Parable of the Talents

to split up. We've got to go our separate ways and find our kids.'

'No,' Nina Noyer whispered, and then louder, 'No! Everybody's gone, and now you want me to go away by myself again? No!' Now it was a shout.

'Yes,' I said to her, only to her, my voice as soft as I could make it. 'Nina, you come with me. My family is gone :oo. Come with me. We'll look for your sisters and my daughter and Allie's son.'

'I want us all to stay together,' she whispered, and she began to cry.

'If we stay together, we'll be collared or dead in no time,' Harry said. He looked at me. 'I'll go with you too. You'll need help. And ... I want my kids back. I'm scared to death of what might be happening to them. That's all I can trunk about now. That's all I care about.'

And Allie put her hand on his shoulder, trying to give comfort.

'No one should leave alone,' I said. It's too dangerous to be alone. But don't gather into groups of more than five or six.'

'What about us?' Doe Mora said, holding her sister's hand. It was hard at that moment to remember that the two were not blood relatives. Two lonely, frightened ex-slaves met and loved one another and married, and their daughters Doe and Tori became sisters. And they're sisters now, or­phaned and alone. I envy their closeness, and I fear for them. They're still kids, and they were abused almost past bearing at Camp Christian. They look starved and haunted. In a way that I can't quite describe, they look old. Our 'teachers' realized that they were sharers back during Day's rebellion, and abused them all the more for it, but the girls never gave any of the rest of us away. Yet in spite of their courage, it would be so easy for them to wind up with new collars around their necks. Or they could wind up de­ciding to prostitute themselves—just to eat.

'You come with us,' Natividad said. 'We intend to find our children. If we can, we'll find your brothers as well.'

Doe bit her lips. 'I'm pregnant,' she said. 'Tori isn't, but I am.'

'It's a wonder we all aren't,' I said. 'We were slaves. Now we're free.' I looked at her. She's a tall, slender, delicate-looking girl, large-eyed like her namesake. 'What do you want to do, Doe?'

Doe swallowed. 'I don't know.'

'We'll take care of her,' Travis said. 'Whatever she de­cides to do, we'll help her. Her father was a good man. He was a friend of mine. We'll take care of her.'

I nodded, relieved. Travis and Natividad are two of the most competent, dependable people I know. They'll sur­vive, and if the girls are with them, the girls will survive too.

Others began forming themselves into groups. Adela Ortiz, who first thought that she would join Travis, Nativi­dad, and the Moras, decided in the end to stay with Lucio Figueroa and his sister. I'm not sure how she and Lucio wound up in each other's arms the night before, but I think now that Adela may be looking for a permanent relation­ship with Lucio. He's much older than she is, and I think she hopes he'll want her and want to take care of her. But Adela is pregnant too. She's not showing yet, but according to what she's told me, she believes she's at least two months pregnant.

Also, Lucio is still carrying Teresa Lin around with him. Her death and the way she died has made him very, very quiet—kind, but distant. He wasn't like that back in Acorn. His own wife and children were killed before he met us. He had invested all his time and energy in helping his sister with her children. He had only begun to reach out again when Teresa joined us. Now ... now perhaps he's decided that it hurts too much to begin to care for someone, then lose her.

It does hurt. It's terrible. I know that. But I know Adela, too. She needs to be needed. I remember she hated being pregnant the first time, hated the men who had gang-raped her. But she loved taking care of her baby. She was an at­tentive, loving mother, and she was happy. What's in store for her now, I don't know.

And yet in spite of my fears for my friends, my people, in spite of my longing to hold together a community that must divide, all this was easier than I had thought it would be—easier than I thought it could be. We'd all worked so well together for six years, and we'd endured so much as slaves. Now we were dividing ourselves, deciding how to go our separate ways. I don't mean that it was easy—just that it wasn't as hard as I expected. God is Change. I've taught that for six years. It's true, and I suppose it's paved the way for us now. Earthseed prepares you to live in the world that is and try to shape the world that you want. But none of it is really easy.

We spent the rest of the day going around to the other caches and parceling out the supplies we'd left in them and gathering the other sets of children's hand and foot prints. Then we had one more night together.