Parable of the Talents (40 page)

He said nothing for a few seconds. It bothered me that he was frowning, and again, not looking at me. "You were col-lared?" he asked at last.

"For seventeen months. Forever."

"How did you get away? Was your sentence up?"

"What? What sentence?"

"I mean did they let you go?"

"They never let anyone go. They killed quite a few of us, but they never released anyone. I don't know what their long-range plans were for us, if they had any, but I don't see how they could have dared to let us go after what they'd done to us."

"How did you get free? You don't escape once someone's put a collar on you. There's no escape from a collar."

Unless someone deals with the devil and buys your free-dom, I thought. But I didn't say it. "There was a landslide," I did say. "It smashed the cabin where the control unit was kept—my cabin. The control unit powered all the individual belt control units somehow. Maybe it even powered the col-lars themselves. I'm not sure. Anyway, once it was smashed and buried, the collars stopped working, and we went into our homes and killed our surviving guards—those who hadn't been killed by the landslide. Then we burned the cabins with their bodies inside.
We
burned them. They were ours! We built every one with our own hands."

"You killed people...?"

"Their names were Cougar, Marc. Every one of them was named Cougar!"

He turned—wrenched himself around as though he had to uproot himself to move:—and started back toward the corner.

"Marc!"

He kept walking.

"Marc!" I grabbed his arm, pulled him back around to face me. "I didn't tell you this to hurt you. I know I have hurt you, and I'm sorry, but these bastards have my child! I need your help to get her back. Please, Marc."

He hit me.

I never expected it, never saw it coming. Even when we were kids, he and I didn't hit each other.

I stumbled backward, more startled than hurt. And he was gone. By the time I got to the corner, he had already van-ished into the CA Center.

I was afraid to go in after him. In his present frame of mind, he might turn me in. How will I get to see him again?

Even if he decides to help me, how will I contact him? Surely he will decide to help me once he's had time to think. Surely he will.

SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2035

I've left the Eureka-Arcata area.

I'm back at the message tree for the night. I brought a flashlight so that I could have light where I wanted it with-out taking risks with fire. Now, shielding my light, I'm read-ing what's been left here. Jorge and Di have left a number, and Jorge says he's found his brother Mateo. In fact, as with Justin, his brother found him. On the northern edge of Gar-berville where there are still big redwoods, Mateo found Jorge's group sleeping on the ground. He had been looking tor them for months. Like Justin, he had run away from abuse, although in his case, the abuse was sexual. Now he's wounded and bitter, but he's with his brother again.

There was no news from Harry. Too soon for him to have gotten back, I suppose. I phoned him several times, but there was no answer. I'm worried about him.

I wrote a note, warning the others to avoid the CA Center in Eureka. I wrote that Marc had been there, but that he wasn't to be trusted.

He isn't to be trusted.

I made myself go back to the CA Center on Wednesday of last week—went back as a sane, but shabby woman rather than as a dirty, crazy man. It took me too long to get up the courage to do that—to go. I worried that Marc might have warned his CA friends about me. I couldn't really believe he would do that, but he might, and I'd had nightmares about them grabbing me as soon as I showed up. I could feel them putting on the collar. I'd wake up soaking wet and scared to death.

At last, I went to a used-clothing store and bought an old black skirt and a blue blouse. From a cheap little shop, I bought some makeup and a scarf for my hair. I dressed, made up, then dirtied up a little, like maybe I'd been rolling around on the ground with someone.

At CA, I got in line with the other women and ate in the small, walled-off women's section. No one seemed to pay any attention to me, although my height was much more no-ticeable when I was among only women. I slumped a little and kept my head down when I was standing. I tried to look weary and bedraggled rather than furtive, but I discovered that furtive wasn't all that unusual. Most of the women, like most of the men, were stolid, indifferent, enduring. But a few were chattering crazies, whiners, or frightened little rab-bits.

There was also a fat woman with only one eye who prowled the room and tried to grab bread from your hands even while you were eating it. She was crazy, of course, but her particular craziness made her nasty and possibly dan-gerous.

She let me alone, but harassed several of the smaller women until a tiny, feisty woman pulled a knife on her.

Then the servers called security, and security men came out of a back room and grabbed both women from behind.

It bothered me very much that they took both women away. The fat crazy woman had been permitted to go about her business until someone resisted. Then both victim and victimizer were treated as equally guilty.

It bothered me even more that the women were not thrown out. They were taken away. Where? They didn't come back.

No one I spoke to knew what had happened to them.

Most troubling of all, I recognized one of the security men.

He had been at Acorn. He had been one of our "teach-ers"

there. I had seen him take Adela Ortiz away to rape her. I could shut my eyes and see him dragging her off to the cabin he used. There had to be many such men still alive and free—men who were not at Camp Christian when we took back our freedom, then took our revenge. But this was the first one that I had seen.

My fear and my hate returned full force and all but choked me. It took all my self-control to sit still, eat my food, and go on being the lump I had to seem to be. Day Turner had been collared after a fight that he said he had had nothing to do with. Christian America officials made them-selves judges, juries, and, when they chose to be, executioners. They didn't waste any effort trying to be fair. I had heard on one of my earlier visits that the all-male CA Center Se-curity Force was made up of retired and off-duty cops. That, if it were true, was terrifying. It made me all the more cer-tain that I was right not to go to the police with the true story of what had been done to me and to Acorn. Hell, I hadn't even been able to get my own brother to believe me. What chance would I have to convince the cops if some of them were working for CA?

After dinner, after the sermon, I managed to make myself go up to one of the servers—a blond woman with a long red scar on her forehead. She was one of the few who laughed and talked with us as she scooped stew into bowls and passed out bread. I asked her to give my note to lay minis-ter Marcos Duran. As it happened, she knew him.

"He's not here anymore," she said. "He was transferred to Portland."

"Oregon?" I asked, and then felt stupid. Of course she meant Portland, Oregon.

"Yeah," the server said. "He left a few days ago. He was offered a chance to do more preaching at our new center in Portland, and he's always wanted that What a nice man. We were sorry to lose him. Did you ever hear him preach?"

"A couple of times," I said. "Are you sure he's gone?"

"Yeah. We had a party for him. He'll be a great minister someday. A great minister. He's so spiritual." She sighed.

Maybe "spiritual" is another word for fantastically good-looking in her circles. Anyway, he was gone. Instead of helping me find Larkin or even seeing me again, he had gone.

I thanked the server and headed out into the evening to-ward the home of the 88-year-old man where I was still stay-ing. I had left my spare clothing and my sleepsack in his garage. For once, I was traveling light My backpack was half-empty. I walked automatically, not thinking about where I was going. I was wondering whether I could reach Marc again, wondering whether it would do me any good to reach him. What would he do if I showed up in Portland? Run for Seattle? Why had he run, anyway? I wouldn't have hurt him—wouldn't have said or done anything that could damage his lay-minister reputation. Did he run because I mentioned Cougar? Maybe it had been a mistake for me to tell him what happened to us, to Acorn. Maybe I should have told him the same thing I had told the police. "Well, I was walking north on U.S. 101, heading for Eureka, and these guys….."

Was it so essential for him to be important in CA that he didn't care what vicious things CA was doing, didn't care even what CA did to the only family he had left?

Then there was a man looming in front of me—a huge man, tall and broad and wearing a CA Center Security uni-form. I stopped just before I would have slammed into him. I jumped back. My impulse was to run like hell. This guy looked scary enough to make anyone run. But the truth was, I was frozen with fear. I couldn't move. I just stared up at him.

He put a huge hand inside his uniform jacket, and I had a flash of it coming out holding a gun—not that this guy needed a gun to kill me. He was a giant.

But his hand came out of his jacket holding an enve-lope—a little white paper envelope like the kind mail used to come in. Back when we lived in Robledo my father some-times brought home paper mail from the college in such envelopes.

"Reverend Duran said to give this to anyone tall and Black and asking for him by name," the giant said. He had a soft, quiet voice that made his appearance less threatening somehow. "Looks like you qualify," he finished.

I had to make myself reach out and take the envelope.

The giant stared at me for a moment, then said, "He told me you were his sister."

I nodded.

"He said you might be dressed as a man."

I didn't answer. I couldn't quite form words yet.

"He said he's sorry. He asked me to tell you that you could get a bed at the Center for as long as you needed one. I'll be around. He's my friend. I'll look out for you."

"No," I said, getting my voice to work at last. "But thank you." I stood straight, never knowing when I had crouched in my fear. I extended a hand, and the giant took it and shook it

"Thank you," I repeated, and he was gone, striding back toward the Center.

I didn't stop to think. I tucked Marcus's envelope into my blouse and walked on. You didn't stand opening things on dark streets in this part of town. I kept my ears open now, and paid attention to my surroundings. The giant had caught up with me, passed me, and gotten in front of me and I hadn't heard a thing. That kind of inattention was beyond stupid. It was suicidal.

And yet I had almost relaxed again by the time I was only three blocks from the old man's little house. I was tired, full of food, looking forward to my warm pallet, and eager to see what my brother had written.

Then, through my preoccupations, I began to hear foot-steps. I swung around just in time to startle and confront the two men who were creeping up behind me. My gun was out of reach in my backpack, but my knife was in my pocket.

I grabbed it and flipped it open before these guys could re-cover and clean the street with me. They weren't big, but there were two of them. I put my back against someone's redwood fence, and let them decide how much they wanted what they thought I had. In fact I was carrying not only my gun but enough money to make them happy for days, as well as Marcus's note, and I wasn't eager to give up any of it

"Just put the pack down, girl," one said. "Put the pack down and back away from it We'll let you go."

I didn't move. To take my pack off, I would have had to lower my knife and trust these two not to jump me. That I didn't dare do. I didn't answer them. I wasn't interested in talking to them. I hated hearing the one call me "girl." It was what Bankole called me with love. And here was the word in someone else's mouth with contempt.

I don't know whether or not I was being stupid. I know I was scared to death and I was angry. I tried to stoke the anger.

I saw that one of them had a knife too. It was an old steak knife, but it was a knife—made for cutting meat.

The one with the knife lunged at me. An instant later, the other lunged too—one to cut, one to grab.

I dropped to the ground and stabbed upward into the belly of the knife-wielder. As I jerked my knife free, not looking, not wanting to see what I had done, I rammed my body backward against the legs of the other man—or against where his legs should have been. I only hit one of them— enough to trip him, but he seemed to recover without falling. Then he did fall. He toppled like a tree as I scrambled to my feet They were both down, one curled around his belly wound, groaning, and the other making no sound at all ex-cept his rasping breathing. The steak knife stuck out of him just below the breastbone.

Shit

I fell to my knees, my body a flaming mass of agony, from other people's knife wounds. I twisted away from mem both, crawled away from them on all fours, dripping tears at the terrible, terrible pain. I dragged myself around a comer and sat there on the broken concrete for a long time. I was shaking with the pain, gasping with it until at last, it began to ease. I got up before it was altogether gone. I went to the old man's garage as quickly as I could. The pain was gone by the time I got there, and the anger had long since gone. There was nothing left but the fear. I got my things together as fast as I could, stuffed them into my pack, and headed out of town. Maybe I didn't have to leave. Maybe the tramp who had been living in the old man's garage would never be con-nected with the two dead or soon-to-be dead men on the street nearby. Maybe.

But I would not risk a collar.

So I ran.

So I run. I had to check the tree before I headed for Port-land, and I'm going to stop at Georgetown. Then I'll take an inland route and avoid Eureka. Meanwhile, here are the words my brother left me:

"Lauren, I'm sorry I hit you—really sorry. I hope I didn't hurt you too much. It's just that I couldn't stand to lose everything
again.
I just couldn't. That keeps happening to me.