'Yes.'
'Yes, what? Which one?'
'All that you said, and more.' It changed the subject abruptly. 'Lilith, sleep during metamorphosis can be very deep. Don't be afraid if sometimes I don't seem to see or hear.'
'All right.'
'You'll stay with me?'
'I said I would.'
'I was afraid. . . good. Lie here with me until Ahajas and Dichaan come.'
She was tired of lying down, but she stretched out beside it.
'When they come to carry me to Lo, you help them. That will tell them the first thing they need to know about you.'
11
Leavetaking.
There was no real ceremony. Ahajas and Dichaan arrived and Nikanj immediately retreated into a deep sleep. Even its head tentacles hung limp and still.
Ahajas alone could have carried it. She was big like most Oankali females-slightly larger than Tediin. She and Dichaan were brother and sister as usual in Oankali matings. Males and females were closely related and ooloi were outsiders. One translation of the word ooloi was 'treasured strangers.' According to Nikanj, this combination of relatives and strangers served best when people were bred for specific work-like opening a trade with an alien species. The male and female concentrated desirable characteristics and the ooloi prevented the wrong kind of concentrations. Tediin and Jdahya were cousins. They had both not particularly liked their siblings. Unusual.
Now Ahajas lifted Nikanj as though it were a young child and held it easily until Dichaan and Lilith took its shoulders. Neither Ahajas nor Dichaan showed surprise at Lilith's participation.
'It has told us about you,' Ahajas said as they carried Nikanj down to the lower corridors. Kahguyaht preceded them, opening walls. Jdahya and Tediin followed.
'It's told me a little about you, too,' Lilith replied uncertainly. Things were moving too fast for her. She had not gotten up that day with the idea that she would be leaving Kaal-leaving Jdahya and Tediin who had become comfortable and familiar to her. She did not mind leaving Kahguyaht, but it had told her when it brought Ahajas and Dichaan to Nikanj that it would be seeing her again soon. Custom and biology dictated that as same-sex parent, Kahguyaht was permitted to visit Nikanj during its metamorphosis. Kahguyaht, like Lilith, smelled neutral and could not increase Nikanj's discomfort or stir inappropriate desires in it.
Lilith helped to arrange Nikanj on the flat tillo that sat waiting for them in a public corridor. Then she stood alone, watching as the five conscious Oankali came together, touching and entangling head and body tentacles. Kahguyaht stood between Tediin and Jdahya. Ahajas and Dichaan stood together and made their contacts with Tediin and Jdahya. It was almost as though they were avoiding Kahguyaht too. The Oankali could communicate this way, could pass messages from one to another almost at the speed of thought- or so Nikanj had said. Controlled multisensory stimulation. Lilith suspected it was the closest thing to telepathy she would ever see practiced. Nikanj had said it might be able to help her perceive this way when it was mature. But its maturity was months away. Now she was alone again-the alien, the uncomprehending outsider. That was what she would be again in the home of Ahajas and Dichaan.
When the group broke up, Tediin came over to Lilith, took both Lilith's arms. 'It has been good having you with us,' she said in Oankali. 'I've learned from you. It's been a good trade.'
'I've learned too,' Lilith said honestly. 'I wish I could stay here.' Rather than go with strangers. Rather than be sent to teach a lot of frightened, suspicious humans.
'No,' Tediin said. 'Nikanj must go. You would not like to be separated from it.'
She had nothing to say to that. It was true. Everyone, even Paul Titus inadvertently, had pushed her toward Nikanj. They had succeeded.
Tediin let her go and Jdahya came to speak to her in English. 'Are you afraid?' he asked.
'Yes,' she said.
'Ahajas and Dichaan will welcome you. You're rare-a human who can live among us, learn about us, and teach us. Everyone is curious about you.'
'I thought I would be spending most of my time with Nikanj.'
'You will be, for a while. And when Nikanj is mature, you'll be taken for training. But there'll be time for you to get to know Ahajas and Dichaan and others.'
She shrugged. Nothing he said settled her nervousness now.
'Dichaan has said he would adjust the walls of their home to you so that you can open them. He and Ahajas can't change you in any way, but they can adjust your new surroundings.'
So at least she wouldn't have to go back to the house pet stage, asking every time she wanted to enter or leave a room or eat a snack. 'I'm grateful for that, at least,' she said.
'It's trade,' Jdahya said. 'Stay close to Nikanj. Do what it has trusted you to do.'
12
Kahguyaht came to see her a few days later. She had been installed in the usual bare room, this one with one bed and two table platforms, a bathroom, and Nikanj who slept so much and so deeply that it too seemed part of the room rather than a living being.
Kahguyaht was almost welcome. It relieved her boredom, and, to her surprise, it brought gifts: a block of tough, thin, white paper-more than a ream-and a handful of pens that said Paper Mate, Parker, and Bic. The pens, Kahguyaht said, had been duplicated from prints taken of centuries-gone originals. This was the first time she had seen anything she knew to be a print re-creation. And it was the first time she had realized that the Oankali re- created nonliving things from prints. She could find no difference between the print copies and the remembered
