Free Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler Page A

they were beyond the woman's hearing, she asked: "Could you not look for her son?"
    "No," Doro said. "I told her the truth. I would not know where to begin—or even whether the boy is still alive."
    "She is one of my descendants."
    "As you said, she will be well treated. I can offer no more than that." Doro glanced at her. "The land must be full of your descendants."
    Anyanwu looked somber. "You are right. They are so numerous, so well scattered, and so far from me in their generations that they do not know me or each other. Sometimes they marry one another and I hear of it. It is abomination, but I cannot speak of it without focusing the wrong kind of attention on the young ones. They cannot defend themselves as I can."
    "You are right to keep silent," Doro said. "Sometimes ways must be different for people as different as ourselves."
    "We," she said thoughtfully. "Did you have children of . . . of a body born to your mother?"
    He shook his head. "I died too young," he said. "I was thirteen years old."
    "That is a sad thing, even for you."
    "Yes." They were on deck now, and he stared out at the sea. "I have lived for more than thirty-seven hundred years and fathered thousands of children. I have become a woman and borne children. And still, I long to know what my body could have produced. Another being like myself? A companion?"
    "Perhaps not," said Anyanwu. "You might have been like me, having one ordinary child after another."
    Doro shrugged and changed the subject. "You must take your daughter's son to meet that girl when he is feeling better. The girl's age is wrong, but she is still a little younger than Okoye. Perhaps they will comfort each other."
    "They are kinsmen!"
    "They will not know that unless you tell them, and you should be silent once more. They have only each other, Anyanwu. If they wish, they can marry after the customs of their new land."
    "And how is that?"
    "There is a ceremony. They pledge themselves to each other before a"—he said an English word, then translated—"a priest."
    "They have no family but me, and the girl does not know me."
    "It does not matter."
    "It will be a poor marriage."
    "No. I will give them land and seed. Others will teach them to live in their new country. It is a good place. People need not stay poor there if they will work."
    "Children of mine will work."
    "Then all will be well."
    He left her and she wandered around the deck looking at the ship and the sea and the dark line of trees on shore. The shore seemed very far away. She watched it with the beginnings of fear, of longing. Everything she knew was back there deep within those trees through strange forests. She was leaving all her people in a way that seemed far more permanent than simply walking away.
    She turned away from the shore, frightened of the sudden emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. She looked at the men, some black, some white, as they moved about the deck doing work she did not understand. The yellow-haired white man came to smile at her and stare at her breasts until she wondered whether he had ever seen a woman before. He spoke to her slowly, very distinctly.
    "Isaac," he said pointing to his chest. "Isaac." Then he jabbed a finger toward her, but did not touch her. He raised his bushy pale eyebrows questioningly.
    "Isaac?" she said stumbling over the word.
    "Isaac." He slapped his chest. Then he pointed again. "You?"
    "Anyanwu!" she said understanding. "Anyanwu." She smiled.
    And he smiled and mispronounced her name and walked her around the deck naming things for her in English. The new language, so different from anything she had ever heard, had fascinated her since Doro began teaching it to her. Now she repeated the words very carefully and strove to remember them. The yellow-haired Isaac seemed delighted. When, finally, someone called him away, he left her reluctantly.
    The loneliness returned as soon as he was gone. There were people all around her, but she felt completely alone on this huge