She blinked, looked at me with the pain I had hoped not to see.
?I want Human things,? I said. ?Small Human things that you and Tino would leave behind. And I want yams from your garden?and cassava and fruit and seed. Samples of all the seed or whatever is needed to grow your plants.?
?Nikanj could give you cell samples.?
?I know
. But will you??
?Yes.?
I hesitated again. ?I would have to leave Lo anyway, you know. Even without this exile, I couldn?t mate here where I?m related to almost everyone.?
?I know. But it will be a while before you mate. And if you were leaving to do that, we?d see you again. If you have to go to the ship
we may not.?
?I belong to this world,? I said. ?I intend to stay. But even so, I want something of yours and Tino?s.?
?All right.?
We looked at one another as though we were already saying goodbye?as though only I were leaving. I did leave her then, to take a final walk around Lo to say goodbye to the people I had spent my life with. Lo was more than a town. It was a family group. All the Oankali males and females were related in some way. All constructs were related except the few males who drifted in from other towns. All the ooloi had become part of Lo when they mated here. And any Human who stayed long in a relationship with an Oankali family was related more closely than most Humans realized.
It was hard to say goodbye to such people, to know that I might not see them again.
It was hard not to dare to touch them, not to allow them to touch me. But I would certainly do to some of them what I kept doing to Lo?change them, damage them as I kept changing and damaging myself. And because I was ooloi and construct, theoretically I could survive more damage than they could. I was to let Nikanj know if I touched anyone.
Everywhere I went, ooloi watched me with a terrible mixture of suspicion and hope, fear and need. If I didn?t learn control, how long would it be before they could have same-sex children? I could hurt them more than anyone else they knew. The sharp, attentive cones of their head tentacles followed me everywhere and weighed on me like logs. If there were anything I would be glad to be away from, it was their intense, sustained attention.
I went to our neighbor Tehkorahs, an ooloi whose Human mates were especially close to my Human parents. ?Do you think I should go into exile on the ship?? I asked it.
?Yes.? Its voice was softer than most soft ooloi voices. It preferred not to speak aloud at all. But signs were sterile without touch to supplement them, and even Tehkorahs would not touch me. That hurt because it was ooloi and safe from anything I was likely to do. ?Yes,? it repeated uncharacteristically.
?Why! You know me. I won?t touch people. And I?ll learn control.?
?If you can.?
?
yes.?
?There are resisters in the forest. If you?re out there long enough, they?ll find you.?
?Most of them have emigrated.?
?Many. Not most.?
?I won?t touch them.?
?Of course you will.?
I opened my mouth, then closed it in the face of Tehkorahs?s certainty. There was no reserve in it, no concealment. It was speaking what it believed was the truth.
After a time, it said, ?How hungry are you??
I didn?t answer It wasn?t asking me how badly I wanted food, but when I?d last been touched. Just before I would have walked away, it held out all four arms. I hesitated, then stepped into its embrace.
It was not afraid of me. It was a forest fire of curiosity, longing, and fear, and I stood comforted and reassured while it examined me with every sensory tentacle that could reach me and both sensory arms.
We fed each other. My hunger was to be touched and its was to know everything firsthand and understand it all. Observing it, I understood that it was looking mainly for reassurance of its own. It wanted to see from an understanding of my body that I would gain control. It wanted me to be a clear success so that it would know it would be allowed to have its own same-sex children. Soon.
When it let me go, it was still uncomprehending. ?You were very hungry,? it said. ?And that after only a day or two of being avoided.? It knotted its head and body tentacles hard against its flesh. ?You know something of what we can do, we ooloi, but I think you had no idea how much we need contact with other people. And you seem to need it more than we do. Spend more time with your paired sibling or you could become dangerous.?
?I don?t want to hurt Aaor.?
?Nikanj will heal it until you learn to. If you learn to.?
?I still don?t want to hurt it.?
?I don?t think you can do it much harm. Not being able to go to anyone for comfort, though, can make you like
