They awoke just before dawn the next morning. Jesusa awoke first. She shook TomÁs awake, then put a hand over his mouth so that he would not speak. He took her hand from his mouth and sat up. How much could they see? It was still fairly dark.
Jesusa pointed downriver through the forest.
TomÁs shook his head, then glanced at me and shook his head again.
Jesusa pulled at him, both her face and her body language communicating pleading and terror.
He shook his head again, tried to take her arms. His manner was reassuring, but she evaded him. She stood up, looked down at him. He would not get up.
She sat down again, touching him, her mouth against his ear. It was more as though she breathed the words. I heard them, but I might not have if I hadn’t been listening for them.
“For the others!” she whispered. “For all of the others, we must go!”
He shut his eyes for a moment, as though the soft words hurt him.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
He got up and followed her into the forest. He did not look at me again. When I couldn’t see them any longer, I got up. I was well rested and ready to track them—to stay out of sight and listen and learn. They were going downriver as I had to do to get home. That was convenient, though the truth was, I would have followed them anywhere. And when I spoke to them again, I would know the things they had not wanted me to know.
I followed them for most of the day. Whatever was driving them, it kept them from stopping for more than a few minutes to rest. They ate almost nothing until the end of the day when, with metal hooks they had not shown me, they managed to catch a few small fish. The smell of these cooking was disgusting, but the conversation, at least, was interesting.
“We should go back,” TomÁs said. “We should cross the river to avoid Jodahs, then we should go back.”
“I know,” Jesusa agreed. “Do you want to?”
“No.”
“It will rain soon. Let’s make a shelter.”
“Once we’re home, we’ll never be free again,” he said. “We’ll be watched all the time, probably shut up for a while.”
“I know. Cut leaves from that plant and that one. They’re big enough for good roofing.”
Silence. Sounds of a machete hacking. And sometime later, TomÁs’s voice, “I would rather stay here and be rained on every day and starve every other day.” There was a pause. “I would almost rather cut my own throat than go back.”
“We will go back,” Jesusa said softly.
“I know.” TomÁs sighed. “Who else would have us anyway—except Jodah’s people.”
Jesusa had nothing to say on that subject. They worked for a while in silence, probably erecting their shelter. I didn’t mind being rained on, so I stretched out silently and lay with most of my attention focused on the two Humans. If someone approached me from a different direction, I would notice, but if people or animals were simply moving around nearby, not coming in my direction, I would not be consciously aware of them.
“We should have let Jodahs teach us about safe, edible plants,” TomÁs said finally. “There’s probably food all around us, but we don’t recognize it. I’m hungry enough to eat that big insect right there.”
Jesusa said, with amusement in her voice, “That is a very pretty red cockroach, brother. I don’t think I’d eat it.”
“At least there will be fewer insects when we get home.”
“They’ll separate us.” Jesusa became grim again. “They’ll make me marry Dario. He has a smooth face. Maybe we’ll have mostly smooth-faced children.” She sighed. “You’ll choose between Virida and Alma.”
“Alma,” he said wearily. “She wants me. How do you think she will like leading me around? And how will we speak to one another when I’m deaf?”
“Hush, little brother. Why think about that?”
“You don’t have to think about it. It won’t happen to you.” He paused, then continued with sad irony. “That leaves you free to worry about bearing child after child after child, watching most of them die, and being told by some smooth-faced elder who looks younger than you do that you’re ready to do it all again—when she’s never done it at all.”
Silence.
“Jesusita.”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s true. It happened to Mama. It will happen to me.”
“It may not be so bad. There are more of us now.”
In a tone that made a lie of every word she said, Jesusa agreed. “Yes, little brother. Perhaps it will be better for our generation.”
They were quiet for so long, I thought they wouldn’t speak again, but he said, “I’m glad to have seen the lowland forest. For all its insects and other discomforts, it’s a good place stuffed with life, drunk with life.”
“I think the mountains better,” she said. “The air is not so thick or so wet. Home is always better.”
“Maybe not if you can’t see it or hear it. I don’t want that life, Jesusa. I don’t think I can stand it. Why should I help give the people more ugly cripples anyway? Will my children thank me? I don’t think they will.”
Jesusa made no comment.
“I’ll see that you get back,” he said. “I promise you that.”
“We’ll both get back,” she said with uncharacteristic harshness. “You know your duty as well as I know mine.”
There was no more talk.
There was no more need for talk. They were fertile! Both of them. That was what I had spotted in TomÁs—spotted, but not recognized. He was fertile, and he was young. He was young! I had never touched a Human like him before—and he had never touched an ooloi. I had thought his rapid aging was part of his genetic disorder, but I could see now that he was aging the way Humans had aged before their war—before the Oankali arrived to rescue the survivors and prolong their lives.
TomÁs was probably younger than I was. They were both probably younger than I was. I could mate with them!
Young Humans, born on Earth, fertile among themselves. A colony of them, diseased, deformed, but breeding!
Life.
I lay utterly still. I had all I could do to keep myself from getting up, going to them at once. I wanted to bind them to me absolutely, permanently. I wanted to lie between them tonight. Now. Yet if I weren’t careful, they would reject me, escape me. Worse, their hidden people would have to be found. I would have to betray them to my family, and my family would have to tell others. The settlement of fertile Humans would be found and the people in it collected. They would be allowed to choose Mars or union with us or sterility here on Earth. They could not be allowed to continue to reproduce here, then to die when we separated and left an uninhabitable rock behind.
No Human who did not decide to mate with us was told this last. They were given their choices and not told why.
What could TomÁs and Jesusa be told? What should they be told to ease the knowledge that their people could not remain as they were? Obviously Jesusa, in particular, cared deeply about these people—was about to sacrifice herself for them. TomÁs cared enough to walk away from certain healing when it was what he desperately wanted. Now, clearly, he was thinking about death, about dying. He did not want to reach his home again.
How could either of them mate with me, knowing what my people would do to theirs?
And how should I approach them? If they were potential mates and nothing more, I would go to them now. But once Jesusa understood that I knew their secret, her first question would be, “What will happen to our people?” She would not accept evasion. If I lied to her, she would learn the truth eventually, and I did not think she would forgive me for the lies. Would she forgive me for the truth?
When she and TomÁs saw that they had given their people away, would they decide to kill me, to die themselves, or to do both?