Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Talents

Jarret's people see alcohol and drugs as Satan's tools. Some of his more fanatical followers might very well be the tunic-and-cross gang who destroyed Dovetree.

And we are Earthseed. We're "that cult," "those strange people in the hills," "those crazy fools who pray to some kind of god of change." We are also, according to some rumors I've heard, "those devil-worshiping hill heathens who take in children. And what do you suppose they do with them?'' Never mind that the trade in abducted or orphaned children or children sold by desperate parents goes on all over the country, and everyone knows it. No matter. The hint that some cult is taking in children for "questionable purposes" is enough to make some people irrational.

That's the kind of rumor that could hurt us even with peo­ple who aren't Jarret supporters. I've only heard it a couple of times, but it's still scary.

At this point, I just hope that the people who hit Dovetree were some new gang, disciplined and frightening, but only after profit. I hope

But I don't believe it. I do suspect that Jarret's people had something to do with this. And I think I'd better say so today at Gathering. With Dovetree fresh in everyone's mind, peo­ple will be ready to cooperate, have more drills and scatter more caches of money, food, weapons, records, and valu­ables. We can fight a gang. We've done that before when we were much less prepared than we are now. But we can't fight Jarret. In particular, we can't fight President Jarret. Presi­dent Jarret, if the country is mad enough to elect him, could destroy us without even knowing we exist.

We are now 59 people—64 with the Dovetree women and children, if they stay. With numbers like that, we barely do exist. All the more reason, I suppose, for my dream.

My "talent," going back to the parable of the talents, is Earthseed. And although I haven't buried it in the ground, I have buried it here in these coastal mountains, where it can grow at about the same speed as our redwood trees. But what else could I have done? If I had somehow been as good at rabble-rousing as Jarret is, then Earthseed might be a big enough movement by now to be a real target. And would that be better?

I'm jumping to all kinds of unwarranted conclusions. At least I hope they're unwarranted. Between my horror at what's happened down at Dovetree and my hopes and fears for my own people, I'm upset and at loose ends and, per­haps, just imagining things.

Chapter 2

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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

Chaos

Is God's most dangerous face—

Amorphous, roiling, hungry.

Shape Chaos—

Shape God.

Act

Alter the speed

Or the direction of Change.

Vary the scope of Change.

Recombine the seeds of Change.

Transmute the impact of Change.

Seize Change.

Use it.

Adapt and grow.

THE ORIGINAL 13 SETTLERS of Acorn, and thus the original 13 members of Earthseed, were my mother, of course, and Harry Balter and Zahra Moss, who were also refugees from my mother's home neighborhood in Robledo. There was Travis, Natividad, and Dominic Douglas, a young family who became my mother's first highway converts. She met them as both groups walked through Santa Barbara, California. She liked their looks, recognized their dangerous vulnerability— Dominic was only a few months old at the time—and con­vinced them to walk with Harry, Zahra, and her in their long trek north where they all hoped to find better lives.

Next came Allison Gilchrist and her sister Jillian—Allie and Jill. But Jill was killed later along the highway. At around the same time, my mother spotted my father and he spotted her. Neither of them was shy and both seemed willing to act on what they felt. My father joined the growing group. Justin Rohr became Justin Gilchrist when the group found him cry­ing alongside the body of his dead mother. He was about three at the time, and he and Allie wound up coming to­gether in another small family. Last came the two families of ex-slaves that joined together to become one growing family of sharers. These were Grayson Mora and his daughter Doe and Emery Solis and her daughter Tori.

That was it: four children, four men, and five women.

They should have died. That they survived at all in the un­forgiving world of the Pox might qualify as a miracle—al­though of course, Earthseed does not encourage belief in miracles.

No doubt the group's isolated location—well away from towns and paved roads—helped keep it safe from much of the violence of the time. The land it settled on belonged to my father. There was on that land when the group arrived one dependable well, a half-ruined garden, a number of fruit and nut trees, and groves of oaks, pines, and redwoods. Once the members of the group had pooled their money and bought handcarts, seed, small livestock, hand tools, and other necessities, they were almost independent. They van­ished into their hills and increased their numbers by birth, by adoption of orphans, and by conversion of needy adults. They scavenged what they could from abandoned farms and settlements, they traded at street markets and traded with their neighbors. One of the most valuable things they traded with one another was knowledge.

Every member of Earthseed learned to read and to write, and most knew at least two languages—usually Spanish and English, since those were the two most useful. Anyone who joined the group, child or adult, had to begin at once to learn these basics and to acquire a trade. Anyone who had a trade was always in the process of teaching it to someone else. My mother insisted on this, and it does seem sensible. Public schools had become rare in those days when ten-year-old chil­dren could be put to work. Education was no longer free, but it was still mandatory according to the law. The problem was, no one was enforcing such laws, just as no one was protect­ing child laborers.

My father had the most valuable skills in the group. By the time he married my mother, he had been practicing medicine for almost 30 years. He was a multiple rarity for their loca­tion: well educated, professional, and Black. Black people in particular were rare in the mountains. People wondered about him. Why was he there? He could have been making a better living in some small, established town. The area was littered with tiny towns that would be glad to have any doc­tor. Was he competent? Was he honest? Was he clean? Could he be trusted looking after wives and daughters? How could they be sure he was really a doctor at all? My father appar­ently wrote nothing at all about this, but my mother wrote about everything.

She says at one point: "Bankole heard the same whispers and rumors I did at the various street markets and in occa­sional meetings with neighbors, and he shrugged. He had us to keep healthy and our work-related injuries to treat. Other people had their first aid kits, their satellite phone nets, and, if they were lucky, their cars or trucks. These vehicles tended to be old and undependable, but some people had them. Whether or not they called Bankole was their business.

"Then, thanks to someone else's misfortune, things im­proved. Jean Holly's appendix flared up and all but ruptured, and the Holly family, our eastern neighbors, decided that they had better take a chance on Bankole.

"Once Bankole had saved the woman's life, he had a talk with the family. He told them exactly what he thought of them for waiting so long to call him, for almost letting a woman with five young children die. He spoke with that in­tense quiet courtesy of his that makes people squirm. The Hollys took it. He became their doctor.