Lilith could have missed it through just a moment's inattention.
'Well, why should they keep you awake and alone for so long?' Tate demanded.
'I wouldn't talk to them at first. Then later when I began to talk, apparently a number of them were interested in me. They weren't trying to make a trustee of me at that point. They were trying to decide whether I was fit to be one. If I had had a vote, I'd still be asleep.'
'Why wouldn't you talk to them? Were you military?'
'God, no. I just didn't like the idea of being locked up, questioned, and ordered around by I-didn't-know-who. And Tate, it's time you knew who-even though you've been careful not to ask.'
She drew a deep breath, rested her forehead on her hand and stared down at the table. 'I asked them. They wouldn't tell me. After a while I got scared and stopped asking.'
'Yeah. I did that too.'
'Are they... Russians?'
'They're not human.'
Tate did not move, did not say anything for so long that Lilith continued.
'They call themselves Oankali, and they look like sea creatures, though they are bipedal. They. . . are you taking any of this in?'
''I'm listening.''
Lilith hesitated. 'Are you believing?'
Tate looked up at her, seemed to smile a little. 'How can I?'
Lilith nodded. 'Yeah. But you'll have to sooner or later, of course, and I'm supposed to do what I can to prepare you. The Oankali are ugly. Grotesque. But we can get used to them, and they won't hurt us. Remember that. Maybe it will help when the time comes.'
3
For three days, Tate slept a great deal, ate a great deal, and asked questions that Lilith answered completely honestly. Tate also talked about her life before the war. Lilith saw that it seemed to relax her, ease that shell of emotional control she usually wore. That made it worthwhile. It meant Lilith felt obligated to talk a little about herself-her past before the war-something she would not normally have been inclined to do. She had learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones whose memories might overwhelm her. She had tried to talk to Nikanj about humans in general, only occasionally bringing in personal anecdotes. Her father, her brothers, her sister, her husband and son. . . . She chose now to talk about her return to college.
'Anthropology,' Tate said disparagingly. 'Why did you want to snoop through other people's cultures? Couldn't you find what you wanted in your own?'
Lilith smiled and noticed that Tate frowned as though this were the beginning of a wrong answer. 'I started out wanting to do exactly that,' Lilith said. 'Snoop. Seek. It seemed to me that my culture-ours-was running headlong over a cliff. And, of course, as it turned out, it was. I thought there must be saner ways of life.'
'Find any?'
'Didn't have much of a chance. It wouldn't have mattered much anyway. It was the cultures of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that counted.'
'I wonder.'
'What?'
'Human beings are more alike than different-damn sure more alike than we like to admit. I wonder if the same thing wouldn't have happened eventually, no matter which two cultures gained the ability to wipe one another out along with the rest of the world'
Lilith gave a bitter laugh. 'You might like it here. The Oankali think a lot like you do.'
Tate turned away, suddenly disturbed. She wandered over to look at the new third and fourth rooms Lilith had grown on either side of the second restroom. One of them was back to back with her own room, and in part, an extension of one of her walls. She had watched the walls growing- watched first with disbelief, then anger, refusing to believe she was not being tricked somehow. Then she began to keep her distance from Lilith, to watch Lilith suspiciously, to be jumpy and silent.
That had not lasted long. Tate was adaptable if nothing else. 'I don't understand,' she had said softly, though by then, Lilith had explained why she could control the walls, how she could find and Awaken specific individuals.
Now, Tate wandered back and said again, 'I don't understand. None of this makes sense!'
'I had an easier time believing,' Lilith said. 'An Oankali sealed himself in my isolation room and refused to leave until I got used to him. You can't look at them and doubt that they're alien.'
'Maybe you can't.'
'I won't argue with you about it. I've been Awake a lot longer than you have. I've lived among the Oankali and I accept them as what they are.'
'What they say they are.'
Lilith shrugged. 'I want to start Awakening more people. Two new ones today. Will you help me?'
'Who are you Awakening?'
'Leah Bede and Celene Iver.'
'Two more women? Why don't you wake up a man?'
'I will eventually.'
