The ooloi took her to see Sharad. She would have preferred to have Jdahya take her, but when Kahguyaht volunteered, Jdahya leaned toward her and asked very softly, “Shall I go?”
She did not imagine that she was intended to miss the unspoken message of the gesture—that Jdahya was indulging a child. Lilith was tempted to accept the child’s role and ask him to come along. But he deserved a vacation from her—and she from him. Maybe he wanted to spend some time with the big, silent Tediin. How, she wondered, did these people manage their sex lives, anyway? How did the ooloi fit in? Were its two arm-sized tentacles sexual organs? Kahguyaht had not used them in eating—had kept them either coiled against its body, under its true arms or draped over its shoulders.
She was not afraid of it, ugly as it was. So far it had inspired only disgust, anger, and dislike in her. How had Jdahya connected himself with such a creature?
Kahguyaht led her through three walls, opening all of them by touching them with one of its large tentacles. Finally they emerged into a wide, downward-sloping, well-lighted corridor. Large numbers of Oankali walked or rode flat, slow, wheel-less conveyances that apparently floated a fraction of an inch above the floor. There were no collisions, no near-misses, yet Lilith saw no order to the traffic. People walked or drove wherever they could find an opening and apparently depended on others not to hit them. Some of the vehicles were loaded with unrecognizable freight—transparent beachball-sized blue spheres filled with some liquid, two-foot-long centipede-like animals stacked in rectangular cages, great trays of oblong, green shapes about six feet long and three feet thick. These last writhed slowly, blindly.
“What are those?” she asked the ooloi.
It ignored her except to take her arm and guide her where traffic was heavy. She realized abruptly that it was guiding her with the tip of one of its large tentacles.
“What do you call these?” she asked, touching the one wrapped around her arm. Like the smaller ones it was cool and as hard as her fingernails, but clearly very flexible.
“You can call them sensory arms,” it told her.
“What are they for?”
Silence.
“Look, I thought I was supposed to be learning. I can’t learn without asking questions and getting answers.”
“You’ll get them eventually—as you need them.”
In anger she pulled loose from the ooloi’s grip. It was surprisingly easy to do. The ooloi did not touch her again, did not seem to notice that twice it almost lost her, made no effort to help her when they passed through a crowd and she realized she could not tell one adult ooloi from another.
“Kahguyaht!” she said sharply.
“Here.” It was beside her, no doubt watching, probably laughing at her confusion. Feeling manipulated, she grasped one of its true arms and stayed close to it until they had come into a corridor that was almost empty. From there they entered a corridor that was empty. Kahguyaht ran one sensory arm along the wall for several feet, then stopped, and flatted the tip of the arm against the wall.
An opening appeared where the arm had touched and Lilith expected to be led into one more corridor or room. Instead the wall seemed to form a sphincter and pass something. There was even a sour smell to enhance the image. One of the big semitransparent green oblongs slid into view, wet and sleek.
“It’s a plant,” the ooloi volunteered. “We store it where it can be given the kind of light it thrives best under.”
Why couldn’t it have said that before, she wondered.
The green oblong writhed very slowly as the others had while the ooloi probed it with both sensory arms. After a time, the ooloi paid attention only to one end. That end, it massaged with its sensory arms.
Lilith saw that the plant was beginning to open, and suddenly she knew what was happening.
“Sharad is in that thing, isn’t he?”
“Come here.”
She went over to where it had sat on the floor at the now-open end of the oblong. Sharad’s head was just becoming visible. The hair that she recalled as dull black now glistened, wet and plastered to his head. The eyes were closed and the look on the face peaceful—as though the boy were in a normal sleep. Kahguyaht had stopped the opening of the plant at the base of the boy’s throat, but she could see enough to know Sharad was only a little older than he had been when they had shared an isolation room. He looked healthy and well.
“Will you wake him?” she asked.
“No.” Kahguyaht touched the brown face with a sensory arm. “We won’t be Awakening these people for a while. The human who will be guiding and training them has not yet begun his own training.”
She would have pleaded with it if she had not had two years of dealing with the Oankali to tell her just how little good pleading did. Here was the one human being she had seen in those two years, in two hundred and fifty years. And she could not talk to him, could not make him know she was with him.
She touched his cheek, found it wet, slimy, cool. “Are you sure he’s all right?”
“He’s fine.” The ooloi touched the plant where it had drawn aside and it began slowly to close around Sharad again. She watched the face until it was completely covered. The plant closed seamlessly around the small head.
“Before we found these plants,” Kahguyaht said, “they used to capture living animals and keep them alive for a long while, using their carbon dioxide and supplying them with oxygen while slowly digesting nonessential parts of their bodies: limbs, skin, sensory organs. The plants even passed some of their own substance through their prey to nourish the prey and keep it alive as long as possible. And the plants were enriched by the prey’s waste products. They gave a very, very long death.
Lilith swallowed. “Did the prey feel what was being done to it?”
“No. That would have hastened death. The prey … slept.”
Lilith stared at the green oblong, writhing slowly like an obscenely fat caterpillar. “How does Sharad breathe?”
“The plant supplies him with an ideal mix of gasses.”
“Not just oxygen?”
“No. It suits its care to his needs. It still benefits from the carbon dioxide he exhales and from his rare waste products. It floats in a bath of nutrients and water. These and the light supply the rest of its needs.”
Lilith touched the plant, found it firm and cool. It yielded slightly under her fingers. Its surface was lightly coated with slime. She watched with amazement as her fingers sank more deeply into it and it began to engulf them. She was not frightened until she tried to pull away and discovered it would not let go—and pulling back hurt sharply.
“Wait,” Kahguyaht said. With a sensory arm, it touched the plant near her hand. At once, she felt the plant begin to let go. When she was able to raise her hand, she found it numb, but otherwise unharmed. Feeling returned to the hand slowly. The print of it was still clear on the surface of the plant when Kahguyaht first rubbed its own hands with its sensory arms, then opened the wall and pushed the plant back through it.
“Sharad is very small,” it said when the plant was gone. “The plant could have taken you in as well.”
She shuddered. “I was in one … wasn’t I?”
Kahguyaht ignored the question. But of course she had been in one of the plants—had spent most of the last two and a half centuries within what was basically a carnivorous plant. And the thing had taken good care of her, kept her young and well.
“How did you make them stop eating people?” she asked.
“We altered them genetically—changed some of their requirements, enabled them to respond to certain chemical stimuli from us.”
She looked at the ooloi. “It’s one thing to do that to a plant. It’s another to do it to intelligent, self-aware beings.”
“We do what we do, Lilith.”
“You could kill us. You could make mules of our children— sterile monsters.”
“No,” it said. “There was no life at all on your Earth when our ancestors left our original home world, and in all that time we’ve never done such a thing.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if you had,” she said bitterly.
It took her back through the crowded corridors to what she had come to think of as Jdahya’s apartment. There it turned her over to the child, Nikanj.
“It will answer your questions and take you through the walls when necessary,” Kahguyaht said. “It is half again your age and very knowledgeable about things other than humans. You will teach it about your people and it will teach you about the Oankali.”
Half again her age, three-quarters her size, and still growing. She wished it were not an ooloi child. She wished it were not a child at all. How could Kahguyaht first accuse her of wanting to poison children, then leave her in the care of its own child?
At least Nikanj did not look like an ooloi yet.
“You do speak English, don’t you?” she asked when Kahguyaht had opened a wall and left the room. The room was the one they had eaten in, empty now except for Lilith and the child. The leftover food and the dishes had been removed and she had not seen Jdahya or Tediin since her return.
“Yes,” the child said. “But… not much. You teach.”
Lilith sighed. Neither the child nor Tediin had said a word to her beyond greeting, though both had occasionally spoken in fast, choppy Oankali to Jdahya or Kahguyaht. She had wondered why. Now she knew.
“I’ll teach what I can,” she said.
“I teach. You teach.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Outside?”
“You want me to go outside with you?”
It seemed to think for a moment. “Yes,” it said finally.
“Why?”
The child opened its mouth, then closed it again, head tentacles writhing. Confusion? Vocabulary problem?
“It’s all right,” Lilith said. “We can go outside if you like.”
Its tentacles smoothed flat against its body briefly, then it took her hand and would have opened the wall and led her out but she stopped it.
“Can you show me how to make it open?” she asked.
The child hesitated, then took one of her hands and brushed it over the forest of its long head tentacles, leaving the hand slightly wet. Then it touched her fingers to the wall, and the wall began to open.
More programmed reaction to chemical stimuli. No special areas to press, no special series of pressures. Just a chemical the Oankali manufactured within their bodies. She would go on being a prisoner, forced to stay wherever they chose to leave her. She would not be permitted even the illusion of freedom.
The child stopped her once they were outside. It struggled through a few more words. “Others,” it said, then hesitated. “Others see you? Others not see human … never.”
Lilith frowned, certain she was being asked a question. The child’s rising inflection seemed to indicate questioning if she could depend on such clues from an Oankali. “Are you asking me whether you can show me off to your friends?” she asked. The child turned its face to her. “Show you … off?”
“It means … to put me on display—take me out to be seen.”
“Ah. Yes. I show you off?”
“All right,” she said smiling.
“I talk … more human soon. You say … if I speak bad.”
“Badly,” she corrected.
“If I speak badly?”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence. “Also, goodly?” it asked.
“No, not goodly. Well.”
“Well.” The child seemed to taste the word. “I speak well soon,” it said.