Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Talents

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I believe that I've finally done it. I believe that my life has finally educated me enough to enable me to make a real start at planting Earthseed. It may be too soon to say this, but it feels true. I believe it is true.

I've allowed the Elfords to make The First Book of the Living available free on the nets. I never expected to make money from the book. My only fear has been that someone would take it and change it, make it an instrument of some other theology or use it for some new brand of demagoguery. Joel Elford says the best way to avoid that is to make it available on every possible net and with my name on it. And, of course, the copyright is my legal fallback if someone does begin to misuse it seriously.

"I don't think you realize what you have," Joel told me.

I looked at him in surprise and realized that he believed what he was saying.

"And you don't realize how many other people will want it," he continued. "I've aimed the book particularly at the nets that are intended to interest American universities and the smaller free cities where so many of those universities are lo­cated. It will go out worldwide, but it will draw more attention to itself in those places."

He was smiling, so I asked, "What are you expecting to happen?"

"You're going to start hearing from people," he said. "You'll soon have more attention than you'll know what to do with." He sobered. "And what you actually do with it is important. Be careful." Irma trusted me more than Joel did. Joel was still watching me—watching with a great deal of interest. He says it's like watching a birth.

sunday, december30, 2035

I've been traveling.

That's nothing new for me, but this is different. This time, thanks to the book, I've been invited by university groups and others, and paid to travel, paid to speak—which is a Little Like paying ice to be cold.

And I've been flying. Flying! I've walked over most of the West Coast, and now I've flown over the interior of the country and over much of the East Coast. I've flown to Newark, Delaware; Clarion, Pennsylvania; and up to Syra­cuse, New York. Next, I go to Toledo, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; and Iowa City, Iowa.

"Not a bad first tour," Joel told me before I left. "I thought you'd arouse interest. People are ready for something new and hopeful."

I was scared to death, worried about flying and worried about speaking to so many strangers. What if I attracted the wrong kind of attention? How would Len handle the experi­ence? And I worried about Len, who seemed to be even more afraid than I was, especially about flying. I had spent more money than I should have, buying us both decent clothing.

Then Joel and Irma were taking us to the airport in their huge car. One way in which they do indulge themselves is to keep a late-model armed and armored car—a civilian mag­got, really. The thing cost as much as a nice house in a good neighborhood, and it's scary-looking enough to intimidate anyone stupid enough to spend their time hijacking vehicles.

"We've never had to use the guns," Irma told me when she showed them to me. "I don't like them. They frighten me. But being without them would frighten me more."

So now Len and I are lecturing and conducting Earthseed Workshops. We're being paid in hard currency, fed well, and allowed to live in good, safe hotels. And we're being wel­comed, listened to, even taken seriously by people who are hungry for something to believe in, some difficult but worthwhile goal to involve themselves in and work toward.

We've also been laughed at, argued with, booed, and threatened with hellfire—or gunfire. But Jarret's kind of re­ligion and Jarret himself are getting less and less popular these days. Both, it seems, are bad for business, bad for the U.S. Constitution, and bad for a large percentage of the pop­ulation. They always have been, but now more and more people are willing to say so in public. The Crusaders have terrorized some people into silence, but they've just made others very angry.

And I'm finding more and more people who have the leisure now to worry about the nasty, downward slide that the country's been on. In the 2020s, when these people were sick, starving, or trying to keep warm, they had no time or energy to look beyond their own desperate situations. Now, though, as they're more able to meet their own immediate needs, they begin to look around, feel dissatisfied with the slow pace of change, and with Jarret, who with his war and his Crusaders, has slowed it even more. I suppose it would have been different if we'd won the war.

Anyway, some of these dissatisfied people are finding what they want and need in Earthseed. They're the ones who come to me and ask, "What can I do? I believe. Now how can I help?"

So I've begun to reach people. I've reached so many peo­ple from Eureka to Seattle to Syracuse that I believe that even if I were killed tomorrow, some of these people would find ways to go on learning and teaching, pursuing the Des­tiny. Earthseed will go on. It will grow. It will force us to be­come the strong, purposeful, adaptable people that we must become if we're to grow enough to fulfill the Destiny.

I know things will go wrong now and then. Religions are no more perfect than any other human institutions. But Earthseed will fulfill its essential purpose. It will force us to become more than we might ever become without it. And when it's successful, it will offer us a kind of species life in­surance. I wish I could live to see that success. I wish I could be one of those who go out to take root among the stars. I can only hope that my Larkin will go—or perhaps some of her children, or even Marc's children.

Whatever happens, as long as I'm alive, I won't stop working, preaching, aiming people toward the Destiny. I've always known that sharing Earthseed was my only true purpose.

EPILOGUE

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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

Earthseed is adulthood.

It's trying our wings,

Leaving our mother,

Becoming men and women.

We've been children,

Fighting for the full breasts,

The protective embrace,

The soft lap.

Children do this.

But Earthseed is adulthood.

Adulthood is both sweet and sad.

It terrifies.

It empowers.

We are men and women now.

We are Earthseed.

And the Destiny of Earthseed

Is to take root among the stars.

UNCLE MARC WAS, in the end, my only family.

I never saw Kayce and Madison again. I sent them money when they were older and in need, and 1 hired people to look after them, but 1 never went back to them. They did their duty toward me and I did mine toward them.

My mother, when I finally met her, was still a drifter. She was immensely rich—or, at least, Earthseed was immensely rich. But she had no home of her own—not even a rented apartment. She drifted between the homes of her many friends and supporters, and between the many Earthseed Communities that she established or encouraged in the United States, Canada, Alaska, Mexico, and Brazil. And she went on teaching, preaching, fund-raising, and spreading her political influence. I met her when she visited a New York Earthseed community in the Adirondacks—a place called Red Spruce.