Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Talents

The guns went off again. I pressed myself against the ground and lay there, frozen, eyes shut. The idiots in the truck meant to kill us whether we moved or not, and their chances for success were excellent.

Then I realized that this time, they weren't shooting at us.

Someone screamed. Over the steady clatter of one of the truck's guns, I heard someone scream in agony. I didn't move. When someone was in pain, the only way I could avoid sharing the suffering was not to look.

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.