They were both eating tubers now, and they seemed content to eat and not talk. That was surprising. Nervousness alone should have made at least one of them talkative. How many times had they sat alone in the forest at night with a scaly construct?
?Will you let me begin to heal you tonight?? I asked TomAs.
?Thank you for healing my neck,? TomAs said aloud while his entire body recoiled from me in tiny movements.
?It may fuse again if your disorder isn?t cured.?
He shrugged. ?It wasn?t that bad. Jesusa says it kept me working instead of looking around daydreaming.?
Jesusa touched his forearm and smiled. ?Nothing would keep you from daydreaming, brother.?
Brother? Not mate?or husband, as the Humans would say. ?Blindness will be bad,? I said. ?Deafness will be even worse.?
?Why do you say he?ll go blind or deaf?? Jesusa demanded. ?He may not. You don?t know.?
?Of course I know. I couldn?t touch him and not know. And I know there was a time when he could see out of his right eye and hear with his right ear. There was a time when the mass on his shoulder was smaller and his arm wasn?t involved at all. He will be blind and deaf and without the use of his right arm?and he knows it. So do you.?
There was a very long silence. I lay down on the cleared ground and closed my eyes. I could still see perfectly well, and most Humans knew it. Somehow, though, they felt more at ease when they were observed only with sensory tentacles. They felt unobserved.
?Why do you want to heal us?? Jesusa asked. ?You waylay us, feed us, and want to heal us. Why??
I opened my eyes. ?I was feeling very lonely,? I said. ?I would have been glad to see
almost anyone. But when I realized you had something wrong, I wanted to help. I need to help. I?m not an adult yet, but I can?t ignore illness. I?m ooloi.?
Their mild reaction surprised me. I expected anything from JoAo?s prejudiced rejection to actually running away into the forest. Only ooloi interacted directly with Humans and produced children. Only ooloi interacted directly with Humans in an utterly non-Human way.
And only ooloi needed to heal. Males and females could learn to heal if they wanted to. Ooloi had no choice. We exist to make the people and to unite them and to maintain them.
Jesusa grabbed TomAs?s hand and stared at me with terror. TomAs looked at her, touched his neck thoughtfully, and looked at her again. ?So it isn?t true, what they say,? he whispered.
She gave him a look more forceful than a scream.
He drew back a little, touched his neck again, and said nothing else.
?I had thought
? Jesusa?s voice shook and she paused for a moment. When she began again, the quiver was gone. ?I thought that all ooloi had four arms?two with bones and two without.?
?Strength arms and sensory arms,? I said. ?Sensory arms come with maturity. I?m not old enough to have them yet.?
?You?re a child? A child as big as an adult??
?I?m as big as I?ll get except for my sensory arms. But I still have to develop in other ways. I?m not exactly a child, though. Young children have no sex. They?re potentially any sex. I?m definitely ooloi?a subadult, or as my parents would say, an ooloi child.?
?Adolescent,? Jesusa decided.
?No. Human adolescents are sexually mature. They can reproduce. I can?t.? I said this to reassure them, but they didn?t seem to be reassured.
?How can you heal us if you?re just a kid?? TomAs asked.
I smiled. ?I?m old enough to do that.? My gaze seemed to confuse him, but it only annoyed her. She frowned at me. She would be the difficult one. I looked forward to touching her, learning her body, curing the disorder she never should have had. Some ooloi had wronged her and TomAs more than I would have imagined was possible.
I changed the subject abruptly. ?Tomorrow I?ll show you some of the things you can eat here in the forest. The tuber was one of many. If you keep moving, the forest will sustain you very comfortably.? I paused. ?Can you see well enough to make pallets for yourselves or will you sleep on the bare ground??
TomAs sighed and looked around. ?Bare ground, I suppose. We?ll do the local insects a good turn.? The pupil of his eye was large, but I doubted that he could see beyond the light of the fire. The moon had not yet risen, and starlight was useful to Humans only in boats on the rivers. Very little of it reached the forest understory.
I got up and stepped around the fire to them. ?Let me have your machete for a few moments.?
Jesusa grabbed TomAs?s arm to stop him, but he simply handed me the machete. I took it and went into the forest. Bamboo was plentiful in the area so I cut that and a few stalks from saplings. I would cover these with palm and wild banana leaves. I also took a stem of bananas. They could be cooked for breakfast. They weren?t ripe enough for Humans to eat raw. And there was a nut tree nearby?not to mention more tubers. All this so close, and yet TomAs had been very hungry when I touched him.
?You haven?t cut anything for yourself,? Jesusa said as I handed back the machete. It meant a great deal to her to get the knife back and to get a comfortable pallet to sleep on. She was still wary, but less obviously on edge.
?I?m used to the ground,? I said. ?No insect will bother me.?
?Why??
?I don?t smell good to them. I would taste even worse.?
