Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,83

her hands already out to help me. Then she doubled up in agony of her own. Echoes of her pain burned through me, and I froze, teeth clenched. I was desperate not to announce my extra vulnerability, my sharing. If I was held captive long enough, they would find out. I knew that. But not now. Not yet.

The man didn’t seem to take any special notice of me. He watched us both and waited in seeming patience until Allie looked up, bewildered and angry.

“You do what you’re told and only what you’re told,” he said. “You don’t touch one another. Whatever filth you’re used to, it’s over. It’s time for you to learn to behave like decent Christian women—if you’ve got the brains to learn.”

So that was it, then. We were a dirty cult of free lovers, and they had come to straighten us out. Educate us.

I believe Allie and I were chosen because we were the biggest of the women. We were ordered to carry first Zahra, then Teresa, out to a patch of ground where we grew jojoba plants for their oil. There, we were given picks and shovels and ordered to dig graves—long, deep holes—among the jojobas. We had had no food and no water. All we got was a jolt of agony now and then when we slowed down more than our overseer was willing to permit. The ground was bad—rocky and hard. That was why we used it for jojoba plants. The plants are tough. They don’t need much. Now, it seemed that we were the ones who didn’t need much. I didn’t think I could do it—dig the damned hole. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so bad in every possible way, so horrible, so scared. After a while, all I could think of was water, pain, and where was my baby? I lost track of everything else.

I was digging Zahra’s grave, and I couldn’t even think of that. I just wanted the digging to be over. She was my best friend, my Change-sister, and she lay uncovered, waiting beside the hole as I dug, and it didn’t matter. I couldn’t focus on it.

The other women were brought out of the school and made to watch us dig. I knew that because my attention was caught by the sudden movement of silent, approaching people. I looked up, saw the women shepherded toward us by three black-tunic-and-cross-wearing men. Sometime later, I realized that the men had also been marched out. They were kept separate, and it seemed that some of them were digging too.

I froze, staring at them, looking for Bankole…and for Harry.

The sudden pain tore a grunt from me. I fell to my knees in the hole I was digging.

“Work!” my slave driver said. “It’s time you heathens learned to do a little work.”

I had not seen whom the men were burying. I saw Travis, shirt off, swinging a pick into the hard ground. I saw Lucio Figueroa digging another hole and Ted Faircloth digging a third. So they had three dead to our two. Who were their dead? Which of our men had these bastards killed?

Where was Bankole?

I hadn’t spotted him. I had had such a quick look. I managed to look again and again as I shoveled dirt out of the hole. In the cluster of men, I spotted Michael, then Jorge, then Jeff King. Then the pain hit again. I didn’t fall this time. I held on to the shovel and leaned back against the side of the hole I was digging.

“Dig!” the son of a bitch above me said. “Just dig!”

What would he do if I passed out? Would he go on triggering the collar until I died like Teresa? Was he enjoying himself? He didn’t smile as he hurt me. But he did keep hurting me, even though I had shown no signs of rebellion.

Submission was no protection. If any of us were to survive, we must escape these people as quickly as possible.

The big, bearded slaver and perhaps three dozen of his kind stood around us as we stood around the graves. We were made to parade past each grave and look down at the dead. That was how Harry learned that Zahra was dead and how Lucio Figueroa, who had only this year begun to take an interest in Teresa Lin, came to know of her death. That was how I learned that Vincent Scolari was dead, as his wife and sister believed. And Gray