Parable of the Talents

her captivity—and I suspect it did—at least it sustained her. It enabled her to sur­vive without giving up or truly giving in to her captors. I couldn't have helped her. I was her weakness. Earthseed was her strength. No wonder it was her favorite.

 

from The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

sunday, april 8, 2035

I'm on my own.

I've left Georgetown, left my students old and young, left my room furnished with junk. I left some of my money and one of my guns with Allie so that I'll have something to fall back on if I'm robbed. I've come first to the message cache—two days' walk—to see whether anything has been left. I'm there now. I'll sleep there in the shelter of a living coast redwood tree that time and rot have hollowed out enough to hold a human or three. I've found unsigned mes­sages from Travis and Natividad and from Michael and Noriko. Both identified themselves by referring to incidents that any member of the community would remember and understand but that would mean nothing to strangers. I did the same in the message I left.

Neither couple had found their kids. Both had left numbers. They had bought new phones—the cheap, talk-and-listen, debit phones like Harry's and mine. I left three numbers— mine, Harry's, and one where Allie could be reached. Then I wrote a message to those who might come later.

'Justin is with us again! He's all right. There is hope. God is Change!'

God is Change. I wrote the words, then settled back to think about that. I find that I haven't thought much about Earthseed in the past few months. I believe its teachings helped me, helped all of us to survive Camp Christian. God is Change. I've lost none of my belief. All that I said to Bankole so long ago—two years ago—is still true.

So much has been destroyed, but it is still true. Earthseed is true. The Destiny is as significant a human purpose as it ever was. Only Acorn is gone. Acorn was precious, but it wasn't essential.

I sit here now, trying to think, to plan. I must find my daughter, and I must teach Earthseed, make Earthseed real to as many people as I can reach, and send them out to teach others.

The truth is, when I taught reading, I used a few simple Earthseed verses. This is what I did in Acorn, and I did it au­tomatically in Georgetown. Strange to say, no one objected. People sometimes looked puzzled, sometimes disagreed or agreed with enthusiasm, but no one complained. Some peo­ple even seemed to think that what I read was from the Bible. I couldn't bring myself to let them go on thinking that.

'No,' I told them. 'It's from something else called Earthseed: The Books of the Living.' And I showed them one of the few surviving copies—retrieved from one of the caches. Since I've been calling myself Cory Duran, no one con­nected me with the strangely named author, Lauren Oya Olamina.

Lines like the familiar,

'All that you touch,

You Change....'< /emphasis>

And

'To get along with God

Consider the consequences of your behavior.'

And

'Belief