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

young it literally had no sex—as very young Oankali did not. Lilith had accepted this designation hopefully. Surely sexless children were not used in breeding experiments. Then there was Kahguyaht’s name. It was her third “parent,” after all. Finally there was the trade status name. The Dinso group was staying on Earth, changing itself by taking part of humanity’s genetic heritage, spreading its own genes like a disease among unwilling humans … Dinso. It wasn’t a surname. It was a terrible promise, a threat.
    Yet if she said this long name—all of it—people immediately understood not only who she was but where she should be, and they pointed her toward “home.” She was not particularly grateful to them.
    On one of these solitary walks, she heard two Oankali use one of their words for humans—kaizidi—and she slowed down to listen. She assumed the two were talking about her. She often supposed people she walked among were discussing her as though she were an unusual animal. These two confirmed her fears when they fell silent at her approach and continued their conversation silently with mutual touching of head tentacles. She had all but forgotten this incident when, several walks later, she heard another group of people in the same area speaking again of a kaizidi—a male they called Fukumoto.
    Again everyone fell silent at her approach. She had tried to freeze and listen, just hidden by the trunk of one of the great pseudotrees, but the moment she stopped there, conversation went silent among the Oankali. Their hearing, when they chose to focus their attention on it, was acute. Nikanj had complained early on in her stay about the loudness of her heartbeat.
    She walked on, ashamed in spite of herself of having been caught eavesdropping. There was no sense to such a feeling. She was a captive. What courtesy did a captive owe beyond what was necessary for self-preservation?
    And where was Fukumoto?
    She replayed in her mind what she remembered of the fragments she had heard. Fukumoto had something to do with the Tiej kinship group—also a Dinso people. She knew vaguely where their area was, though she had never been there.
    Why had people in Kaal been discussing a human in Tiej? What had Fukumoto done? And how could she reach him?
    She would go to Tiej. She would do her wandering there if she could—if Nikanj did not appear to stop her. It still did that occasionally, letting her know that it could follow her anywhere, approach her anywhere, and seem to appear from nowhere. Maybe it liked to see her jump.
    She began to walk toward Tiej. She might manage to see the man today if he happened to be outside—addicted to wandering as she was. And if she saw him, he might speak English. If he spoke English, his Oankali jailers might not prevent him from speaking to her. If the two of them spoke together, he might prove as ignorant as she was. And if he were not ignorant, if they met and spoke and all went well, the Oankali might decide to punish her. Solitary confinement again? Suspended animation? Or just closer confinement with Nikanj and its family? If they did either of the first two she would simply be relieved of a responsibility she did not want and could not possibly handle. If they did the third, what difference would it really make? What difference balanced against the chance to see and speak with one of her own kind again, finally?
    None at all.
    She never considered going back to Nikanj and asking it or its family to let her meet Fukumoto. They had made it clear to her that she was not to have contact with humans or human artifacts.
    The walk to Tiej was longer than she had expected. She had not yet learned to judge distances aboard the ship. The horizon, when it was not obscured by pseudotrees and hill-like entrances to other levels, seemed startlingly close. But how close, she could not have said.
    At least no one stopped her. Oankali she passed seemed to assume that she belonged wherever she