Adulthood Rites Read Free

have a sister to grow up with—a sister but not an ooloi sibling. Why? He wondered whether the child inside Ahajas would become ooloi, but Ahajas and Nikanj both assured him it would not. And they would not tell him how they knew. So this sibling should become a sister. It would take years to develop sexually, but he already thought of it as “she.”
    Dichaan usually took him once Ahajas had returned him to Lilith and Lilith had fed him. Dichaan taught him about strangers.
    First there were his older siblings, some born to Ahajas and becoming more Human, and some born to Lilith and becoming more Oankali. There were also children of older siblings, and finally, frighteningly, unrelated people. Akin could not understand why some of the unrelated ones were more like Lilith than Joseph had been. And none of them were like Joseph.
    Dichaan read Akin’s unspoken confusion.
    “The differences you perceive between Humans—between groups of Humans—are the result of isolation and inbreeding, mutation, and adaptation to different Earth environments,” he said, illustrating each concept with quick multiple images. “Joseph and Lilith were born in very different parts of this world—born to long separated peoples. Do you understand?”
    “Where are Joseph’s kind?” Akin asked aloud.
    “Now there are villages of them to the southwest. They’re called Chinese.”
    “I want to see them.”
    “You will. You can travel to them when you’re older.” He ignored Akin’s rush of frustration. “And someday I’ll take you to the ship. You’ll be able to see Oankali differences, too.” He gave Akin an image of the ship—a vast sphere made up of huge, still-growing, many-sided plates like the shell of a turtle. In fact, it was the outer shell of a living being. “There,” Dichaan said, “you’ll see Oankali who will never come to Earth or trade with Humans. For now, they tend the ship in ways that require a different physical form.” He gave Akin an image, and Akin thought it resembled a huge caterpillar.
    Akin projected silent questioning.
    “Speak aloud,” Dichaan told him.
    “Is it a child?” Akin asked, thinking of the changes caterpillars underwent.
    “No. It’s adult. It’s larger than I am.”
    “Can it talk?”
    “In images, in tactile, bioelectric, and bioluminescent signals, in pheromones, and in gestures. It can gesture with ten limbs at once. But its throat and mouth parts won’t produce speech. And it is deaf. It must live in places where there is a great deal of noise. My parents’ parents had that shape.”
    This seemed terrible to Akin—Oankali forced to live in an ugly form that did not even allow them to hear or speak.
    “What they are is as natural to them as what you are is to you,” Dichaan told him. “And they are much closer to the ship than we can be. They’re companions to it, knowing its body better than you know your own. When I was a little older than you are now, I wanted to be one of them. They let me taste a little of their relationship with the ship.”
    “Show me.”
    “Not yet. It’s a very powerful thing. I’ll show you when you’re a little older.”
    Everything was to happen when he was older. He must wait! He must always wait! In frustration, Akin had stopped speaking. He could not help hearing and remembering all that Dichaan told him, but he would not speak to Dichaan again for days.
    Yet it was Dichaan who began leaving him in the care of his older sisters, letting him begin to investigate them—while they thoroughly investigated him. His favorite among them was Margit. She was six years old—too small to carry him long, but he was content to ride on her back or sit on her lap for as long as she could handle him comfortably. She did not have sensory tentacles like his Oankali-born sisters, but she had clusters of sensitive nodules that would probably be tentacles when she grew up. She could match some of these to the smooth, invisible sensory patches on his