Back to Lo.
We gave the drugged prisoners to the people of Lo. A house would be grown for them from the substance of Lo and they would not be let out of it until a shuttle came for them. Then they would be transferred to the ship. They understood what was to happen to them, and even drugged, they asked to be spared, to be released. The one who had called Lilith and Tino animals began to cry. Nikanj drugged him a little more and he seemed to forget why he had been upset. That would be his life now. Once he was aboard the ship, one ooloi would drug him regularly. He would come to look forward to it—and he would not care what else was done with him.
I took Marina to the guest area before Nikanj was free to check her. I didn’t want to watch it examine her. I got the impression that it was perfectly willing not to touch her. There must have been too much of my scent on her to make her seem still alone and unrelated.
She kissed me before I left her. I think it was an experiment for her. For me it was an enjoyment. It let me touch her a little more, sink filaments of sensory tentacles into her along the lengths of our bodies. She liked that. She shouldn’t have. I was supposed to be too young to give pleasure. She liked it anyway.
“I’ll send someone to change you genetically,” I said after a time. “Don’t be afraid. Let your children have the same chance you have.”
“All right.”
I held her a little longer, then left her. I asked Tehkorahs to check her and make the necessary adjustment.
It stood with Wray Ordway, its male Human mate, and Wray smiled and gave me a look of understanding and amusement. He was one of the few people in Lo to speak for me when the exile decision was being made. “A child is a child,” he said through Tehkorahs. “The more you treat it like a freak, the more it will behave like one.” I think people like him eased things for me. They made Earth exile feel less objectionable to the truly frightened people who wanted me safely shut away on the ship.
“You know I’ll take care of the female,” Tehkorahs said. “She seemed to like you very much.”
I felt my head and body tentacles flatten to my skin in remembered pleasure. “Very much.”
Wray laughed. “I told you it would be sexually precocious— just like the construct males and females.”
Tehkorahs looped a sensory tentacle around his neck. “I’m not surprised. Every gene trade brings change. Jodahs, let me check you. The female won’t want to see me for a while. You’ve left too much of yourself with her.”
I stepped close to it and it released Wray and examined me quickly, thoroughly. I felt its surprise before it let me go. “You’re much more in control now,” it said. “I can’t find anything wrong with you. And if your memories of the female are accurate—”
“Of course they are!”
“Then I probably won’t find anything wrong with her either. Except for the genetic problem.”
“She’ll cooperate when you’re ready to correct that.”
“Good. You look like her, you know.”
“What?”
“Your body has been striving to please her. You’re more brown now—less gray. Your face is changed subtly.”
“You look like a male version of her,” Wray said. “She probably thought you were very handsome.”
“She said so,” I admitted amid Wray’s laughter. “I didn’t know I was changing.”
“All ooloi change a little when they mate,” Tehkorahs said. “Our scents change. We fit ourselves into our mates’ kin group. You may fit in better than most of us—just as your descendants will fit more easily when they find a new species for the gene trade.”
If I ever had descendants.
The next day, the family gathered new supplies and left Lo for the second time. I had had one more night to sleep in the family house. I slept with Aaor the way I always used to before my metamorphosis. I think I made it as lonely as I felt myself now that Marina was gone. And that night I gave Aaor, Lo, and myself large, foul-smelling sores.