what the hell are you anyway??
?Construct. Oankali-Human mixture. Ooloi.?
?Ooloi
The mixed ones?male and female in one body.?
?We aren?t male or female.?
?So you say.? He sighed. ?Do you mean to hold me here all night??
?If I?m to heal you, I?ll have to.?
?Why are you here? You said your people would come eventually. What are you doing here now??
?Nothing harmful. Do you want hair??
?What??
I waited. He had heard the question. Now let him absorb it. Hair was easy. I could start it as an afterthought.
He put his head against my chest. ?I don?t understand,? he said. ?I don?t even understand
my own feelings.? Much later he said, ?Of course I want hair. And I want skin, not scales. I want hair, and I want height. I want to be a man!?
My first impulse was to point out that he was a man. His male organs were well developed. But I understood him. ?We?ll take you with us when we go,? I said.
And he was content. After a while, he slept. I never drugged him in the way ooloi usually drugged resisters. Once he had passed his first surprise and fear, he had accepted me much more quickly than Jesusa and TomAs had?but I had been only a subadult when I met them. And adult ooloi?a construct ooloi?ought to be able to handle Humans better. Or perhaps this man?I had not even asked his name, nor he mine?was particularly susceptible to the ooloi substance that I could not help injecting. In his Human way, he had been very hungry, starving, for any touch. How long had it been since anyone was willing to touch him?except perhaps to break his nose again. He would need an ooloi to steer him away from breaking a few noses himself once he was large enough to reach them. He had probably been treated badly. He did not veer from the Human norm in the same way as other people in the village, and Humans were genetically inclined to be intolerant of difference. They could overcome the inclination, but it was a reality of the Human conflict that they often did not. It was significant that this man was so ready to leave his home with someone he had been taught to think of as a devil?someone he hadn?t even seen yet.
8
By morning, I had given the cave Human a smooth, new skin and the beginnings of a full head of hair.
?It will take me longer to repair your nose,? I told him. ?When I have, though, you?ll be able to breathe better with your mouth closed.?
He took a deep breath through his mouth and stared at me, then looked at himself, then stared at me again. He rubbed a hand over the fuzz on his head, then held the hand in front of him and examined it. I had not allowed him to awaken until I?d gotten up myself, opened the door to the dawn, and found the short, thick gun he had been reaching for the night before. I had emptied it and thrown it off the mountain. Then I awoke the man.
Seeing me alarmed him, but he never once reached toward the hiding place of the gun.
?What?s your name?? I asked him.
?Santos.? His voice now was a harsh whisper rather than a harsh growl. ?Santos Ibarra Ruiz. How did you do this? How is it possible?? He rubbed the fingers of his right hand over his left arm and seemed to delight in the feel of it.
?Did you think you were dreaming last night?? I asked.
?I haven?t had time to think.?
?Who will come up here today??
He blinked. ?Here? No one.?
?Who will visit the cabin below??
?I don?t know. I lose track with them. Are you going down there??
?Eventually. Have your breakfast if you like.?
?What are you called??
?Jodahs.?
He nodded. ?I?ve heard that some of your kind had four arms. I didn?t believe it.?
?Ooloi have four arms.?
He stared for some time at my sensory arms, then asked, ?Are you really going to take me away with you and make me grow??
?Yes.?
He smiled, showing several bad teeth. I would fix those, too?have him shed them and grow more.
Later that morning we went down to the stone cabin. The male and female there were sharing their breakfast with Aaor. Santos and I startled them, but they seemed comfortably at home with Aaor. And Aaor looked better than it had since its first metamorphosis. It looked stable and secure in itself. It looked satisfied.
?Will they come with us?? I asked in Oankali.
?They?ll come,? it answered in Spanish. ?I?ve begun to heal them. I?ve told them about you.?
