Parable of the Talents (49 page)

Its walls were a dim gray-green and the floor was gray tile worn through to the wood in spots. We were alone there, drinking what I was told would be hot cinnamon-apple tea.

When I bought a cup from the machine, I found that it tasted like tepid, slightly sweet water. The lights in the room were few, weak, and far apart, and the place worked hard at being as dreary and cheerless as could be managed.

"Service to God is what's important," my brother said, and I realized that I had been looking around and making my unspoken criticism obvious.

"I'm sorry," I said. "If you want to be here, then you should be here. I wish, though . . . I wish you could spare a little concern for your niece."

"Don't be so condescending! And I've told you what you should do to find her!"

Join CA. I shuddered. "I can't. I just can't. If Cougar were here, could you enlist with him again—just as a job, you know? Could you become one of his helpers?"

"It's not the same!"

"It's the same to me. What Cougar did to you, CA's Cru-saders did to me. The only difference is they did it to me longer. And don't tell me the Crusaders are just renegades.

They're not. They're as much part of CA as the shelters are. I spotted one of the men who raped and lashed us at Acorn. He was working as an armed guard at the Eureka shelter."

Marc stood up. He all but pushed his chair over in his ea-gerness to get away from me. "I've finally got a chance to have what I want," he said. "You're not going to wreck it for me!"

"This isn't about you," I said, still seated. "I wish you had a child, Marc. If you did, you might be able to understand what it's like not to know where she is, whether she's being well treated, or even . . . even whether she's still alive.
If I could

only know!"

He stood over me for a very long time, looking down at me as though he hated me. "I don't believe you feel any-thing,"

he said.

I stared back at him amazed. "Marc, my daughter—"

"You think you're supposed to care, so you pretend to.

Maybe you even want to, but you don't."

I think I preferred it when he hit me. I couldn't react ex-cept to sit staring at him. Tears spilled from my eyes, but I didn't realize it at the time. I just sat frozen, staring.

After a while, my brother turned and walked away, tears glistening on his own face.

By then, I wanted to hate him. I couldn't quite, but I wanted to.

"Brothers!" Len muttered when I told her what had hap-pened. She had waited for me at the Elford guesthouse.

She listened to what I told her and, I suppose, heard it according to her own experience.

"He needs to make everything my fault," I said. "He still can't let himself admit what Christian America did to me. He couldn't stay with them if they did such things, so he's decided that they're innocent, and somehow everything is my fault."

"Why are you making excuses for him?" Len demanded.

"I'm not. I think that's really what he's feeling. He had tears on his face when he walked away from me. He didn't want me to see that, but I saw it. He has to drive me away or he can't have his dreams. Christian America is teaching him to be the only thing I think he's ever wanted to be—a min-ister.

Like our father."

She sighed and shook her head. "So what are you going to do?"

"I. . . don't know. Maybe the Elfords can suggest some-thing.''

"Them, yes.... Irma asked me while you were gone whether you would be willing to speak to a group of her friends. She wants to have a party and, I suppose, show you off."

"You're kidding!"

“I
said I thought you would do it."

I got up and went to look out the window at a pear tree, dark against the night sky. "You know, if I could only find my daughter, I would think my life was going along beauti-fully."

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER
16, 2035

I've managed to get Marc to meet with me again at last.

He may be the only relative I have left on earth. I don't want him as an enemy.

"Just tell me you'll help my Larkin if you ever find her," I said.

"How could I do less?" he asked, still with a certain cold-ness.

"I wish you well, Marc. I always have. You're my brother, and I love you. Even with all that's happened, I can't help loving you."

He sighed. We were sitting in his building's vast, drab din-ing room again. This time there were other people scattered around, eating late lunches or early dinners. Most were men, young and old, individuals and small groups. Some stared at me with what seemed to be disapproval. "You can't know what Christian America has meant to me," he said. His voice had softened. He looked less distant.

"Of course I can," I told him. "I'm here because I do understand. You'll be a Christian American minister, and I'll be your heathen sister. I can stand that. What I find hard to stand is being your enemy. I never meant for that to happen."

After a while, he said, "We aren't enemies. You're my sis-ter, and I love you too."

We shook hands. I don't think I've ever shaken hands with my brother before, but I got the feeling that it was as much contact as he was willing to endure, at least for now.

************************************

Allie and Justin have come to Portland to live. I phoned Allie and told her to use some of the money I left with her to buy a ride up with the Georges. The Elfords have agreed to let the two of them live in their guest house. Len and I have been given rooms above the garage at the home of another sup-porter—a friend of the Elfords.

That's how I've come to think of these people—as sup-porters. We speak to groups in their houses. We lead discus-sions and teach the truths of Earthseed. I say "we"

because Len has begun to take a more active part. She will teach on her own someday, and perhaps train someone to help her. As I write those words, I miss her as though she had already gone off on her own, as though I already had some new young skeptic to train.

Through the Elfords and their friends and the friends of their friends, we've received invitations to speak all over town in people's homes and in small halls. I've found that in each group there is one person, perhaps two, who are serious, who hear in Earthseed something that they can accept, something they want, something they need. These are the ones who will make our first schools possible.

In Acorn, it was no accident that the church and the school were the same. They weren't just the same building. They were the same institution. If the Earthseed Destiny is to have any meaning beyond a distant mythical paradise, Earthseed must be not only a belief system but a way of life. Children should be raised in it. Adults should be reminded of it often, refocused on it, and urged toward it. Both should understand how their current behavior is or isn't contribut-ing to fulfillment of the Destiny. By the time we're able to send Earthseed children to college, they should be dedicated not only to a course of study but to the fulfillment of the Destiny.

If they are, then any course of study they choose can become a tool for the fulfillment.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER
30, 2035

I've found a potential home for Travis and Natividad. I've called them several times, and gotten no answer. I worried about them until last night when I reached them. They've been living in a squatter camp a few miles from Sacramento.

They went there on a rumor that some of Acorn's children had been seen there. The rumor was false, but their money had run low. They'd had to stop and take jobs doing agricultural work. This was rough because the work paid little more than room and board in horrible little shacks.

They'll come here with the Mora girls and the new Mora baby. I can't restore their children to them, but I can see to it that they have work that sustains them and a decent place to Live. They'll live in the big house that is to be our first school. The house belongs to one of my supporters—one who said those magic words: "What can I do? What do you need?"

What don't we need!

The house is a big empty shell that the Douglas and Mora families will have to work hard on. It needs paint, repairs, landscaping, fencing, everything. But it has living room for a big family upstairs and teaching and working room down-stairs. It will be a new beginning in so many ways. And the people who own it have relatives in both city and state gov-ernment. They're the kind of people Jarret's Crusaders have learned to let alone.

Also, next month, Len and I are invited to teach at several homes in the Seattle area.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER
13, 2035

I've finally talked Harry into coming north. He's run across the Figueroas and joined with them for the trip. He hasn't found Tabia or Russ, I'm sorry to say, but he has picked up three orphans. He found them on the road just north of San Luis Obispo. Their mother was hit by a truck. He saw it hap-pen and went straight to the kids.

There are more and more vehicles on the road during the day now.

Walking is becom-ing more dangerous.

As horrible as the hit and run was, I get the feeling it's given Harry what he needs—children to protect, children who need him, children who run to him and hold his hands when they're scared.

He and Zahra always said they wanted a big family. He's such a good daddy. I have a teaching job for him in Seattle. I believe he'll thrive in it if he can let him-self.

Jorge Cho and his family are coming. I've found work for Jorge and Di in Portland.

Now I have to look around for places for the Figueroas.

************************************

I've allowed the Elfords to make
The First Book of the

Living
available free on the nets. I never expected to make money from the book. My only fear has been that someone would take it and change it, make it an instrument of some other theology or use it for some new brand of demagoguery.

Joel Elford says the best way to avoid that is to make it available on every possible net and with my name on it. And, of course, the copyright is my legal fallback if someone does begin to misuse it seriously.

"I don't think you realize what you have," Joel told me.

I looked at him in surprise and realized that he believed what he was saying.

"And you don't realize how many other people will want it," he continued. "I've aimed the book particularly at the nets that are intended to interest American universities and the smaller free cities where so many of those universities are lo-cated. It will go out worldwide, but it will draw more attention to itself in those places."

He was smiling, so I asked, "What are you expecting to happen?"

"You're going to start hearing from people," he said.

"You'll soon have more attention than you'll know what to do with." He sobered. "And what you actually do with it is important. Be careful." Irma trusted me more than Joel did.

Joel was still watching me—watching with a great deal of interest. He says it's like watching a birth.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER
30, 2035

I've been traveling.

That's nothing new for me, but this is different. This time, thanks to the book, I've been invited by university groups and others, and paid to travel, paid to speak—which is a Little Like paying ice to be cold.

And I've been flying. Flying! I've walked over most of the West Coast, and now I've flown over the interior of the country and over much of the East Coast. I've flown to Newark, Delaware; Clarion, Pennsylvania; and up to Syra-cuse, New York. Next, I go to Toledo, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; and Iowa City, Iowa.

"Not a bad first tour," Joel told me before I left. "I thought you'd arouse interest. People are ready for something new and hopeful."

I was scared to death, worried about flying and worried about speaking to so many strangers. What if I attracted the wrong kind of attention? How would Len handle the experi-ence? And I worried about Len, who seemed to be even more afraid than I was, especially about flying. I had spent more money than I should have, buying us both decent clothing.

Then Joel and Irma were taking us to the airport in their huge car. One way in which they do indulge themselves is to keep a late-model armed and armored car—a civilian mag-got, really. The thing cost as much as a nice house in a good neighborhood, and it's scary-looking enough to intimidate anyone stupid enough to spend their time hijacking vehicles.

"We've never had to use the guns," Irma told me when she showed them to me. "I don't like them. They frighten me. But being without them would frighten me more."

So now Len and I are lecturing and conducting Earthseed Workshops. We're being paid in hard currency, fed well, and allowed to live in good, safe hotels. And we're being wel-comed, listened to, even taken seriously by people who are hungry for something to believe in, some difficult but worthwhile goal to involve themselves in and work toward.

We've also been laughed at, argued with, booed, and threatened with hellfire—or gunfire. But Jarret's kind of re-ligion and Jarret himself are getting less and less popular these days. Both, it seems, are bad for business, bad for the U.S. Constitution, and bad for a large percentage of the pop-ulation. They always have been, but now more and more people are willing to say so in public. The Crusaders have terrorized some people into silence, but they've just made others very angry.

And I'm finding more and more people who have the leisure now to worry about the nasty, downward slide that the country's been on. In the 2020s, when these people were sick, starving, or trying to keep warm, they had no time or energy to look beyond their own desperate situations. Now, though, as they're more able to meet their own immediate needs, they begin to look around, feel dissatisfied with the slow pace of change, and with Jarret, who with his war and his Crusaders, has slowed it even more. I suppose it would have been different if we'd won the war.