Imago x-3

by Butler, Octavia

  We drifted beyond the range and apparently beyond the interest of the resisters. I was regaining consciousness as TomÁs crawled back to us. I saw him freeze as he noticed the blood, saw him look at us, saw him lunge toward us, rocking the raft, then stop just short of touching us.

  “Is she alive?” he whispered.

  It was an effort to speak. “Yes,” I answered after a moment. I couldn’t manage anything else.

  “What can I do to help?”

  One more word. “Home.”

  I was of no use at all to him after that. I had all I could do to keep Jesusa unconscious and alive while my own body insisted on continuing its development and change. I could not heal Jesusa quickly. I wasn’t sure I could heal her at all. I had stopped the blood loss, stopped her bodily wastes from poisoning her. It seemed a very long time, though, before I was able to seal the hole in her colon and begin the complicated process of regenerating a new kidney. The wounded one was not salvageable. I used it to nourish her—which involved me breaking the kidney down to its useful components and feeding them to her intravenously. It was the most nutritious meal she had had in days. That was part of the problem. Neither she nor I was in particularly good condition. I worried that my efforts at regeneration would trigger her genetic disorder, and I tried to keep watch. It occurred to me that I could have left her with one kidney until I was through my metamorphosis and able to look after her properly. That was what I should have done.

  I hadn’t done it because on some level, I was afraid Nikanj would take care of her if I didn’t. I couldn’t stand to think of it touching her, or touching TomÁs.

  That one thought drove me harder than anything else could have. It almost caused me to let us pass my family’s home site.

  The scent of home and relatives got through to me somehow. “TomÁs!” I called hoarsely. And when I saw that I had his attention, I pointed. “Home.”

  He managed to bring us to the bank some distance past my family’s cabin. He waded to shore and pulled the raft as close to the bank as he could.

  “There’s no one around,” he said. “And no house that I can see.”

  “They didn’t want to be easily visible from the river,” I said. I detached myself from Jesusa and examined her visually. No new tumors. Smooth skin beneath her ragged, bloody, filthy clothing. Smooth skin across her abdomen.

  “Is she all right?” TomÁs asked.

  “Yes. Just sleeping now. I’ve lost track. How long has it been since she was shot?”

  “Two days.”

  “That long

  ?” I focused on him with sensory tentacles and saw evidence of the load of worry and work that he had carried. I could think of nothing sufficient to say to him. “Thank you for taking care of us.”

  He smiled wearily. “I’ll go look for some of your people.”

  “No, they’ll notice my scent if they haven’t already. They’ll be coming. Help Jesusa off, then come back for me. She can walk.”

  I shook her and she awoke—or half awoke. She cringed away when TomÁs waded into the shallow water and reached for her. He drew back. After a while, she got up slowly, swayed, and followed TomÁs’s beckoning hand.

  “Come on, Jesusita,” he whispered. “Off the raft.” He walked beside her through the water and up the bank where the ground was dry enough to be firm. There, she sat down and seemed to doze again.

  When he came back for me, he held something in his fingers—held it up for me to see. An irregularly shaped piece of metal smaller than the end point of his smallest finger. It was the bullet I had caused Jesusa’s body to expel.

  “Throw it away,” I said. “It almost took her from us.”

  He threw it far out into the river.

  11

  Some of my family is coming now,” I said. TomÁs had put me on the bank beside Jesusa. He had sat down beside me to rest. Now he became alert again.

  “TomÁs,” I said softly.

  He glanced at me.

  “You won’t feel comfortable about letting them get close to you or letting them surround you. Jesusa won’t either. My family will understand that. And no one will touch you—except the children. You won’t mind their touch.”

  He frowned, gave me a longer look. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. It has to do with your being with me, letting me heal you, letting me sleep with you. You’ll feel

  drawn to be with Jesusa and me and strongly repelled by others. The feeling won’t last. It’s normal, so don’t let it worry you.”

  Lilith, Nikanj, and Aaor came out of the trees together. Aaor. It was awake and strong. The family must only have been waiting for me to get home. Exile—true exile—had been that close.

  The three stood near enough to speak normally, but not near enough to make TomÁs uncomfortable.

  “I’m going to have to learn not to worry about you,” Lilith said, smiling. “Welcome back.” She had spoken in Oankali. She switched to Spanish, which meant she had heard me talking to TomÁs. “Welcome,” she said to him. “Thank you for caring for our child and bringing it home.” She inserted the English “it” because in English the word was truly neuter. Spanish did not have a word that translated exactly. Spanish-speaking people usually handled the ooloi gender by ignoring it. They used masculine or feminine, whichever felt right to them—when they had to use anything.

  I took TomÁs’s hand, felt it grip mine desperately, almost painfully, yet his face betrayed no sign of emotion.

  “These are two of my parents,” I told him, gesturing with my free hand. “Lilith is my birth mother and Nikanj is my same-sex parent. This third one is Aaor, my paired sibling.” I enjoyed the sight of it for a moment. It was gray-furred now and, oddly, not that unusual-looking. Perhaps the other siblings helped it stay almost normal. “Aaor has been closer to me than my skin at times,” I said. “I think it turned out to be more like me than it would have preferred.”

  Aaor, who was restraining itself with an obvious effort, said, “When I touch you, Jodahs, I won’t let you go for at least a day.”

  I laughed, remembering its touch, realizing that I was eager to touch it, too, and understand exactly how it had changed. We would not be the same—Human-born and Oankali-born. Examining it would teach me more about myself by similarity and by contrast. And it would want even more urgently to know where I had found Jesusa and TomÁs. If its own sense of smell had not recognized them as young and fertile—as mine had not when I met them—Nikanj would have let it know.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” I said. “But put us somewhere dry, first, and feed us.” I meant, and all three of them knew it, that TomÁs and Jesusa should be given a dry place and food.

  Nikanj rested a sensory arm on Aaor’s shoulders and some of the straining eagerness went out of Aaor.

  “What are you called?” Nikanj asked TomÁs. It spoke very softly, yet that soft voice carried so well. Did I sound that way?

  TomÁs leaned forward, responding to the voice, then was barely able to keep himself from drawing back. He had never seen an Oankali before, and Nikanj, an adult ooloi, was especially startling. He stared, and then was ashamed and looked away. Then he stared again.

  “What are you called?” Nikanj repeated.

  “TomÁs,” he answered finally. “TomÁs Serrano y MartÍn.” He had not told me that much. He paused, then said, “This is Jesusa, my sister.” He touched her hair the way my Human parents sometimes touched one another’s hair. “She was shot.”

  Nikanj focused sharply on me.

  “She’s all right,” I said. “She’s exhausted because she hasn’t been eating well for a while—and you know how hard I had to make her body work.” I turned and shook her. “Jesusa,” I whispered. “You’re all right. Wake up. We’ve reached my family.” I kept my hand on her shoulder, shook her again gently, wishing I could give her the kind of comfort I would have been able to give only a few days before. But I had had all I could do to save her life.

  She opened her eyes, looked around, and saw Nikanj. She turned her face from it and whimpered—a sound I had not heard from her before.

>   “You’re safe,” I told her. “These people are here to help us. You’re all right. No one will harm you.”

  She realized finally what I was saying. She fell silent and became almost still. She could not stop her trembling, but she looked at me, then at Lilith, Aaor, and Nikanj. She made herself look longest at Nikanj.

  “Excuse me,” she said after a moment. “I

  haven’t seen anyone like you before.”

  Nikanj’s many sensory tentacles flattened smooth as its body. “I haven’t seen anyone like you for a century,” it said.

  At the sound of its voice, she looked startled. She turned to look at me, then looked back at Nikanj. I introduced it along with Lilith and Aaor.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Jesusa lied politely. She watched Nikanj, fascinated, not knowing that it held its position of amusement, of smoothness, extra long for her benefit. I went smooth every time I laughed, but my few sensory tentacles were not that visible even when they were not flattened. And I did laugh. Nikanj did not.

  “I’m amazed and pleased,” Nikanj said. And to me in Oankali, it said, “Where are they from?”

  “Later,” I said.

  “Will they stay, Oeka?”

  “Yes.”

  It focused on me, seemed to expect me to say more. I kept quiet.

  Aaor broke the silence. “You can’t walk, can you?” it said in Spanish. “We’ll have to carry you.”

  TomÁs stood up quickly. “If you’ll show me the way,” he said, “I’ll carry Jodahs.” He hesitated for a moment beside Jesusa. “Sister, can you walk?”

  “Yes.” She stood up slowly, holding her ragged bloody clothing together. She took a tentative step. “I feel all right,” she said, “but

  so much blood.”

  Aaor had turned to lead the way back to the cabin. TomÁs lifted me, and Jesusa walked close to him. I spoke to her from his arms. “You’ll have good food to eat here,” I told her. “You’ll probably be a little hungrier than usual for a while because you’re still regrowing part of yourself. Aside from that, you’re well.”

  She took my dangling hand and kissed it.

  TomÁs smiled. “If you really feel well, Jesusa, give it one more for me. You don’t know what it brought you back from.”

  She looked ahead at Nikanj. “I don’t know what it’s brought me back to,” she whispered.

  “No one will hurt you here,” I told her again. “No one will touch you or even come near you. No one will keep you from coming to me when you want to.”

  “Will they let me go?” she asked.

  I turned my head so that I could look at her with my eyes. “Don’t leave me,” I said very softly.

  “I’m afraid. I don’t see how I can stay here with your

  family.”

  “Stay with me.”

  “Your

  relative. The Oankali one

  .”

  “Nikanj. My ooloi parent. It will never touch you.” I would get that promise from it before I slept again.

  “It’s

  ooloi, like you.”

  Ah. “No, not like me. It’s Oankali. No Human admixture at all. Jesusa, my birth mother is as Human as you are. My Human father looks like a relative of yours. Even when I’m adult, I won’t look the way Nikanj does. You’ll never have reason to fear me.”

  “I fear you now because I still don’t understand what’s happening.”

  TomÁs spoke up. “Jesusa, it saved you. It could hardly move, but it saved you.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m grateful. More grateful than I can say.” She touched my face, then moved her hand to my hair and let her fingers slide expertly around the base of a group of sensory tentacles.

  I shuddered with sudden pleasure and frustrated need.

  “I’ll try to stay until your metamorphosis is over,” she said. “I owe you that and more. I promise to stay that long.”

  My mother turned her head and looked at Jesusa, then at me, looked long at me.

  I met her gaze, but said nothing to her.

  After a time, she turned back to the path. Her scent, as it reached me, said she was upset, under great stress. But like me, she said nothing at all.

  12

  We were given food. For a change, I actually needed it. Healing Jesusa had depleted my resources. I had no strength at all, and Jesusa fed me as she fed herself. She seemed to take some comfort in feeding me.

  Jesusa and TomÁs were given clean, dry clothing. They went to the river to wash themselves and came back to the house clean and content. They ate parched nuts and relaxed with my family.

  “Tell us about your people,” Aaor said as the sun went down and Dichaan put more wood on the fire. “I know there are things you don’t want to tell us, but

  tell us how your people came to exist. How did your fertile ancestors find one another?”

  Jesusa and TomÁs looked at each other. Jesusa looked apprehensive, but TomÁs smiled. It was a tired, sad smile.

  “Our first postwar ancestors never found one another,” he said. “I’ll tell you if you like.”

  “Yes!”

  “Our elders were people who joined together because they could communicate,” he said. “They all spoke Spanish. They were from Mexico and Peru and Spain and Chile and other countries. The First Mother was from Mexico. She was fifteen years old and traveling with her parents. There were others with them who knew this country and who said it would be best to live higher in the mountains. They were on the way up when the First Mother and her own mother were attacked. They had left the group to bathe. The Mother never saw her attackers. She was hit from behind. She was raped—probably many times.

  “When she regained consciousness, she was alone. Her mother was there, but she was dead. The First Mother was badly injured. She had to crawl and drag herself back to her people. They cared for her as best they could. Her father couldn’t help her. He left her to others. He was so angry at what had been done to her and to her mother that eventually he left the group. The Mother awoke one morning and he was gone. She never saw him again.

  “The people had already begun to make homes for themselves in the place they had chosen when they realized the Mother would have a child. No one had thought it was possible. People had tried to accept their sterility. They said it was better to have no children than

  than to have un-Human children.” TomÁs looked down at his hands. When he raised his head, he found himself looking directly at Tino.

  “My people said the same thing before I left them,” Tino said. “They believed it. But it’s a lie.”

  TomÁs looked at Lilith, his gaze questioning.

  “You know it’s a lie,” Lilith said quietly.

  TomÁs looked at me, then continued his story. “The people worried that the Mother’s child might not be Human. No one had seen her attackers. No one knew who or what they had been.”

  Nikanj spoke up. “They could not have believed we would send them away sterile, then change our minds and impregnate one of them while killing another.” Even with its soft mature-ooloi’s voice, it managed to sound outraged.

  TomÁs was already able to look at it, speak to it. It had been careful not to notice when he studied it as he ate. Now he said, “They said you could do almost anything. Some of them said your powers came from the devil. Some said you were devils. Some were disgusted with that kind of talk. To them, you were only the enemy. They didn’t believe you had raped the Mother. They believed the Mother could be their tool to defeat you. They took her in and cared for her and fed her even when they didn’t have enough to eat themselves. When her son was born, they helped her care for him and they showed him to everyone so that the people could see that he was perfect and Human. They called him Adan. The mother’s name was MarÍa de la Luz. When Adan was weaned, they cared for him. They encouraged his mother to work in the gardens and help with the building and be away from her son. That way, when the time came, when Adan was thirteen years old, they were able to put mother and son together. By then, both had been taught their duty. And by then, everyone had realized that the Mother was not only fertile but
mortal—as they seemed not to be. By the time her first daughter was born, the Mother looked older than some of those who had helped her raise her son.

  “The Mother bore three daughters eventually. She died with the birth of her second son. That son was

  seriously deformed. He had a hole in his back. People say you could see the spine. And he had other things wrong with him. He died and was buried with the Mother in a place

  that is sacred to us. The people built a shrine there. Some have seen the Mother when they went there to think or to pray. They’ve seen her spirit.” TomÁs stopped and looked at the three Oankali. “Do you believe in spirits?”

  “We believe in life,” Ahajas said.

  “Life after death?”

  Ahajas smoothed her tentacles briefly in agreement. “When I’m dead,” she said, “I will nourish other life.”

  “But I mean—”

  “If I died on a lifeless world, a world that could sustain some form of life if it were tenacious enough, organelles within each cell of my body would survive and evolve. In perhaps a thousand million years, that world would be as full of life as this one.”

  “

  it would?”

  “Yes. Our ancestors have seeded a great many barren worlds that way. Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of. A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution. That’s what we believe in.”

  “Nothing more?”

  Ahajas became smooth enough with amusement to reflect firelight. “No, Lelka. Nothing more.”

  He did not ask what “Lelka” meant, though he couldn’t have known. It meant mated child—something parents called their adult children and mates of their children. I would have to ask her not to call him that. Not yet.

  “When I was little,” TomÁs said, “I planted a tree at the Mother’s shrine.” He smiled, apparently remembering. “Some people wanted to pull it up. It grew so well, though, that no one touched it. People said the Mother must like having it there.” He stopped and looked at Ahajas.

  She nodded Humanly and watched him with interest and approval.