'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 final
'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.
3
Nikanj's friends poked and prodded her exposed flesh and tried to persuade her through Nikanj to take off her clothing. None of them spoke English. None seemed in the least childlike, though Nikanj said all were children. She got the feeling some would have enjoyed dissecting her. They spoke aloud very little, but there was much touching of tentacles to flesh or tentacles to other tentacles. When they saw that she would not strip, no more questions were addressed to her. She was first amused, then annoyed, then angered by their attitude. She was nothing more than an unusual animal to them, Nikanj's new pet.
Abruptly she turned away from them. She had had enough of being shown off. She moved away from a pair of children who were reaching to investigate her hair, and spoke Nikanj's name sharply.
Nikanj disentangled its long head tentacles from those of another child and came back to her. If it had not responded to its name, she would not have known it. She was going to have to learn to tell people apart. Memorize the various head-tentacle patterns, perhaps.
'I want to go back,' she said.
'Why?' it asked.
She sighed, decided to tell as much of the truth as she thought it could understand. Best to find out now just how far the truth would get her. 'I don't like this,' she said. 'I don't want to be shown off anymore to people I can't even talk to.'
It touched her arm tentatively. 'You . . . anger?'
'I'm angry, yes. I need to be by myself for a while.'
It thought about that. 'We go back,' it said finally.
Some of the children were apparently unhappy about her leaving. They clustered around her and spoke aloud to Nikanj, but Nikanj said a few words and they let her pass.
She discovered she was trembling and took deep breaths to relax herself. How was a pet supposed to feel? How did zoo animals feel?
