"Butler, Octavia - Xenogenesis 01 - Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Butler Octavia E)

"A few days. . . I don't know. Fewer than six."
"You see?" the ooloi asked softly.
She frowned at it. It was naked as were the others except for Jdahya. This did not bother her even at close quarters as much as she had feared it might. But she did not like the ooloi. It was smug and it tended to treat her condescendingly. It was also one of the creatures scheduled to bring about the destruction of what was left of humanity. And in spite of Jdahya's claim that the Oankali were not hierarchical, the ooloi seemed to be the head of the house. Everyone deferred to it.
It was almost exactly Lilith's size-slightly larger than Jdahya and considerably smaller than the female Tediin. And it had four arms. Or two arms and two arm-sized tentacles. The big tentacles, gray and rough, reminded her of elephants' trunks-except that she could not recall ever being disgusted by the trunk of an elephant. At least the child did not have them yet-though Jdahya had assured her that it was an ooloi child. Looking at Kahguyaht, she took pleasure in the knowledge that the Oankali themselves used the neuter pronoun in referring to the ooloi. Some things deserved to be called "it."
She turned her attention back to the food. "How can you eat all this?" she asked. "I couldn't eat your foods, could I?"
"What do you think you've eaten each time we've Awakened you?" the ooloi asked.
"I don't know," she said coldly. "No one would tell me what it was."
Kahguyaht missed or ignored the anger in her voice. "It was one of our foods-slightly altered to meet your special needs," it said.
Thought of her "special needs" made her realize that this might be Jdahya's "relative" who had cured her cancer. She had somehow not thought of this until now. She got up and filled one of her small bowls with nuts-roasted, but not salted-and wondered wearily whether she had to be grateful to Kahguyaht. Automatically she filled with the same nuts, the bowl Tediin had thrust forward at her.
"Is any of our food poison to you?" she asked flatly.
"No," Kahguyaht answered. "We have adjusted to the foods of your world."
"Are any of yours poison to me?"
"Yes. A great deal of it. You shouldn't eat anything unfamiliar that you find here."
"That doesn't make sense. Why should you be able to come from so far away-another world, another star system- and eat our food?"
"Haven't we had time to learn to eat your food?" the ooloi asked.
"What?''
It did not repeat the question.
"Look," she said, "how can you learn to eat something that's poison to you?"
"By studying teachers to whom it isn't poison. By studying your people, Lilith. Your bodies."
"I don't understand."
"Then accept the evidence of your eyes. We can eat anything you can. It's enough for you to understand that."
Patronizing bastard, she thought. But she said only, "Does that mean that you can learn to eat anything at all? That you can't be poisoned?"
"No. I didn't mean that."
She waited, chewing nuts, thinking. When the ooloi did not continue, she looked at it.
It was focused on her, head tentacles pointing. "The very old can be poisoned," it said. "Their reactions are slowed. They might not be able to recognize an unexpected deadly substance and remember how to neutralize it in time. The seriously injured can be poisoned. Their bodies are distracted, busy with self-repair. And the children can be poisoned if they have not yet learned to protect themselves."
"You mean. . . just about anything might poison you if you weren't somehow prepared for it, ready to protect yourselves against it?"
"Not just anything. Very few things, really. Things we were especially vulnerable to before we left our original homeworld."
"Like what?"
"Why do you ask, Lilith? What would you do if I told you? Poison a child?"
She chewed and swallowed several peanuts, all the while staring at the ooloi, making no effort to conceal her dislike. "You invited me to ask," she said.
"No. That isn't what I was doing."
"Do you really imagine I'd hurt a child?"
"No. You just haven't learned yet not to ask dangerous questions."
"Why did you tell me as much as you did?"
The ooloi relaxed its tentacles "Because we know you, Lilith. And, within reason, we want you to know us."




2

The ooloi took her to see Sharad. She would have preferred to have Jdahya take her, but when Kahguyaht volunteered, Jdahya leaned toward her and asked very softly, "Shall I go?"
She did not imagine that she was intended to miss the unspoken message of the gesture-that Jdahya was indulging a child. Lilith was tempted to accept the child's role and ask him to come along. But he deserved a vacation from her-and she from him. Maybe he wanted to spend some time with the big, silent Tediin. How, she wondered, did these people manage their sex lives, anyway? How did the ooloi fit in? Were its two arm-sized tentacles sexual organs? Kahguyaht had not used them in eating-had kept them either coiled against its body, under its true arms or draped over its shoulders.
She was not afraid of it, ugly as it was. So far it had inspired only disgust, anger, and dislike in her. How had Jdahya connected himself with such a creature?
Kahguyaht led her through three walls, opening all of them by touching them with one of its large tentacles. Finally they emerged into a wide, downward-sloping, well-lighted corridor. Large numbers of Oankali walked or rode flat, slow, wheel-less conveyances that apparently floated a fraction of an inch above the floor. There were no collisions, no near-misses, yet Lilith saw no order to the traffic. People walked or drove wherever they could find an opening and apparently depended on others not to hit them. Some of the vehicles were loaded with unrecognizable freight-transparent
beachball-sized blue spheres filled with some liquid, two-foot-long centipede-like animals stacked in rectangular cages, great trays of oblong, green shapes about six feet long and three feet thick. These last writhed slowly, blindly.
"What are those?" she asked the ooloi.
It ignored her except to take her arm and guide her where traffic was heavy. She realized abruptly that it was guiding her with the tip of one of its large tentacles.
"What do you call these?" she asked, touching the one wrapped around her arm. Like the smaller ones it was cool and as hard as her fingernails, but clearly very flexible.
"You can call them sensory arms," it told her.