of unity that she recalled with her own paired sibling. Akin recognized the feeling. He had noticed it before in others. It did nothing to calm his own confusion of feelings.
Ayre broke contact with them. ?Ti is right. You should go up together,? she said, rustling her head tentacles uncomfortably. ?You have to resolve this. It?s disgusting that the people chose to let this happen to you.?
?We don?t know how to resolve it,? Akin said, ?except to wait for metamorphosis.?
?Find an ooloi. A subadult. That?s something you can?t do here. I haven?t seen a subadult down here for years.?
?I?ve never seen one,? Tiikuchahk said. ?They come down after their second metamorphosis. What can they do before then??
?Focus the two of you away from each other without even trying. You?ll see. Even before they grow up, they?re
interesting.?
Akin stood up. ?I don?t want an ooloi. That makes me think about mating. Everything is going too fast.?
Ayre sighed and shook her head. ?What do you think you?ve been doing with those resister women??
?That was different. Nothing could happen. I even told them nothing could happen. They wanted to do it anyway?in case I was wrong.?
?You and Ti find yourselves an ooloi. If it isn?t mature it can?t mate?but it can help you.?
They left her, found themselves both seeking out then starting toward Nikanj. At that point, Akin deliberately pulled himself out of synchronization with Tiikuchahk. It was a grating synchronization that kept happening by accident and feeling the way the saw mill in Phoenix had once sounded when something went badly wrong with the saw and the mill had to be shut down for days.
He stopped, and Tiikuchahk went on. It stumbled, and he knew it felt the same tearing away that he did. Things had always been this way for them. He knew it was usually glad when he left the village for weeks or months. Sometimes it would not stay with the family when he was home but went to other families, where it found being alone, being an outsider, more endurable.
Humans had no idea how completely Oankali and construct society was made up of groups of two or more people. Tate did not know what she had done when she refused to help him get back to Lo and Tiikuchahk. Perhaps that was why in all his travels, he had never returned to Phoenix.
He went to Lilith, as someone began calling for a story. She was sitting alone, ignoring the call, although people liked her stories. Her memory supplied her with the smallest details of prewar Earth, and she knew how to put everything together in ways that made people laugh or cry or lean forward, listening, fearful of missing the next words.
She looked up at him, and said nothing when he sat down next to her.
?I wanted to say goodbye,? he said softly.
She seemed tired. ?I was thinking about Margit growing up, you and Ti going
. But you should go.? She took his hand and held it. ?You should know the Oankali part of yourselves, too. But I can hardly stand the thought of losing what may be the last year of your childhood.?
?I hoped I would reach more of the resisters,? he said.
She said nothing. She did not talk to him about his trips to the resisters. She cautioned him sometimes, answered questions if he asked. And he could see that she worried about him. But she volunteered nothing?nor did he. Once, when she had left the village on one of her solitary treks, he had followed her, found her sitting on a log waiting for him when he finally caught her. They traveled together for several days, and she told him her story?why her name was an epithet among English-speaking resisters, how they blamed her for what the Oankali had done to them because she was the person the Oankali had chosen to work through. She had had to awaken groups of Humans from suspended animation and help them understand their new situation. Only she could speak Oankali then. Only she could open and close walls and use her Oankali-enhanced strength to protect herself and others. That was enough to make her a collaborator, a traitor in the minds of her own people. It had been safe to blame her, she said. The Oankali were powerful and dangerous, and she was not.
Now she faced him. ?You couldn?t possibly reach all the resisters,? she said. ?If you want to help them, you already have the information you need from them. Now you need to learn more about the Oankali. Do you see??
He nodded slowly, his skin itching where there were sensory spots but no tentacles to coil tight and express the tension he felt.
?If there is anything you can do, now is the time to find out what it is and how to do it. Learn all you can.?
?I will.? He compared her long, brown hand to his own and wondered how there could be so little visible difference. Perhaps the first sign of his metamorphosis would be new fingers growing or old ones losing their flat Human nails. ?I hadn?t really thought of the trip being useful.?
?Make it useful!?
?Yes.? He hesitated. ?Do you really believe I can help??
?Do you??
?I have ideas.?
?Save them. You?ve been right to keep quiet about them so far.?
It was good to hear her confirming what he had believed. ?Will you come to the ship with me??
?Of course.?
?Now.?
She looked out at the party, at the village. People had clustered at the guest house where someone was telling a story, and another group had gotten out flutes, drums, guitars, and a small harp. Their music would soon either
