Adulthood Rites Read Online Free PDF

understand. The look was not threatening, but Nikanj drew its body tentacles up slightly into the beginnings of a prestrike threat gesture. Humans called it knotting up or getting knotty. They knew it meant getting angry or otherwise upset. Few of them realized it was also a reflexive, potentially lethal gesture. Every sensory tentacle could sting. The ooloi could also sting with their sensory arms. But at least they could sting without killing. Male and female Oankali and constructs could only kill. Akin could kill with his tongue. This was one of the first things Nikanj had taught him not to do. Let alone, he might have discovered his ability by accident and killed Lilith or some other Human. The thought of this had frightened him at first, but he no longer worried about it. He had never seen anyone sting anyone.
    Even now, Nikanj’s body language indicated only mild upset. But why should Tino upset it at all? Akin began to watch Nikanj instead of Tino. As Tino spoke, all of Nikanj’s long head tentacles swung around to focus on him. Nikanj was intensely interested in this newcomer. After a moment, it got up and made its way over to Lilith. It took Akin from her arms.
    Akin had finished nursing and now flattened obligingly against Nikanj, giving what he knew Nikanj wanted: genetic information about Tino. In trade, he demanded to have explained the feelings Nikanj had expressed with its indrawn sensory tentacles.
    In silent, vivid images and signals, Nikanj explained. “That one wanted to stay with us when he was a child. We couldn’t agree to keep him, but we hoped he would come to us when he was older.”
    “You knew him then?”
    “I handled his conditioning. He spoke only Spanish then. Spanish is one of my Human languages. He was only eight years old and not afraid of me. I didn’t want to let him go. Everyone knew his parents would run when we released them. They would become resisters and perhaps die in the forest. But I couldn’t get a consensus. We aren’t good at raising Human children, so no one wanted to break up the family. And even I didn’t want to force them all to stay with us. We had prints of them. If they died or kept resisting we could fashion genetic copies of them to be born to trader Humans. They wouldn’t be lost to the gene pool. We decided that might have to be enough.”
    “Tino recognized you?”
    “Yes, but in a very Human way, I think. I don’t believe he understands why I caught his attention. He doesn’t have complete access to memory.”
    “I don’t understand that.”
    “It’s a Human thing. Most Humans lose access to old memories as they acquire new ones. They know how to speak, for instance, but they don’t recall learning to speak. They keep what experience has taught them—usually—but lose the experience itself. We can retrieve it for them—enable them to recall everything—but for many of them, that would only create confusion. They would remember so much that their memories would distract them from the present.”
    Akin received an impression of a dazed Human whose mind so overflowed with the past that every new experience triggered the reliving of several old ones, and those triggered others.
    “Will I get that way?” he asked fearfully.
    “Of course not. No construct is that way. We were careful.”
    “Lilith isn’t that way, and she remembers everything.”
    “Natural ability, plus some changes I made. She was chosen very carefully.”
    “How did Tino find you again? Did you bring him here before you let him go? Did he remember?”
    “This place didn’t exist when we let his family and a few others go. He was probably following the river. Did he have a canoe?”
    “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
    “If you follow the river and keep your eyes open, you’ll find villages.”
    “He found Mother and me.”
    “He’s Human—and he’s a resister. He wouldn’t want to just walk into a village. He would want to have a look at it first. And he