Adulthood Rites (8 page)

Now he cut the tree he had felled into pieces and cut lianas to bundle the wood. Then he came to collect Akin. He stopped abruptly and whispered. “My god!”

Akin was tasting a large caterpillar. He had allowed it to crawl onto his forearm. It was, in fact, almost as large as his forearm. It was bright red and spotted with what appeared to be tufts of long, stiff black fur. The tufts, Akin knew, were deadly. The animal did not have to sting. It had only to be touched on one of the tufts. The poison was strong enough to kill a large Human. Apparently Tino knew this. His hand moved toward the caterpillar, then stopped.

Akin split his attention, watching Tino to see that he made no further moves and tasting the caterpillar gently, delicately, with his skin and with a flick of his tongue to its pale, slightly exposed underside. Its underside was safe. It did not poison what it crawled on.

It ate other insects. It even ate small frogs and toads. Some ooloi had given it the characteristics of another crawling creature—a small, multilegged, wormlike peripatus. Now both caterpillar and peripatus could project a kind of glue to snare prey and hold it until it could be consumed.

The caterpillar itself was not good to eat. It was too poisonous. The ooloi who had assembled it had not intended that it be food for anything while it was alive, though it might be killed by ants or wasps if it chose to hunt in one of the trees protected by these. It was safe, though, in the tree it had chosen. Its kind would give the tree a better chance to mature and produce food.

Akin held his arm against the trunk of the sapling and carefully maneuvered the caterpillar into crawling back to it. The moment it had left his arm, Tino snatched him up, shouting at him.

“
Never
do anything so crazy again!
Never!
That thing could kill you! It could kill me!”

Someone grabbed him from behind.

Someone else grabbed Akin from his arms.

Now, far too late, Akin saw, heard, and smelled the intruders. Strangers. Human males with no scent of the Oankali about them. Resisters. Raiders. Child thieves!

Akin screamed and twisted in the arms of his captor. But physically, he was still little more than a baby. He had let his attention be absorbed by Tino and the caterpillar, and now he was caught. The man who held him was large and strong. He held Akin without seeming to notice Akin’s struggles.

Meanwhile, four men had surrounded Tino. There was blood on Tino’s face where someone had hit him, cut him. One of the four had a piece of gleaming silver metal around one of his fingers. That must have been what had cut Tino.

“Hold it!” one of Tino’s captors said. “This guy used to be Phoenix.” He frowned at Tino. “Aren’t you the Leal kid?”

“I’m Augustino Leal,” Tino said, holding his body very straight. “I was Phoenix. I was Phoenix before you ever heard of it!” His voice did not tremble, but Akin could see that his body was trembling slightly. He looked toward his ax, which now lay on the ground several feet from him. He had leaned it against a tree when he came to get Akin. His machete, though, had still been at his belt. Now it was gone. Akin could not see where it had gone.

The raiders all had long wood-and-metal sticks, which they now pointed at Tino. The man holding Tino also had such a stick, strapped across his back. These were weapons, Akin realized. Clubs—or perhaps guns? And these men knew Tino. One of them knew Tino. And Tino did not like that one. Tino was afraid. Akin had never seen him more afraid.

The man who held Akin had put his neck within easy reach of Akin’s tongue. Akin could sting him, kill him. But then what would happen? There were four other men.

Akin did nothing. He watched Tino, hoping the man would know what was best.

“There were no guns in Phoenix when I left,” Tino was saying. So the sticks were guns.

“No, and you didn’t want there to be any, did you?” the same man asked. He made a point of jabbing Tino with his gun.

Tino began to be a little less afraid and more angry. “If you think you can use those to kill the Oankali, you’re as stupid as I thought you were.”

The man swung his gun up so that its end almost touched Tino’s nose.

“Is it Humans you mean to kill?” Tino asked very softly. “Are there so many Humans left? Are our numbers increasing so fast?”

“You’ve joined the traitors!” the man said.

“To have a family,” Tino said softly. “To have children.” He looked at Akin. “To have at least part of myself continue.”

The man holding Akin spoke up. “This kid is as human as any I’ve seen since the war. I can’t find anything wrong with him.”

“No tentacles?” one of the four asked.

“Not a one.”

“What’s he got between his legs?”

“Same thing you’ve got. Little smaller, maybe.”

There was a moment of silence, and Akin saw that three of the men were amused and one was not.

Akin was afraid to speak, afraid to show the raiders his un-Human characteristics: his tongue, his ability to speak, his intelligence. Would these things make them let him alone or make them kill him? In spite of his months with Tino, he did not know. He kept quiet and began trying to hear or smell any Lo villager who might be passing nearby.

“So we take the kid,” one of the men said. “What do we do with him?” He gestured sharply toward Tino.

Before anyone could answer, Tino said, “No! You can’t take him. He still nurses. If you take him, he’ll starve!”

The men looked at one another uncertainly. The man holding Akin suddenly turned Akin toward him and squeezed the sides of Akin’s face with his fingers. He was trying to get Akin’s mouth open. Why?

It did not matter why. He would get Akin’s mouth open, then be startled. He was Human and a stranger and dangerous. Who knew what irrational reaction he might have. He must be given something familiar to go with the unfamiliar. Akin began to twist in the man’s arm and to whimper. He had not cried so far. That had been a mistake. Humans always marveled at how little construct babies cried. Clearly a Human baby would have cried more.

Akin opened his mouth and wailed.

“Shit!” muttered the man holding him. He looked around quickly as though fearing someone might be attracted by the noise. Akin, who had not thought of this, cried louder. Oankali had hearing more sensitive than most Humans realized.

“Shut up!” the man shouted, shaking him. “Good god, it’s got the ugliest goddamn gray tongue you ever saw! Shut up, you!”

“He’s just a baby,” Tino said. “You can’t get a baby to shut up by scaring him. Give him to me.” He had begun to step toward Akin, holding his arms out to take him.

Akin reached toward him, thinking that the resisters would be less likely to hurt the two of them together. Perhaps he could shield Tino to some degree. In Tino’s arms he would be quiet and cooperative. They would see that Tino was useful.

The man who had first recognized Tino now stepped behind him and smashed the wooden end of his gun into the back of Tino’s head.

Tino dropped to the ground without a cry, and his attacker hit him again, driving the wood of the gun down into Tino’s head like a man killing a poisonous snake.

Akin screamed in terror and anguish. He knew Human anatomy well enough to know that if Tino were not dead, he would die soon unless an Oankali helped him.

And there was no Oankali nearby.

The resisters left Tino where he lay and strode away into the forest, carrying Akin who still screamed and struggled.

D
ICHAAN SLIPPED FROM THE
deepest part of the broad lake, shifted from breathing in water to breathing in air, and began to wade to shore.

Humans called this an oxbow lake—one that had originally been part of the river. Dichaan had kept the Lo entity from engulfing it so far because the entity would have killed the plant life in it and that would have eventually killed the animal life. Even with help, Lo could not have been taught to provide what the animals needed in a form they would accept before they died of hunger. The only useful thing the entity could have provided at once was oxygen.

But now the entity was changing, moving into its next growth stage. Now it could learn to incorporate Earth vegetation, sustain it, and benefit from it. On its own, it would learn slowly, killing a great deal, culling native vegetation for that vegetation’s ability to adapt to the changes it made.

But the entity in symbiotic relationship with its Oankali inhabitants could change faster, adapting itself and accepting adapted plant life that Dichaan and others had prepared.

Dichaan stepped on shore through a natural corridor between great profusions of long, thick, upright prop roots that would slowly be submerged when the rainy season began and the water rose.

Dichaan had made his way out of the mud, his body still savoring the taste of the lake—rich in plant and animal life—when he heard a cry.

He stood utterly still, listening, his head and body tentacles slowly swinging around to focus on the direction of the sound. Then he knew where it was and who it was, and he began to run. He had been underwater all morning. What had been happening in the air?

Leaping over fallen trees, dodging around dangling lianas, undergrowth, and living trees, he ran. He spread his body tentacles against his skin. This way the sensitive parts of the tentacles could be protected from the thin underbrush that lashed him as he ran through it. He could not avoid it all and still move quickly.

He splashed through a small stream, then scrambled up a steep bank.

He came to a bundle of small logs and saw where a tree had been cut. The scent of Akin and of strange Human males was there. Tino’s scent was there—very strong.

And now Tino cried out weakly, making only a shadow of the sound Dichaan had heard at the lake. It hardly seemed a Human sound at all, yet to Dichaan, it was unmistakably Tino. His head tentacles swept around, seeking the man, finding him. He ran to him where he lay, concealed by the broad, wedge-shaped buttresses of a tree.

His hair was stuck together in solid masses of blood, dirt, and dead leaves. His body twitched, and he made small sounds.

Dichaan folded to the ground, first probed Tino’s wounds with several head tentacles, then lay down beside him and penetrated his body wherever possible with filaments from head and body tentacles.

The man was dying—would die in a moment unless Dichaan could keep him alive. It had been good having a Human male in the family. It had been a balance found after painful years of imbalance, and no one had felt the imbalance more than Dichaan. He had been born to work with a Human male parallel—to help raise children with the aid of such a person, and yet he had had to limp along without this essential other. How were children to learn to understand the Human male side of themselves—a side they all possessed whatever their eventual sex?

Now, here was Tino, childless and unused to children, but quickly at ease with them, quickly accepted by them.

Now, here was Tino, nearly dead at the hands of his own kind.

Dichaan linked with his nervous system and kept his heart beating. The man was a beautiful, terrible physical contradiction, as all Humans were. He was a walking seduction, and he would never understand why. He would not be lost. He could not be another Joseph.

There was some brain damage. Dichaan could perceive it, but he could not heal it. Nikanj would have to do that. But Dichaan could keep the damage from growing worse. He stopped the blood loss, which was not as bad as it looked, and made certain the living brain cells had intact blood vessels to nourish them. He found damage to the skull and perceived that the damaged bone was exerting abnormal pressure on the brain. This, he did not tamper with. Nikanj would handle it. Nikanj could do it faster and more certainly than a male or female could.

Dichaan waited until Tino was as stable as he could be, then left him for a moment. He went to the edge of Lo to one of the larger buttresses of a pseudotree and struck it several times in the code of pressures he would have used to supplement exchanged sensory impressions. The pressures would normally be used very rapidly, soundlessly, against another person’s flesh. It would take a moment for this drumming to be perceived as communication. But it would be noticed. Even if no Oankali or construct heard it, the Lo entity would pick up the familiar groups of vibrations. It would alert the community the next time someone opened a wall or raised a platform.

Dichaan pounded out the message twice, then went back to Tino and lay down to monitor him and wait.

Now there was time to think about what he had been too late to prevent.

Akin was gone—had been gone for some time. His abductors had been Human males—resisters. They had run toward the river. No doubt they had already headed up- or downriver toward their village—or perhaps they had crossed the river and traveled over land. Either way, their scent trail would probably vanish along the river. He had included in his message instructions to search for them, but he was not hopeful. All resister villages had to be searched. Akin would be found. Phoenix in particular would be checked, since it had once been Tino’s home. But would men from Phoenix have hated Tino so much? He did not seem to be the kind of man people could know and still hate. The people of Phoenix who had watched him grow up as the village’s only child must have felt as parents toward him. They would have been more likely to abduct him along with Akin.

Akin.

They would not hurt him—not intentionally. Not at first. He still nursed, but he did it more for comfort than for nutrition. He had an Oankali ability to digest whatever he was given and make the most of it. If they fed him what they ate, he would satisfy his body’s needs.

Did they know how intelligent he was? Did they know he could talk? If not, how would they react when they found out? Humans reacted badly to surprise. He would be careful, of course, but what did he know of angry, frightened, frustrated Humans? He had never been near even one person who might hate him, who might even hurt him when they discovered that he was not as Human as he looked.