Parable of the Talents

cost me to find her, then maybe buy her. I don't know what I might have to do.' And maybe, I did not say, maybe I'll have to kidnap her and run. Maybe I'll have to pay the Georges for a fast trip across one or two state lines. Maybe anything. I couldn't waste money.

'Yeah,' she said. T haven't heard anything more, but my people are listening.'

They're still listening. So are the freelancers to whom I had paid a little and promised a lot—people like Cougar, I'm sorry to say—except that they deal in even younger children. I feel filthy every time I have to talk to one of them. If anyone deserves to be collared and put to work, they do, and yet mere hasn't been any particular Christian American crackdown on them.

Apparently we represent the greater danger to Jarret's America. What was done to us was illegal, by the way. We've learned that much. No new laws have been made to okay any of it. But, as Day Turner said long ago, a lot of people are convinced that cracking down on the poor and the different is a good idea. There are now a number of legal cases—Hindus, Jews, Moslems, and others who have managed to avoid being caught when Crusaders came for them. But even among these people, young children who are taken away are not often returned. Charge after charge of neglect and abuse is made against the parents or guardians. In fact, the parents or guardians might wind up collared legally for the horrible things they were supposed to have done to their children. Sometimes brainwashed or terrorized children are produced to give testimony against biological parents they haven't seen for months or years. I wasn't sure what to make of that last. Justin had not turned against Allie, no matter what he had been told about her. What kind of brainwashing would make a child turn against its own parents?

So the legal road seems not to lead to a return of abducted children—or it hasn't so far. It hasn't even led to an end of the camps. Camps are mentioned on the nets and disks as being strictly for the rehabilitation and reeducation of minor criminals—vagrants, thieves, addicts, and prostitutes. That's all. No problem.

We are, as we have always been, on our own.

'I quit my job today,' Harry said to me. He sat on my bed and leaned forward on my table, looking across at me with disturbing intensity. “I'm leaving.'

I put aside the lessons I had been writing for one of my students—a woman who wanted to learn to read so that she could teach her children. My students can't or won't afford books of any kind. I write lessons for them on sheets of paper that they buy from George's and bring to me. I've taught them to practice first letters, then words on the ground in a smooth patch of dirt. They write with their fore­fingers to learn to feel the shapes of letters and words. Then I make mem write with sharp, slender sticks so they can get used to the feel of using a pencil or pen.

It seems I've always taught With four younger brothers, I feel as though I were born teaching. I like doing it. I'm just not sure how much good it does. How much good does any­thing do now?

'What have you heard?' I asked Harry.

He stared off to one side, out my window.

I reached across the table to take his hand. 'Tell me, Harry.'

He looked at me and tried, I think, to smile a little. 'I've heard that there's a big children's home run by Christian America down in Marin County,' he said, 'and there's an­other in Ventura County. I don't have addresses, but I'll find them. Truth is, I've heard there are a lot of children's homes run by CA. But those are the only two I know of in Califor­nia.' He paused, looked out the window again. 'I don't know whether they would send our kids to one of those places. Justin says he didn't hear anything about children's homes or orphanages. He says all he heard was that he and the other kids were going to new families to be raised the right way as patriotic Christian Americans.'

'But you're going down to Ventura and Marin to find out for surer?”

“I have to.'

I thought about this, then shook my head. 'I don't believe they'd send kids as young as yours and mine down there. They have them adopted or fostered around here somewhere. At worst they'd be here in small group homes. The Ventura home would have kids pouring into it from all of southern California. The Marin home would be full of kids from the Bay Area and Sacramento.'

'So you go on looking here,' he said. 'I want you to. If you find our kids, it will be as good as if I found them. They won't be in the hands of crazy people—of their own mother's murderers.'

'Here is where it makes sense to look!' I said. 'If CA is doing any moving of kids, chances are, it's from south to north. It's still crowded down there—with all the immigration from Latin America plus the people from Arizona and Nevada and those who were already there.'

'I've got to go,' he said. 'I know you're right, but it doesn't matter. I don't know where to look up here. Adop­tions,