Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,43

think of Dan.

To tell the truth, I had forgotten about Dan. My mind had been filled with Marcus—getting him back, keeping him, wondering what had happened to him. I had paid no attention to Dan. Yet Dan had suffered a terrible disappointment. He was in real pain. I knew that, and I left him to the Balters, who, after all, have two energetic little kids of their own to deal with.

I got Zahra out of bed and asked her to check on Dan. He had been staying with them for four months now. Of course, he was gone. His note said, “I know you’ll think I’m wrong, but I have to find them. I can’t let them be with someone like that Cougar. They’re my sisters!” And after his signature, a postscript: “Take care of Kassi and Mercy until I come back. I’ll work for you and pay you. I’ll bring Paula and Nina back and they’ll work too.”

He’s only 15. He saw Cougar and his crew. He saw my brother. He saw Georgetown. And seeing all that, he learned nothing!

No, that’s not true. He’s learned—or finally realized—all the wrong things. I had assumed he knew what his sisters’ fate might be if they were alive—that they might be prostitutes, might wind up in some rich man’s harem or working as slave farm or factory laborers. Or, I suppose, they might wind up with some pervert who likes cutting out female tongues. They might even wind up as the property of someone who cares for them and looks after them even as he makes sexual use of them. That would be the best possibility. The worst, perhaps, is that they might survive for a while as “specialists”—prostitutes used to serve crazies and sadists. These don’t live long, and that’s a mercy. Theirs is a fate that could also befall a big, baby-faced, well-built boy like Dan. I wonder how much of this Dan understands. He is a good, brave, stupid boy, and I suspect he’ll pay for it.

He might come back, of course. He might come to his senses and come home to help take care of Kassia and Mercy. Or we might find him through our outside contacts. I’ll have to make sure that the word is out on him as well as on Nina and Paula. Problem is, finding him won’t help if he’s still intent on hunting for his sisters. We can’t chain him here. Or rather, we won’t. If he insists on dying, he will die, damn him. Damn!

SEVEN

❏ ❏ ❏

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

The child in each of us

Knows paradise.

Paradise is home.

Home as it was

Or home as it should have been.

Paradise is one’s own place,

One’s own people,

One’s own world,

Knowing and known,

Perhaps even

Loving and loved.

Yet every child

Is cast from paradise—

Into growth and destruction,

Into solitude and new community,

Into vast, ongoing

Change.

FROM Warrior BY MARCOS DURAN

WHEN I WAS A kid, I never let anyone know how much the future scared me. In fact, I couldn’t see any future. I was born into a world that was no bigger than the walled neighborhood enclave where my family lived. My father had lived there as a boy and inherited the house from his father.

My world was a cage. When one of my brothers dared to leave the cage, to run away from home, someone outside caught him and cut and burned all the flesh from his living body. Sometimes I catch myself wondering how long it took him to die.

I admit, my brother was no angel. He was mean and not very bright. He loved our mother, and he was her favorite, but I don’t think he ever gave a damn about anyone else. Still, even though he was as tall as our father, he was only 14 when he was killed. To me, that makes the men who killed him worse than he ever was. How could they be human and do a thing like that to somebody? I used to imagine them—the killers—waiting for me whenever neighborhood adults with guns risked taking us out of the cage for a little while. The world outside was like my brother at his worst multiplied by about a thousand: stupid, mean, so out of control that it might do anything. It was like a dog with rabies, tearing itself to pieces, and wanting to do the same to me.

And then it did just that.

Oh, yes. It did.

I could return the compliment. I could have reached for the power to do