Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

  But why did my brother not mention where he was going—or even that he was going—in his letter? Did he think I wouldn’t find out? Or was he just signaling me in a cold, deliberate way that he wanted no further contact with me. Was he saying, in effect, “You’re my sister and I have a duty to help you. So here’s some advice and some money. Too bad about your troubles, but I can’t do any more. I’ve got to get on with my life.”

  Well, the money I could use. As far as the advice was concerned, my first impulse was to curse it, and to curse my brother for giving it. Then, for a moment, I wondered whether I could join the enemy and find my child. Perhaps I could.

  Then I remembered the man I had seen at the Center—the one whom I had last seen acting as one of our “teachers” at Acorn, and raping Adela Ortiz. Perhaps he was the father of the child she would soon be having. Marc might be able to convince himself that the Crusaders are outcast extremists, but I know better. Whether CA chooses to admit it or not, they and the Crusaders have members in common. How many? What are the real connections? What does Jarret really think about the Crusaders? Does he control them? If he doesn’t like what they’re doing, he should make some effort to stop them. He shouldn’t want them to make their insanity part of his political image.

  On the other hand, one way to make people afraid of you is to have a crazy side—a side of yourself or your organization that’s dangerous and unpredictable—willing to do any damned thing.

  Is that what’s going on? I don’t know and my brother doesn’t want to know.

  NINETEEN

  ❏ ❏ ❏

  From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

  All religions are ultimately cargo cults. Adherents perform required rituals, follow specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally gifted with desired rewards—long life, honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth, victory over opponents, immortality after death, any desired rewards. Earthseed offers its own rewards—room for small groups of people to begin new lives and new ways of life with new opportunities, new wealth, new concepts of wealth, new challenges to grow and to learn and to decide what to become. Earthseed is the dawning adulthood of the human species. It offers the only true immortality. It enables the seeds of the Earth to become the seeds of new life, new communities on new earths. The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars, and there, again, to grow, to learn, and to fly.

  I BEGAN CREATING SECRET Dreamask scenarios when I was 12. By then, I was very much the timid, careful daughter of Kayce and Madison Alexander. I knew that even though I was allowed to use Dreamasks with strict Christian American scenarios—like the old “Asha Vere” stories—no one would be likely to approve my creating new, uncensored scenarios. I knew this because back when I was nine, I began making up plain, linear installment stories to amuse myself and my few friends at Christian America School. It was fun. My friends liked it until we all got into trouble. Then some teacher eavesdropped, realized what I was doing, and punished me for lying. My friends were punished for not reporting my lies. We had to memorize whole chapters of Exodus, Psalms, Proverbs, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Until we had memorized and been tested on every single assigned chapter, we were allowed no free time—no recess or lunch breaks. We were kept an hour late every day. We were monitored even in the bathroom to make sure we weren’t indulging in more wickedness—like stealing a minute or two “from God.”

  It didn’t matter that I had said from the beginning that my stories were only made up. I never tried to convince anyone that they were true. And it didn’t matter that the Dreamask scenarios we were all allowed to experience were equally imaginary. It was as though my teachers believed that all the possible stories had already been created, and it was a sin to make more—or at least it was a sin for me to make more.

  But by the time I reached puberty, except for the pornography I managed to find, most of the scenarios I was permitted were tired, dull, boring things. Characters were always being shown the error of their ways, suffering for their sins, and then returning to God. Boys fought for Christian America. They went to war against heathens, or went out as missionaries in dangerous, wicked, foreign jungles and deserts. Girls, on the other hand, were always cooking, cleaning, sewing, crying, praying, taking care of babies or old people, and going to church. Asha Vere was unusual because she did interesting things. She saved people. She made them return to God. She was one of the few. In fact as a Black and a woman, she was the only one.

  A very old woman—she was in her nineties and lived in one of the nursing homes that Christian America had set up for elderly members—once told me that Asha Vere was my generation’s Nancy Drew. It was years before I found out who Nancy Drew was.

  Anyway, I wrote scenarios—had to write them down with a stylus in my notebook since even outside of Christian America, no one was going to trust a kid to work with a scenario recorder. At least our notebooks had a lot of memory and I could code them to erase the scenarios if someone else tried to get into them. Or I thought I could.

  I wrote about having different parents—parents who cared about me and didn’t wish always that I were another person, the sainted Kamaria. I didn’t know at this time that I was adopted. All I had was the usual child’s suspicion that I might be, and that somewhere, somehow, I might have beautiful, powerful “real” parents who would come for me someday.

  I wrote about having four brothers and three sisters. The idea of eight children appealed to me. I didn’t think you could be lonely in such a big family. My brothers and sisters and I had huge parties on holidays and birthdays and we were always having adventures, and I had a handsome boyfriend who was crazy about me, and the girls at school were all jealous.

  Instead of living in shabby, patched-together old Seattle with its missile-strike scars, we lived in a big corporate town. We were important and had plenty of money. We spent our time speeding around in fast cars or making flashy scientific discoveries in laboratories or catching gangs of spies, embezzlers, and saboteurs. Since this was a Mask, I could live the adventures as any of my brothers or sisters or as either of our parents. That meant I could “experience” being a boy or an adult. But since it wasn’t like a real Dreamask experience, I had no sensation guidance beyond research and my imagination. I watched other people, tried to make myself feel what it might be like to drive a car or fire a gun or be an older brother who worked in the South Pacific as a deep-sea miner or an older sister who was an architect in Antarctica or a father who was CEO of a major corporation or a mother who was a molecular biologist. The father was a big, godlike man who was rich and smart and…not there most of the time. I had the hardest time being him. Research didn’t help much. He was more of a shell than the others. What should a father be like inside, in his thoughts and feelings? I wasn’t sure. Not like Madison, for sure. Like the fathers of my occasional friends? I saw my friends’ fathers now and then, but I didn’t know them. Like the minister, maybe—stern and sure of himself and usually surrounded by a lot of deferential men and smiling women, some of whom were rumored to sleep with him even though they had husbands and he had a wife. But how did he feel? What did he believe? What did he want? What scared him?

  I read a lot. I watched people and I eavesdropped. I got a lot of the ideas from kids whose parents let them have nonreligious Masks and books—bad books, we called them. In short, I tried to do what my biological mother hated, but couldn’t help doing. I tried to feel what other people felt and know them—really know them.

  It was all nonsense, of course. Harmless nonsense. But when I was caught at it, it was suddenly all but criminal.

  There was a theft in my Christian American History class. Someone stole a small personal phone that the teacher had left on her desk. We were all searched and our belongings collected and thoroughly examined. Someone examined my notebook too thoroughly, in spite of my self-destruct codes, and found my scenario.

  I had to attend special religion classes for delinquents and get counseling. I had to confess m
y sins before our local church. I had to memorize a dozen or so more chapters of the Bible. While I was working off my punishment, I began to hear whispers that I was, indeed, adopted, and that I was the daughter not of rich, important, beautiful people but of the worst heathen devils—murderers, thieves, and perverters of God’s word. The kids started it. There were plenty of kids around who were known to be adopted, so it was commonplace to ridicule them and make up lies about how evil their real parents were. And if you weren’t adopted, and someone got mad at you, they might call you a heathen bastard whether you were or not.

  So first the kids started in on me, then the adults, some of whom knew that I was adopted, began to talk. “Well, after all, think about what kind of woman her real mother must be. That’s got to leave a mark on her.” Or, “You wait. That girl is no good. My grandmother used to say the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree!” Or, “Well, what can you expect? ‘Vere’ means truth, doesn’t it? And the truth is, there’s bad blood in her if there ever was bad blood!”

  I remember turning around in church to confront the nasty old woman who had stage-whispered this last bit of stupidity to her equally ancient friend. The two were sitting directly behind Kayce, Madison, and me during Sunday evening service. I looked at her, and she just stared back at me as though I were an animal who had somehow invaded the church.

  “ ‘God is love,’ ” I quoted to her in as sweet a voice as I could manage. And then, “ ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law.’ ” I tried to make sure that my words carried as well as her ugly stage whisper had carried. Bad blood, for heaven’s sake. Kayce had told me people said things like that because they were ignorant, but that I had to respect even the ignorant because they were older.

  On that particular night, Kayce nudged me with a sharp elbow the moment I spoke, and I saw the ignorant old woman’s mouth turn down in a grimace of dislike and disapproval.

  I had just turned 13 when that happened. I remember after church, Kayce and I had a huge fight because she said I was rude to an older person, and I said I didn’t care. I said I wanted to know whether I really was adopted and if so, who were my real parents.

  Kayce said she and Madison were the only parents I had to worry about, and I was an ungrateful little heathen not to appreciate what I had.

  That was that.

  When I was 15, an enemy at school told me my real mother was not only a heathen but a whore and a murderer. I hit her before I even thought about it—and I discovered that I didn’t know my own strength. I broke her jaw. She was screaming and crying and bleeding, and I was horrified—scared to death. I got kicked out of school, and very nearly collared as a juvenile felon. Only Madison and our minister working together managed to keep my neck out of a collar. This was the beginning of the worst part of my adolescence. I was grateful to Madison. I hadn’t thought he would fight for me. I hadn’t thought he would fight for anything. He had become even more of a shadow as I had grown. He repaired aging computers for poor working people. He had seemed closer to his tools than he did to me, except when he was feeling me up.

  Then, on Saturday, after my troubles had been papered over, while Kayce was attending some women’s-group thing at Church, Madison explained to me how grateful I should be to him. He had saved me from a collar. He read me an article about collars—how they hurt, how they can “pacify” even the most violent criminal and still leave him able to do useful work, how the holder of a collar control unit is “a virtual puppet master” as far as the convict is concerned. And although the pain that the collar can deliver is intense, it leaves no mark and does no permanent harm no matter how often it must be used.

  Madison gave me some other articles to read. As I took them, he reached out with both sweaty little hands and felt my breasts.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to show some gratitude,” he said to me when I pulled away. “I saved you from something really brutal. I don’t know. You’re so ungrateful. Maybe I won’t be able to save you next time.” He paused. “You know, your mama wanted to let you go on and be collared. She thinks you hurt that girl on purpose.” Another pause. “You need to be nice to me, Asha. I’m all you’ve got.”

  He kept after me. There were times when I thought I should just sleep with him and be done with it. But I was back in school by then and I could stay away from home most of the time. He was such a godawful whiny man. My only good luck was that he was small, and after a while, I realized he was a little bit afraid of me. That was a shock. I had grown up timid and afraid of almost everyone—resentful, but afraid. I had to be provoked suddenly and severely to make me react with anything other than argument. That’s why I was so upset when I broke the girl’s jaw. Not only did I not know that I could hurt someone that badly, but I wasn’t the kind of person who hurt people at all.

  But somehow, Madison didn’t know that.

  He wouldn’t let me alone, but at least he didn’t use physical force on me. His moist little hands kept wandering and he kept pleading, and he watched me. His eyes followed me so much, I was afraid Kayce would notice and blame me. He tried to peek at me in the bathroom—I caught him at it twice. He tried to watch me in my bedroom when I was dressing.

  At 15, I couldn’t wait to get out of the house and away from both of them for good.

  FROM The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

  THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2035

  I’m back at Georgetown. I need to rest a little, check in with Allie, clean up, pick up some of the things I left with her, and gather what information I can. Then I’ll head for Oregon. I need to get out of the area for a while, and going up where Marc is seems a good choice. He won’t want to see me. He needs to be part of Christian America even though he knows that Christian America’s hands are far from clean. If he doesn’t want me around reminding him what kind of people he’s mixed up with, let him help me. Once I’ve got my child back, he’ll never have to see me again—unless he wants to.

  It’s hard to accept even the comforts of Georgetown now. It seems that I can only stand myself when I’m moving, working, searching for Larkin. I’ve got to get out of here.

  Allie says I should stay until next week. She says I look like hell. I suppose I did when I arrived. After all, I was pretending to be a vagrant. I’ve cleaned up now and gone back to being an ordinary woman. But even when I was clean, she said I looked older. “Too much older,” she said.

  “You’ve got your Justin back,” I told her, and she looked away, looked at Justin, who was playing basketball with some other Georgetown kids. They had nailed an honest-to-goodness basket-without-a-bottom high up on someone’s cabin wall. Early Georgetown cabins were made of notched logs, stone, and mud. They’re heavy, sturdy things—so heavy that a few have fallen in and killed people during earthquakes. But a nailed-on basket and the blows of a newly stolen basketball did them no harm at all. One of the men who had a job cleaning office buildings in Eureka had brought the ball home the day before, saying he had found it in the street.

  “How is Justin?” I asked Allie. She had set up a work area behind the hotel. There she made or repaired furniture, repaired or sharpened tools, and did reading and writing for people. She didn’t teach reading or writing as I had. She claimed she didn’t have the patience for that kind of teaching—although she was willing to show kids how to work with wood, and she fixed their broken toys for free. She continued to do repair work for the various George businesses, but no more cleaning, no more fetching and carrying. Once Dolores George had seen the quality of her work, Allie was allowed to do the things she loved for her living and for Justin’s. The repair work she was doing now for other people was for extra cash to buy clothing or books for Justin.

  “I wish you’d stay and teach him,” she said to me. “I’m afraid he spends too much time with kids who are already breaking into houses and robbing people. If anything makes me leave Georgetown, it will be that.”

  I nodded, wondering what sort of things my Larkin was learning. And the unwanted question occur
red to me as it sometimes did: Was she still alive to learn anything at all? I turned my back on Allie and stared out into the vast, jumbled forest of shacks, cabins, tents, and lean-tos that was Georgetown.

  “Lauren?” Allie said in a voice too soft to trust.

  I looked around at her, but she was hand-sanding the leg of a chair, and not looking at me. I waited.

  “You know… I had a son before Justin,” she said.

  “I know.” Her father, who had prostituted her and her sister Jill had also murdered her baby in a drunken rage. That was why she and Jill had left home. They had waited until their father drank himself to sleep. Then they set fire to their shack with him in it and ran away. Fire again. What a cleansing friend. What a terrible enemy.

  “I never even knew who my first son’s father was,” she said, “but I loved him—my little boy. You can’t know how I loved him. He came from me, and he knew me, and he was mine.” She sighed and looked up from the chair leg. “For eight whole months, he was mine.”

  I stared at Georgetown again, knowing where she was going with this, not really wanting to hear it. It had a nasty enough sound when I heard it in my own head.

  “I wanted to die when Daddy killed my baby. I wished he had killed me too.” She paused. “Jill kept me going—kind of like back at Camp Christian, you kept me going.” Another pause, longer this time. “Lauren, you might never find her.”

  I didn’t say anything, didn’t move.

  “She might be dead.”

  After a while, I turned to look at her. She was staring at me, looking sad.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s true. And even if she’s alive, you might never find her.”