Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,105

more willing to inflict suffering than to endure it, drove us back to our prison rooms to sit in the cold dimness while they went to our cabins, to warm fires, light, and food.

After a while, the lowest-ranking “teacher” brought Beth and Jessica Faircloth out with our disgusting dinner—a lot of half-boiled, half-spoiled cabbage with potatoes.

We had put Allie where the Faircloths could not avoid seeing her, being confronted by her when they came in. She is a little better. I’ve looked after her as best I could. She walks like a bent old woman, talks in monosyllables, and does not always seem to understand when we speak to her. I don’t believe she even remembers what the Faircloths did to her, but she seems to trust me. I told her to watch them—watch them every second.

She did.

The Faircloths trembled and stumbled over one another, putting down pots of awful food and backing out. We all stared at them in silence, but I suspect they saw only saw Allie.

After dinner, we rested as best we could, feeling cold, stiff, miserable, and damp on the bare wood floor wrapped in our filthy blankets. Some of us slept, but the storm grew much worse, shaking the building and making it creak. Rain beat against the window and blew roofing off cabins, limbs off trees, and trash from the dump that the teachers had made us create. We had had no dump before. We had a salvage heap and a compost heap. Neither was trash. We could not afford to be wasteful. Our teachers have made trash of our entire community.

Sometimes there was lightning and thunder, sometimes only heavy rain. It went on all night, tearing the world apart outside. Then sometime this morning before dawn, not long after I had managed to get to sleep, I was awakened by a terrible noise. It wasn’t like thunder—wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard. It was just this incredible rumbling, breaking, cracking noise.

I reacted without thinking. My place is near the window, and I jumped up and looked out. I leaned against the sill and peered out into the darkness. A moment later there was a flare of lightning, and I saw rock and dirt where my cabin should have been. Rock and dirt.

It took me a moment to understand this. Then I realized that I was leaning against the windowsill, leaning halfway out the window. And I had not convulsed and fallen to the floor. No pain. None of that filthy, twisting agony that made us all slaves.

I touched my collar. It was still there, still capable of delivering the agony. But for some reason, it no longer cared that I leaned against the windowsill. In the dark room, I reached for Natividad. She slept on one side of me and Allie slept on the other. Natividad trusts me, and she knows how to be quiet.

“Freedom!” I whispered. “The collars are dead! They’re dead!”

She let me lead her to the door between our quarters and the men’s. We managed to get there, each of us waking people as we went, whispering to them, but not stepping on anyone, feeling our way. At the door, Natividad pulled back a little, then she let me lead her through. The door’s never been locked. Collars were always enough to keep everyone away from it. But not this time.

No pain.

We woke the men—those who were still asleep. We couldn’t see well enough to wake only the men we trusted. We woke them all. We couldn’t do this with silent stealth. We were quiet, but they awoke in confusion and chaos. Some were already awake and confused and grabbing me, and realizing that I was a woman. I hit one who wouldn’t let me go—a stranger from the road.

“Freedom!” I whispered into his face. “The collars are dead! We can get away!”

He let me go, and scrambled for the door. I went back and gathered the women. When I got them into the men’s room, the men were already pouring out of the building. We followed them through the big outside doors. Travis and Natividad, Mike and Noriko, others of Earthseed, the Gamas, and the Sullivans somehow found one another. We all clustered together, male and female members of families greeting one another, crying, hugging. They had not been able even to touch one another through the eternity of our captivity. Seventeen months. Eternity.

I hugged Harry because neither of us had anyone left. Then he and I stood together