Humans to live in the forest. None of them had liked it. Now they were headed for the real thing? because of me.
Sometime during the afternoon, Aaor?s underarms began to itch and hurt. By the time it went to Nikanj for healing, swellings had begun to appear. I had apparently caused Aaor?s unsexed, immature body to try to grow sensory arms. Instead, it was growing potentially dangerous tumors.
?I?m sorry,? I said when Nikanj had finished with it.
?Just figure out what you did wrong,? it said unhappily. ?Find out how to avoid doing it again.?
That was the problem. I hadn?t been aware of doing anything to Aaor. If I had felt myself doing it, I would have stopped myself. I thought I had been careful. I was like a blind Human, trampling what I could not see. But a blind Human?s eyesight could be restored. What I was missing was something I had never had?or at least, something I had never discovered.
?Learn as quickly as you can so we can go home,? Aaor said.
I focused on the trail ahead?on scenting or hearing strangers. I couldn?t think of anything to say.
7
The island should have been three days? walk upriver. We thought we might make it in five days, since we had to circle around Pascual, an unusually hostile riverine resister settlement. People from Pascual were probably the ones who had destroyed Lilith?s garden. Now we would go far out of our way to avoid repaying them. Too many of them might not survive contact with me.
We never thought we were in danger from Pascual because its people knew better than most resisters what happened to anyone who attacked us. Their village, already shrunken by emigration, would be gassed, and the attackers hunted out by scent. They would be found and exiled to the ship. There, if they had killed, they would be kept either unconscious or drugged to pleasure and contentment. They would never be allowed to awaken completely. They would be used as teaching aids, subjects for biological experiments, or reservoirs of Human genetic material. The people of Pascual knew this, and thus committed only what Lilith called property crimes. They stole, they burned, they vandalized. They had not come as close to Lo as the garden before. They had confined their attentions to travelers.
We did not understand how extreme their behavior had become until we met some of them on our first night away from Lo. We stopped walking at dusk, cooked and ate some of the food Lilith and Tino had brought, and hung our hammocks between trees. We didn?t bother erecting a shelter, since the adults agreed that it wasn?t going to rain.
Only Nikanj cleared a patch of ground and spread its hammock on the bare earth. Because of the connections it had to make with sensory arms and tentacles, it was not comfortable sharing a hanging hammock with anyone. It wanted us to feel free to come to it with whatever wounds, aches, or pains we had developed. It gestured to me first, though I had not intended to go to it at all.
?Come every night until you learn to control your abilities,? it told me. ?Observe what I do with you. Don?t drowse.?
?All right.?
It could not heal without giving pleasure. People tended simply to relax and enjoy themselves with it. Instead, this time I observed, as it wished, saw it investigate me almost cell by cell, correcting the flaws it found?flaws I had not noticed. It was as though I had gained an understanding of the complexity of the outside world and lost even my child?s understanding of my inner self. I used to notice quickly when something was wrong. Now my worst problem was uncontrolled, unnecessary cell division. Cancers. They began and grew very quickly?many, many times faster than they could have in a Human. I was supposed to be able to control and use them in myself and in others. Instead, I couldn?t even spot my own when they began. And they began with absolutely no conscious encouragement from me.
?Do you see?? Nikanj asked.
?Yes. But I didn?t before you showed me.?
?I?ve left one.?
I hunted for it and after some time found it growing in my throat, where it would surely kill me if it were allowed to continue. I did not readjust the genetic message of the cells and deactivate the part that was in error. That was what Nikanj had done to the others, but I did not trust my ability to follow its example. I might accidentally reprogram other genes. Instead, I destroyed the few malignant cells.
Then I put my head against Nikanj, let my head tentacles link with its own. I spoke to it silently.
?I?m not learning. I don?t know what to do.?
?Wait.?
?I don?t want to keep being dangerous, hurting Aaor, being afraid of myself.?
?Give yourself time. You?re a new kind of being. There?s never been anyone like you before. But there?s no flaw in you. You just need time to find out more about yourself.?
Its certainty fed me. I rested against it for a while, enjoying the easy, safe contact?my only one now. It nudged me after a while, and I went back to my hammock. Lilith was lying with it when the resisters made themselves known to us.
First they screamed. A female Human screamed again and again, first cursing someone, then begging, then making hoarse, wordless noises. There were also male voices?at least three of them shouting, laughing, cursing.
?Real and not real,? Dichaan said when the screaming began.
?What is it?? Oni demanded.
?The female is being hurt now,? Nikanj said. ?And she?s afraid. But something is wrong about this. Her first screams were false. She was not afraid then.?
?If she?s being hurt now, that?s enough!? Tino said. He was on his feet, staring at Nikanj, his posture all urgency and anger.
