Its skin was deep gray. Patches of it still glistened with slime. Aaor could not walk very well. It was bipedal again, but very weak, and its coordination had not returned as it should have.
It was hairless.
It could not speak aloud.
Its hands were webbed flippers.
?It keeps slipping away,? Nikanj said. ?I?d brought it almost back to normal, but it has no control left. The moment I release it, it drifts toward a less complex form.?
It placed Aaor on the pallet we had prepared for it. TomAs had followed it in. Now he stood staring as Aaor?s body retreated further and further from what it should have been. Jesusa had not come in at all.
?Can you help it?? TomAs asked me.
?I don?t know,? I said. I lay down alongside it, saw that it was watching me. Its reconstructed eyes were not what they should have been either. They were too small. They protruded too much. But it could see with them. It was staring at my sensory arms. I wrapped them both around it, wrapped my strength arms around it as well.
It was deeply, painfully afraid, desperately lonely and hungry for a touch it could not have.
?Lie down behind me, TomAs,? I said, and saw with my sensory tentacles how he hesitated, how his throat moved when he swallowed. Yet he lay behind me, drew up close, and let me share him with Aaor as I had already shared him with Jesusa.
In spite of my efforts, there was no pleasure in the exercise. Something had gone seriously wrong with Aaor?s body, as Nikanj had said. It kept slipping away from me?simplifying its body. It had no control of itself, but like a rock rolling downhill, it had inertia. Its body ?wanted? to be less and less complex. If it had stayed unattended in the water for much longer, it would have begun to break down completely?individual cells each with its own seed of life, its own Oankali organelle. These might live for a while as single-cell organisms or invade the bodies of larger creatures at once, but Aaor as an individual would be gone. In a way, then, Aaor?s body was trying to commit suicide. I had never heard of any carrier of the Oankali organism doing such a thing. We treasured life. In my worst moments before I found Jesusa and TomAs, such dissolution had not occurred to me. I didn?t doubt that it would have happened eventually?not as something desirable, but as something inescapable, inevitable. We called our need for contact with others and our need for mates hunger. The word had not been chosen frivolously. One who could hunger could starve.
The people who had wanted me safely shut away on Chkahichdahk had been afraid not only of what my instability might cause me to do but of what my hunger might cause me to do. Dissolution had been one unspoken possibility. Dissolution in the river would be bound to affect?to infect?plants and animals. Infected animals would be drawn to areas like Lo, where ship organisms were growing. So would free-living cells be drawn to such places. Only a very few cells would end by causing trouble?causing diseases and mutations in plants, for instance.
Aaor wanted to continue living as Aaor. It tried to help me bring it back to a normal metamorphosis, but without words, I discouraged its efforts. It had not even enough control to help in its own restoration.
TomAs wanted desperately to withdraw from me and from Aaor. I put him to sleep and kept him with me. His presence would help Aaor whether he was conscious or not.
For a day and a half, the three of us lay together, forcing Aaor?s body to do what it no longer wanted to do. By the time TomAs and I got up to go to bathe and eat, Aaor looked almost as it had before it went away. Smooth brown skin, a sensory arm bud under each strength arm, a dusting of black hair on its head, fingers without webbing, speech.
?What am I going to do?? it asked just before we left it with Nikanj.
?We?ll take care of you,? I promised.
Without a word to each other, TomAs and I went to the river and scrubbed ourselves.
?I don?t ever want to do that again,? TomAs said as we emerged from the water.
I said nothing. The next day, as Aaor?s body shape began to change in the wrong way, TomAs and I did it again. He didn?t want to, but he looked at Aaor and me and reluctantly lay down alongside me.
The next time it happened, I called Jesusa. Afterward, at the river, she said, ?I feel as though I?ve been crawled over by a lot of slugs!?
Aaor?s body did not learn stability. Again and again, it had to be brought back from drifting toward dissolution. Working with Jesusa and TomAs, I could always bring it back, but I couldn?t hold it. Our work was never finished.
?Why does it always feel so disgusting?? Jesusa demanded after a long session. We had washed. Now three of us shared a meal?something we weren?t able to do very often.
?Two reasons,? I said. ?First, Aaor isn?t me. Mated people don?t want that kind of contact with ooloi who aren?t their mates. The reasons are biochemical.? I stopped. ?Aaor smells wrong and tastes wrong to you. I wish I could mask that for you, but I can?t.?
?We never touch it, and yet I feel it,? Jesusa said.
?Because it needs to feel you. I make you sleep because it doesn?t need to feel your revulsion. You can?t help feeling revulsion, I know, but Aaor doesn?t need to share it.?
?What?s the second reason?? TomAs asked.
I hugged myself with my strength arms. ?Aaor is ill. It should not keep sliding away from us the way it does. It should stabilize the way my siblings used to help me stabilize. But it can?t.? I looked at his face?thinner than it should have been, though he got plenty to eat. The effects of his sessions with Aaor were beginning to show. And Jesusa looked older than she should have. The vertical lines between her eyes had deepened and become set. When all this was over I would erase them.
She and TomAs looked at one another bleakly.
?What is it?? I asked.
Jesusa moved uncomfortably. ?What will happen to Aaor?? she asked. ?How long will we have to keep helping it??
