Three. And they weren’t teachers. They were the world’s first psionic brawlers. They fought among themselves mostly. Sparring, jockeying for position in the organization, fooling around. It kept them alert and in shape.
I never even thought of running. They were set to have too much fun as it was. Something like this had been bound to happen sooner or later anyway. I had known that for a long time.
The four of them came in and faced me silently. They didn’t have to say anything.
I shrugged. “Do you mind if I get my things?”
They took long enough answering to have been doing some silent arguing about it. I wouldn’t know for sure because I had shut myself up as tight as I could in my own head. Anything I let slip now, they would grab. I’d been bragging about how much my kids knew about the organization. Now, one slip and the organization would know all about my kids.
Eve. “I’ll bring what you need, Barbara.” She evidently spoke for all of them.
As they herded me toward the door, one of the men said, “How long did you think we’d let you get away with this shit anyway?”
I was making things too easy for him. He wanted to make me mad enough to do something stupid. Like dropping my guard.
I never had time to get mad. Just as the man finished speaking, one of the other two yelled. It would have taken me a little longer to realize what was going on without that yell. Not that the realization helped me.
The men and Eve fell to the floor unconscious before they could even spot their attacker. It happened so fast they appeared to fall in unison.
I stared down at them for a moment muttering, “Oh God!” Then I started to feel the anger that the organization man’s question had not had time to bring. I had to force myself calm before I could come out of my mental shell.
The first thing I got when I did come out was an identity. Not a “my name is.” Just a mental impression that I recognized like the sound of a familiar voice. I reached out.
Jordan.
Hey. His thought was easy, like his voice. Why don’t you let somebody know you in trouble? If we hadn’t felt you closing yourself off a minute ago they would have had you and gone before we could do anything.
Confusion. I didn’t know what to feel. I was let down rather than relieved. And the fear that I had managed to conceal from my organization captors now had to be concealed from Jordan, because he wouldn’t understand it any more than they would have. The only safe emotion was anger, and he didn’t deserve that. He’d only been trying to help.
Jordan again. You better get out of there now. The organization must know what we did to their pigs. They’ll be sending twenty people after you instead of four!
No doubt. He was seventeen. One of the first kids I’d found after leaving the organization. Not too long ago a college student from Kenya had told him he looked like a Watusi man. His head was still pretty big over that.
Jordan, let them come to. I sent the thought, knowing beforehand what his answer would be. He replied true to form.
What? Shit, they almost got you once! What you want to …?
Looks to me like she wanted them to get her. Another identity. Jessie Mae. One of my developing childfinders and a lot better telepath than she ought to have been at fifteen.
It had to happen sooner or later. I managed to make it no more than an unemotional statement of fact.
Like hell it did! Both of them and a lot of others besides. All the older ones were in on this. And in a way, that was good. Later nobody would be able to blame anybody else for whatever happened.
They know me, Jordan. I can’t hide from them. They can find me wherever I am and they can use me to find you.
Jordan. You don’t have to hide from them. There’s enough of us to stop them.
Softly. Man, I know there is. But it’s not time yet. Because all you can do is stop them. How long do you think you can hold them? Or do you figure they’ll all be as easy as these four?
Silence. Belligerent mutterings. Little “we can take them right now” fantasies beginning to grow in several minds at once.
I shoved all the disgust I could into my next thought. I thought I had managed to teach one or two of you something. If you really put your heart in it, you can make a single mildly worded thought like that carry more slap than all the profanity you could use.
They all shut up. A couple of them jerked away from me in surprise as though they were dodging an expected blow.
I continued only a little more gently. I thought I had taught you to look out for yourselves. To do what you had to to keep yourselves alive and together and hidden until you’re too strong for the organization to touch.
I paused for a moment. You know you’re in danger of being found every time you’re with me. We’re just lucky they took as long as they did to decide that we’re something to worry about. Lucky they gave you time to …
Time to get ready. Time to learn to make it on their own. Yeah. Start out strong like you’re going to hit them if they don’t behave. And then wind up carrying on worse than they are. Shit.
I was tired. Almost too tired to be afraid any more. Jordan bring them to for me, please. And Jessie Mae, as soon as I leave, come get Valerie. She doesn’t know anything, but I’m afraid of what they might do to her to find that out for sure.
Jordan answered first. Barbara, I’d sooner kill them now than let them get up and take you.
Then Jessie Mae. We need you! What happens to us if they take you?
You … survive, honey. You don’t need me. You already know about all I can teach you.
Abruptly Jessie Mae was projecting so intensely I could almost see her—tall, stronger than a girl was supposed to be, her face perpetually set in a defiant scowl. She hadn’t cried since she was seven years old. You’re going to let them kill you. You’re going to let them take you away and kill you!
No I’m not.
You are! I’m not so dumb I can’t see that!
You are dumb! Or you could see that they want me alive and well so I can work for them. They think. I can string them along as long as I have to. I could feel her disbelief like a rock in my mind. Anyway … anyway, Jessie Mae, I swear to God I’m not going to let them kill me.
She wavered slightly, a little less sure of herself. Barbara …
Do what I tell you, Jessie Mae, Jordan. Just do it. I closed them out to give them time to consider and to hide my half-lie before they could see it for what it was.
I wasn’t exactly going to let the organization kill me. There was too much chance that they might learn something from me as I died. They would definitely try. And no amount of “stringing them along” would work for long. Especially after this little show of strength the kids had put on. So in a couple of minutes, as soon as Jordan let Eve and her friends regain consciousness, I was going to forget everything I knew about pre-psi kids and finding them. Thinking about it, thinking about forgetting, about erasing the thing that had become as important to me as breathing, brought my fear back full force. It was like saying I was going to kill myself. I almost envied those white kids I’d crippled. They never knew what they were losing.
But afraid or not, I was going to do it. I had started something that I wasn’t going to let the organization stop. Partly because my kids deserved a chance. And partly because they were going to settle a lot of scores for me and a few million other people … someday.
On the floor one of the men groaned and opened his eyes.
Historians believe that an atmosphere of tolerance and peace would be a natural outgrowth of a psionic society.
Records of the fate of the psis are sketchy. Legend tells us that they were all victims of a disease to which they were particularly vulnerable. Whatever the cause, we may be sure that this is one civilization that was destroyed by purely external forces.
Psi: History of a Vanished People
_____________________
“Childfinder” appears in this volume through the courtesy of Har
lan Ellison®. This story was written by Octavia Estelle Butler especially for her close friend, the editor of The Last Dangerous Visions, and appears here for the first time.
Childfinder
Afterword
“Childfinder” is the product of Harlan Ellison week at the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop. It is also the product of my generally pessimistic outlook. After a few years of watching the human species make things unnecessarily difficult for itself I have little hope that it will do anything more than survive and continue its cycle of errors. An incident from my own childhood illustrates my point.
When I was little my mother worked and I was often left with one of my aunts or my grandmother. Sometimes when this happened, I would disagree with whichever of my cousins I found myself with. If the disagreement was noisy enough, whoever was in charge of us would come to the door and warn, “Now you all get along out there! No fighting!” We would stop obediently and wait until she went away before we resumed the fight. Aunt or grandmother, she always seemed surprised when one of us came in bloody.
After such an experience, I am surprised to find myself writing the same kind of warning in “Childfinder.” “Get along out there! No fighting!” But in at least one way I’m different from my aunts and my grandmother. I know no one’s listening.
Afterword
Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006)—winner of a MacArthur Fellowship “genius grant,” a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, and several Hugo and Nebula Awards—was my client, and she was a pack rat. In her will, she named me literary executor of her estate and left her papers to the Huntington Library outside of Pasadena. There were so many boxes of correspondence, manuscripts, and notes that it was soon clear to everyone that the archiving alone was going to take years.
When Octavia’s cousin Ernestine Walker asked me to come out to California in October of 2012 to help identify some letters and photos that had ended up in the family archives, we also planned to visit Sue Hodson, curator of literary manuscripts, who was still hard at work supervising the archiving of the windfall.
I knew that somewhere existed a finished story Octavia had sold to Harlan Ellison in the 1970s for his much-anticipated Last Dangerous Visions anthology, which was never published. I had always wanted to find this story, and Ernestine, along with many in the science fiction community, had urged me to make this a priority.
After a long and disappointing search through the stacks, we went back to the office of Natalie Russell, the wonderful assistant curator, where she was still finishing her catalog of Butler’s works. There were desks covered with organized mountains of papers and files that had yet to be read through, and there was absolutely no reason to feel hopeful. But then my eye fell on a box marked Contracts, and while I admit that not everyone might have considered this a breathtaking discovery, as an agent, I couldn’t resist. I started rifling through them and tripping down memory lane (“I remember this deal—whatever happened to that editor?” and “Oh my god, how did I ever agree to those mass market royalties?!”) but finally, there it was—the official signed agreement for “Childfinder.” Armed now with title and date, we quickly found the original, typewritten manuscript.
Natalie, who was still knee deep in her work, needed time to make copies of all this (the woman is, after all, a librarian) and find all the other relevant, supporting documents that might ever have existed. She promised to send everything to my office in New York.
Back at my hotel, still kind of dazed by our success, I finally focused on the calls and texts on my phone from family, friends, and Delta Airlines. Hurricane Sandy’s rising waters were devastating the East Coast. Flights cancelled, mother panicking in Connecticut, husband and daughter hunkering down … and of course CNN was in full 24/7 disaster mode. Suddenly there were a few other things to think about.
I finally got home a week later. When the package from the Huntington arrived sometime after that, I found not just “Childfinder,” but also another story—truly unexpected—“A Necessary Being,” with notes from the author indicating that it had been submitted a very few times in the early seventies, then apparently shelved.
Now, after much discussion and thought, the time feels right to make these early stories available, not just to the graduate students and professors who have access to a great research library, but also to her many fans and readers.
Octavia’s family thought it was important that these stories be published and available to anyone who might be interested in the early work of a true genius (and believer in global warming)—Octavia E. Butler.
Merrilee Heifetz
Writers House
April 29, 2014
A Biography of Octavia E. Butler
Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a bestselling and award-winning author, considered one of the best science fiction writers of her generation. She received both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and in 1995 became the first author of science fiction to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. She was also awarded the prestigious PEN Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000.
Butler’s father died when she was very young; her mother raised her in Pasadena, California. Shy, tall, and dyslexic, Butler immersed herself in reading whatever books she could find. She began writing at twelve, when a B movie called Devil Girl from Mars inspired her to try writing a better science-fiction story.
She took writing classes throughout college, attending the Clarion Writers Workshop and, in 1969, the Open Door Workshop of the Screenwriters’ Guild of America, a program designed to mentor Latino and African American writers. There she met renowned science fiction author Harlan Ellison, who adopted Butler as his protégé.
In 1974 she began writing Patternmaster (1976), set in a future world where a network of all-powerful telepaths dominate humanity. Praised both for its imaginative vision and for Butler’s powerful prose, the novel spawned four prequels, beginning with Mind of My Mind (1977) and finishing with Clay’s Ark (1984).
Although the Patternist series established Butler among the science fiction elite, Kindred (1979) brought her mainstream success. In that novel, a young black woman travels back in time to the antebellum South, where she is called on to protect the life of a white, slaveholding ancestor. Kindred’s protagonist stood out in a genre that, at the time, was widely dominated by white men.
In 1985, Butler won Nebula and Hugo awards for the novella Bloodchild, which was reprinted in 1995 as Bloodchild and Other Stories. Dawn (1987) began the Xenogenesis trilogy, about a race of aliens who visit earth to save humanity from itself. Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989) continue the story, following the life of the first child born with a mixture of alien and human DNA.
Fledgling (2005), which combines vampire and science fiction narratives, was Butler’s final novel. “She wasn't writing romance or feel-good novels,” mystery author Walter Mosley said. “She was writing very difficult, brilliant work.” Her books have been translated into several languages, and continue to appear widely in school and college literature curricula.
Butler died at home in Washington in 2006.
Butler, age three, sits with her mother for a photo in Los Angeles in 1951.
Butler at age thirteen. She began writing the year before when a science fiction film—the cult favorite Devil Girl from Mars—inspired her to create something of her own.
Butler’s 1965 senior class photo from John Muir High School in Pasadena, California.
Butler reading a book in 1975, the year before she published Patternmaster.
Butler on a book tour for Parable of the Sower in New York City in 1993.
Butler addresses the audience at Marygrove College, Detroit, during the Contemporary American Author Lecture Series in 1994.
Butler won both Nebula and Hugo awards for her contributions to the science fiction genre. (Photo courtesy of Anna Fedor.)
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic
or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Octavia E. Butler
Foreword copyright © 2014 by Walter Mosley
Afterword copyright © 2014 by Merrilee Heifetz
Cover design by Andrea Worthington
978-1-4976-0137-6
Published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Unexpected Stories Page 7
