"I had an easier time believing," Lilith said. "An Oankali sealed himself in my isolation room and refused to leave until I got used to him. You can't look at them and doubt that they're alien."
"Maybe you can't."
"I won't argue with you about it. I've been Awake a lot longer than you have. I've lived among the Oankali and I accept them as what they are."
"What they say they are."
Lilith shrugged. "I want to start Awakening more people. Two new ones today. Will you help me?"
"Who are you Awakening?"
"Leah Bede and Celene Iver."
"Two more women? Why don't you wake up a man?"
"I will eventually."
"You're still thinking about your Paul Titus, aren't you?"
"He wasn't mine." She wished she had not told Tate about him.
"Awaken a man next, Lilith. Awaken the guy who was found protecting the kids."
Lilith turned to look at her. "On the theory that if you fall off a horse, you should immediately get back on?"
"Yes."
"Tate, once he's Awake, he stays Awake. He's six-three, he weighs two-twenty, he's been a cop for seven years, and he's used to ordering people around. He can't save us or protect us here, but he can damn sure screw us up. All he has to do to hurt us is refuse to believe we're on a ship. After that, everything he does will be wrong and potentially deadly."
"So what? You're going to wait until you can Awaken him to a kind of harem?"
"No. Once we've got Leah and Celene awake and reasonably stable, I'm going to Awaken Curt Loehr and Joseph Shing."
"Why wait?"
"I'm going to get Celene out first. You take care of her while I get Leah out. I think Celene might be someone for Curt to take care of."
She went to her room, brought back pictures of both women, and was about to begin hunting for Celene when Tate caught her arm.
"We're being watched, aren't we?" she asked.
"Yes. I don't know that we're watched every minute, but now, when we're both Awake, yes, I'm sure they're watching."
"If there's trouble, will they help?"
"If they decide it's bad enough. I think there were some who would have let Titus rape me. I don't think they would have let him kill me. They might have been too slow to prevent it, though."
"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?" She paused. "You didn't have kids, did you Lilith?"
Lilith began to walk slowly along the wall, eyes closed, Celene's picture flat between the wall and her hand. Tate walked along beside her, distracting her.
"Wait until I call you," Lilith told her. "Searching like this takes all my attention."
"It's really hard for you to talk about your life before, isn't it?" Tate said, with sympathy Lilith did not begin to trust.
"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. And, as for kids, I had a son. He was killed in an auto accident before the war." Lilith took a deep breath. "Let me alone now. I'll call you when I've found Celene."
Tate moved away, settled against the opposite wall near one of the rest rooms. Lilith closed her eyes and began inching along again. She let herself lose track of time and distance, felt as though she were almost flowing along the wall. The illusion was familiar-as physically pleasing and emotionally satisfying as a drug-a needed drug at this moment.
"If you have to do something, it might as well feel good," Nikanj had told her. It had become very interested in her physical pleasures and pains once its sensory aims were fully grown. Happily, it had paid more attention to pleasure than to pain. It had studied her as she might have studied a book-and it had done a certain amount of rewriting.
The bulge in the wall felt large and distinct when her fingers found it. But when she opened her eyes and looked, she could not see any irregularity.
"There's nothing there!" Tate said over her right shoulder. Lilith jumped, dropped the picture, refused to turn and glare at Tate as she bent to pick it up. "Get away from me!" she said quietly.
Grudgingly, Tate moved back several steps. Lilith could have found the spot again without any particular concentration, without having Tate move away, but Tate had to learn to accept Lilith's authority in anything to do with controlling the walls or dealing with the Oankali and their ship. What the hell did she think she was doing, coming back, creeping along behind Lilith? What was she looking for? Some trick?
Lilith rubbed one hand on the face of the picture and placed it against the wall. She found the bulge at once, though it was still to slight to be seen. It had ceased to grow with the removal of the picture, but had not yet vanished. Now Lilith rubbed it gently with the picture, encouraging it to grow. When she could see the protrusion, she stepped away and waited, gesturing for Tate to come.
Standing together, they watched the wall disgorge the long, translucent green plant. Tate made a sound of disgust and stepped back as the smell drifted to her.
"You want to look at it before I open it?" Lilith asked. Tate came closer and stared at the plant. "Why is it moving?"
"So that every part of it is exposed to the light for a while. If you could mark it, you would see that it's very slowly turning over. The movement is suppose to be good for the people inside, too. it exercises their muscles and changes their position."
"It doesn't really look like a slug," Tate said. "Not when someone's in it." She went to it, stroked it with several fingers, then looked at her fingers.
"Be careful," Lilith told her. "Celene isn't very big. The plant probably wouldn't mind taking someone else in."
"Would you be able to get me out?"
"Yes." She smiled. "The first Oankali to show these to me didn't warn me. I put my hand on the plant and almost panicked when I realized the plant was holding me and growing around my hand."
Tate tried this, and the plant obligingly began to swallow her hand. She tugged at her band, then looked at Lilith, obviously afraid. "Make it let go!"
Lilith touched the plant around her captive hand and the plant released her. "Now," Lilith said, moving to one end of the plant. She drew her hands along the length of the plant. It opened in its usual slow way, and she lifted Celene out and put her on the floor where Tate could look after her. "Get some clothes on her before she wakes up if you can," she told Tate.
But by the time Celene was fully awake, Lilith had Leah Bede out of the wall and out of her plant. She dressed Leah quickly. Not until both women were fully awake and looking around did Lilith push the two plants back through the wall. When that was done, she turned, meaning to sit down with Leah and Celene and answer their questions.
Instead, she was suddenly staggered by Leah's weight as the woman leaped onto her back and began strangling her. Lilith began to fall. Time seemed to slow down for her.
If she fell on Leah, the woman would probably injure her back or her head. The injury might be only superficial, but could be serious. It would be wrong to let a potentially useful person be lost for one act of stupidity.
Lilith managed to fall on her side so that only Leah's arm and shoulder struck the floor. Lilith reached up and took Leah's hands from her throat. It was not difficult. Lilith was even able to go on taking care not to cause injury. She also took care not to let Leah see how easy it was for Lilith to defeat her. She gasped as she tore Leah's hands from her throat, though she was nowhere near desperate for air yet. And she allowed Leah's hands to move in her own as Leah struggled.