People avoided Lilith. She suspected they saw her either as a traitor or as a ticking bomb.
She was content to be let alone. Ahajas and Dichaan asked her if she wanted to go home with them when they left, but she declined the offer. She wanted to stay in an Earthlike setting until she went to Earth. She wanted to stay with human beings even though for a time, she did not love them.
She chopped wood for the fire, gathered wild fruits for meals or casual eating, even caught fish by trying a method she remembered reading about. She spent hours binding together strong grass stems and slivers of split cane, fashioning them into a long, loose cone that small fish could swim into, but not out of. She fished the small streams that flowed into the river and eventually provided most of the fish the group ate. She experimented with smoking it and had surprisingly good results. No one refused the fish because she had caught it. On the other hand, no one asked how she made her fish traps—so she did not tell them. She did no more teaching unless people came to her and asked questions. This was more punishing to her than to the Oankali since she had discovered that she liked teaching. But she found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones.
Eventually people did begin to come to her. A few people. Allison, Wray and Leah, Victor…. She shared her knowledge of fish traps with Wray finally. Tate avoided her—perhaps to please Gabriel, perhaps because she had adopted Gabriel’s way of thinking. Tate had been a friend. Lilith missed her, but somehow could not manage any bitterness against her. There was no other close friend to take Tate’s place. Even the people who came to her with questions did not trust her. There was only Nikanj.
Nikanj never tried to make her change her behavior. She had the feeling it would not object to anything she did unless she began hurting people. She lay with it and its mates at night and it pleasured her as it had before she met Joseph. She did not want this at first, but she came to appreciate it.
Then she realized she was able to touch a man again and find pleasure in it.
“Are you so eager to match me with someone else?” she asked Nikanj. That day she had handed Victor an armload of cassava cuttings for planting and she had been surprised, briefly pleased at the feel of his hand, as warm as her own.
“You’re free to find another mate,” Nikanj told her. “We’ll be Awakening other humans soon. I wanted you to be free to choose whether or not to mate.”
“You said we would be put down on Earth soon.”
“You stopped teaching here. People are learning more slowly. But I think they’ll be ready soon.” Before she could question it further, other ooloi called it away to swim with them. That probably meant it was leaving the training room for a while. Ooloi liked to use the underwater exits whenever they could. Whenever they were not guiding humans.
Lilith looked around the camp, saw nothing that she wanted to do that day. She wrapped smoked fish and baked cassava in a banana leaf and put it into one of her baskets with a few ripe bananas. She would wander. Later, she would probably come back with something useful.
It was late when she headed back, her basket filled with bean pods that provided an almost candy-sweet pulp and palm fruit that she had been able to cut from a small tree with her machete. The bean pods—inga, they were called—would be a treat for everyone. Lilith did not like this particular kind of palm fruit as much, but others did.
She walked quickly, not wanting to be caught in the forest after dark. She thought she could probably find her way home in the dark, but she did not want to have to. The Oankali had made this jungle too real. Only they were invulnerable to the things whose bite or sting or sharp spines were deadly.
It was almost too dark to see under the canopy when she arrived back at the settlement.
Yet at the settlement, there was only one fire. This was a time for cooking and talking and working on baskets, nets, and other small things that could be done mindlessly while people enjoyed one another’s company. But there was only one fire—and only one person near it.
As she reached the fire, the person stood up, and she saw that it was Nikanj. There was no sign of anyone else.
Lilith dropped her basket and ran the last few steps into camp. “Where are they?” she demanded. “Why didn’t someone come to find me?”
“Your friend Tate says she’s sorry for the way she behaved,” Nikanj told her. “She wanted to talk to you, says she would have done it within the next few days. As it happened, she didn’t have a few more days here.”
“Where is she?”
“Kahguyaht has enhanced her memory as I have yours. It thinks that will help her survive on Earth and help the other humans.”
“But…” She stepped closer to it, shaking her head. “But what about me? I did all you asked. I didn’t hurt anyone. Why am I still here!”
“To save your life.” It took her hand. “I was called away today to hear the threats that had been made against you. I had already heard most of them. Lilith, you would have wound up like Joseph.”
She shook her head. No one had threatened her directly. Most people were afraid of her.
“You would have died,” Nikanj repeated. “Because they can’t kill us, they would have killed you.”
She cursed it, refusing to believe, yet on another level, believing, knowing. She blamed it and hated it and wept.
“You could have waited!” she said finally. “You could have called me back before they left.”
“I’m sorry,” it said.
“Why didn’t you call me? Why?”
It knotted its head and body tentacles in distress. “You could have reacted very badly. With your strength, you could have injured or killed someone. You could have earned a place alongside Curt.” It relaxed the knots and let its tentacles hang limp. “Joseph is gone. I didn’t want to risk losing you too.”
And she could not go on hating it. Its words reminded her too much of her own thoughts when she lay down to help it in spite of what other humans might think of her. She went to one of the cut logs that served as benches around the fire and sat down.
“How long do I have to stay here?” she whispered. “Do they ever let the Judas goat go?”
It sat beside her awkwardly, wanting to fold itself onto the log, but not finding enough room to balance there.
“Your people will escape us as soon as they reach Earth,” it told her. “You know that. You encouraged them to do it—and of course, we expected it. We’ll tell them to take what they want of their equipment and go. Otherwise they might run away with less than they need to live. And we’ll tell them they’re welcome to come back to us. All of them. Any of them. Whenever they like.”
Lilith sighed. “Heaven help anyone who tries.”
“You think it would be a mistake to tell them?”
“Why bother asking me what I think?”
“I want to know.”
She stared into the fire, got up and pulled a small log onto it. She would not do this again soon. She would not see fire or collect inga and palm fruit or catch a fish …
“Lilith?”
“Do you want them to come back?”
“They will come back eventually. They must.”
“Unless they kill one another.”
Silence.
“Why must they come back?” she asked.
It turned its face away.
“They can’t even touch one another, the men and the women. Is that it?”
“That will pass when they’ve been away from us for a while. But it won’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“They need us now. They won’t have children without us. Human sperm and egg will not unite without us.”
She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “And what kind of children would they have with you?”
“You haven’t answered,” it said.
“What?”
“Shall we tell them they can come back to us?”
“No. And don’t be too obvious about helping them get away either. Let them decide for themselves what they’ll do. Otherwise people who decide later to come back will seem to be obeying you, betraying their humanity for you. That could get them killed. You won’t get many back, anyway. Some will think the human species deserves at least a clean death.”
“Is it an unclean thing that we want, Lilith?”
“Yes!”
“Is it an unclean thing that I have made you pregnant?”
She did not understand the words at first. It was as though it had begun speaking a language she did not know.
“You … what?”
“I have made you pregnant with Joseph’s child. I wouldn’t have done it so soon, but I wanted to use his seed, not a print. I could not make you closely enough related to a child mixed from a print. And there’s a limit to how long I can keep sperm alive.”
She was staring at it, speechless. It was speaking as casually as though discussing the weather. She got up, would have backed away from it, but it caught her by both wrists.
She made a violent effort to break away, realized at once that she could not break its grip. “You said—” She ran out of breath and had to start again. “You said you wouldn’t do this. You said—”
“I said not until you were ready.”
“I’m not ready! I’ll never be ready!”
“You’re ready now to have Joseph’s child. Joseph’s daughter.”
“… daughter?”
“I mixed a girl to be a companion for you. You’ve been very lonely.”
“Thanks to you.”
“Yes. But a daughter will be a companion for a long time.”
“It won’t be a daughter.” She pulled again at her arms, but it would not let her go. “It will be a thing—not human.” She stared down at her own body in horror. “It’s inside me, and it isn’t human!”
Nikanj drew her closer, looped a sensory arm around her throat. She thought it would inject something into her and make her lose consciousness. She waited almost eager for the darkness.
But Nikanj only drew her down to the log bench again. “You’ll have a daughter,” it said. “And you are ready to be her mother. You could never have said so. Just as Joseph could never have invited me into his bed—no matter how much he wanted me there. Nothing about you but your words reject this child.”
“But it won’t be human,” she whispered. “It will be a thing. A monster.”
“You shouldn’t begin to lie to yourself. It’s a deadly habit. The child will be yours and Joseph’s. Ahajas’ and Dichaan’s. And because I’ve mixed it, shaped it, seen that it will be beautiful and without deadly conflicts, it will be mine. It will be my first child, Lilith. First to be born, at least. Ahajas is also pregnant.”
“Ahajas?” When had it found the time? It had been everywhere.
“Yes. You and Joseph are parents to her child as well.” It used its free sensory arm to turn her head to face it. “The child that comes from your body will look like you and Joseph.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“The differences will be hidden until metamorphosis.”
“Oh god. That too.”
“The child born to you and the child born to Ahajas will be siblings.”
“The others won’t come back for this,” she said. “I wouldn’t have come back for it.”
“Our children will be better than either of us,” it continued. “We will moderate your hierarchical problems and you will lessen our physical limitations. Our children won’t destroy themselves in a war, and if they need to regrow a limb or to change themselves in some other way they’ll be able to do it. And there will be other benefits.”
“But they won’t be human,” Lilith said. “That’s what matters. You can’t understand, but that is what matters.”
Its tentacles knotted. “The child inside you matters.” It released her arms, and her hands clutched uselessly at one another.
“This will destroy us,” she whispered. “My god, no wonder you wouldn’t let me leave with the others.”
“You’ll leave when I do—you, Ahajas, Dichaan, and our children. We have work to do here before we leave.” It stood up. “We’ll go home now. Ahajas and Dichaan are waiting for us.”
Home? she thought bitterly. When had she last had a true home? When could she hope to have one. “Let me stay here,” she said. It would refuse. She knew it would. “This is as close to Earth as it seems you’ll let me come.”
“You can come back here with the next group of humans. Come home now.”
She considered resisting, making it drug her and carry her back. But that seemed a pointless gesture. At least she would get another chance with a human group. A chance to teach them … but not a chance to be one of them. Never that. Never?
Another chance to say, “Learn and run!”
She would have more information for them this time. And they would have long, healthy lives ahead of them. Perhaps they could find an answer to what the Oankali had done to them. And perhaps the Oankali were not perfect. A few fertile people might slip through and find one another. Perhaps. Learn and run! If she were lost, others did not have to be. Humanity did not have to be.
She let Nikanj lead her into the dark forest and to one of the concealed dry exits.