Parable of the Sower

Did I remember? I turned to face her, first angry-furious—

then to my own surprise, sad. “I’ll miss you,” I said.

She must have read my feelings. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

We hugged each other. I didn’t ask her what she was sorry for, and she didn’t say any more.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2026

Dad didn’t come home today. He was due this morning.

I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what to think. I’m scared to death.

Cory called the college, his friends, fellow ministers, co-workers, the cops, the hospitals… .

Nothing. He isn’t under arrest or sick or injured or dead— at least not as far as anyone knows. None of his friends or colleagues had seen him since he left work early this morning. His bike was working all right. He was all right.

He had ridden off toward home with three co-workers who lived in other neighborhoods in our area. Each of these said the same thing: That they had left him as usual at River Street where it intersects Durant Road. That’s only five blocks from here. We’re at the tip-end of Durant Road.

So where is he?

Today a group of us, all armed, rode bicycles from home to River Street and down River Street to the college. Five miles in all. We checked side streets, alleys, vacant buildings, every place we could think of. I went. I took Marcus with me because if I hadn’t, he would have gone out alone. I had the Smith &

Wesson. Marcus had only his knife. He’s quick and agile with it, and strong for his age, but he’s never used it on anything alive. If anything had happened to him, I don’t think I would have dared to go home.

Cory is already out of her mind with worry. All this on top of losing Keith… . I don’t know. Everyone helped. Jay Garfield will be leaving soon, but that didn’t stop him from leading the search. He’s a good man. He did everything he could think of to find Dad.

Tomorrow we’re going into the hills and canyons.

We have to. No one wants to, but what else can we do?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18,

2026

I’ve never seen more squalor, more human remains, more feral dogs than I saw today. I have to write. I have to dump this onto paper. I can’t keep it inside of me. Seeing the dead has never bothered me before, but this… .

We were looking for Dad’s body, of course, though no one said so. I couldn’t deny that reality or avoid thinking about it. Cory checked with the police again, with the hospitals, with everyone we could think of who knew Dad.

Nothing.

So we had to go to the hills. When we go for target practice, we don’t look around, except to insure safety. We don’t look for what we’d rather not find.

Today in groups of three or four, we combed through the area nearest to the top of River Street. I kept Marcus with me— which was not easy. What is it in young boys that makes them want to wander off alone and get killed? They get two chin hairs and they’re trying to prove they’re men.

“You watch my back and I’ll watch yours,” I said. “I’m not going to let you get hurt. Don’t you let me down.”

He gave me the kind of near-smile that said he knew exactly what I was trying to do, and that he was going to do as he pleased. I got mad and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Damnit, Marcus, how many sisters have you got?

How many fathers have you got!” I never used even mild profanity with him unless things were very serious. Now, it got his attention.

“Don’t worry,” he muttered. “I’ll help.”

Then we found the arm. Marcus was the one who spotted it— something dark lying just off the trail we were following. It was hung up in the low branches of a scrub oak.

The arm was fresh and whole— a hand, a lower, and an upper arm. A black man’s arm, just the color of my father’s where color could be seen. It was slashed and cut all over, yet still powerful looking-long-boned, long-fingered, yet muscular and massive… . Familiar?

Smooth, white bone stuck out at the shoulder end.

The arm had been cut off with a sharp knife. The bone wasn’t broken. And, yes. It could have been his.

Marcus threw up when he saw it. I made myself examine it, search it for something familiar, for certainty. Jay Garfield tried to stop me, and I shoved him away and told him to go to hell. I’m sorry for that, and I told him so later. But I had to know. And yet, I still don’t know. The arm was too slashed and covered in dried blood. I couldn’t tell. Jay Garfield took fingerprints in his pocket notebook, but we left the arm itself. How could we take that back to Cory?

And we kept searching. What else could we do?

George Hsu found a rattlesnake. It didn’t bite anyone and we didn’t kill it. I don’t think anyone was in a mood to kill things.

We saw dogs, but they kept away from us. I even saw a cat watching us from under a bush. Cats either run like hell or crouch and freeze. They’re interesting to watch, somehow. Or, at any other time, they’d be interesting.

Then someone began to scream. I’ve never heard screams like that before— on and on. A man, screaming, begging, praying: “No! No more! Oh, God, no more, please. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, please!”

Then there were wordless, grating cries and high, horrible mewling.

It was a man’s voice, not like my father’s but not that different from his. We couldn’t locate the source. The echoes bounced around the canyon, confusing us, sending us first in one direction, then in another. The canyon was full of loose rock and spiny, vicious plants that kept us on the pathways where there were pathways.

The screaming stopped, then began again as a kind of horrible, bubbling noise.

I had let myself fall back to the end of the line of us by then. I wasn’t in trouble. Sound doesn’t trigger my sharing. I have to see another person in pain before I do any sharing. And this was one I’d do anything to avoid seeing.

Marcus dropped back beside me and whispered, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I just don’t want to know anything about what’s happening to that man.

“Keith,” he said.

“I know,” I agreed.

We walked our bikes behind the others, watching the back trail. Kayla Talcott dropped back to see if we were all right. She hadn’t wanted us to come, but since we had come, she had come, she had kept an eye on us. She’s like that.

“It doesn’t sound like your daddy,” she said. “Doesn’t sound like him at all.” Kayla is from Texas like my biological mother. Sometimes she sounded as though she’d never left, and sometimes she sounded as though she’d never been near any part of the south. She seemed to be able to turn the accent on and off. She tended to turn it on for comforting people, and for threatening to kill them.

Sometimes when I’m with Curtis, I see her in his face and wonder what kind of relative— what kind of motherin-law— she would make. Today I think both Marcus and I were glad she was there. We needed to be close to someone with her kind of mothering strength.

The horrible noise ended. Maybe the poor man was dead and out of his misery. I hope so.

We never found him. We found human bones and animal bones. We found the rotting corpses of five people scattered among the boulders. We found the cold remains of a fire with a human femur and two human skulls lying among the ashes.

At last, we came home and wrapped our community wall around us and huddled in our illusions of security.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2026

No one has found my father. Almost every adult in the neighborhood has spent some time looking.

Richard Moss didn’t, but his oldest son and daughter did. Wardell Parrish didn’t, but his sister and oldest nephew did. I don’t know what else people could have done. If I did know, I would be out doing it.

And yet nothing, nothing, nothing! The police never came up with any sign of him. He never turned up anywhere. He’s vanished, gone. Even the severed arm’s fingerprints weren’t his.

Every night since Wednesday, I’ve dreamed that horrible screaming. I’ve gone out twice more with teams hunting through the canyons. We’ve found nothing but more of the dead and the poorest of the living— people who are all staring eyes and visible bones. My own bones ached in empathy.

Sometimes if I sleep for a while without hearing the screaming, I see these— the living dead. I’ve always seen them. I’ve never seen them.

A team I wasn’t with found a living child being eaten by dogs. The team killed the dogs, then watched, helpless as the boy died.

I spoke at services this morning. Maybe it was my duty. I don’t know. People came for church, all uncertain and upset, not knowing what they should do. I think they wanted to draw together, and they had years of habit drawing them together at our house on Sunday morning. They were uncertain and hesitant, but they came.

Both Wyatt Talcott and Jay Garfield offered to speak. Both did say a few words, both informally eulogizing my father, though neither admitted that that was what they were doing. I was afraid everyone would do that and the service would become an impossible impromptu funeral. When I stood up, it wasn’t just to say a couple of words. I meant to give them something they could take home— something that might make them feel that enough had been said for today.

I thanked them all for the ongoing— emphasize ongoing— efforts to find my father. Then…well, then I talked about perseverance. I preached a sermon about perseverance if an unordained kid can be said to preach a sermon. No one was going to stop me.

Cory was the only one who might have tried, but Cory was in a kind of walking coma. She wasn’t doing anything she didn’t have to do.

So I preached from Luke, chapter eighteen, verses one through eight: the parable of the importunate widow. It’s one I’ve always liked. A widow is so persistent, in her demands for justice that she overcomes the resistance of a judge who fears neither God nor man. She wears him down.

Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.

My father and the adults present had created and maintained our community in spite of the scarcity and the violence outside. Now, with my father or without him, that community had to go on, hold together, survive. I talked about my nightmares and the source of those nightmares. Some people might not have wanted their kids to hear things like that, but I didn’t care. If Keith had known more, maybe he would still be alive. But I didn’t mention Keith. People could say what happened to Keith was his own fault.

No one could say that about Dad. I didn’t want anyone to be able to say it about this community some day.

“Those nightmares of mine are our future if we fail one another,” I said, winding up. “Starvation, agony at the hands of people who aren’t human any more.

Dismemberment. Death.

“We have God and we have each other. We have our island community, fragile, and yet a fortress.

Sometimes it seems too small and too weak to survive. And like the widow in Christ’s parable, its enemies fear neither God nor man. But also like the widow, it persists. We persist. This is our place, no matter what.”

That was my message. I left it there, hanging before them with an unfinished feel to it. I could feel them expecting more, then realizing that I wasn’t going to say more, then biting down on what I had said.

At just the right moment, Kayla Talcott began an old song. Others took it up, singing slowly, but with feeling: “We shall not, we shall not be moved… .”

I think this might have sounded weak or even pitiful somehow if it had been begun by a lesser voice. I think I might have sang it weakly. I’m only a fair singer. Kayla, on the other hand, has a big voice, beautiful, clear, and able to do everything she asks of it. Also, Kayla has a reputation for not moving unless she wants to.

Later, as she was leaving, I thanked her.

She looked at me. I’d grown past her years ago, and she had to look up. “Good job,” she said, and nodded and walked away toward her house. I love her.

I got other compliments today, and I think they were sincere. Most said, in one way or another, “You’re right,” and “I didn’t know you could preach like that,”

and “Your father would be proud of you.”

Yeah. I hope so. I did it for him. He built this bunch of houses into a community. And now, he’s probably dead. I wouldn’t let them bury him, but I know. I’m no good at denial and self-deception. That was Dad’s funeral that I was preaching— his and the community’s. Because as much as I want all that I said to be true, it isn’t. We’ll be moved, all right. It’s just a matter of when, by whom, and in how many pieces.

13

There is no end

To what a living world

Will demand of you.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2026

Today Reverend Matthew Robinson in whose church I was baptized came to preach my father’s funeral. Cory made the arrangements. There was no body, no urn. No one knows what happened to my father. Neither we nor the police have been able to find out. We’re sure he’s dead. He would find a way to come home if he were alive, so we’re certain he’s dead.

No, we’re not certain. We’re not certain at all. Is he sick somewhere? Hurt? Held against his will for who knows what reason by who knows what monsters?

This is worse than when Keith died. So much worse.

As horrible as that was, we knew he was dead.

Whatever he suffered, we knew he wasn’t suffering any more. Not in this world, anyway. We knew. Now, we don’t know anything. He is dead. But we don’t know!

The Dunns must have felt this when Tracy vanished.

Crazy as they are, crazy as she was, they must have felt this. What do they feel now. Tracy never came back. If she’s not dead, what must be happening to her outside? A girl alone only faced one kind of future outside. I intend to go out posing as a man when I go.

How will they all feel when I go? I’ll be dead to them— to Cory, the boys, the neighborhood. They’ll hope I’m dead, considering the supposed alternative. Thank Dad for my tallness and my strength.

I won’t have to leave Dad now. He’s already left me.

He was 57. What reason would strangers have for keeping a 57-year-old man alive? Once they’d robbed him, they would either let him go or kill him. If they let him go, he’d come home, walking, limping, crawling.

So he’s dead.

That’s that.

It has to be.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2026

The Garfields left for Olivar today— Phillida, Jay, and Joanne. An armored KSF truck came from Olivar to collect them and their belongings. The adults of the community had all they could do to keep the little kids from climbing all over the truck and pestering the drivers to death. Most kids my brothers’ ages have never been close to a truck that runs. Some of the younger Moss kids have never seen a truck of any kind. The Moss kids weren’t even allowed to visit the Yannis house back when the Yannis television still worked.

The two guys from KSF were patient once they realized the kids weren’t thieves or vandals. Those two guys with their uniforms, pistols, whips, and clubs, looked more like cops than movers. No doubt they had even more substantial weapons in the truck. My brother Bennett said he saw bigger guns mounted inside the truck when he climbed onto the hood. But when you consider how much a truck that size is worth, and how many people might want to relieve them of it and its contents, I guess the weaponry isn’t surprising.

The two movers were a black and a white, and I could see that Cory considered that hopeful. Maybe Olivar wouldn’t be the white enclave that Dad had expected.

Cory cornered the black guy and talked to him for as long as he would let her. Will she try now to get us into Olivar? I think she will. After all, without Dad’s salary, she’ll have to do something. I don’t think we have a prayer of being accepted. The insurance company isn’t going to pay— or not for a long time.

Its people choose not to believe that Dad is dead.

Without proof he can’t be declared legally dead for seven years. Can they hold on to our money for that long? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. We could starve many times over in seven years. And Cory must know she alone can’t earn enough in Olivar to feed and house us. Is she hoping to get work for me, too? I don’t know what we’re going to do.

Joanne and I cried all over each other, saying good-bye. We promised to phone each other, to stay in touch. I don’t think we’ll be able to. It costs extra to call Olivar. We won’t be able to afford it. I don’t think she will either. Chances are, I’ll never see her again.

The people I’ve grown up with are falling out of my life, one by one.

After the truck pulled away, I found Curtis and took him back to the old darkroom to make love. We hadn’t done it for a long time, and I needed it. I wish I could imagine just marrying Curtis, staying here, and having a decent life with him.

It isn’t possible. Even if there were no Earthseed, it wouldn’t be possible. I would almost be doing the family a favor if I left now— one less mouth to feed.

Unless I could somehow get a job… .

“We’ve got to get out of here, too,” Curtis said as we lay together afterward, lingering, tempting fate, not wanting to lose the feel of each other so soon. But that wasn’t what he had meant. I turned my head to look at him.

“Don’t you want to go?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you like to get out of this dead end neighborhood, out of Robledo.

I nodded. “I was just thinking that. But— ”

“I want you to marry me, and I want us to get out of here,” he said in a near whisper. “This place is dying.”

looked down at

him. The only light in the room came from a single window up near the ceiling. Nothing covered it any more, and the glass was broken out of it, but still, only a little light came in. Curtis’s face was full of shadows.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked him.

“Not Olivar,” he said. “That could turn out to be a bigger dead end than living here.”

“Where, then?”

“I don’t know. Oregon or Washington? Canada?

Alaska?”

I don’t think I gave any sign of sudden excitement.

People tell me my face doesn’t show them what I’m feeling. My sharing has been a hard teacher. But he saw something.

“You’ve already been thinking about leaving, haven’t you,” he demanded. “That’s why you won’t talk about getting married. ”

I rested my hand on his smooth chest.

“You were thinking about going alone!” He grasped my wrist, seemed ready to push it away. Then he held on to it, kept it. “You were just going to walk away from here and leave me.”

I turned so that he couldn’t see my face because now I had a feeling my emotions were all too obvious: Confusion, fear, hope… . Of course I had intended to go alone, and of course I hadn’t told anyone that I was leaving. And I had not decided yet how Dad’s disappearance would affect my going.

That raised frightening questions. What are my responsibilities? What will happen to my brothers if I leave them to Cory? They’re her sons, and she’ll move the earth to take care of them, keep them fed and clothed and housed. But can she do it alone?

How?

“I want to go,” I admitted, moving around, trying to be comfortable on the pallet of old sleepsacks that we had put down on the concrete floor. “I planned to go. Don’t tell anyone.”

“How can I if I go with you?”

I smiled, loving him. But… . “Cory and my brothers are going to need help,” I said. “When my father was here, I planned to go next year when I’m 18. Now. .

.I don’t know.”

“Where were you going?”

“North. Maybe as far as Canada. Maybe not.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Why alone, he meant.

I shrugged. “I could get killed as soon as I leave here. I could starve. The cops could pick me up.

Dogs could get me. I could catch a disease.

Anything could happen to me; I’ve thought about it. I haven’t named half the bad possibilities.”

“That’s why you need help!”

“That’s why I couldn’t ask anyone else to walk away from food and shelter and as much safety as there is in our world. To just start walking north, and hope you wind up some place good. How could I ask that of you?”

“It’s not that bad. Farther north, we can get work.”

“Maybe. But people have been flooding north for years. Jobs are scarce up there, too. And statelines and borders are closed.”

“There’s nothing down here!”

“I know.”

“So how can you help Cory and your brothers?”

“I want to marry you,” I said. I hesitated, and there was absolute silence. I couldn’t believe I’d heard myself say such a thing, but it was true. Maybe I was just feeling bereft. Keith, my father, the Garfields, Mrs. Quintanilla… . People could disappear so easily. I wanted someone with me who cared about me, and who wouldn’t disappear. But my judgement wasn’t entirely gone.

“When my family is back on its feet, we’ll marry,” I said. “Then we can get out of here. I just have to know that my brothers will be all right.”

“If we’re going to marry anyway, why not do it now?”

Because I have things to tell you, I thought. Because if you reject me or make me reject you with your reactions, I don’t want to have to hang around and watch you with someone else.

“Not now,” I said. “Wait for me,”

He shook his head in obvious disgust. “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing?”

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2026

It’s Christmas Eve.

Last night someone set fire to the Payne-Parrish house. While the community tried to put out the fire, and then tried to keep it from spreading, three other houses were robbed. Ours was one of the three.

Thieves took all our store-bought food: wheat flour,

sugar, canned goods, packaged goods… . They took our radio— our last one. The crazy thing is, before we went to bed we had been listening to a half-hour news feature about increasing arson.

People are setting more fires to cover crimes-although why they would bother these days, I don’t know. The police are no threat to criminals. People are setting fires to do what our arsonist did last night— to get the neighbors of the arson victim to leave their own homes unguarded. People are setting fires to get rid of whomever they dislike from personal enemies to anyone who looks or sounds foreign or racially different. People are setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.

Then there’s that fire drug with its dozen or so names: Blaze, fuego, flash, sunfire… . The most popular name is pyro— short for pyromania, It’s all the same drug, and it’s been around for a while.

From what Keith said, it’s becoming more popular. It makes watching the leaping, changing patterns of fire a better, more intense, longer-lasting high than sex. Like Paracetco, my biological mother’s drug of choice, pyro screws around with people’s neurochemistry. But Paracetco began as a legitimate drug intended to help victims of Alzheimer’s disease. Pyro was an accident. It was a home-brew— a basement drug invented by someone who was trying to assemble one of the other higher-priced street drugs. The inventor made a very small chemical mistake, and wound up with pyro.

That happened on the east coast and caused an immediate increase in the number of senseless arson fires, large and small.

Pyro worked its way west without making nearly as much trouble as it could have. Now its popularity is growing. And in dry-as-straw southern California, it can cause a real orgy of burning.

“My God,” Cory said when the radio report was over.

And in a small, whispery voice, she quoted from the Book of Revelation: “`Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils… .’”

And the devils set fire to the Payne-Parrish house.

At about two a.m. I awoke to the jangling of the bell: Emergency! Earthquake? Fire? Intruders?

But there was no shaking, no unfamiliar noise, no smoke. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t at our house. I got up, threw clothing on, debated for a second whether to snatch my survival pack, then left it. Our house didn’t seem to be in immediate danger.

My pack was safe in the closet, mixed in among blankets and bundles of old clothes. If I had to have it, I could come back and snatch it in seconds.

I ran outside to see what was needed, and saw at once. The Payne-Parrish house was fully involved, surrounded by fire. One of the watchers on duty was still sounding the alarm. People spilled from all the houses, and must have seen as I did that the Payne-Parrish house was a total loss. Neighbors were already wetting down the houses on either side. A live oak tree— one of our huge, ancient ones— was afire. There was a light wind blowing, swirling bits of burning leaves and twigs into the air and scattering them. I joined the people who were beating and wetting the grounds.

Where were the Paynes? Where was Wardell Parrish? Had anyone called the fire department? A house full of people, after all, it wasn’t like a burning garage.

I asked several people. Kayla Talcott said she had called them. I was grateful and ashamed. I wouldn’t have asked if Dad were still with us. One of us would have just called. Now we couldn’t afford to call.

No one had seen any of the Paynes. Wardell Parrish I found in the Yannis yard where Cory and my brother Bennett were wrapping him in a blanket. He was coughing so much that he couldn’t talk, and wearing only pajama pants.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“He breathed a lot of smoke,” Cory said. “Has someone called— ”

“Kayla Talcott called the fire department.”

“Good. But no one’s at the gate to let them in.”

“I’ll go.” I turned away, but she caught my arm.

“The others?” she whispered. She meant the Paynes, of course.

“I don’t know.”

She nodded and let me go.

I went to the gate, borrowing Alex Montoya’s key on the way. He always seemed to have his gate key in his pocket. It was because of him that I didn’t go back into our house and maybe interrupt a robbery and be killed for my trouble.

Firefighters arrived in no great hurry. I let them in, locked the gate after them, and watched as they put out the fire.

No one had seen the Paynes. We could only assume they had never gotten out. Cory tried to take Wardell Parrish to our house, but he refused to leave until he found out one way or the other about his twin sister and his nieces and nephews.

When the fire was almost out, the bell began to ring again. We all looked around. Caroline Balter, Harry’s mother, was jerking and pushing at the bell and screaming.

“Intruders!” she shouted. “Thieves! They’ve broken into the houses!”

And we all rushed without thinking back to our houses. Wardell Parrish came along with my family, still coughing, and wheezing, and as useless— as weaponless— as the rest of us. We could have been killed, rushing in that way. Instead, we were lucky.

We scared away our thieves.

Along with our store-bought food and the radio, the thieves got some of Dad’s tools and supplies— nails, wire, screws, bolts, that kind of thing. They didn’t get the phone, the computer, or anything in Dad’s office.

In fact, they didn’t get into Dad’s office at all. I suppose we scared them away before they could search the whole house.

They stole clothing and shoes from Cory’s room, but didn’t touch my room or the boys’. They got some of our money— the kitchen money, Cory calls it. She had hidden it in the kitchen in a box of detergent.

She had thought no one would steal such a thing. In fact, the thieves might have stolen it for resale without realizing that it wasn’t just detergent. It could have been worse. The kitchen money was only about a thousand dollars for minor emergencies.

The thieves did not find the rest of our money, some of it hidden out by our lemon tree, and some hidden with our two remaining guns under the floor in Cory’s closet. Dad had gone to a lot of trouble to make a kind of floor safe, not locked, but completely concealed beneath a rug and a battered chest of drawers filled with sewing things— salvaged bits of cloth, buttons, zippers, hooks, things like that. The chest of drawers could be moved with one hand. It slid from one side of the closet to the other if you pushed it right, and in seconds you could have the money and the guns in your hands. The concealment trick wouldn’t have defeated people who had time to make a thorough search, but it had defeated our thieves. They had dumped some of the drawers onto the floor, but they had not thought to look under the chest.

The thieves did take Cory’s sewing machine. It was a compact, sturdy old machine with its own carrying case. Both case and machine were gone. That was a real blow. Cory and I both use that machine to make, alter, and repair clothing for the family. I had thought I might even be able to earn some money with the machine, sewing for other people in the neighborhood. Now the machine is gone. Sewing for the family will have to be done by hand. It will take much more time, and may not look like what we’re used to. Bad. Hard. But not a fatal blow. Cory cried over the loss of her machine, but we can get along without it. She’s just being worn down by one blow after another.

We’ll adapt. We’ll have to. God is Change.

Strange how much it helps me to remember that.

Curtis Talcott just came to my window to tell me that the firemen have found charred bodies and bones in the ashes of the Payne-Parrish house. The police are here, taking reports of the robberies and the obvious arson. I told Cory. She can tell Wardell Parrish or let the cops tell him. He’s lying down on one of our living room couches. I doubt that he’s sleeping. Even though I’ve never liked him, I feel sorry for him. He’s lost his home and his family. He’s the only survivor. What must that be like?

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2026

I don’t know how long it can last, but in some way that I suspect is not quite legal, Cory has taken over part of the job Dad held for so long. She’ll give the classes Dad gave. With the computer hookups we have already in place, she’ll issue assignments, receive homework, and be available for phone and compu-conferences. The administrative part of Dad’s work will be handled by someone else who can use the extra money, and who is willing to show up at the college more often than once or twice a month. It will be as though Dad were still teaching, but had decided to give up his other responsibilities.

Cory has arranged this by pleading and begging, by crying and cajoling and calling in every favor and every friend she could think of. People at the college know her. She taught there before Bennett’s birth, before she saw the need here and began the front-room school that serves all the children of the neighborhood. Dad was all for her quitting the college because he didn’t want her going back and forth outside, exposed to all the dangers that involved. The neighbors pay a per-kid fee, but it isn’t much. No one could support a household on it.

Now Cory will have to go outside again. She’s already drafting men and older boys in the neighborhood to escort her when she has to go out.

There are plenty of unemployed men here, and Cory will be paying them a small fee.

So in a few days, the new term will start and Cory will do Dad’s work— while I do her work. I’ll handle the school with help from her and from Russel Dory, Joanne and Harry’s grandfather. He used to be a highschool math teacher. He’s been retired for years, but he’s still sharp. I don’t think I need his help, but Cory does, and he’s willing, so that’s that.

Alex Montoya and Kayla Talcott will take over Dad’s preaching and other church work. Neither is ordained, but both have substituted for Dad in the past. Both have authority in the community and the church. And, of course, both know their Bible.

This is how we will survive and hold together. It will work. I don’t know how long it will last, but for now, it will work.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30,

2026

Wardell Parrish has finally dragged himself back to his people— to the part of his family that he lived with before he and his sister inherited the Sims house.

He’s stayed with us since his sister and all her children were killed. Cory gave him some of Dad’s clothes which were too big for him. Much too big.

He wandered around, not talking, not seeming to see anything, not eating enough… . Then yesterday he said, like a little boy, “I want to go home. I can’t stay here. I hate it here; everyone’s dead! I have to go home.”

So today Wyatt Talcott, Michael, and Curtis escorted him home. Poor man. He’s years older than he was a week ago. I think he may not live much longer.

2027

We are Earthseed. We are flesh—

self-aware, questing,

problem-solving flesh. We are thataspect of Earthlife best able toshape God knowingly. We areEarthlife maturing, Earthlife preparing to fall away from theparent world. We are Earthlifepreparing to take root in newground, Earthlife fulfilling itspurpose, its promise, its Destiny.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

by Lauren Oya Olamina

14

In order to rise

From its own ashes

A phoenix

First

Must

Burn.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2027—

MORNING

Last night, when I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning. The houses, the trees, the people: Burning.

Smoke awoke me, and I shouted down the hall to Cory and the boys. I grabbed my clothes and emergency pack and followed Cory as she herded the boys out.

The bell never rang. Our watchers must have been killed before they could reach it.

Everything was chaos. People running, screaming, shooting. The gate had been destroyed. Our attackers had driven an ancient truck through it.

They must have stolen a truck just to crash it through our gate.

I think they must have been pyro addicts— bald people with painted heads, faces, and hands. Red faces; blue faces; green faces; screaming mouths; avid, crazy eyes, glittering in the firelight.

They shot us and shot us and shot us. I saw Natalie Moss, running, screaming, then pitching backward, her face half gone, her body still impelled forward.

She fell flat on her back, and did not move again.

I fell with her, caught up in her death. I lay there, dazed, struggling to move, to get up. Cory and the boys, running ahead of me never noticed. They ran on.

I got up, felt for my pack, found it, and ran. I tried not to see what was happening around me. Hearing the gunfire and the screams didn’t stop me. A dead body— Edwin Dunn— didn’t stop me. I bent, snatched up his gun, and kept running.

Someone screamed near me, then tackled me, pulled me down. I fired the gun in reflexive terror, and took the terrible impact in my own stomach. A green face hung above mine, mouth open, eyes

wide, not yet feeling all his pain. I shot him again, terrified that his pain would immobilize me when he did feel it. It seemed that he took a long time to die.

When I could move again, I pushed his body off me.

I got up, still holding the gun, and ran for the wrecked gate.

Best to be in the darkness outside. Best to hide.

I ran up Meredith Street away from Durant Road, away from the fires and the shooting. I had lost track of Cory and the boys. I thought they would go toward the hills and not toward the center of town.

Every direction was dangerous, but there was more danger where there were more people. In the night, a woman and three kids might look like a gift basket of food, money, and sex.

North toward the hills. North through the dark streets to where the nearby hills and mountains blotted out the stars.

And then what?

I didn’t know. I couldn’t think. I had never been outside the walls when it was so dark. My only hope of staying alive was to listen, hear any movement before it got too close to me, see what I could by starlight, be as quiet as I could.

I walked down the middle of the street looking and listening and trying to avoid potholes and chunks of broken asphalt. There was little other trash. Anything that would burn, people would use as fuel. Anything that could be reused or sold had been gathered.

Cory used to comment on that. Poverty, she said, had made the streets cleaner.

Where was she? Where had she taken my brothers?

Were they all right? Had they even gotten out of the neighborhood?

I stopped. Were my brothers back there? Was Curtis? I hadn’t seen him at all— though if anyone were going to survive this insanity, it would be the Talcotts. But we had no way of finding each other.

Sound. Footsteps. Two pairs of running footsteps. I stayed where I was, frozen in place. No sudden moves to draw attention to me. Had I already been seen? Could I be seen— a figure of darker darkness in an otherwise empty street?

The sound was behind me. I listened and knew that it was off to one side, approaching, passing. Two people running down a side street, indifferent to the noise they made, indifferent to woman-shaped shadows.

I let out a breath and drew another through my mouth because I could get more air with less sound that way. I couldn’t go back to the fires and the pain.

If Cory and the boys were there, they were dead or worse, captive. But they had been ahead of me.

They must have gotten out. Cory wouldn’t let them come back to look for me. There was a bright glow in the air over what had been our neighborhood. If she had gotten the boys away, all she had to do was look back to know that she didn’t want to go back.

Did she have her Smith & Wesson? I wished I had it and the two boxes of ammunition that went with it.

All I had was the knife in my pack and Edwin Dunn’s old .45 automatic. And all the ammunition I had for it was in it. If it wasn’t empty. I knew the gun. It held seven rounds. I’d fired it twice. How many times had Edwin Dunn fired it before someone shot him? I didn’t expect to find out until morning. I had a flashlight in my pack, but I didn’t intend to use it unless I could be certain I wouldn’t be making a target of myself.

During the day the sight of the bulge in my pocket would be enough to make people think twice about robbing or raping me. But during the night the blue gun would be all but invisible even in my hand. If it were empty, I could only use it as a club. And the moment I hit someone with it, I might as well hit myself. If I lost consciousness for any reason during a fight, I would lose all my possessions if not my life.

Tonight I had to hide.

Tomorrow I would have to try to bluff as much as possible. Most people wouldn’t insist on my shooting them just to test whether or not the gun was loaded.

For the street poor, unable to afford medical care, even a minor wound might be fatal.

I am one of the street poor, now. Not as poor as some, but homeless, alone, full of books and ignorant of reality. Unless I meet someone from the neighborhood, there’s no one I can afford to trust.

No one to back me up.

Three miles to the hills. I kept to the starlit back streets, listening and looking around. The gun was in my hand. I meant to keep it there. I could hear dogs barking and snarling, fighting somewhere not far away.

I was in a cold sweat. I had never been more terrified in my life. Yet nothing attacked me. Nothing found me.

I didn’t go all the way to the hills. Instead I found a burned out, unwalled house a few blocks before the end of Meredith Street. Fear of dogs had made me keep an eye open for anything that might provide shelter.

The house was a ruin, a plundered ruin. It wasn’t safe to walk into with or without a light. It was a roofless collection of upright black bones. But it had been built up off the ground. Five concrete steps led up to what had been the front porch. There should be a way under the house.

What if other people were under it?

I walked around it, listening, trying to see. Then, instead of daring to crawl under, I settled in what was left of the attached garage. A corner of it was still standing, and there was enough rubble in front of that corner to conceal me if I didn’t show a light.

Also, if I were surprised, I could get out of the garage faster than I could crawl out from under a house. The concrete floor could not collapse under me as the wooden floor might in what was left of the house proper. It was as good as I was going to get, and I was exhausted. I didn’t know whether I could sleep, but I had to rest.

Morning now. What shall I do? I did sleep a little, but I kept startling awake. Every sound woke me— the wind, rats, insects, then squirrels, and birds… . I don’t feel rested, but I’m a little less exhausted. So what shall I do?

How is it that we had never established an outside meeting place— somewhere where the family could reunite after disaster. I remember suggesting to Dad that we do that, but he had never done anything about it, and I hadn’t pushed the idea as I should have. (Poor Godshaping. Lack of forethought.) What now?

Now, I have to go home. I don’t want to. The idea scares me to death. It’s taken me a long time just to write the word: Home. But I have to know about my brothers, and about Cory and Curtis. I don’t know how I can help if they’re hurt or being held by someone. I don’t know what might be waiting for me back at the neighborhood. More painted faces? The police? I’m in trouble either way. If the police are there, I’ll have to hide my gun before I go in— my gun, and my small amount of money. Carrying a gun can win you a lot of unwanted attention from the police if you catch them in the wrong mood. Yet everyone who has one carries it. The trick, of course, is not to get caught carrying it.

On the other hand, if the painted faces are still there, I can’t go in at all. How long do those people stay high on pyro and fire? Do they hang around after their fun to steal whatever’s left and maybe kill a few more people?

No matter. I have to go and see.

I have to go home.

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2027

— EVENING

I have to write. I don’t know what else to do. The others are asleep now, but it isn’t dark. I’m on watch because I couldn’t sleep if I tried. I’m jittery and crazed. I can’t cry. I want to get up and just run and run… , Run away from everything. But there isn’t any away.

I have to write. There’s nothing familiar left to me but the writing. God is Change. I hate God. I have to write.

There were no unburned houses back in the neighborhood, although some were burned worse than others. I don’t know whether police or firefighters ever came. If they had come, they were gone when I got there. The neighborhood was wide open and crawling with scavengers.

I stood at the gate, staring in as strangers picked among the black bones of our homes. The ruins were still smoking, but men, women, and children were all over them, digging through them, picking fruit from the trees, stripping our dead, quarreling or fighting over new acquisitions, stashing things away in clothing or bundles… . Who were these people?

I put my hand on the gun in my pocket— it had four rounds left in it— and I went in. I was grimy from lying in dirt and ashes all night. I might not be noticed.

I saw three women from an unwalled part of Durant Road, digging through what was left of the Yannis house. They were laughing and throwing around chunks of wood and plaster.

Where were Shani Yannis and her daughters?

Where were her sisters?

I walked through the neighborhood, looking past the human maggots, trying to find some of the people I had grown up with. I found dead ones. Edwin Dunn lay where he had when I took his gun, but now he was shirtless and shoeless. His pockets had been turned out.

The ground was littered with ash-covered corpses, some burned or half blown apart by automatic weapons fire. Dried or nearly dried blood had pooled in the street. Two men were prying loose our emergency bell. The bright, clear, early morning sunlight made the whole scene less real somehow, more nightmarelike. I stopped in front of our house and stared at the five adults and the child who were picking through the ruins of it. Who were these vultures? Did the fire draw them? Is that what the street poor do? Run to fire and hope to find a corpse to strip?

There was a dead green face on our front porch. I went up the steps and stood looking at him— at her.

The green face was a woman— tall, lean, bald, but female. And what had she died for? What was the point of all this?

“Leave her alone”’ A woman who had a pair of Cory’s shoes in her hand strode up to me. “She died for all of us. Leave her alone.”

I’ve never in my life wanted more to kill another human being. “Get the hell out of my way,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice. I don’t know how I looked, but the thief backed away.

I stepped over the green face and went into the carcass of our home. The other thieves looked at me, but none of them said anything. One pair, I noticed, was a man with a small boy. The man was dressing the boy in a pair of my brother Gregory’s jeans. The jeans were much too big, but the man belted them and rolled them up.

And where was Gregory, my clownish smartass of a baby brother? Where was he? Where was everyone?

The roof of our house had fallen in. Most things had burned— kitchen, living room, dining room, my room.

… The floor wasn’t safe to walk on. I saw one of the scavengers fall through, give a surprised yell, then climb, unhurt, onto a floor joist.

Nothing left in my room could be salvaged. Ashes. A heat-distorted metal bedframe, the broken metal and ceramic remains of my lamp, bunches of ashes that had been clothing or books. Many books were not burned through. They were useless, but they had been packed so tightly together that the fire had burned in deeply from the edges and the spines.

Rough circles of unburned paper remained, surrounded by ash. I didn’t find a single whole page.

The back two bedrooms had survived better. That was where the scavengers were, and where I headed.

I found bundled pairs of my father’s socks, folded shorts and Tshirts, and an extra holster that I could use for the .45. All this I found in or under the unpromising-looking remains of Dad’s chest of drawers. Most things were burned beyond use, but I stuffed the best of what I found into my pack. The man with the child came over to scavenge beside me, and somehow, perhaps because of the child, because this stranger in his filthy rags was someone’s father, too, I didn’t mind. The little boy watched the two of us, his small brown face expressionless. He did look a little like Gregory.

I dug a dried apricot out of my pack and held it out to him. He couldn’t have been more than six, but he wouldn’t touch the food until the man told him to.

Good discipline. But at the man’s nod, he snatched the apricot, bit off a tiny taste, then stuffed the rest into his mouth whole.

So, in company with five strangers, I plundered my family’s home. The ammunition under the closet floor in my parents’ room had burned, had no doubt exploded. The closet was badly charred. So much for the money hidden there.

I took dental floss, soap, and a jar of petroleum jelly from my parents’ bathroom. Everything else was already gone.

I managed to gather one set of outer clothing each for Cory and my brothers. In particular, I found shoes for them. There was a woman scavenging among Marcus’s shoes, and she glared at me, but she kept quiet. My brothers had run out of the house in their pajamas. Cory had thrown on a coat. I had been the last to get out of the house because I had risked stopping to grab jeans, a sweatshirt, and shoes as well as my emergency pack. I could have been killed. If I had thought about what I was doing, if I had had to think, no doubt I would have been killed. I reacted the way I had trained myself to react-though my training was far from up to date— more memory than anything else. I hadn’t practiced late at night for ages, Yet my self-administered training had worked.

Now, if I could get these clothes to Cory and my brothers, I might be able to make up for their lack of training. Especially if I could get the money under the rocks by the lemon tree.

I put clothes and shoes into a salvaged pillow case, looked around for blankets, and couldn’t find a one.

They must have been grabbed early. All the more reason to get the lemon-tree money.

I went out to the peach tree, and, being tall, managed to reach a couple of nearly-ripe peaches that other scavengers had missed. Then I looked around as though for something more to take, and surprised myself by almost crying at the sight of Cory’s big, well-tended back garden, trampled into the ground. Peppers, tomatoes, squashes, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, melons, sunflowers, beans, corn… . Much of it wasn’t ripe yet, but what hadn’t been stolen had been destroyed.

I scavenged a few carrots, a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds from flower heads that lay on the ground, and a few bean pods from vines Cory had planted to run up the sunflower stalks and corn plants. I took what was left the way I thought a late-arriving scavenger would. And I worked my way toward the lemon tree. When I reached it, heavy with little green lemons, I hunted for any with even a hint of paling, of yellow. I took a few from the tree, and from the ground. Cory had planted shade-loving flowers at the base of the tree, and they had thrived there. She and my father had scattered small, rounded boulders among these in a way that seemed no more than decorative. A few of these had been turned over, crushing the flowers near them. In fact, the rock with the money under it had been turned over. But not the two or three inches of dirt over the money packet, triple wrapped and heat-sealed in plastic.

I snatched the packet in no more time than it had taken to pick up a couple of lemons a moment before. First I spotted the hiding place, then I snatched up the money packet along with a hand full of dirt. Then, eager to leave, but terrified of drawing attention to myself, I picked up a few more lemons and hunted around for more food.

The figs were hard and green instead of purple, and the persimmons were yellow-green instead of orange. I found a single ear of corn left on a downed stalk and used it to stuff the money packet deeper into my blanket pack. Then I left.

With my pack on my back and the pillow case in my left arm, resting on my hip like a baby, I walked down the driveway to the street. I kept my right hand free for the gun still in my pocket. I had not taken time to put on the holster.

There were more people within the walls than there had been when I arrived. I had to walk past most of them to get out. Others were leaving with their loads, and I tried to follow them without quite attaching myself to any particular group. This meant that I moved more slowly than I would have chosen to. I had time to look at the corpses and see what I didn’t want to see.

Richard Moss, stark naked, lying in a pool of his own blood. His house, closer to the gate than ours, had been burned to the ground. Only the chimney stuck up blackened and naked from the rubble. Where were his two surviving wives Karen and Zahra? Or had they survived? Where were all his many children?

Little Robin Balter, naked, filthy, bloody between her legs, cold, bony, barely pubescent. Yet she might have married my brother Marcus someday. She might have been my sister. She and always been such a bright, sharp, great little kid, all serious and knowing. Twelve going on thirty-five, Cory used to say. She always smiled when she said it.

Russell Dory, Robin’s grandfather. Only his shoes had been taken. His body had been almost torn apart by automatic weapons fire. An old man and a child. What had the painted faces gotten for all their killing?

“She died for us,” the scavenger woman had said of the green face. Some kind of insane burn-the-rich movement, Keith had said. We’ve never been rich, but to the desperate, we looked rich. We were surviving and we had our wall. Did our community die so that addicts could make a help-the-poor political statement?

There were other corpses. I didn’t get a close look at most of them. They littered the front yards, the street, and the island. There was no sign of our emergency bell now. The men who had wanted it had carried it away— perhaps to be sold for its metal.

I saw Layla Yannis, Shani’s oldest daughter. Like Robin, she had been raped. I saw Michael Talcott, one side of his head smashed in. I didn’t look around for Curtis. I was terrified that I might see him lying nearby. I was almost out of control as it was, and I couldn’t draw attention to myself. I couldn’t be anything more than another scavenger hauling away treasure.

Bodies passed under my eyes; Jeremy Balter, one of Robin’s brothers, Philip Moss, George Hsu, his wife and his oldest son, Juana Montoya, Rubin Quintanilla, Lidia Cruz… . Lidia was only eight years old. She had been raped, too.

I made it back through the gate. I didn’t break down.

I hadn’t seen Cory or my brothers in the carnage.

That didn’t mean they weren’t there, but I hadn’t seen them. They might be alive. Curtis might be alive. Where could I look for them?

The Talcotts had relatives living in Robledo, but I didn’t know where. Somewhere on the other side of River Street. I couldn’t look for them, though Curtis might have gone to them. Why hadn’t anyone else stayed to salvage what they could?

I circled the neighborhood, keeping the wall in sight, then made a greater circle. I saw no one— or at least no one I knew. I saw other street poor who stared at me.

Then because I didn’t know what else to do, I headed back toward my burned out garage on Meredith Street. I couldn’t call the police. All the phones I knew of were slag. No strangers would let me use their phone if they had phones, and I didn’t know anyone whom I could pay to call and trust to make the call. Most people would avoid me or be tempted to keep my money and never call. And anyway, if the police have ignored what’s been done to my neighborhood so far, if such a fire and so many corpses can be ignored, why should I go to them? What would they do? Arrest me? Take my cash as their fee? I wouldn’t be surprised. Best to stay clear of them.

But where was my family!

Someone called my name.

I turned around, my hand in my pocket, and saw Zahra Moss and Harry Balter— Richard Moss’s youngest wife and Robin Balter’s oldest brother.

They were an unlikely pair, but they were definitely together. They managed, without touching each other, to give the appearance of all but clinging together. Both were blood-spattered and ragged. I looked at Harry’s battered swollen face and remembered that Joanne had loved him— or thought she had— and that he wouldn’t marry her and go with her to Olivar because he believed what Dad believed about Olivar.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

I nodded, remembering Robin. Did he know? Russell Dory, Robin, and Jeremy… . “They beat you up?” I asked, feeling stupid and awkward. I didn’t want to tell him his grandfather, brother, and sister were dead.

“I had to fight my way out last night. I was lucky they didn’t shoot me.” He swayed, looked around. “Let’s sit on the curb.”

Both Zahra and I looked around, made sure no one else was near by. We sat with Harry between us. I sat on my pillowcase of clothing. Zahra and Harry were fully dressed, in spite of their coating of blood and dirt, but they carried nothing. Did they have nothing, or had they left their things somewhere-perhaps with whatever was left of their families. And where was Zahra’s little girl Bibi? Did she know that Richard Moss was dead?

“Everyone’s dead,” Zahra whispered as though speaking into my thoughts. “Everyone. Those painted bastards killed them all!”

“No!” Harry shook his head. “We got out. There’ll be some others.” He sat with his face in his hands, and I wondered whether he was more hurt than I had thought. I wasn’t sharing any serious pain with him.

“Have either of you seen my brothers or Cory?” I asked.

“Dead,” Zahra whispered. “Like my Bibi. All dead.”

I jumped. “No! Not all of them. No! Did you see them?”

“I saw most of the Montoya family,” Harry said. He wasn’t talking to me as much as musing aloud. “We saw them last night. They said Juana was dead. The rest of them were going to walk to Glendale where their relatives live.”

“But— ” I began.

“And I saw Laticia Hsu. She had been stabbed 40 or 50 times.”

“But did you see my brothers?” I had to ask.

“They’re all dead, I told you,” Zahra said. “They got out, but the paints caught them and dragged them back and killed them. I saw. One of them had me down, and he… . I saw.”

She was being raped when she saw my family dragged back and killed? Was that what she meant?

Was it true?

“I went back this morning,” I said. “I didn’t see their bodies. Didn’t see any of them.” Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no… .

“I saw. Your mother. All of them. I saw.” Zahra hugged herself. “I didn’t want to see, but I saw.”

We all sat without talking. I don’t know how long we sat there. Now and then someone walked past us and looked at us, some dirty, ragged person with bundles. Cleaner people in little bunches rode past us on bikes. A group of three rode past on motorcycles, their electric hum and whine strange in the quiet street.

When I got up, the other two looked at me. For no reason except habit, I picked up my pillowcase. I don’t know what I meant to do with the things in it. It had occurred to me, though, that I should get back to my garage before someone else settled there. I wasn’t thinking very well. It was as though that garage was home now, and all I wanted in the world was to be there.

Harry got up and almost fell down again. He bent and threw up into the gutter. The sight of his throwing up grabbed at me, and I only just managed to look away in time to avoid joining him. He finished, spat, turned to face Zahra and me, and coughed.

“I feel like hell,” he said.

“They hit him in the head last night,” Zahra explained. “He got me away from the guy who was. .

. . Well, you know. He got me away, but they hurt him.”

“There’s a burned out garage where I slept last night,” I said. “It’s a long walk, but he can rest there.

We can all rest there.”

Zahra took my pillowcase and carried it. Maybe something in it could do her some good. We walked on either side of Harry and kept him from stopping or wandering off or staggering too much. Somehow, we got him to the garage.

15

Kindness eases Change.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2027

Harry slept most of the day today. Zahra and I took turns staying with him. He has a concussion, at least, and he needs time to heal. We haven’t talked about what we’ll do if he gets sicker instead of healing. Zahra doesn’t want to abandon him because he fought to save her. I don’t want to abandon him because I’ve known him all my life.

He’s a good guy. I wonder if there’s some way to get in touch with the Garfields. They would give him a home, or at least see that he has medical care.

But he doesn’t seem to be getting worse. He totters out to the fenced back yard to urinate. He eats the food and drinks the water that I give him. With no need for discussion, we’re eating and drinking sparingly from my supplies. They’re all we have.

Soon we’ll have to risk going out to buy more. But today, Sunday, is a day of rest and healing for us.

The pain of Harry’s headache and his bruised, beaten body are almost welcome to me. They’re distractions. Along with Zahra’s talking and crying for her dead daughter, they fill my mind.

Their misery eases my own, somehow. It gives me moments when I don’t think about my family.

Everyone is dead. But how can they be? Everyone?

Zahra has a soft, little-girl voice that I used to think was phony. It’s real, but it takes on a sandpaper roughness when she’s upset. It sounds painful, as though it’s abrading her throat as she speaks.

She had seen her daughter killed, seen the blue face who shot Bibi as Zahra ran, carrying her. She believed the blue face was enjoying himself, shooting at all the moving targets. She said his expression reminded her of a man having sex.

“I fell down,” she whispered. “I thought I was dead. I thought he had killed me. There was blood. Then I saw Bibi’s head drop to one side. A red face grabbed her from me. I didn’t see where he came from. He grabbed her and threw her into the Hsu house. The house was burning everywhere. He threw her into the fire.

“I went crazy then. I don’t know what I did.

Somebody grabbed me, then I was free, then somebody shoved me down and fell on me. I couldn’t get my breath, and he tore my clothes. Then he was on me, and I couldn’t do nothing. That’s when I saw your mother, your brothers… .

“Then Harry was there, and he pulled the bastard off me. He told me later that I was screaming. I don’t know what I was doing. He was beating up the guy he’d pulled off me when a new guy jumped him. I hit the new guy with a rock and Harry knocked the other one out. Then we got away. We just ran. We didn’t sleep. He hid between two unwalled houses down the street away from the fire until a guy came out with an ax and chased us away. Then we just wandered until we found you. We didn’t even really know each other before. You know. Richard never wanted us to have much to do with the neighbors-especially the white ones.”

I nodded, remembering Richard Moss. “He’s dead, you know,” I said. “I saw him.” I wanted to take the words back as soon as I’d said them. I didn’t know how to tell someone her husband was dead, but there must be a better, gentler way than that.

She stared at me, stricken. I wanted to apologize for my bluntness, but I didn’t think it would help. “I’m sorry,” I said in a kind of generic apology for everything. She began to cry, and I repeated, “I’m sorry.”

I held her and let her cry. Harry woke up, drank a little water, and listened while Zahra told how Richard Moss had bought her from her homeless mother when she was only fifteen— younger than I had thought— and brought her to live in the first house she had ever known. He gave her enough to eat and didn’t beat her, and even when her co-wives were hateful to her, it was a thousand times better than living outside with her mother and starving.

Now she was outside again. In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing.

“Do you have someplace to go?” she asked us at last. Do you know anybody who still has a house?”

I looked at Harry. “You might be able to get into Olivar if you can walk there from here. The Garfields would take you in.”

He thought about that for a while. “I don’t want to,”

he said. “I don’t think there’s any more future in Olivar than there was in our neighborhood. But at least in our neighborhood, we had the guns.”

“For all the good it did us,” Zahra muttered.

“I know. But they were our guns, not hired gunmen.

No one could turn them against us. In Olivar, from what Joanne said, no one’s allowed to have a gun except the security force. And who the hell are they?”

“Company people,” I said. “People from outside Olivar.”

He nodded. “That’s what I heard, too. Maybe it will be all right, but it doesn’t sound all right.”

“It sounds better than starving,” Zahra said. “You guys have never missed a meal, have you?”

“I’m going north,” I said. “I planned to go anyway once my family was back on its feet. Now I have no family, and I’m going.”

“North where?” Zahra demanded.

I ate four of them. They were delicious, and too ripe to travel well anyway.

“Why don’t you try on some of those clothes,” I said.

“Take what fits you.”

She fit not only into Marcus’s shirt and jeans—

though she had to roll the jeans legs up— but into his shoes. Shoes are expensive. Now she has two pair.

“You let me do it, I’ll trade these little shoes for some food,” she said.

I nodded. “Tomorrow. Whatever you get, we’ll split it.

Then I’m leaving.”

“Going north?”

“Yes.”

“Just north. Do you know anything about the roads and towns and where to buy stuff or steal it? Have you got money?”

“I have maps,” I said. “They’re old, but I think they’re still good. No one’s been building new roads lately.”

“Hell no. Money?”

“A little. Not enough, I suspect.”

“No such thing as enough money. What about him?”

She gestured toward Harry’s unmoving back. He was lying down. I couldn’t tell whether he was asleep or not.

“He has to decide for himself,” I said. “Maybe he wants to hang around to look for his family before he goes.”

He turned over slowly. He looked sick, but fully aware. Zahra put the peaches she had saved for him next to him.

“I don’t want to wait for anything,” he said. “I wish we could start now. I hate this place.”

“You going with her?” Zahra asked, jabbing a thumb at me.

He looked at me. “We might be able to help each other,” he said. “At least we know each other, and. .

.I managed to grab a few hundred dollars as I ran

out of the house.” He was offering trust. He meant we could trust each other. That was no small thing.

“I was thinking of traveling as a man,” I said to him.

He seemed to be repressing a smile. “That will be safer for you. You’re at least tall enough to fool people. You’ll have to cut your hair, though.”

Zahra grunted. “Mixed couples catch hell whether people think they’re gay or straight. Harry’ll piss off all the blacks and you’ll piss off all the whites. Good luck.”

I watched her as she said it, and realized what she wasn’t saying. “You want to come?” I asked.

She sniffed. “Why should I? I won’t cut my hair!”

“No need,” I said. “We can be a black couple and their white friend. If Harry can get a reasonable tan, maybe we can claim him as a cousin.”

She hesitated, then whispered, “Yeah, I want to go.”

And she started to cry. Harry stared at her in surprise.

“Did you think we were going to just dump you?” I asked, “All you had to do was let us know.”

“I don’t have any money,” she said. “Not a dollar.”

I sighed. “Where did you get those peaches.”

“You were right. I stole them.”

“You have a useful skill, then, and information about living out here.” I faced Harry. “What do you think?”

“Her stealing doesn’t bother you?” he asked “I mean to survive,” I said.

“`Thou shalt not steal,’” he quoted. “Years and years— a lifetime of `Thou shalt not steal.’”

I had to smother a flash of anger before I could answer. He wasn’t my father. He had no business quoting scripture at me. He was nobody. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t speak until I knew my voice would sound normal. Then, “I said I mean to survive,” I told him. “Don’t you?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t a criticism. I’m just surprised.”

“I hope it won’t ever mean getting caught or leaving someone else to starve,” I said. And to my own surprise, I smiled. “I’ve thought about it. That’s the way I feel, but I’ve never stolen anything.”

“You’re kidding!” Zahra said.

I shrugged. “It’s true. I grew up trying to set a good example for my brothers and trying to live up to my father’s expectations. That seemed like what I should be doing.”

“Oldest kid,” Harry said. “I know.” He was the oldest in his family.

“Oldest, hell,” Zahra said, laughing. “You’re both babies out here.”

And that wasn’t offensive, somehow. Perhaps because it was true. “I’m inexperienced,” I admitted.

“But I can learn. You’re going to be one of my teachers.”

“One?” she said. “Who have you got but me?”

“Everyone.”

She looked scornful. “No one.”

“Everyone who’s surviving out here knows things that I need to know,” I said. “I’ll watch them, I’ll listen to them, I’ll learn from them. If I don’t, I’ll be killed.

And like I said, I intend to survive.”

“They’ll sell you a bowl of shit,” she said.

I nodded. “I know. But I’ll buy as few of those as possible.”

She looked at me for a long time, then sighed. “I wish I’d known you better before all this happened,”

she said. “You’re a weird preacher’s kid. If you still want to play man, I’ll cut your hair for you.”

I took my many purchases out to what was once the ground floor of a parking structure, and was now a kind of semi-enclosed flea market. Many of the things dug out of ash heaps and landfills wind up for sale here. The rule is that if you buy something in the store, you can sell something of similar value in the structure. Your receipt, coded and dated, is your peddler’s license.

The structure was patrolled, though more to check these licenses than to keep anyone safe. Still, the structure was safer than the street.

I found Harry and Zahra sitting on our bundles, Harry

waiting to go into the store, and Zahra waiting for her license. They had put their backs against a wall of the store at a spot away from the street and away from the biggest crowd of buyers and sellers. I gave Zahra the receipt and began to separate and pack our new supplies. We would leave as soon as Zahra and Harry finished their buying and selling.

We walked down to the freeway— the 118— and turned west. We would take the 118 to the 23 and the 23 to U.S. 101. The 101 would take us up the coast toward Oregon. We became part of a broad river of people walking west on the freeway. Only a few straggled east against the current— east toward the mountains and the desert. Where were the westward walkers going? To something, or just away from here?

We saw a few trucks— most of them run at night-swarms of bikes or electric cycles, and two cars. All these had plenty of room to speed along the outer lanes past us. We’re safer if we keep to the left lanes away from the on and off ramps. It’s against the law in California to walk on the freeways, but the law is archaic. Everyone who walks walks on the freeways sooner or later. Freeways provide the most direct routes between cities and parts of cities. Dad walked or bicycled on them often. Some prostitutes and peddlers of food, water, and other necessities live along the freeways in sheds or shacks or in the open air. Beggars, thieves, and murderers live here, too.

But I’ve never walked a freeway before today. I found the experience both fascinating and frightening. In some ways, the scene reminded me of an old film I saw once of a street in mid-twentieth-century China— walkers, bicyclers, people carrying, pulling, pushing loads of all kinds.

But the freeway crowd is a heterogeneous mass-black and white, Asian and Latin, whole families are on the move with babies on backs or perched atop loads in carts, wagons or bicycle baskets, sometimes along with an old or handicapped person.

Other old, ill, or handicapped people hobbled along as best they could with the help of sticks or fitter companions. Many were armed with sheathed knives, rifles, and, of course, visible, holstered handguns. The occasional passing cop paid no attention.

Children cried, played, squatted, did everything except eat. Almost no one ate while walking. I saw a couple of people drink from canteens. They took quick, furtive gulps, as though they were doing something shameful— or something dangerous.

A woman alongside us collapsed. I got no impression of pain from her, except at the sudden impact of her body weight on her knees. That made me stumble, but not fall. The woman sat where she had fallen for a few seconds, then lurched to her feet and began walking again, leaning forward under her huge pack.

Almost everyone was filthy. Their bags and bundles and packs were filthy. They stank. And we, who have slept on concrete in ashes and dirt, and who have not bathed for three days— we fitted in pretty well. Only our new sleepsack packs gave us away as either new to the road or at least in possession of new stealables. We should have dirtied the packs a little before we got started. We will dirty them tonight.

I’ll see to it.

There were a few young guys around, lean and quick, some filthy, some not dirty at all. Keiths.

Today’s Keiths. The ones who bothered me most weren’t carrying much. Some weren’t carrying anything except weapons.

Predators. They looked around a lot, stared at people, and the people looked away. I looked away.

I was glad to see that Harry and Zahra did the same.

We didn’t need trouble. If trouble came, I hoped we could kill it and keep walking.

The gun was fully loaded now, and I wore it holstered, but half covered by my shirt. Harry bought himself a knife. The money he had snatched up as he ran from his burning house had not been enough to buy a gun. I could have bought a second gun, but it would have taken too much of my money, and we have a long way to go.

Zahra used the shoe money to buy herself a knife and a few personal things. I had refused my share of that money. She needed a few dollars in her pocket.

16

Earthseed

Cast on new ground

Must first perceive

That it knows nothing.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2027

(cont. from notes expandedAUGUST 8) Here are some of the things I’ve learned today: Walking hurts. I’ve never done enough walking to learn that before, but I know it now. It isn’t only the blisters and sore feet, although we’ve got those.

After a while, everything hurts. I think my back and shoulders would like to desert to another body.

Nothing eases the pain except rest. Even though we got a late start, we stopped twice today to rest. We went off the freeway, into hills or bushes to sit down, drink water, eat dried fruit and nuts. Then we went on. The days are long this time of year.

Sucking on a plum or apricot pit all day makes you feel less thirsty. Zahra told us that.

“When I was a kid,” she said, “there were times when I would put a little rock in my mouth. Anything to feel better. It’s a cheat, though. If you don’t drink enough water, you’ll die no matter how you feel.”

All three of us walked along with seeds in our mouths after our first stop, and we felt better. We drank only during our stops in the hills. It’s safer that way.

Also, cold camps are safer than cheery campfires.

Yet tonight we cleared some ground, dug into a hillside, and made a small fire in the hollow. There we cooked some of my acorn meal with nuts and fruit. It was wonderful. Soon we’ll run out of it and we’ll have to survive on beans, cornmeal, oats-expensive stuff from stores. Acorns are home-food, and home is gone.

Fires are illegal. You can see them flickering all over the hills, but they are illegal. Everything is so so dry that there’s always a danger of campfires getting away from people and taking out a community or two. It does happen. But people who have no homes will build fires. Even people like us who know what fire can do will build them. They give comfort, hot food, and a false sense of security.

While we were eating, and even after we’d finished, people drifted over and tried to join us. Most were harmless and easily gotten rid of. Three claimed they just wanted to get warm. The sun was still up, red on the horizon, and it was far from cold.

Three women wanted to know whether two studs like Harry and me didn’t need more than one woman. The women who asked this may have been cold, considering how few clothes they had on. It’s going to be strange for me, pretending to be a man.

“Couldn’t I just roast this potato in your coals?” and old man asked, showing us a withered potato.

We gave him some fire and sent him away— and watched to see where he went, since a burning brand could be either a weapon or a major distraction if he had friends hiding. It’s crazy to live this way, suspecting helpless old people. Insane.

But we need our paranoia to keep us alive. Hell, Harry wanted to let the old guy sit with us. It took Zahra and me together to let him know that wasn’t going to happen. Harry and I have been well-fed and protected all our lives. We’re strong and healthy and better educated than most people our age. But we’re stupid out here. We want to trust people. I fight against the impulse. Harry hasn’t learned to do that yet. We argued about it afterward, low voiced, almost whispering.

“Nobody’s safe, ” Zahra told him. No matter how pitiful they look, they can steal you naked. Little kids, skinny and big-eyed will make off with all your money, water, and food! I know. I used to do it to people. Maybe they died, I don’t know. But I didn’t die.”

Harry and I both stared at her. We knew so little about her life. But to me, at that moment, Harry was our most dangerous question mark.

“You’re strong and confident,” I said to him. “You think you can take care of yourself out here, and maybe you can. But think what a stab wound or a broken bone would mean out here: Disablement, slow death from infection or starvation, no medical care, nothing.”

He looked at me as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know me anymore. “What, then?” he asked. “Everyone’s guilty until proven innocent?

Guilty of what? And how do they prove themselves to you?”

“I don’t give a piss whether they’re innocent or not,”

Zahra said. “Let them tend to their own business.”

“Harry, your mind is still back in the neighborhood,” I said. “You still think a mistake is when your father yells at you or you break a finger or chip a tooth or something. Out here a mistake— one mistake— and you may be dead. Remember that guy today? What if that happened to us?”

We had seen a man robbed— a chubby guy of 35 or 40 who was walking along eating nuts out of a paper bag. Not smart. A little kid of 12 or 13 snatched the nuts and ran off with them. While the victim was distracted by the little kid, two bigger kids tripped him, cut his pack straps, dragged the pack off his back, and ran off with it. The whole thing happened so fast that no one could have interfered if they’d wanted to. No one tried. The victim was unhurt except for bruises and abrasions— the sort of thing I had to put up with every day back in the neighborhood. But the victim’s supplies were gone. If he had a home nearby and other supplies, he would be all right. Otherwise, his only way of surviving might be to rob someone else— if he could.

“Remember?” I asked Harry. “We don’t have to hurt anyone unless they push us into it, but we don’t dare let our guard down. We can’t trust people.”

Harry shook his head. “What if I thought that way when I pulled that guy off Zahra?”

I held on to my temper. “Harry, you know I don’t mean we shouldn’t trust or help each other. We know each other. We’ve made a commitment to travel together.”

“I’m not sure we do know each other.”

“I am. And we can’t afford your denial. You can’t afford it.”

He just stared at me.

“Out here, you adapt to your surroundings or you get killed,” I said. “That’s obvious!”

Now he did look at me as though I were a stranger. I looked back, hoping I knew him as well as I thought I did. He had a brain and he had courage. He just didn’t want to change .

“Do you want to break off with us,” Zahra asked, “go your own way without us?”

His gaze softened as he looked at her. “No,” he said.

“Of course not. But we don’t have to turn into animals, for godsake.”

“In a way, we do,” I said. “We’re a pack, the three of us, and all those other people out there aren’t in it. If we’re a good pack, and we work together, we have a chance. You can be sure we aren’t the only pack out here.”

He leaned back against a rock, and said with amazement, “You damn sure talk macho enough to be a guy.”

I almost hit him. Maybe Zahra and I would be better off without him. But no, that wasn’t true. Numbers mattered. Friendship mattered. One real male presence mattered.

“Don’t repeat that,” I whispered, leaning close to him. “Never say that again. There are other people all over these hills; you don’t know who’s listening.

You give me away and you weaken yourself!”

That reached him. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s bad out here,” Zahra said. “But most people make it if they’re careful. People weaker than us make it— if they’re careful.”

Harry gave a wan smile. “I hate this world already,”

he said.

“It’s not so bad if people stick together.”

He looked from her to me and back to her again. He smiled at her and nodded. It occurred to me then that he liked her, was attracted to her. That could be a problem for her later. She was a beautiful woman, and I would never be beautiful— which didn’t bother me. Boys had always seemed to like me. But Zahra’s looks grabbed male attention. If she and Harry get together, she could wind up carrying two heavy loads northward.

I was lost in thought about the two of them when Zahra nudged me with her foot.

Two big, dirty-looking guys were standing nearby, watching us, watching Zahra in particular.

I stood up, feeling the others stand with me, flanking me. These guys were too close to us. They meant to be too close. As I stood up, I put my hand on the gun.

“Yeah?” I said, “What do you want?”

“Not a thing,” one of them said, smiling at Zahra.

Both wore big holstered knives which they fingered.

I drew the gun. “Good deal,” I said.

Their smiles vanished. “What, you going to shoot us for standing here?” the talkative one said.

I thumbed the safety. I would shoot the talker, the leader. The other one would run away. He already wanted to run away. He was staring, open-mouthed, at the gun. By the time I collapsed, he would be gone.

“Hey, no trouble!” the talker raised his hands, backing away. “Take it easy, man.”

I let them go. I think it would have been better to shoot them. I’m afraid of guys like that— guys looking for trouble, looking for victims. But it seems I can’t quite shoot someone just because I’m afraid of him. I killed a man on the night of the fire, and I haven’t thought much about it. But this was different. It was like what Harry said about stealing. I’ve heard, “Thou shalt not kill,” all my life, but when you have to, you kill. I wonder what Dad would say about that. But then, he was the one who taught me to shoot.

“We’d better keep a damn good watch tonight,” I said. I looked at Harry, and was glad to see that he looked the way I probably had a moment before: mad and worried. “Let’s pass your watch and my gun around,” I told him. “Three hours per watcher.”

“You know I’ll take care of it,” I told him.

He nodded. “You be careful,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I put the watch on, pulled the elastic of my sleeve down over it so that the glow of the dial wouldn’t be visible by accident, and sat back against the hill to make a few quick notes. While there was still some natural light, I could write and watch.

Zahra watched me for a while, then laid her hand on my arm. “Teach me to do that,” she whispered.

I looked at her, not understanding, “Teach me to read and write.”

I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. Where, in a life like hers, had there been time or money for school. And once Richard Moss bought her, her jealous co-wives wouldn’t have taught her.

“You should have come to us back in the neighborhood,” I said. “We would have set up lessons for you.”

“Richard wouldn’t let me. He said I already knew enough to suit him.”

I groaned. “I’ll teach you. We can start tomorrow morning if you want.”

“Okay.” She gave me an odd smile and began ordering her bag and her few possessions, bundled in my scavenged pillowcase. She lay down in her bag and turned on her side to look at me. “I didn’t think I’d like you,” she said. “Preacher’s kid, all over the place, teaching, telling everybody what to do, sticking your damn nose in everything. But you ain’t bad.”

I went from surprise into amusement of my own.

“Neither are you,” I said.

“You didn’t like me either?” Her turn to be surprised.

“You were the best looking woman in the neighborhood. No, I wasn’t crazy about you. And remember a couple of years ago when you tried your hardest to make me throw up while I was learning to clean and skin rabbits.”

“Why’d you want to learn that, anyway?” she asked.

“Blood, guts, worms… . I just figured, `There she goes again, sticking her nose where it don’t belong.

Well, let her have it!”’

“I wanted to know that I could do that— handle a dead animal, skin it, butcher it, treat its hide to make leather. I wanted to know how to do it, and that I could do it without getting sick.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought someday I might have to. And we might out here. Same reason I put together an emergency pack and kept it where I could grab it.”

“I wondered about that— about you having all that stuff from home, I mean. At first I thought maybe you got it all when you went back. But no, you were ready for all the trouble. You saw it coming.”

“No.” I shook my head, remembering. “No one could have been ready for that. But… . I thought something would happen someday. I didn’t know how bad it would be or when it would come. But everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn’t believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.”

She turned again and lay on her back, staring upward at the stars. “I should have seen some of that stuff,” she said. “But I didn’t. Those big walls.

And everybody had a gun. There were guards every night. I thought… . I thought we were so strong.”

I put my notebook and pen down, sat on my sleepsack, and put my own pillowcased bundle behind me. Mine was lumpy and uncomfortable to lean on. I wanted it uncomfortable. I was tired.

Everything ached. Given a little comfort, I would fall asleep.

The sun was down now, and our fire had gone out except for a few glowing coals. I drew the gun and held it in my lap. If I needed it at all, I would need it fast. We weren’t strong enough to survive slowness or stupid mistakes.

I sat where I was for three weary, terrifying hours.

Nothing happened to me, but I could see and hear things happening. There were people moving around the hills, sometimes silhouetting themselves against the sky as they ran or walked over the tops of hills. I saw groups and individuals. Twice I saw dogs, distant, but alarming. I heard a lot of gunfire-individual shots and short bursts of automatic weapons fire. That last and the dogs worried me, scared me. A pistol would be no protection against a machine gun or automatic rifle. And dogs might not know enough to be afraid of guns. Would a pack keep coming if I shot two or three of its members? I sat in a cold sweat, longing for walls— or at least for another magazine or two for the gun.

It was nearly midnight when I woke Harry, gave him the gun and the watch, and made him as uncomfortable as I could by warning him about the dogs, the gunfire, and the many people who wandered around at night. He did look awake and alert enough when I lay down.

I fell asleep at once. Aching and exhausted, I found the hard ground as welcoming as my bed at home.

A shout awoke me. Then I heard gunfire— several single shots, thunderous and nearby. Harry?

Something fell across me before I could get out of my sleepsack— something big and heavy. It knocked the breath out of me. I struggled to get it off me, knowing that it was a human body, dead or unconscious. As I pushed at it and felt its heavy beard stubble and long hair, I realized it was a man, and not Harry. Some stranger.

I heard scrambling and thrashing near me. There were grunts and sounds of blows. A fight. I could see them in the darkness— two figures struggling on the ground. The one on the bottom was Harry.

He was fighting someone over the gun, and he was losing. The muzzle was being forced toward him.

That couldn’t happen. We couldn’t lose the gun or Harry. I took a small granite boulder from our fire pit, set my teeth,and brought it down with all my strength on the back of the intruder’s head. And I brought myself down.

It wasn’t the worst pain I had ever shared, but it came close. I was worthless after delivering that one blow. I think I was unconscious for a while.

Then Zahra appeared from somewhere, feeling me, trying to see me. She wouldn’t find a wound, of course.

I sat up, fending her off, and saw that Harry was there too.

“Are they dead?” I asked.

“Never mind them,” he said. “Are you all right?”

I got up, swaying from the residual shock of the blow. I felt sick and dizzy, and my head hurt. A few days before, Harry had made me feel that way and we’d both recovered. Did that mean the man I’d hit would recover?

I checked him. He was still alive, unconscious, not feeling any pain now. What I was feeling was my own reaction to the blow I’d struck.

“The other one’s dead,” Harry said. “This one… .

Well, you caved in the back of his head. I don’t know why he’s still alive.”

“Oh, no,” I whispered. “Oh hell.” And then to Harry.

“Give me the gun.”

“Why?” he asked.

My fingers had found the blood and broken skull, soft and pulpy at the back of the stranger’s head.

Harry was right. He should have been dead.

“Give me the gun.” I repeated, and held out a bloody hand for it. “Unless you want to do this yourself.”

“You can’t shoot him. You can’t just… .”

“I hope you’d find the courage to shoot me if I were like that, and out here with no medical care to be had. We shoot him, or leave him here alive. How long do you think it will take him to die?”

“Maybe he won’t die.”

I went to my pack, struggling to navigate without throwing up. I pulled it away from the dead man, groped within it, and found my knife. It was a good knife, sharp and strong. I flicked it open and cut the unconscious man’s throat with it.

Not until the flow of blood stopped did I feel safe.

The man’s heart had pumped his life away into the ground. He could not regain consciousness and involve me in his agony.

But, of course, I was far from safe. Perhaps the last two people from my old life were about to leave me. I had shocked and horrified them. I wouldn’t blame them for leaving.

“Strip the bodies,” I said. “Take what they have, then

we’ll put them into the scrub oaks down the hill where we gathered wood.”

I searched the man I had killed, found a small amount of money in his pants pocket and a larger amount in his right sock. Matches, a packet of almonds, a packet of dried meat, and a packet of small, round, purple pills. I found no knife, no weapon of any kind. So this was not one of the pair that sized us up earlier in the night. I hadn’t thought so. Neither of them had been long-haired. Both of these were.

I put the pills back in the pocket I had taken them from. Everything else, I kept. The money would help sustain us. The food might or might or might not be edible. I would decide that when I could see it clearly.

“No,” I said. “I don’t get the damage. Just the pain.”

“But, I mean it felt like you hit yourself?”

I nodded. “Close enough. When I was little, I used to bleed along with people if I hurt them or even if I saw them hurt. I haven’t done that for a few years.”

“But if they’re unconscious or dead, you don’t feel anything.”

“That’s right.”

“So that’s why you killed that guy?”

“I killed him because he was a threat to us. To me in

a special way, but to you too. What could we have done about him? Abandon him to the flies, the ants, and the dogs? You might have been willing to do that, but would Harry? Could we stay with him? For how long? To what purpose? Or would we dare to hunt up a cop and try to report seeing a guy hurt without involving ourselves. Cops are not trusting people. I think they would want to check us out, hang on to us for a while, maybe charge us with attacking the guy and killing his friend. I turned to look at Harry who had not said a word. “What would you have done?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice hard with disapproval. “I only know I wouldn’t have done what you did.”

“I wouldn’t have asked you to do it,” I said. “I didn’t ask you. But, Harry, I would do it again. I might have to do it again. That’s why I’m telling you this.” I glanced at Zahra. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I knew I should, but talking about it is…hard. Very hard. I’ve never told anyone before. Now… .” I took a deep breath. “Now everything’s up to you.”

“What do you mean?” Harry demanded.

I looked at him, wishing I could see his expression well enough to know whether this was a real question. I didn’t think it was. I decided to ignore him.

“So what do you think?” I asked, looking at Zahra.

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Then Zahra began to speak, began to say such terrible things in that soft voice of hers. After a moment, I wasn’t sure she was talking to us.

I took his hands, looked at their big, pale, blunt fingers. They had a lot of strength in them, I knew, but I had never seen him use it to bully anyone. He was worth some trouble, Harry was.

“No one is who we think they are,” I said. “That’s what we get for not being telepathic. But you’ve trusted me so far— and I’ve trusted you. I’ve just put my life in your hands. What are you going to do?”

Was he going to abandon me now to my “infirmity”-instead of me maybe abandoning him at some future time due to a theoretical broken arm. And I thought: One oldest kid to another, Harry; would that be responsible behavior?

He took his hands back. “Well, I did know you were a manipulative bitch,” he said.

Zahra smothered a laugh. I was surprised. I’d never heard him use the word before. I heard it now as a sound of frustration. He wasn’t going to leave. He was a last bit of home that I didn’t have to give up yet. How did he feel about that? Was he angry with me for almost breaking up the group? He had reason to be, I suppose.

“I don’t understand how you could have been like this all the time,” he said. “How could you hide your sharing from everyone?”

“My father taught me to hide it,” I told him. “He was right. In this world, there isn’t any room for housebound, frightened, squeamish people, and that’s what I might have become if everyone had known about me— all the other kids, for instance.

Little kids are vicious. Haven’t you noticed?”

“But your brothers must have known.”

“My father put the fear of God into them about it. He could do that. As far as I know, they never told anyone. Keith used to play `funny’ tricks on me, though.”

“So…you faked everyone out. You must be a hell of an actor.”

“I had to learn to pretend to be normal. My father kept trying to convince me that I was normal. He was wrong about that, but I’m glad he taught me the way he did.”

“Maybe you are normal. I mean if the pain isn’t real, then maybe— ”

“Maybe this sharing thing is all in my head? Of course it is! And I can’t get it out. Believe me, I’d love to.”

17

Embrace diversity.

Unite—

Or be divided,

robbed,

ruled,

killed

By those who see you as prey.

Embrace diversity

Or be destroyed.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2027

(from notes expanded AUGUST 8)

There’s a big fire in the hills to the east of us. We saw it begin as a thin, dark column of smoke, rising into an otherwise clear sky. Now it’s massive— a hillside or two? Several buildings? Many houses?

Our neighborhood again?

We kept looking at it, then looking away. Other people dying, losing their families, their homes… .

Even when we had walked past it, we looked back.

Had the people with painted faces done this, too?

Zahra was crying as she walked along, cursing in a voice so soft that I could hear only a few of the bitter words.

Earlier today we left the 118 freeway to look for and finally connect with the 23. Now we’re on the 23 with charred overgrown wilderness on one side and neighborhoods on the other. We can’t see the fire itself now. We’ve passed it, come a long way from it, put hills between it and us as we head southward toward the coast. But we can still see the smoke. We didn’t stop for the night until it was almost dark and we were all tired and hungry.

We’ve camped away from the freeway on the wilderness side of it, out of sight, but not out of hearing of the shuffling hoards of people on the move. I think that’s a sound we’ll hear for the whole of our journey whether we stop in Northern California or go through to Canada. So many people hoping for so much up where it still rains every year, and an uneducated person might still get a job that pays in money instead of beans, water, potatoes, and maybe a floor to sleep on.

But it’s the fire that holds our attention. Maybe it was started by accident. Maybe not. But still, people are losing what they may not be able to replace. Even if they survive, insurance isn’t worth much these days.

People on the highway, shadowy in the darkness, had begun to reverse the flow, to drift northward to find a way to the fire. Best to be early for the scavenging.

“Should we go?” Zahra asked, her mouth full of dried meat. We built no fire tonight. Best for us to vanish into the darkness and avoid guests. We had put a tangle of trees and bushes at our backs and hoped for the best.

“You mean go back and rob those people?” Harry demanded.

On the other hand, my Earthseed verses had surprised him, and, I think, pleased him a little. I wasn’t sure whether he liked the writing or the reasoning, but he liked having something to read and talk about.

“Poetry?” he said this morning as he looked through the pages I showed him— pages of my Earthseed notebook, as it happened. “I never knew you cared about poetry.”

“A lot of it isn’t very poetical,” I said. “But it’s what I believe, and I’ve written it as well as I could.” I showed him four verses in all— gentle, brief verses that might take hold of him without his realizing it and live in his memory without his intending that they should. Bits of the Bible had done that to me, staying with me even after I stopped believing.

I gave to Harry, and through him to Zahra, thoughts I wanted them to keep. But I couldn’t prevent Harry from keeping other things as well: His new distrust of me, for instance, almost his new dislike. I was not quite Lauren Olamina to him any longer. I had seen that in his expression off and on all day. Odd.

Joanne hadn’t liked her glimpse of the real me either. On the other hand, Zahra didn’t seem to mind. But then, she hadn’t known me very well at home. What she learned now, she could accept without feeling lied to. Harry did feel lied to, and perhaps he wondered what lies I was still telling or living. Only time could heal that— if he let it.

We moved when he came back. He had found us a new campsite, near the freeway and yet private. One of the huge freeway signs had fallen or been knocked down, and now lay on the ground, propped up by a pair of dead sycamore trees. With the trees, it formed a massive lean-to. The rock and ash leavings of a campfire showed us that the place had been used before. Perhaps there had been people here tonight, but they had gone away to see what they could scavenge from the fire. Now we’re here, happy to get a little privacy, a view of the hills back where the fire is, and the security, for what it was worth, of at least one wall.

“Good deal!” Zahra said, unrolling her sleepsack and settling down on top of it. “I’ll take the first watch tonight, okay?”

It was okay with me. I gave her the gun and lay down, eager for sleep. Again I was amazed to find so much comfort in sleeping on the ground in my clothes. There’s no narcotic like exhaustion.

Sometime in the night I woke up to soft, small sounds of voices and breathing. Zahra and Harry were making love. I turned my head and saw them at it, though they were too much involved with each other to notice me.

And, of course, no one was on watch.

I got caught up in their lovemaking, and had all I could do to lie still and keep quiet. I couldn’t escape their sensation. I couldn’t keep an efficient watch. I could either writhe with them or hold myself rigid. I held rigid until they finished— until Harry kissed Zahra, then got up to put his pants on and began his watch.

And I lay awake afterward, angry and worried. How in hell could I talk to either of them about this? It would be none of my business except for the time they chose for doing it. But look when that was! We could all have been killed.

Still sitting up, Harry began to snore.

I listened for a couple of minutes, then sat up, reached over Zahra, and shook him.

He jumped awake, stared around, then turned toward me. I couldn’t see more than a moving silhouette.

“Give me the gun and go back to sleep,” I said.

He just sat there.

“Harry, you’ll get us killed. Give me the gun and the watch and lie down. I’ll wake you later.”

He looked at the watch.

“Sorry,” he said. “Guess I was more tired than I thought.” His voice grew less sleep-fogged. “I’m all right. I’m awake. Go back to sleep.”

His pride had kicked in. It would be almost impossible to get the gun and the watch from him now.

I lay down. “Remember last night,” I said. “If you care about her at all, if you want her to live, remember last night.”

He didn’t answer. I hoped I had surprised him. I supposed I had also embarrassed him. And maybe I had made him feel angry and defensive. Whatever I’d done, I didn’t hear him doing any more snoring.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2027

Today we stopped at a commercial water station and filled ourselves and all our containers with clean, safe water. Commercial stations are best for that.

Anything you buy from a water peddler on the freeway ought to be boiled, and still might not be safe. Boiling kills disease organisms, but may do nothing to get rid of chemical residue— fuel, pesticide, herbicide, whatever else has been in the bottles that peddlers use. The fact that most peddlers can’t read makes the situation worse. They sometimes poison themselves.

Commercial stations let you draw whatever you pay for— and not a drop more— right out of one of their taps. You drink whatever the local householders are drinking. It might taste, smell, or look bad, but you can depend on it not to kill you.

There aren’t enough water stations. That’s why water peddlers exist. Also, water stations are dangerous places. People going in have money.

People coming out have water, which is as good as money. Beggars and thieves hang around such places— keeping the whores and drug dealers company. Dad warned us all about water stations, trying to prepare us in case we ever went out and got caught far enough from home to be tempted to stop for water. His advice: “Don’t do it. Suffer. Get your rear end home.”

Yeah.

Three is the smallest comfortable number at a water station. Two to watch and one to fill up. And it’s good to have three ready for trouble on the way to and from the station. Three would not stop determined thugs, but it would stop opportunists— and most predators are opportunists. They prey on old people, lone women or women with young kids, handicapped people… . They don’t want to get hurt.

My father used to call them coyotes. When he was being polite, he called them coyotes.

We were coming away with our water when we saw a pair of two-legged coyotes grab a bottle of water from a woman who was carrying a sizable pack and a baby. The man with her grabbed the coyote who had taken the water, the coyote passed the water to his partner, and his partner ran straight into us.

I tripped him. I think it was the baby who attracted my attention, my sympathy. The tough plastic bubble that held the water didn’t break. The coyote didn’t break either. I set my teeth, sharing the jolt as he fell and the pain of his scraped forearms. Back home, the younger kids hit me with that kind of thing every day.

I stepped back from the coyote and put my hand on the gun. Harry stepped up beside me. I was glad to have him there. We looked more intimidating together.

The husband of the woman had thrown off his attacker, and the two coyotes, finding themselves outnumbered, scampered away. Skinny, scared little bastards out to do their daily stealing.

I picked up the plastic bubble of water and handed it to the man.

He took it and said, “Thanks man. Thanks a lot.”

I nodded and we went on our way. It still felt strange to be called “man.” I didn’t like it, but that didn’t matter.

“All of a sudden you’re a good Samaritan,” Harry said. But he didn’t mind. There was no disapproval in his voice.

“It was the baby, wasn’t it?” Zahra asked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “The family, really. All of them together.” All of them together. They had been a black man, a Hispanic-looking woman, and a baby who managed to look a little like both of them. In a few more years, a lot of the families back in the neighborhood would have looked like that. Hell, Harry and Zahra were working on starting a family like that. And as Zahra had once observed, mixed couples catch hell out here.

Yet there were Harry and Zahra, walking so close together that they couldn’t help now and then brushing against each other. But they kept alert, looked around. We were on U.S. 101 now, and there were even more walkers. Even clumsy thieves would have no trouble losing themselves in this crowd.

But Zahra and I had had a talk this morning during her reading lesson. We were supposed to be working on the sounds of letters and the spelling of simple words. But when Harry went off to the bushes of our designated toilet area, I stopped the lesson.

“Remember what you said to me a couple of days ago?” I asked her. “My mind was wandering and you warned me. `People get killed on freeways all the time,’ you said.”

To my surprise, she saw where I was headed at once. “Damn you,” she said, looking up from the paper I had given her. “You don’t sleep sound enough, that’s all.” She smiled as she said it.

“You want privacy, I’ll give it to you,” I said. “Just let me know, and I’ll guard the camp from someplace a short distance away. You two can do what you want.

But no more of this shit when you’re on watch!”

She looked surprised. “Didn’t think you said words like that.”

“And I didn’t think you did things like last night.

Dumb!”

“I know. Fun, though. He’s a big strong boy.” She paused. “You jealous?”

“Zahra!”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Things took me by surprise last night. I…I needed something, someone. It won’t be like that no more.”

“Okay.”

“You jealous?” she repeated.

I made myself smile. “I’m as human as you are,” I said. “But I don’t think I would have yielded to temptation out here with no prospects, no idea what’s going to happen. The thought of getting pregnant would have stopped me cold.”

“People have babies out here all the time.” She grinned at me. “What about you and that boyfriend of yours.”

“We were careful. We used condoms.”

Zahra shrugged. “Well Harry and me didn’t. If it happens, it happens.”

It had apparently happened to the couple whose water we had saved. Now they had a baby to lug

north.

They stayed near us today, that couple. I saw them every now and then. Tall, stocky, velvet-skinned, deep-black man carrying a huge pack; short, pretty, stocky, light-brown woman with baby and pack; medium brown baby a few months old— huge-eyed baby with curly black hair.

They rested when we rested. They’re camped now not far behind us. They look more like potential allies than potential dangers, but I’ll keep an eye on them.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2027

Late today we came within sight of the ocean. None of us have ever seen it before, and we had to go closer, look at it, camp within sight and sound and smell of it. Once we had decided to do that, we walked shoeless in the waves, pants legs rolled up.

Sometimes we just stood and stared at it: the Pacific Ocean— the largest, deepest body of water on earth, almost half-a-world of water. Yet, as it was, we couldn’t drink any of it.

Harry stripped down to his underwear and waded out until the cool water reached his chest. He can’t swim, of course. None of us can swim. We’ve never before seen water enough to swim in. Zahra and I watched Harry with a lot of concern. Neither of us felt free to follow him. I’m supposed to be a man and Zahra attracts enough of the wrong kind of attention with all her clothes on. We decided to wait until after sundown and go in fully clothed, just to wash away some of the grime and stink. Then we could change clothes. We both had soap and we were eager to make use of it.

There were other people on the beach. In fact, the narrow strip of sand was crowded with people, though they managed to stay out of each others’

way. They had spread themselves out and seemed far more tolerant of one another than they had during our night in the hills. I didn’t hear any shooting or fighting. There were no dogs, no obvious thefts, no rape. Perhaps the sea and the cool breeze lulled them. Harry wasn’t the only one to strip down and go into the water. Quite a few women had gone out, wearing almost nothing. Maybe this was a safer place than any we’d seen so far.

Some people had tents, and several had built fires.

We settled in against the remnants of a small building. We were always, it seemed, looking for walls to shield us. Was it better to have them and perhaps get trapped against them or to camp in the open and be vulnerable on every side? We didn’t know. It just felt better to have at least one wall.

I salvaged a flat piece of wood from the building, went a few yards closer to the ocean, and began to dig into the sand. I dug until I found dampness. Then I waited.

“What’s supposed to happen?” Zahra asked. Until now she had watched me without saying anything.

“Drinkable water,” I told her. “According to a couple of books I read, water is supposed to seep up through the sand with most of the salt filtered out of it.”

She looked into the damp hole. “When?” she asked.

I dug a little more. “Give it time,” I said. “If the trick works, we ought to know about it. It might save our lives someday.”

“Or poison us or give us a disease,” she said. She looked up to see Harry coming toward us, dripping wet. Even his hair was wet.

“He don’t look bad naked,” she said.

He was still wearing his underwear, of course, but I could see what she meant. He had a nice, strong-looking body, and I don’t think he minded our looking at it. And he looked clean and he didn’t stink.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2027

Late today we came within sight of the ocean. None of us have ever seen it before, and we had to go closer, look at it, camp within sight and sound and smell of it. Once we had decided to do that, we walked shoeless in the waves, pants legs rolled up.

Sometimes we just stood and stared at it: the Pacific Ocean— the largest, deepest body of water on earth, almost half-a-world of water. Yet, as it was, we couldn’t drink any of it.

Harry stripped down to his underwear and waded out until the cool water reached his chest. He can’t swim, of course. None of us can swim. We’ve never before seen water enough to swim in. Zahra and I watched Harry with a lot of concern. Neither of us felt free to follow him. I’m supposed to be a man and Zahra attracts enough of the wrong kind of attention with all her clothes on. We decided to wait until after sundown and go in fully clothed, just to wash away some of the grime and stink. Then we could change clothes. We both had soap and we were eager to make use of it.

There were other people on the beach. In fact, the narrow strip of sand was crowded with people, though they managed to stay out of each others’

way. They had spread themselves out and seemed far more tolerant of one another than they had during our night in the hills. I didn’t hear any shooting or fighting. There were no dogs, no obvious thefts, no rape. Perhaps the sea and the cool breeze lulled them. Harry wasn’t the only one to strip down and go into the water. Quite a few women had gone out, wearing almost nothing. Maybe this was a safer place than any we’d seen so far.

Some people had tents, and several had built fires.

We settled in against the remnants of a small building. We were always, it seemed, looking for walls to shield us. Was it better to have them and perhaps get trapped against them or to camp in the open and be vulnerable on every side? We didn’t know. It just felt better to have at least one wall.

I salvaged a flat piece of wood from the building, went a few yards closer to the ocean, and began to dig into the sand. I dug until I found dampness. Then I waited.

“What’s supposed to happen?” Zahra asked. Until now she had watched me without saying anything.

“Drinkable water,” I told her. “According to a couple of books I read, water is supposed to seep up through the sand with most of the salt filtered out of it.”

She looked into the damp hole. “When?” she asked.

I dug a little more. “Give it time,” I said. “If the trick works, we ought to know about it. It might save our lives someday.”

“Or poison us or give us a disease,” she said. She looked up to see Harry coming toward us, dripping wet. Even his hair was wet.

“He don’t look bad naked,” she said.

He was still wearing his underwear, of course, but I could see what she meant. He had a nice, strong-looking body, and I don’t think he minded our looking at it. And he looked clean and he didn’t stink.

“So do you mind?” I asked again.

They looked at each other.

“I don’t mind,” Zahra said. “Long as we keep an eye on them.”

“Why do you want them?” Harry asked, watching me.

“They need us more than we need them,” I said.

“That’s not a reason.”

“They’re potential allies.”

“We don’t need allies.”

“Not now. But we’d be damned fools to wait and try to get them when we do need them. By then, they might not be around.”

He shrugged and sighed. “All right. Like Zahra says, as long as we watch them.”

I got up and went over to the couple. I could see them straighten and go tense as I approached. I was careful not to go too close or move too fast.

“Hello,” I said. “If you two would like to take turns bathing, you can come over and join us. That might be safer for the baby.”

“Join you?” the man said. “You’re asking us to join you?”

“Inviting you.”

“Why?”

“Why not. We’re natural allies— the mixed couple and the mixed group.”

“Allies?” the man said, and he laughed.

I looked at him, wondering why he laughed.

“What the hell do you really want?” he demanded.

I sighed. “Come join us if you want to. You’re welcome, and in a pinch, five is better than two.” I turned and left them. Let them talk it over and decide.

“They coming?” Zahra asked when I got back.

“I think so,” I said. “Although maybe not tonight.”

FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 2027

We built a fire and had a hot meal last night, but the mixed family did not join us. I didn’t blame them.

People stay alive out here by being suspicious. But they didn’t go away either. And it was no accident that they had chosen to stay near us. It was a good thing for them that they were near us. The peaceful beach scene changed late last night. Dogs came onto the sand.

They came during my watch. I saw movement far down the beach and I focused on it. Then there was shouting, screams. I thought it was a fight or a robbery. I didn’t see the dogs until they broke away from a group of humans and ran inland. One of them was carrying something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I watched them until they vanished inland.

People chased them for a short distance, but the dogs were too fast. Someone’s property was lost-someone’s food, no doubt.

I was on edge after that. I got up, moved to the inland end of our wall, sat there where I could see more of the beach. I was there, sitting still with the gun in my lap then I spotted movement perhaps a long city block up the beach. Dark forms against pale sand. More dogs. Three of them. They nosed around the sand for a moment, then headed our way. I sat as still as I could, watching. So many people slept without posting watches. The three dogs wandered among the camps, investigating what they pleased, and no one tried to drive them away. On the other hand, people’s oranges, potatoes, and grain meal couldn’t be very tempting to a dog. Our small supply of dried meat might be another matter. But no dog would get it.

But the dogs stopped at the camp of the mixed couple. I remembered the baby and jumped up. At the same moment, the baby began to cry. I shoved Zahra with my foot and she came awake all at once.

She could to that.

“Dogs,” I said. “Wake Harry.” Then I headed for the mixed couple. The woman was screaming and beating at a dog with her hands. A second dog was dodging the man’s kicks and going for the baby.

Only the third dog was clear of the family.

I stopped, slipped the safety, and as the third dog went in toward the baby, I shot it.

The dog dropped without a sound. I dropped, too, gasping, feeling kicked in the chest. It surprised me how hard the loose sand was to fall on.

At the crack of the shot, the other two dogs took off inland. From my prone position, I sighted on them as they ran. I might have been able to pick off one more of them, but I let them go. I hurt enough already. I couldn’t catch my breath, it seemed. As I gasped, though, it occurred to me that prone was a good shooting position for me. Sharing would be less able to incapacitate me at once if I shot two-handed and prone. I filed the knowledge away for future use.

Also, it was interesting that the dogs had been frightened by my shot. Was it the sound that scared them or the fact that one of them had been hit? I wish I knew more about them. I’ve read books about them being intelligent, loyal pets, but that’s all in the past. Dogs now are wild animals who will eat a baby if they can.

I felt that the dog I had shot was dead. It wasn’t moving. But by now a lot of people were awake and moving around. A living dog, even wounded, would be frantic to get away.

The pain in my chest began to ebb. When I could breathe without gasping, I stood up and walked back to our camp. There was so much confusion by then that no one noticed me except Harry and Zahra.

Harry came out to meet me. He took the gun from my hand, then took my arm and steered me back to my sleepsack.

“So you hit something,” he said as I sat gasping again from the small exertion.

“Is your baby all right?” I asked.

“He had scratches and sand in his eyes and mouth from being dragged.” She stroked the sleeping baby’s black hair. “I put salve on the scratches and washed his eyes. He’s all right now. He’s so good.

He only cried a little bit.”

“Hardly ever cries,” Travis said with quiet pride.

Travis has an unusual deep-black complexion— skin so smooth that I can’t believe he has ever in his life had a pimple. Looking at him makes me want to touch him and see how all that perfect skin feels.

He’s young, good looking, and intense— a stocky, muscular man, tall, but a little shorter and a little heavier than Harry. Natividad is stocky, too— a pale brown woman with a round, pretty face long black hair bound up in a coil atop her head. She’s short, but it isn’t surprising somehow that she can carry a pack and a baby and keep up a steady pace all day.

I like her, feel inclined to trust her. I’ll have to be careful about that. But I don’t believe she would steal from us. Travis has not accepted us yet, but she has. We’ve helped her baby. We’re her friends.

“We’re going to Seattle,” she told us. “Travis has an aunt there. She says we can stay with her until we find work. We want to find work that pays money.”

“Don’t we all,” Zahra agreed. She sat on Harry’s sleepsack with him, his arm around her. Tonight could be tiresome for me.

Travis and Natividad sat on their three sacks, spread out to give their baby room to crawl when he woke up. Natividad had harnessed him to her wrist with a length of clothesline.

I felt alone between the two couples. I let them talk about their hopes and rumors of northern edens. I took out my notebook and began to write up the day’s events, still savoring the last of the chocolate.

The baby awoke hungry and crying. Natividad opened her loose shirt, gave him a breast, and moved over near me to see what I was doing.

“You can read and write,” she said with surprise. “I thought you might be drawing. What are you writing?”

“She’s always writing,” Harry said. “Ask to read her poetry. Some of it isn’t bad.”

I winced. My name is androgynous, in pronunciation at least— Lauren sounds like the more masculine Loren. But pronouns are more specific, and still a problem for Harry.

“She?” Travis asked right on cue. “Her?”

“Damn it, Harry,” I said. “We forgot to buy that tape for your mouth.”

He shook his head, then gave me an embarrassed smile. “I’ve known you all my life. It isn’t easy to remember to switch all your pronouns. I think it’s all right this time, though.”

“I told you so!” Natividad said to her husband. Then she looked embarrassed. “I told him you didn’t look like a man,” she said to me. “You’re tall and strong, but…I don’t know. You don’t have a man’s face.”

I had, almost, a man’s chest and hips, so maybe I should be glad to hear that I didn’t have a man’s face— though it wasn’t going to help me on the road.

“We believed two men and a woman would be more likely to survive than two women and a man,” I said.

“Out here, the trick is to avoid confrontation by looking strong.”

“The three of us aren’t going to help you look strong,” Travis said. He sounded bitter. Did he resent the baby and Natividad?

“You are our natural allies,” I said. “You sneered at that last time I said it, but it’s true. The baby won’t weaken us much, I hope, and he’ll have a better chance of surviving with five adults around him.”

“I can take care of my wife and my son,” Travis said with more pride than sense. I decided not to hear him.

“I think you and Natividad will strengthen us,” I said.

“Two more pairs of eyes, two more pairs of hands.

Do you have knives?”

“Yes.” He patted his pants pocket. “I wish we had guns like you.”

I wished we had guns— plural— too. But I didn’t say so. “You and Natividad look strong and healthy,” I said. “Predators will look at a group like the five of us and move on to easier prey.”

Travis grunted, still noncommittal. Well, I had helped him twice, and now I was a woman. It might take him a while to forgive me for that, no matter how grateful he was.

“I want to hear some of your poetry,” Natividad said.

“The man we worked for, his wife used to write poetry. She would read it to me sometimes when she was feeling lonely. I liked it. Read me something of yours before it gets too dark.”

Odd to think of a rich woman reading to her maid-which was who Natividad had been. Maybe I had the wrong idea of rich women. But then, everyone gets lonely. I put my journal down and picked up my book of Earthseed verses. I chose soft, nonpreachy verses, good for road-weary minds and bodies.

18

Once or twice

each week

A Gathering of Earthseed

is a good and necessary thing.

It vents emotion, then

quiets the mind.

It focuses attention,

strengthens purpose, and

unifies people.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2027

“You believe in all this Earthseed stuff, don’t you?”

Travis asked me.

It was our day off, our day of rest. We had left the highway to find a beach where we could camp for the day and night and be comfortable. The Santa Barbara beach we had found included a partly burned park where there were trees and tables. It wasn’t crowded, and we could have a little daytime privacy. The water was only a short walk away. The two couples took turns disappearing while I watched their packs and the baby. Interesting that the Douglases were already comfortable trusting me with all that was precious to them. We didn’t trust them to watch alone last night or the night before, though we did make them watch. We had no walls to put our backs against last night so it was useful to have two watchers at a time. Natividad watched with me and Travis watched with Harry. Finally, Zahra watched alone.

I organized that, feeling that it was the schedule that would be most comfortable to both couples. Neither would be required to trust the other too much.

Now, amid the outdoor tables, firepits, pines, palms, and sycamores, trust seems not to be a problem. If you turn your back to the burned portion which is barren and ugly, this is a beautiful place, and it’s far enough from the highway not to be found by the ever-flowing river of people moving north. I found it because I had maps— in particular, a street map of much of Santa Barbara County. My grandparents’

maps helped us explore away from the highway even though many street signs were fallen or gone.

There were enough left for us to find beaches when we were near them.

There were locals at this beach— people who had left real homes to spend an August day at the beach. I eavesdropped on a few fragments of conversation and found out that much.

Then I tried talking to some of them. To my surprise, most were willing to talk. Yes, the park was beautiful except where some painted fools had set fires. The rumors were that they did it to fight for the poor, to expose or destroy the goods hoarded by the rich.

But a park by the sea wasn’t goods. It was open to everyone. Why burn it? No one knew why.

No one knew where the fad of painting yourself and getting high on drugs and fire had come from, either.

Most people suspected it had begun in Los Angeles where, according to them, most stupid or wicked things began. Local prejudice. I didn’t tell any of them I was from the L.A. area. I just smiled and asked about the local job situation. Some people said they knew where I could work to earn a meal or a “safe” place to sleep, but no one knew where I could earn money. That didn’t mean there weren’t any such jobs, but if there were, they would be hard to find and harder to qualify for. That’s going to be a problem wherever we go. And yet we know a lot, the three of us, the five of us. We know how to do a great many things. There must be a way to put it all together and make us something other than domestic servants working for room and board. We make an interesting unit.

Water is very expensive here— worse than in Los Angeles or Ventura Counties. We all went to a water station this morning. Still no freeway watersellers for us.

On the road yesterday, we saw three dead men— a group together, young, unmarked, but covered with the blood they had vomited, their bodies bloated and beginning to stink. We passed them, looked at them, took nothing from their bodies. Their packs— if they’d had any— were already gone. Their clothes, we did not want. And their canteens— all three still had canteens— their canteens, no one wanted.

We all resupplied yesterday at a local Hanning Joss.

We were relieved and surprised to see it— a good dependable place where we could buy all we needed from solid food for the baby to soap to salves for skin chafed by salt water, sun, and walking. Natividad bought new liners for her baby carrier and washed and dried a plastic bag of filthy old ones. Zahra went with her into the separate laundry area of the store to wash and dry some of our filthy clothing. We wore our sea-washed clothing, salty, but not quite stinking. Paying to wash clothes was a luxury we could not often afford, yet none of us found it easy to be filthy. We weren’t used to it.

We were all hoping for cheaper water in the north. I even bought a second clip for the gun— plus solvent, oil, and brushes to clean the gun. It had bothered me, not being able to clean it before. If the gun failed us when we needed it, we could be killed. The new clip was a comfort, too. It gave us a chance to reload fast and keep shooting.

Now we lounged in the shade of pines and sycamores, enjoyed the sea breeze, rested, and talked. I wrote, fleshing out my journal notes for the week. I was just finishing that when Travis sat down next to me and asked his question:

“You believe in all this Earthseed stuff, don’t you?”

“Every word,” I answered.

“But…you made it up.”

I reached down, picked up a small stone, and put it on the table between us. “If I could analyze this and tell you all that it was made of, would that mean I’d made up its contents?”

He didn’t do more than glance at the rock. He kept his eyes on me. “So what did you analyze to get Earthseed?”

“Other people,” I said, “myself, everything I could read, hear, see, all the history I could learn. My father is— was— a minister and a teacher. My stepmother ran a neighborhood school. I had a chance to see a lot.”

“What did your father think of your idea of God?”

“He never knew.”

“You never had the guts to tell him.”

I shrugged. “He’s the one person in the world I worked hard not to hurt.”

“Dead?”

“She taught you about entropy?” Harry asked.

“She taught me to read and write,” Travis said.

“Then she taught me to teach myself. The man she worked for had a library— a whole big room full of books.”

“He let you read them?” I asked.

“He didn’t let me near them.” Travis gave me a humorless smile. “I read them anyway. My mother would sneak them to me.”

Of course. Slaves did that two hundred years ago.

They sneaked around and educated themselves as best they could, sometimes suffering whipping, sale, or mutilation for their efforts.

“Did he ever catch you or her at it?” I asked.

“No.” Travis turned to look toward the sea. “We were careful. It was important. She never borrowed more than one book at a time. I think his wife knew, but she was a decent woman. She never said anything.

She was the one who talked him into letting me marry Natividad.”

The son of the cook marrying one of the maids. That was like something out of another era, too.

“Then my mother died and all Natividad and I had was each other, and then the baby. I was staying on as gardener-handyman, but then that old bastard we worked for decided he wanted Natividad. He would try to watch when she fed the baby. Couldn’t let her alone. That’s why we left. That’s why his wife helped us leave. She gave us money. She knew it wasn’t Natividad’s fault. And I knew I didn’t want to have to kill the guy. So we left.”

In slavery when that happened, there was nothing the slaves could do about it— or nothing that wouldn’t get them killed, sold, or beaten.

I looked at Natividad who sat a short distance away, on spread out sleepsacks, playing with her baby and talking to Zahra. She had been lucky. Did she know?

How many other people were less lucky— unable to escape the master’s attentions or gain the mistress’s sympathies. How far did masters and mistresses go these days toward putting less than submissive servants in their places?

“I still can’t see change or entropy as God,” Travis said, bringing the conversation back to Earthseed.

“Then show me a more pervasive power than change,” I said. “It isn’t just entropy. God is more complex than that. Human behavior alone should teach you that much. And there’s still more complexity when you’re dealing with several things at once— as you always are. There are all kinds of changes in the universe.”

“Then they’re supposed to do what?” he demanded.

“Read a poem?”

“Or remember a truth or a comfort or a reminder to action,” I said. “People do that all the time. They reach back to the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, or some other religious book that helps them deal with the frightening changes that happen in life.”

“Change does scare most people.”

“I know. God is frightening. Best to learn to cope.”

“Your stuff isn’t very comforting.”

“It is after a while. I’m still growing into it myself. God isn’t good or evil, doesn’t favor you or hate you, and yet God is better partnered than fought.”

“Your God doesn’t care about you at all,” Travis said.

“All the more reason to care for myself and others.

All the more reason to create Earthseed communities and shape God together. `God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay.’ We decide which aspect we embrace— and how to deal with the others.”

“Is that what you want to do? Set up Earthseed communities?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

There it was. The opening. I swallowed and turned a little so that I could see the burned over area. It was so damn ugly. Hard to think anyone had done that on purpose.

“And then what?” Travis insisted. “A God like yours wouldn’t have a heaven for people to hope for, so what is there?”

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.

.

Parable of the Sower

19

The ground beneath your feet moves, 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 householders 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.

“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 her.

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 to fall, and I caught her, grateful that she wasn’t very 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.

I can’t describe the pain.

The others told me later that I screamed as they’d never heard anyone scream. I’m not surprised.

Nothing has ever hurt me that much before.

After a while, the agony in my chest ebbed and died.

That is, the man on top of me bled and died. Not until then could I begin to be aware of something other than pain.

The first thing I heard was Dominic, crying.

I understood then that I had also heard shots fired—

several shots. Where was everyone? Were they wounded?

Dead? Being held prisoner?

I kept my body still beneath the dead man. He was painfully heavy as deadweight, and his body odor was nauseating. He had bled all over my chest, and, if my nose was any judge, in death, he had urinated on me. Yet I didn’t dare move until I understood the situation.

I opened my eyes just a little.

Before I could understand what I was seeing, someone hauled the stinking dead man off me. I found myself looking into two worried faces: Harry and Bankole.

I coughed and tried to get up, but Bankole held me down.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” he demanded.

“No, I’m all right.” I said. I saw Harry staring at all the blood, and I added, “Don’t worry. The other guy did all the bleeding.”

They helped me up, and I discovered I was right.

The dead man had urinated on me. I was almost frantic with the need to strip off my filthy clothes and wash. But that had to wait. No matter how disgusting I was, I wouldn’t undress in daylight where I could be seen. I’d had enough trouble for one day.

I looked around, saw Travis and Natividad comforting Dominic who was still screaming. Zahra was with the two new girls, standing guard beside them as they sat on the ground.

“Are those two okay?” I asked.

Harry nodded. “They’re scared and shaken up, but they’re all right. Everyone’s all right— except him and his friends.” He gestured toward the dead man.

There were three more dead lying nearby.

“There were some wounded,” Harry said. “We let them go.”

I nodded. “We’d better strip these bodies and go too.

We’re too obvious here from the highway.”

We did a quick, thorough job, searching everything except body cavities. We weren’t needy enough to do that yet. Then, at Zahra’s insistence, I did go behind the ruined house for a quick change of clothing. She took the gun from Harry and stood watch for me.

“You’re bloody,” she said. “If people think you’re wounded, they might jump you. This ain’t a good day to look like you got something wrong with you.”

I suspected that she was right. Anyway, it was a pleasure to have her talk me into something I already wanted so much to do.

I put my filthy, wet clothes into a plastic bag, sealed it, and stuffed it into my pack. If any of the dead had owned clothing that would fit me, and that was still in wearable condition, I would have thrown mine away.

As it was, I would keep them and wash them the next time we came to a water station or a store that permitted washing. We had collected money from the corpses, but it would be best to use that for necessities.

We had taken about twenty-five hundred dollars in all from the four corpses— along with two knives that we could sell or pass on to the two girls, and one gun pulled by a man Harry had shot. The gun turned out to be an empty, dirty Beretta nine millimeter. Its owner had had no ammunition, but we can buy that-maybe from Bankole. For that we will spend money.

I had found a few pieces of jewelry in the pocket of the man who attacked me— two gold rings, a necklace of polished blue stones that I thought were lapis lazuli, and a single earring which turned out to be a radio. The radio we would keep. It could give us information about the world beyond the highway. It would be good not to be cut off any longer. I wondered who my attacker had robbed to get it.

All four of the corpses had little plastic pill boxes hidden somewhere on them. Two boxes contained a couple of pills each. The other two were empty. So these people who carried neither food nor water nor adequate weapons did carry pills when they could steal them or steal enough to buy them. Junkies.

What was their drug of choice, I wondered. Pyro?

For the first time in days, I found myself thinking of my brother Keith. Had he dealt in the round purple pills we kept finding on people who attacked us?

Was that why he died?

A few miles later along the highway, we saw some cops in cars, heading south toward what must now be a burned out hulk of a community with a lot of corpses. Perhaps the cops would arrest a few late-arriving scavengers. Perhaps they would scavenge a little themselves. Or perhaps they would just have a look and drive away. What had cops done for my community when it was burning?

Nothing.

The two women we’d dug out of the rubble want to stay with us. Allison and Jillian Gilchrist are their names. They are sisters, 24 and 25 years old, poor, running away from a life of prostitution. Their pimp was their father. The house that had fallen on them was empty when they took shelter in it the night before. It looked long abandoned.

“Abandoned buildings are traps,” Zahra told them as we walked. “Out here in the middle of nowhere, they’re targets for all kinds of people.”

“Nobody bothered us,” Jill said. “But then the house fell on us, and nobody helped us either, until you guys came along.”

“You’re very fortunate,” Bankole told her. He was still with us, and walking next to me. “People don’t help each other much out here.”

“We know,” Jill admitted. “We’re grateful. Who are you guys, anyway?”

Harry gave her an odd little smile. “Earthseed,” he said, and glanced at me. You have to watch out for Harry when he smiles that way.

“What’s Earthseed?” Jill asked, right on cue. She had let Harry direct her gaze to me.

“We share some ideas,” I said. “We intend to settle up north, and found a community.”

“Where up north?” Allie demanded. Her mouth was still hurting, and I felt it more when I paid attention to her. At least her bleeding had almost stopped.

“We’re looking for jobs that pay salaries and we’re watching water prices,” I said. “We want to settle where water isn’t such a big problem.”

“Water’s a problem everywhere,” she proclaimed.

Then, “What are you? Some kind of cult or something?”

“We believe in some of the same things,” I said.

She turned to stare at me with what looked like hostility. “I think religion is dog shit,” she announced.

“It’s either phony or crazy.”

I shrugged. “You can travel with us or you can walk away.”

“But what the hell do you stand for?” she demanded.

“What do you pray to?

“Ourselves,” I said. “What else is there?”

She turned away in disgust, then turned back. “Do we have to join your cult if we travel with you?”

“No.”

“All right then!” She turned her back and walked ahead of me as though she’d won something.

I raised my voice just enough to startle and projected it at the back of her head. I said, “We risked ourselves for you today.”

She jumped, but refused to look back.

I continued. “You don’t owe us anything for that. It isn’t something you could buy from us. But if you travel with us, and there’s trouble, you stand by us, stand with us. Now will you do that or not?”

Allie swung around, stiff with anger. She stopped right in front of me and stood there.

I didn’t stop or turn. It wasn’t a time for giving way. I needed to know what her pride and anger might

drive her to. How much of that apparent hostility of hers was real, and how much might be due to her pain? Was she going to be more trouble than she was worth?

When she realized that I meant to walk over her if I had to, that I would do it, she slid around me to walk beside me as though she had intended to do that all along.

“If you hadn’t been the ones to dig us out,” she said, “we wouldn’t bother with you at all.” She drew a deep, ragged breath. “We know how to pull our own weight. We can help our friends and fight our enemies. We’ve been doing that since we were kids.”

I looked at her, thinking of the little that she and her sister had told us about their lives: prostitution, pimp father… . Hell of a story if it were true. No doubt the details would be even more interesting. How had they gotten away from their father, anyway? They would bear watching, but they might turn out to be worth something.

“Welcome.” I said.

She stared at me, nodded, then walked ahead of me in long quick strides. Her sister, who had dropped to walk near us while we were talking, now walked faster to join her. And Zahra, who had dropped back to keep an eye on the sister, grinned at me and shook her head. She went up to join Harry who was leading the group.

Bankole came up beside me again, and I realized he had gotten out of the way as soon as he saw trouble between Allie and me.

“One fight a day is enough for me,” he said when he saw me looking at him.

I smiled. “Thank you for standing by us back there.”

He shrugged. “I was surprised to see that anyone else cared what happened to a couple of strangers.”

“You cared.”

“Yes. That kind of thing will get me killed someday. If you don’t mind, I’d like to travel with your group, too.”

“You have been. You’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” he said, and smiled back at me. He had clear eyes with deep brown irises— attractive eyes. I like him too much already. I’ll have to be careful.

Late today we reached Salinas, a small city that seemed little touched by the quake and its aftershocks. The ground has been shuddering off and on all day. Also, Salinas seemed untouched by the hordes of overeager scavengers that we had been seeing since that first burning community this morning. That was a surprise. Almost all of the smaller communities we’d passed had been burning and swarming with scavengers. It was as though the quake had given yesterday’s quiet, plodding paupers permission to go animal and prey on anyone who still lives in a house.

I suspected that the bulk of the predatory scavengers were still behind us, still killing and dying and fighting over the spoils. I’ve never worked as hard at not seeing what was going on around me as I did today. The smoke and the noise helped veil things from me. I had enough to do dealing with Allie’s throbbing face and mouth and the ambient misery of the highway.

We were tired when we reached Salinas, but we had decided to walk on after resupplying and washing.

We didn’t want to be in town when the worst of the scavengers arrived. They might be calm, tired after their day of burning and stealing, but I doubted it. I thought they would be drunk with power and hungry for more. As Bankole said, “Once people get the idea that it’s all right-to take what you want and destroy the rest, who knows when they’ll stop.”

He got the old man down to a price he seemed to think was fair, then he called us over, “Any of you know how to handle a relic like this?” he asked.

Well, Harry and I did, and he had us look the rifle over. In the end, everyone had a look at it, some with obvious awkwardness and some with familiarity.

Back in the neighborhood, Harry and I had practiced with the guns of other households— rifles and shotguns as well as handguns. Whatever was legal back home was shared, at least in practice sessions.

My father had wanted us to be familiar with whatever weapons might be available. Harry and I were both good, competent shots, but we’d never bought a used gun. I liked the rifle, l liked the look and feel of it, but that didn’t mean much. Harry seemed to like it, too. Same problem.

“Come over here,” Bankole said. He herded us out of earshot of the old couple. “You should buy that gun,” he told us. “You took enough money off those four junkies to pay the price I got that guy to agree to. You need at least one accurate, long-range weapon, and this is a good one.”

“That money would buy a lot of food,” Travis said.

Bankole nodded. “Yes, but only living people need food. You buy this, and it will pay for itself the first time you need it. Anyone who doesn’t know how to use it, I’ll teach. My father and I used to hunt deer with guns just like this.”

“It’s an antique,” Harry said. “If it were automatic…

.”

“If it were automatic, you couldn’t afford it.” Bankole shrugged. “This thing is cheap because it’s old and it’s legal.”

“And it’s slow,” Zahra said. “And if you think that old guy’s price is cheap, you’re crazy.”

“I know I’m new here,” Allie said, “but I agree with Bankole. You guys are good with your handguns, but sooner or later, you’re going to meet someone who sits out of handgun range and picks you off.

Picks us off.”

“And this rifle is going to save us?” Zahra demanded.

“I doubt that it would save us,” I said. “But with a decent shot behind it, it might give us a chance.” I looked at Bankole. “You hit any of those deer?”

He smiled. “One or two.”

I did not return the smile. “Why don’t you buy the rifle for yourself?”

“I can’t afford it,” he said. “I’ve got enough money to keep me going and take care of necessities for a while. Everything else that I had was stolen from me or burned.

I didn’t quite believe him. But then, no one knew how much money I had either. In a way, I suppose he was asking about our solvency. Did we have enough money to spend an unexpected windfall on an old rifle? And what did he intend to do if we did? I hoped, not for the first time, that he wasn’t just a handsome thief. Yet I did like the gun, and we do need it.

“Harry and I are decent shots, too,” I said to the group. “I like the feel of this gun, and it’s the best we can afford right now. Has anyone seen any real trouble with it?”

They looked at one another. No one answered.

“It just needs a cleaning and some 30-06

ammunition,” Bankole said. “It’s been stored for a while, but it appears to have been well maintained. If you buy it, I think I can manage to buy a cleaning kit and some ammunition.”

At that, I spoke up before anyone else could. “If we buy, that’s a deal. Who else can handle the rifle?”

“I can,” Natividad said. And when that won her a few surprised looks, she smiled. “I had no brothers. My father needed to teach someone.”

“We never had a chance to do any shooting,” Allie said. “But we can learn.”

Jill nodded. “I always wanted to learn,” she said.

“I’ll have to learn, too,” Travis admitted. “Where I grew up, guns were either locked away or carried by hired guards.”

“Let’s go buy it, then,” I said. “And let’s get out of here. The sun will be down soon.”

Bankole kept his word, bought cleaning things and plenty of ammunition— insisted on buying them before we left town, because, as he said, “Who knows when we’ll need it, or when we’ll find other people willing to sell it to us.”

Once that was settled, we left town.

As we left, Harry carried the new rifle and Zahra carried the Beretta, both empty and in need of attention before we loaded them. Only Bankole and I carried fully loaded guns. I led the group and he brought up the rear. It was getting dark. Behind us in the distance, we could hear gunfire and the dull thunder of small explosions.

20

God is neither good

nor evil,

neither loving

nor hating.

God is Power.

God is Change.

We must find the rest of what we need within ourselves,

in one another,

in our Destiny.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 2027

(from notes expanded TUESDAY,

AUGUST 31)

Today or tomorrow should be a rest day, but we’ve agreed not to rest. Last night was full of distant shooting, explosions and fire. We could see fire behind us, though not in front. Moving on seems sensible, in spite of our weariness.

Then, this morning, I cleaned the little black earring radio with alcohol from my pack, turned the thing on, and put it in my ear. I had to relay what it said since its sound could not reach the others.

What it said told us we should not only forget about resting, but change our plans.

We had intended to follow U.S. 101 up through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge. But the radio warned us to stay away from the Bay Area.

From San Jose up through San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, there is chaos. The quake hit hard up there, and the scavengers, predators, cops, and private armies of security guards seem bent on destroying what’s left. Also, of course, pyro is doing its part. This far north, the radio reporters shorten the name to “pro” or “ro” and they say there are plenty of addicts.

Addicts are running wild, setting fires in areas that the earthquake didn’t damage. Bands of the street poor precede or follow them, grabbing whatever they can from stores and from the walled enclaves of the rich and what’s left of the middle class. Yeah.

In some places, the rich are escaping by flying out in helicopters. The bridges that are still intact— and most of them are— are guarded either by the police or by gangs. Both groups are there to rob desperate, fleeing people of their weapons, money, food, and water— at the least. The penalty for being too poor to be worth robbing is a beating, a rape, and/or death.

The National Guard has been activated to restore order, and I suppose it might. But I suspect that in the short term, it will only add to the chaos. What else could another group of well-armed people do in such an insane situation. The thoughtful ones might take their guns and other equipment and vanish to help their families. Others might find themselves at war with their own people. They’ll be confused and scared and dangerous. Of course, some will discover that they enjoy their new power— the power to make others submit, the power to take what they want— property, sex, life… .

Bad situation. The Bay Area will be a good place to avoid for a long time.

We spread maps on the ground, studied them as we ate breakfast, and decided to turn off U.S. 101 this morning. We’ll follow a smaller, no doubt emptier road inland to the little town of San Juan Bautista, then east along State Route 156. From 156 to 152 to Interstate 5. We’ll use I-5 to circle around the Bay Area. For a time we’ll walk up the center of the state instead of along the coast. We might have to bypass I-5 and go farther east to State 33 or 99. I like the emptiness around much of I-5. Cities are dangerous.

Even small towns can be deadly. Yet we have to be able to resupply. In particular, we have to be able to get water. If that means going into the more populated areas around one of the other highways, we’ll do it. Meanwhile we’ll be careful, resupply every time we get a chance, never pass up a chance to top off our water and food, waste nothing. But, hell, the maps are old. Maybe the area around I-5 is more settled now.

To reach I-5, we’ll pass a big freshwater lake— San Luis Reservoir. It might be dry now. Over the past few years a lot of things had gone dry. But there will be trees, cool shade, a place to rest and be comfortable. Perhaps there will at least be a water station. If so, we’ll camp there and rest for a day or even two days. After hiking up and over a lot of hills, we’ll need the extra rest.

For now, I suspect that we’ll soon have scavengers being driven north toward us from Salinas, and refugees being driven south toward us from the Bay area. The best thing we can do it get out of the way.

We got an early start, fortified by the good food we had bought at Salinas— some extra stuff that Bankole had wheeled in his cart, though we all chipped in to buy it. We made sandwiches— dried beef, cheese, sliced tomatoes— all on bread made from wheat flour. And we ate grapes. It was a shame we had to hurry. We hadn’t had anything that good tasting for a long time.

The highway north was emptier today than I’ve ever seen it. We were the biggest crowd around— eight adults and a baby— and other people kept away from us. Several of the other walkers were individuals and couples with children. They all seemed in a hurry— as though they, too, knew what might be coming behind them. Did they also know what might be ahead— what was ahead if they stayed on 101. Before we left 101 I tried to warn a couple of women traveling alone with kids to avoid the Bay Area. I told them I’d heard there was a lot of trouble up there— fires, riots, bad quake damage.

They just held on to their kids and edged away from me.

Then we left the 101 and took our small, hilly road, our short cut to San Juan Bautista. The road was paved and not too badly broken up. It was lonely.

For long stretches we saw no one at all. No one had followed us from 101. We passed farms, small communities, and shanties, and the people living in these came out with their guns to stare at us. But they let us alone. The short cut worked. We managed to reach and pass through San Juan Bautista before dark. We’ve camped just east of the town. We’re all exhausted, footsore, full of aches and pains and blisters. I long for a rest day, but not yet. Not yet.

I put my sleepsack next to Bankole’s and lay down, already half asleep. We had drawn straws for the watch schedule, and my watch wasn’t until the early morning. I ate nuts and raisins, bread and cheese, and I slept like a corpse.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 2027

(from notes expanded TUESDAY,

AUGUST 31)

Early this morning I awoke to the sound of gunfire, nearby and loud. Short bursts of automatic weapons fire. And there was light from somewhere.

“Be still,” someone said. “Stay down and keep quiet.” Zahra’s voice. She had the watch just before mine.

“What is it?” one of the Gilchrists demanded. And then, “We’ve got to get away!”

“Stay!” I whispered. “Be still, and it will pass.”

I could see now that two groups were running from the highway— the 156— one group chasing the other, both firing their guns as though they and their enemies were the only people in the world. We could only stay down and hope they didn’t shoot us by accident. If nobody moved, accidents were less likely.

The light came from a fire burning some distance from us. Not buildings. We hadn’t camped near buildings. Yet something was burning. It was, I decided, a big truck of some kind. Perhaps that was the reason for the shooting. Someone, some group had tried to hijack a truck on the highway and things had gone wrong. Now, whatever the truck was carrying— food, I suspected— the fire would get it.

Neither the hijackers nor the defenders would win.

We would win if we could just keep out of the fighting.

I reached over to feel for Bankole, wanting assurance that he was all right.

He wasn’t there.

His sleepsack and his things were still there, but he was gone.

Moving as little as I could, I looked toward our designated toilet area. He must be there. I couldn’t see him, but where else could he be? Bad timing. I squinted, trying to pick him out, not knowing whether to be glad or afraid because I couldn’t. After all, if I could see him, so could other people.

The shooting went on and on while we lay still and quiet and scared. One of the trees we’d camped under was hit twice, but well above our heads.

Then the truck exploded. I don’t know what exploded in it. It hadn’t looked like an old truck— one of those that used diesel fuel, but it might have been. Would diesel fuel explode? I didn’t know.

The explosion seemed to end the gunfight. A few more shots were exchanged, then nothing. I saw people, visible in the firelight, walking back toward the truck. Sometime later, I saw others— several together in a bunch— moving away toward the town.

Both groups were moving away from us, and that was good.

Now. Where was Bankole? In as low a voice as I could manage, I spoke to the others. “Can anyone see Bankole?”

No answer.

“Zahra, did you see him go?”

“Yeah, a couple of minutes before the shooting started,” she answered.

All right. If he didn’t come out soon, we would have to go looking for him. I swallowed, tried not to think about finding him hurt or dead. “Is everyone else all right?” I asked. “Zahra?”

“I’m fine.”

“Harry?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“Travis? Natividad?”

“We’re all right,” Travis said.

“What about Dominic?”

“Didn’t even wake up.”

That was good. If he had, his crying could have gotten us killed. “Allie? Jill?”

“We’re okay,” Allie said.

I sat up, keeping my movements slow and cautious.

I couldn’t see anyone or hear anything beyond insects and the distant fire. When no one shot me, others sat up too. Where noise and light had not

awakened Dominic, his mother’s movement did the trick. He awoke and began to whimper, but Natividad held him and he quieted.

But still no Bankole. I wanted to get up and go looking for him. I had two mental images of him: One of him lying wounded or dead, and one of him crouching behind a tree holding his own Beretta nine millimeter. If the latter was true, I could scare him into shooting me. There might also be other people out there with ready guns and frayed nerves.

“What time is it?” I asked Zahra who had Harry’s watch.

“Three forty,” she said.

“Let me have the gun,” I said. “Your watch is almost over anyway.”

“What about Bankole?” She passed both the watch and the gun over.”

“If he isn’t back in five minutes I’m going to go look for him.”

“Wait a minute,” Harry said. “You aren’t going to do that by yourself. I’ll go with you.”

I almost said no. I don’t think he would have paid any attention if I had, but I never spoke the word. If Bankole were injured and conscious, I would be useless the moment I saw him. I would be lucky to drag myself back to camp. Someone else would have to drag him back.

“Thank you,” I said to Harry.

Five minutes later, he and I went first to the toilet area, then around it, searching. There was no one, or rather, we could see no one. Still, there might be other people around— others camping overnight, others involved in the shooting, others prowling… .

Still, I called Bankole’s name once, aloud. I touched Harry as a kind of warning and he jumped, settled, then jumped again as I said the name. We both listened in absolute silence.

There was a rustling off to our right where there were several trees blotting out the stars, creating a space of impenetrable darkness. Anything could be there.

The rustling came again, and with it a whimper— a child’s whimper. Then Bankole’s voice: “Olamina!”

“Yes,” I answered, almost limp with relief. “Here!”

He came out of the pool of darkness, a tall, broad shadow that seemed bulkier than it should have been. He was carrying something.

“I have an orphaned child,” he said. “The mother was hit by a stray bullet. She just died.”

I sighed. “Is the child hurt?”

“No, just scared. I’ll carry him back to our camp. Will one of you get his things?”

“Take us to his camp,” I said.

Harry collected the child’s things, and I collected the mother’s and searched her body. Between us, we

gathered everything. By the time we finished, the little boy, perhaps three years old, was crying. That scared me. I left Harry to push the dead woman’s pack along in her baby carriage and Bankole to carry the whimpering child. All I carried was the gun, drawn and ready. Even when we got back to our own camp, I couldn’t relax. The little boy wouldn’t be quiet and Dominic joined him with even louder cries.

Zahra and Jill worked to comfort the new child, but he was surrounded by strangers in the middle of the night, and he wanted his mother!

I saw movement over near the burned out carcass of the truck. The fire was still burning, but it was smaller now, burning itself out. There were still people near it. They had lost their truck. Would they care about a crying child? And if they did care, would they want to help the kid or just shut its mouth.

A lone, dark figure came away from the truck and took several steps toward us. At that moment, Natividad took the new child, and in spite of his age, gave him one breast and Dominic the other.

It worked. Both children were comforted almost at once. They made a few more small sounds, then settled down to nursing.

The shadow figure from the truck stood still, perhaps confused now that it was no longer guided by noise.

After a moment, it turned and went back past the truck and out of sight. Gone. It couldn’t have seen us. We could look out of the darkness under the trees that sheltered our campsite and see by firelight, by starlight. But others could only follow the baby noise to us.

“We ought to move,” Allie whispered. “Even if they can’t see us, they know we’re here.”

“Watch with me,” I said.

“What?”

“Stay awake and watch with me. Let the others get a little more rest. Trying to move in the dark is more dangerous than staying put.”

“…all right. But I don’t have a gun.”

“Do you have a knife?”

“Yeah.”

“That will have to be enough until we get the other guns clean and ready.” We’ve been too tired and in too much of a hurry to do that so far. Also, I don’t want Allie or Jill to have guns yet. Not yet. “Just keep your eyes open.” The only real defense against automatic rifles is concealment and silence.

“A knife is better than a gun now,” Zahra said. “If you have to use it, it will be quiet.”

I nodded. “The rest of you, try to get a little more rest. I’ll wake you at dawn.”

Most of them lay down to sleep, or at least to rest.

Natividad kept both children with her. Tomorrow, though, one of us would have to take charge of the little boy. We didn’t need the burden of such a big child— one who had reached the “run around and grab everything” stage. But we had the little boy, and there was no one to hand him off to. No woman camping alongside a highway with her child would have other relatives handy.

“Olamina,” Bankole said into my ear. His voice was low and soft and only I reacted to it. I turned, and he was so close that I felt his beard brush my face. Soft, thick beard. This morning he combed it more carefully than he combed the hair on his head. He has the only mirror among us. Vain, vain old man. I moved almost by reflex toward him.

I kissed him, wondering what it would feel like to kiss so much beard. I did kiss the beard at first, missing his mouth by a little in the dark. Then I found it and he moved a little and slipped his arms around me and we settled to it for a little while.

It was hard for me to make myself push him away. I didn’t want to. He didn’t want to let me.

“I was going to say thank you for coming after me,”

he said. “That woman was conscious almost until she died. The only thing I could do for her was stay with her.”

“I was afraid you might have been shot out there.”

“I was flat on the ground until I heard the woman groaning.”

I sighed. “Yeah.” And then, “Rest.”

He lay down next to me and rubbed my arm— which tingled wherever he touched it. “We should talk soon,” he said.

“At least,” I agreed.

He grinned— I could see the flash of teeth— and turned over and tried to sleep.

The boy’s name was Justin Rohr. His dead mother had been Sandra Rohr. Justin had been born in Riverside, California just three years ago. His mother had gotten him this far north from Riverside. She had saved his birth certificate, some baby pictures, and a picture of a stocky, freckled, red-haired man who was, according to a notation on the back of the photo, Richard Walter Rohr, born January 9, 2002, and died May 20, 2026. The boy’s father— only twenty-four when he died. I wondered what had killed him. Sandra Rohr had saved her marriage certificate and other papers important to her. All were wrapped in a plastic packet that I had taken from her body. Elsewhere on her, I had found several thousand dollars and a gold ring.

There was nothing about relatives or a specific destination. It seemed that Sandra had simply been heading north with her son in search of a better life.

The little boy tolerated us all well enough today, although he got frustrated when we didn’t understand him at once. When he cried, he demanded that we produce his mother.

“Then he’s more than three hundred miles behind you.”

“…yeah.”

“He drank a lot, didn’t he.”

“All the time.”

“Then he’d be in no shape to follow you even if the fire never touched him. What do you think would happen to a drunk on the highway? He’d never even make it out of L.A.”

She nodded. “You sound like Allie. You’re both right.

I know. But…I dream about him sometimes— that he’s coming, that he’s found us… . I know it’s crazy.

But I wake up covered in sweat.”

“Yeah,” I said, remembering my own nightmares during the search for my father. “Yeah.”

Jill and I walked together for a while without talking.

We were moving slowly because Justin demanded to be allowed to walk now and then. He had too much energy to spend hours sitting and riding. And, of course, when he was allowed to walk, he wanted to run all around, investigate everything. I had time to stop, swing my pack around, and dig out a length of closeline. I handed it to Jill.

“Tell your sister to try harnessing him with this,” I said. “It might save his life. One end around his waist, the other around her arm.”

She took the rope.

“I’ve taken care of a few three-year-olds,” I said, “and I’ll tell you, she’s going to need a lot of help with that little kid. If she doesn’t know that now, she will.”

“Are you guys just going to leave all the work to her?” Jill demanded.

“Of course not.” I watched Allie and Justin walking along— lean, angular woman and pudgy, bumblebee of a child. The boy ran to investigate a bush near the roadside, then, startled by the approach of strangers, ran back to Allie and hung on to the cloth of her jeans until she took his hand. “They do seem to be adopting each other, though,” I said. “And taking care of other people can be a good cure for nightmares like yours and maybe hers.”

“You sound as though you know.”

I nodded. “I live in this world, too.”

We passed through Hollister before noon. We resupplied there, not knowing when we would see well-equipped stores again. We had already discovered that several of the small communities shown on the maps no longer existed— had not existed for years. The earthquake had done a lot of damage in Hollister, but the people hadn’t gone animal. They seemed to be helping one another with repairs and looking after their own destitute. Imagine that.

21

The Self must create

Its own reasons for being.

To shape God,

Shape Self.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2027

There is still a little water in the San Luis Reservoir.

It’s more fresh water than I’ve ever seen in one place, but by the vast size of the reservoir, I can see that it’s only a little compared to what should be there— what used to be there.

The highway runs through the recreational area for several miles. That gave us a chance to travel through on the road until we spotted an area that would make a good rest-day camp and that wasn’t occupied.

There are a lot of people in the area— people who have set up permanent camps in everything from rag-and-plastic tents to wooden shacks that look almost fit for human habitation. Where are so many people going to the bathroom? How clean is the water in the reservoir? No doubt cities that use it purify the water when it reaches them. Whether they do or not, I think it’s time for us to break out the water purification tablets.

Around several of the tents and shacks, there are small, ragged gardens— new plantings and remnants of summer vegetable gardens. There are a few things left to harvest: big squashes, pumpkins, and gourds still growing along with carrots, peppers, greens, and a little corn. Good, cheap, filling foods.

Not enough protein, but perhaps the people hunt.

There must be game around here, and I saw plenty of guns. People wear holstered handguns or carry rifles or shotguns. The men in particular go armed.

They all stared at us.

As we went past, people stopped their gardening, outdoor cooking, or whatever to stare at us. We had pushed ourselves, had been eager to arrive ahead of the crowd I believe will soon come in from the Bay Area. So we didn’t arrive with the usual human river.

Yet by ourselves we are enough of a crowd to make the local squatters nervous. They let us alone, though. Except during disaster-induced feeding frenzies like the ones after the earthquake, most people let one another alone. I think Dominic and Justin are making it easier for us to fit in. Justin, now tethered to Allie’s wrist, runs around staring at the squatters until they make him nervous. Then he runs back to Allie and demands to be carried. He’s a cute little kid. Lean, grim-faced people tend to smile at him.

No one shot at us or challenged us as we walked along the highway. No one bothered us later when we left the highway and headed into the trees toward what we thought might be a good area. We found old campsites and toilet places and avoided them. We didn’t want to be within sight of the highway or of anyone else’s tent or shack. We wanted privacy, not too many rocks to sleep on, and a way of reaching the water that didn’t put us too much on display. We looked for over an hour until we found an isolated old campsite, long abandoned and a little higher upslope than others we’d seen. It suited all of us. Then, with hours of daylight left, we rested in enormous comfort and laziness, knowing we had the rest of today and all of tomorrow to do almost nothing. Natividad fed Dominic and the two of them drifted off to sleep. Allie followed her example with Justin, although preparing him a meal was a little more complicated. Both women had more reason to be tired and to need sleep than the rest of us, so we left them out when we drew lots for a watch schedule— one for day and night. We shouldn’t get too comfortable. Also, we agreed that no one should go off exploring or getting water alone. I thought the couples would soon start going off together— and I thought it was just about time for Bankole and me to have that talk.

I sat with him and cleaned our new handgun while he cleaned the rifle. Harry was on watch and needed my gun. When I went over to give it to him, he let me know he understood exactly what was going on between Bankole and me.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “Don’t give the poor old guy a heart attack.”

“And why should people bother about the Destiny, farfetched as it is? What’s in it for them?”

“A unifying, purposeful life here on Earth, and the hope of heaven for themselves and their children. A real heaven, not mythology or philosophy. A heaven that will be theirs to shape.”

“Or a hell,” he said. His mouth twitched. “Human beings are good at creating hells for themselves even out of richness.” He thought for a moment. “It sounds too simple, you know.”

“You think it’s simple?” I asked in surprise.

“I said it sounds too simple.”

“It sounds overwhelming to some people.”

“I mean it’s too…straightforward. If you get people to accept it, they’ll make it more complicated, more open to interpretation, more mystical, and more comforting.”

“Not around me they won’t!” I said.

“With you or without you, they will. All religions change. Think about the big ones. What do you think Christ would be these days? A Baptist? A Methodist? A Catholic? And the Buddha— do you think he’d be a Buddhist now? What kind of Buddhism would he practice?” He smiled. “After all, if `God is Change,’ surely Earthseed can change, and if it lasts, it will.”

I looked away from him because he was smiling.

This was all nothing to him. “I know,” I said. “No one can stop Change, but we all shape Change whether we mean to or not. I mean to guide and shape Earthseed into what it should be.”

“Perhaps.” He went on smiling. “How serious are you about this?”

The question drove me deep into myself. I spoke, almost not knowing what I would say. “When my father…disappeared,” I began, “it was Earthseed that kept me going. When most of my community and the rest of my family were wiped out, and I was alone, I still had Earthseed. What I am now, all that I am now is Earthseed.”

“What you are now,” he said after a long silence, “is a very unusual young woman.”

We didn’t talk for a while after that. I wondered what he thought. He hadn’t seemed to be bottling up too much hilarity. No more than I’d expected. He had been willing to go along with his wife’s religious needs. Now, he would at least permit me mine.

I wondered about his wife. He hadn’t mentioned her before. What had she been like? How had she died?

“Did you leave home because your wife died?” I asked.

He put down a long slender cleaning rod and rested his back against the tree behind him. “My wife died five years ago,” he said. “Three men broke in-junkies, dealers, I don’t know. They beat her, tried to make her tell where the drugs were.”

“Drugs?”

“They had decided that we must have something they could use or sell. They didn’t like the things she was able to give them so they kept beating her. She had a heart problem.” He drew in a long breath, then sighed. “She was still alive when I got home. She was able to tell me what had happened. I tried to help her, but the bastards had taken her medicine, taken everything. I phoned for an ambulance. It arrived an hour after she died. I tried to save her, then to revive her. I tried so damned hard… .”

I stared down the hill from our camp where just a glint of water was visible in the distance through the trees and bushes. The world is full of painful stories.