Lilith's Brood: Dawn / Adulthood Rites / Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

  After three days, Beatrice Dwyer and Gabriel Rinaldi seemed to be settling in. Gabriel paired with Tate. Beatrice avoided the men sexually, but joined in the endless discussions of their situation, first refusing to believe it, then finally accepting it along with the group’s learn-and-run philosophy.

  Now, Lilith decided, was the time to Awaken two more people. She Awoke two every two or three days, no longer worrying about Awakening men since there had been no real trouble. She did deliberately Awaken a few more women than men in the hope of minimizing violence.

  But as the number of people grew, so did the potential for disagreement. There were several short, vicious fist-fights. Lilith tried to keep out of them, allowing people to sort things out for themselves. Her only concern was that the fights do no serious harm. Curt helped with this in spite of his cynicism. Once as they pulled two struggling, bleeding men apart, he told her she might have made a pretty good cop.

  There was one fight that Lilith could not keep out of—one begun for a foolish reason as usual. A large, angry, not particularly bright woman named Jean Pelerin demanded an end to the meatless diet. She wanted meat, she wanted it now, and Lilith had better produce it if she knew what was good for her.

  Everyone else had accepted, however grudgingly, the absence of meat. “The Oankali don’t eat it,” Lilith had told them. “And because we can get along without it, they won’t give it to us. They say once we’re back on Earth, we’ll be free to keep and kill animals again—though the ones we’re used to are mostly extinct.”

  Nobody liked the idea. So far she had not Awakened a single voluntary vegetarian. But until Jean Pelerin, no one had tried to do anything about it.

  Jean lunged at Lilith, punching, kicking, obviously intending to overwhelm at once.

  Surprised, but far from overwhelmed, Lilith struck back. Two short, quick jabs.

  Jean collapsed, unconscious, bleeding from her mouth.

  Frightened, still angry, Lilith checked to see that the woman was breathing and not badly hurt. She stayed with her until Jean had regained consciousness enough to glare at Lilith. Then, without a word, Lilith left her.

  Lilith went to her room, sat thinking for a few moments about the strength Nikanj had given her. She had pulled her punches, not intending to knock Jean unconscious. She was no longer concerned about Jean now, but it bothered her that she no longer knew her own strength. She could kill someone by accident. She could maim someone. Jean did not know how lucky she was with her headache and her split lip.

  Lilith slipped to the floor, took off her jacket, and began doing exercises to burn off excess energy and emotion. Everyone knew she exercised. Several other people had begun doing it as well. For Lilith, it was a comfortable, mindless activity that gave her something to do when there was nothing she could do about her situation.

  Some people would attack her. She had probably not yet experienced the worst of them. She might have to kill. They might kill her. People who accepted her now might turn away from her if she seriously injured or killed someone.

  On the other hand, what could she do? She had to defend herself. What would people say if she had beaten a man as easily as she beat Jean? Nikanj had said she could do it. How long would it be before someone forced her to find out for sure?

  “May I come in?”

  Lilith stopped her exercising, put her jacket on, and said, “Come.”

  She was still seated on the floor, breathing deeply, perversely enjoying the slight ache in her muscles when Joseph Shing came around her new curving entrance-hall partition and into the room. She leaned against the bed platform and looked up at him. Because it was him, she smiled.

  “You aren’t hurt at all?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “A couple of bruises.”

  He sat down next to her. “She’s telling people you’re a man. She says only a man can fight that way.”

  To her own surprise, Lilith laughed aloud.

  “Some people aren’t laughing,” he said. “That new man, Van Weerden said he didn’t think you were human at all.”

  She stared at him, then got up to go out, but he caught her hand and held it.

  “It’s all right. They’re not standing out there muttering to themselves and believing fantasy. In fact, I don’t think Van Weerden really believes it. They only want someone to focus their frustration on.”

  “I don’t want to be that someone,” she muttered.

  “What choice have you?”

  “I know.” She sighed. She let him pull her down beside him again. She found it impossible to delude herself when he was around. This caused her enough pain sometimes to make her wonder why she encouraged him to stay around. Tate, with typical malice, had said, “He’s old, he’s short, and he’s ugly. Haven’t you got any discrimination at all?”

  “He’s forty,” Lilith had said. “He doesn’t seem ugly to me, and if he can deal with my size, I can deal with his.”

  “You could do better.”

  “I’m content.” She never told Tate that she had almost made Joseph the first person she Awakened. She shook her head over Tate’s halfhearted attempts to lure Joseph away. It wasn’t as though Tate wanted him. She just wanted to prove she could have him—and in the process, try him out. Joseph seemed to find the whole sequence funny. Other people were less relaxed about similar situations. That caused some of the most savage fights. An increasing number of bored, caged humans could not help finding destructive things to do.

  “You know,” she told him, “you could become a target yourself. Some people could decide to take their anger at me out on you.”

  “I know kung fu,” he said examining her bruised knuckles.

  “Do you really?”

  He smiled. “No, just a little tai chi for exercise. Not so much sweating.”

  She decided he was telling her she smelled—which she did. She started to get up to go wash, but he would not let her go.

  “Can you talk to them?” he asked.

  She looked at him. He was growing a thin black beard. All the men were growing beards since no razors had been provided. Nothing hard or sharp had been provided.

  “You mean talk to the Oankali?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “They hear us all the time.”

  “But if you ask for something, will they provide it?”

  “Probably not. I think it was a major concession for them just to give us all clothing.”

  “Yes. I thought you might say that. Then you should do what Tate wants you to do. Awaken a large number of people at once. There’s too little to do here. Get people busy helping one another, teaching one another. There are fourteen of us now. Awaken ten more tomorrow.”

  Lilith shook her head. “Ten? But—”

  “It will take some of the negative attention off you. Busy people have less time for fantasizing and fighting.”

  She moved away from his side to sit facing him. “What is it, Joe? What’s wrong?”

  “People being people, that’s all. You’re probably not in any danger now, but you will be soon. You must know that.”

  She nodded.

  “When there are forty of us, will the Oankali take us out of here or—”

  “When there are forty of us, and the Oankali decide we’re ready, they’ll come in. Eventually, they’ll take us to be taught to live on Earth. They have a … an area of the ship that they’ve made over into a fragment of Earth. They’ve grown a small tropical forest there—like the forest we’ll be sent to on Earth. We’ll be trained there.”

  “You’ve seen this place?”

  “I spent a year there.”

  “Why?”

  “First learning, then proving I’d learned. Knowing and using the knowledge aren’t the same thing.”

  “No.” He thought for a moment. “The presence of the Oankali will bring them together, but it might turn them even more strongly against you. Especially if the Oankali really scare them.”

  “The Oankali w
ill scare them.”

  “That bad?”

  “That alien. That ugly. That powerful.”

  “Then … don’t come into the forest with us. Try to get out of it.”

  She smiled sadly. “I speak their language, Joe, but I’ve never yet been able to convince them to change one of their decisions.”

  “Try, Lilith!”

  His intensity surprised her. Had he really seen something she had missed—something he wouldn’t tell her? Or was he simply understanding her position for the first time? She had known for a long time that she might be doomed. She had had time to get used to the idea and to understand that she must struggle not against nonhuman aliens, but against her own kind.

  “Will you talk to them?” Joseph asked.

  She had to think for a moment to realize he meant the Oankali. She nodded. “I’ll do what I can,” she said. “You and Tate may be right about Awakening people faster, too. I think I’m ready to try that.”

  “Good. You have a fair core group around you. The new ones you Awaken can work things out in the forest. There they should have more to do.”

  “Oh, they’ll have plenty to do. The tedium of some of it, though … wait until I teach you to weave a basket or a hammock or to make your own garden tools and use them to grow your food.”

  “We’ll do what’s necessary,” he said. “If we can’t, then we won’t survive.” He paused, looked away from her. “I’ve been a city man all my life. I might not survive.”

  “If I do, you will,” she said grimly.

  He broke the mood by laughing quietly. “That’s foolishness—but it’s a lovely foolishness. I feel the same way about you. You see what comes of being shut up together and having so little to do. Good things as well as bad. How many people will you Awaken tomorrow?”

  She had bent her body almost in thirds, arms clasped around doubled knees, head resting on knees. Her body shook with humorless laughter. He had awakened her one night, seemingly out of the blue and asked her if he might come to bed with her. She had had all she could do to stop herself from grabbing him and pulling him in.

  But they had not talked about their feelings until now. Everyone knew. Everyone knew everything. She knew, for instance, that people said he slept with her to get special privileges or to escape their prison. Certainly, he was not someone she would have noticed on prewar Earth. And he would not have noticed her. But here, there had been a pull between them from the moment he Awoke, intense, inescapable, acted upon, and now, spoken.

  “I’ll Awaken ten people as you said,” she told him finally. “It seems a good number. It will occupy everyone I would dare to trust to look after a newly Awakened person. As for the others … I don’t want them free to wander around and cause trouble or get together and cause trouble. I’ll double them with you, Tate, Leah, and me.”

  “Leah?” he said.

  “Leah’s all right. Surly, moody, stubborn. And hardworking, loyal, and hard to scare. I like her.”

  “I think she likes you,” he said. “That surprises me. I would have expected her to resent you.”

  Behind him, the wall began to open.

  Lilith froze, then sighed and deliberately stared at the floor. When she looked up again, seemingly to look at Joseph, she could see Nikanj coming through the opening.

  6

  SHE MOVED OVER BESIDE Joseph who, leaning against the bed platform, had noticed nothing. She took his hand, held it for a moment between her own, wondering if she were about to lose him. Would he stay with her after tonight? Would he speak to her tomorrow beyond absolute necessity? Would he join her enemies, confirming to them things they only suspected now? What the hell did Nikanj want anyway? Why couldn’t it stay out as it had said it would. There: She had finally caught it in a lie. She would not forgive it if that lie destroyed Joseph’s feelings for her.

  “What is it?” Joseph was saying as Nikanj strode across the room in utter silence and sealed the doorway.

  “For God knows what reason, the Oankali have decided to give you a preview,” she said softly, bitterly. “You aren’t in any physical danger. You won’t be hurt.” Let Nikanj make a lie of that and she would force it to put her back into suspended animation.

  Joseph looked around sharply, froze when he saw Nikanj. After a moment of what Lilith suspected was absolute terror, he jerked himself to his feet and stumbled back against the wall, cornering himself between the wall and the bed platform.

  “What is it!” Lilith demanded in Oankali. She stood to face Nikanj. “Why are you here?”

  Nikanj spoke in English. “So that he could endure his fear now, privately, and be of help to you later.”

  A moment after hearing the quiet androgynous, human-sounding voice speak in English, Joseph came out of his corner. He moved to Lilith’s side, stood staring at Nikanj. He was trembling visibly. He said something in Chinese—the first time Lilith had heard him speak the language—then somehow, stilled his trembling. He looked at her.

  “You know this one?”

  “Kaalnikanjl oo Jdahyatediinkahguyaht aj Dinso,” she said, staring at Nikanj’s sensory arms, remembering how much more human it had looked without them. “Nikanj,” she said when she saw Joseph frowning.

  “I didn’t believe,” he said softly. “I couldn’t, even though you said it.”

  She did not know what to say. He was handling the situation better than she had. Of course he had been warned and he was not being kept isolated from other humans. Still, he was doing well. He was as adaptable as she had suspected.

  Moving slowly, Nikanj reached the bed and boosted itself up with one hand, folding its legs under it as it settled. Its head tentacles focused sharply on Joseph. “There’s no hurry,” it said. “We’ll talk for a while. If you’re hungry, I’ll get you something.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Joseph said. “Others may be, though.”

  “They must wait. They should spend a little time waiting for Lilith, understanding that they’re helpless without her.”

  “They’re just as helpless with me,” Lilith said softly. “You’ve made them dependent on me. They may not be able to forgive me for that.”

  “Become their leader, and there’ll be nothing to forgive.”

  Joseph looked at her as though Nikanj had finally said something to distract him from the strangeness of its body.”

  “Joe,” she said, “it doesn’t mean leader. It means Judas goat.”

  “You can make their lives easier,” Nikanj said. “You can help them accept what is to happen to them. But whether you lead them or not, you can’t prevent it. It would happen even if you died. If you lead them, more of them will survive. If you don’t, you may not survive yourself.”

  She stared at it, remembered lying next to it when it was weak and helpless, remembered breaking bits of food into small pieces and slowly, carefully feeding it those pieces.

  After a time its head and body tentacles drew themselves into knotted lumps and it hugged itself with its sensory arms. It spoke to her in Oankali: “I want you to live! Your mate is right! Some of these people are already plotting against you!”

  “I told you they would plot against me,” she said in English. “I told you they would probably kill me.”

  “You didn’t tell me you would help them!”

  She leaned against her table platform, head down. “I’m trying to live,” she whispered. “You know I am.”

  “You could clone us,” Joseph said. “Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could take reproductive cells from us and grow human embryos in artificial wombs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can even re-create us from some kind of gene map or print.”

  “We can do that too. We have already done these things. We must do them to understand a new species better. We must compare them to normal human conception and birth. We must compare the children we have made to those we took from Earth. We’re very careful to avoid damaging new partner-species
.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Joseph muttered in bitter revulsion.

  Nikanj spoke very softly. “We revere life. We had to be certain we had found ways for you to live with the partnership, not simply to die of it.”

  “You don’t need us!” Joseph said. “You’ve created your own human beings. Poor bastards. Make them your partners.”

  “We … do need you.” Nikanj spoke so softly that Joseph leaned forward to hear. “A partner must be biologically interesting, attractive to us, and you are fascinating. You are horror and beauty in rare combination. In a very real way, you’ve captured us, and we can’t escape. But you’re more than only the composition and the workings of your bodies. You are your personalities, your cultures. We’re interested in those too. That’s why we saved as many of you as we could.”

  Joseph shuddered. “We’ve seen how you saved us—your prison cells and your suspended animation plants, and now this.”

  “Those are the simplest things we do. And they leave you relatively untouched. You are what you were on Earth—minus any disease or injury. With a little training, you can go back to Earth and sustain yourselves comfortably.”

  “Those of us who survive this room and the training room.”

  “Those of you who survive.”

  “You could have done this another way!”

  “We’ve tried other ways. This way is best. There is incentive not to do harm. No one who has killed or severely injured another will set foot on Earth again.”

  “They’ll be kept here?”

  “For the rest of their lives.”

  “Even …” Joseph glanced at Lilith, then faced Nikanj again. “Even if the killing is in self-defense?”

  “She is exempt,” Nikanj said.

  “What?”

  “She knows. We’ve given her abilities that at least one of you must have. They make her different, and therefore they make her a target. It would be self-defeating for us to forbid her to defend herself.”

  “Nikanj,” Lilith said, and when she saw that she had its attention she spoke in Oankali. “Exempt him.”

  “No.”

  Flat refusal. That was that, and she knew it. But she could not help trying. “He’s a target because of me,” she said. “He could be killed because of me.”