her. She gave him images of it and even managed to give it images of him. It had several presences: all its parents except Lilith. And it had him. Sibling.

He knew he would be male when he grew up. He understood male, and female, and ooloi. And he knew that because he would be male, the unborn child who would begin its life seeming much less Human than he did would eventually become female. There was a balance, a naturalness to this that pleased him. He should have a sister to grow up with—a sister but not an ooloi sibling. Why? He wondered whether the child inside Ahajas would become ooloi, but Ahajas and Nikanj both assured him it would not. And they would not tell him how they knew. So this sibling should become a sister. It would take years to develop sexually, but he already thought of it as “she.”