Tools, when they were finally handed out, were waterproof tarpaulins, machetes, axes, shovels, hoes, metal pots, rope, hammocks, baskets, and mats. Lilith spoke privately with each of the most dangerous humans before they were given their tools.
One more try, she thought wearily.
“I don’t care what you think of me,” she told Curt. “You’re the kind of man the human race is going to need down on Earth. That’s why I woke you. I want you to live to get down there.” She hesitated. “Don’t go Peter’s way, Curt.”
He stared at her. Only recently free of the drug, only recently capable of violence, he stared.
“Make him sleep again!” Lilith told Nikanj. “Let him forget! Don’t give him a machete and wait for him to use it on someone.”
“Yahjahyi thinks he’ll be all right,” Nikanj said. Yahjahyi was Curt’s ooloi.
“Does it?” Lilith said. “What did Peter’s ooloi think?”
“It never told anyone what it thought. As a result, no one realized it was in trouble. Incredible behavior. I said it would be better if we weren’t so drawn to you.”
She shook her head. “If Yahjahyi thinks Curt is all right, it’s deluding itself.”
“We’ve observed Curt and Yahjahyi,” Nikanj said. “Curt will go through a dangerous time now, but Yahjahyi is ready. Even Celene is ready.”
“Celene!” Lilith said with contempt.
“You did a good job matching them. Much better than with Peter and Jean.”
“I didn’t match Peter and Jean. Their own temperaments did—like fire and gasoline.”
“… yes. Anyway, Celene is not ready to lose another mate. She’ll hold on to him. And Curt, since he sees her as much more vulnerable than she is, will have good reason not to risk himself, not to chance leaving her alone. They’ll be all right.”
“They won’t,” Gabriel told her later. He too was free of the drug, finally, but he was handling it better. Kahguyaht, who had been so eager to push Lilith, coerce her, ridicule her, seemed to be infinitely patient with Tate and Gabriel.
“Look at things from Curt’s point of view,” Gabriel said. “He’s not in control even of what his own body does and feels. He’s taken like a woman and…. No, don’t explain!” He held up his hand to stop her from interrupting. “He knows the ooloi aren’t male. He knows all the sex that goes on is in his head. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter! Someone else is pushing all his buttons. He can’t let them get away with that.”
Honestly frightened, Lilith asked, “How have you … made your peace with it?”
“Who says I have?”
She stared at him. “Gabe, we can’t lose you, too.”
He smiled. Beautiful, perfect, white teeth. They made her think of some predator. “I don’t take the next step,” he said, “until I see where I’m standing now. You know I still don’t believe this isn’t Earth.”
“I know.”
“A tropical forest in a space ship. Who’d believe that?”
“But the Oankali. You can see that they’re not of Earth.”
“Sure. But they’re here now on what sure looks, sounds, and smells like Earth.”
“It isn’t.”
“So you say. Sooner or later I’ll find out for myself.”
“Kahguyaht could show you things that would make you sure now. They might even convince Curt.”
“Nothing will convince Curt. Nothing will reach him.”
“You think he’ll do what Peter did?”
“Much more efficiently.”
“Oh god. Did you know they put Jean back into suspended animation? She won’t even remember Peter when she wakes up.”
“I heard. That will make it easier on her when they put her with another guy, I guess.”
“Is that what you would want for Tate?”
He shrugged, turned, and walked away.