'I have to go. You should wash, then feed your people. Seal your mate in. Be certain you're the first to talk to him when he wakes.'
She watched it climb over her, joints bending all wrong, and lower itself to the floor. She caught its hand before it could head for a wall. Its head tentacles pointed at her loosely in unspoken question.
'Do you like him?' she asked.
The point focused briefly on Joseph. 'Ahajas and Dichaan are mystified,' it said. 'They thought you would choose one of the big dark ones because they're like you. I said you would choose this one-because he's like you.'
'What?'
'During his testing, his responses were closer to yours than anyone else I'm aware of. He doesn't look like you, but he's like you.'
'He might. . .' She forced herself to voice the thought. 'He might not want anything more to do with me when he realizes what I helped you do with him.'
'He'll be angry-and frightened and eager for the next time and determined to see that there won't be a next time. I've told you, I know this one.'
'How do you know him so well? What have you had to do with him before?'
Its head and body smoothed so that even with its sensory arms, it resembled a slender, hairless, sexless human.
'He was the subject of one of my first acts of adult responsibility,' it said. 'I knew you by then, and I set out to find someone for you. Not another Paul Titus, but someone you would want. Someone who would want you. I examined memory records of thousands of males. This one might have been taught to parent a group himself, but when I showed other ooloi the match, they agreed that the two of you should be together.'
'You. . . You chose him for me?'
'I offered you to one another. The two of you did your own choosing.' It opened a wall and left her.
8
People gathered around silently, radiating hostility when Lilith called them out to eat. Most were already out, waiting for her sullenly, impatiently, hungrily. Lilith ignored their annoyance.
'It's about time,' Peter Van Weerden muttered as she opened the various wall cabinets and people began to come forward and take food. This was the man who claimed she was not human, she recalled.
'If you're through screwing, that is,' Jean Pelerin added. Lilith turned to look at Jean and managed to examine the woman's bruised, swollen face before Jean turned away.
Troublemakers. Only two of them out in the open so far. How long would that last?
'I'll be Awakening ten more people tomorrow,' she said before anyone could leave. 'You'll all be helping with them singly or in pairs.' She paced alongside the food wall, automatically drawing her fingers around the circular cabinet openings, keeping them from closing while people chose what they wanted. Even the newest people were used to this, but Gabriel Rinaldi complained mildly.
'It's ridiculous for you to have to do that, Lilith. Make them stay open.'
'That's the idea,' she said. 'They stay open for two or three minutes, then they close unless I touch them again.' She stopped, took the last bowl of hot, spicy beans from one cabinet, and let it close. The cabinet would not begin to refill itself until the wall was sealed. She put the beans on the floor to one side for her own meal later. People sat around on the floor, eating from edible dishes. There was comfort in eating together-one of their few comforts. Groups formed and people talked quietly among themselves. Lilith was taking fruit for herself when Peter spoke from his group nearby. His group of Jean, Curt Loehr, and Celene Ivers.
'If you ask me, the walls are fixed that way to keep us from thinking about what we ought to do to our jailor,' Peter said.
Lilith waited, wondering whether anyone would defend her. No one did,' though silence spread to other groups.
She drew a deep breath, walked over to Peter's group. 'Things can change,' she said quietly. 'Maybe you can turn everybody here against me. That would make me a failure.' She raised her voice slightly, though even her quiet words had carried. 'That would mean all of you put back into suspended animation so that you can be separated and put through all this again with other people.' She paused. 'If that's what you want-to be split up, to begin again alone, to go through this however many times it takes for you to let yourself get all the way through it, keep trying. You might succeed.'
She left him, took her food and joined Tate, Gabriel, and Leah.
'Not bad,' Tate said when people had resumed their own conversations. 'Clear warning to everyone. It's overdue.'
'It won't work,' Leah said. 'These people don't know each other. What do they care if they have to start again?'
'They care,' Gabriel told her. Even with his blue-black beard, he was one of the best looking men Lilith had ever seen. And he was still sleeping exclusively with Tate. Lilith liked him, but she was aware that he did not quite trust her. She could see that in his expression when she caught him watching her sometimes. Yet he was careful to keep her goodwill-keep his options open.
'They've made personal ties here,' he said to Leah. 'Think what they had before: War, chaos, family and friends dead. Then solitary. A jail cell and shit to eat. They care very much. So do you.'
She turned to face him angrily, mouth already open, but the handsome face seemed to disarm her. She sighed and nodded sadly. For a moment she seemed close to tears.
'How many times can you have everyone taken from you and still have the will to start again?' Tate muttered.
As many times as it took, Lilith thought wearily. As many times as human fear, suspicion, and stubbornness
