Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,114

have to go to these cities to look for our children, but once we’ve found them and taken them back, we should go elsewhere to live.

“And change your names,” I told them. “As soon as you can, buy yourselves new identities. Then relax. You’re honest people. If anyone says otherwise, attack their credibility. Accuse them of being secret cultists, witches, Satanists, thieves. Whatever you think will endanger your accusers the most, say it! Don’t just defend yourselves. Attack. And keep attacking until you scare the shit out of your accusers. Watch them. Pay attention to their body language. Their own reactions will tell you how best to damage them or scare them off.

“I don’t think you’ll have to do much of that kind of thing. The chances of any of us running into someone who knew us at Camp Christian are small. It’s just that we need to be mentally prepared for it if it happens. God is Change. Look after yourselves.”

And we went our separate ways. Travis said we would be better off not walking on the highway unless we could lose ourselves in a crowd. If there were no crowds, he said, we should walk through the hills. It would be harder, but safer. I agreed.

We hugged one another. It took a lot of hugging. It took the possibility of coming together again someday in another state or another country or a post-Jarret America. It took tears and fear and hope. It was terrible, that final leavetaking. Deciding to do it was easier than I thought. Doing it was much harder. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

Then I was alone with Allie, Harry, and Nina. We four slogged through the mud, heading north. We traveled through the familiar hills, to the outskirts of Eureka, and finally, to Georgetown. I was the one who suggested Georgetown once we had separated from the others.

“Why?” Harry demanded in a cold voice that didn’t sound much like Harry.

“Because it’s a good place to pick up information,” I said. “And because I know Dolores Ramos George. She may not be able to help us, but she won’t talk about our being there.”

Harry nodded.

“What’s Georgetown?” Nina asked.

“A squatter settlement,” I told her. “A big, nasty one. We went there when we were looking for you and your sister. You can get lost in there. People aren’t nosy, and the Georges are all right.”

“They’re all right.” Allie agreed. “They don’t turn people in.” These were her first voluntary sentences since her lashing. I looked at her, and she repeated, “They’re all right. We can look for Justin from Georgetown.”

SIXTEEN

❏ ❏ ❏

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

The Destiny of Earthseed

Is to take root among the stars.

It is to live and to thrive

On new earths.

It is to become new beings

And to consider new questions.

It is to leap into the heavens

Again and again.

It is to explore the vastness

Of heaven.

It is to explore the vastness

Of ourselves.

MY FIRST CLEAR MEMORY is of a doll. I was about three years old, maybe four. I don’t know where the doll came from. I still don’t know. I had never seen one before. I had never been told that they were sinful or forbidden or even that they existed. I suspect now that this doll had been thrown over our fence and abandoned. I found it at the foot of the big pine tree that grew in our backyard.

The doll had been made in the image of an adolescent blond-haired blue-eyed girl. I remember that it was very straight and thin. It was dressed in a scrap of pink cloth. I remember feeling the knot in the back of it where three ends of the scrap were tied over one shoulder and around the waist. The knot was an oddly soft lump against the hard plastic of the doll’s body, and as soon as my fingers found it, I began to pick at it. Then I chewed on it. Then I examined the coarse, yellow hair. It looked like hair, but when I touched it, it didn’t feel right. And it bothered me that the legs didn’t move. They just stuck out stiff, the feet shaped in permanent tiptoes. I didn’t know how to play with a doll, but I knew how to look at it, feel it, taste it, file it away in my memory as one of the new, strange things to come into my world.

Then Kayce was there, snatching the doll from me. When I