Adulthood Rites Read Online Free PDF Page A

If you’re too tired for any of this now, say so, and we’ll save your party until tomorrow.”
    “You didn’t tell me I would have to entertain,” he said, staring at the inpouring of Humans, constructs, and Oankali.
    “You don’t have to. Do what you like.”
    “But …” He looked around helplessly, cringed away from an Oankali-born unsexed construct child who touched him with one of the sensory tentacles growing from its head.
    “Don’t scare him,” Akin told it from Lilith’s back. He spoke in Oankali. “There aren’t any of us where he comes from.”
    “Resister?” the child asked.
    “Yes. But I don’t think he means any harm. He didn’t try to hurt us.”
    “What does the kid want?” Tino asked.
    “It’s just curious about you,” Lilith told him. “Do you want to talk to these people while I put together a meal?”
    “I guess so. I’m not a good storyteller, though.”
    Lilith turned to the still gathering crowd. “All right,” she said loudly. And when they had quieted: “His name is Augustino Leal. He comes from a long way away, and he says he feels like talking.”
    People cheered.
    “If anyone wants to go home to get something to eat or drink, we’ll wait.”
    Several Humans and constructs left, ordering her not to let anything begin without them. An Oankali took Akin from her back. Dichaan. Akin flattened against him happily, sharing what he had learned of the new Human.
    “You like him?” Dichaan asked by way of tactile signals shaded with sensory images.
    “Yes. He’s a little afraid and dangerous. Mother had to take his weapon. But he’s mostly curious. He’s so curious he feels like one of us.”
    Dichaan projected amusement. Maintaining his sensory link with Akin, he watched Lilith give Tino something to drink. The man tasted the drink and smiled. People had gathered around him, sitting on the floor. Most of them were children, and this seemed to put him at ease in one way—he was no longer afraid—and excite him in another. His eyes focused on one child after another, examining the wide variety of them.
    “Will he try to steal someone?” Akin asked silently.
    “If he did, Eka, it would probably be you.” Dichaan softened the statement with amusement, but there was a seriousness beneath it that Akin did not miss. The man probably meant no harm, was probably not a child thief. But Akin should be careful, should not allow himself to be alone with Tino.
    People brought food, shared it among themselves and with Lilith as they accepted what she offered. They fed their own children and each other’s children as usual. A child who could walk could get bits of food anywhere.
    Lilith prepared Tino and her younger children dishes of flat cassava bread layered with hot scigee and quat alongside hot, spicy beans. There were slices of pineapple and papaya for dessert. She fed Akin small amounts of quat mixed with cassava. She did not let him nurse until she had settled down with everyone else to talk and listen to Tino.
    “They named our village Phoenix before my parents reached it,” Tino told them. “We weren’t original settlers. We came in half-dead from the forest—we’d eaten something bad, some kind of palm fruit. It was edible, all right, but only if you cooked it—and we hadn’t. Anyway, we stumbled in, and the people of Phoenix took care of us. I was the only child they had—the only Human child they’d seen since before the war. The whole village sort of adopted me because …” He stopped, glanced at a cluster of Oankali. “Well, you know. They wanted to find a little girl. They thought maybe the few kids who hadn’t gone through puberty before they were set free might be fertile together when they grew up.” He stared at the nearest Oankali, who happened to be Nikanj. “True or false?” he asked.
    “False,” Nikanj said softly. “We told them it was false. They chose not to believe.”
    Tino stared at Nikanj—gave it a look that Akin did not