Xenogesis Triology

Notes

The three books in Octavia Butler's Xenogesis Trilogy are:

• Book 1 - Dawn
• Book 2 - Adulthood Rites
• Book 3 - Imago

This trilogy was incredible. Where to even begin?

Quotes

Dawn

Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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Opening and closing her jacket, her hand touched the long scar across her abdomen. She had acquired it somehow between her second and third Awakenings, had examined it fearfully, wondering what had been done to her. What had she lost or gained, and why? And what else might be done? She did not own herself any longer. Even her flesh could be cut and stitched without her consent or knowledge. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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So she refused them, gave them no answers, ignored the tests, physical and mental, that they tried to put her through. She did not know what they would do to her. She was terrified that she would be hurt, punished. But she felt she had to risk bargaining, try to gain something, and her only currency was cooperation. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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We collected as many as we could. The ones we didn’t find in time died of injury, disease, hunger, radiation, cold. … We found them later.” She believed him. Humanity in its attempt to destroy itself had made the world unlivable. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“I can only say that your people have something we value. You may begin to know how much we value it when I tell you that by your way of measuring time, it has been several million years since we dared to interfere in another people’s act of self-destruction. Many of us disputed the wisdom of doing it this time. We thought … that there had been a consensus among you, that you had agreed to die.” “No species would do that!” “Yes. Some have. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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He let her hide there for a while, let her wash and be alone and wallow in self-pity and self-contempt. She could not remember ever having been so continually afraid, so out of control of her emotions. Jdahya had done nothing, yet she cowered. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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My relative examined you, observed a few of your normal body cells, compared them with what it had learned from other humans most like you, and said you had not only a cancer, but a talent for cancer.” “I wouldn’t call it a talent. A curse, maybe. But how could your relative know about that from just … observing.” “Maybe perceiving would be a better word,” he said. “There’s much more involved than sight. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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She tried to imagine herself surrounded by beings like him and was almost overwhelmed by panic. As though she had suddenly developed a phobia—something she had never before experienced. But what she felt was like what she had heard others describe. A true xenophobia—and apparently she was not alone in it. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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After … however many days it had been, she felt none of the old panic; only relief at somehow having finally shed it. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Back into your cage, Lilith?” Jdahya asked softly. She stared at him through the hole, realized at once that he was trying to provoke her, make her overcome her fear. It would not have worked if he had not been so right. She was retreating into her cage—like a zoo animal that had been shut up for so long that the cage had become home. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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Your diet in particular encouraged your body not to grow cancers while your genetic inclination to grow them was corrected.” “It has been corrected, then?” “Yes. Correcting genes have been inserted into your cells, and your cells have accepted and replicated them. Now you won’t grow cancers by accident.” That, she thought, was an odd qualification, but she let it pass for the moment. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“We’ve strengthened your immune system, increased your resistance to disease in general.” “How? Something else done to our genes?” He said nothing. She let the silence lengthen until she was certain he would not answer. This was one more thing they had done to her body without her consent and supposedly for her own good. “We used to treat animals that way,” she muttered bitterly. “What?” he said. “We did things to them—inoculations, surgery, isolation—all for their own good. We wanted them healthy and protected—sometimes so we could eat them later. “ His tentacles did not flatten to his body, but she got the impression he was laughing at her. “Doesn’t it frighten you to say things like that to me?” he asked. “No,” she said. “It scares me to have people doing things to me that I don’t understand.” “You’ve been given health. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Why can’t you go back to your homeworld?” she asked. “It … still exists, doesn’t it?” He seemed to think for a moment. “We left it so long ago … I doubt that it does still exist.” “Why did you leave?” “It was a womb. The time had come for us to be born.” 
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She smiled sadly. “There were humans who thought that way—right up to the moment the missiles were fired. People who believed space was our destiny. I believed it myself.” “I know—though from what the ooloi have told me, your people could not have fulfilled that destiny. Their own bodies handicapped them.” “Their … our bodies? What do you mean? We’ve been into space. There’s nothing about our bodies that prevented—” “Your bodies are fatally flawed. The ooloi perceived this at once. At first it was very hard for them to touch you. Then you became an obsession with them. Now it’s hard for them to let you alone.” “What are you talking about?” “You have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics. Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species. But the two together are lethal. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed you.” 
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What if we or the humans hadn’t discovered the cancer?” “It was malignant, I assume.” “Of course.” “Then I suppose it would eventually have killed me.” “Yes, it would have. And your people were in a similar position. If they had been able to perceive and solve their problem, they might have been able to avoid destruction. Of course, they too would have to remember to reexamine themselves periodically.” “But what was the problem? You said we had two incompatible characteristics. What were they?” Jdahya made a rustling noise that could have been a sigh, but that did not seem to come from his mouth or throat. “You are intelligent,” he said. “That’s the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we’ve found, though your focus is different from ours. Still, you had a good start in the life sciences, and even in genetics.” “What’s the second characteristic?” “You are hierarchical. That’s the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It’s a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all …” The rattling sounded again. “That was like ignoring cancer. I think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were doing.” 
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“We do what you would call genetic engineering. We know you had begun to do it yourselves a little, but it’s foreign to you. We do it naturally. We must do it. It renews us, enables us to survive as an evolving species instead of specializing ourselves into extinction or stagnation.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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I don’t care what you do with what you’ve already learned—how you apply it to yourselves—but leave us out of it. Just let us go. If we have the problem you think we do, let us work it out as human beings.” “We are committed to the trade,” he said, softly implacable. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Oh god,” she whispered. “Why didn’t I do it? Why can’t I do it?” He stood up and waited uncomplaining for several minutes until she dragged herself to her feet. “You’ll meet my mates and one of my children now,” he said. “Then rest and food, Lilith.” She looked at him, longing for a human expression. “Would you have done it?” she asked. “Yes,” he said. “Why?” “For you.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Before we found these plants,” Kahguyaht said, “they used to capture living animals and keep them alive for a long while, using their carbon dioxide and supplying them with oxygen while slowly digesting nonessential parts of their bodies: limbs, skin, sensory organs. The plants even passed some of their own substance through their prey to nourish the prey and keep it alive as long as possible. And the plants were enriched by the prey’s waste products. They gave a very, very long death. Lilith swallowed. “Did the prey feel what was being done to it?” “No. That would have hastened death. The prey … slept.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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Its tentacles smoothed flat against its body briefly, then it took her hand and would have opened the wall and led her out but she stopped it. “Can you show me how to make it open?” she asked. The child hesitated, then took one of her hands and brushed it over the forest of its long head tentacles, leaving the hand slightly wet. Then it touched her fingers to the wall, and the wall began to open. More programmed reaction to chemical stimuli. No special areas to press, no special series of pressures. Just a chemical the Oankali manufactured within their bodies. She would go on being a prisoner, forced to stay wherever they chose to leave her. She would not be permitted even the illusion of freedom. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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Second, she wanted to catch an Oankali in a lie. Any Oankali. Any lie. But she saw no sign of other humans. And the closest she came to catching the Oankali lying was to catch them in half-truths—though they were honest even about this. They freely admitted that they would tell her only part of what she wanted to know. Beyond this, the Oankali seemed to tell the truth as they perceived it, always. This left her with an almost intolerable sense of hopelessness and helplessness—as though catching them in lies would make them vulnerable. As though it would make the thing they intended to do less real, easier to deny. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“You can do what you’re doing with your fingers,” it told her. “That’s not enough. I need to be able to keep my writing … to study it. I need—” “No.” She stopped in midsentence, blinked at it. “This isn’t anything dangerous,” she said. “Some of your people must have seen our books, tapes, disks, films—our records of history, medicine, language, science, all kinds of things. I just want to make my own records of your language.” “I know about the … records your people kept. I didn’t know what they were called in English, but I’ve seen them. We’ve saved many of them and learned to use them to know humans better. I don’t understand them, but others do.” “May I see them?” “No. None of your people are permitted to see them.” “Why?” It did not answer. “Nikanj?” Silence. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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She let it go on, not questioning when she did not understand, not wanting to care. The idea of Oankali blending with a species of intelligent, schooling, fishlike creatures was fascinating, but she was too angry to give it her full attention. Writing materials. Such small things, and yet they were denied to her. Such small things! 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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She looked at its tightly contracted body tentacles and decided it did not look happy. It really was concerned over her failure to learn quickly and retain everything. “Are you going to let me have writing materials?” she asked. “No. It will be done our way. Not yours.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“I’m growing up,” it told her. “Ooan wants me to hurry with you so that you can be given your work and I can mate.” “You mean … the faster I learn, the sooner you mate?” “Yes. Until I have taught you, shown that I can teach you, I won’t be considered ready to mate.” There it was. She was not just its experimental animal. She was, in some way she did not fully understand, its final exam. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Helped raise them,” Lilith said, “or helped rear them.” “… rear?” “The word has multiple meanings.” “Oh. There’s no logic to such things.” “There probably is, but you’d need an etymologist to explain it. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Ooan wanted me to act and say nothing … to … surprise you. I won’t do that.” “What!” “I must make small changes—a few small changes. I must help you reach your memories as you need them.” “What do you mean? What is it you want to change?” “Very small things. In the end, there will be a tiny alteration in your brain chemistry.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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How much did sex determine personality among the Oankali? She shook her head. Stupid question. She did not know how much sex determined personality even among human beings. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Nikanj, do you ever build machinery? Tamper with metal and plastic instead of living things?” “We do that when we have to. We … don’t like it. There’s no trade.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“I had natural childbirth,” she said. “It wasn’t any fun, but it went okay.” “What do you mean? No painkiller?” “None. No hospital either. Just something called a birthing center—a place for pregnant women who don’t like the idea of being treated as though they were sick.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“He was content with his Oankali family until he met you.” “What did he know? You never let him see anybody else!” “It wasn’t necessary. His family took care of him.” She stared at it, feeling more strongly than ever, the difference between them—the unbridgeable alienness of Nikanj. 
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“His family thought you should have mated with him,” it said. “They knew you wouldn’t stay with him permanently, but they believed you would share sex with him at least once.” Share sex, she thought sadly. Where had it picked up that expression? She had never said it. She liked it, though. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“Your people called it birth control. You are slightly changed. It was done while you slept, as it was done to all humans at first. It will be undone eventually.” “When?” she asked bitterly. “When you’re ready to breed me?” “No. When you’re ready. Only then.” “Who decides? You?” “You, Lilith. You.” Its sincerity confused her. 
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“He had a right to know!” “Knowing frightened him and made him miserable. You discovered one of his fears—that perhaps one of his female relatives had survived and been impregnated with his sperm. He’s been told that this did not happen. Sometimes he believes; sometimes he doesn’t.” 
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“What we’ve preserved of you isn’t living tissue. It’s memory. A gene map, your people might call it—though they couldn’t have made one like those we remember and use. It’s more like what they would call a mental blueprint. A plan for the assembly of one specific human being: You. A tool for reconstruction.” It let her digest this, said nothing more to her for several minutes. So few humans could do that—just let someone have a few minutes to think. 
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Now she could keep herself occupied until someone decided it was time to send her off to the work she did not want and could not do—the work that would probably get her killed. How many more Paul Tituses could she survive, after all? 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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What is this mark? What will it do to me?” “No harm. You’ll want to avoid deep contact—contact that involves penetration of the flesh—with other ooloi, you understand? Perhaps for a while after Nikanj matures, you’ll want to avoid all contact with most people. Follow your feelings. People will understand.” “But … how long will it last?” “It’s different with humans. Some linger in the avoidance stage much longer than we would. The longest I’ve known it to last is forty days.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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She had learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones whose memories might overwhelm her. 
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“I wonder.” “What?” “Human beings are more alike than different—damn sure more alike than we like to admit. I wonder if the same thing wouldn’t have happened eventually, no matter which two cultures gained the ability to wipe one another out along with the rest of the world.” Lilith gave a bitter laugh. “You might like it here. The Oankali think a lot like you do.” Tate turned away, suddenly disturbed. 
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“Wonderful,” Tate muttered bitterly. “We’re on our own.” “Exactly.” Tate shook her head. “I don’t know whether I should be shedding the constraints of civilization and getting ready to fight for my life or keeping and enhancing them for the sake of our future.” “We’ll do what’s necessary,” Lilith said. “Sooner or later, that will probably mean fighting for our lives.” “I hope you’re wrong,” Tate said. “What have we learned if all we can do now is go on fighting among ourselves?” 
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“Pointless,” Lilith said. “Not hard. I lived in those memories for my two years of solitary. By the time the Oankali showed up in my room, I was ready to move into the present and stay there. My life before was a lot of groping around, looking for I-didn’t-know-what. 
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“We … do need you.” Nikanj spoke so softly that Joseph leaned forward to hear. “A partner must be biologically interesting, attractive to us, and you are fascinating. You are horror and beauty in rare combination. In a very real way, you’ve captured us, and we can’t escape. But you’re more than only the composition and the workings of your bodies. You are your personalities, your cultures. We’re interested in those too. That’s why we saved as many of you as we could.” 
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“Those of us who survive this room and the training room.” “Those of you who survive.” “You could have done this another way!” “We’ve tried other ways. This way is best. There is incentive not to do harm. No one who has killed or severely injured another will set foot on Earth again.” “They’ll be kept here?” “For the rest of their lives.” “Even …” Joseph glanced at Lilith, then faced Nikanj again. “Even if the killing is in self-defense?” “She is exempt,” Nikanj said. “What?” “She knows. We’ve given her abilities that at least one of you must have. They make her different, and therefore they make her a target. It would be self-defeating for us to forbid her to defend herself.” “Nikanj,” Lilith said, and when she saw that she had its attention she spoke in Oankali. “Exempt him.” “No.” Flat refusal. That was that, and she knew it. 
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“All that and you only screamed once,” it told her. “How’d you let me do even that?” she asked. “You surprised me. I’ve never made you scream before.” She let it withdraw from her throat, then moved languidly to stroke it. “How much of that experience was Joseph’s and mine?” she asked. “How much did you make up?” “I’ve never made up an experience for you,” it said. “I won’t have to for him either. You both have memories filled with experiences.” “That was a new one.” “A combination. You had your own experiences and his. He had his and yours. You both had me to keep it going much longer than it would have otherwise. The whole was … overwhelming.” She looked around. “Joseph?” “Asleep. Very deeply asleep. I didn’t induce it. He’s tired. He’s all right, though.” “He … felt everything I felt?” “On a sensory level. Intellectually, he made his interpretations and you made yours.” “I wouldn’t call them intellectual.” “You understand me.” “Yes.” She moved her hand over its chest, taking a perverse pleasure in feeling its tentacles squirm, then flatten under her hand. “Why do you do that?” it asked. “Does it bother you?” she asked stilling her hand. 
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“During his testing, his responses were closer to yours than anyone else I’m aware of. He doesn’t look like you but he’s like you.” “He might …” She forced herself to voice the thought. “He might not want anything more to do with me when he realizes what I helped you do with him.” “He’ll be angry—and frightened and eager for the next time and determined to see that there won’t be a next time. I’ve told you, I know this one.” 
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I examined memory records of thousands of males. This one might have been taught to parent a group himself, but when I showed other ooloi the match, they agreed that the two of you should be together.” “You … You chose him for me?” “I offered you to one another. The two of you did your own choosing.” It opened a wall and left her. 
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She drew a deep breath, walked over to Peter’s group. “Things can change,” she said quietly. “Maybe you can turn everybody here against me. That would make me a failure.” She raised her voice slightly, though even her quiet words had carried. “That would mean all of you put back into suspended animation so that you can be separated and put through all this again with other people.” She paused. “If that’s what you want—to be split up, to begin again alone, to go through this however many times it takes for you to let yourself get all the way through it, keep trying. You might succeed.” 
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“What happened to Derrick!” Jean Pelerin demanded. “He did something stupid,” Lilith told her. “And while he was doing it, you helped hold me so that I couldn’t stop him.” Jean drew back a little, spoke louder. “What happened to him?” “I don’t know.” “Liar!” The volume increased again. “What did your friends do to him? Kill him?” “What ever happened to him, you’re partly to blame,” Lilith said. “Handle your own guilt.” She looked around at other equally guilty, equally accusing faces. Jean never made her complaints privately. She needed an audience. 
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Abruptly, all was still except for Curt’s gasping and Peter’s groaning—“My arm! Oh, god, my arm!” Lilith looked at each of Peter’s people, daring them to attack, almost wanting them to attack. But now five of them were injured, and Lilith was untouched. Even her own people stood back from her. “There’ll be no rape here,” she said evenly. She raised her voice. “Nobody here is property. Nobody here has the right to the use of anybody else’s body. There’ll be no back-to-the-Stone-Age, caveman bullshit!” She let her voice drop to normal. “We stay human. We treat each other like people, and we get through this like people. Anyone who wants to be something less will have his chance in the forest. There’ll be plenty of room for him to run away and play at being an ape.” 
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Alarmed, she looked back at the carnage she had created. She drew a deep breath, managed to still her trembling. Then she spoke quietly in Oankali. “Whoever is on watch, come in and check these people. Some of them may be badly hurt.” “Not so badly,” a disembodied voice answered in Oankali. “The ones on the floor will heal without help. I’m in contact with them through the floor.” “What about the one with the broken arm?” “We’ll take care of him. Shall we keep him?” “I’d love to have you keep him. But no, leave him with us. You’re already suspected of being murderers.” “Derrick is asleep again.” “I thought so. What shall we do with Peter?” “Nothing. Let him think for a while about his behavior.” “Ahajas?” “Yes?” Lilith drew another deep breath. “I’m surprised to realize how good it is to hear your voice.” 
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Elsewhere in the room, small groups of people, supporting one another, confronted the ooloi without panic. The drug had quieted them just enough. The room was a scene of quiet, strangely gentle chaos. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“What are you doing, foretelling the future?” Joseph asked. His voice was a harsh whisper. “Gabe will kill himself?” “Indirectly, he might. I hope not. I can’t foretell anything. Maybe Kahguyaht will save him. He’s worth saving. But his past behavior says he will be hard to work with.” It reached out and took Joseph’s hands, apparently unable to stand the gouging any longer. “You were only given a weak, ooloi-neutral drug in your food,” it told him. “I can help you with something better.” Joseph tried to pull away, but it ignored his effort. It examined the hand he had injured, then further tranquilized him, all the while talking to him quietly. “You know I won’t hurt you. You’re not afraid of being hurt or of pain. And your fear of my strangeness will pass eventually. No, be still. Let your body go limp. Let it relax. If your body is relaxed, it will be easier for you to handle your fear. That’s it. Lean back against this wall. I can help you maintain this state without blurring your intellect. You see?” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 184 | Loc. 2924-27  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:31 AM

Joseph sighed. “I don’t understand why the sight of you should scare me so,” Joseph said. He did not sound frightened. “You don’t look that threatening. Just … very different.” “Different is threatening to most species,” Nikanj answered. “Different is dangerous. It might kill you. That was true to your animal ancestors and your nearest animal relatives. And it’s true for you.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 185 | Loc. 2941-44  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:33 AM

“What will happen now?” Joseph asked. “We’ll stay with you for several days. When you’re used to us, we’ll take you to the training floor we’ve created—the forest.” It focused on Lilith. “For a little while, you won’t have any duties. I could take you and your mate outside for a while, show him more of the ship.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 186 | Loc. 2961-74  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:34 AM

the first time. You could not have understood what there was to choose. Now you have some small idea. And you have a choice.” He understood now. “No!” he said sharply. “Not again.” Silence. “I’d rather have the real thing!” “With Lilith?” “Of course.” He looked as though he would say something more, but he glanced at Lilith and fell silent. “Rather with any human than with me,” Nikanj supplied softly. Joseph only stared at it. “And yet I pleased you. I pleased you very much.” “Illusion!” “Interpretation. Electrochemical stimulation of certain nerves, certain parts of your brain … What happened was real. Your body knows how real it was. Your interpretations were illusion. The sensations were entirely real. You can have them again—or you can have others.” “No!” “And all that you have, you can share with Lilith.” Silence. “All that she feels, she’ll share with you.” It reached out and caught his hand in a coil of sensory arm. “I won’t hurt you. And I offer a oneness that your people strive for, dream of, but can’t truly attain alone.” He pulled his arm free. “You said I could choose. I’ve made my choice!” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 187 | Loc. 2981-86  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:35 AM

After a long while, he closed his eyes and the two of them lay together. Joseph held his body rigid at first, but slowly, as nothing happened, he began to relax. Sometime later his breathing evened and he seemed to be asleep. Lilith sat on the table, waiting, watching. She was patient and interested. This might be her only chance ever to watch close up as an ooloi seduced someone. She thought it should have bothered her that the “someone” in this case was Joseph. She knew more than she wanted to about the wildly conflicting feelings he was subject to now. Yet, in this matter, she trusted Nikanj completely. It was enjoying itself with Joseph. It would not spoil its enjoyment by hurting him or rushing him. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 189 | Loc. 3005-12  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:37 AM

Silently, Lilith got up, stripped off her jacket, and went to the bed. She stood over it, looking down. For a moment, she saw Nikanj as she had once seen Jdahya—as a totally alien being, grotesque, repellant beyond mere ugliness with its night crawler body tentacles, its snake head tentacles, and its tendency to keep both moving, signaling attention and emotion. She froze where she stood and had all she could to keep from turning and running away. The moment passed, left her almost gasping. She jumped when Nikanj touched her with the tip of a sensory arm. She stared at it for a moment longer wondering how she had lost her horror of such a being. Then she lay down, perversely eager for what it could give her. She positioned herself against it, and was not content until she felt the deceptively light touch of the sensory hand and felt the ooloi body tremble against her. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 190 | Loc. 3025-31  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:50 AM

the ooloi-produced drugs could be potent. Under their influence, Peter might have laughed at anything. Under their influence, he accepted union and pleasure. When that influence was allowed to wane and Peter began to think, he apparently decided he had been humiliated and enslaved. The drug seemed to him to be not a less painful way of getting used to frightening nonhumans, but a way of turning him against himself, causing him to demean himself in alien perversions. His humanity was profaned. His manhood was taken away. Peter’s ooloi should have noticed that at some point what Peter said and the expression he assumed ceased to agree with what his body told it. Perhaps it did not know enough about human beings to handle someone like Peter. It was older than Nikanj—more a contemporary of Kahguyaht. But it was not as perceptive as either of them—and perhaps not as bright. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 191 | Loc. 3034-37  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:51 AM

The ooloi tried to help him once it had recovered from the worst of its own pain, but it was too late. He was dead. The ooloi sat down beside his body, its head and body tentacles drawn into hard lumps. It did not move or speak. Its cool flesh grew even cooler, and it seemed to be as dead as the human it was apparently mourning. There were no Oankali on watch above. Peter might have been saved if there had been. But the great room was full of ooloi. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 193 | Loc. 3068-78  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:54 AM

She frowned, looking more childlike than ever as she tried to understand. Then her face changed. Curt, heavily drugged, edged along the wall toward her. He kept himself comfortably far from Nikanj, but moved a little too close to Jean. She cringed back from him. Curt shook his head, took a step backward. “Jeanie?” he called, his heavy voice sounding too loud, sounding drunk. Jean jumped, but said nothing. Curt faced Nikanj. “She’s one of ours! We should be the ones to take care of her!” “It isn’t possible,” Nikanj said. “It should be possible! It should be! Why isn’t it?” “Her bonding with her ooloi is too strong, too heavily reinforced—as yours is with your ooloi. Later when the bond is more relaxed, you’ll be able to go near her again. Later. Not now.” “Goddammit, she needs us now!” “No.” Curt’s ooloi came up to him, took him by the arm. Curt would have pulled away, but suddenly his strength seemed to leave him. He stumbled, fell to his knees. Nearby, Lilith looked away. Curt was as unlikely to forgive any humbling as Peter had been. And he would not always be drugged. He would remember. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 194 | Loc. 3088-93  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:56 AM

Lilith stood staring after Jean, hardly aware of Joseph’s coming to stand beside her. He was drugged, but the drug had only made him reckless. “Peter was right,” he said angrily. She frowned. “Peter? Right to try to kill? Right to die?” “He died human! And he almost managed to take one of them with him!” She looked at him. “So what? What’s changed? On Earth we can change things. Not here.” “Will we want to by then? What will we be, I wonder? Not human. Not anymore.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 197 | Loc. 3105-7  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:31 PM

Let them explore and see for themselves that they are in a forest on an island. Let them begin to feel what it’s like to live here.” It hesitated. “Let them settle more firmly into their places with their ooloi. They can tolerate one another now. Let them learn that it isn’t shameful to be together with one another and with us.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 213 | Loc. 3354-60  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:51 PM

“Why did you want me on this trip, Gabe? Why did you personally want me here?” “I didn’t. I just—” “Liar.” He frowned, glared at her. “I just thought you deserved a chance to get away from the Oankali—if you wanted it.” “You thought I might be useful! You thought you’d eat better and be better able to survive out here. You didn’t think you were doing me a favor, you thought you were doing yourself one. It could work out that way.” She looked around at the others. “But it won’t. Not if everyone’s sitting around waiting for me to play Judas.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 215 | Loc. 3395-99  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:54 PM

Lilith pointed. “If that’s land over there instead of some kind of illusion, then that’s your goal. Your first goal anyway.” “We find the others first!” Gabriel insisted. Lilith looked at him with interest. He was in the open now. Probably in his mind he was in some kind of struggle with her. He wanted to lead and she did not—yet she had to. He could easily get someone killed. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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An ooloi needed a male and female pair to be able to play its part in reproduction, but it neither needed nor wanted two-way contact between that male and female. Oankali males and females never touched each other sexually. That worked fine for them. It could not possibly work for human beings. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 219 | Loc. 3463-64  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 05:59 PM

She must go back to the settlement and get help from the Oankali. She must get nonhumans to help her against her own people in a place that might or might not be on Earth. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 220 | Loc. 3469-71  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 06:00 PM

Would he want it? Or would he choose to stay with the others who were trying to do the thing she had always wanted them all to do? Learn and run. Learn to live in this country, then lose themselves in it, go beyond the reach of the Oankali. Learn to touch one another as human beings again. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 221 | Loc. 3492-97  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 06:02 PM

“Us,” Nikanj repeated. “We wanted to keep him safe, you and I. He was slightly injured and unconscious when they took him away. He had fought for you. But his injuries healed. Curt saw the flesh healing. He believed Joe wasn’t human.” “Why didn’t you help him!” she screamed. She had begun to cry. She turned again to see the terrible wounds and did not understand how she could even look at Joseph’s body so mutilated, dead. She had had no last words from him, no memory of fighting alongside him, no chance to protect him. Her last memory was of him flinching away from her too-human touch. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 222 | Loc. 3501-4  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 06:03 PM

“Why didn’t you help?” she demanded. “If you could see and hear everything, why—” “We don’t have an entrance near enough to this place.” She made a sound of anger and despair. “And there was no sign that Curt meant to kill. He blames you for almost everything, yet he didn’t kill you. What happened here was … totally unplanned.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 223 | Loc. 3530-39  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 06:05 PM

Nikanj pressed the back of her neck with a sensory hand—warning pressure. It would give her something then. They stopped walking by mutual consent and faced one another. It gave her … a new color. A totally alien, unique, nameless thing, half seen, half felt or … tasted. A blaze of something frightening, yet overwhelmingly, compelling. Extinguished. A half known mystery beautiful and complex. A deep, impossibly sensuous promise. Broken. Gone. Dead. The forest came back around her slowly and she realized she was still standing with Nikanj, facing it, her back to the waiting ooloi. “That’s all I can give you,” Nikanj said. “That’s what I feel. I don’t even know whether there are words in any human language to speak of it.” “Probably not,” she whispered. After a moment, she let herself hug it. There was some comfort even in cool, gray flesh. Grief was grief, she thought. It was pain and loss and despair—an abrupt end where there should have been a continuing. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 226 | Loc. 3571-76  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 06:11 PM

“We didn’t kill a human being,” Curt shouted. “We killed one of your animals!” “We?” Kahguyaht said mildly. “And who helped you kill him?” Curt did not answer. “You beat him,” Kahguyaht continued, “and when he was unconscious, you killed him with your ax. You did it alone, and in doing it, you’ve exiled yourself permanently from your Earth.” It spoke to the others. “Will you join him? Will you be taken from this training room and placed with Toaht families to live the rest of your lives aboard the ship?” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 228 | Loc. 3610-12  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 06:14 PM

The ooloi focused on her again. “If you had used a weapon, you could probably have killed at least one of us. These others couldn’t, but you could.” “I don’t want to kill you. I want to get away from you. You know that.” “I know you think that.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 233 | Loc. 3690-94  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 06:19 PM

She looked at Nikanj’s still-healing sensory arm. “Listen to me,” she said. “Let me help you learn about us, or there’ll be more injuries, more deaths.” “Will you walk through the forest,” Nikanj asked, “or shall we go the shorter way beneath the training room?” She sighed. She was Cassandra, warning and predicting to people who went deaf whenever she began to warn and predict. “Let’s walk through the forest,” she said. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 235 | Loc. 3726-31  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:09 PM

They could give each other whole experiences, then discuss the experience in nonverbal conversation. They had a whole language of sensory images and accepted signals that took the place of words. Lilith watched them enviously. They didn’t lie often to humans because their sensory language had left them with no habit of lying—only of withholding information, refusing contact. Humans, on the other hand, lied easily and often. They could not trust one another. They could not trust one of their own who seemed too close to aliens, who stripped off her clothing and lay down on the ground to help her jailer. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 239 | Loc. 3783-85  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:12 PM

She was content to be let alone. Ahajas and Dichaan asked her if she wanted to go home with them when they left, but she declined the offer. She wanted to stay in an Earthlike setting until she went to Earth. She wanted to stay with human beings even though for a time, she did not love them. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 239 | Loc. 3788-91  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:15 PM

No one refused the fish because she had caught it. On the other hand, no one asked how she made her fish traps—so she did not tell them. She did no more teaching unless people came to her and asked questions. This was more punishing to her than to the Oankali since she had discovered that she liked teaching. But she found more gratification in teaching one willing student than a dozen resentful ones. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 240 | Loc. 3793-97  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:16 PM

Tate had been a friend. Lilith missed her, but somehow could not manage any bitterness against her. There was no other close friend to take Tate’s place. Even the people who came to her with questions did not trust her. There was only Nikanj. Nikanj never tried to make her change her behavior. She had the feeling it would not object to anything she did unless she began hurting people. She lay with it and its mates at night and it pleasured her as it had before she met Joseph. She did not want this at first, but she came to appreciate it. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 240 | Loc. 3802-3  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:16 PM

“You stopped teaching here. People are learning more slowly. But I think they’ll be ready soon.” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 242 | Loc. 3829-34  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:23 PM

It knotted its head and body tentacles in distress. “You could have reacted very badly. With your strength, you could have injured or killed someone. You could have earned a place alongside Curt.” It relaxed the knots and let its tentacles hang limp. “Joseph is gone. I didn’t want to risk losing you too.” And she could not go on hating it. Its words reminded her too much of her own thoughts when she lay down to help it in spite of what other humans might think of her. She went to one of the cut logs that served as benches around the fire and sat down. “How long do I have to stay here?” she whispered. “Do they ever let the Judas goat go?” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 243 | Loc. 3850-58  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:25 PM

“You haven’t answered,” it said. “What?” “Shall we tell them they can come back to us?” “No. And don’t be too obvious about helping them get away either. Let them decide for themselves what they’ll do. Otherwise people who decide later to come back will seem to be obeying you, betraying their humanity for you. That could get them killed. You won’t get many back, anyway. Some will think the human species deserves at least a clean death.” “Is it an unclean thing that we want, Lilith?” “Yes!” “Is it an unclean thing that I have made you pregnant?” She did not understand the words at first. It was as though it had begun speaking a language she did not know. “You … what?” “I have made you pregnant with Joseph’s child. I wouldn’t have done it so soon, but I wanted to use his seed, not a print. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
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“It won’t be a daughter.” She pulled again at her arms, but it would not let her go. “It will be a thing—not human.” She stared down at her own body in horror. “It’s inside me, and it isn’t human!” 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 244 | Loc. 3873-77  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:26 PM

“But it won’t be human,” she whispered. “It will be a thing. A monster.” “You shouldn’t begin to lie to yourself. It’s a deadly habit. The child will be yours and Joseph’s. Ahajas’ and Dichaan’s. And because I’ve mixed it, shaped it, seen that it will be beautiful and without deadly conflicts, it will be mine. It will be my first child, Lilith. First to be born, at least. 
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Dawn: 1 (The Xenogenesis Trilogy) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight on Page 245 | Loc. 3884-88  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:28 PM

Our children won’t destroy themselves in a war, and if they need to regrow a limb or to change themselves in some other way they’ll be able to do it. And there will be other benefits.” “But they won’t be human,” Lilith said. “That’s what matters. You can’t understand, but that is what matters.” Its tentacles knotted. “The child inside you matters.” 
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Adulthood Rites

Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 65-73  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:34 PM

He was wrapped in something that touched him everywhere except his face. He did not like the heavy feel of it, but it shut out the light and did not hurt him. Something touched the side of his face, and he turned, mouth open, to take it. His body knew what to do. He sucked and was rewarded by food and by the taste of flesh as familiar as his own. For a time, he assumed it was his own. It had always been with him. He could hear voices, could even distinguish individual sounds, though he understood none of them. They captured his attention, his curiosity. He would remember these, too, when he was older and able to understand them. But he liked the soft voices even without knowing what they were. “He’s beautiful,” one voice said. “He looks completely Human.” “Some of his features are only cosmetic, Lilith. Even now his senses are more dispersed over his body than yours are. He is … less Human than your daughters.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 91-95  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:36 PM

Nikanj Ooan, Lilith Mother, Ahajas Ty, Dichaan Ishliin, and the one who never came to him even though Nikanj Ooan had taught him that one’s touch and taste and smell. Lilith Mother had shown him a print image of that one, and he had scanned it with all his senses: Joseph Father. He called for Joseph Father and, instead, Nikanj Ooan came and taught him that Joseph Father was dead. Dead. Ended. Gone away and not coming back. Yet he had been part of Akin, and Akin must know him as he knew all his living parents. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 105-9  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:38 PM

“That,” Lilith had commented, “was a lot like being stabbed with a hot, blunt needle.” “He won’t do it again,” Nikanj had promised. Akin had not done it again. And he had learned an important lesson: He would share any pain he caused. Best, then, to be careful and not cause pain. He would not know for months how unusual it was for an infant to recognize the pain of another person and recognize himself as the cause of that pain. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 110-14  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:38 PM

He focused on a few cells, on a single cell, on the parts of that cell, on its nucleus, on chromosomes within the nucleus, on genes along the chromosomes. He investigated the DNA that made up the genes, the nucleotides of the DNA. There was something beyond the nucleotides that he could not perceive—a world of smaller particles that he could not cross into. He did not understand why he could not make this final crossing—if it were the final one. It frustrated him that anything was beyond his perception. He knew of it only through shadowy ungraspable feelings. When he was older he came to think of it as a horizon, always receding when he approached it. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 141-44  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:44 PM

“I know. And we control children in ways we should not to make them mature as Oankali-born males and Human-born females. We control inclinations that should be left to individual children. Even the group that suggested we go on this way knows we shouldn’t. But they were afraid. A male who’s Human enough to be born to a Human female could be a danger to us all. We must try though. We’ll learn from Akin.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 147-51  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:45 PM

But you could teach the next generation to love you, no matter who their mothers are. All you’d have to do is start early. Indoctrinate them before they’re old enough to develop other opinions.” “But …” Nikanj hesitated. “But if we had to work that blindly, that clumsily, we couldn’t have trade. We would have to take your children from you soon after they were born. We wouldn’t dare trust you to raise them. You would be kept only for breeding—like nonsentient animals.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 160-63  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:46 PM

“Able to fight?” “Only to save his life. He’ll tend to avoid fighting. He’ll be like Oankali-born males now—a solitary wanderer when he’s not mated.” “He won’t settle down with anyone?” “No. Most Human males aren’t particularly monogamous. No construct males will be.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 163-66  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:46 PM

“Families will change, Lilith—are changing. A complete construct family will be a female, an ooloi, and children. Males will come and go as they wish and as they find welcome.” “But they’ll have no homes.” “A home like this would be a prison to them. They’ll have what they want, what they need.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 167-71  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:47 PM

Nikanj paused. “They might choose to keep contact with their children. They won’t live with them permanently—and no construct, male or female, young or old, will feel that as a deprivation. It will be normal to them, and purposeful, since there will always be many more females and ooloi than males.” It rustled its head and body tentacles. “Trade means change. Bodies change. Ways of living must change. Did you think your children would only look different?” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 173-79  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:57 PM

Ahajas was tall and broad. She carried him without seeming to notice his weight. He had never felt weariness in her. And he knew she enjoyed carrying him. He could feel pleasure the moment she sank filaments of her sensory tentacles into him. She was the first person to be able to reach him this way with more than simple emotions. She was the first to give him multisensory images and signaling pressures and to help him understand that she was speaking to him without words. As he grew, he realized that Nikanj and Dichaan also did this. Nikanj had done it even before he was born, but he had not understood. Ahajas had reached him and taught him quickly. Through the images she created for him, he learned about the child growing within her. She gave him images of it and even managed to give it images of him. It had several presences: all its parents except Lilith. And it had him. Sibling. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 187-94  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 09:58 PM

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. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 201-7  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:00 PM

“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.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 215-21  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:01 PM

“You should be careful,” she said as she took him to shelter in their family house, away from a hard afternoon rain. “Your eyes don’t track a lot of the time. Can you see with them?” He thought about this. “I can,” he said, “but I don’t always. Sometimes it’s easier to see things from other parts of my body.” “When you’re older, you’ll be expected to turn your face and body toward people when you talk to them. Even now, you should look at Humans with your eyes. If you don’t, they yell at you or repeat things because they’re not sure they have your attention. Or they start to ignore you because they think you’re ignoring them.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 221-27  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:01 PM

“No one’s done that to me.” “They will. Just wait until you get past the stage when they try to talk stupid to you.” “Baby talk, you mean?” “Human talk!” Silence. “Don’t worry,” she said after a while. “It’s them I’m mad at, not you.” “Why?” “They blame me for not looking like them. They can’t help doing it, and I can’t help resenting it. I don’t know which is worse—the ones who cringe if I touch them or the ones who pretend it’s all right while they cringe inside.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 231-33  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:02 PM

“Just remember to look at them with your eyes when they talk to you or you talk to them. And be careful about tasting them. You won’t be able to get away with that for much longer. Besides, your tongue doesn’t look Human.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 234-39  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:02 PM

“Don’t let them guess. They can be dangerous, Akin. Don’t show them everything you can do. But … hang around them when you can. Study their behavior. Maybe you can collect things about them that we can’t. It would be wrong if anything that they are is lost.” “Your legs are going to sleep,” Akin observed. “You’re tired. You should take me to Lilith.” “In a little while.” She did not want to give him up, he realized. He did not mind. She was, Humans said, gray and warty—more different than most Human-born children. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 246-54  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:04 PM

“Will you tell Vidor to let me touch him when he comes to see you again?” Akin asked. “Father? Why?” “I want to find you in him.” She laughed. “He and I have a lot in common. He doesn’t like having anyone explore him, though. Says he doesn’t need anything burrowing through his skin.” She hesitated. “He means that. He only let me do it once. Just talk to him if you meet him, Akin. In some ways he can be just as dangerous as any other Human.” “Your father?” “Akin … All of them! Haven’t you explored any of them? Can’t you feel it?” She gave him a complex image. He understood it only because he had explored a few Humans himself. Humans were a compelling, seductive, deadly contradiction. He felt drawn to them, yet warned against them. To touch a Human deeply—to taste one—was to feel this. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 261-62  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:05 PM

Lilith gave him bits of solid food now, but he still took great comfort in nursing. It frightened him to realize that someday she would not let him nurse. He did not want to grow that old. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 276-88  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:07 PM

“I can’t see them,” she said. “Can you?” She had only her eyes to look with, but her senses were sharper than those of other Humans—somewhere between Human and construct. “It’s a man,” Akin said. “He’s hidden. He’s Human and a stranger.” Akin breathed in the adrenaline bite of the man’s scent. “He’s excited. Maybe afraid.” “Not afraid,” she said softly. “Not of a woman pulling cassavas and carrying a baby. I hear him now, moving around near the big Brazil nut tree.” “Yes, I hear!” Akin said excitedly. “Keep quiet! And hold on. I might have to move fast.” The man had stopped moving. Suddenly, he stepped into view, and Akin saw that he had something in his hands. “Shit!” Lilith whispered. “Bow and arrow. He’s a resister.” “You mean those sticks he’s holding?” “Yes. They’re weapons.” “Don’t turn that way. I can’t see him.” “And he can’t see you. Keep your head down!” He realized then that he was in danger. Resisters were Humans who had decided to live without the Oankali—and thus without children. Akin had heard that they sometimes stole construct children, the most Human-looking construct children they could find. But that was stupid because they had no idea what the child might be like after metamorphosis. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 305-9  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:08 PM

“How is it you were allowed to have a boy?” “How is it your mother was allowed to have a boy?” The man took a final step toward Lilith and was abruptly too close. He stood very straight and tried to intimidate her with his stiff, angry posture and his staring eyes. Akin had seen Humans do that to one another before. It never worked with constructs. Akin had never seen it work with Lilith. She did not move. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 309-14  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:09 PM

“I’m Human,” the man said. “You can see that. I was born before the war. There’s nothing Oankali about me. I have two parents, both Human, and no one told them when and whether they could have kids and what the sex of those kids would be. Now, how is it you were allowed to have a boy?” “I asked for one.” Lilith reached out, snatched the man’s bow, and broke it over her knee before the man was fully aware of what had happened. Her move had been almost too swift for him to follow even if he had been expecting it. “You’re welcome to food and shelter for as long as you like,” she said, “but we don’t allow weapons.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 321-25  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:10 PM

Akin watched the man while Lilith put her cassavas and pineapples into her basket. She cut a stalk of bananas, and once she was certain they were free of snakes and dangerous insects, she handed them to the man. He took a quick step back from her. “Carry these,” she said. “They’re all right. I’m glad you happened along. The two of us will be able to carry more.” She cut several dozen ribbons of quat—an Oankali vegetable that Akin loved—and tied it into a bundle with thin lianas. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 346-51  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:13 PM

She reached out to touch his arm in a gesture of sympathy. He grabbed her hand and held it at first as though he thought she would try to pull away. She did not. He held her wrist and examined the hand. After a time he let her go. “Human,” he whispered. “I always heard you could tell by the hands—that the … the others would have too many fingers or fingers that bend in un-Human ways.” “Or you could just ask,” she said. “People will tell you; they don’t mind. It’s not the kind of thing anyone bothers to lie about. Hands aren’t as reliable as you think.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 357-63  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:13 PM

“Can he talk?” “All the time. Come on.” He followed her along the path, and Akin watched him through light-sensitive patches on the skin of his shoulder and arm. “Baby?” the man said peering at him. Akin, remembering what Margit had told him, turned his head so that he faced the man. “Akin,” he said. “What’s your name?” The man let his mouth fall open. “How old are you?” he demanded. Akin stared at him silently. “Don’t you understand me?” the man asked. He had a jagged scar on one of his shoulders, and Akin wondered what had made it. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 364-69  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:14 PM

“Tell him your name,” she said. “What?” She said nothing more. The man’s smallest toe was missing from his right foot, Akin noticed. And there were other marks on his body—scars, paler than the rest of his skin. He must have hurt himself often and had no ooloi to help him heal. Nikanj would never have left so many scars. “Okay,” the man said. “I give up. My name is Augustino Leal. Everybody calls me Tino.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 374-76  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:14 PM

The man reached out and touched his face. Akin grasped one of the man’s fingers and drew it to his mouth. He tasted it quickly with a snakelike flick of his tongue and a penetration too swift, too slight to notice. He collected a few living cells for later study. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 386-91  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:16 PM

“But … you didn’t have to have kids.” “As it happens, I did have to. I had two construct kids by the time they brought me down from the ship. I never had a chance to run off and pine for the good old days!” The man said nothing. If he stayed long, he would learn that Lilith had these flares of bitterness sometimes. They never seemed to affect her behavior, though often they frightened people. Margit had said, “It’s as though there’s something in her trying to get out. Something terrible.” Whenever the something seemed on the verge of surfacing, Lilith went alone into the forest and stayed away for days. Akin’s oldest sisters said they used to worry that she would leave and not come back. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 392-95  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:17 PM

“They forced you to have kids?” the man asked. “One of them surprised me,” she said. “It made me pregnant, then told me about it. Said it was giving me what I wanted but would never come out and ask for.” “Was it?” “Yes.” She shook her head from side to side. “Oh, yes. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 395  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:17 PM

But if I had the strength not to ask, it should have had the strength to let me alone.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 413-16  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:26 PM

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.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 420-23  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:27 PM

“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. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 423-24  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:27 PM

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. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 433-38  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:28 PM

“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 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. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 442-47  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:31 PM

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.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 452-57  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:32 PM

“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. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 458-62  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:32 PM

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.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 469-70  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:33 PM

“Mother isn’t harmless.” “No, but she finds it convenient to seem harmless.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 471-73  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:33 PM

“What kind of village would he avoid?” “Other resister villages, probably. Resister villages—especially widely separated ones—are dangerous in different ways. Some of them are dangerous to one another. A few become dangerous to us, and we have to break them up. Human diversity is fascinating and seductive, but we can’t let it destroy them—or us.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 497-504  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:36 PM

He faced her angrily. “My people never had a chance! They didn’t make the war. They didn’t make the Oankali. And they didn’t make themselves sterile! But you can be damn sure that everything they did make was good and it worked and they put their hearts into it. Hey, I thought, ‘If we made a town, the … traders … must have made a city!’ And what do I find? A village of huts with primitive gardens. This place is hardly even a clearing!” His voice had risen again. He looked around with disapproval. “You’ve got kids to plan for and provide for, and you’re going to let them slide right back to being cavemen!” A Human woman named Leah spoke up. “Our kids will be okay,” she said. “But I wish we could get more of your people to come here. They’re as close to immortal as a Human being has ever been, and all they can think of to do is build useless houses and kill one another.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 507-11  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:37 PM

Nikanj, still holding Akin, got up and moved through the seated people until it could sit with no one between itself and Tino. “None of the resister villages are hidden from us,” it said softly. “We wouldn’t have asked you where Phoenix was. And we don’t mean to focus on Phoenix. It’s time for us to approach all the resister villages and invite them to join us. It’s only to remind them that they don’t have to live sterile, pointless lives. We won’t force them to come to us, but we will let them know they’re still welcome. We let them go originally because we didn’t want to hold prisoners.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 514-21  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:37 PM

Lilith looked around, found Wray Ordway who kept the small guest house stocked with food and other supplies. This was where newly arrived men lived until they paired off with one of the village women. It was the only house in the village that had been built of cut trees and palm thatch. Tino might sleep there tonight. Wray kept the guest house because he had chosen not to wander. He had paired with Leah and apparently never tired of her. The two of them with their three Oankali mates had nine Human-born daughters and eleven Oankali-born children. “How many men have we got now, Wray?” Lilith asked. “Five,” he said. “None in the guest house, though. Tino can have it all to himself if he wants.” “Five men.” Tino shook his head. “No wonder you haven’t built anything.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 525-27  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:38 PM

“They change us and we change them,” Lilith said. “The whole next generation is made up of genetically engineered people, Tino—constructs, whether they’re born to Oankali or to Human mothers.” She sighed. “I don’t like what they’re doing, and I’ve never made any secret of it. But they’re in this with us. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 529-32  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:39 PM

She paused, looked around the large room. “Look at the children here, Tino. Look at the construct adults. You can’t tell who was born to whom. But you can see some Human features on every one of them. And as for the way we live … well, we’re not as primitive as you think—and not as advanced as we could be. It was all a matter of how much like the ship we wanted our homes to be. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 536-40  | Added on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 10:40 PM

Lilith shook her head. “I was a city person, too, but there were some things I was willing not to learn from experience.” She returned to her original subject. “Anyway, once we had learned to live in the forest on our own, the Oankali told us we didn’t have to. They meant to live in homes as comfortable as the ones they had on the ship, and we were free to do the same. We accepted their offer. Believe me, weaving thatch and tying logs together with lianas doesn’t hold any more fascination for me than it does for you—and I’ve done my share of it.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 575-79  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 12:17 AM

Lilith amid the menagerie. He had liked her looks when he spotted her in the garden. She was an amazon of a woman, tall and strong, but with no look of hardness to her. Fine, dark skin. Breasts high in spite of all the children—breasts full of milk. He had never before seen a woman nursing a child. He had almost had to turn his back on her to stop himself from staring as Lilith fed Akin. The woman was not beautiful. Her broad, smooth face was usually set in an expression of solemnity, even sadness. It made her look—and Tino winced at the thought—it made her look saintly. A mother. Very much a mother. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 614-18  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 12:20 AM

“One thing,” Wray said softly. “Listen.” Tino faced him questioningly. “You can do as you please here. As long as you don’t hurt anyone, you can stay or go as you like; you can choose your own friends, your own lovers. No one has the right to demand anything from you that you don’t want to give.” He turned and walked away before Tino could ask what this really meant when it came to the Oankali. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 661-69  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 12:26 AM

The war damaged your ozone layer. Do you know what that is?” “No.” “It shielded life on Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Without its protection, above-ground life on Earth would not have been possible. If we had left you on Earth, you would have been blinded. You would have been burned—if you hadn’t already been killed by other expanding effects of the war—and you would have died a terrible death. Most animals did die, and most plants, and some of us. We’re hard to kill, but your people had made their world utterly hostile to life. If we had not helped it, it couldn’t have restored itself so quickly. Once it was restored, we knew we couldn’t carry on a normal trade. We couldn’t let you breed alongside us, coming to us only when you saw the value of what we offered. Stabilizing a trade that way takes too many generations. We needed to free you—the least dangerous of you anyway. But we couldn’t let your numbers grow. We couldn’t let you begin to become what you were.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 677-80  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 12:27 AM

“Could we stop them, Lilith, really?” “You used to try!” “Aboard the ship, here in Lo, and in the other trade villages. Nowhere else. We control the resisters only if we cage them, drug them, and allow them to live in an unreal world of drug-stimulated imaginings. We’ve done that to a few violent Humans. Shall we do it to more?” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 723-30  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 12:31 AM

“This isn’t just a drug.” “What then?” “Direct stimulation of the brain and nervous system.” She held up her hand to stop him from speaking. “There’s no pain. They hate pain more than we do, because they’re more sensitive to it. If they hurt us, they hurt themselves. And there are no harmful side effects. Just the opposite. They automatically fix any problems they find. They get real pleasure from healing or regenerating, and they share that pleasure with us. They weren’t as good at repairs before they found us. Regeneration was limited to wound healing. Now they can grow you a new leg if you lose one. They can even regenerate brain and nervous tissue. They learned that from us, believe it or not. We had the ability, and they knew how to use it. They learned by studying our cancers, of all things. It was cancer that made Humanity such a valuable trade partner.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 774-80  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 12:35 AM

“Didn’t you wonder about me? About my name?” “I thought you should have changed it. It isn’t a very popular name.” “I know. And changing it wouldn’t do much good. Too many people know me. I’m not just someone stuck with an unpopular name, Tino. I’m the one who made it unpopular. I’m Lilith Iyapo.” He frowned, began to shake his head, then stopped. “You’re not the one who … who …” “I awakened the first three groups of Humans to be sent back to Earth. I told them what their situation was, what their options were, and they decided I was responsible for it all. I helped teach them to live in the forest, and they decided it was my fault they had to give up civilized life. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 805-9  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 12:37 AM

“Oh, god. Which of my first group is in Phoenix?” “A guy named Rinaldi.” “Gabe? Gabe and Tate. Are they still together?” “Yes. I didn’t realize … Tate never said anything about being with him then. I thought they had gotten together here on Earth.” “I awoke them both. They were my best friends for a while. Their ooloi was Kahguyaht—ooan Nikanj.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1005-8  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:37 AM

The man was dying—would die in a moment unless Dichaan could keep him alive. It had been good having a Human male in the family. It had been a balance found after painful years of imbalance, and no one had felt the imbalance more than Dichaan. He had been born to work with a Human male parallel—to help raise children with the aid of such a person, and yet he had had to limp along without this essential other. How were children to learn to understand the Human male side of themselves—a side they all possessed whatever their eventual sex? 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1010-12  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:38 AM

Dichaan linked with his nervous system and kept his heart beating. The man was a beautiful, terrible physical contradiction, as all Humans were. He was a walking seduction, and he would never understand why. He would not be lost. He could not be another Joseph. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1040-42  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:40 AM

Akin stared at the man’s broad, bearded, red face, breathed his sour breath. His was a bitter, angry face whose owner might hurt him for acting like a baby, yet might kill him for acting like anything else. The man held him as disgustedly as he had once seen another man hold a snake. Was he as alien as a snake to these people? 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1063-67  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:42 AM

Akin’s babysitter stared at Akin with cold dislike. He rubbed his stomach, and, for a moment, pain seemed to replace his general displeasure. Perhaps his stomach hurt him. How stupid to be sick and know where there was healing and decide to stay sick. Abruptly, the man grabbed Akin, lifted him by one arm, thrust him under one of the man’s own long, thick arms, and followed the others up the steep, muddy trail. Akin shut his eyes during the climb. His captor was not surefooted. He kept falling but somehow never fell on Akin or dropped him. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1069-72  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:43 AM

He feared this man as he had never before feared anyone. This man who had been eager to dunk him in water that might contain predators, who had gripped him and shaken him and threatened to punch him because he was crying, this man who was apparently willing to endure pain rather than go to someone who would heal him and ask nothing of him—this man might kill him before anyone could act to stop him. At 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1081-87  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:44 AM

He urinated on the ground, then found a bush with edible, nutritious leaves. He was too small to reach the best possible food sources—sources the men could have reached but probably could not recognize. Tino had known a great deal, but he did not know much about the forest plants. He ate only obvious things—bananas, figs, nuts, palm fruit—wild versions of things his people grew in Phoenix. If a thing did not look or taste familiar to him, he would not eat it. Akin would eat anything that would not poison him and that would help to keep him alive. He was eating an especially nutritious gray fungus when he heard one of the men coming back for him. He swallowed quickly, muddied one hand deliberately, and wiped it over his face. If he were simply dirty, the men would pay no attention. But if only his mouth were dirty, they might decide to try to make him throw up. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1119-22  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:47 AM

Perhaps they would let him live with them. He wanted to be among people who did not grab him painfully by a leg or an arm and carry him as though he had no more feeling than a piece of dead wood. He wanted to be among people who spoke to him and cared for him instead of people who either ignored him or drew away from him as though he were a poisonous insect or laughed at him. These men not only frightened him, they made him agonizingly lonely. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1134-38  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:48 AM

Akin fled into the forest. Better to try to get home. Better to chance hungry animals and poisonous insects than to stay with these men who might do anything, any irrational thing. Better to be completely alone than lonely among dangerous creatures that he did not understand. But it was aloneness that really frightened him. The caimans and the anacondas could probably be avoided. Most stinging or biting insects were not deadly. But to be alone in the forest … He longed for Lilith, for her to hold him and give him her sweet milk. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1155-59  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:49 AM

Akin rested against the man wearily. There was no escape. Not even at night when his ability to see gave him an advantage. He could not run away from grown men who were determined to keep him. What could he do then? How could he save himself from their unpredictable violence? How could he live at least until they sold him? He put his head against the man’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Perhaps he could not save himself. Perhaps there was nothing for him to do but wait until they killed him. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1187-94  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:51 AM

The red-haired man picked him up and held him, peering into his face worriedly. “You’re not getting sick, too, are you?” he asked. “Please, God, no.” “No,” Akin whispered. The man looked at him sharply. “So you can talk. Tilden said you ought to know a few words. Being what you are, you probably know more than a few, don’t you?” “Yes.” Akin did not realize until later that the man had not expected an answer. Human beings talked to trees and rivers and boats and insects the way they talked to babies. They talked to be talking, but they believed they were talking to uncomprehending things. It upset and frightened them when something that should have been mute answered intelligently. All this, Akin realized later. Now he could only think of the man vomiting blood and perhaps dying so incomplete. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1220-22  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:53 AM

“I will be valuable to you,” he said. “All I have to do is be quiet. Then you can be rid of me. And I can be rid of you.” The man got up and walked away. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1223-26  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:54 AM

He was frightened and miserable and shaking with anger. He had never felt such a mix of intense emotions. And where had his last words come from? They made him think of Lilith when she was angry. Her anger had always frightened him, yet here it was inside him. What he had said was true enough, but he was not Lilith, tall and strong. It might have been better for him not to speak his feelings. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1227-29  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:54 AM

“Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1261-65  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:57 AM

Nikanj sat searching with its sensory arms for the place from which the child would eventually emerge. Lilith’s Human way of giving birth was simpler. The child emerged from an existing orifice —the same one each time. Its birth hurt Lilith, but Nikanj always took away her pain. Ahajas had no birth orifice. Her child had to make its own way out of her body. This did not hurt Ahajas, but it weakened her momentarily, made her want to sit down, made her focus her whole attention on following the child’s progress, helping it if it seemed in distress. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1276-88  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 01:59 AM

The child would emerge from Ahajas’s left side. She lay down on her right side. Dichaan and Lilith moved to maintain contact while Nikanj stroked the area of slowly rippling flesh. In tiny circular waves, the flesh withdrew itself from a central point, which grew slowly to show a darker gray—a temporary orifice within which the child’s head tentacles could be seen moving slowly. These tentacles had released the substance that began the birth process. They were responsible now for the way Ahajas’s flesh rippled aside. Nikanj exposed one of its sensory hands, reached into the orifice, and lightly touched the child’s head tentacles. Instantly, the head tentacles grasped the sensory arm—the familiar thing amid so much strangeness. Ahajas, feeling the sudden movement and understanding it, rolled carefully onto her back. The child knew now that it was coming into an accepting, welcoming place. Without that small contact, its body would have prepared it to live in a harsher place—an environment less safe because it contained no ooloi parent. In truly dangerous environments, ooloi were likely to be killed trying to handle hostile new forms of life. That was why children who had no ooloi parents to welcome them at birth tended to become ooloi themselves when they matured. Their bodies assumed the worst. But in order for them to mature in the assumed hostile environment, they had to become unusually hardy and resilient early. This child, though, would not have to undergo such changes. Nikanj was with it. And someday it would probably be female to balance Akin—if Akin returned in time to influence it. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1579-81  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:09 AM

Akin, who had considering lying, was glad he had not. He had always found it easy to tell the truth and difficult to make himself lie. He could lie very convincingly, though, if lying would keep him alive and spare him pain among these men. It was easier, though, to divert questions—as he had diverted the question about his parents. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1631-38  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:14 AM

“Akin,” the doctor said softly, “did you tell them the truth?” Akin looked at her and decided not to answer. He wished he had not told Tate Rinaldi the truth. She had sent Tino’s parents to him. It would have been better not to meet them at all until the raiders had gone away. He had to remember, had to keep reminding himself how dangerous Human beings were. “Never tell them,” Yori whispered. His silence had apparently told her enough. “There has been enough killing. We die and die and no one is born.” She put her hands on either side of his face and looked at him, her expression shifting from pain to hatred to pain to something utterly unreadable. She hugged him suddenly, and he was afraid she would crush him or scratch him with her nails or thrust him away from her and hurt him. There was so much suppressed emotion in her, so much deadly tension in her body. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1657-62  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:15 AM

But Iriarte was dead. Someone had struck him several times across the body with what must have been a machete. He had gaping, horrible wounds, some spilling entrails onto the floor. Akin screamed in shock and frustration and grief. When he came to know a man, the man died. His Human father was dead without Akin ever knowing him except through Nikanj. Tino was dead. Now Iriarte was dead. His years had been cut off unfinished. His Human children had died in the war, and his construct children, created from material the ooloi had collected long ago, would never know him, never taste him and find themselves in him. Why? 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Bookmark Loc. 1700  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:19 AM


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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1700-1705  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:19 AM

“You shouldn’t have told Tino’s parents anything at all until the raiders were gone,” Akin said quietly. She looked at him, then looked away. “I know. All I said was that you had known Tino and that he had been killed. Of course they wanted to know more, but I told them to wait until we had settled you in—that you were just a baby, after all.” She looked at him again, frowning, shaking her head. “I wonder what the hell you really are.” “A baby,” he said. “A Human-Oankali construct. I wish I were something more because the Oankali part of me scares people, but it doesn’t help me when they try to hurt me.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1730-40  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:22 AM

“Don’t worry about it,” Tate told him. They had gone out to pick pummelos—Tate to pick the fruit and Akin to graze, but Akin stayed close to her. “The kid’s just a newborn now,” Tate continued. “Even construct kids can’t be born talking and knowing people. You’ll have time to get acquainted with it.” “This is the time for bonding,” Akin said, wondering how he could explain such a personal thing to a Human who deliberately avoided all contact with the Oankali. “Bonding happens shortly after birth and shortly after metamorphosis. At other times … bonds are only shadows of what they could be. Sometimes people manage to make them, but usually they don’t. Late bonds are never what they should be. I’ll never know my sister the way I should.” “Sister?” Akin looked away, not wanting to cry but not able to stop a few silent tears. “Maybe it won’t be a sister. It should be, though. It would be if I were there.” He looked up at her suddenly and thought he read sympathy in her face. “Take me home!” he whispered urgently. “I’m not really finished with my own bonding. My body was waiting for this new sibling.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1779-84  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:26 AM

Us, Akin thought. Tate and Gabe. They had both known Kahguyaht. And Gabe was probably the reason Tate had not gone to Kahguyaht. “Kahguyaht would come back if Nikanj called it,” he said. “You really didn’t know about us?” she insisted. “No. But the walls in Lo aren’t like the walls here. You can’t hear through Lo walls. People seal themselves in and no one knows what they’re saying.” She stopped, put one hand up to balance the basket, then stared down at him. “Good god!” she said. It occurred to him then that he should not have let her know he could hear through Phoenix walls. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1792-97  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:27 AM

“So someday the people of Lo—or their descendants—will be in space again, looking for some other people to infect or afflict or whatever you call it.” “Trade.” “Oh, yeah. The goddamn gene trade! And you want to know why I can’t go back to Kahguyaht.” She walked away, leaving him to make his own way back to the village. He made no effort to keep up with her, knowing he could not. The little she had guessed had upset her enough to make her not care that he, valuable being that he was, was left alone in the groves and gardens where he might be stolen. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1797-1800  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:27 AM

How would she have reacted if he had told her all he knew—that it was not only the descendants of Humans and Oankali who would eventually travel through space in newly mature ships. It was also much of the substance of Earth. And what was left behind would be less than the corpse of a world. It would be small, cold, and as lifeless as the moon. Maturing Chkahichdahk left nothing useful behind. They had to be worlds in themselves for as long as it took the constructs in each one to mature as a species and find another partner species to trade with. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1801-2  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:27 AM

The salvaged Earth would finally die. Yet in another way, it would live on as single-celled animals lived on after dividing. Would that comfort Tate? Akin was afraid to find out. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1804-8  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:28 AM

NO ONE CAME FOR him. No one would take him home or let him go. He felt both unwanted and wanted too much. If his parents could not come because of his sibling’s birth, then others should have come. His parents had done this kind of service for other families, other villages who had had their children stolen. People helped each other in searching for and recovering children. And yet, his presence seemed to delight the people of Phoenix. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1810-12  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:28 AM

Others liked to hold him or let him sit at their feet and tell him stories of their own prewar lives. He liked this best. He learned not to interrupt them with questions. He could learn afterward what kangaroos, lasers, tigers, acid rain, and Botswana were. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1813-14  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:29 AM

He liked it less when people told him stories that were clearly not true—stories peopled by beings called witches or elves or gods. Mythology, they said; fairy tales. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1829-34  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:30 AM

Gabe picked him up and strode off with him. “I wonder how much you really understand,” he muttered. “I usually understand,” Akin admitted. “What I don’t understand, I remember. Eventually I understand.” “Jesus! I wonder what you’ll be like when you grow up.” “Not as big as you,” Akin said wistfully. “Really? You know that?” Akin nodded. “Strong, but not very big.” “Smart, though.” “It would be terrible to be small and foolish.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1839-41  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:31 AM

Akin watched the blacksmith make a machete blade, heating, pounding, shaping the metal. There was a wooden crate of machete blades in one corner. There were also scythes, sickles, axes, hammers, saws, nails, hooks, chains, coiled wire, picks … And yet there was no clutter. Everything, work tools and products, had their places. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1851-58  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:32 AM

“Phoenix money,” Gabe said. “That’s a phoenix rising from its own ashes. A phoenix was a mythical bird. You understand?” “A lie,” Akin said thoughtlessly. Gabe took the disk from him, put it back into his pocket and put Akin down. “Wait!” Akin said. “I’m sorry. I call myths that in my mind. I didn’t mean to say it out loud.” Gabe looked down at him. “If you’re always going to be small, you ought to learn to be careful with that word,” he said. “But … I didn’t say you were lying.” “No. You said my dream, the dream of everyone here, was a lie. You don’t even know what you said.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1976-81  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:41 AM

She does … strange things sometimes. She … The worst thing she might do now is nothing.” “What’s wrong with her?” “What’s wrong with them all? Haven’t you noticed?” “… yes. But I don’t understand.” “I don’t either, really. But it’s the way they have to live. They want kids, so they buy us. But we still aren’t their kids. They want to have kids. Sometimes they hate us because they can’t. And sometimes they hate us because we’re part of the Oankali and the Oankali are the ones who won’t let them have kids.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1989-92  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:42 AM

The girls shuddered, broke contact briefly, minutely. When they touched him again they seemed to communicate as one person. “We are them! And we are the Oankali. You know. If they could perceive, they would know!” “If they could perceive, they would be us. They can’t and they aren’t. We’re the best of what they are and the best of what the Oankali are. But because of us, they won’t exist anymore.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2067-77  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:49 AM

More silence. “You should have taken me home.” He was crying openly now. “I know,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry. But I can’t take you home. You mean too much to my people.” She had crossed her arms in front of her, the fingers of each hand curved around an elbow. She had made a bar against him like the wooden bars she used to secure her doors. He went to her and put his hands on her arms. “They won’t let you keep me much longer,” he said. “And even if they did … Even if I grew up in Phoenix and Amma and Shkaht grew up there, you would still need an ooloi. And there are no construct ooloi.” “You don’t know what we’ll need!” This surprised him. How could she think he did not know? She might wish he did not know, but of course he did. “I’ve known since I touched my sibling,” he said. “I couldn’t have said it then, but I knew we were two-thirds of a reproductive unit. I know what that means. I don’t know how it feels. I don’t know how threes of adults feel when they come together to mate. But I know there must be three, and one of those three must be an ooloi. My body knows that.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2082-85  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:49 AM

Lilith has made her choice, and I’ve made mine. That’s something you’ll probably never understand. You and the girls are hope to these people, and hope is something they haven’t had for more years than I want to think about.” “But it’s not real. We can’t do what they want.” “Do yourself a favor. Don’t tell them.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2088-90  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:49 AM

“You’ve taken my sibling from me,” he said. “You’ve kept me from having what Amma and Shkaht have, and that’s something you don’t understand or even care about. My mother might die because you keep me here. You know her, but you don’t care. And if you don’t care about my people, why should I care about yours?” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2123-28  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:52 AM

“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. He talked to them easily and ate the bits of food they kept giving him and accepted their caresses, though he did not enjoy them any more than he ever had. Humans needed to touch people, but they could not do so in ways that were pleasurable or useful. Only when he felt lonely or frightened was he glad of their hands, their protection. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Note Loc. 2128  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:54 AM

entire book is extremely lonely. where book onewas suspicion and a kind of exhausting lack of faith in humanity... this book is a kind of exhausting isolation. emotional and literal aienation.
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2141-47  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:55 AM

There was a flattened rectangular metal frame—Sabina’s “truck” apparently. It looked useless. Akin had no idea what Humans had once done with it, but now it could only be cut up into metal scrap and eventually forged into other things. It was huge and would probably yield a great deal of metal. Akin wondered how the feeding shuttle had missed it. “I’d like to know how the Oankali smashed it flat this way,” another woman said. “It’s as though a big foot stepped on it.” Akin said nothing. He had learned that people did not really want him to give them information unless they asked him directly—or unless they were so desperate they didn’t care where their information came from. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2167-75  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 04:57 AM

“The picture—the plastic—was harmful to you?” “The stuff it was made of. Plastic?” “Yes.” “It’s so sealed and covered with dirt that I didn’t feel the poison before I tasted it. Tell the girls not to taste it.” “We won’t,” Amma and Shkaht said in unison, and Akin jumped. He did not know when they had come in. “I’ll show you later,” he said in Oankali. They nodded. “It was … more poison packed tight together in one place than I’ve ever known. Did Humans make it that way on purpose?” “It just worked out that way,” Gabe said. “Hell, maybe that’s why the stuff is still here. Maybe it’s so poisonous—or so useless—that not even the microbes would eat it. Non-biodegradable, I think the prewar word was.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2279-86  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:04 AM

“We have to go.” “I want to go with you!” Silence. Frightened, Akin linked more deeply with them. “Don’t leave me here alone!” More silence. Very gently, they held him between them and put him to sleep. He understood what they were doing and resisted them angrily at first, but they were right. They had a chance without him. They were stronger, larger, and could travel faster and farther without rest. Communication between them was quicker and more precise. They could act almost as though they shared a single nervous system. Only paired siblings and adult mates came to know each other that well. Akin would hamper them, probably get them recaptured. He knew this, and they could feel his contradictory feelings. They knew he knew. Thus, there was no need to argue. He must simply accept the reality. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2397-2402  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:11 AM

I like a lot of the people in Phoenix. And I remember what raiders did to Tino. They didn’t have to. They just did it. Later, though, while I was with them, they didn’t really seem … I don’t know. Most of the time, they were like the men in Phoenix.” “They probably came from someplace like Phoenix—some village or town. They got sick of one pointless, endless existence and chose another.” “Pointless because resisters can’t have children?” “That’s it. It means a lot more than I could ever explain to you. We don’t get old. We don’t have kids, and nothing we do means shit.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2428-31  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:14 AM

He did not have their flaw. He had been assembled within the body of an ooloi. He was Oankali enough to be listened to by other Oankali and Human enough to know that resister Humans were being treated with cruelty and condescension. Yet he had not even been able to make Amma and Shkaht understand. He did not know enough yet. These resisters had to help him learn more. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2434-36  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:15 AM

Often he found Human leavings protected within containers. There were bits of hair, skin, nail. From some of these he salvaged lost Human genetic patterns that ooloi could re-create if they needed the Human genetic diversity. Only an ooloi could tell him what was useful. He memorized everything to give to Nikanj someday. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2473-75  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:18 AM

GABE TOOK HIM AWAY from his tasting and cleaning for a while—took him higher into the hills where the great mountains in the distance could be seen clearly. One of them smoked and steamed into the blue sky and was somehow very beautiful—a pathway deep into the Earth. A breathing place. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2496-99  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:20 AM

“I liked the acting. It scared me at first, and I couldn’t understand a lot of it, but … It’s like what we do—constructs and Oankali. It’s like when we touch each other and talk with feelings and pressures. Sometimes you have to remember a feeling you haven’t had for a long time and bring it back so you can transmit it to someone else or use a feeling you have about one thing to help someone understand something else.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2515-17  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:22 AM

“What can I take back that will grow?” Gabe would say. He could not know how much this pleased Akin. What he and Gabe were doing was what the Oankali always did—collect life, travel and collect and integrate new life into their ships, their already vast collection of living things, and themselves. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2534-47  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:24 AM

He went to her quickly, glad there was no one near her to hear. “I have to go,” he whispered. “They’re here.” She almost stabbed herself with the knife. “Where!” “That way.” He looked east but did not point. “Of course.” “Walk me out there. People will notice if I get too far from camp alone.” “Me? No!” “If you don’t, someone might get killed.” “If I do, I might get killed!” “Tate.” She looked at him. “You know they won’t hurt you. You know. Help me. Your people are the ones I’m trying to save.” She gave him a look so hostile that he stumbled back from her. Abruptly she grabbed him, picked him up, and began walking east. “Put me down,” he said. “Let me walk.” “Shut up!” she said. “Just tell me when I’m getting close to them.” He realized belatedly that she was terrified. She could not have been afraid of being killed. She knew the Oankali too well for that. What then? “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You were the only one I dared to ask. It will be all right.” She took a breath and put him down, held his hand. “It won’t be all right,” she said. “But that’s not your fault.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2588-96  | Added on Friday, October 13, 2017, 05:27 AM

“The people believed you had learned enough. They knew they had deprived you of your sibling.” “It’s … too late for bonding.” He knew it was. “Yes.” “There was a pair of construct siblings here.” “We know. They’re all right.” “I saw what they had, how it was for them.” He paused for a moment remembering, longing. “I’ll never have that.” Without realizing it, he had begun to cry. “Eka, you’ll have something very like it when you mate. Until then, you have us.” Dichaan did not have to be told how little this was. It would be long years before Akin was old enough to mate. And bonding with parents was not the same as bonding with a close sibling. Nothing he had touched was as sweet as that bonding. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2663-69  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:42 AM

“Nikanj said he would go through a phase of quasi-Human sexuality.” Tino laughed. “This must be it, then.” “Later he’ll want an ooloi.” “Yeah. I can understand that, too.” Dichaan hesitated. He had come to the question he most wanted to ask, and he knew Tino would not appreciate his asking. “Does he go to the resisters, Tino? Are they the reason for his wandering?” Tino looked startled, then angry. “If you knew, why did you ask?” “I didn’t know. I guessed. He must stop!” “No.” “They could kill him, Tino! They kill each other so easily!” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2690-95  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:45 AM

Dichaan got up from his platform, left his salad, and went to Tino. The man started to draw back, but Dichaan took his arms.” Let me try to understand you, Chkah. How many children have we had together? Be still.” Tino sat still and allowed Dichaan to touch him with a few long, slender head tentacles. They had had six children together. Three boys from Ahajas and three girls from Lilith. The old pattern. “You chose to come here,” Dichaan said. “And you’ve chosen to stay. I’ve been very glad to have you here—a Human father for the children and a Human male to balance group mating. A partner in every sense. Why does it hurt you to stay here?” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2707-10  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:47 AM

But it doesn’t matter. The resisters haven’t betrayed themselves or their Humanity. They haven’t helped you do what you’re doing. They may not be able to stop you, but they haven’t helped you.” “If all Humans were like them, our construct children would be much less Human, no matter how they looked. They would know only what we could teach them of Humans. Would that be better?” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2722-30  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:49 AM

“Resisters have been wronged and betrayed,” Tino said. “I never told Akin that, though. I never had to. He saw it for himself.” “You’re working on another ulcer,” Nikanj said. “So what?” “You want to die. And yet you want to live. You love your children and your parents and that is a terrible conflict. You even love us—but you don’t think you should.” It climbed onto the platform and lay down alongside Tino. Dichaan touched the platform with his head tentacles, encouraging it to grow, to broaden and make room for him. He was not needed, but he wanted to know firsthand what happened to Tino. “I remember Akin telling me about a Human who bled to death from ulcers,” he said to Nikanj. “One of his captors.” “Yes. He gave the man’s identity. I found the ooloi who had conditioned the man and learned that he had had ulcers since adolescence. The ooloi tried to keep him for his own sake, but the man wouldn’t stay.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2744-49  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:50 AM

“Anything to do with Humans always seems to involve contradictions.” It paused. “Examine Tino. Inside him, so many very different things are working together to keep him alive. Inside his cells, mitochondria, a previously independent form of life, have found a haven and trade their ability to synthesize proteins and metabolize fats for room to live and reproduce. We’re in his cells too now, and the cells have accepted us. One Oankali organism within each cell, dividing with each cell, extending life, and resisting disease. Even before we arrived, they had bacteria living in their intestines and protecting them from other bacteria that would hurt or kill them. They could not exist without symbiotic relationships with other creatures. Yet such relationships frighten them.” 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2782-86  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:54 AM

SOMETIMES IT SEEMED TO Akin that his world was made up of tight units of people who treated him kindly or coldly as they chose, but who could not let him in, no matter how much they might want to. He could remember a time when blending into others seemed not only possible but inevitable—when Tiikuchahk was still unborn and he could reach out and taste it and know it as his closest sibling. Now, though, because he had not been able to bond with it, it was perhaps his least interesting sibling. He had spent as little time as possible with it. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2798-2801  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:56 AM

So much had to wait until he was an adult. When he was an adult, he could speak for the resisters. Now, his voice could be ignored, would not even be heard without the amplification provided by one of the adult members of his family. He remembered Nikanj’s stories of its own childhood—of being right, knowing it was right, and yet being ignored because it was not adult. Lilith had occasionally been hurt during those years because people did not listen to Nikanj, who knew her better than they did. 
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Adulthood Rites (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 2) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2816-22  | Added on Saturday, October 14, 2017, 01:58 AM

You don’t want to leave so you don’t want to say goodbye. You didn’t even go to your resister friends.” She didn’t smell them on him. He had been particularly embarrassed to realize that she and others knew by scent when he had been with a woman. He washed, of course, but still they knew. “You should have gone to them. You might change a great deal duri <You have reached the clipping limit for this item>
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Imago

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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 49-51  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:03 AM

My first changes were sensory. Tastes, scents, all sensations suddenly became complex, confusing, yet unexpectedly seductive. I had to relearn everything. River water, for instance: when I swam in it, I noticed that it had two distinctive major flavors—hydrogen and oxygen?—and many minor flavors. I could separate out and savor each one individually. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 88-90  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:07 AM

The word “ooloi” could not be translated directly into English because its meaning was as complex as Nikanj’s scent. “Treasured stranger.” “Bridge.” “Life trader.” “Weaver.” “Magnet.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 151-54  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:13 AM

The male walked away toward the empty house. The female hesitated. “What do you think of our emigration?” she asked. I looked at her, liking her, not wanting to answer. But such questions should be answered. Why, though, were the Human females who insisted on asking them so often small, weak people? The Martian environment they were headed for was harsher than any they had known. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 162-65  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:14 AM

“You should stay and mate with constructs or with Oankali,” I said. “The children we construct are free of inherent flaws. What we build will last.” “You’re just a child, repeating what you’ve been told!” I shook my head. “I perceive what I perceive. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 166-70  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:15 AM

The male had come back. He put his arm around the female, drawing her away from me as though I had offered some threat. “They could be lying for their own reasons.” I shifted my attention to him. “You know they’re not,” I said softly. “Your own history tells you. Your people are intelligent, and that’s good. The Oankali say you’re potentially one of the most intelligent species they’ve found. But you’re also hierarchical—you and your nearest animal relatives and your most distant animal ancestors. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 177-80  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:16 AM

“We’ll be fully Human and free. That’s enough. We might even get into space again on our own someday. Your people might be dead wrong about us.” “No.” He couldn’t read the gene combinations as I could. It was as though he were about to walk off a cliff simply because he could not see it—or because he, or rather his descendants, would not hit the rocks below for a long time. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 192-94  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:17 AM

The Oankali believe … the Oankali know to the bone that it’s wrong to help the Human species regenerate unchanged because it will destroy itself again. To them it’s like deliberately causing the conception of a child who is so defective that it must die in infancy. “ 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 249-53  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:24 AM

After a time it lay down beside me and helped me understand why it was so upset. But by then, I knew. “You’re becoming ooloi,” it said quietly. I began to be afraid for myself. Nikanj lay alongside me. Its head and body tentacles did not touch me. It offered no comfort or reassurance, no movement, no sign that it was even conscious. “Ooan?” I said. I hadn’t called it that for years. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 274-79  | Added on Monday, October 16, 2017, 05:26 AM

“I should have sent you to spend more time with Tino and Dichaan.” It paused for a moment, rustled its unengaged body tentacles. It did that when it was thinking. A dozen or so body tentacles rubbed together sounded like wind blowing through the trees. “I liked having you around too much,” it said. “All my children grow up and turn away from me, turn to their same-sex parents. I thought you would, too, when the time came.” “That’s what I thought. I never wanted to do it, though.” “You didn’t want to go to your fathers?” “No. I only left you when I knew I would be in the way.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 334-37  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:03 AM

It probably could not be injured by bare Human hands, but I think Tino tried. He was angry and hurt, and that made him want to hurt others. Of my two Human parents, only he tended to react this way. And now the only being he could turn to for comfort was the one who had caused all his trouble. An Oankali would have opened a wall and gone away for a while. Even Lilith would have done that. Tino tried to give pain. Pain for pain. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 347-52  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:04 AM

She smiled a little. “Nika’s first same-sex child. It’s been so lonely.” “I know.” “We all knew,” Dichaan said from his platform. “All the ooloi on Earth must be feeling the desperation Nikanj felt. The people are going to have to change the old agreement before more accidents happen. The next one might be a flawed ooloi.” A flawed natural genetic engineer—one who could distort or destroy with a touch. Nothing could save it from confinement on the ship. Perhaps it would even have to be physically altered to prevent it from functioning in any way as an ooloi. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 362-64  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:06 AM

METAMORPHOSIS IS SLEEP. DAYS, weeks, months of sleep broken by a few hours now and then of waking, eating, talking. Males and females slept even more, but they had just the one metamorphosis. Ooloi go through this twice. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 376-83  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:08 AM

I had been constructed inside such an organ, assembled from the genetic contributions of my two mothers and my two fathers. The construction itself and a single Oankali organelle was the only ooloi contribution to my existence. The organelle had divided within each of my cells as the cells divided. It had become an essential part of my body. We were what we were because of that organelle. It made us collectors and traders of life, always learning, always changing in every way but one—that one organelle. Ooloi said we were that organelle—that the original Oankali had evolved through that organelle’s invasion, acquisition, duplication, and symbiosis. Sometimes on worlds that had no intelligent, carbon-based life to trade with, Oankali deliberately left behind large numbers of the organelle. Abandoned, it would seek a home in the most unlikely indigenous life-forms and trigger changes—evolution in spurts. Hundreds of millions of years later, perhaps some Oankali people would wander by and find interesting trade partners waiting for them. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 386-88  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:09 AM

Yashi, the ooloi called their organ of genetic manipulation. Sometimes they talked about it as though it were another person. “I’m going out to taste the river and the forest. Yashi is hungry and twisting for something new.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 391-95  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:09 AM

Adult ooloi were more different than most Humans realized. Beyond their insertion of the Oankali organelle, they made no genetic contribution to their children. They left their birth families and mated with strangers so that they would not be confronted with too much familiarity. Humans said familiarity bred contempt. Among the ooloi, it bred mistakes. Male and female siblings could mate safely as long as their ooloi came from a totally different kin group. So, for an ooloi, a same-sex child was as close as it would ever come to seeing itself in its children. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 403-5  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:11 AM

Since it said I must not be disturbed in metamorphosis, and since they were not yet convinced that it had lost all competence, they would not disturb me. Humans thought this sort of thing was a matter of authority—who had authority over the child. Constructs and Oankali knew it was a matter of physiology. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 418-23  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:14 AM

Subadults were still seen as children, but they could work as ooloi in ways that did not involve reproduction. Subadults could not only heal or cause disease, but they could cause genetic changes—mutations—in plants and animals. They could do anything that could be done without mates. They could be unintentionally deadly, changing insects and microorganisms in unexpected ways. “I don’t want to hurt anything,” I said toward the end of my months-long change when I could speak again. “Don’t let me do any harm.” “No harm, Oeka,” Nikanj said softly. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 425-27  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:14 AM

You can make mistakes, but you can also perceive them. And you can correct them. I’ll help you.” Its words gave a security nothing else could have. I had begun to feel like one of the dormant volcanoes high in the mountains beyond the forest—like a thing that might explode anytime, destroying whatever happened to be 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 427  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:14 AM

nearby. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 436-40  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:16 AM

“The people wouldn’t be as hard on you if I were male.” It said nothing. “They haven’t accepted me yet,” I argued. “They could go on rejecting me until the family had to leave Lo—all because of me.” It continued to focus on me silently. There were times when I envied Humans their ability to shut off their sight by closing their eyes, shut off their understanding by some conscious act of denial that was beyond me. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 449-52  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:17 AM

What we do about it is our decision, our responsibility. Not yours.” I might not have believed this if a Human had said it. Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 458-71  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:18 AM

It moved closer and let me touch it, let me examine its flesh so that I could begin to understand the difference between its flesh and my own. I would be the most extreme version of a construct—not just a mix of Human and Oankali characteristics, but able to use my body in ways that neither Human nor Oankali could. Synergy. I studied a single cell of Nikanj’s arm, comparing it with cells of my own. Apart from my Human admixture, the main difference seemed to be that certain genes of mine had activated and caused my metamorphosis. I wondered what might happen if these genes activated in Nikanj. It was mature. Were there other changes it might undergo? “Stop,” Nikanj said quietly. It signaled silently and spoke aloud. Its silent signal felt urgent. What was I doing? “Look what you’ve done.” Now it spoke only silently. I reexamined the cell I had touched and realized that somehow I had located and activated the genes I had been curious about. These genes were trying to activate others of their kind in other cells, trying to cause Nikanj’s body to begin the secretion of inappropriate hormones that would cause inappropriate growth. What would grow? “Nothing would grow in me,” Nikanj said, and I realized it had perceived my curiosity. “The cell will die. You see?” The cell died as I watched. “I could have kept it alive,” Nikanj said. “By a conscious act, I could have prevented my body from rejecting it. Without you, though, I could not have activated the dormant genes. My body rejects that kind of behavior as … deeply self-destructive.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 485-91  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:20 AM

It touched my head tentacles with several of its own, agreeing. Then it examined the rest of my body closely, again checking for dangerous flaws, gathering information for the people. I relaxed and let it work, and it said instantly, “No!” “What?” I asked. I really hadn’t done anything this time. I knew I hadn’t. “Until you know yourself a great deal better, you can’t afford to relax that way while you’re in contact with another person. Not even with me. You’re too competent, too well able to make tiny, potentially deadly changes in genes, in cells, in organs. What males, females, and even some ooloi must struggle to perceive, you can’t fail to perceive on one level or another. What they must be taught to do, what they must strain to do, you can do almost without thought. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 495-98  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:21 AM

Every child in the family had heard that story. One of Nikanj’s sensory arms had been all but severed from its body, but Lilith allowed it to link into her body and activate certain of her highly specialized genes. It used what it learned from these to encourage its own cells to grow and reattach the complex structures of the arm. It could not have done this without the triggering effect of Lilith’s genetic help. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 498-501  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:21 AM

Lilith’s ability had run in her family, although neither she nor her ancestors had been able to control it. It had either lain dormant in them or come to life in insane, haphazard fashion and caused the growth of useless new tissue. New tissue gone obscenely wrong. Humans called this condition cancer. To them, it was a hated disease. To the Oankali, it was treasure. It was beauty beyond Human comprehension. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 533-38  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:25 AM

Humans thought the ooloi were promising that they would do nothing until the Humans said they had changed their minds—told the ooloi with their mouths, in words. But the ooloi perceived all that a living being said—all words, all gestures, and a vast array of other internal and external bodily responses. Ooloi absorbed everything and acted according to whatever consensus they discovered. Thus ooloi treated individuals as they treated groups of beings. They sought a consensus. If there was none, it meant the being was confused, ignorant, frightened, or in some other way not yet able to see its own best interests. The ooloi gave information and perhaps calmness until they could perceive a consensus. Then they acted. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 543-49  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:44 PM

Lo’s natural color was gray-brown. Beneath me, it turned yellow. It developed swellings. Rough, diseased patches appeared on it. Its odor changed, became foul. Parts of it sloughed off. Sometimes it developed deep, open sores. And all that I did to Lo, I also did to myself. But it was Lo that I felt guilty about. Lo was parent, sibling, home. It was the world I had been born into. As an ooloi, I would have to leave it when I mated. But woven into its genetic structure and my own was the unmistakable Lo kin group signature. I would have done anything to avoid giving Lo pain. I got up from my platform as soon as I could and collected dead wood to sleep on. Lo ate the wood. It was not intelligent enough to reason with—would not be for perhaps a hundred years. But it was self-aware. It knew what was part of it and what wasn’t. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 550-52  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:44 PM

It preferred whatever pain I gave it to the unnatural itch of apparent rejection. So I went on giving it pain until I was completely recovered. By then, I knew as well as anyone else that I had to go. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 559-61  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:45 PM

Both Lilith and Tino knew that their Oankali mates would provide for all their physical needs, yet they could not easily accept being totally dependent. This was a characteristic of adult Humans that the Oankali never understood. The Oankali simply accepted it as best they could and were pleased to see that we constructs understood. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 574-76  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 08:46 PM

She blinked, looked at me with the pain I had hoped not to see. “I want Human things,” I said. “Small Human things that you and Tino would leave behind. And I want yams from your garden—and cassava and fruit and seed. Samples of all the seed or whatever is needed to grow your plants.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 603-5  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 10:59 PM

After a time, it said, “How hungry are you?” I didn’t answer. It wasn’t asking me how badly I wanted food, but when I’d last been touched. Just before I would have walked away, it held out all four arms. I hesitated, then stepped into its embrace. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 605-8  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 10:59 PM

It was not afraid of me. It was a forest fire of curiosity, longing, and fear, and I stood comforted and reassured while it examined me with every sensory tentacle that could reach me and both sensory arms. We fed each other. My hunger was to be touched and its was to know everything firsthand and understand it all. Observing it, I understood that it was looking mainly for reassurance of its own. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 610-13  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 11:00 PM

When it let me go, it was still uncomprehending. “You were very hungry,” it said. “And that after only a day or two of being avoided.” It knotted its head and body tentacles hard against its flesh. “You know something of what we can do, we ooloi, but I think you had no idea how much we need contact with other people. And you seem to need it more than we do. Spend more time with your paired sibling or you could become dangerous.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 615-16  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 11:00 PM

Not being able to go to anyone for comfort, though, can make you like the lightning—mindless and perhaps deadly.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 625-27  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 11:01 PM

I looked at it, missing it already—a smaller than average pale gray ooloi from the Jah kin group. It uncoiled one sensory arm and touched a sensory spot on my face. It could see the spots—as I could now. Their texture was slightly rougher than the skin around them. Tehkorahs made the contact a sharp, sweet shock of pleasure that washed over me like a sudden, cool rain. It ebbed slowly away. A goodbye. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 687-93  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 11:09 PM

Oni watched Dichaan go, then returned to Hozh, who had finished her papaya. She stood close to him. He was no more male than she female, but it was easier to go on thinking of them the way I always had. The two of them slipped automatically into silent communication. Whenever they stood close together that way, Hozh’s sensory tentacles immediately found Oni’s sensory spots—she had very few sensory tentacles of her own—and established communication. Paired siblings. Watching them made me lonely, and I looked around for Aaor. I caught it watching me. It had avoided me carefully since I got up from my metamorphosis. I had let it keep its distance in spite of what Tehkorahs had told me because Aaor obviously did not want contact. It did not seem to need me as much as I needed it. As I watched, it turned away from me and focused its attention on a large beetle. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 695-99  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 11:10 PM

“You have your machete,” Nikanj said. It could not have gotten more attention if it had screamed. I focused on it to the exclusion of everything, felt pulled around to face it. Oankali did not suggest violence. Humans said violence was against Oankali beliefs. Actually it was against their flesh and bone, against every cell of them. Humans had evolved from hierarchical life, dominating, often killing other life. Oankali had evolved from acquisitive life, collecting and combining with other life. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 700-703  | Added on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, 11:10 PM

They fought only to save their lives and the lives of others. Even then, they fought to subdue, not to kill. If they were forced to kill, they resorted to biological weapons collected genetically on thousands of worlds. They could be utterly deadly, but they paid for it later. It cost them so dearly that they had no history at all of striking out in anger, frustration, jealousy, or any other emotion, no matter how keenly they felt it. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 714-16  | Added on Thursday, October 19, 2017, 06:39 AM

It would have been happier holding its hand in fire. “There are easier ways to say these things,” it admitted. “But some things shouldn’t be said easily.” It hesitated as Dichaan rejoined us. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 773-79  | Added on Thursday, October 19, 2017, 06:44 AM

I had apparently caused Aaor’s unsexed, immature body to try to grow sensory arms. Instead, it was growing potentially dangerous tumors. “I’m sorry,” I said when Nikanj had finished with it. “Just figure out what you did wrong,” it said unhappily. “Find out how to avoid doing it again.” That was the problem. I hadn’t been aware of doing anything to Aaor. If I had felt myself doing it, I would have stopped myself. I thought I had been careful. I was like a blind Human, trampling what I could not see. But a blind Human’s eyesight could be restored. What I was missing was something I had never had—or at least, something I had never discovered. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 784-88  | Added on Thursday, October 19, 2017, 06:45 AM

We never thought we were in danger from Pascual because its people knew better than most resisters what happened to anyone who attacked us. Their village, already shrunken by emigration, would be gassed, and the attackers hunted out by scent. They would be found and exiled to the ship. There, if they had killed, they would be kept either unconscious or drugged to pleasure and contentment. They would never be allowed to awaken completely. They would be used as teaching aids, subjects for biological experiments, or reservoirs of Human genetic material. The people of Pascual knew this, and thus committed only what Lilith called property crimes. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 908-12  | Added on Thursday, October 19, 2017, 06:55 AM

A foreign Human as incredibly complex as any Human, as full of the Human Conflict—dangerous and frightening and intriguing—as any Human. She was like the fire—desirable and dangerous, beautiful and lethal. Humans never understood why Oankali found them so interesting. I took my time finishing with the woman. No one hurried me. It was a real effort for me to move aside and let Nikanj check her. I didn’t want it to touch her. I didn’t want to share her with it. I had never felt that way before. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 940-44  | Added on Thursday, October 19, 2017, 06:57 AM

“Marina Rivas. I want to go to Mars.” I looked away from her, suddenly weary. One more small, thin-boned female to be sacrificed to Human stubbornness. I recalled from examining her that she had never had a child. That was good because her narrow hips were not suitable to bearing children. If her fertility were restored and nothing else changed, she would surely die trying to give birth to her first child. She could be changed, redesigned. I wouldn’t trust myself to do such substantial work, but she must have it done. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1060-63  | Added on Thursday, October 19, 2017, 07:05 AM

They understood what was to happen to them, and even drugged, they asked to be spared, to be released. The one who had called Lilith and Tino animals began to cry. Nikanj drugged him a little more and he seemed to forget why he had been upset. That would be his life now. Once he was aboard the ship, one ooloi would drug him regularly. He would come to look forward to it—and he would not care what else was done with him. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1083-89  | Added on Thursday, October 19, 2017, 07:07 AM

“She’ll cooperate when you’re ready to correct that.” “Good. You look like her, you know.” “What?” “Your body has been striving to please her. You’re more brown now—less gray. Your face is changed subtly.” “You look like a male version of her,” Wray said. “She probably thought you were very handsome.” “She said so,” I admitted amid Wray’s laughter. “I didn’t know I was changing.” “All ooloi change a little when they mate,” Tehkorahs said. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1130-34  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 03:13 AM

You should eat.” When I didn’t eat, it moved closer to me and leaned against me, linking comfortably into my nervous system. It had not done that for a while. It wasn’t afraid of me anymore. It had not exactly abandoned me. It had allowed me to isolate myself—since I seemed to want to. It let me know this in simple neurosensory impressions. “I was lonely,” I protested aloud. “I know. But not for me.” It spoke with confidence and contentment that confused me. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1166-72  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 03:17 AM

“Kahguyaht said ooloi possessiveness during subadulthood is a bridge that helps ooloi understand Humans,” she said. “It’s as though Human emotions were permanently locked in ooloi subadulthood. Humans are possessive of mates, potential mates, and property because these can be taken from them.” “They can be taken from anyone,” I said. “Living things can die. Nonliving things can be destroyed.” “But Human mates can walk away from one another,” Dichaan said. “They never lose the ability to do that. They can leave one another permanently and find new mates. Humans can take the mates of other Humans. There’s no physical bond. No security. And because Humans are hierarchical, they tend to compete for mates and property.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1218-24  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 03:20 AM

You appear to be an adult. You appear to be a young woman—too thin, perhaps, but very lovely.” I wasn’t surprised this time. My body wanted him. My body sought to please him. What would happen to me when I had two or more mates? Would I be like the sky, constantly changing, clouded, clear, clouded, clear? Would I have to be hateful to one partner in order to please the other? Nikanj looked the same all the time and yet all four of my other parents treasured it. How well would my looks please anyone when I had four arms instead of two? “No male or female could regenerate your leg,” I told João. “I am ooloi.” It was as though the air between us became a crystalline wall—transparent, but very hard. I could not reach him through it anymore. He had taken refuge behind it and even if I touched him, I would not reach him. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1276-80  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 03:25 AM

“People shook their heads over the war at first,” he told them. “They said it would kill off the north—Europe, Asia, North America. They said the northerners had lost their minds. No one realized we would suffer from sickness, hunger, blindness. …” He had known I was listening. He hadn’t cared, but he would not have volunteered to tell me anything of his past. He answered my questions, but he volunteered nothing. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1324-26  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 03:29 AM

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been among Oankali before. We all have, we resisters. Oankali never made me doubt what I should do.” He smiled. “Before I met you, Jodahs, I knew myself much better.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1362-65  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:03 AM

“His body told you. His every look, his reactions, his touch, his scent. He never stopped telling you what he wanted. And since he was the sole focus of your attention, you gave him everything he asked for.” It lay down beside Aaor. “We do that, Jodahs. We please them so that they’ll stay and please us. You’re better at it with Humans than I ever was. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1375-78  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:05 AM

There were young Humans born and raised on the ship because there had been so few salvageable Humans left after their war and their resulting disease and atmospheric disturbances. There had not been enough for a good trade. Also most of those who wanted to return to Earth had been allowed to return. That left the Toaht Oankali—those who wanted to trade and to leave with the ship—too few Human mates. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1381-86  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:06 AM

“I won’t go to Chkahichdahk. I won’t take what they decide to give me and stay if they decide to keep me. I would rather stay here and mate with old Humans.” It did not shout at me as my Human parents would have. It did not tell me what I already knew. It did not even turn away from me. “Lie here with me,” it said softly. I went over and lay down next to it, felt it link into me with more sensory tentacles than I had on my entire body. It looped a sensory arm around my neck. “Such despair in you,” it said silently. “You could not throw away so much life.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1400-1401  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:08 AM

How many attacks on you will it take for them to force a lethal response from you? What will happen then? 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1421-22  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:09 AM

Someday it was supposed to duplicate the cells of its vast store of biological information and pass the copies along to its same-sex children. We were to receive it when we were fully adult and mated. What would that mean, really, for Aaor and me? 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1432-34  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:11 AM

When I came out of the forest, looking like nothing anyone on Earth would recognize, one or the other pair of them took me between them and stayed with me until I looked like myself again. If I touched only one of them, I would change that one, make it what I was. But if they both stayed with me, they changed me. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1435-36  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:11 AM

“You make it easy for me not to wander,” I told it. “My body wanders. Even when I come home, it wants to go on wandering.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1443-47  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:12 AM

“But—” They both spoke at once. Then, by mutual consent, Ayodele spoke. “Then you’re either out of control or contained by us or forced into a false Human shape.” “Not forced.” “When can you be yourself?” I thought about that. I understood it because I remembered being their age and having a strong awareness of the way my face and body looked, and of that look being me. It never had been, really. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1454-57  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:13 AM

“Does it bother you to have me here with you?” “It did,” Ayodele said. “We thought your life must be terrible. We can feel your distress when we link with you.” “This is my place,” I told them. “This world. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1475-78  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:15 AM

I watched a Human hunter make so much noise that the feeding peccary he was stalking heard him and ran away. The Human went to the place where the peccary had been feeding and he cursed and kicked the fruit the animal had been feeding on. It never occurred to him to eat the fruit or to collect some for his people. I ate some when he was gone. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1509-14  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:18 AM

“They’re yours if you would like them,” I said. I cleared a place well away from the food and lay down to rest. I had not slept in two days. Humans liked regular periods of sleep—preferably at night. Oankali slept when they needed rest. I needed rest now, but I would not sleep until the Humans made some decision—either to go away or to come satisfy their hunger and their curiosity. But I could be still in the Oankali way. I could lie awake using the least possible energy, and as Lilith and Tino said, looking dead. I could do this very comfortably for much longer than most Humans would willingly sit and watch. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1600-1603  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:24 AM

“Why do you want to heal us?” Jesusa asked. “You waylay us, feed us, and want to heal us. Why?” I opened my eyes. “I was feeling very lonely,” I said. “I would have been glad to see … almost anyone. But when I realized you had something wrong, I wanted to help. I need to help. I’m not an adult yet, but I can’t ignore illness. I’m ooloi.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1605-6  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 05:24 AM

And only ooloi needed to heal. Males and females could learn to heal if they wanted to. Ooloi had no choice. We exist to make the people and to unite them and to maintain them. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 1860-66  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 09:01 PM

“Your people won’t be hurt,” I assured her. “People who spend as much time as we do living inside one another’s skins are very slow to kill. And if we injure people, we heal them.” “You should let them alone.” “No. We shouldn’t.” “They own themselves. They don’t belong to you.” “They can’t survive as they are. Their gene pool is too small. It’s only a matter of time before some disease or defect wipes them out.” I stopped for a moment, thinking. “I’m Human enough to understand what they’re trying to do. One of my brothers began the Mars colony because he understood the need of Humans to live as themselves, not to blend completely with the Oankali.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2043-45  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 09:14 PM

It would be the same if I were being cared for by a pair of Oankali or a pair of constructs. Nikanj had warned me. Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2265-70  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:26 PM

“If I died on a lifeless world, a world that could sustain some form of life if it were tenacious enough, organelles within each cell of my body would survive and evolve. In perhaps a thousand million years, that world would be as full of life as this one.” “… it would?” “Yes. Our ancestors have seeded a great many barren worlds that way. Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of. A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution. That’s what we believe in.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2279-85  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:28 PM

He had known a woman who had it and who looked much the way I did before Jodahs healed me.” Everyone turned at once and focused on me. “Ask me when his story is finished,” I said. “I don’t know a name for the disease anyway. I can only describe it.” “Describe it,” Lilith said. I looked at her and understood that she was asking me for more than a description of the disorder. Her face was set and grim, as it had been since Jesusa promised to stay with me through metamorphosis. She wanted to know what reason there might be apart from her love for me for not telling the Humans how bound to me they were becoming. She wanted to know why she should betray her own kind with silence. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2370-72  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:35 PM

Back when I met my first mature ooloi, Nikanj’s parent Kahguyaht, I found it alien, arrogant, and terrifying. I hated it. I thought I hated all ooloi.” She paused. “Now I feel as though I’ve loved Nikanj all my life. Ooloi are dangerously easy to love. They absorb us, and we don’t mind.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2493-94  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:44 PM

There was a time when that conflict or contradiction—it was called both—frightened some Oankali so badly that they withdrew from contact with Humans. They became Akjai—people who would eventually leave the vicinity of Earth without mixing with Humans. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2501-3  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:45 PM

Jesusa had only begun to taste me—me as an adult—and I could see that this was true. She had liked me very much as a subadult. But what she felt now went beyond liking, beyond loving, into the deep biological attachment of adulthood. Literal, physical addiction to another person, Lilith called it. I couldn’t think about it that coldly. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2516-20  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:47 PM

I detached myself from Jesusa, lingering for a moment over the salt taste of her skin. I had once heard my mother say to Nikanj, “It’s a good thing your people don’t eat meat. If you did, the way you talk about us, our flavors and your hunger and your need to taste us, I think you would eat us instead of fiddling with our genes.” And after a moment of silence, “That might even be better. It would be something we could understand and fight against.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2674-76  | Added on Friday, October 20, 2017, 11:57 PM

“Speak to Lilith first. She used to do this, you know. Nikanj had to learn very young that she would stretch the cord until it almost strangled her. And if Nikanj went after her, she would curse it and hate it.” I knew that about Lilith. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2724-28  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 12:02 AM

Yet as Nikanj stepped away from Ahajas and Dichaan and reached for me with all four arms, I didn’t feel like an adult. I was afraid of this final step, this final touch. It was as though Nikanj were saying, “Here’s your birthright, my final gift/duty/pleasure to you.” Final. But Nikanj said nothing at all. When it touched me, I pulled back, resisting. It simply waited until I was calmer. Then it spoke. “You must have this before you go, Lelka.” It paused. “And you must pass it on to Aaor as soon as Aaor is mated and stable. Who knows when the two of you will see me again?” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2733-39  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 12:02 AM

There was immense newness. Life in more varieties than I could possibly have imagined—unique units of life, most never seen on Earth. Generations of memory to be examined, memorized, and either preserved alive in stasis or allowed to live their natural span and die. Those that I could re-create from my own genetic material, I did not have to maintain alive. The flood of information was incomprehensible to me at first. I received it and stored it with only a few bits of it catching my attention. There would be plenty of time for me to examine the rest. I wouldn’t lose any of it, and once I understood it, I wouldn’t forget it. When the flood ended and Nikanj was sure I could stand alone, it let me go. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2794-98  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 12:06 AM

Aaor let me soothe it, but still said, “What reasons?” “Sometimes they need to prove to themselves that they still own themselves, that they can still care for themselves, that they still have things—customs—that are their own.” “Sounds like an expression of the Human conflict,” Aaor said. “It is,” I agreed. “They’re proving their independence at a time when they’re no longer independent. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 2832-34  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 12:09 AM

I slept with it that night. I couldn’t do as much for it alone, but it couldn’t have tolerated Jesusa or Tomás until they had digested their meal. I couldn’t imagine it not existing, truly gone, never to be touched again—like never being able to touch my own face again. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3027-30  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 12:41 AM

He did not veer from the Human norm in the same way as other people in the village, and Humans were genetically inclined to be intolerant of difference. They could overcome the inclination, but it was a reality of the Human conflict that they often did not. It was significant that this man was so ready to leave his home with someone he had been taught to think of as a devil—someone he hadn’t even seen yet. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3072-75  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 12:44 AM

“I want to go,” Paz said quietly. “I’m tired of telling myself lies about this place and watching my children die.” She pushed very long black hair from her face. As she sat at the table, most of her hair hung to the floor behind her. “Santos, if you had seen our last child before it died, you would thank God for the beauty you had even before your healing.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3338-46  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:14 AM

“Why did you think I wanted them? Why else would I be willing to risk your killing me?” I paused, but no one spoke. “We care for our mates as deeply as you do for yours,” I said. “It would be better for them to be killed than to be given to you,” the disgusted elder said. “Your people almost destroyed themselves,” I said, “and you still haven’t had enough killing?” “Your people want to kill us!” someone said from the crowd. I spoke into renewed muttering. “My people are coming here, but they won’t kill. They didn’t kill your elders. They plucked them out of the ashes of their war, healed them, mated with those who were willing, and let the others go. If my people were killers, you wouldn’t be here.” I paused to let them think, then I continued. “And there wouldn’t be a Human colony on the planet Mars where Humans live and breed totally free of us. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3364-69  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:16 AM

“Give me something to eat,” I told them. “Plant material. No meat.” No one moved or spoke. I looked at the guard I had just healed. “Get me something, please.” He nodded. No one stopped him from going out, though everyone was armed. I sat still and waited. Eventually the Humans would begin to talk to me. They were playing a game now, trying to make me uneasy, trying to put me at more of a disadvantage than I was. A small, Human, hierarchical game. They might not let my guard back in. Well, I was uncomfortably hungry, not desperately hungry. And I didn’t know their game well enough to play it. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3407-12  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:19 AM

“Santos was the one who suggested keeping you here.” I did not shout with laughter. Laughter would have made the elders even more intensely suspicious than they were. But within myself, I howled. Santos was making up for his error. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew his people would use Aaor’s and my healing ability and breathe our scents, and finally, when our people arrived, his would meet them without hostility. In that way, I would, as Francisco had said, assure the mountain people’s safety. People who did not fight would be in no danger at all, would not even be gassed once the shuttle caught Aaor’s and my scents. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3484-87  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:25 AM

I went after Francisco, caught him, took him by the arms. “My Oankali mother says there are people here, now, who might mate with you.” He stood still for a moment, then abruptly tried to wrench free. I held him because his body language told me that he wanted to be held more than he wanted to be let go. He was afraid and confused and ashamed and powerfully drawn to the idea of potential Oankali mates. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3495-3500  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:26 AM

“Take these new people up to see her. Talk to her, and to them.” He stopped me, turned me to face him. “You’ve done this to me,” he said. “I would have gone to Mars.” I said nothing. “I can’t even hate you,” he whispered. “My god, if there had been people like you around a hundred years ago, I couldn’t have become a resister. I think there would be no resisters.” He stared at me a moment longer. “Damn you,” he said slowly, sadly. “Goddamn you.” He walked past me and went to Ahajas and the waiting Oankali family. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3502-7  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:27 AM

“You and Aaor are beautiful,” she said. “Are you both really all right?” “We are. We need Oankali mates, but other than that we’re fine.” “And that man, Francisco, is he typical of the people here?” “He’s one of the old ones. The first one I met.” “And he loves you.” “As you said once: pheromones.” “At first, no doubt. By now, he loves you.” “… yes.” 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3573-79  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:42 AM

I sorted through the vast genetic memory that Nikanj had given me. There was a single cell within that great store—a cell that could be “awakened” from its stasis within yashi and stimulated to divide and grow into a kind of seed. This seed could become a town or a shuttle or a great ship like Chkahichdahk. In fact, my seed would begin as a town and eventually leave Earth as a great ship. It would never be a shuttle, though it would be parent to shuttles. Over the next few days, I found the cell, awakened it, nourished it, and encouraged it to divide. When it had divided several times, I stopped it, separated one cell from the mass, and returned that cell to stasis. This was work that only an adult ooloi could do, and I found that I enjoyed it immensely. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3589-93  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:44 AM

“There’s room here for many people,” Jesusa said, looking at me. She wanted a child even more than I did. It was hard for her to wait for Oankali mates. At least now we knew there were potential mates coming. I chose a spot near the river. There I prepared the seed to go into the ground. I gave it a thick, nutritious coating, then brought it out of my body through my right sensory hand. I planted it deep in the rich soil of the riverbank. Seconds after I had expelled it, I felt it begin the tiny positioning movements of independent life. 
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Imago (The Xenogenesis Trilogy Book 3) (Octavia E. Butler)
- Highlight Loc. 3608-10  | Added on Saturday, October 21, 2017, 01:46 AM

Dawn (1987) began the Xenogenesis trilogy, about a race of aliens who visit earth to save humanity from itself. Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989) continue the story, following the life of the first child born with a mixture of alien and human DNA. 

Resources

http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/books/butler1.html