Xenogenesis 02: Adulthood Rites by Butler Octavia E

Author:Butler, Octavia E. [Butler, Octavia E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Novel, Sci-Fi
Publisher: Unofficial e-book edition
Published: 1988-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

16

The salvage site that was their destination was a buried town. “Smashed and covered by the Oankali,” Gabe told Akin. “They didn’t want us living here and remembering what we used to be.”

Akin looked at the vast pit the salvage crew had dug over the years, excavating the town. It had not been wantonly smashed as Gabe believed. It had been harvested. One of the shuttles had partially consumed it. The small ship-entities fed whenever they could. There was no faster way to destroy a town than to land a shuttle on it and let the shuttle eat its fill. Shuttles could digest almost anything, including the soil itself. What the people of Phoenix were digging through were leavings. Apparently these were enough to satisfy their needs.

“We don’t even know what this place used to be called,” Gabe said bitterly.

Piles of metal, stone, and other materials lay scattered about. Salvagers were tying some things together with jute rope so that they could be carried. They all stopped their work, though, when they saw the party of newcomers. They gathered around first, shouting and greeting people by name, then falling silent as they noticed the three children.

Men and women, covered with sweat and dirt, clustered around to touch Akin and make baby-talk noises at him. He did not surprise them by speaking to them, although both girls were trying out their new English on their audience.

Gabe knelt down, slipped out of his pack, then lifted Akin free. “Don’t goo-goo at him,” he said to a dusty woman salvager who was already reaching for him. “He can talk as well as you can—and understand everything you say.”

“He’s beautiful!” the woman said. “Is he ours? Is he—”

“We got him in trade. He’s more Human-looking than the girls, but that probably doesn’t mean anything. He’s construct. He’s not a bad kid, though.”

Akin looked up at him, recognizing the compliment—the first he had ever received from Gabe, but Gabe had turned away to speak to someone else.

The salvager picked Akin up and held him so that she could see his face. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you a damn big hole in the ground. Why don’t you talk like your friends? You shy?”

“I don’t think so,” Akin answered.

The woman looked startled, then grinned. “Okay. Let’s go take a look at something that probably used to be a truck.”

The salvagers had hacked away thick, wild vegetation to dig their hole and to plant their crops along two sides of it, but the wild vegetation was growing back. People with hoes, shovels, and machetes had been clearing it away. Now they were talking with newly arrived Humans or getting acquainted with Amma and Shkaht. Three Humans trailed after the woman who carried Akin, talking to each other about him and occasionally talking to him.

“No tentacles,” one of them said, stroking his face. “So Human. So beautiful ”

Akin did not believe he was beautiful. These people liked him simply because he looked like them. He was comfortable with them, though.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.