He stood still for a moment, then abruptly tried to wrench free. I held him because his body language told me that he wanted to be held more than he wanted to be let go. He was afraid and confused and ashamed and powerfully drawn to the idea of potential Oankali mates.
After his first effort, he would not shame himself by continuing to struggle against me. I let him go when he truly wanted it. Then I took his right hand loosely and led him back toward Ahajas, who waited with a mated group of strangers?three Oankali. Francisco began to sweat.
?I would give anything at all to have you instead,? he told me.
?You already have all I can give you,? I said. ?If you like these new people, their ooloi can give you much more.? I paused. ?Do you think Inez will consent to have her fertility restored? Maybe she?s tired of having children.?
He laughed, momentarily decreasing the level of his tension. ?She?s been after me to see whether I could get you to make changes in us. She wants to have at least one child with me.?
?A construct child??
?I don?t know?although if I?m willing after resisting for a century
?
?Take these new people up to see her. Talk to her, and to them.?
He stopped me, turned me to face him. ?You?ve done this to me,? he said. ?I would have gone to Mars.?
I said nothing.
?I can?t even hate you,? he whispered. ?My god, if there had been people like you around a hundred years ago, I couldn?t have become a resister. I think there would be no resisters.? He stared at me a moment longer. ?Damn you,? he said slowly, sadly. ?Goddamn you.? He walked past me and went to Ahajas and the waiting Oankali family.
?They are your ooan relatives,? Lilith said, and I looked at her with amazement. She had somehow managed to approach me without my noticing.
?You were preoccupied,? she said. She wanted very much to touch me and made no effort to hide it. She looked at me hungrily. ?You and Aaor are beautiful,? she said. ?Are you both really all right??
?We are. We need Oankali mates, but other than that we?re fine.?
?And that man, Francisco, is he typical of the people here??
?He?s one of the old ones. The first one I met.?
?And he loves you.?
?As you said once: pheromones.?
?At first, no doubt. By now, he loves you.?
?
yes.?
?Like JoAo. Like Marina. You have a strange gift, Lelka.?
I changed the subject abruptly. ?Did you say those people with Francisco were my ooan relatives? Nikanj?s relatives??
?Nikanj?s parents.?
I turned to look at them, remembering their names. I had heard them all my life. The ooloi was Kahguyaht, large for an ooloi?as big as Lilith, who was large for a Human female. Kahguyaht had not given such large size to Nikanj. Its male mate, Jdahya, was of an ordinary size. The placement of his sensory tentacles gave him an oddly Human look. They hung from his head like hair. They were placed on his face in a way that could be mistaken for Human eyes, ears, nose. He was the first Oankali Lilith had ever met. She was looking at him now and smiling. ?Francisco will like him,? she said.
Francisco would like them all if he let himself. He was talking now with Tediin, Kahguyaht?s huge female mate?again, bigger than average. She did not look in the slightest Human. He was laughing at something she had said.
?There are people waiting to meet you, Jodahs,? Lilith said.
Oh, yes. They were waiting to meet me and examine me and decide whether I should be allowed to go on running around loose. They were already meeting Aaor.
Three ooloi were investigating Aaor. Two waited to meet me. My ooan parents would be busy for a while with Francisco, but these others must be satisfied. I went to them wearily.
15
It wasn?t bad being examined by so many. It wasn?t uncomfortable. After a time even my ooan family left Francisco to poke and probe us. They took us into the shuttle. Through the shuttle, Oankali and constructs of all sexes could make easy, fast, nonverbal contact with us and with one another. The group had the shuttle fly out of the canyon and up as high as necessary to communicate with the ship. The ship transmitted our messages and those of its own inhabitants to the lowland towns and their messages to us. In that way, the people came together for the second time to share knowledge of construct ooloi who should not exist, and to decide what to do with us.
The shuttle left children and most Humans back in the canyon. Both could have come and participated through their ooloi, but for them the experience would be jarring and disorienting. Everything was too intense, went too fast, was, for the Humans, too alien. Linking into the nervous system of a shuttle, a ship, or a town even through an ooloi was, according to Lilith, one of the worst experiences of her life. Yet she and Tino went up with us, and absorbed what they could of the complex exchange.
The demands of the lowlanders and the people of the ship were surprisingly easy for me to absorb and understand. I could handle the intensity and the complexity. What I wasn?t sure I could handle was the result. The
