Free Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) by Octavia E. Butler Page A

reason?”
    Silence again. It let its sensory tentacles droop. This made it look smaller—like a furry animal that had gotten wet.
    “It can’t be that you don’t have—or can’t make—writing materials,” she said.
    “We can make anything your people could,” it said. “Though we would not want to make most of their things.”
    “This is such a simple thing …” She shook her head. “Have you been told not to tell me why?”
    It refused to answer. Did that mean not telling her was its own idea, its own childish exercise of power? Why shouldn’t the Oankali do such things as readily as humans did?
    After a time, it said, “Come back in. I’ll teach you more of our history.” It knew she liked stories of the long, multispecies Oankali history, and the stories helped her Oankali vocabulary. But she was in no mood to be cooperative now. She sat down on the ground and leaned back against the pseudotree. After a moment, Nikanj sat down opposite her and began to speak.
    “Six divisions ago, on a white-sun water world, we lived in great shallow oceans,” it said. “We were many-bodied and spoke with body lights and color patterns among ourself and among ourselves. …”
    She let it go on, not questioning when she did not understand, not wanting to care. The idea of Oankali blending with a species of intelligent, schooling, fishlike creatures was fascinating, but she was too angry to give it her full attention. Writing materials. Such small things, and yet they were denied to her. Such small things!
    When Nikanj went into the apartment to get food for them both, she got up and walked away. She wandered, freer than she ever had before through the parklike area outside the living quarters—the pseudotrees. Oankali saw her, but seemed to pay no more than momentary attention to her. She had become absorbed in looking around when abruptly Nikanj was beside her.
    “You must stay with me,” it said in a tone that reminded her of a human mother speaking to her five-year-old. That, she thought, was about right for her rank in its family.
    After that incident she slipped away whenever she could. Either she would be stopped, punished, and/or confined, or she would not be.
    She was not. Nikanj seemed to get used to her wandering. Abruptly, it ceased to show up at her elbow minutes after she had escaped it. It seemed willing to give her an occasional hour or two out of its sight. She began to take food with her, saving easily portable items from her meals—a highly seasoned rice dish wrapped in an edible, high-protein envelope, nuts, fruit or quatasayasha, a sharp, cheeselike Oankali food that Kahguyaht had said was safe. Nikanj had acknowledged its acceptance of her wandering by advising her to bury any uneaten food she did not want. “Feed it to the ship,” was the way it put the suggestion.
    She would fashion her extra jacket into a bag and put her lunch into it, then wander alone, eating and thinking. There was no real comfort in being alone with her thoughts, her memories, but somehow the illusion of freedom lessened her despair.
    Other Oankali tried to talk with her sometimes, but she could not understand enough of their language to hold a conversation. Sometimes even when they spoke slowly, she would not recognize words she should have known and did know moments after the encounter had ended. Most of the time she wound up resorting to gestures—which did not work very well—and feeling impenetrably stupid. The only certain communication she managed was in enlisting help from strangers when she was lost.
    Nikanj had told her that if she could not find her way “home” she was to go to the nearest adult and say her name with new Oankali additions: Dhokaaltediinjdahyalilith eka Kahguyaht aj Dinso. The Dho used as prefix indicated an adopted non-Oankali. Kaal was a kinship group name. Then Tediin’s and Jdahya’s names with Jdahya’s last because he had brought her into the family. Eka meant child. A child so