Sometimes it seemed to Akin that his world was made up of tight units of people who treated him kindly or coldly as they chose, but who could not let him in, no matter how much they might want to.
He could remember a time when blending into others seemed not only possible but inevitable—when Tiikuchahk was still unborn and he could reach out and taste it and know it as his closest sibling. Now, though, because he had not been able to bond with it, it was perhaps his least interesting sibling. He had spent as little time as possible with it.
Now it wanted to go to Chkahichdahk with him.
“Let it go and let me stay here,” he had told Dichaan.
“It is alone, too,” Dichaan had answered. “You and it both need to learn more about what you are.”
“I know what I am.”
“Yes. You are my same-sex child, near his metamorphosis.”
Akin had not been able to answer this. It was time for him to listen to Dichaan, learn from him, prepare to be a mature male. He felt strongly inclined to obey.
Yet he had lost himself in the forest for days, resisting the inclination and deeply resenting it each time it returned to nag him.
No one came after him. And no one seemed surprised when he came home. The shuttle had eaten a new clearing waiting for him.
He stood staring at it. It was a great green-shelled thing—a male itself to the degree that the ship-entities could be of one sex or the other. Each one had the capacity to become female. But as long as it received a controlling substance from the body of Chkahichdahk, it would remain small and male. It would extend the reach of Chkahichdahk by investigating planets and moons of solar systems, bringing back information, supplies of minerals, life. It would carry passengers and work with them in exploration. And it would ferry people to the ship and back.
Akin had never been inside one. He would not be allowed to link into one’s nervous system until he was an adult. So much had to wait until he was an adult.
When he was an adult, he could speak for the resisters. Now, his voice could be ignored, would not even be heard without the amplification provided by one of the adult members of his family. He remembered Nikanj’s stories of its own childhood—of being right, knowing it was right, and yet being ignored because it was not adult. Lilith had occasionally been hurt during those years because people did not listen to Nikanj, who knew her better than they did.
Akin would not make Nikanj’s mistake. He had decided that long ago. But now … Why had Dichaan decided to send him to Chkahichdahk? Was it only to keep him out of danger or was there some other reason?
He moved closer to the shuttle, waiting to go inside but wanting first to walk around the thing, look at it, appreciate it with the senses he and the Humans shared.
It looked from every angle like a perfectly symmetrical high hill. Once it was airborne, it would be spherical. Its shell plates would slide around and lock—three layers of them—and nothing would get in or out.
“Akin.”
He looked around without moving his body and saw Ahajas coming from the direction of Lo. Everyone else made some noise when they walked, but Ahajas, larger, taller than almost everyone else, seemed to flow along, sixteen-toed feet hardly seeming to touch the ground. If she did not want to be heard, no one heard her. Females had to be able to hide if possible and to fight if hiding was impossible or useless. Nikanj had said that.
He would not see Nikanj for a year. Perhaps longer.
She came towering over him, then folded herself into a sitting position opposite him the way some Humans used to stoop or kneel to talk to him when he was younger. Now his head and hers were at the same level.
“I wanted to see you before you left. You might not still be a child when you come back.”
“I will be.” He put his hand in among her head tentacles and felt them grasp and penetrate. “I’m still years away from changing.”
“Your body can change faster than you think. The stress of having to adjust to a new environment could make things go more quickly. You should see everyone now.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know. You don’t want to leave so you don’t want to say goodbye. You didn’t even go to your resister friends.”
She didn’t smell them on him. He had been particularly embarrassed to realize that she and others knew by scent when he had been with a woman. He washed, of course, but still they knew.
“You should have gone to them. You might change a great deal during your metamorphosis. Humans don’t accept that easily.”
“Lilith?”
“You know better. In spite of the things she says, I’ve never seen her reject one of her children. But would you want to leave without seeing her?”
Silence.
“Come on, Eka.” She released his hand and stood up.
He followed her back to the village, feeling resentful and manipulated.