Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
We were all lashed for what Emery did. The men were made to watch.
We were marched out of the school and lashed as we were made to kneel and pray, to scream out our sins, to beg for forgiveness, and quote Bible verses on command. I kept thinking they would make a mistake and kill some of us. This was an orgy of abuse and humiliation. It went on and on for hours with our “teachers” taking turns, trading off, screaming their hate at us, and calling it love. I had no voice at all left by the time it was over. I was sore all over. An actual beating couldn’t have left me feeling any worse. And if anyone had been paying attention to me in particular, they would have seen that I was a sharer. I lost control. I couldn’t have concealed anything.
I remember wishing I could die. I remember wondering if in the end they would force us all to go the way Emery did, each of us taking a few of them with us.
New people have been brought to live among us—men and women from squatter camps and from nearby towns. Most of them seem to be just plain poor people. Some were like the Dovetrees. They produced and sold drugs or homemade beer, wine, or whiskey. And our neighbors the Sullivan and the Gama families have been rounded up and brought here. Some of their children used to attend our school, but none were captured with us. I haven’t seen any of them since our capture. Why have they been taken captive and brought here now? No one seems to know.
The new women were stuffed in with us or put into the empty third room of the school—the room that was once our clinic. The men were housed in the big room with our men.
I need to write about Bankole.
I meant to do that when I began. I need to but I don’t want to. It just plain hurts too much.
The Crusaders are making us enlarge our prison and enlarge our cabins, which are now their homes. And we work in the fields as before. We’re feeding livestock and cleaning their pens. We’re turning compost, we’re planting herbs, we’re harvesting winter fruits, vegetables and herbs, clearing brush from the hills. We’re expected to feed ourselves and our captors. They eat better than we do, of course. After all, we owe them more than we can ever pay, you see, because they’re teaching us to forsake our sinful ways. They keep talking about teaching us the meaning of hard work. They tell us that we’re no longer squatters, parasites, and thieves. I’ve earned myself more than one lashing by saying that my husband and I own this land, that we’ve always paid our taxes on it, and that we’ve never stolen from anyone.
They’ve burned our books and our papers.
They’ve burned all that they could find of our past. It’s all ungodly trash, they say. They made us do most of the fetching and carrying, the stacking and piling of so much that we loved. They watched us, their hands on their belts. All the books on paper and on disk. All the collections that our younger kids had assembled of minerals, seeds, leaves, pictures… All the reports, models, sculptures and paintings that our older kids have done. All the music that Travis and Gray wrote. All the plays that Emery wrote. All the bits of my journal that they could find. All the legal papers, including marriage licenses, tax receipts, and Bankole’s deed to the land. All these things, our teachers threw lamp oil on and burned, then raked and stirred and burned again.
In fact, they’ve only burned copies of the legal papers. I’m not sure that matters, but it’s true. Since we got our first truck, we’ve kept the originals in a safe-deposit box in Eureka—Bankole’s idea. And we keep other copies in our various caches, along with a few books, other records, and the usual weapons, food, money, and clothing. I had been scanning Bankole’s writing and my journal notebooks and hiding disk copies of them in the caches too. I don’t know why I did this. In the case of my journals, it’s an indulgence that I’ve always been a little ashamed of—wasting money copying my own stuff. But I remember I felt much better when I began to do it. Now I only wish I had scanned Emery’s plays and Travis’s and Gray’s music. At least, as far as I know, the caches are still safe.
I’ve hidden my writing paper, pens, and pencils away in our prison room. Allie and Natividad have helped me loosen a couple of floorboards near the window. With only sharp stones and a couple of old nails as tools, we made a small compartment by scraping a hollow in one of the big lumber girders that supports the floor joists. The joists themselves were too slender and too obvious if anyone noticed a loose board. We hoped no “teacher” would peer down into the darkness to see whether anything might be in the girder. Natividad put her wedding ring there too, and Allie put in some drawings that Justin had done. Noriko put in a smooth, oval green stone. She and Michael had found it back when they had gone out salvaging together—back when they could be together.
Interesting that we could scrape into the girder without pain from our collars. Allie thought it meant we might be able to escape by loosening more floorboards and crawling out under the school. But when we got Tori Mora, the slenderest of us, to try to go down, she began to writhe in pain the moment her feet reached the ground. She convulsed and we had to pull her out.
So we know one more thing. It’s a negative thing, but we needed to know it.
So much is gone. So much has been taken from us and destroyed. If we haven’t found a way out, at least we’ve found a way to keep a few small things. I find myself thinking sometimes that I could bear all this better if I still had Larkin and Bankole, or if I could see Larkin and know that she was alive and all right. If I could only just see her…
I don’t know whether the actions of these so-called Crusaders have any semblance of legality. It’s hard to believe they might—stealing the land and freedom of people who’ve followed the law, earned their own livings, and given no trouble. I can’t believe that even Jarret has so mangled the constitution as to make such things legal. At least, not yet. So how could a vigilante group have the nerve to set up a “reeducation” camp and run it with illegally collared people? We’ve been here for over a month and no one has noticed. Even our friends and customers don’t seem to have noticed. The Gamas and the Sullivans aren’t rich or powerful, but they’ve been in these hills for a couple of generations. Hasn’t anyone come asking questions about them?
Maybe they have. And who has answered the questions? Crusaders in their other identities as ordinary, law-abiding patriots? I don’t think it’s too much to assume they have such identities. What lies have they told? Any group wealthy enough to have seven maggots, to support at least several dozen men, and to have what seems to be an endless number of expensive collars must be able to spread any lies it chooses to spread. Perhaps our friends outside have been told believable lies. Or perhaps they’ve just been frightened into silence, given to know that they shouldn’t ask too many questions lest they get into trouble themselves. Or maybe it’s just that none of us has powerful enough friends. We were nobodies, and our anonymity, far from protecting us, had made us vulnerable.
We at Acorn were told that we were attacked and enslaved because we were a heathen cult. But the Gamas and the Sullivans aren’t cultists. I’ve asked women from both families why they were attacked, but they don’t know either.
The Gamas and the Sullivans owned their land just as we did, and unlike the Dovetrees, the Gamas and the Sullivans had never raised marijuana or sold alcoholic beverages. They worked their land and they took jobs in the towns whenever they could find them. They worked hard and behaved themselves. And in the end, what did it matter? All their hard work and ours, all Bankole’s attention to dead-and-gone laws, and all my hopes for my Larkin and for Earthseed… I don’t know what’s going to happen. We will get out of this! We’ll do that somehow! But what then? From what I’ve been able to hear, some of our “teachers” come from important families in the Churches of Christian America in Eureka, Arcata, and the surrounding smaller towns. This land is mine now. Bankole, with his trust in law and order, made a will, I’ve read it. The copy we kept here has been destroyed, of course, but the original and other copies still exist. The land is mine, but how can I take it back? How can we ever rebuild what
When we break free of our “teachers,” we will kill at least some of them. I see no way to avoid this. If they have to, and if they can, they’ll kill us to stop our escape. The way they rape us, the way they lash us, the way they let some of us die—all that tells me they don’t value our lives. Do their families know what they’re doing? Do the police know? Are some of these “teachers” cops themselves or relatives of cops?
A great many people must know that something is going on. Each shift of our “teachers” stays with us for at least a week, then goes away for a week. Where do they tell people they’ve been? The area must be full of people who know, at least, that something unusual is happening. That’s why once we’ve freed ourselves, I don’t see how we can stay here. Too many people here will hate us either because we’ve killed their men in our escape or because they won’t be able to forgive us for the wrongs that they, their families, or their friends have done us.
Earthseed lives. Enough of us know it and believe it for it to live on in us. Earthseed lives and will live. But Jarret’s Crusaders have strangled Acorn. Acorn is dead.
I keep saying that I need to write about Bankole, and I keep not doing it. I was a zombie for days after I saw his body thrown into the bare hole they made Lucio Figueroa dig. They said none of their prayers over him, and, of course they refused to allow us to have services for him.
I saw him alive on the day the Crusaders invaded. I know I did. What happened? He was a healthy man, and no fool. He would not have provoked armed men to kill him. We’re not allowed to talk to our men, but I had to find out what happened. I kept trying until I found a moment to talk to Harry Balter. I wanted it to be Harry so I could tell him about Zahra.
We managed to meet in the field as we worked with only our own community members nearby. We were harvesting—often in the rain—salad greens, onions, potatoes, carrots, and squashes, all planted and tended by Acorn, of course. We should also have been harvesting acorns—should already have harvested them—but we weren’t permitted to do that. Some of us were being made to cut down both the mature live oak and pine trees and the saplings that we had planted. These trees not only commemorated our dead and provided us with much protein, but also they helped hold the hillside near our cabins in place. Somehow, our “teachers” have gotten the idea that we worshipped trees, thus we must have no trees nearby except those that produce the fruit and nuts that our “teachers” like to eat. Funny how that worked out. The orange, lemon, grapefruit, persimmon, pear, walnut, and avocado trees were good. All others were wicked temptations.
This is what Harry told me, bit by bit, during the times we managed to be near one another in our work.
“They used the collars, you know?” he said. “On that first day, they waited until we were all conscious. Then they came in and one of them said, ‘We don’t want you to make any mistakes. We want you to understand how this is going to work.’ Then they started with Jorge Cho, and he screamed and writhed like a worm on a hook. Then they got Alan Faircloth, then Michael, then Bankole.
“Bankole was awake, but not really alert. He was just sitting on the floor, holding his head between his hands, staring down. They had taken all the furniture out by then, and piled it in a heap out where the trucks were. So none of us fell on anything but the floor. When they used the collar on him, he didn’t make a sound. He just toppled over onto his side and twitched, sort of convulsed. He never screamed, never said a word. But he went into worse convulsions than any of the others had. Then he was dead. That was all. Michael said the collar had triggered a massive heart attack.”
Harry didn’t say more for a long time—or maybe he did, and I just didn’t hear it. I was crying in spite of myself. I could be quiet, but I couldn’t stop the tears. Then I heard him whisper, as we passed one another again, “I’m sorry, Lauren. God, I’m sorry. He was a good guy.”
Bankole had delivered both of Harry’s children. Bankole had delivered everyone’s children, including his own daughter. Without believing in Earthseed, or even in Acorn, he had stayed and worked hard to make it all work. He had done more than anyone to make it work. How stupid and pointless that he should die at the hands of men who didn’t know him or care about him or even intend to kill him. They just didn’t know how to use the powerful weapons they possessed. They gassed Zahra to death by mistake because they didn’t take her size into consideration. They shocked Bankole into a heart attack by mistake because they didn’t take his age into consideration. It must have been his age. He’d had no heart trouble before. He was a strong, healthy man who should have lived to see his daughter grow up and maybe later father a son or another daughter.
It was all I could do not to fold up among the rows of plants and just lie there and moan and cry. But I stayed upright, somehow managed not to attract our “teachers’ ” attentions.
After a time, I told him about Zahra. “I really believe it was her size,” I finished. “Maybe these people don’t know much about their weapons. Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe both. None of them lifted a finger to help Teresa.”
There was another long, long silence. We worked and Harry got himself under control. When he spoke again, his voice was steady.
“Olamina, we’ve got to kill these bastards!”
He almost never called me Olamina. We’d known each other since we were both in diapers. He called me Lauren except during the more important Gathering Day ceremonies. He had called me Olamina for the first time when I Welcomed his first child into the Acorn community, and into Earthseed. It was as though for him the name were a title.
“First we’ve got to get rid of these collars,” I said. “Then we have to find out what happened to the kids. If…if they’re alive, we have to find out where they are.”
“Do you think they are alive?”
“I don’t know.” I drew a deep breath. “I’d give almost anything to know where my Larkin is and whether she’s all right.” Another pause. “These people lie about almost everything. But there must be records somewhere. There must be something. We’ve got to try to find out. Gather information. Seek weakness. Watch, wait, and do what you have to to stay alive!”
A “teacher” was coming toward us. Either he had spotted us whispering as we worked or he was just checking. I let Harry move past me. Our few moments of talk were over.
THIRTEEN
❏ ❏ ❏
From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
When vision fails
Direction is lost.
When direction is lost
Purpose may be forgotten.
When purpose is forgotten
Emotion rules alone.
When emotion rules alone,
Destruction…destruction.
FROM ACORN, I WAS taken to a reeducation camp that was housed in an old maximum-security prison in Del Norte County, just north of Humboldt County. Pelican Bay State Prison, the thing had been called. It became Pelican Bay Christian Reeducation Camp. I have no memory of it, I’m glad to say, but people who spent time there as adults and older kids have told me that even though it was no longer called a prison, it reeked of suffering. Because of its prison structure, it lent itself more easily than did Acorn to isolating people, not only from society but from one another. It also provided enough room for a nursery that was completely separate from the heathen inmates who might contaminate the children. I was cared for at the Pelican Bay nursery for several months. I know this because I was fingerprinted, footprinted, and geneprinted there, and my records were stored at the Christian American Church of Crescent City. They were supposed to be accessible only to camp authorities, who were to prevent me from being adopted by my heathen biological parents, and to whoever did adopt me. Also, there I was given my name: Asha Vere. Asha Vere was the name of a character in a popular Dreamask program.
Dreamasks—also known as head cages, dream books, or simply, Masks—were new then, and were beginning to edge out some of the virtual-reality stuff. Even the e
Jarret’s people worried that this new entertainment would be like a drug to the “morally weak.” To avoid their censure, Dreamasks International made a number of religious programs—programs that particularly featured Christian American characters. Asha Vere was one of those characters.
Asha Vere was a tall, beautiful, Amazon-like Black Christian American woman who ran around rescuing people from heathen cults, anti-Christian plots, and squatter-camp pimps. I suppose someone thought that naming me after such an upright character might stifle any hereditary inclination in me toward heathenism. So I was stuck with the name. And so, by the way, were a lot of other women. Strong female characters were out of fashion in the fiction of the time. President Jarret and his followers in Christian America believed that one of the things that had gone wrong with the country was the intrusion of women into “men’s business.” I’ve seen recordings of him saying this and large audiences of both men and women cheering and applauding wildly. In fact, I’ve discovered that Asha Vere was originally intended to be a man, Aaron Vere, but a Dreamask executive convinced his colleagues that it was time for a hit series starring a tough-tender, Christian American female. He was right. There was such a hunger for interesting female characters that, as silly as the Asha Vere stories were, people liked them. And surprising numbers of people named their girl children “Asha” or “Vere” or “Asha Vere.”