Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,65

One began to fire in Zahra’s general direction. There were shouts of pain and loud curses. Then all five were shooting. Down in Acorn, we could hear the gunfire. Even without the phone, we would have known that it was coming from the area around Zahra’s watch station.

Zahra and Harry are my oldest friends, and I’m Change-sister to them and Change-aunt to their kids Tabia and Russell. For that reason, I paid no attention to Bankole when he told me to stay in the house. I remember thinking that if this were another Dovetree-like raid, staying inside was only asking to burn.

But this didn’t sound like what happened at Dovetree. It wasn’t loud enough. There weren’t enough attackers. This sounded like a small gang raid of a kind we hadn’t had for years.

Bankole and I slipped out of the house together and headed for the truck. For most of the run, we were protected by the bulk first of our own cabin, then of the school. I suppose that’s why Bankole didn’t try as hard as he might have to make me stay behind. We couldn’t be seen, let alone shot at. We keep the truck parked in its own space on the south side of the school. It’s protected there in the center of the community, and during the day we can spread its solar wings and let it recharge its batteries.

Harry Balter reached the truck just as Bankole and I got there. He opened a side door, and all three of us scrambled in.

Harry and I have gotten comfortable with the truck’s computers. In our earlier lives down south, we both used our parents’ computers. We’re unusual. Most adults at Acorn had never touched or even seen a computer before. Still others are afraid of them. For now, although we’re passing on our knowledge, we’re still among the few who take full advantage of what the truck can do with its weapons, maneuverability, and sensory systems.

We turned everything on, and Bankole drove us toward Zahra’s current watch station. As we rode, we used the truck’s infrared viewer to locate each of the intruders. Bankole is a good, steady driver, and he has confidence in the truck’s armor. It didn’t seem to bother him at all that people were shooting at us. In fact, it was a good thing the intruders were wasting ammunition on us. That gave Zahra some relief.

Then we had a look around, and we decided that one of the intruders was much too close to Zahra—and creeping closer. He could have been trying to get away, but he wasn’t. None of them were. We made sure the targets we had identified were, in fact, targets, and not our own people. Once we were sure, we pointed them out to the truck and let it open up on them. Along with the trucks ability to “see” in the dark via infrared, ambient light, or radar, it also has very good “hearing,” and an incorrectly designated sense of “smell.” This last is based on spectroscopic analysis rather than on actual smelling, but it is a kind of chemical analysis over a distance. It could be used on anything that emitted or reflected electromagnetic radiation—light—of some kind.

And the truck had plenty of memory. It could, and had, recorded all that it could of each of us—our voices, hand and foot prints, retinal prints, body sounds, and our general shapes in several positions to help it recognize us and not shoot us.

When the truck began shooting, I left the forward monitors to Harry. I didn’t need to see anything that might make me useless, and the truck didn’t need any more help from me. Once we were between Zahra and the attackers, I checked Zahra on an aft screen. She was alive and still at her station. Most of her body was concealed within the depression and behind the stone shelter that was intended to shield her. Some distance away, Gray Mora was still at his station and still alive. He wasn’t involved in this, and his duty was to hold his position and guard the other most likely approach to Acorn. It had taken a while for us to learn not to be distracted by people who might rattle the front door while their friends slipped in through the back.

The intruder nearest to Zahra was dead. According to the truck, he was no longer changing the chemistry of the air in his immediate vicinity in a way that