8

By morning, I had given the cave Human a smooth, new skin and the beginnings of a full head of hair.

“It will take me longer to repair your nose,” I told him. “When I have, though, you’ll be able to breathe better with your mouth closed.”

He took a deep breath through his mouth and stared at me, then looked at himself, then stared at me again. He rubbed a hand over the fuzz on his head, then held the hand in front of him and examined it. I had not allowed him to awaken until I’d gotten up myself, opened the door to the dawn, and found the short, thick gun he had been reaching for the night before. I had emptied it and thrown it off the mountain. Then I awoke the man.

Seeing me alarmed him, but he never once reached toward the hiding place of the gun.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Santos.” His voice now was a harsh whisper rather than a harsh growl. “Santos Ibarra Ruiz. How did you do this? How is it possible?” He rubbed the fingers of his right hand over his left arm and seemed to delight in the feel of it.

“Did you think you were dreaming last night?” I asked.

“I haven’t had time to think.”

“Who will come up here today?”

He blinked. “Here? No one.”

“Who will visit the cabin below?”

“I don’t know. I lose track with them. Are you going down there?”

“Eventually. Have your breakfast if you like.”

“What are you called?”

“Jodahs.”

He nodded. “I’ve heard that some of your kind had four arms. I didn’t believe it.”

“Ooloi have four arms.”

He stared for some time at my sensory arms, then asked, “Are you really going to take me away with you and make me grow?”

“Yes.”

He smiled, showing several bad teeth. I would fix those, too—have him shed them and grow more.

Later that morning we went down to the stone cabin. The male and female there were sharing their breakfast with Aaor. Santos and I startled them, but they seemed comfortably at home with Aaor. And Aaor looked better than it had since its first metamorphosis. It looked stable and secure in itself. It looked satisfied.

“Will they come with us?” I asked in Oankali.

“They’ll come,” it answered in Spanish. “I’ve begun to heal them. I’ve told them about you.”

The two Human stared at me curiously.

“This is Jodahs, my closest sibling,” Aaor said. “Without it I would already be dead.” It actually said, “my closest brother-sister,” because that was the best either of us could do in Spanish. No wonder people like Santos thought we were hermaphroditic.

“These are Javier and Paz,” Aaor said. “They are already mates.”

They were also close relatives, of course. They looked as much alike as Jesusa and TomÁs did, and they looked like Jesusa and TomÁs—strong, brown, black-haired, deep-chested people.

Santos and I were given dried fruit, tea, and bread. Javier and Paz seemed most interested in Santos. He was their relative, too, of course.

“Do you feel well, Santos?” Paz asked.

“What do you care?” Santos demanded.

Paz looked at me. “Why do you want him? Wish him a good day, and he’ll spit on you.”

“He needs more healing than I can give him here,” I said. I turned my head so that he would know I was looking at him. “He’ll have less reason to spit when I’m finished with him, so maybe he’ll do less spitting. Perhaps then I’ll find mates for him.”

He watched me while I spoke, then let his eyes slide away from me. He stared, unseeing, I think, at the rough wooden table.

“Will others come up here today?” I asked Paz.

“No,” she said. “Today is still our watch. Juana and Santiago will come tomorrow to relieve us.”

Santos spoke abruptly, urgently. “Are you really going with them?”

“Of course,” Paz said.

“Why? You should be afraid of them. You should be terrified. When we were children they told us the devil had four arms.”

“We’re not children anymore,” Javier said. “Look at my right hand.” He held it up, pale brown and smooth. “I have a right hand again. It’s been a frozen claw for years, and now—”

“Not enough!”

Javier opened his mouth, his expression suddenly angry. Then, without speaking, he closed his mouth.

“I want to go,” Paz said quietly. “I’m tired of telling myself lies about this place and watching my children die.” She pushed very long black hair from her face. As she sat at the table, most of her hair hung to the floor behind her. “Santos, if you had seen our last child before it died, you would thank God for the beauty you had even before your healing.”

Santos looked away from her, shamefaced but stubborn. “I know all that,” he said. “I don’t mean to be cruel. I do know. But … we have been taught all our lives that the aliens would destroy us if they found us. Why did our belief and our fear slip away so quickly?”

Javier sighed. “I don’t know.” He looked at Aaor. “They’re not very fearsome, are they? And they are … very interesting. I don’t know why.” He looked up. “Santos, do you believe we are building a new people here?”

Santos shook his head. “I’ve never believed it. I have eyes. But that’s no reason for us to consent to go away with people we’ve been taught were evil.”

“Did you consent?” Paz asked

“… yes.”

“What else is there, then?”

“Why are they here!” He turned to me. “Why are you here?”

“To get Human mates for Aaor,” I said. “And now I have to get my own Human mates back. They are—”

“Jesusa and TomÁs, we know,” Paz said. “Aaor said they were imprisoned below. We can show you where they’re probably being held but I don’t know how you can get them out.”

“Show us,” I said.

We went outside where the stone village lay below us, spread like a Human-made map. The buildings seemed tiny in the distance, but they could all be seen. The whole flattened ridge was visible.

“See the round building there,” Javier said, pointing.

I didn’t see it at first. So many gray buildings with gray-brown thatched roofs, all tiny in the distance. Then it was clear to me—a stone half-cylinder built against a stone wall.

“There are rooms in it and under it,” Paz said. “Prisoners are kept there. The elders believe people who travel must be made to spend time alone to be questioned and prove they are who they say they are, and that they have not betrayed the people.” She stopped, looked at Javier. “They would say that we’ve betrayed the people.”

“We didn’t bring the aliens here,” he said. “And why do the people need us to produce more dead children?”

“They won’t say that if they catch us.”

“What will they do to you?” I asked.

“Kill us,” Paz whispered.

Aaor stepped between them, one sensory arm around each. “Jodahs, can we take them out, then come back for Jesusa and TomÁs?”

I stared down at the village, at the hundreds of green terraces. “I’m afraid for them. The longer we’re separated, the more likely they are to give themselves away. If only they had told us … Paz, did people watch the canyon from up here before Jesusa and TomÁs left home?”

“No,” she said. “We do this now because they left. The elders were afraid we would be invaded. We made more guns and ammunition, and we posted new guards. Many new guards.”

“This isn’t really a good place to watch from,” Javier said. “We’re too high and the canyon is too heavily forested. People would have to almost make an effort to attract our attention. Light a fire or something.”

I nodded. We had made cold camps for days before we reached the village. Yet we had been spotted. New guards. More vigilance. “You have to help us get you away from here,” I said. “You know where the guards are. We don’t want to hurt them, but we have to get you away and I have to get Jesusa and TomÁs out.”

“We can help you get away,” Paz said. “But we can’t help you reach TomÁs and Jesusa. You’ve seen that they’re guarded and in the middle of town.”

“If they’re where you say, I can get almost to them by climbing around the slope. It looks steep, but there’s good cover.”

“But you can’t get Jesusa and TomÁs out that way.”

I looked at her, liking the way she stood close to Aaor, the way she had put one hand up to hold the sensory arm that encircled her throat. And, though she was a few years older, she was painfully like Jesusa.

I spoke in Oankali to Aaor. “Take your mates tonight and get clear of this place. Wait at the cave down the canyon.”

“You didn’t desert me,” Aaor said obstinately in Spanish.

“I can reach them,” I said. “Alone and focused, I can come up through the terraces and avoid the guards—or surprise them and sting them unconscious. And no door will keep me from Jesusa and TomÁs. I can take them down the slope to the canyon. You’ve seen them climb. Especially Jesusa. I’ll carry TomÁs on my back if I have to—whether he wants me to or not. So tonight, you take your mates to safety. And take Santos for me. I intend to keep my promise to him.”

After a while, Aaor nodded. “I’ll come back for you if you don’t meet us.”

“It might be better for you if you didn’t,” I said.

“Don’t ask the impossible of me,” it said, and guided its mates back into the stone cabin.