Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
She, Cristina, and the Moras all say they would rather risk death than go on with things as they are. Whichever of them is taken to my cabin next will cut their rapists’ throats during the night. They can do that now. I don’t believe they could have a few months ago. Then they will try to find and disable the master unit. Problem is, we don’t know what the master unit looks like. None of us has ever seen it.
All we know—or think we know about it—we’ve learned from those among us who have been collared before. They say once you disable the master unit, the smaller units won’t work. The only way I can understand this is to compare it to one of the phones in the Balter house down south in Robledo, so long ago. This was a big, old-fashioned dinosaur of a “cordless” phone. You had to plug the base unit into an electrical outlet and a phone jack. Then you could walk around the house and yard talking into the hand unit. But unplug the two cords of the base, and the hand unit didn’t work anymore. I’m told that that’s close to what happens with a network of collars.
I don’t know anything for sure. I only half believe that we can do what we think we can and survive. Tampering with the master unit might kill the woman who does it. It might kill us all. But the truth is, we couldn’t last much longer, no matter what. We’re only just human now—most of us. I’ve said this to the people I trust—people who have helped me gather the fragments of information that we have. I’ve asked each of them if they’re willing to take the risk.
They are. We all are.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2035
Day before yesterday, we had a terrible storm—truly terrible. And yet, it was a wonderful thing: wind and rain and cold…and a landslide. The hill where our cemetery once was with all its new and old trees, that hill has slumped down into our valley. Our teachers had made us cut down the older trees for firewood and lumber and God. I never found out how they came to believe we prayed to trees, but they went on believing it. We begged them to let the hill alone, told them it was our cemetery, and they lashed us. Because they forced us to do this, the hillside has broken away and come rumbling down to us. It has buried a maggot and three cabins, including the cabin that Bankole and I had built and then lived in for our six brief years together.
Also, it buried the men who slept alone in that cabin. I’m sorry to say that there were two women in each of the other cabins. They were from squatter camps. Natividad had been friendly with one of them, but I didn’t know them at all. They are dead, however, buried and dead. Six “teachers,” four captive women, and all of our collars were dead. Last Sunday, we resolved to free ourselves or die trying. Now, instead, the weather, and our “teachers’ ” own stupidity has freed us.
Here is what happened.
The storm began as a cold rain whipped by a brisk wind on Monday afternoon, and for a while, we were made to go on working in it. At last, though, our “teachers,” who are much more willing to inflict suffering than to endure it, drove us back to our prison rooms to sit in the cold dimness while they went to our cabins, to warm fires, light, and food.
After a while, the lowest-ranking “teacher” brought Beth and Jessica Faircloth out with our disgusting dinner—a lot of half-boiled, half-spoiled cabbage with potatoes.
We had put Allie where the Faircloths could not avoid seeing her, being confronted by her when they came in. She is a little better. I’ve looked after her as best I could. She walks like a bent old woman, talks in monosyllables, and does not always seem to understand when we speak to her. I don’t believe she even remembers what the Faircloths did to her, but she seems to trust me. I told her to watch them—watch them every second.
She did.
The Faircloths trembled and stumbled over one another, putting down pots of awful food and backing out. We all stared at them in silence, but I suspect they saw only saw Allie.
After dinner, we rested as best we could, feeling cold, stiff, miserable, and damp on the bare wood floor wrapped in our filthy blankets. Some of us slept, but the storm grew much worse, shaking the building and making it creak. Rain beat against the window and blew roofing off cabins, limbs off trees, and trash from the dump that the teachers had made us create. We had had no dump before. We had a salvage heap and a compost heap. Neither was trash. We could not afford to be wasteful. Our teachers have made trash of our entire community.
Sometimes there was lightning and thunder, sometimes only heavy rain. It went on all night, tearing the world apart outside. Then sometime this morning before dawn, not long after I had managed to get to sleep, I was awakened by a terrible noise. It wasn’t like thunder—wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard. It was just this incredible rumbling, breaking, cracking noise.
I reacted without thinking. My place is near the window, and I jumped up and looked out. I leaned against the sill and peered out into the darkness. A moment later there was a flare of lightning, and I saw rock and dirt where my cabin should have been. Rock and dirt.
It took me a moment to understand this. Then I realized that I was leaning against the windowsill, leaning halfway out the window. And I had not convulsed and fallen to the floor. No pain. None of that filthy, twisting agony that made us all slaves.
I touched my collar. It was still there, still capable of delivering the agony. But for some reason, it no longer cared that I leaned against the windowsill. In the dark room, I reached for Natividad. She slept on one side of me and Allie slept on the other. Natividad trusts me, and she knows how to be quiet.
“Freedom!” I whispered. “The collars are dead! They’re dead!”
She let me lead her to the door between our quarters and the men’s. We managed to get there, each of us waking people as we went, whispering to them, but not stepping on anyone, feeling our way. At the door, Natividad pulled back a little, then she let me lead her through. The door’s never been locked. Collars were always enough to keep everyone away from it. But not this time.
No pain.
We woke the men—those who were still asleep. We couldn’t see well enough to wake only the men we trusted. We woke them all. We couldn’t do this with silent stealth. We were quiet, but they awoke in confusion and chaos. Some were already awake and confused and grabbing me, and realizing that I was a woman. I hit one who wouldn’t let me go—a stranger from the road.
“Freedom!” I whispered into his face. “The collars are dead! We can get away!”
He let me go, and scrambled for the door. I went back and gathered the women. When I got them into the men’s room, the men were already pouring out of the building. We followed them through the big outside doors. Travis and Natividad, Mike and Noriko, others of Earthseed, the Gamas, and the Sullivans somehow found one another. We all clustered together, male and female members of families greeting one another, crying, hugging. They had not been able even to touch one another through the eternity of our captivity. Seventeen months. Eternity.
I hugged Harry because neither of us had anyone left. Then he and I stood together watching the others, probably feeling the same mixture of relief and pain. Zahra was gone. Bankole was gone. And where were our children?
But there was no time for joy or grief.
“We’ve got to get into the cabins now,” I said, all but herding them before me. “We’ve got to stop them from fixing the collars. We’ve got to get their guns before they know what’s going on. They’ll waste time trying to lash us. Groups of four or more to a cabin. Do it!”
We all know how to work together. We’ve spent years working together. We separated and went to the houses. Travis, Natividad, and I grabbed the Mora girls and we burst into what had been the Kardos house just as the screaming began outside.
Some of our “teachers” came rushing out of their cabins to see what was wrong, and they were torn to pieces by the people they had so enjoyed tormenting.
Some of the captives, desperate to escape while they could, tried to find their way through the Lazor wire in the dark, and the wire cut their flesh to the bone when they ran into it.
Earthseed made no such lethal mistake. We went into the cabins to arm ourselves, to rid ourselves of our “teachers,” and to cut off our damned collars.
My group piled onto the two “teachers” who were there, out of bed, one with his pants and shirt on, and one in long underwear. They could have shot us. But they were so used to depending on their belts to protect them that it was the belts they tried to reach.
One stood and said, “What’s going on?” The other lunged at Natividad and me with a wordless shout.
We grappled with them, dragged them down, and strangled them. That simple. Even simple for me. It hurt when they hit me. It hurt when I hit them. And it didn’t matter a good goddamn! Once I had my hands on one of them, I just shut my eyes and did it. I never felt their deaths. And I have never been so eager and so glad to kill people.
We couldn’t see them very well anyway in the dark cabin, but we made sure they were dead. We didn’t let go of them until they were very, very dead. Our makeshift knives were still in the walls and floor of our barracks, but our hands did the job.
And then we had guns. We used a chair, then a night table to smash open a gun cabinet.
More important, then we had wire cutters.
Tori Mora found the cutters in what had once been Noriko Kardos’s silverware drawer. Now it was full of small hand tools. We took turns cutting one another’s collars off. As long as we wore them, we were in terrible danger. I was afraid every minute, anticipating the convulsing agony that could end our freedom, begin our final torture. Our “teachers” would kill us if they regained control of us. They would kill us very, very slowly. The collars alone would kill us if they somehow switched back on while we were trying to cut through them and twist them off. I had learned over the months that nothing was more tamperproof than a functioning collar.
I cut the Mora girls’ collar off, and Tori cut off mine. Travis and Natividad did the same for one another. And then we were free. Then, no matter what, we were truly free. We all hugged one another again. There was still danger, still work to do, but we were free. We allowed ourselves that moment of intense relief.
Then we went out to find that our people and some of the others had finished the job. The teachers were all dead. I saw that some of the inmates still wore their collars, so I went back into the Kardos cabin for the wire cutters. Once people realized what I was doing—cutting off collars—both outsiders and members of the Earthseed community made a ragged line in front of me. I spent the next several minutes cutting off collars. It was cold, the wind was blowing, but at least it had stopped raining. The eastern sky was beginning to brighten with the dawn. We were free people, all of us.
Now what?
We stripped what we could from the cabins. We had to. The outsiders were running around grabbing things, tearing or smashing whatever they didn’t want, screaming, cheering, ripping curtains from windows, breaking windows, grabbing food and liquor. Amazing how much liquor our “teachers” had had.
We took guns first. We didn’t try to stop the outsiders from their orgy of destruction, but we did guard the things we collected: guns, ammunition, clothing, shoes, food. Outsiders understood that. We were like them, taking what we wanted and guarding it. Some of them had found guns, too, but there was a respectful wariness between us. Even people who got crazy drunk didn’t come after us.
Someone shot the locks off the gate, and people began to leave.
Several people tried to shoot their way into the single unburied maggot, but it was locked and impervious to any effort we could make. In fact, if even one of our “teachers” had slept in the maggot, he could have defeated our escape. He could have killed us all.
Our own trucks were long gone. One had been destroyed when Gray Mora said his final “no” to slavery. The other had been taken and driven away. We had no idea where.
When it was light, I counted seven people dead on the Lazor wire. I suspect most had bled to death, although two had opened their own abdomens, even slicing into their intestines propelled by their mindless lunge for freedom. Lazor wire is impossible to see at night in the rain, and even the lowest street pauper should know the dangers of it. When we were ready to leave, I collected Allie, who had stayed inside the school and just stood at a window, staring out at us. I cut off her collar, then I thought about the Faircloths. I had not cut off their collars. They had not come to me. The two Faircloth boys, of course, had been taken away with the rest of our young children. Alan Faircloth, the father of Beth and Jessica, must have taken his daughters and slipped away—or perhaps the Sullivans had found them and taken their revenge.
I sighed. Either the girls were dead or they were with Alan. Best to say nothing. There had been enough killing.
I gathered what was left of the Earthseed community around me. The sun wasn’t visible through the clouds, but the wind had died down, and the sky was pale gray. It was cold, but for once, with our fresh clothing, we were warm enough.
“We can’t stay here,” I told my people. “We’ll have to take as much as we can carry and go. The church will send people here sooner or later.”
“Our homes,” Noriko Kardos said in a kind of moan.
I nodded. “I know. But they’re already gone. They’ve been gone for a long time.” And a particular Earthseed verse occurred to me.
In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.
It was an apt Earthseed verse, but not a comforting one. The problem with Earthseed has always been that it isn’t a very comforting belief system.
“Let’s take one last look through the houses,” I said. “We need to look for evidence of what they’ve done with our children. That’s the most important thing we can do next: find the children.”
I left Michael and Travis to guard the goods we had collected, and the rest of us went in groups to search the ruins of the houses.
But we found nothing that related to the children. There was money hidden here and there around the cabins, missed by the marauding inmates. There were piles of religious tracts, Bibles, lists of “inmates” brought from Garberville, Eureka, Arcata, Trinidad, and other nearby towns. There was a plan for spring planting, a few books written by President Jarret, or by some ghostwriter. There were personal papers, but nothing about our children, and no addresses. None. Nothing. This could only be deliberate. They feared being found out. Was it us they feared, or someone else?
We searched until almost midday. Then we knew we had to go, too. The roads were mud and water, and it was unlikely that anyone would try to drive up today, but we needed to get a good start. In particular, I wanted to go to our secret caches where we had not only the necessities but copies of records, journals, and in two places, the hand and foot prints of some of our children. Bankole took hand and foot prints of every child he delivered. He labeled them, gave a copy to the parents, and kept a copy. I had distributed these copies among two of our caches—the two that only a few of us knew about. I don’t know whether the prints will help us get our children back. When I let myself think about it, I have to admit that I don’t know even whether our children are alive. I only know that now I have to get to those two caches. They are back in the mountains toward the sea, not toward the road. We can disappear in that country. There are places there where we can shelter and decide what to do. It’s one thing to say that we must find our children, and another to figure out how to do that, how to begin. Who to trust?
We burned Acorn. No. No, we burned Camp Christian. We burned Camp Christian so that it couldn’t be used as Camp Christian anymore. If Christian America still wants the land it stole from us, it will have some serious rebuilding to do. We spread lamp oil and diesel fuel inside the cabins that we built from the trees we cut and the stone and concrete we hauled. We spread oil in the school Grayson Mora had designed and we had all worked so hard to build and make beautiful. We spread it on the bodies of our “teach
So, once more, we watched our homes burn. We went into the hills, separating from the last of the other inmates, who went their own ways back to the highway or wherever else they might want to go. From the hills, for a time, we watched. Most of us had seen our homes burn before, but we had not been the ones to set the fires. This time, though, it’s too late for fire to be the destroyer that we remembered. The things that we had created and loved had already been destroyed. This time, the fires only cleansed.
FIFTEEN
❏ ❏ ❏
From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
We have lived before.
We will live again.
We will be silk,
Stone,
Mind,
Star.
We will be scattered,
Gathered,
Molded,
Probed.
We will live
And we will serve life.
We will shape God
And God will shape us
Again,
Always again,
Forevermore.
THE CRUSADERS DELIBERATELY DIVIDED siblings because if they were together, they might support one another in secret heathen practices or beliefs. But if each child was isolated and dropped into a family of good Christian Americans, then each would be changed. Parent pressure, peer pressure, and time would remake them as good Christian Americans.
Sometimes it did, even among the older children of Acorn. Look at the Faircloth boys. One became a Christian American minister. The other rejected Christian America completely. And sometimes the division was utterly destructive. Some of us died of it. Ramon Figueroa Castro committed suicide because, according to one of his foster brothers, “He was too stubborn to try to fit in and forget about his sinful past.” Christian America was, at first, much more a refuge for the ignorant and the intolerant than it should have been. Even people who would never beat or burn another person could treat suddenly orphaned or abducted children with cold, self-righteous cruelty.