Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,104
Sullivan has been sent away. We don’t know where. He’s out of his mind and our “teachers” weren’t able to lash him back to sanity, so they got rid of him.
We’ve learned that the master unit, the unit that powers or controls all the collars in Camp Christian, is in my old cabin. For months it was kept in one of the maggots—or we heard that’s where it was kept. We’ve had to put together hints, rumors, and overheard comments, any of which might be misinterpreted, or untrue. But at long last, I believe we have it right.
Reverend Locke’s two assistants live in my cabin, and from time to time, some of us are taken there for the night. The next time that happens, we’ll make our break.
The women who have been taken there most often are Noriko, Cristina Cho, and the Mora girls.
“They say they like small, ladylike women,” Noriko says with terrible bitterness. “Those flabby, ugly men. They like us because it’s easy for them to hurt us. They like to use their hands, leave bruises, make you beg them to stop.”
She, Cristina, and the Moras all say they would rather risk death than go on with things as they are. Whichever of them is taken to my cabin next will cut their rapists’ throats during the night. They can do that now. I don’t believe they could have a few months ago. Then they will try to find and disable the master unit. Problem is, we don’t know what the master unit looks like. None of us has ever seen it.
All we know—or think we know about it—we’ve learned from those among us who have been collared before. They say once you disable the master unit, the smaller units won’t work. The only way I can understand this is to compare it to one of the phones in the Balter house down south in Robledo, so long ago. This was a big, old-fashioned dinosaur of a “cordless” phone. You had to plug the base unit into an electrical outlet and a phone jack. Then you could walk around the house and yard talking into the hand unit. But unplug the two cords of the base, and the hand unit didn’t work anymore. I’m told that that’s close to what happens with a network of collars.
I don’t know anything for sure. I only half believe that we can do what we think we can and survive. Tampering with the master unit might kill the woman who does it. It might kill us all. But the truth is, we couldn’t last much longer, no matter what. We’re only just human now—most of us. I’ve said this to the people I trust—people who have helped me gather the fragments of information that we have. I’ve asked each of them if they’re willing to take the risk.
They are. We all are.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2035
Day before yesterday, we had a terrible storm—truly terrible. And yet, it was a wonderful thing: wind and rain and cold…and a landslide. The hill where our cemetery once was with all its new and old trees, that hill has slumped down into our valley. Our teachers had made us cut down the older trees for firewood and lumber and God. I never found out how they came to believe we prayed to trees, but they went on believing it. We begged them to let the hill alone, told them it was our cemetery, and they lashed us. Because they forced us to do this, the hillside has broken away and come rumbling down to us. It has buried a maggot and three cabins, including the cabin that Bankole and I had built and then lived in for our six brief years together.
Also, it buried the men who slept alone in that cabin. I’m sorry to say that there were two women in each of the other cabins. They were from squatter camps. Natividad had been friendly with one of them, but I didn’t know them at all. They are dead, however, buried and dead. Six “teachers,” four captive women, and all of our collars were dead. Last Sunday, we resolved to free ourselves or die trying. Now, instead, the weather, and our “teachers’ ” own stupidity has freed us.
Here is what happened.
The storm began as a cold rain whipped by a brisk wind on Monday afternoon, and for a while, we were made to go on working in it. At last, though, our “teachers,” who are much