Parable of the Talents (32 page)

To survive, I kept my head down, my eyes half shut. I've been lashed for this behavior from time to time, but not today. Today, all attention was on the two "sinners."

They lashed Allie and Mary until Mary died.

They lashed them until Allie was lost somewhere within herself. She hasn't spoken a full sentence since the lashing.

Because I spoke for Allie, I was made to dig Mary's grave.

Better me than Mary's father. He isn't in his right mind either.

He was forced to watch his child tortured to death. He just wanders around, staring. Our teachers lash him, and he screams from the pain, but when they finish, he's no different.

They seem to think they can torture him into forgetting his terrible grief and his hate.

I can't stand this. I can't. I don't care if they kill me. I will break free of this or I will be dead.

The Faircloth girls have been given a room in what used to be the King house. They have a whole room to them-selves now instead of a room shared with thirty other women. They still wear collars, but they're on permanent cooking duty now.

They don't have to chop wood or do fieldwork or construction work or clear brush or dig wells or graves or do any of the other hard, heavy, dirty work that the rest of us must do. And they don't know how to cook. Somehow, they've never learned to put together a decent meal. So they don't cook for our "teachers." They just cook for us.

Of course, they're hated. No one talks to them, but no one does anything to them either. We've been warned to let them alone. And they have been given a certain power over us.

They can season our food with spit or dirt or shit, and we know it. Maybe that's what they're doing, and that's why the food is so much worse than it was. I didn't think that was possible—for it to get worse. The Faircloths have managed to ruin garbage. The Sullivan brothers and sisters might kill both Faircloth girls if they get the chance. Old Arthur Sullivan has been sent away. We don't know where. He's out of his mind and our "teachers" weren't able to lash him back to sanity, so they got rid of him.

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For months it was kept in one of the maggots—or we heard that's where it was kept. We've had to put to-gether hints, rumors, and overheard comments, any of which might be misinterpreted, or untrue. But at long last, I believe we have it right.

Reverend Locke's two assistants live in my cabin, and from time to time, some of us are taken there for the night. The next time that happens, we'll make our break.

The women who have been taken there most often are Noriko, Cristina Cho, and the Mora girls.

"They say they like small, ladylike women," Noriko says with terrible bitterness. "Those flabby, ugly men. They like us because it's easy for them to hurt us. They like to use their hands, leave bruises, make you beg them to stop."

She, Cristina, and the Moras all say they would rather risk death than go on with things as they are. Whichever of them is taken to my cabin next will cut their rapists' throats during the night. They can do that now. I don't believe they could have a few months ago. Then they will try to find and disable the master unit. Problem is, we don't know what the master unit looks like. None of us has ever seen it.

All we know—or think we know about it—we've learned from those among us who have been collared be-fore. They say once you disable the master unit, the smaller units won't work. The only way I can understand this is to compare it to one of the phones in the Balter house down south in Robledo, so long ago. This was a big, old-fash-ioned dinosaur of a

"cordless" phone. You had to plug the base unit into an electrical outlet and a phone jack. Then you could walk around the house and yard talking into the hand unit. But unplug the two cords of the base, and the hand unit didn't work anymore. I'm told that that's close to what happens with a network of collars.

I don't know anything for sure. I only half believe that we can do what we think we can and survive. Tampering with the master unit might kill the woman who does it. It might kill us all. But the truth is, we couldn't last much longer, no matter what. We're only just human now—most of us. I've said this to the people I trust—people who have helped me gather the fragments of information that we have. I've asked each of them if they're willing to take the risk.

They are. We all are.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2035

Day before yesterday, we had a terrible storm—truly terri-ble. And yet, it was a wonderful thing: wind and rain and cold. . . and a landslide. The hill where our cemetery once was with all its new and old trees, that hill has slumped down into our valley. Our teachers had made us cut down the older trees for firewood and lumber and God. I never found out how they came to believe we prayed to trees, but they went on believing it. We begged them to let the hill alone, told them it was our cemetery, and they lashed us. Because they forced us to do this, the hillside has broken away and come rumbling down to us. It has buried a mag-got and three cabins, including the cabin that Bankole and I had built and then lived in for our six brief years together.

Also, it buried the men who slept alone in that cabin. I'm sorry to say that there were two women in each of the other cabins. They were from squatter camps. Natividad had been friendly with one of them, but I didn't know them at all. They are dead, however, buried and dead. Six "teach-ers," four captive women,
and all of our collars
were dead. Last Sunday, we resolved to free ourselves or die trying. Now, instead, the weather, and our "teachers'" own stupid-ity has freed us.

Here is what happened.

The storm began as a cold rain whipped by a brisk wind on Monday afternoon, and for a while, we were made to go on working in it. At last, though, our "teachers," who are much more willing to inflict suffering than to endure it, drove us back to our prison rooms to sit in the cold dimness while they went to our cabins, to warm fires, light, and food.

After a while, the lowest-ranking "teacher" brought Beth and Jessica Faircloth out with our disgusting dinner—a lot of half-boiled, half-spoiled cabbage with potatoes.

We had put Allie where the Faircloths could not avoid seeing her, being confronted by her when they came in. She is a little better. I've looked after her as best I could. She walks like a bent old woman, talks in monosyllables, and does not always seem to understand when we speak to her. I don't believe she even remembers what the Faircloths did to her, but she seems to trust me. I told her to watch them— watch them every second.

She did.

The Faircloths trembled and stumbled over one another, putting down pots of awful food and backing out. We all stared at them in silence, but I suspect they saw only Allie.

After dinner, we rested as best we could, feeling cold, stiff, miserable, and damp on the bare wood floor wrapped in our filthy blankets. Some of us slept, but the storm grew much worse, shaking the building and making it creak. Rain beat against the window and blew roofing off cabins, limbs off trees, and trash from the dump that the teachers had made us create. We had had no dump before. We had a salvage heap and a compost heap. Neither was trash. We could not afford to be wasteful. Our teachers have made trash of our entire community.

Sometimes there was lightning and thunder, sometimes only heavy rain. It went on all night, tearing the world apart outside. Then sometime this morning before dawn, not long after I had managed to get to sleep, I was awakened by a terrible noise. It wasn't like thunder—wasn't like any-thing I'd ever heard. It was just this incredible rumbling, breaking, cracking noise.

I reacted without thinking. My place is near the window, and I jumped up and looked out. I leaned against the sill and peered out into the darkness. A moment later there was a flare of lightning, and I saw rock and dirt where my cabin should have been. Rock and dirt.

It took me a moment to understand this. Then I realized that I was leaning against the windowsill, leaning halfway out the window. And I had not convulsed and fallen to the floor.

No pain. None of that filthy, twisting agony that made us all slaves.

I touched my collar. It was still there, still capable of de-livering the agony. But for some reason, it no longer cared that I leaned against the windowsill. In the dark room, I reached for Natividad. She slept on one side of me and Allie slept on the other. Natividad trusts me, and she knows how to be quiet.

"Freedom!" I whispered. "The collars are dead! They're dead!"

She let me lead her to the door between our quarters and the men's. We managed to get there, each of us waking people as we went, whispering to them, but not stepping on anyone, feeling our way. At the door, Natividad pulled back a little, then she let me lead her through. The door's never been locked. Collars were always enough to keep everyone away from it. But not this time.

No pain.

We woke the men—those who were still asleep. We couldn't see well enough to wake only the men we trusted.

We woke them all. We couldn't do this with silent stealth. We were quiet, but they awoke in confusion and chaos. Some were already awake and confused and grabbing me, and realizing that I was a woman. I hit one who wouldn't let me go—a stranger from the road.

"Freedom!" I whispered into his face. "The collars are dead! We can get away!"

He let me go, and scrambled for the door. I went back and gathered the women. When I got them into the men's room, the men were already pouring out of the building. We followed them through the big outside doors. Travis and Natividad, Mike and Noriko, others of Earthseed, the Gamas, and the Sullivans somehow found one another. We all clustered together, male and female members of fami-lies greeting one another, crying, hugging. They had not been able even to touch one another through the eternity of our captivity. Seventeen months. Eternity.

I hugged Harry because neither of us had anyone left. Then he and I stood together watching the others, probably feeling the same mixture of relief and pain. Zahra was gone. Bankole was gone. And where were our children?

But there was no time for joy or grief.

"We've got to get into the cabins now," I said, all but herding them before me. "We've got to stop them from fix-ing the collars. We've got to get their guns before they know what's going on. They'll waste time trying to lash us. Groups of four or more to a cabin. Do it!"

We all know how to work together. We've spent years working together. We separated and went to the houses.

Travis, Natividad, and I grabbed the Mora girls and we burst into what had been the Kardos house just as the screaming began outside.

Some of our "teachers" came rushing out of their cabins to see what was wrong, and they were torn to pieces by the people they had so enjoyed tormenting.

Some of the captives, desperate to escape while they could, tried to find their way through the Lazor wire in the dark, and the wire cut their flesh to the bone when they ran into it.

Earthseed made no such lethal mistake. We went into the cabins to arm ourselves, to rid ourselves of our "teachers,"

and to cut off our damned collars.

My group piled onto the two "teachers" who were there, out of bed, one with his pants and shirt on, and one in long underwear. They could have shot us. But they were so used to depending on their belts to protect them that it was the belts they tried to reach.

One stood and said, "What's going on?" The other lunged at Natividad and me with a wordless shout.

We grappled with them, dragged them down, and

stran-gled them. That simple. Even simple for me. It hurt when they hit me. It hurt when I hit them. And it didn't matter a good goddamn! Once I had my hands on one of them, I just shut my eyes and did it. I never felt their deaths. And I have never been so eager and so glad to kill people.

We couldn't see them very well anyway in the dark cabin, but we made sure they were dead. We didn't let go of them until they were very, very dead. Our makeshift knives were still in the walls and floor of our barracks, but our hands did the job.

And then we had guns. We used a chair, then a night table to smash open a gun cabinet.

More important, then we had wire cutters.

Tori Mora found the cutters in what had once been Noriko Kardos's silverware drawer. Now it was full of small hand tools. We took turns cutting one another's col-lars off. As long as we wore them, we were in terrible dan-ger. I was afraid every minute, anticipating the convulsing agony that could end our freedom, begin our final torture. Our

"teachers" would kill us if they regained control of us. They would kill us very, very slowly. The collars alone would kill us if they somehow switched back on while we were trying to cut through them and twist them off. I had learned over the months that nothing was more tamper-proof than a functioning collar.

I cut the Mora girls' collars off, and Tori cut off mine.

Travis and Natividad did the same for one another. And then we were free. Then, no matter what, we were truly free. We all hugged one another again. There was still dan-ger, still work to do, but we were free. We allowed our-selves that moment of intense relief.

Then we went out to find that our people and some of the others had finished the job. The teachers were all dead. I saw that some of the inmates still wore their collars, so I went back into the Kardos cabin for the wire cutters. Once people realized what I was doing—cutting off collars— both outsiders and members of the Earthseed community made a ragged line in front of me. I spent the next several minutes cutting off collars. It was cold, the wind was blow-ing, but at least it had stopped raining. The eastern sky was beginning to brighten with the dawn. We were free people, all of us.

Now what?

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The outsiders were running around grabbing things, tearing or smashing whatever they didn't want, screaming, cheering, ripping curtains from windows, breaking windows, grab-bing food and liquor. Amazing how much liquor our "teachers"