Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Talents

In fact, she went to Red Spruce to rest. She had been traveling and speaking steadily for several months, and she needed a place where she could be quiet and think. I know this because it was what people kept telling me when I tried to reach her. The community protected her privacy so well that for a while, I was afraid I might never get to see her. I'd read that she usually traveled with only an acolyte or two and, sometimes, a bodyguard, but now it seemed that everyone in the community had decided to guard her.

By then, I was 34, and I wanted very much to meet her. My friends and Uncle Marc's housekeeper had told me how much I looked like this charismatic, dangerous, heathen cult leader. 1 had paid no attention until, in researching Lauren Olamina's life, I discovered that she had had a child, a daughter, and that that daughter had been abducted from an early Earthseed community called Acorn.

The community, according to Olamina's official biogra­phy, had been destroyed by Jarret's Crusaders back in the 30s. Its men and women had been enslaved for over a year by the Crusaders, and all the prepubescent children had been abducted. Most had never been seen again.

The Church of Christian America had denied this and sued Olamina and Earthseed back in the 2040s when Olam­ina's charge first came to their attention. The church was still powerful, even though Jarret was dead by then. The ru­mors were that Jarret, after his single term as President, drank himself to death. A coalition of angry business peo­ple, protestors against the Al-Can War, and champions of the First Amendment worked hard to defeat him for re­election in 2036. They won by exposing some of the earli­est Christian American witch-burnings. It seems that be­tween 2015 and 2019, Jarret himself took part in singling people out and burning them alive. The Pox, then a grow­ing malignancy, had been both the excuse and the cover for this. Jarret and his friends had burned accused prostitutes, drug dealers, and junkies. Also, in their enthusiasm, they burned some innocent people—people who had nothing to do with the sex trade or drugs. When that happened, Jar­ret's people covered their "mistakes" with denials, threats, more terror, and occasional payoffs to the bereaved fami­lies. Uncle Marc researched this himself several years ago, and he says it's true—true and sad and wrong, and in the end, irrelevant. He says Jarret's teachings were right even if the man himself did wrong.

Anyway, the Church of Christian America sued Olamina for her "false" accusations. She countersued. Then sud­denly, without explanation, CA dropped its suit and settled with her, paying her an unreported, but reputedly vast sum of money. I was still a kid growing up with the Alexanders when all this happened, and I heard nothing about it. Years later, when I began to research Earthseed and Olamina, I didn't know what to think of it.

I phoned Uncle Marc and asked him, point-blank, whether there was any possibility that this woman could be my mother.

On my phone's tiny monitor, Uncle Marc's face froze, then seemed to sag. He suddenly looked much older than his 54 years. He said, "I'll talk to you about this when I come home." And he broke the connection. He wouldn't take my calls after that. He had never refused my calls be­fore. Never.

Not knowing what else to do, where else to turn, 1 checked the nets to see where Lauren Olamina might be speaking or organizing. To my surprise, I learned that she was "resting" at Red Spruce, less than a hundred kilometers from where I was.

And all of a sudden, I had to see her.

I didn't try to phone her, didn't try to reach her with Uncle Marc's well-known name or my own name as a cre­ator of several popular Masks. I just showed up at Red Spruce, rented a room at their guest house, and began try­ing to find her. Earthseed doesn't bother with a lot of for­mality. Anyone can visit its communities and rent a room at a guest house. Visitors came to see relatives who were members, came to attend Gatherings or other ceremonies, even came to join Earthseed and arrange to begin their pro­bationary first year.

I told the manager of the guest house that I thought I might be a relative of Olamina's and asked him if he could tell me how I might make an appointment to speak with her. I asked him because I had heard people call him "Shaper" and I recognized that from my reading as a title of respect akin to "reverend" or "minister." If he was the com­munity's minister, he might be able to introduce me to Olamina himself.

Perhaps he could have, but he refused. Shaper Olamina was very tired, and not to be bothered, he told me. If I wanted to meet her, I should attend one of her Gatherings or phone her headquarters in Eureka, California, and arrange an appointment.

I had to hang around the community for three days be­fore I could find anyone willing to take my message to her. 1 didn't see her. No one would even tell me where she was staying within the community. They protected her from me courteously, firmly. Then, all of a sudden, the wall around her gave way. I met one of her acolytes and he took my mes­sage to her.

My messenger was a thin, brown-haired young man who said his name was Edison Balter. I met him in the guest­house dining room one morning as we each sat alone, eat­ing bagels and drinking apple cider. I pounced on him as someone I hadn't pestered yet. I had no idea at that time what the Balter name meant to my mother or that this man was an adopted son of one of her best friends. I was only relieved that someone was listening to me, not closing one more door in my face.

"I'm her aide this trip," he told me. "She says I'm just about ready to go out on my own, and the idea scares the hell out of me. What name shall I give her?"

"Asha Vere."

"Oh? Are you the Asha Vere who does Dreamasks?"

I nodded.

"Nice work. I'll tell her. You want to put her in one of your Masks? You know you do look a lot like her. Like a softer version of her." And he was gone. He talked fast and moved very fast, but somehow without seeming to hurry. He didn't look anything like Olamina himself, but there was a similarity. I found that I liked him at once—just as I'd at first found myself liking her. Another likable cultist. I got the feeling that Red Spruce, a clean, pretty mountain com­munity, was nothing but a nest of seductively colorful snakes—a poisonous place.

Then Edison Balter came back and told me he would take me to her. She was somewhere in her fifties—58, I remem­bered from my reading. She was born way back in 2009, be­fore the Pox. My god. She was old. But she didn't look old, even though her black hair was streaked with gray. She looked big and strong and, in spite of her pleasant, welcom­ing expression, just a little frightening. She was a little taller than me, and maybe a little more angular. She looked... not hard, but as though she could be hard with just the smallest change of expression. She looked like someone I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of. And, yes, even 1 could see it. She looked like me.

She and I just stood looking at one another for a long, long time. After a while, she came up to me, took my left hand, and turned it to look at the two little moles I have just below the knuckles. My impulse was to pull away, but I managed not to.

She stared at the moles for a while, then said, "Do you have another mark—a kind of jagged dark patch just here?" She touched a place covered by my blouse on my left shoul­der near my neck.

This time, I did step away from her touch. I didn't mean to, but I just don't like to be touched. Not even by a stranger who might be my mother. I said, "I have a birth­mark like that, yes."

"Yes," she whispered, and went on looking at me. After a moment, she said, "Sit down. Sit here with me. You are my child, my daughter. I know you are."