Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Jorge, who should have known better, raised his head and looked.
An instant later he doubled up, thrashing and twisting in someone else’s agony. He didn’t scream. Sharers who survive learn early to take the pain and keep quiet. We keep our vulnerability as secret as we can. Sometimes we manage not to move or give any sign at all. But Jorge hurt too much to keep his body still. He clutched himself, crossing his arms over his belly. At once, I felt a dull echo of his pain in my own middle. It is incomprehensible to me that some people think of sharing as an ability or a power—as something desirable.
“Fool,” I said to Jorge, and held him until the pain passed from both of us. I concealed my own pain as best I could so that we wouldn’t develop the kind of nasty feedback loop that I’ve learned we sharers are capable of. We don’t die of the pains that we see and share. We wish we could sometimes, and there is danger in sharing too much pain or too many deaths. These are individual matters. Five years ago I shared three or four deaths fast, one after another. It hurt more than anything should be able to hurt. Then it knocked me out. When I came to, I was numb and sick and dazed long after there was any pain to share. With lesser pains, it’s enough to turn away. In minutes, the pain is over for us. Deaths take much longer to get over.
The one good thing about sharing pain is that it makes us very slow to cause pain to other people. We hate pain more than most people do.
“I’m okay,” Jorge said after a while. And then, “Those guys out there… I think they’re dead. They must be dead.”
“They’re down anyway,” Michael whispered as he looked where Jorge had looked. “I can see at least three of them in the field beyond the chimney and the truck.” He squirmed backward so that he could relax and no longer see or be seen over the rise. Sometimes I try to imagine what it must be like to look at pain and feel nothing. My current recurring nightmare is the closest I’ve come to that kind of freedom, not that it felt like freedom. But to Michael feeling nothing must be…well…normal.
Everything had gone quiet. The truck had not moved. It did nothing.
“They seem to need a moving target,” I said.
“Maybe they’re high on something,” Natividad said. “Or maybe they’re just crazy. Jorge, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. I just want to get the hell out of here.”
I shook my head. “We’re stuck here, at least until it gets dark.”
“If the truck has even the cheapest night-vision equipment, the dark won’t help us,” Michael said.
I thought about that, then nodded. “Yes, but it shot at us and missed. And it hasn’t moved, even though two sets of people have found its hiding place. I’d say either the truck or the people in it are not in good working order. We’ll stay here until dark, then we’ll run. If we’re lucky, no one will wander in behind us before then and give us trouble or draw the truck’s attention back this way. But whatever happens, we’ll wait.”
“Three people are dead,” Michael said. “We should be dead ourselves. Maybe before the night is over, we will be.”
I sighed. “Shut up, Mike.”
We waited through the cool autumn day. We were lucky that two days before, the weather had turned cool. We were also lucky that it wasn’t raining. Perfect weather for getting pinned down by armed lunatics.
The truck never moved. No one else came along to trouble us or to draw fire. We ate the food we had brought along for lunch and drank what was left of our water. We decided that the trackers must think we were dead. Well, we were content to play dead until the sun had set. We waited.
Then we moved. In the dark, we began to crawl toward the northward edge of our cover. Moving this way, we hoped to put so much of the big chimney between ourselves and the truck that the people in the truck would not have time to see us and open fire before we got to better cover behind the second chimney. Once we reached the second chimney, we hoped to keep both chimneys between ourselves and the immobile truck as we escaped. That was fine as long as the truck remained immobile. If it moved, we were dead. Even if it didn’t move, there would be a moment when we were easy targets, when we had to run across open ground.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Jorge whispered through clenched teeth as he stared at the stretch of open ground. If the truck managed to shoot anyone, and he saw it, he would collapse. So would I.
“Don’t look around,” I reminded him. “Even if you hear shots, look straight ahead, and run!”
But before we could start, the crying began again. There was no mistaking the sound. It was the open, uninhibited sobbing of a child, and this time, it didn’t stop.
We ran. The sound of the crying might help to cover any sounds we made over the uneven ground—although we weren’t noisy. We’ve learned not to be.
Jorge reached the smaller chimney first. I was next. Then Michael and Natividad arrived together. Michael is short and lean and looks as quick as he is. Natividad is stocky and strong and doesn’t look quick at all, but she tends to surprise people.
We all made it. There were no shots fired. And in the time it took us to reach the smaller chimney, I found that I had changed my mind about things.
The crying had not stopped or even paused. When I looked around the small chimney toward the truck, I could see light—a broad swatch of dim, blue-gray light. I couldn’t see people, but it was clear that we had guessed right. A side door of the truck was wide open.
We were all bunched together at the smaller chimney, the others peering toward the down slope north of us. That was where they still expected to go. There was starlight enough to light the way, and I could see Jorge, bent down, his hands on his thighs as though he were about to run a race.
The child was not sobbing now, but wailing—a thin, exhausted sound. Best to move before the crying stopped. Also best to move before the others understood what I meant to do—what I now knew I had to do. They would follow me and back me up as long as I moved fast and didn’t give them time to think or argue.
“Let’s go,” Michael said.
I paid no attention. There was, I realized, a bad smell in the air, swelling and fading in the evening breeze. It seemed to be coming from the truck.
“Come on,” Michael urged.
“No,” I said, and waited until all three of them had turned to look at me. Timing, now. “I want to see about that child,” I said. “And I want that truck.”
I moved then, just ahead of their restraining hands and words.
I ran. I ran around the carcass of the house, shifting for an instant from reality into my dream. I was running past the stark ruin of a house, its chimneys, its few remaining black bones just visible against the stars.
Just for an instant, I thought I saw shadowy dream forms. Shadows rising, moving…
I shook off the feeling and stopped as I reached the larger chimney. I edged around it, willing the truckers not to shoot me, terrified that they would shoot me, moving fast in spite of the terror.
The blue-gray light was brighter now, and the smell had become a sickening stench of rottenness that I found all too familiar.
I crouched low, hoping to be out of sight of the truck’s cameras, and I crossed in front of the truck—near enough to it to put out my hand and touch it. Then I had reached the far side of it where the light was, where the door must be open.
As I went, I almost fell over the crying child. It was a little girl of perhaps six or seven. She was filthy beyond my ability to describe filthiness. She sat in the dirt, crying, reaching up to wipe away tears and rearrange some of the mud on her face.
She looked up and saw me just as I managed to stop myself from falling over her. She stared at me, her mouth open, as I swung past her to level my rifle into the blue-gray light of the truck’s interior.
I don’t know what I expected to see: Drunken people sprawled about? An orgy? More filth? People aiming their weapons at me? Death?
There was death nearby. I knew that. The smell was unmistakable.
&
There were also three dead people in the truck.
That is, I thought they must be dead. It was clear that all had been wounded—shot, I thought—several times. In fact, they must have been shot some time ago—days ago, perhaps. The blood on their bodies had dried and darkened.
I don’t share any feeling with the unconscious or the dead, I’m glad to say. No matter how they look or smell, they don’t bother me that much. I’ve seen too many of them.
I climbed into the truck, leaving the crying child outside to the care of the others. I could already hear Natividad talking to her. Natividad loves kids, and they seem to trust her as soon as they meet her.
Jorge and Michael had come up behind me as I climbed into the truck. Both froze as they saw the sleeping child and the sprawled bodies. Then Michael moved past me to check the bodies. He, Natividad, Allie Gilchrist, and Zahra Balter have learned to assist Bankole. They have no official medical or nurse training, but Bankole has trained them—is training them—and they’re careful and serious about their work.
Michael checked the bodies and discovered that only one, a slender, dark, middle-aged man, was dead. He had been shot in the chest and abdomen. The other two were a big, naked, middle-aged, blond woman shot in the legs and thighs and a clothed blond boy of about 15 shot in the legs and left shoulder. These people were covered with dried blood. Nevertheless, Michael found faint heartbeats in the woman and the boy.
“We’ve got to get them to Bankole,” he said. “This is too much for me.”
“Oh, shit,” Jorge moaned, and he ran outside and threw up. I couldn’t blame him. He had just noticed the maggots in the man’s eyes, mouth, and wounds, and in the wounds of the other two. I looked away myself. All of us can deal with that kind of thing, but no one enjoys it. To tell the truth, I was more concerned about whether one or both of the wounded people would come to. I positioned myself so that I would not have to look at them. They were in no shape to attack us, of course, but they would drag me into their pain if they were conscious.
Keeping my back to Michael and his patients, I awoke the sleeping child. She wasn’t quite as filthy as the little girl we’d found outside, but she did need a bath.
She squinted up at me, groggy, uncomprehending. Then she gave a little squeal and tried to dart past me, and out the door.
I caught her and held her while she struggled and screamed. I spoke to her, whispered to her, tried to reassure her, did all I could to bring her out of her hysteria. “It’s all right, honey, it’s all right. Don’t cry. You’ll be all right. We’ll take care of you, don’t worry. We’ll take care of you…” I rocked her and crooned to her as though to a much younger child.
The dead and wounded were no doubt her family. She and the other child had been alone here with them for…how long? They would need all the care we could give them. After much more screaming and struggling, she began to take refuge in my arms, holding on to me instead of trying to escape. From my arms, she stared, huge-eyed, at the others.
Jorge stood watch at the monitors once his stomach settled. Natividad had calmed the other little girl and found a clean cloth and some water. These she used to wash the child’s face, hands, and arms. Michael had left the wounded woman and boy to examine the truck’s controls. Of the four of us, he was the only one who knew how to drive.
“Any trouble?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Not even any sign of boobytraps. I guess they would have worried about the kids springing them.”
“Can you drive it?”
“No problem.”
“Drive it, then. It’s ours. Let’s go home.”
The truck was all right. There was plenty of power in its batteries, and Michael had no trouble finding and using its night-vision equipment. It carried infrared, ambient light, and radar devices. All of these were of good quality, and all worked. The little girls must not have understood how to use them—as they had not known how to drive. Or perhaps they had known how to operate everything, but had not known where to go with it. Who could little children go to for help, after all? If they had no adult relatives, even the police would either sell them illegally or indenture them legally. Indenturing indigents, young and old, is much in fashion now. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—the ones abolishing slavery and guaranteeing citizenship rights—still exist, but they’ve been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legislatures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don’t much matter. Indenturing indigents is supposed to keep them employed, teach them a trade, feed them, house them, and keep them out of trouble. In fact, it’s just one more way of getting people to work for nothing or almost nothing. Little girls are valued because they can be used in so many ways, and they can be coerced into being quick, docile, disposable labor.
No doubt these two girls have been taught to be terrified of strangers. Then, with their parents and brother out of action, they had been left on their own to defend their family and their home. In their blind fear, they had, they must have, shot at us and shot and hit three men who gave no sign of being anything worse than wanderers, perhaps salvagers. Michael and Natividad did go out to check on these men before we left while Jorge and I loaded our handcart and its contents onto the truck.
The three men were dead. They had hard currency and holstered guns—which Michael and Natividad collected. We covered them with rocks and left them. But they had been even less of a danger to the housetruck than we were. If they had walked right up to the truck, a locked door would have kept them out. Their old nine-millimeter semi-automatics would have had no chance against the truck’s armor. But the little girls hadn’t realized that.
We got them home to Acorn, and they’re getting baths, food, comfort, and rest. Bankole is working on their mother and brother. He was not happy to have new patients. Our clinic has never been so full, and he has all his students and some volunteers helping him. He says he doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to save this new mother and son. He has a few simple instruments and an intricate little diagnostic unit that he saved when he fled his home in San Diego five years ago. And he has a few medicines—drugs to ease pain, fight infection, and otherwise keep us healthy. If the boy lives, Bankole doesn’t know whether he’ll walk again.
Bankole will do his best for them. And Allie Gilchrist and May are taking care of the little girls. The girls have been lucky, at least, in having us find them. They’ll be safe with us.
And now, at last, we have something we’ve needed for years. We have a truck.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2032
With all the work that my Bankole has had to do to help the wounded woman and boy and the wounded Dovetrees, he didn’t get around to shouting at me over the truck incident until last night. And, of course, he didn’t shout. He tends not to. It’s a pity. His disapproval might be easier to take if it were quick and loud. It was, as usual, quiet and intense.
“It’s a shame that so many of your unnecessary risks pay off so well,” he said to me as we lay in bed last night. “You’re a fool, you know. It’s as though you think you can’t be killed. My god, girl, you’re old enough to know better.”
“I wanted the housetruck,” I said. “And I realized we might be able to get it. And we might be able to help a child. We kept hearing one of them crying.”
He turned his head to look at me for several seconds, his mouth set. “You’ve seen children led down the road in convict collars or chains,” he said. “You’ve seen them displayed as enticements before houses of prostitution. Are you going to tell me you did this because you heard one crying?”
“I do what I can,” I said. “When I can do more, I will. You know that.?
He just looked at me. If I didn’t love him, I might not like him much at times like these. I took his hand and kissed it, and held it. “I do what I can.” I repeated, “And I wanted the housetruck.”
“Enough to risk not only yourself, but your whole team—four people?”
“The risk in running away empty-handed was at least as great as the risk of going for the truck.”
He made a sound of disgust and withdrew his hand. “So now you’ve got a battered old housetruck,” he muttered.
I nodded. “So now we have it. We need it. You know we do. It’s a beginning.”
“It’s not worth anyone’s life!”
“It didn’t cost any of our lives!” I sat up and looked down at him. I needed to have him see me as well as he could in the dim light from the window. I wanted to have him know that I meant what I was saying. “If I had to die,” I said, “if I had to get shot by strangers, shouldn’t it be while I was trying to help the community, and not just while I was trying to run away?”
He raised his hands and gave me an ironic round of applause. “I knew you would say something like that. Well, I never thought you were stupid. Obsessed, perhaps, but not stupid. That being the case, I have a proposition for you.”
He sat up and I moved close to him and pulled the blankets up around us. I leaned against him and sat, waiting. Whatever he had to say, I felt that I’d gotten my point across. If he wanted to call my thinking obsessive, I didn’t care.
“I’ve been looking at some of the towns in the area,” he said. “Saylorville, Halstead, Coy—towns that are a few miles off the highway. None of them need a doctor now, but one probably will someday soon. How would you feel about living in one of those towns?”
I sat still, surprised. He meant it. Saylorville? Halstead? Coy? These are communities so small that I’m not sure they qualify as towns. Each has no more than a few families and businesses huddled together between the highway—U.S. 101—and the sea. We trade at their street markets, but they’re closed societies, these towns. They tolerate “foreign” visitors, but they don’t like us. They’ve been burned too many times by strangers passing through—people who turned out to be thieves or worse. They trust only their own and long-established neighboring farmers. Did Bankole think that they would welcome us? Except for a larger town called Prata, the nearest towns are almost all White. Prata is White and Latino with a sprinkling of Asians. We’re you name it: Black, White, Latino, Asian, and any mixture at all—the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a city. The kids we’ve adopted and the ones who have been born to us think of all the mixing and matching as normal. Imagine that.