Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Marc would be in the same situation once he left us. Worse, he would be all alone. Yet he smiled.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever see him again. I feel almost as though he’s died…died again.
THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2033
Dan Noyer found his way back to us last night.
He came back. Amazing. I think he’s been gone longer than he was with us. We tried to find him—for his little sisters’ sakes as much as for his. But unless you have the money to hire a small army of private cops like that guy in Texas, finding people in today’s chaos is almost impossible. My finding Marcus was an accident. Anyway, Dan came home on his own, poor boy.
It was a cold night. We had all gone to bed except for the first watch of the night.
The watchers were Gray Mora and Zahra Balter.
Zahra was the one who spotted the intruders. As she described it to me later, she saw two people running, staggering, sometimes seeming to hold one another up. If not for the staggering, Zahra might have fired a warning shot, at least. But before she revealed herself, she wanted to see who or what the runners were escaping from.
As she scanned the hills behind them, she tapped out our emergency signal on her phone.
There were five people chasing the staggering runners—or, with her night-vision glasses, she could see five. She kept looking for more.
One of the five shouted, then fell, and Zahra realized that that one must have blundered into the edge of our thorn fence. In the dark, some of our thorn bushes don’t look that savage. They’re pretty if you don’t touch them. Some will even be covered with flowers soon. But they grab clothing and flesh, and they tear.
The injured one’s four companions slowed, seemed to hesitate, then sped up again as the injured one limped after them.
Zahra put her rifle on automatic and fired a short burst across the path of the two front runners. They stopped short and dived into the thorn bushes and cactuses. One began to fire in Zahra’s general direction. There were shouts of pain and loud curses. Then all five were shooting. Down in Acorn, we could hear the gunfire. Even without the phone, we would have known that it was coming from the area around Zahra’s watch station.
Zahra and Harry are my oldest friends, and I’m Change-sister to them and Change-aunt to their kids Tabia and Russell. For that reason, I paid no attention to Bankole when he told me to stay in the house. I remember thinking that if this were another Dovetree-like raid, staying inside was only asking to burn.
But this didn’t sound like what happened at Dovetree. It wasn’t loud enough. There weren’t enough attackers. This sounded like a small gang raid of a kind we hadn’t had for years.
Bankole and I slipped out of the house together and headed for the truck. For most of the run, we were protected by the bulk first of our own cabin, then of the school. I suppose that’s why Bankole didn’t try as hard as he might have to make me stay behind. We couldn’t be seen, let alone shot at. We keep the truck parked in its own space on the south side of the school. It’s protected there in the center of the community, and during the day we can spread its solar wings and let it recharge its batteries.
Harry Balter reached the truck just as Bankole and I got there. He opened a side door, and all three of us scrambled in.
Harry and I have gotten comfortable with the truck’s computers. In our earlier lives down south, we both used our parents’ computers. We’re unusual. Most adults at Acorn had never touched or even seen a computer before. Still others are afraid of them. For now, although we’re passing on our knowledge, we’re still among the few who take full advantage of what the truck can do with its weapons, maneuverability, and sensory systems.
We turned everything on, and Bankole drove us toward Zahra’s current watch station. As we rode, we used the truck’s infrared viewer to locate each of the intruders. Bankole is a good, steady driver, and he has confidence in the truck’s armor. It didn’t seem to bother him at all that people were shooting at us. In fact, it was a good thing the intruders were wasting ammunition on us. That gave Zahra some relief.
Then we had a look around, and we decided that one of the intruders was much too close to Zahra—and creeping closer. He could have been trying to get away, but he wasn’t. None of them were. We made sure the targets we had identified were, in fact, targets, and not our own people. Once we were sure, we pointed them out to the truck and let it open up on them. Along with the trucks ability to “see” in the dark via infrared, ambient light, or radar, it also has very good “hearing,” and an incorrectly designated sense of “smell.” This last is based on spectroscopic analysis rather than on actual smelling, but it is a kind of chemical analysis over a distance. It could be used on anything that emitted or reflected electromagnetic radiation—light—of some kind.
And the truck had plenty of memory. It could, and had, recorded all that it could of each of us—our voices, hand and foot prints, retinal prints, body sounds, and our general shapes in several positions to help it recognize us and not shoot us.
When the truck began shooting, I left the forward monitors to Harry. I didn’t need to see anything that might make me useless, and the truck didn’t need any more help from me. Once we were between Zahra and the attackers, I checked Zahra on an aft screen. She was alive and still at her station. Most of her body was concealed within the depression and behind the stone shelter that was intended to shield her. Some distance away, Gray Mora was still at his station and still alive. He wasn’t involved in this, and his duty was to hold his position and guard the other most likely approach to Acorn. It had taken a while for us to learn not to be distracted by people who might rattle the front door while their friends slipped in through the back.
The intruder nearest to Zahra was dead. According to the truck, he was no longer changing the chemistry of the air in his immediate vicinity in a way that indicated breathing, and he wasn’t moving. Once the truck was stopped, its ability to detect motion was as good as its hearing. Put the two together and we could detect breathing and heartbeat—or their absence. We’ve tried to trick it—fool it into mistaking one of us playing dead for an actual corpse—and we’ve never been able to. That’s comforting.
“All right,” Harry said, looking up from his screen. “How’s Zee?”
“Alive,” I told him. “Are all the shooters down?”
“Down and dead, all five of them.” He drew a deep breath. “Bankole, let’s go pick up Zahra.”
“Has anyone given Gray an all-clear?” I asked.
“I have,” Bankole answered. “You know, I’ve got the next watch. In another hour, I would have relieved Zahra.”
“For the rest of the night,” I said, “whoever’s on duty should watch from the truck. Whoever these guys are, they might have friends.”
Bankole nodded.
He stopped us as close to Zahra’s watch station as the truck could get. We all took one more look around, then Harry opened the door. Before we could call her, Zahra darted from cover and jumped into the truck. She was bleeding from the left side of her face and neck, and that took me by surprise. At once, I felt pain in my own face and neck, but managed not to react. Habit. Harry grabbed Zahra and yelled for Bankole.
“I’m okay,” Zahra said. “I just got hit by broken rock when those guys were shooting. There was rock flying everywhere.”
I went up to take Bankole’s place, and he went back to check on her. I’m a pretty decent driver now, so I got us back to the houses. “I’ll take what’s left of Zahra’s watch,” I said. “Your watch, too, Bankole. I think you’re going to be busy.”
“Watch from the truck!” Bankole ordered as though I hadn’t just made the same suggestion myself.
“Of course.”
“Whatever happened to the two people those gunmen were chasing?” Zahra asked.
We all looked at her.
“They were staggering toward Acorn,” she said. “They couldn’t have gotten far. I didn’t shoot them. They were already hurt.
This was the first we knew of the running pair. Zahra thought they were both wounded, and both men. Yet we hadn’t spotted them. Of course, we hadn’t looked back toward Acorn for more intruders. I hadn’t even used the aft screens to do that. Stupid of me.
We looked around Acorn now, and found the usual signs of life—plenty of heat and some sound from the houses. The people were no doubt watching, but in the middle of the night, they wouldn’t come rushing out until they got an all-clear from us. The older kids would be keeping an eye on the younger ones, and the adults would be watching us. No one was showing a light or moving around where they could be seen. The only loud sound was that of a baby crying from the Douglas house. Even that came to an abrupt stop.
If this had been a drill, it would have been a good drill.
But where were the two runners? Were they hiding? Had they found their way into the school or into one of the houses? Were they crouching behind one of the trees?
Were they armed?
“I don’t think they had guns,” Zahra said when I asked her.
Then I spotted them—or spotted something. I drove toward it, toward our own cabin, in fact—Bankole’s and mine.
“The truck says they’re still alive,” I said. “They’re not moving much, and Zee’s right. They’re not armed. But they’re alive.”
The runners were Dan Noyer and a young girl. The moment I saw her—tall like Dan, but slender, pretty, dark-haired with a sharp little chin like Mercy’s—I knew she must be one of Dan’s sisters. As it turned out, she was Nina Noyer.
Both brother and sister had been beaten bloody with both fists, and with something else. Bankole says they look as though they’ve been lashed with whips.
“I suppose,” he said with great bitterness, “that people who don’t have access to convict collars might have to exert themselves—resort to older methods of torture.”
Brother and sister have rope burns at their wrists, ankles, and necks. Also, Bankole says, they’ve suffered a great deal of sexual abuse. The girl told him they were forced “to do it with strangers for money.” Dan has endured even more beating than Nina has, and both have what Bankole calls, “the usual infections and tissue damage.” Nina says she got pregnant, but one night during her captivity, she had a miscarriage. She hadn’t known what was happening, but one of the other slaves told her. Well, I suppose it would be surprising if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. For her sake, I’m glad she miscarried.
And Dan had somehow found her, rescued her, and brought her home in spite of pursuers chasing him right down into our valley. How had one 15-year-old done so very much?
And in the end, what would it cost him? In the end, did that matter?
FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2033
“This is no way to live,” Bankole said to me when he came in from tending Dan and Nina this morning. He sat at the table and put his head down on his arms.
I had taken his watch, as I promised, to free him to do what he could for Dan and Nina. Allie and May were helping him, since they have all but joined the Noyer family by taking care of Kassia and Mercy for so long.
Bankole had spent most of his time with his two patients, and had once again found himself fighting for Dan’s life. The boy stopped breathing twice, and Bankole revived him. But at last, the young body, once strong and healthy, just gave up. It had taken an incredible amount of abuse over the past few months.
“His heart just quit,” Bankole said. “If I had more modern equipment, maybe… Goddamnit, Olamina, can you see now why I need to get out of here and get you out of here?”
“He’s really dead?” I whispered, not believing it—not wanting to believe it.
“He’s dead. It’s obscene! A young boy like that.”
“What about his sister?”
“She wasn’t as badly beaten as he was. I believe she’ll be all right.”
Would she, after all that had happened? I doubted it. Bankole and I sat silent for a while, each of us thinking our own thoughts. What would it have meant to Dan that he had saved his sister, even though he had not been able to save himself? Did he ever imagine such a thing? Would it somehow have been all right? Enough?
“Where’s the other sister—Paula?” I asked. “What happened to her?”
Bankole sighed. “Dead. Some trouble on the road up north around Trinidad. Three men tried to steal her. They got caught. Her owners and the thieves shot it out, and she was in the middle. Nina says her owners just cursed her for getting in the way and getting killed. They left her body lying among the rocks by the sea. Nina said Paula loved the sea when the family saw it for the first time last year. She said she hoped the tide came in and carried her away.”
I shook my head. Bankole got up and went to lie on the bed.
“But Dan did it,” I said more to myself than to him. “He found his sister, and he brought her home. It was impossible, but he did it!”
“Shit,” Bankole said, and turned his face to the wall.
Now the long day is over.
We’ve cleaned up the hillside battlefield and thrown ground pepper over parts of it so that any smell of blood that still clings to it wouldn’t hold the attention of wild dogs.
We’ve collected the dead, searched their bodies, then after dark, surrounded them with scrap wood, soaked them in lamp oil, and burned them. We do a thorough job, and the smoke is less noticeable at night—less of a lure to scavengers and to the curious.
I hate doing this—burning the dead. Of course, whether they’re our dead or someone else’s, it has to be done, but I hate it. We burned Dan separate from his attackers. I set his pyre alight myself. Allie chose the verse and spoke it. We’ll have a full service for Dan when Nina is well enough to attend. For now, though, I think Allie made a good choice.
“As wind,
As water,
As fire,
As life,
God
Is both creative and destructive,
Demanding and yielding,
Sculptor and clay.
God
Is Infinite Potential.
God
Is Change.”
The other dead—the intruders—were four men and a woman, all in their twenties or early thirties. They were dirty and scratched up, but well-dressed, well-armed, well-heeled. They had plenty of Canadian money in their pockets. Were they slavers? Drug dealers? Thieves? Rich kids slumming? Even Nina wasn’t sure. She and Dan had escaped from their original captors and had been on the highway, headed for Acorn when this new group spotted them and came after them.
The intruders weren’t carrying identification or even a change of clothing. That means they had homes or a base of some kind nearby. We thought about that and decided to burn their clothing along with their bodies. It’s of much better quality than our own—newer, more fashionable, and more expensive. If we wear it, it might be recognized at one of the street markets. And another thing. Two of the intruders were wearing black sweatshirts with white crosses embroidered on them—embroidered, not printed. These weren’t the long tunics that Aubrey Dovetree mentioned, but they were interesting imitations. The intruders were thugs of some kind who had decided it was fashionable to look like Jarret’s people.
The intruders’ guns are, like our own, good-quality, well-cared-for automatic rifles with laser sites. One is German, one’s American, and the three newest are Russian. They’re all as illegal as hell and as common as oranges. We’ll hide them in our survival caches scattered through the mountains. The only thing they had that we’ll keep with us and use, as we need it, is some of their money. Most of that will go in the caches too. It’s all worn and wrinkled and not identifiable. The fact that there’s so much of it—more per person than any group of us would carry around—tells us that these people were either rich or involved in some profitable illegal activity, or both.
Well, now they’re gone. People vanish in this world. Even rich people out for fun and greater profit vanish. It happens all the time.
TEN
❏ ❏ ❏
From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
We can,
Each of us,
Do the impossible
As Long as we can convince ourselves
That it has been done before.
LIFE AT ACORN INVOLVED a lot of hard physical work. It says a great deal about the world of the early 2030s that most of the people who stumbled onto the community chose to join Earthseed and stay. That being the case, it must have taken a lot to get the Peralta family to leave. There may have been more reasons than my mother gives for their leaving, but I haven’t been able to find evidence of them. Perhaps the Peraltas actually did disagree with the religious and political feelings of the rest of Acorn. Perhaps also, they were afraid of the way the political situation in the country was going. They had reason to be.
On the other hand, I’m not at all surprised that Uncle Marc left. There really was no place for him at Acorn. He was “Olamina’s little brother” or, as my mother said, a nice boy. He could have married and begun a family in one more little cabin. That would have been intolerable to him. He was a world saver, after all, like my mother. Or not like her, since Earth was the only world that interested him. Like the Peraltas, he was in religious and political disagreement with Acorn, and, like the Peraltas, he was probably wise to leave when he did.
I got the impression that my mother didn’t pay much attention to being pregnant. It wasn’t that she resented it. There’s no indication that she did. She simply ignored it. I was due in July. Between running out into the firefight with the thugs who chased Dan and Nina Noyer and actually giving birth to me, she worked hard to increase both Acorn’s wholesaling and its retailing businesses. She was so successful at this that by the time I was born, the community was in the process of negotiating to buy another truck. They did eventually buy it. Most people had been nervous about having only the one truck. Travis and his helpers had kept the old housetruck running well, and hadn’t had to spend much money on it since they made repairs themselves, but one major accident would put the whole community out of business—or at least out of its new businesses.