Butler, Octavia - Survivor

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Survivor

Octavia E. Butler

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

1978

All of the characters in this book

are fictitious, and any resemblance

to actual persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Butler, Octavia E

Survivor.

I. Title.

PZ4B98674Su [PS3552.U827] 813’.5‘4

ISBN: 0-385-13385-5

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-81548

Copyright © 1978 by Octavia E. Butler

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

CHAPTER ONE

Alanna

I didn’t know enough to appreciate my foster father the way I should have when we met back on Earth. That was when I was about fifteen and his Missionaries caught me stealing from their cornfield. They shot me, would have killed me, but he stopped them. Then he carried me back to his house, got a doctor to tend my wound, and announced that he and his wife were adopting me. Just like that. I heard the doctor try to talk him out of it when they both thought I was unconscious.

“You could be making a mistake, Jules. She’s not the harmless young girl she appears to be. And she’ll never replace your children.”

“My children are dead,” said my foster father quietly. “I’ve accepted that. I wouldn’t expect her or anyone else to replace them.”

The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “Well, at least she can talk.”

“Of course she can talk! She is human, Bart, wild or not.”

“Yes… physically anyway. Some of them can’t do much more than grunt, you know. They’ve either forgotten speech, or they never learned it. As wild humans, they spend their lives either hunting or being hunted. By the time they’re this girl’s age, they’re more wild than human.”

“This one’s a future Missionary,” said my foster father. “She’ll learn. She’ll become one of us.”

“Maybe.” The doctor sounded doubtful. “If the people let her, and if she really wants to. But I think all she’ll learn for quite a while is how to pretend to be one of us. Don’t expect more than that.”

And my foster father didn’t at first. I don’t think he had even before the doctor warned him. All he asked of me was that I learn to put on a good act when I was with people other than him and his wife Neila. That would protect me from the less tolerant of his Missionaries. Perhaps during that early period, he was too tolerant himself, though, too willing to let me stand apart from his people as I was naturally inclined to do. Perhaps there was a time when I could have become a Missionary if he had insisted, pushed me. But as it happened, it was best for him, for his people, and especially for me, that he did not insist. Best that when we left Earth and settled on our new world, I became something else entirely.

Two days after Alanna Verrick was rescued from her Tehkohn captors, the sharp edge of her pain began to wear away. She could think again. She could look at her situation clearly and realize how much trouble she was in.

Her rescuers, complacent and overconfident after their victorious raid, were also in trouble but they did not know it. In fact, their ignorance was one of Alanna’s problems. But she had another more immediate problem. In a very short time, she was going to have to convince her rescuers that they had not made a mistake in setting her free.

For now, though, she followed them silently as she had for the past two days while they herded their own Tehkohn prisoners down from the mountains. They had already reached the foothills and Alanna could look down from the trail into the valley’s thick covering of yellow-green meklah trees. For the first time in nearly eight hundred days—two local years—she saw the planet’s only settlement of Earth humans. The Mission colony that had once been her home. Like her, it had changed.

The Missionaries had transformed their settlement from a scattered collection of cabins almost hidden by the surrounding trees to a solidly stockaded town—a fortress that apparently provided them with the dangerous illusion of security.

Alanna looked around for some sign of the Garkohn town. Since the Garkohn, native allies of the Missionaries, chose to live underground, a sign of their town would be a small hill somewhere along the eastern side of the valley—the far side. But there were many such hills, all natural-looking, all identically covered with meklah trees and shrubs. The Garkohn knew that real security began with adequate camouflage. But then, the Missionaries considered this world’s version of even adequate camouflage to be beyond their reach. The expertise of the natives intimidated them.

Thus, only the Missionary fortress stood in plain view, beckoning unwittingly to the Tehkohn—inviting them to steal in and butcher everyone without even the inconvenience of a battle. And, Alanna guessed, after the defeat that the Tehkohn had just suffered, they would be strongly motivated to do just that.

Alanna looked back at the Tehkohn prisoners. They walked together in a group completely surrounded by their Garkohn and Missionary captors. She noticed that one of the prisoners, the big blue one, was watching her. This startled her because until now, he had been very careful to pay no attention to her at all. She turned away quickly.

Her foster father, Jules Verrick, was walking beside her. He noticed the gesture and naturally misinterpreted it.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re well guarded. For once, they’re the prisoners instead of us.”

Silently, Alanna found fault with the inclusive “us.” She alone had been a prisoner of the Tehkohn. Others, Garkohn and Missionary, had been captured with her, but they were dead. Only Alanna had managed to live beyond the first few days of her captivity. Only she had survived to be rescued.

Jules spoke again gently. “You’ll feel better when we get home and those creatures are locked up out of your sight.”

She nodded meaninglessly, wondering whether he really thought that after two years among the Tehkohn, she could still be upset by the sight of them. She looked out over the valley again. The sight of the defenseless Missionary fortress had far more power to upset her. In the long run, the Missionaries were in greater danger than she was.

She glanced at the prisoners again, seeing them in a different way now—seeing them as living shields for the Missionaries.

“How many of the prisoners are yours, Jules?” she asked. He was the Missionary leader and would know exactly.

“Five hunters,” he answered, “and one of the blue-green types.”

“A judge,” said Alanna. “Higher than a hunter among the Tehkohn.”

“Yes, and… all the farmers are ours.” He sounded a little ashamed of this last. As far as Alanna was concerned, he had reason to be. Farmers and artisans were nonfighters. Capturing them was no achievement. The Garkohn had taken none of them. The Garkohn had hunters, judges, and one other. These were the prisoners who would have been most useful to the Missionaries. Prisoners whom the Tehkohn could ill afford to lose, prisoners whom the Missionaries could shield themselves behind and negotiate through. The Missionaries could negotiate a peace now that all Tehkohn would respect if Jules could only speak privately with the prisoners who belonged to the Garkohn. Such a peace had to be arranged if the Missionaries were to survive. And Alanna had to arrange it somehow. That was the responsibility she had assigned herself. It was not a responsibility she wanted. It would center the attention of three warring peoples on her. If she made a mistake, one of the groups would surely kill her. But she was the only person with the knowledge, and possibly the leverage, to manage it. And she owed her foster parents a debt. Years before, they had saved her. Now she would try to save them, and save their Mission, which meant so much to them. She had to try.