itself and Tino. ?None of the resister villages are hidden from us,? it said softly. ?We wouldn?t have asked you where Phoenix was. And we don?t mean to focus on Phoenix. It?s time for us to approach all the resister villages and invite them to join us. It?s only to remind them that they don?t have to live sterile, pointless lives. We won?t force them to come to us, but we will let them know they?re still welcome. We let them go originally because we didn?t want to hold prisoners.?
Tino laughed bitterly. ?So everyone here is here of their own freewill, huh??
?Everyone here is free to leave.?
Tino gave Nikanj another of his unreadable looks and turned deliberately so that he faced Lilith. ?How many men are there here?? he asked.
Lilith looked around, found Wray Ordway who kept the small guest house stocked with food and other supplies. This was where newly arrived men lived until they paired off with one of the village women. It was the only house in the village that had been built of cut trees and palm thatch. Tino might sleep there tonight. Wray kept the guest house because he had chosen not to wander. He had paired with Leah and apparently never tired of her. The two of them with their three Oankali mates had nine Human-born daughters and eleven Oankali-born children.
?How many men have we got now, Wray?? Lilith asked.
?Five,? he said. ?None in the guest house, though. Tino can have it all to himself if he wants.?
?Five men.? Tino shook his head. ?No wonder you haven?t built anything.?
?We build ourselves,? Wray said. ?We?re building a new way of life here. You don?t know anything about us. Why don?t you ask questions instead of shooting off your mouth!?
?What is there to ask? Except for your garden?which barely looks like a garden?you don?t grow anything. Except for your shacks, you haven?t built anything! And as for building yourselves, the Oankali are doing that. You?re their clay, that?s all!?
?They change us and we change them,? Lilith said. ?The whole next generation is made up of genetically engineered people, Tino?constructs, whether they?re born to Oankali or to Human mothers.? She sighed. ?I don?t like what they?re doing, and I?ve never made any secret of it. But they?re in this with us. When the ships leave, they?re stuck here. And with their own biology driving them, they can?t not blend with us. But some of what makes us Human will survive, just as some of what makes them Oankali will survive.? She paused, looked around the large room. ?Look at the children here, Tino. Look at the construct adults. You can?t tell who was born to whom. But you can see some Human features on every one of them. And as for the way we live
well, we?re not as primitive as you think?and not as advanced as we could be. It was all a matter of how much like the ship we wanted our homes to be. The Oankali made us learn to live here without them so that if we did resist, we could survive. So that people like your parents would have a choice.?
?Some choice,? Tino muttered.
?Better than being a prisoner or a slave,? she said. ?They should have been ready for the forest. I?m surprised they ate the palm fruit that made them sick.?
?We were city people, and we were hungry. My father didn?t believe something could be poison raw but okay to eat cooked.?
Lilith shook her head. ?I was a city person, too, but there were some things I was willing not to learn from experience.? She returned to her original subject. ?Anyway, once we had learned to live in the forest on our own, the Oankali told us we didn?t have to. They meant to live in homes as comfortable as the ones they had on the ship, and we were free to do the same. We accepted their offer. Believe me, weaving thatch and tying logs together with lianas doesn?t hold any more fascination for me than it does for you?and I?ve done my share of it.?
?This place has a thatched roof,? Tino argued. ?In fact, it looks freshly thatched.?
?Because the leaves are green? Hell, they?re green because they?re alive. We didn?t build this house, Tino, we grew it. Nikanj provided the seed; we cleared the land; everyone who was going to live here trained the walls and made them aware of us.?
Tino frowned. ?What do you mean, ?aware? of you? I thought you were telling me it was a plant.?
?It?s an Oankali construct. Actually, it?s a kind of larval version of the ship. A neotenic larva. It can reproduce without growing up. It can also get a lot bigger without maturing sexually. This one will have to do that for a while. We don?t need more than one.?
?But you?ve got more than one. You?ve got??
?Only one in this village. And a lot of that one is underground. What you see of it appears to be houses, grasses, shrubs, nearby trees, and, to some extent, riverbank. It allows some erosion, traps some newly arrived silt. Its inclination, though, is to become a closed system. A ship. We can?t let it do that here. We still have a lot of growing to do ourselves.?
Tino shook his head. He looked around at the large room, at the people watching, eating, feeding children, some small children stretched out asleep with their heads on adults? laps.
?Look up, Tino.?
Tino jumped at the sound of Nikanj?s soft voice so close to him. He seemed about to move away, shrink away. He had probably not been this close to an Oankali since he was a child. Somehow, he managed to keep still.
?Look up,? Nikanj repeated.
Tino looked up into the soft yellow glow of the ceiling.
?Didn?t you even wonder where the light was coming from?? Nikanj asked. ?Is that the ceiling of a primitive dwelling??
?It wasn?t like that when I came in,? Tino said.
?No. It wasn?t as much needed when you came in. There was plenty of light from outside. Look at the smooth walls. Look at the floor. Feel the floor. I don?t think a floor of dead wood would be as comfortable. You?ll have a chance to make comparisons if you choose to stay in the guest house. It really is the rough wood and thatch building you thought this was. It has to be. Strangers wouldn?t be able to control the walls of the true houses here.?
