hope…
But I don’t believe it. I do suspect that Jarret’s people had something to do with this. And I think I’d better say so today at Gathering. With Dovetree fresh in everyone’s mind, people will be ready to cooperate, have more drills and scatter more caches of money, food, weapons, records, and valuables. We can fight a gang. We’ve done that before when we were much less prepared than we are now. But we can’t fight Jarret. In particular, we can’t fight President Jarret. President Jarret, if the country is mad enough to elect him, could destroy us without even knowing we exist.
We are now 59 people—64 with the Dovetree women and children, if they stay. With numbers like that, we barely do exist. All the more reason, I suppose, for my dream.
My “talent,” going back to the parable of the talents, is Earthseed. And although I haven’t buried it in the ground, I have buried it here in these coastal mountains, where it can grow at about the same speed as our redwood trees. But what else could I have done? If I had somehow been as good at rabble-rousing as Jarret is, then Earthseed might be a big enough movement by now to be a real target. And would that be better?
I’m jumping to all kinds of unwarranted conclusions. At least I hope they’re unwarranted. Between my horror at what’s happened down at Dovetree and my hopes and fears for my own people, I’m upset and at loose ends and, perhaps, just imagining things.
TWO
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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
Chaos
Is God’s most dangerous face—
Amorphous, roiling, hungry.
Shape Chaos—
Shape God.
Act.
Alter the speed
Or the direction of Change.
Vary the scope of Change.
Recombine the seeds of Change.
Transmute the impact of Change.
Seize Change.
Use it.
Adapt and grow.
THE ORIGINAL 13 SETTLERS of Acorn, and thus the original 13 members of Earthseed, were my mother, of course, and Harry Balter and Zahra Moss, who were also refugees from my mother’s home neighborhood in Robledo. There was Travis, Natividad, and Dominic Douglas, a young family who became my mother’s first highway converts. She met them as both groups walked through Santa Barbara, California. She liked their looks, recognized their dangerous vulnerability—Dominic was only a few months old at the time—and convinced them to walk with Harry, Zahra, and her in their long trek north where they all hoped to find better lives.
Next came Allison Gilchrist and her sister Julian—Allie and Jill. But Jill was killed later along the highway. At around the same time, my mother spotted my father and he spotted her. Neither of them was shy and both seemed witting to act on what they felt. My father joined the growing group. Justin Rohr became Justin Gilchrist when the group found him crying alongside the body of his dead mother. He was about three at the time, and he and Allie wound up coming together in another small family. Last came the two families of ex-slaves that joined together to become one growing family of sharers. These were Grayson Mora and his daughter Doe and Emery Solis and her daughter Tori.
That was it: four children, four men, and five women.
They should have died. That they survived at all in the unforgiving world of the Pox might qualify as a miracle—although of course, Earthseed does not encourage belief in miracles.
No doubt the group’s isolated location—well away from towns and paved roads—helped keep it safe from much of the violence of the time. The land it settled on belonged to my father. There was on that land when the group arrived one dependable well, a half-ruined garden, a number of fruit and nut trees, and groves of oaks, pines, and redwoods. Once the members of the group had pooled their money and bought handcarts, seed, small livestock, hand tools, and other necessities, they were almost independent. They vanished into their hills and increased their numbers by birth, by adoption of orphans, and by conversion of needy adults. They scavenged what they could from abandoned farms and settlements, they traded at street markets and traded with their neighbors. One of the most valuable things they traded with one another was knowledge.
Every member of Earthseed learned to read and to write, and most knew at least two languages—usually Spanish and English, since those were the two most useful. Anyone who joined the group, child or adult, had to begin at once to learn these basics and to acquire a trade. Anyone who had a trade was always in