Butler, Octavia - Adulthood Rites

Both girls climbed down from their chairs, came to touch him and taste him and know him. He became so totally focused on them and on getting to know them that he could not perceive anything else for several minutes.

They were siblings—Human-born and Oankali-born. The smaller one was Oankali-born and the more androgenous-looking of the two. It would probably become male in response to its sibling’s apparent femaleness. Its name, it had signaled, was Shkaht—Kaalshkaht eka Jaitahsokahldahktohj aj Dinso. It was a relative. They were both relatives through Nikanj, whose people were Kaal. Happily, Akin gave Shkaht the Human version of his own name, since the Oankali version did not give enough information about Nikanj. Akin Iyapo Shing Kaalnikanjlo.

Both children knew already that he was Human-born and expected to become male. That made him an object of intense curiosity. He discovered that he enjoyed their attention, and he let them investigate him thoroughly.

“

not like kids at all,” one of the Humans was saying. “They’re all over each other like a bunch of dogs.” Who was speaking? Akin made himself focus on the room again, on the Humans. Three more had come into the room. The speaker was Neci, a woman who had always seen him as a valuable property, but who had never liked him.

“If that’s the worst thing they do, we’ll get along fine with them,” Tate said. “Akin, what are their names?”

“Shkaht and Amma,” Akin told her. “Shkaht is the younger one.”

“What kind of name is Shkaht?” Gabe said. He had come in with Neci and Pilar.

“An Oankali name,” Akin said.

“Why? Why give her an Oankali name?”

“Three of her parents are Oankali. So are three of mine.” He would not tell them Shkaht was Oankali-born. He would not let Shkaht tell them. What if they found out and decided they only wanted the Human-born sibling? Would they trade Shkaht away later or return her to the raiders? Best to let them go on believing that both Amma and Shkaht were Human-born and truly female. He must think of them that way himself so that his thoughts did not become words and betray him. He had already warned both children that they must not tell this particular truth. They did not understand yet, but they had agreed.

“What languages do they speak?” Tate asked.

“They want to know what languages you speak,” Akin said in Oankali.

“We speak French and Twi,” Amma said. “Our Human father and his brothers come from France. They were traveling in our mother’s country when the war came. Many people in her country spoke English, but in her home village people spoke mostly Twi.”

“Where was her village?”

“In Ghana. Our mother comes from Ghana.”

Akin relayed this to Tate.

“Africa again,” she said. “It probably didn’t get hit at all. I wonder whether the Oankali have started settlements there. I thought people in Ghana all spoke English.”

“Ask them what trade village they’re from,” Gabe said.

“From Kaal,” Akin said without asking. Then he turned to the children. “Is there more than one Kaal village?”

“There are three,” Shkaht said. “We’re from Kaal-Osei.”

“Kaal-Osei,” Akin relayed.

Gabe shook his head. “Kaal

” He looked at Tate, but she shook her head.

“If they don’t speak English there,” she said, “nobody we know would be there.”

He nodded. “Talk to them, Akin. Find out when they were taken and where their village is—if they know. Can they remember things the way you can?”

“All constructs remember.”

“Good. They’re going to stay with us, so start teaching them English.”

“They’re siblings. Very close. They need to stay together.”

“Do they? We’ll see.”

Akin did not like that. He would have to warn Amma and Shkaht to get sick if they were separated. Crying would not work. The Humans had to be frightened, had to think they might lose one or two of their new children. They had now what they had probably never had before: children they thought might eventually be fertile together. From what he had heard about resisters, he had no doubt that some of them really believed they could soon breed new, Human-trained, Human-looking children.

“Let’s go outside,” he told them. “Are you still hungry?”

“Yes.” They spoke in unison.

“Come on. I’ll show you where the best things grow.”

14

The next day, all three children were arranged in backpacks and carried toward the mountains. They were not allowed to walk. Gabe carried Akin atop a bundle of supplies, and Tate walked behind, carrying even more supplies. Amma rode on Macy Wilton’s back and surreptitiously tasted him with one of her small body tentacles. She had a normal Human tongue, but each of her tentacles would serve her as well as Akin’s long, gray Oankali tongue. Shkaht’s throat tentacles gave her a more sensitive sense of smell and taste than Akin, and she could use her hands for tasting. Also, she had slender, dark tentacles on her head, mixed with her hair. She could see with these. She could not see with her eyes. She had learned, though, to seem to look at people with her eyes—to turn and face them and to move her slender head tentacles as she moved her head so that Humans were not disturbed by her hair seeming to crawl about. She would have to be very careful because Humans, for some reason, liked to cut people’s hair. They cut their own, and they had cut Akin’s. Even back in Lo, men in particular either cut their own hair or got others to cut it. Akin did not want to think about what it might feel like to have sensory tentacles cut off. Nothing could hurt worse. Nothing would be more likely to cause an Oankali or a construct to sting reflexively, fatally.

The Humans walked all day, stopping for rest and food only once at noon. They did not talk about where they were going or why, but they walked quickly, as though they feared pursuit.

They were a party of twenty, armed, in spite of Tate’s efforts, with the four guns of Akin’s captors. Damek was still alive, but he could not walk. He was being cared for back at Phoenix. Akin suspected that he had no idea what was going on—that his gun was gone, that Akin was gone. What he did not know, he could not resent or tell.

That night the Humans erected tents and made beds of blankets and branches or bamboo—whatever they could find. Some stretched hammocks between trees and slept outside the tents since they saw no sign of rain. Akin asked to sleep outside with someone and a woman named Abira simply reached out of her hammock and lifted him in. She seemed glad to have him in spite of the heat and humidity. She was a short, very strong woman who carried a pack as heavy as those of men half again her size, yet she handled him with gentleness.

“I had three little boys before the war,” she said in her strangely accented English. She had come from Israel. She gave his head a quick rub—her favorite caress—and went to sleep, leaving him to find his own most comfortable position.

Amma and Shkaht slept together on their own bed of blanket-covered bamboo. Humans valued them, fed them, sheltered them, but they did not like the girls’ tentacles—would not deliberately allow themselves to be touched by the small sensory organs. Amma had only managed to taste Macy Wilton because she was riding on his back and her tentacles were able to burrow through the clothing he had put between himself and her.

No Human wanted to sleep with them. Even now Neci Roybal and her husband Stancio were whispering about the possibility of removing the tentacles while the girls were young.

Alarmed, Akin listened carefully.

“They’ll learn to do without the ugly little things if we take them off while they’re so young,” Neci was saying.

“We have no proper anesthetics,” the man protested. “It would be cruel.” He was his wife’s opposite, quiet, steady, kind. People tolerated Neci for his sake. Akin avoided him in order to avoid Neci. But Neci had a way of saying a thing and saying a thing over and over until other people began to say it—and believe it.