Elsewhere a man did manage to swing his ax through part of an ooloi's chest, leaving a gaping wound. When the ooloi fell, the man closed in for the kill, aided by a woman with a machete.
A second ooloi stung them both from behind. As they fell, the injured ooloi got up. In spite of the cut it had taken, it walked over to where Lilith's group waited. It sat down heavily on the ground.
Lilith looked at Allison, Wray, and Leah. They stared at the ooloi, but made no move toward it. Lilith went to it, noticing that it focused on her sharply in spite of its wound. She suspected the wound would not have stopped it from stinging her to unconsciousness or death if it felt threatened.
'Is there anything I can do to help?' she asked. Its wound was just about where its heart would have been if it had been human. It was oozing thick clear fluid and blood so bright red that it seemed false. Movie blood. Poster- paint blood. Such a terrible wound should have been awash in bodily fluids, but the ooloi seemed to be losing very little.
'I'll heal,' it said in its disconcertingly calm voice. 'This isn't serious.' It paused. 'I never believed they would try to kill us. I never knew how hard it would be not to kill them.'
'You should have known,' Lilith said. 'You've had plenty of time to study us. What did you think would happen when you told us you were going to extinguish us as a species by tampering genetically with our children?'
The ooloi focused on her again. 'If you had used a weapon, you could probably have killed at least one of us. These others couldn't, but you could.'
'I don't want to kill you. I want to get away from you. You know that.'
'I know you think that.'
It turned its attention from her and began doing something to its wound with its sensory arms.
'Lilith!' Allison called.
Lilith looked back at her, then looked where she was pointing.
Nikanj was down, writhing on the ground as no ooloi had so far. Kahguyaht abruptly stopped fencing with Curt, lunged under his ax, hit him, and drugged him. Curt was the last human to go down. Tate was still conscious, still holding Gabriel, who was unconscious from Kahguyaht's sting. Some distance away, Victor was conscious, weaponless, making his way to the injured ooloi near Lilith-Victor's ooloi, she realized.
Lilith did not care how the two would meet. They could both take care of themselves. She ran toward Nikanj, avoiding the sensory arms of another ooloi who might have stung her.
Kahguyaht was already kneeling beside Nikanj, speaking to it low-voiced. It fell silent as she knelt on Nikanj's opposite side. She saw Nikanj's wound at once. Its left sensory arm had been hacked almost off. The arm seemed to be hanging by little more than a length of tough gray skin. Clear fluid and blood spurted from the wound.
'My god!' Lilith said. 'Can it. . . can it heal?'
'Perhaps,' Kahguyaht answered in its insanely calm voice. She hated their voices. 'But you must help it.'
'Yes, of course I'll help. What shall I do?'
'Lie beside it. Hold it and hold the sensory arm in place so that it can reattach-if it will.'
'Reattach?'
'Get your clothing off. It may be too weak to burrow through clothing.'
Lilith stripped, refusing to think of how she would look to the humans still conscious. They would be certain now that she was a traitor. Stripping naked on the battlefield to lie down with the enemy. Even the few who had accepted her might turn on her now. But she had just lost Joseph. She could not lose Nikanj too. She could not simply watch it die.
She lay down beside it and it strained toward her silently. She looked up for more instructions from Kahguyaht, but Kahguyaht had gone away to examine Gabriel. Nothing important going on for it here. Only its child, horribly wounded.
Nikanj penetrated her body with every head and body tentacle that could reach her, and for once it felt the way she had always imagined it should. It hurt! It was like abruptly being used as a pincushion. She gasped, but managed not to pull away. The pain was endurable, was probably nothing to what Nikanj was feeling-however it experienced pain.
She reached twice for the nearly severed sensory arm before she could make herself touch it. It was covered with slimy bodily fluids and white, blue-gray, and red-gray tissues hung from it.
She grasped it as best she could and pressed it to the stump it had been hacked from.
But surely more was necessary than this. Surely the heavy, complex, muscular organ could not reattach itself with no aid but the pressure of a human hand.
'Breathe deeply,' Nikanj said, hoarsely. 'Keep breathing deeply. Use both hands to hold my arm.'
'You're plugged into my left arm,' she gasped.
Nikanj made a harsh, ugly sound. 'I have no control. I'll have to let you go completely, then begin again. If I can.'
Several seconds later, tens of dozens of 'needles' were withdrawn from Lilith's body. She rearranged Nikanj as gently as she could so that its head was on her shoulder and she could reach the nearly severed limb with both hands. She could support it and hold it where it belonged. She could rest one of her own arms on the ground and the other across Nikanj's body. This was a position she could hold for a while as long as no one disturbed her.
'All right,' she said, bracing for the pincushion effect again.
Nikanj did nothing.
'Nikanj!' she whispered, frightened.
