drive the storytellers into one of the houses or, more likely, bring them into the singing and dancing.
Oankali did not like music. They began to withdraw into the houses?to save their hearing, they said. Most constructs enjoyed music as much as Humans did. Several Oankali-born construct males had become wandering musicians, more than welcome at any trade village.
?I?m not in a mood for singing or dancing or stories,? he said. ?Walk with me. I?ll sleep at the ship tonight. I?ve said my goodbyes.?
She stood up, towering over him in a way that made him feel oddly secure. No one spoke to them or joined them as they left the village.
4
Chkahichdahk. Dichaan went up with Akin and Tiikuchahk. The shuttle could simply have been sent home. It had eaten its fill and been introduced to several people who had reached adulthood recently. It was content and needed no guiding. But Dichaan went with them anyway. Akin was glad of this. He needed his same-sex parent more than he would have admitted.
Tiikuchahk seemed to need Dichaan, too. It stayed close to him in the soft light of the shuttle. The shuttle had made them a plain gray sphere within itself and left them to decide whether they wanted to raise platforms or bulkheads. The air would be kept fresh, the shuttle efficiently supplying them with the oxygen it produced and taking away the carbon dioxide they exhaled for its own use. It could also use any waste they produced, and it could feed them anything they could describe, just as Lo could. Even a child with only one functional sensory tentacle could describe foods he had eaten and ask for duplicate foods. The shuttle would synthesize them as Lo would have.
But only Dichaan could truly link with the shuttle and, through its senses, share its experience of flying through space. He could not share what he experienced until he had detached himself from the shuttle. Then he held Akin immobile as though holding an infant and showed him open space.
Akin seemed to drift, utterly naked, spinning on his own axis, leaving the wet, rocky, sweet-tasting little planet that he had always enjoyed and going back to the life source that was wife, mother, sister, haven. He had news for her of one of their children?of Lo.
But he was in empty space?surrounded by blackness, feeding from the impossibly bright light of the sun, falling away from the great blue curve of the Earth, aware over all the body of the great number of distant stars. They were gentle touches, and the sun was a great, confining hand, gentle but inescapable. No shuttle could travel this close to a star, then escape its gravitational embrace. Only Chkahichdahk could do that, powered by its own internal sun?its digestion utterly efficient, wasting nothing.
Everything was sharp, starkly clear, intense beyond enduring. Everything pounded the senses. Impressions came as blows. He was attacked, beaten, tormented
And it ended.
Akin could not have ended it. He lay now, weak with shock, no longer annoyed at Dichaan?s holding him, needing the support.
?That was only a second,? Dichaan was saying. ?Less than a second. And I cushioned it for you.?
Gradually, Akin became able to move and think again. ?Why is it like that?? he demanded.
?Why does the shuttle feel what it feels? Why do we experience its feelings so intensely? Eka, why do you feel what you feel? How would a coati or an agouti receive your feelings??
?But??
?It feels as it feels. Its feelings would hurt you, perhaps injure or kill you if you took them directly. Your reactions would confuse it and throw it off course.?
?And when I?m an adult, I?ll be able to perceive through it as you do??
?Oh, yes. We never trade away our abilities to work with the ships. They?re more than partners to us.?
?But
what do we do for them, really? They allow us to travel through space, but they could travel without us.?
?We build them. They are us, too, you know.? He stroked a smooth, gray wall, then linked into it with several head tentacles. He was asking for food, Akin realized. Delivery would take a while, since the shuttle stored nothing. Foods were stored when Humans were brought along because some shuttles were not as practiced as they might be in assembling foods that tasted satisfying to Humans. They had never poisoned anyone or left anyone malnourished. But sometimes Humans found the food they produced so odd-tasting that the Humans chose to fast.
?They began as we began,? Dichaan continued. He touched Akin with a few long-stretched head tentacles, and Akin moved closer again to receive an impression of Oankali in one of their earliest forms, limited to their home world and the life that had originated there. From their own genes and those of many other animals, they fashioned the ancestors of the ships. Their intelligence, when it was needed, was still Oankali. There were no ooloi ships, so their seed was always mixed in Oankali ooloi.
?And there are no construct ooloi,? Akin said softly.
?There will be.?
?When??
?Eka
when we feel more secure about you.?
Silenced, Akin stared at him. ?Me alone??
?You and the others like you. By now, every trade village has one. If you had done your wandering to trade villages, you?d know that.?
Tiikuchahk spoke for the first time. ?Why should it be so hard to get construct males from Human females? And why are Human-born males so important??
?They must be given more Human characteristics than Oankali-born construct males,? Dichaan answered.
