?Is he all right?? the man asked, stopping so quickly he spilled some of his water.
?He?s still throwing up blood. I thought I?d get the kid away.?
The other man hurried on, spilling more of his water.
The red-haired man sat on a fallen tree and put Akin down beside him.
?Shit!? he muttered to himself. He put one foot on the tree trunk, turning away from Akin.
Akin sat, torn, wanting to speak, yet not daring to, almost sick himself about the bleeding man. It was wrong to allow such suffering, utterly wrong to throw away a life so unfinished, unbalanced, unshared.
The red-haired man picked him up and held him, peering into his face worriedly. ?You?re not getting sick, too, are you?? he asked. ?Please, God, no.?
?No,? Akin whispered.
The man looked at him sharply. ?So you can talk. Tilden said you ought to know a few words. Being what you are, you probably know more than a few, don?t you??
?Yes.?
Akin did not realize until later that the man had not expected an answer. Human beings talked to trees and rivers and boats and insects the way they talked to babies. They talked to be talking, but they believed they were talking to uncomprehending things. It upset and frightened them when something that should have been mute answered
intelligently. All this, Akin realized later. Now he could only think of the man vomiting blood and perhaps dying so incomplete. And the red-haired man had been kind. Perhaps he would listen.
?He?ll die,? Akin whispered, feeling as though he were using shameful profanity.
The red-haired man put him down, stared at him with disbelief.
?An ooloi would stop the bleeding and the pain,? Akin said. ?It wouldn?t keep him or make him do anything. It would just heal him.?
The man shook his head, let his mouth sag open. ?What the hell are you?? There was no longer kindness or friendliness in his voice. Akin realized he had made a mistake. How to recoup? Silence? No, silence would be seen as stubbornness now, perhaps punished as stubbornness.
?Why should your friend die?? he asked with all the passionate conviction he felt.
?He?s sixty-five,? the man said, drawing away from Akin. ?At least he?s been awake for sixty-five years in all. That?s a decent length of time for a Human being.?
?But he?s sick, in pain.?
?It?s just an ulcer. He had one before the war. The worms fixed it, but after a few years it came back.?
?It could be fixed again.?
?I think he?d cut his own throat before he?d let one of those things touch him again. I know I would.?
Akin looked at the man, tried to understand his new expression of revulsion and hatred. Did he feel these things toward Akin as well as toward the Oankali? He was looking at Akin.
?What the hell are you?? he said.
Akin did not know what to say. The man knew what he was.
?How old are you really??
?Seventeen months.?
?Crap! Jesus, what are the worms doing to us? What kind of mother did you have??
?I was born to a Human woman.? That was what he really wanted to know. He did not want to hear that Akin had two female parents just as he had two male parents. He knew this, though he probably did not understand it. Tino had been intensely curious about it, had asked Akin questions he was too embarrassed to ask his new mates. This man was curious, too, but it was like the kind of curiosity that made some Humans turn over rotting logs?so they could enjoy being disgusted by what lived there.
?Was that Phoenix your father??
Akin began to cry in spite of himself. He had thought of Tino many times, but he had not had to speak of him. It hurt to speak of him. ?How could you hate him so much and still want me? He was Human like you, and I?m not, but one of you killed him.?
?He was a traitor to his own kind. He chose to be a traitor.?
?He never hurt other Humans. He wasn?t even trying to hurt anyone when you killed him. He was just afraid for me.?
Silence.
?How can what he did be wrong if I?m valuable??
The man looked at him with deep disgust. ?You may not be valuable.?
Akin wiped his face and stared his own dislike back at this man who defended the killing of Tino, who had never harmed him. ?I will be valuable to you,? he said. ?All I have to do is be quiet. Then you can be rid of me. And I can be rid of you.?
The man got up and walked away.
Akin stayed where he was. The men would not leave him. They would come this way when they went down to
