Free Adulthood Rites by Octavia E. Butler Page B

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.

II
PHOENIX

1
    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