Read Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago (Xenogenesis Trilogy) for Free Online Page A

specific purpose.
    “You were wrong,” she said. She could not sustain her anger. She could not look at his tentacled, alien face and sustain anger—but she had to say the words. “You destroyed what wasn’t yours,” she said. “You completed an insane act.”
    “You are still alive,” he said.
    She walked beside him, silently ungrateful. Knee-high tufts of thick, fleshy leaves or tentacles grew from the soil. He stepped carefully to avoid them—which made her want to kick them. Only the fact that her feet were bare stopped her. Then she saw, to her disgust, that the leaves twisted or contracted out of the way if she stepped near one—like plants made up of snake-sized night crawlers. They seemed to be rooted to the ground. Did that make them plants?
    “What are those things?” she asked, gesturing toward one with a foot.
    “Part of the ship. They can be induced to produce a liquid we and our animals enjoy. It wouldn’t be good for you.”
    “Are they plant or animal?”
    “They aren’t separate from the ship.”
    “Well, is the ship plant or animal?”
    “Both, and more.”
    Whatever that meant. “Is it intelligent?”
    “It can be. That part of it is dormant now. But even so, the ship can be chemically induced to perform more functions than you would have the patience to listen to. It does a great deal on its own without monitoring. And it …” He fell silent for a moment, his tentacles smooth against his body. Then he continued, “The human doctor used to say it loved us. There is an affinity, but it’s biological—a strong, symbiotic relationship. We serve the ship’s needs and it serves ours. It would die without us and we would be planetbound without it. For us, that would eventually mean death.”
    “Where did you get it?”
    “We grew it.”
    “You … or your ancestors?”
    “My ancestors grew this one. I’m helping to grow another.”
    “Now? Why?”
    “We’ll divide here. We’re like mature asexual animals in that way, but we divide into three: Dinso to stay on Earth until it is ready to leave generations from now; Toaht to leave in this ship; and Akjai to leave in the new ship.”
    Lilith looked at him. “Some of you will go to Earth with us?”
    “I will, and my family and others. All Dinso.”
    “Why?”
    “This is how we grow—how we’ve always grown. We’ll take the knowledge of shipgrowing with us so that our descendants will be able to leave when the time comes. We couldn’t survive as a people if we were always confined to one ship or one world.”
    “Will you take … seeds or something?”
    “We’ll take the necessary materials.”
    “And those who leave—Toaht and Akjai—you’ll never see them again?”
    “I won’t. At some time in the distant future, a group of my descendants might meet a group of theirs. I hope that will happen. Both will have divided many times. They’ll have acquired much to give one another.”
    “They probably won’t even know one another. They’ll remember this division as mythology if they remember it at all.”
    “No, they’ll recognize one another. Memory of a division is passed on biologically. I remember every one that has taken place in my family since we left the homeworld.”
    “Do you remember your homeworld itself? I mean, could you get back to it if you wanted to?”
    “Go back?” His tentacles smoothed again. “No, Lilith, that’s the one direction that’s closed to us. This is our homeworld now.” He gestured around them from what seemed to be a glowing ivory sky to what seemed to be brown soil.
    There were many more of the huge trees around them now, and she could see people going in and out of the trunks—naked, gray Oankali, tentacled all over, some with two arms, some, alarmingly, with four, but none with anything she recognized as sexual organs. Perhaps some of the tentacles and extra arms served a sexual function.
    She examined every cluster of Oankali for humans, but saw none. At least none of