Parable of the Sower

by Octavia E. Butler

  I grinned. “I know it won’t be possible for a long time. Now is a time for building foundations—Earthseed communities—focused on the Destiny. After all, my heaven really exists, and you don’t have to die to reach it. ‘The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars,’ or among the ashes.” I nodded toward the burned area.

  Travis listened. He didn’t point out that a person walking north from LA. to who-knows-where with all her possessions on her back was hardly in a position to point the way to Alpha Centauri. He listened. He laughed a little—as though he were afraid to get caught being too serious about my ideas. But he didn’t back away from me. He leaned forward. He argued. He shouted. He asked more questions. Natividad told him to stop bothering me, but he kept it up. I didn’t mind. I understand persistence. I admire it.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2027

  I think Travis Charles Douglas is my first convert. Zahra Moss is my second. Zahra has listened as the days passed, and as Travis and I went on arguing off and on. Sometimes she asked questions or pointed out what she saw as inconsistencies. After a while, she said. “I don’t care about no outer space. You can keep that part of it. But if you want to put together some kind of community where people look out for each other and don’t have to take being pushed around, I’m with you. I’ve been talking to Natividad. I don’t want to live the way she had to. I don’t want to live the way my mama had to either.”

  I wondered how much difference there was between Natividad’s former employer who treated her as though he owned her and Richard Moss who purchased young girls to be part of his harem. It was all a matter of personal feeling, no doubt. Natividad had resented her employer. Zahra had accepted and perhaps loved Richard Moss.

  Earthseed is being born right here on Highway 101—on that portion of 101 that was once El Camino Real, the royal highway of California’s Spanish past. Now it’s a highway, a river of the poor. A river flooding north.

  I’ve come to think that I should be fishing that river even as I follow its current. I should watch people not only to spot those who might be dangerous to us, but to find those few like Travis and Natividad who would join us and be welcome.

  And then what? Find a place to squat and take over? Act as a kind of gang? No. Not quite a gang. We aren’t gang types. I don’t want gang types with their need to dominate, rob and terrorize. And yet we might have to dominate. We might have to rob to survive, and even terrorize to scare off or kill enemies. We’ll have to be very careful how we allow our needs to shape us. But we must have arable land, a dependable water supply, and enough freedom from attack to let us establish ourselves and grow.

  It might be possible to find such an isolated place along the coast, and make a deal with the inhabitants. If there were a few more of us, and if we were better armed, we might provide security in exchange for living room. We might also provide education plus reading and writing services to adult illiterates. There might be a market for that kind of thing. So many people, children and adults, are illiterate these days… We might be able to do it—grow our own food, grow ourselves and our neighbors into something brand new. Into Earthseed.

  19

  ❏ ❏ ❏

  Changes.

  The galaxies move through space.

  The stars ignite,

  burn,

  age,

  cool,

  Evolving.

  God is Change.

  God prevails.

  EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2027

  (from notes expanded SUNDAY, AUGUST 29)

  EARTHQUAKE TODAY.

  It hit early this morning just as we were beginning the day’s walk, and it was a strong one. The ground itself gave a low, grating rumble like buried thunder. It jerked and shuddered, then seemed to drop. I’m sure it did drop, though I don’t know how far. Once the shaking stopped, everything looked the same—except for sudden patches of dust thrown up here and there in the brown hills around us.

  Several people screamed or shouted during the quake. Some, burdened by heavy packs, lost their footing and fell into the dirt or onto the broken asphalt. Travis, with Dominic on his chest and a heavy pack on his back was almost one of these. He stumbled, staggered, and managed somehow to catch himself. The baby, unhurt, but jolted by the sudden shaking, began to cry, adding to the noise of two older children walking nearby, the sudden talking of almost everyone, and the gasps of an old man who had fallen during the quake.

  I put aside my usual suspicions and went to see whether the old man was all right—not that I could have done much to help him if he hadn’t been. I retrieved his cane for him—it had landed beyond his reach—and helped him up. He was as light as a child, thin, toothless, and frightened of me.

  I gave him a pat on the shoulder and sent him on his way, checking when his back was turned to see that he hadn’t lifted anything. The world was full of thieves. Old people and young kids were often pickpockets.

  Nothing missing.

  Another man nearby smiled at me—an older, but not yet old black man who still had his teeth, and who pushed his belongings in twin saddlebags hanging from a small, sturdy metal-framed cart. He didn’t say anything, but I liked his smile. I smiled back. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be a man, and wondered whether he had seen through my disguise. Not that it mattered.

  I went back to my group where Zahra and Natividad were comforting Dominic and Harry was picking up something from the roadside. I went to Harry, and saw that he had found a filthy rag knotted into a small, tight ball around something. Harry tore the rotten cloth and a roll of money fell out into his hands. Hundred-dollar bills. Two or three dozen of them.

  “Put it away!” I whispered.

  He pushed the money into a deep pants pocket. “New shoes,” he whispered. “Good ones, and other things. Do you need anything?”

  I had promised to buy him a new pair of shoes as soon as we reached a dependable store. His were worn out. Now another idea occurred to me. “If you have enough,” I whispered, “buy yourself a gun. I’ll still get your shoes. You get a gun!” Then I spoke to the others, ignoring his surprise. “Is everyone all right?”

  Everyone was. Dominic was happy again, riding now on his mother’s back, and playing with her hair. Zahra was readjusting her pack, and Travis had gone on and was taking a look at the small community ahead. This was farm country. We’d passed through nothing for days except small, dying towns, withering roadside communities and farms, some working, some abandoned and growing weeds.

  We walked forward toward Travis.

  “Fire,” he said as we approached.

  One house down the hill from the road smoked from several of its windows. Already people from the highway had begun to drift down toward it. Trouble. The people who owned the house might manage to put out their fire and still be overwhelmed by scavengers.

  “Let’s get away from here,” I said. “The people down there are still strong, and they’re going to feel besieged soon. They’ll fight back.”

  “We might find something we can use,” Zahra argued.

  “There’s nothing down there worth our getting shot over,” I said. “Let’s go!” I led the way past the small community and we were almost clear of it when the gunfire began.

  There were people still on the road with us, but many had flooded down into the small community to steal. The crowd would not confine its attention to the one burning house, and all the households would have to resist.

  There were more shots behind us—first single shots, then an uneven crackling of exchanged fire, then the unmistakable chatter of automatic weapons fire. We walked faster, hoping that we were beyond the range of anything aimed in our direction.

  “Shit!” Zahra whispered, keeping up with me. “I should have known that was going to happen. People out here in the middle of nowhere gotta be tough.”

  “I don’t think their toughness will get them through this day, though,” I said, looking back. There
was much more smoke rising now, and it was rising from more than one place. Distant shouts and screams mixed with the gunfire. Stupid place to put a naked little community. They should have hidden their homes away in the mountains where few strangers would ever see them. That was something for me to keep in mind. All the people of this community could do now was take a few of their tormentors with them. Tomorrow the survivors of this place would be on the road with scraps of their belongings on their backs.

  It’s odd, but I don’t think anyone on the road would have thought of attacking that community en masse like that if the earthquake—or something—had not started a fire. One small fire was the weakness that gave scavengers permission to devastate the community—which they were no doubt doing now. The shooting could scare away some, kill or wound others, and make the remainder very angry. If the people of the community chose to live in such a dangerous place, they should have set up overwhelming defenses—a line of explosive charges and incendiaries, that kind of thing. Only power that strong, that destructive, that sudden would scare attackers off, would drive them away in a panic more overwhelming than the greed and the need that had drawn them in the first place. If the people of the community were without explosives, they should have grabbed their money and their kids and run like crazy the moment they saw the horde coming. They knew the hills better than migrating scavengers could. They should have had hiding places already prepared or at least been able to lose themselves among the hills while scavengers were ransacking their homes. But they had done none of this. And now vast thick clouds of smoke rose behind us, drawing even more scavengers.

  “Whole world’s gone crazy,” a voice near me said, and I knew before I looked that it was the man with the saddlebagged cart. We’d slowed down a little, looking back, and he had caught up. He too had had the sense not to try to go scavenging in the little community. He didn’t look like a man who scavenged. His clothes were dirty and ordinary, but they fit him well and they looked almost new. His jeans were still dark blue, and still creased down the legs. His red, short-sleeved shirt still had all its buttons. He wore expensive walking shoes and had had, not too long ago, an expensive professional haircut. What was he doing out here on the road, pushing a cart? A rich pauper—or at least, a once-rich pauper. He had a short, full, salt and pepper beard. I decided that I liked his looks as much as I had before. What a handsome old man.

  Had the world gone crazy?

  “From what I’ve read,” I said to him, “the world goes crazy every three or four decades. The trick is to survive until it goes sane again.” I was showing off my education and background; I admit it. But the old man seemed unimpressed.

  “The nineteen nineties were crazy,” he said, “but they were rich. Nothing like this bad. I don’t think it’s ever been this bad. Those people, those animals back there…”

  “I don’t see how they can act that way,” Natividad said. “I wish we could call the police—whoever the police are around here. The householders back there should call.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” I said. “Even if the cops came today instead of tomorrow, they’d just add to the death toll.”

  We walked on, the stranger walking with us. He seemed content to walk with us. He could have dropped back or walked on ahead since he didn’t have to carry his load. As long as he stayed on the road, he could speed along. But he stuck with us. I talked to him, introduced myself and learned that his name was Bankole—Taylor Franklin Bankole. Our last names were an instant bond between us. We’re both descended from men who assumed African surnames back during the 1960s. His father and my grandfather had had their names legally changed, and both had chosen Yoruba replacement names.

  “Most people chose Swahili names in the ’60s,” Bankole told me. He wanted to be called Bankole. “My father had to do something different. All his life he had to be different.”

  “I don’t know my grandfather’s reasons,” I said. “His last name was Broome before he changed it, and that was no loss. But why he chose Olamina…? Even my father didn’t know. He made the change before my father was born, so my father was always Olamina, and so were we.”

  Bankole was one year older than my father. He had been born in 1970, and he was, according to him, too damn old to be tramping along a highway with everything he owned in a couple of saddlebags. He was 57. I caught myself wishing he were younger so he would live longer.

  Old or not, he heard the two girls calling for help sooner than we did.

  There was a road, more dirt than asphalt, running below and alongside the highway, then veering away from the highway into the hills. Up that road was a half-collapsed house, the dust of its collapse still hanging over it. It couldn’t have been much of a house before it fell in. Now it was rubble. And once Bankole alerted us, we could hear faint shouts from it.

  “Sounds like women,” Harry said.

  I sighed. “Let’s go see. It might just be a matter of pushing some wood off them or something.”

  Harry caught me by the shoulder. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” I took the gun out and gave it to him in case someone else’s pain made me useless. “Watch our backs,” I said.

  We went in wary and tentative, knowing that a call for help could be false, could lure people to their attackers. A few other people followed us off the road, and Harry hung back, staying between them and us. Bankole shoved his cart along, keeping up with me.

  There were two voices calling from the rubble. Both sounded like women. One was pleading, the other cursing. We located them by the sound of their voices, then Zahra, Travis and I began throwing off rubble—dry, broken wood, plaster, plastic, and brick from an ancient chimney. Bankole stood with Harry, watching, and looking formidable. Did he have a gun? I hoped he did. We were drawing a small audience of hungry-eyed scavengers. Most people looked to see what we were doing, and went on. A few stayed and stared. If the women had been trapped since the earthquake, it was surprising that no one had come already to steal their belongings and set fire to the rubble, leaving them in it. I hoped we would be able to get the women out and get back on the highway before someone decided to rush us. No doubt they already would have if there had been anything of value in sight.

  Natividad spoke to Bankole, then put Dominic in one of his saddlebags and felt to see that her knife was still in her pocket. I didn’t like that much. Better she should keep wearing the baby so we could leave at a run if she had to.

  We found a pale leg, bruised and bleeding but unbroken, pinned under a beam. A whole section of wall and ceiling plus some of the chimney had fallen on these women. We moved the loose stuff then worked together to lift heavier pieces. At last we dragged the women out by their exposed limbs—an arm and a leg for one, both legs for the other. I didn’t enjoy it any more than they did.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t that bad. The women had lost some skin here and there, and one was bleeding from the nose and mouth. She spat out blood and a couple of teeth and cursed and tried to get up. I let Zahra help her up. All I wanted to do now was get away from here.

  The other one, face wet with tears, just sat and stared at us. She was quiet now in a blank, unnatural way. Too quiet. When Travis tried to help her up, she cringed and cried out. Travis let her alone. She didn’t seem to be hurt beyond a few scratches, but she might have hit her head. She might be in shock.

  “Where’s your stuff?” Zahra was asking the bloody one. “We’re going to have to get away from here fast.”

  I rubbed my mouth, trying to get past an irrational certainty that two of my own teeth were gone. I felt horrible—scraped and bruised and throbbing, yet whole and unbroken, undamaged in any major way I just wanted to huddle somewhere until I felt less miserable. I took a deep breath and went to the frightened, cringing woman.

  “Can you understand me?” I asked.

  She looked at me, then looked around, saw her companion wiping away blood with a grimy hand, and tried to get up and run to her. She tripped, started t
o fall, and I caught her, grateful that she wasn’t every big.

  “Your legs are all right,” I said, “but take it easy. We have to get out of here soon, and you’ve got to be able to walk.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “A total stranger,” I said. “Try to walk.”

  “There was an earthquake.”

  “Yeah. Walk!”

  She took a shaky step away from me, then another. She staggered over to her friend. “Allie?” she said.

  Her friend saw her, stumbled to her, hugged her, smeared her with blood. “Jill! Thank God!”

  “Here’s their stuff,” Travis said. “Let’s get them out of here while we still can.”

  We made them walk a little more, tried to make them see and understand the danger of staying where we were. We couldn’t drag them with us, and what would have been the point of digging them out, then leaving them at the mercy of scavengers. They had to walk along with us until they were stronger and able to take care of themselves.

  “Okay” the bloody one said. She was the smaller and tougher of the two, not that there was that much physical difference between them. Two medium-size, brown-haired white women in their twenties. They might be sisters.

  “Okay,” the bloody one repeated. “Let’s get out of here.” She was walking without limping or staggering now, though her companion was less steady.

  “Give me my stuff,” she said.

  Travis waved her toward two dusty sleepsack packs. She put one on her back, then looked at the other and at her companion.

  “I can carry it,” the other woman said. “I’m all right.”

  She wasn’t, but she had to carry her own things. No one could carry a double pack for long. No one could fight while carrying a double pack.

  There were a dozen people standing around staring as we brought the two women out. Harry walked ahead of us, gun in hand. Something about him said with great clarity that he would kill. If he were pushed even a little, he would kill. I hadn’t seen him that way before. It was impressive and frightening and wrong. Right for the situation and the moment, but wrong for Harry. He wasn’t the kind of man who ought ever to look that way.