Octavia E. Butler by Adulthood Rites

Author:Adulthood Rites [Rites, Adulthood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, Alien Contact
ISBN: 9781453263686
Google: 1dduSHtg1zYC
Amazon: B008HALPTU
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-07-24T07:00:00+00:00

Akin awoke the next day still miserable, still frightened for his mother and lonely for his sibling. Yet he went to Tate and asked her to carry him for a while so that he could talk to her.

She picked him up at once and took him to the small, fast-running stream where the camp had gotten its water.

“Wash,” she said, “and talk to me here. I don’t want people watching the two of us whispering together.”

He washed and told her about Neci’s efforts to have Amma’s and Shkaht’s tentacles removed. “They would grow back,” he said. “And until they did, Shkaht wouldn’t be able to see at all or breathe properly. She would be very sick. She might die. Amma probably wouldn’t die, but she would be crippled. She wouldn’t be able to use any of her senses to their full advantage. She wouldn’t be able to recognize smells and tastes that should be familiar to her—as though she could touch them, but not grasp them—until her tentacles grew back. They would always grow back. And it would hurt her to have them cut off—maybe the way it would hurt you to have your eyes cut out.”

Tate sat on a fallen log, ignoring its fungi and its insects. “Neci has a way of convincing people,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I came to you.”

“Gabe said something to me about a little surgery on the girls. Are you sure it was Neci’s idea?”

“I heard her talking about it on the first night after we left Phoenix.”

“God.” Tate sighed. “And she won’t quit. She never quits. If the girls were older, I’d like to give her a knife and tell her to go try it.” She stared at Akin. “And since neither of those two is an ooloi, I assume that would be fatal to her. Wouldn’t it, Akin?”

“… yes.”

“What if the girls were unconscious?”

“It wouldn’t matter. Even if they … Even if they were dead and hadn’t been dead very long, their tentacles would still sting anyone who tried to cut them or pull them.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that instead of telling me how badly the girls would be hurt?”

“I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.”

“No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.”

“You’re going to tell them?”

“In a way. I’m going to tell them a story. Gabe and I once saw what happened to a man who injured an Oankali’s body tentacles. That was back on the ship. There are other people in Phoenix who remember, but none of them are with us here. Your mother was with us then, Akin, though I don’t intend to mention her.”

Akin looked away from her, stared across the stream bed, and wondered if his mother were still alive.

“Hey,” Tate said. “What’s the matter?”

“You should have taken me home,” he said bitterly. “You say you know my mother. You should have taken me back to her.

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