Imago x-3

Imago x-3 Page 13

by Butler, Octavia

  “I have,” TomÁs said, “a very strange compulsion to do that, too.” He kept his tone light, but there was real confusion behind it.

  I sat up and kissed him, savoring the healing that had taken place so far. Invisible healing as well as shrinkage of visible tumors. His optic nerve was being restored—against the original genetic advice of his body. Insanely one bit of genetic information said the nerve was complete and the genes controlling its development were not to become active again. Yet his genetic disorder went on causing the growth of more and more useless, dangerous tissue on such finished organs and preventing them from carrying on their function.

  TomÁs had grown patches of hair on his face overnight. When I touched one of them, he smiled. “I have to shave,” he said. “I’d grow a beard if I could, but when I tried, Jesusa said it looked like an alpaca sheared by a five-year-old-child.”

  I frowned. “Alpaca?”

  “A highland animal. We raise them for wool to make clothing.”

  “Oh.” I smiled. “I think your beard will grow more evenly when I’ve finished with you,” I said.

  “Do you think you’ll ever do that?” he asked. “Finish with us?”

  My free head and body tentacles tightened flat to my skin with pleasurable sexual tension. “No,” I said softly. “I don’t think so.”

  He had to be told everything. He and Jesusa and I talked and rested all that day, then lay together to share the night. The next morning we began several days of walking—drifting, really—back toward my family’s camp. We were in no hurry. I taught them to find and make safe use of wild forest foods. They talked about their people and worried about them. Jesusa talked with real horror about the breaking apart of the planet, but TomÁs seemed less concerned.

  “It isn’t real to me,” he said simply. “It will happen long after I’m dead. And if you’re telling us the truth, Jodahs, there’s nothing we can do to prevent it.”

  “Will you stay with me?” I asked.

  He looked at Jesusa, and Jesusa looked away. “I don’t know,” he said softly.

  “If you stay with me, you’ll almost certainly live past the time of separation.”

  He stared at me, frowning, thinking. They both had their silent, thoughtful times.

  We wandered downstream, walking and resting and enjoying one another for seven days. Seven very good days. TomÁs’s tumors vanished and the sight of his eye returned. His hearing improved. He looked at himself in the water of a small pond and said, “I don’t know how I’ll get used to being so beautiful.”

  Jesusa threw a handful of mud at him.

  On the morning of our eighth day together, I was more tired than I should have been. I didn’t understand why until I realized that the flesh under my arms itched more than usual, and that it was swollen a little. Just a little.

  I was beginning my second metamorphosis. Soon, in the middle of the forest, far from even our temporary home, I would fall into a sleep so deep that TomÁs and Jesusa would not be able to awaken me.

  9

  “Will you stay with me?” I asked TomÁs and Jesusa as we ate that morning. I had not asked either of them that question since we began to travel together. I had slept in a cocoon of their bodies every night. Perhaps that had helped bring on the change. Oankali ooloi usually made the final change after they had found mates. Mates gave them the security to change. Mates would look after them while they were helpless and be there for them when they awoke. Now, looking at Jesusa and TomÁs, I felt afraid, desperate. They had no idea how much I needed them.

  Jesusa looked at TomÁs, and TomÁs spoke.

  “I want to stay with you. I don’t really know what that will mean, but I want it. There’s no place else for me. But you want us both, don’t you?”

  “Want?” I whispered, and shook my head. “I need you both very much.”

  I think that surprised them. Jesusa leaned toward me. “You’ve known Human beings all your life,” she said. “But we’ve never known anyone like you. And

  you want me to have children with my brother.”

  Ah. “Touch him.”

  “What?”

  I waited. They had not touched one another since their first night with me. They were not aware of it, but they were avoiding contact.

  TomÁs reached out toward Jesusa’s arm. She flinched, then kept still. TomÁs’s hand did not quite reach her. He frowned, then drew back. He turned to face me.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing harmful. You can touch her. You won’t enjoy it, but you can do it. If she were drowning, you could save her.”

  Jesusa reached out abruptly and grasped his wrist. She held on for a moment, both of them rigid with a revulsion they might not want to recognize. TomÁs made himself cover her repellent hand with his own.

  As abruptly as they had come together, they broke apart. Jesusa managed to stop herself from wiping her hand against her clothing. TomÁs did not.

  “Oh, god,” she said. “What have you done to us?”

  I got up, went around her to sit between them. I could still walk normally, but even those few steps were exhausting.

  I took their hands, rested each of them on one of my thighs so that I would not have to maintain a grip. I linked into their nervous systems and brought them together as though they were touching one another. It was not illusion. They were in contact through me. Then I gave them a bit of illusion. I “vanished” for them. For a moment, they were together, holding one another. There was no one between them.

  By the time Jesusa finished her scream of surprise, I was “back,” and more exhausted than ever. I let them go and lay down.

  “If you stay,” I said, “what you do, you’ll do through me. You literally won’t touch one another.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” TomÁs asked. “You didn’t feel the same just now.”

  “Oh, I’m not the same. I’m changing. Now, I’m maturing.”

  They did not understand. I saw concern and questioning on their faces, but no alarm. Not yet.

  “My final metamorphosis is beginning now,” I said. “It will last for several months.”

  Now they looked alarmed. “What will happen to you?” Jesusa asked. “What shall we do for you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, “I had no idea it was so close. The first time, I had several days’ warning. If it had happened that way this time, I would have been able to go into the river and get home without your help. I can’t do that now.”

  “Did you think we would abandon you?” she demanded. “Is that why you asked us again to stay?”

  “Not that you would walk away and leave me here, no. But that

  you wouldn’t wait.”

  “A few months?”

  “As much as a year.”

  “We have to get you back to your people. We can’t find enough food

  .”

  “Wait. Can you

  will you make a raft? There are young cecropia trees just above the sandbar. Farther inland, there are plenty of lianas. If you can put something together while I’m awake, we can go downriver to my family’s camp. I won’t let you pass it. Then

  if you want to leave me, my family won’t try to hold you.”

  Jesusa moved to sit near my head. “Will you be all right if we leave?”

  I looked at her for a long time before I could make myself answer. “Of course not.”

  She got up and walked a short distance away from me, kept her back to me. TomÁs moved to where she had been and took my hand.

  “We’ll build the raft,” he said. “We’ll get you home.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t see why we can’t stay until you finish your metamorphosis.”

  I closed my eyes, and I said nothing. Was that how Nikanj had done it a century before? Lilith had been with it when its second metamorphosis began. Had it been tempted to say, “If you stay with me now, you’ll never leave?” Or had it simply never thought to say anything? It was Oankali. It had probably never thought to say anything. It wouldn’t have been harboring any sexual feeling for her at that point. It had enjoyed her because she was so un-Oankali—differe
nt and dangerous and fascinating.

  I felt those things myself about these two, but I felt more. As Nikanj had said, I was precocious.

  I said nothing at all to TomÁs. Someday he would curse me for my silence.

  He went to Jesusa and said, “If we stay, we’ll have a chance to see how their families work.”

  “I’m afraid to stay,” she said.

  “Afraid?”

  She picked up the machete. “We should get started on the raft.”

  “Jesusita, why are you afraid?”

  “Why aren’t you?” she said. She looked at me, then at him. “This is an alien thing Jodahs wants of us. Certainly it’s an un-Christian thing, an un-Human thing. It’s the thing we’ve been taught against all our lives. How can we be accepting it or even considering it so easily?”

  “Are you?” he asked quietly.

  “Of course I am. So are you. You’ve said you want to stay.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Something is not right. Jodahs sleeps with us and heals us and pleasures us—and asks only for the opportunity to go on doing these things.” She paused, shook her head. “When I think of leaving Jodahs, finding other Human beings, or perhaps going to the colony on Mars, my stomach knots. It wants us to stay and I want to stay and so do you, and we shouldn’t! Something is wrong.”

  I fell asleep at that point. It was not deliberate, but it could not have been better timed. Second metamorphosis, I had been told, was not one long sleep as the first one had been. It was a series of shorter sleeps—sleeps several days long.

  I frightened them. Jesusa thought first that I was faking, then that I was dead. Only when they were able to get some reaction from my body tentacles did they decide I was alive and probably all right. They carried me down to the river and left me under a tree while they found other, small trees to chop down with their machete. Slow, hard work. I perceived and remembered everything in latent memories, stored away for consideration later when I was conscious.

  They took good care of me, moving me when they moved, keeping me near them. Without realizing it, they became a torment to me when they touched me, when I could smell them. But they were a much worse torment when they went too far away. My only salvation was the certainty that they would not abandon me and the knowledge that this, uncomfortable as it was, was normal. It would be the same if I were being cared for by a pair of Oankali or a pair of constructs. Nikanj had warned me. Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up.

  I endured, grateful to Jesusa and TomÁs for their loyalty.

  The raft took four days to finish. Not only was the machete not the best tool for the job, but Jesusa and TomÁs had never built such a thing before. They were not sure what would work and they would not load me onto a craft that would come apart in the water or one they could not control. They spent time learning to control it with long poles and with paddles. They worried that in some places the river might be too deep for poles. They worried about hostile people, too. We would be very visible on the river. People with guns could pick us off if they wanted to. What could we do about that?

  I awoke as they were loading me and baskets of food onto the raft. Figs, nuts, bean pods with edible pulp, and several baked applesauce tubers.

  “Are you all right?” TomÁs asked when he saw my eyes open. He was carrying me toward the raft. I felt as though I could sink into him, merge with him, become him. Yet I felt as though he were days away from me and beyond my reach completely.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t drop you. Jesusa might, but I won’t.”

  “Don’t say that!” Jesusa said quickly. “Jodahs may not know you’re joking.”

  TomÁs put me down on the raft. They had made a pallet for me there of large leaves covering soft grasses. I made myself relax and not clutch at TomÁs as he put me down.

  He sat down next to me for a moment. “Is there anything you need? You haven’t eaten for days.”

  “People don’t eat much during metamorphosis,” I said. “On the other hand, eating can take my mind off

  other things. Do you see the bush there with the deep green leaves?”

  He looked around, then pointed.

  “Yes, that one. Pull several branches of young leaves from it. I eat the leaves.”

  “Truly? They’re good for you?”

  “Yes, but not for you, so don’t ever eat them. I can digest them and use their nutrients.”

  “Eat some nuts.”

  “No. You eat the nuts. Bring me the leaves.”

  He obeyed, though slowly.

  I ate the first few leaves while he watched incredulously. “I don’t understand enough about you,” he said.

  “Because I eat leaves? I can eat almost anything. Some things are more worth the effort than others.”

  “More than that. Something I’ve been trying to figure out. How do you

  ? I don’t mean to offend you, but I can’t figure this out on my own.” He hesitated, looked around to see where Jesusa was. She was out of sight among the trees. “How do you shit?” he demanded. “How do you piss? You’re all closed up.”

  I laughed aloud. My Human mother had been with Nikanj for almost a year before she asked that question. “We’re very thorough,” I said. “What we leave behind would make poor fertilizer—except for our ships. We shed what we don’t need.”

  “The way we shed hair or dead skin?”

  “Yes. At home, the ship or the town would take it as soon as it was shed. Here, it’s dust. I leave it behind when I sleep—when I sleep normally, anyway. People in metamorphosis leave almost nothing behind.”

  “I’ve never seen anything.”

  “Dust.”

  “And water?”

  I smiled. “Easiest to shed when I’m in it, though I can sweat as you do.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all. Think TomÁs. When did you last see me drink water? I can drink, of course, but normally I get all the moisture I need from what I eat. We use everything that we take in much more thoroughly than you do.”

  “Why aren’t you ever covered in mud?”

  “I do one thing at a time.”

  “And

  our children would be like you?”

  “Not at first. Human-born children look very Human at first. They eliminate in Human ways until metamorphosis.” I changed the subject abruptly. “TomÁs, I’m going to stay awake through as much of this trip as I can. I should be able to warn you if we’re near people so that we can at least stay close to the opposite shore. And I’ll have to stop you at my family’s camp. You won’t be able to see it from the river.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “If I do fall asleep, make camp. Wait for me to wake up. This is a very long river, and I’m not up to backtracking.”

  “All right,” he repeated.

  Jesusa arrived them. She had found a cacao tree the night before, and today had climbed it again for one last harvest. I had pointed a cacao tree out to her as we traveled together, and she had discovered she especially liked the pulp of the pods. She put her basket, stuffed with pods, onto the raft, then helped TomÁs push off. They poled us into the current not far from shore.

  “Listen,” I said to them once the raft was moving easily.

  Both glanced around to show me they were listening.

  “If we’re attacked or we have to abandon the raft for any reason, push me off into the water—whether I’m awake or not. I can breathe in the water and nothing that lives there will be interested in eating me. Get me out later if you can. If you can’t, don’t worry about me. Get yourselves out and keep each other safe. I’m much harder to kill than you are.”

  They didn’t argue. Jesusa gave me an odd look, and I remembered her shooting me. Her gun had not been salvageable. The metal parts had been too damaged. Was she remembering how hard I was to kill—or how I had destroyed their most powerful weapon? After a time, she left poling the raft to TomÁs. He seemed to have no trouble letting the current carry us and preventing us from drifting too close to either bank, where fallen trees and sandbars made progress slow a
nd dangerous.

  Jesusa sat with me and fed me cacao pulp and did not talk to me at all.

  10

  We drifted for days on the river.

  I could not help with paddles or poles. It took all the energy I had just to stay awake. I could and did sit up and spot barely submerged sandbars for them and keep them aware of the general depth of the water. I kept quiet about the animals I could see in the water. The Humans could see almost nothing through the brown murk, but we often drifted past animals that would eat Human flesh if they could get it. Fortunately the worst of the carnivorous fish preferred slow, quieter waters, and were no danger to us.

  It was the people who were dangerous.

  Twice I directed Jesusa and TomÁs away from potentially hostile people—Humans grouped on one side of the river or the other. Resisters still fought among themselves and sometimes robbed and murdered strangers.

  I didn’t scent the third group of Humans in time. And, unlike the first two, the third group spotted us.

  There was a shot—a loud crack like the first syllable of a phrase of thunder. We all fell flat to the logs of the raft, Jesusa losing her pole as she fell.

  She was wounded. I could smell the blood rushing out of her.

  I lost myself then. I was not fully conscious anymore, but my latent memories told me later that I dragged myself toward her, my body still flat against the logs. From shore, the Humans fired several more times, and TomÁs, unaware of Jesusa’s injury, cursed them, cursed the current that was not moving us beyond their reach quickly enough, cursed his own broken rifle

  .

  I reached Jesusa, unconscious, bleeding from the abdomen, and I locked on to her.

  I was literally unconscious now. There was nothing at work except my body’s knowledge that Jesusa was necessary to it, and that she would die from her wound if it didn’t help her. My body sought to do for her what it would have done for itself. Even if I had been conscious and able to choose, I could not have done more. Her right kidney and the large blood vessels leading to it had been severely damaged. Her colon had been damaged. She was bleeding internally and poisoning herself with bodily wastes. Fortunately she was unconscious or her pain might have caused her to move away before I could lock into her. Once I was in, though, nothing could have driven me off.

 

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