Imago x-3

by Butler, Octavia

“Can you travel?” he asked.

  “Yes. Just let me stay close to you.”

  “I thought that was settled. You’ll never get away from me.”

  5

  There was no end to the forest. The trees and smaller plants changed. Some varieties vanished, but the forest continued. It was a heavy coat of green fur on the hills and later on the nearly vertical cliffs of the mountains. There were places where we could not have gotten through without machetes.

  There were old trails, ledges along cliff faces that perhaps dated back to a time before the war. Below us, a branch of the river cut through a deep, narrow gorge. Above us the mountains were green and sheer, bordering a blue and white band of sky that broadened ahead of us. The water ran high and fast below us, green and white, breaking over huge rocks. I might survive a fall to it, but it was unlikely that any of the others would.

  But my Human mates were in their own country, surefooted and confident. I had wondered whether they would be able to find their way home. They had traveled this route only once, nearly two years before. But Jesusa in particular was at home as soon as the landscape became more vertical than horizontal. Most often she broke trail for us just because she obviously loved the job and was better at it than any of us could have been. When our trail, narrow ledge that it was, vanished, she was usually the first to spot it above us or below or beginning again some distance away. And if she spotted it, she led the climb toward it. She never waited to see what the rest of us wanted to do—she simply found the best way across. The first time I saw her spread flat against the mountain, finding tiny hand-and footholds in the vegetation and the rock, making her way upward like a spider, I froze in absolute panic.

  “She’s part lizard,” TomÁs said, smiling. “It’s disgusting. I’m not clumsy myself, I’ve never even seen her fall.”

  “She’s always done this?” Aaor asked.

  “I’ve seen her go up naked rock,” TomÁs said.

  I looked at Aaor and saw that it, too, had reacted with fear. This trip had begun to do it good. The trip had forced it to use its body and focus attention on something other than its own misery. It had made the safety of the two Humans its main concern. It understood the sacrifice they were making for it, and the sacrifice they had already made.

  It was last across the gulf, holding on with both feet and all four arms. “I make a better insect than you do,” it told TomÁs as it reached the rest of us and safety.

  TomÁs laughed as much with surprise as with pleasure. I don’t think he had ever heard Aaor even try to make a joke before.

  There were times when we could descend to the river and walk alongside it or bathe in it. Jesusa and TomÁs caught fish occasionally and cooked and ate them while Aaor and I took ourselves as far away as we could and focused on other things.

  “Why do you let them do that?” Aaor demanded of me the second time it happened. “They shouldn’t be hungry.”

  “They’re not,” I agreed. “Jesusa told me they lost most of their supplies coming out of the mountains—accidentally dropped them into those rapids we passed two days ago.”

  “That was then! They don’t have to kill animals and eat them now!” Aaor sounded petulant and miserable. It brushed away my sensory arm when I reached out to it, then changed its mind and grasped the sensory arm in its strength hands.

  I extended my sensory hand and reached into its body to understand what was wrong with it. As always, it was like reaching into a slightly different version of myself. It was feeling sick—nauseated, disgusted, oddly Human, yet unable to cope with the Humanity of Jesusa and TomÁs.

  “When you have Human mates,” I told it, “you have to remember to let them be Human. They’ve killed fish and eaten them all their lives. They know we hate it. They need to do it anyway—for reasons that don’t have much to do with nutrition.”

  Aaor let me soothe it, but still said, “What reasons?”

  “Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things—customs—that are their own.”

  “Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict,” Aaor said.

  “It is,” I agreed. “They’re proving their independence at a time when they’re no longer independent. But if this is the worst thing they do, I’ll be grateful.”

  “Will you sleep with them tonight?”

  “No. And they know it.”

  “They—” It stopped, froze utterly still, and signaled me silently. “There are other Humans nearby!”

  “Where?” I demanded, silent and frozen myself, trying to catch the sight or the scent.

  “Ahead. Can’t you smell them?” It gave me an illusion of scent, faint and strange and dangerous. Even with this prompting, I could not smell the new Humans on my own, but Aaor was completely focused on them.

  “Males,” it said. “Three, I think. Maybe four. Headed away from us. No females.”

  “At least they’re headed away,” I whispered aloud. “Do any of them smell anything like TomÁs? I can’t tell from what you gave me.”

  “They all smell very much like TomÁs. That’s why I can’t tell how many there are. Like TomÁs, but including a certain odd element. The genetic disorder, I suppose. Can’t you smell them?”

  “I can now. They’re so far away, though, I don’t think I would have noticed them on my own. They have a dead animal with them, did you notice?”

  Aaor nodded miserably.

  “They’ve been hunting,” I said. “Now they’re probably heading home. Although I don’t smell anything that could be their home. Do you?”

  “No,” it said. “I’ve been trying. Maybe they’re just looking for a place to camp—a place to cook the animal and eat it.”

  “Whatever their intentions, we’ll have to be careful tomorrow.” I focused on it. “You’ve never been shot, have you?”

  “Never. People always aim at you for some reason.”

  I shook my head. “You’re picking up TomÁs’s sense of humor. I don’t know what your new mates will think of that.” I paused. “Being shot hurts more than I would want to show you. I could probably handle the pain better now, but I wouldn’t want to have to. I wouldn’t want you to have to.”

  It moved closer to me and linked into me with its sensory tentacles. “I’m not sure I could survive being shot,” it said. “I think part of me might, but not as me.”

  “You can’t know that for sure.”

  It said nothing, but there was no tenacity to it, no feeling that it could withstand abrupt shock and pain. It thought it would dissolve. It was probably right.

  “They’ve finished eating their fish,” I said. “Let’s go back.”

  We detached from one another and it turned wearily to follow me. “Do you know,” it said, “that before we left home, Ooan still said it couldn’t find the flaw in us, couldn’t see why we needed mates so early—needed, not just wanted? And why we focus so on Humans.” It paused. “Do you want other mates?”

  “Oankali mates,” I said. “Not construct.”

  “Why?”

  “I think

  I feel as though it will balance the two parts of me—Human and Oankali. I don’t know what the Oankali will think about that, though.”

  “If they ever accept us and if you find two that you like, don’t let them make their decision from a distance.”

  I smiled. “What about you? Humans and Oankali?”

  It rested one strength arm around my shoulders. It almost never touched me with its sensory arms, though it accepted my own gladly. It behaved as though it were not yet mature. “What about me?” it repeated. “I can’t plan anything. It’s hard for me to believe from one day to the next that I’m even going to survive.” It made a fist with its free strength hand, then relaxed the hand. “Most of the time I feel as though I could just let go like this and dissolve. Sometimes I feel as though I should.”

  I slept with it that night. I couldn’t do as much for it alone, but it couldn’t have tolerated Jesusa or TomÁs until they had digested their meal. I couldn’t imagine it not existing, truly gone, never to be touched
again—like never being able to touch my own face again.

  Two days later, Jesusa and TomÁs told me to give them back the marks of their genetic disorder. We had crawled up the nearly nonexistent trail on the mountain and back down again to the river. We had crossed the trail of the hunters we had scented earlier. There were four of them and they were still ahead of us. And now, when the wind was right, I could scent more Humans. Many more. Aaor’s head and body tentacles kept sweeping forward, controlled by the tantalizing scent.

  “The more Human you can make yourselves look, the less likely you are to be shot if you’re seen,” TomÁs told us. He was looking at Aaor as he spoke. Then he faced me. “I’ve seen you both change by accident. Why can’t you change deliberately?”

  “I can,” I said. “But Aaor’s control is just not firm enough. It already looks as Human as it can look.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Then this is as close as it should get. You should change us and camp here.”

  “We can’t even see your town from here,” Aaor protested.

  “And they can’t see you. If you round that next bend, though, part of our settlement will be visible to you. But the way is guarded. You would be shot.”

  Aaor seemed to sink in on itself. We had made a fireless camp. My mates were on either side of me, linked with me. Aaor was alone. “You should change yourself and go with them,” it said. “They’ll function better if they are not separated from you. I can survive alone for a few days.”

  “If we’re caught, we’ll be separated,” Jesusa said. “We’ll be shut up in separate places. We’ll be questioned. I would probably be married off very quickly.” She stopped. “Jodahs, what will happen if someone tries to have sex with me?”

  I shook my head. “You’ll fight. You won’t be able to help fighting. You’ll fight so hard, you might win even if the male is much stronger. Or maybe you’ll just make him hurt or kill you.”

  “Then she can’t go,” TomÁs said. “I’ll have to do it alone.”

  “Neither of you should go,” I said. “If hunters come out this far, we should wait. We have time.”

  “That will get you a man,” Jesusa said. “Maybe several men. But women don’t hunt.”

  “What do females do?” I asked. “What might bring them out away from the protection of the settlement?”

  Jesusa and TomÁs looked at one another, and TomÁs grinned. “They meet,” he said.

  “Meet?” I repeated, uncomprehending.

  “The elders tell us who we must marry,” he said. “But they can’t tell us who we must love.”

  I knew Humans did such things: marry here and mate there and there and there

  . There was nothing in Human biology to prevent this. In fact, Human biology encouraged male Humans to have liaisons with more than one female. The male’s investment of time and energy in fathering children was much smaller than the female’s. Still, the concept felt alien to me. To have a mating and somehow put it aside. But then, most construct males never had true mates. They went wherever they found welcome and everyone knew it. There was no permanent bonding, no betrayal, no biological wrongness to contend with.

  “Do your people meet this way because they would like to be mated?” I asked.

  “Some of them,” TomÁs said. “Others only feel a temporary attraction.”

  “It would be good to get a pair for Aaor who already care for one another.”

  “We thought that, too,” Jesusa said. “We meant to go to the village and bring away the people we would have been married to. But they wouldn’t be coming out here to be together. They’re brother and sister, too. A brother and two sisters, really.”

  “It would be better, safer to go after people who have already slipped away from your village. Is there a place where such people often meet?”

  TomÁs sighed. “Change us back tonight. Make us as ugly as we were, just in case. Tomorrow night, we’ll show you some of the places where lovers meet. If you go there at all, it will have to be at night.”

  But the next night we were spotted.

  6

  We did not know we had been seen. As we rounded the final bend before the mountain people’s village, we kept hidden in the trees and undergrowth. All we could see of their village were occasional stonework terraces cut into the sides of forested mountains. Crops grew on the terraces—a great deal of corn, some large melons, more than one species of potato, and other things that I did not recognize at all—foods neither I nor Nikanj had ever collected or stored memories of. These were surprisingly distracting—new things just sitting and waiting to be tasted, remembered. Yashi, between my hearts and protected now by a broad, flat slab of bone that no Human would have recognized as a sternum, did twist—or rather, it contracted like a long-empty Human stomach. Any perception of new living things attracted it and distracted me. I looked at Aaor and saw that it was utterly focused on the village itself, the people.

  Its desperation had sharpened and directed its perceptions.

  The Humans had built their village well above the river, had stretched it along a broad flattened ridge that extended between two mountains. We could not see it from where we were, but we could see signs of it—a great deal more terracing high up. These terraces could not be reached from where we were, but there was probably a way up nearby. All we could see between the canyon floor and the terraces was a great deal of sheer rock, much of it overgrown with vegetation. It was nothing I would have chosen to climb.

  The scent of the Humans was strong now. Aaor, perhaps caught up in it, stumbled and stepped on a dry stick as it regained its balance. The sharp snap of the wood was startling in the quiet night. We all froze. Those stalking us did not freeze—or not quickly enough.

  “Humans behind us!” I whispered.

  “Are they coming?” TomÁs demanded.

  “Yes. Several of them.”

  “The guard,” TomÁs said. “They will have guns.”

  “You two get away!” Jesusa said. “We’ll have a better chance without you. Wait for us at the cave we passed two days ago. Go!”

  The guard meant to catch us against their mountains. We were trapped now, really. If we ran to the river, we would have to go around them or through them, and probably be shot. There was nowhere for us to go except up the sheer cliff. Or down like insects to hide in the thickest vegetation. We could not get away, but we could hide. And if the guard found Jesusa and TomÁs, perhaps they would not look for us.

  I pulled Aaor down with me, fearing for it more than I feared for any of us. It was probably right in suspecting that it could not survive being shot.

  In the darkness, Humans passed on either side of where Aaor and I lay hidden. They knew the terrain, but they could not see very well at night. Jesusa and TomÁs led them a short distance away from us. They did this by simply walking down the slope toward the river until they walked into the arms of their captors.

  Then there was shouting—Jesusa shouting her name, TomÁs demanding that he be let go, that Jesusa be let go, guards shouting that they had caught the intruders.

  “Where are the rest of you?” a male voice said. “There were more than two.”

  “Make a light, Luis,” Jesusa said with deliberate disgust. “Look at us, then tell me when there has been more than one Jesusa and more than one TomÁs.”

  There was silence for a while. Jesusa and TomÁs were walked farther from us—perhaps taken where the moonlight would show more of their faces. Their tumors looked exactly as they had when I met them, so I wasn’t worried about them not being recognized. But still, they had said they would be separated, imprisoned, questioned.

  How long would they be imprisoned? If they were separated, they wouldn’t be able to help one another break free. And what might be done to them if they gave answers that their people did not believe? They had, with obvious distaste for lying, created a story of being captured by a small group of resisters and held by separate households so that neither knew the details of the other’s captivity. Resisters actually did such things, though most often, their captives were female. TomÁs would say he had bee
n made to work for his captors. He had done planting, harvesting, hauling, building, cutting wood, whatever needed to be done. Since he had actually done these things while he was with us, he could give accurate descriptions of them. He would say that his sister was held hostage to ensure his good behavior while his captivity kept her in line. Finally the two had been able to get together and escape their resister captors.

  This could have happened. If Jesusa and TomÁs could tell it convincingly, perhaps they would not be imprisoned for long.

  The two had been recognized now. There were no more hostile cries—only Jesusa’s anguished “Hugo, please let me go. Please! I won’t run away. I’ve just run all the way home. Hugo!”

  The last word was a scream. He was touching her, this Hugo. She had known they would touch her. She had not known until now how difficult it would be to endure their touch. She could touch other females in comfort. TomÁs could touch males. They would have to protect one another as best they could.

  “Let her alone!” TomÁs said. “You don’t know what she’s been through.” His voice said she had already been released. He was only warning.

  “Everyone said you two were dead,” one guard told them.

  “Some hoped they were dead,” another voice said softly. “Better them than all of us.”

  “No one will die because of us,” TomÁs said.

  “We haven’t come home to die,” Jesusa said. “We’re tired. Take us up.”

  “Does everyone know them?” the softer voice asked. It sounded almost like an ooloi voice. “Does anyone dispute their identity?”

  “We could strip them down here,” someone said. “Just to be sure.”

  TomÁs said, “Bring your sister down, Hugo. We’ll strip her, too.”

  “My sister stays home where she belongs!”

  “And if she didn’t, how would you want her treated? With justice and decency? Or should she be stripped by seven men?”

  Silence.

  “Let’s go up,” Jesusa said. “Hugo, do you remember the big yellow water jar we used to hide in?”

  More silence.

  “You know me,” she said. “We were ten years old when we broke that jar, and I got caught and you didn’t and I never told. You know me.”