She went cold. Her mother had died of cancer. Two of her aunts had had it and her grandmother had been operated on three times for it. They were all dead now, killed by someone else's insanity. But the family 'tradition' was apparently continuing.
'What did I lose along with the cancer?' she asked softly.
'Nothing.'
'Not a few feet of intestine? My ovaries? My uterus?'
'Nothing. My relative tended you. You lost nothing you would want to keep.'
'Your relative is the one who... performed surgery on me?'
'Yes. With interest and care. There was a human physician with us, but by then she was old, dying. She only watched and commented on what my relative did.'
'How would he know enough to do anything for me? Human anatomy must be totally different from yours.'
'My relative is not male-or female. The name for its sex is ooloi. It understood your body because it is ooloi. On your world there were vast numbers of dead and dying humans to study. Our ooloi came to understand what could be normal or abnormal, possible or impossible for the human body. The ooloi who went to the planet taught those who stayed here. My relative has studied your people for much of its life.'
'How do ooloi study?' She imagined dying humans caged and every groan and contortion closely observed. She imagined dissections of living subjects as well as dead ones. She imagined treatable diseases being allowed to run their grisly courses in order for ooloi to learn.
'They observe. They have special organs for their kind of observation. My relative examined you, observed a few of your normal body cells, compared them with what it had learned from other humans most like you, and said you had not only a cancer, but a talent for cancer.'
'I wouldn't call it a talent. A curse, maybe. But how could your relative know about that from just. . . observing.'
'Maybe perceiving would be a better word,' he said. 'There's much more involved than sight. It knows everything that can be learned about you from your genes. And by now, it knows your medical history and a great deal about the way you think. It has taken part in testing you.'
'Has it? I may not be able to forgive it for that. But listen, I don't understand how it could cut out a cancer without. . . well, without doing damage to whichever organ it was growing on.'
'My relative didn't cut out your cancer. It wouldn't have cut you at all, but it wanted to examine the cancer directly with all its senses. It had never personally examined one before. When it had finished, it induced your body to reabsorb the cancer.
'It. . . induced my body to reabsorb. . . cancer?'
'Yes. My relative gave your body a kind of chemical command.'
'Is that how you cure cancer among yourselves?'
'We don't get them.'
Lilith sighed. 'I wish we didn't. They've created enough hell in my family.'
'They won't be harming you anymore. My relative says they're beautiful, but simple to prevent.'
'Beautiful?'
'It perceives things differently sometimes. Here's food, Lilith. Are you hungry?'
She stepped toward him, reaching out to take the bowl, then realized what she was doing. She froze, but managed not to scramble backward. After a few seconds, she inched toward him. She could not do it quickly-snatch and run. She could hardly do it at all. She forced herself forward slowly, slowly.
Teeth clenched, she managed to take the bowl. Her hand shook so badly that she spilled half the stew. She withdrew to the bed. After a while she was able to eat what was left, then finish the bowl. It was not enough. She was still hungry, but she did not complain. She was not up to taking another bowl from his hand. Daisy hand. Palm in the center, many fingers all the way around. The fingers had bones in them, at least; they weren't tentacles. And there were only two hands, two feet. He could have been so much uglier than he was, so much less. . . human. Why couldn't she just accept him? All he seemed to be asking was that she not panic at the sight of him or others like him. Why couldn't she do that?
She tried to imagine herself surrounded by beings like him and was almost overwhelmed by panic. As though she had suddenly developed a phobia-something she had never before experienced. But what she felt was like what she had heard others describe. A true xenophobia-and apparently she was not alone in it.
She sighed, realized she was still tired as well as still hungry. She rubbed a hand over her face. If this were what a phobia was like, it was something to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. She looked at Jdahya. 'What do your people call themselves?' she asked. 'Tell me about them.'
'We are Oankali.'
'Oankali. Sounds like a word in some Earth language.'
'It may be, but with different meaning.'
'What does it mean in your language?'
'Several things. Traders for one.'
'You are traders?'
'Yes.'
'What do you trade?'
