Butler, Octavia - Adulthood Rites

“Oh, yes.” She had become very still, totally focused on Akin. If she had been Oankali, all her head tentacles would have been elongated toward him in a cone of living flesh. “His parents are here,” she said. “He

couldn’t have been your father. You look like him, though.”

“My Human father is dead. Tino took his place. Damek called him a traitor and killed him.”

She closed her eyes, turned her face away from Akin. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

“He was alive when they took me away, but the bones of his head had been broken with the wooden part of Damek’s gun. There was no one around to help him. He must have died.”

She took Akin down from the counter and hugged him. “Did you like him, Akin?”

“Yes.”

“We loved him here. He was the son most of us never had. I knew he was going, though. What was there for him in a place like this? I gave him a packet of food to take with him and aimed him toward Lo. Did he reach it?”

“Yes.”

She smiled again with only half her mouth. “So you’re from Lo. Who’s your mother?”

“Lilith Iyapo.” Akin did not think she would have liked hearing Lilith’s long Oankali name.

“Son of a bitch!” Tate whispered. “Listen, Akin, don’t say that name to anyone else. It may not matter anymore, but don’t say it.”

“Why?”

“Because there are people here who don’t like your mother. There are people here who might hurt you because they can’t get at her. Do you understand?”

Akin looked into her sun-browned face. She had very blue eyes—not like Wray Ordway’s pale eyes, but a deep, intense color. “I don’t understand,” he said, “but I believe you.”

“Good. If you do that, we’ll buy you. I’ll see to it.”

“At Siwatu, the raiders took me away because they were afraid the men were going to try to steal me.”

“Don’t you worry. Once I drop this tray and you in the living room, I’ll see to it that they don’t go anywhere until our business with them is done.”

She carried the tray of drinks and let Akin walk back to her husband and the resisters. Then she left them.

Akin climbed onto Iriarte’s lap, knowing he was about to lose the man, missing him already.

“We’ll have to have our doctor look at him,” Gabriel Rinaldi was saying. He paused. “Let me see your tongue, kid.”

Obligingly, Akin opened his mouth. He did not stick his tongue out to its full extent, but he did nothing to conceal it.

The man got up and looked for a moment, then shook his head. “Ugly. And he’s probably venomous. The constructs usually are.”

“I saw him bite an agouti and kill it,” Galt put in.

“But he’s never made any effort to bite any of us,” Iriarte said with obvious irritation. “He’s done what he’s been told to do. He’s taken care of his own toilet needs. And he knows better than we do what’s edible and what isn’t. Don’t worry about his picking up things and eating them. He’s been doing that since we took him—seeds, nuts, flowers, leaves, fungi

and he’s never been sick. He won’t eat fish or meat. I wouldn’t force him to if I were you. The Oankali don’t eat it. Maybe it would make him sick.”

“What I want to know,” Rinaldi said, “is just how un-Human he is

mentally. Come here, kid.”

Akin did not want to go. Showing his tongue was one thing. Deliberately putting himself in hands that might be unfriendly was another. He looked up at Iriarte, hoping the man would not let him go. Instead Iriarte put him down and gave him a shove toward Rinaldi. Reluctantly, he edged toward the man.

Rinaldi got up impatiently and lifted Akin into his arms. He sat down, turned Akin about on his lap looking at him, then held Akin facing him. “Okay, they say you can talk. So talk.”

Again Akin turned to look at Iriarte. He did not want to begin talking in a room full of men when talking had already made one of those men hate him.

Iriarte nodded. “Talk, niŃo. Do as he says.”

“Tell us your name,” Rinaldi said.

Akin caught himself smiling. Twice now, he had been asked his name. These people seemed to care who he was, not just what he was. “Akin,” he said softly.

“Ah-keen?” Rinaldi frowned down at him. “Is that a Human name?”

“Yes.”

“What language?”

“Yoruba.”

“Yor—

what? What country?”

“Nigeria.”

“Why should you have a Nigerian name? Is one of your parents Nigerian?”

“It means hero. If you put an s on it, it means brave boy. I’m the first boy born to a Human woman on Earth since the war.”

“That’s what the worms hunting for you said,” Rinaldi agreed. He was frowning again. “Can you read?”

“Yes.”

“How can you have had time to learn to read?”

Akin hesitated. “I don’t forget things,” he said softly.

The raiders looked startled. “Ever?” Damek demanded. “Anything?”

Rinaldi only nodded. “That’s the way the Oankali are,” he said. “They can bring out the ability in Humans when they want to—and when the Humans agree to be useful to them. I thought that was the boy’s secret.”

Akin, who had considering lying, was glad he had not. He had always found it easy to tell the truth and difficult to make himself lie. He could lie very convincingly, though, if lying would keep him alive and spare him pain among these men. It was easier, though, to divert questions—as he had diverted the question about his parents.

“Do you want to stay here, Akin?” Rinaldi asked.

“If you buy me, I’ll stay,” Akin said.

“Shall we buy you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Akin glanced at Iriarte. “They want to sell me. If I have to be sold, I’d like to stay here.”

“Why?”

“You aren’t afraid of me, and you don’t hate me. I don’t hate you, either.”

Rinaldi laughed. Akin was pleased. He had hoped to make the man laugh. He had learned back in Lo that if he made Humans laugh, they were more comfortable with him—though, of course, in Lo, he had never been exposed to people who might injure him simply because he was not Human.

Rinaldi asked his age, the number of languages he spoke, and the purpose of his long, gray tongue. Akin withheld information only about the tongue.

“I smell and taste with it,” he said. “I can smell with my nose, too, but my tongue tells me more.” All true, but Akin had decided not to tell anyone what else his tongue could do. The idea of his tasting their cells, their genes, might disturb them too much.

A woman called a doctor came in, took Akin from Rinaldi, and began to examine, poke, and probe his body. She did not talk to him, though Rinaldi had told her he could talk.

“He’s got some oddly textured spots on his back, arms, and abdomen,” she said. “I suspect they’re where he’ll grow tentacles in a few years.”

“Are they?” Rinaldi asked him.

“I don’t know,” Akin said. “People never know what they’ll be like after metamorphosis.”

The doctor stumbled back from him with a wordless sound.

“I told you he could talk, Yori.”

She shook her head. “I thought you meant

baby talk.”

“I meant like you and me. Ask him questions. He’ll answer.”

“What can you tell me about the spots?” she asked.

“Sensory spots. I can see and taste with most of them.” And he could complete sensory connections with anyone else who had sensory tentacles or spots. But he would not talk to Humans about that.

“Does it bother you when we touch them?”

“Yes. I’m used to it, but it still bothers me.”

Two women came into the room and called Rinaldi away.

A man and woman came in to look at Akin—just to stand and stare at him and listen as he answered the doctor’s questions. He guessed who they were before they finally spoke to him.

“Did you really know our son?” the woman asked. She was very small. All the women he had seen so far were almost tiny. They would have looked like children alongside his mother and sisters. Still, they were gentle and knew how to lift him without hurting him. And they were neither afraid of him nor disgusted by him.