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

the Oankali came near her or seemed to pay any attention to her. Some of them, she noticed with a shudder, had tentacles covering every inch of their heads all around. Others had tentacles in odd, irregular patches. None had quite Jdahya’s humanlike arrangement—tentacles placed to resemble eyes, ears, hair. Had Jdahya’s work with humans been suggested by the chance arrangement of his head tentacles or had he been altered surgically or in some other way to make him seem more human?
    “This is the way I have always looked,” he said when she asked, and he would not say any more on the subject.
    Minutes later they passed near a tree and she reached out to touch its smooth, slightly giving bark—like the walls of her isolation room, but darker-colored. “These trees are all buildings, aren’t they?” she asked.
    “These structures are not trees,” he told her. “They’re part of the ship. They support its shape, provide necessities for us—food, oxygen, waste disposal, transport conduits, storage and living space, work areas, many things.”
    They passed very near a pair of Oankali who stood so close together their head tentacles writhed and tangled together. She could see their bodies in clear detail. Like the others she had seen, these were naked. Jdahya had probably worn clothing only as a courtesy to her. For that she was grateful.
    The growing number of people they passed near began to disturb her, and she caught herself drawing closer to Jdahya as though for protection. Surprised and embarrassed, she made herself move away from him. He apparently noticed.
    “Lilith?” he said very quietly.
    “What?”
    Silence.
    “I’m all right,” she said. “It’s just … so many people, and so strange to me.”
    “Normally, we don’t wear anything.”
    “I’d guessed that.”
    “You’ll be free to wear clothing or not as you like.”
    “I’ll wear it!” She hesitated. “Are there any other humans Awake where you’re taking me?”
    “None.”
    She hugged herself tightly, arms across her chest. More isolation.
    To her surprise, he extended his hand. To her greater surprise, she took it and was grateful.
    “Why can’t you go back to your homeworld?” she asked. “It … still exists, doesn’t it?”
    He seemed to think for a moment. “We left it so long ago … I doubt that it does still exist.”
    “Why did you leave?”
    “It was a womb. The time had come for us to be born.”
    She smiled sadly. “There were humans who thought that way—right up to the moment the missiles were fired. People who believed space was our destiny. I believed it myself.”
    “I know—though from what the ooloi have told me, your people could not have fulfilled that destiny. Their own bodies handicapped them.”
    “Their … our bodies? What do you mean? We’ve been into space. There’s nothing about our bodies that prevented—”
    “Your bodies are fatally flawed. The ooloi perceived this at once. At first it was very hard for them to touch you. Then you became an obsession with them. Now it’s hard for them to let you alone.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics. Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species. But the two together are lethal. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed you.”
    She shook her head. “If you’re saying we were genetically programmed to do what we did, blow ourselves up—”
    “No. Your people’s situation was more like your own with the cancer my relative cured. The cancer was small. The human doctor said you would probably have recovered and been well even if humans had discovered it and removed it at that stage. You might have lived the rest of your life free of it, though she said she would have wanted you checked regularly.”
    “With my family history, she wouldn’t have had to tell me that last.”
    “Yes. But what if you hadn’t recognized the significance of