Parable of the Talents

Initiates and guides action Or it does nothing.'

And

'Kindness eases Change.'

People seemed to like brief fragments of verses or com­plete rhythmic verses because rhythmic verses are easy to memorize. And memorizing verses made it easier to spot individual words and learn to recognize them in their written forms. In that way, I guess I never stopped teaching Earth-seed. But without the Destiny, without a more complete un­derstanding of the belief system, what I taught was no more than a few scattered verses and aphorisms. Nothing unifies them.

I must find at least a few people who are willing to learn more, and who will be willing to teach what they've learned. I must build ... not a physical community this time. I guess I understand at last how easy it is to destroy such a commu­nity. I need to create something wide-reaching and harder to kill. That's why I must teach teachers. I must create not only a dedicated little group of followers, not only a collection of communities as I once imagined, but a movement. I must create a new fashion in faith—a fashion that can evolve into a new religion, a new guiding force, that can help humanity to put its great energy, competitiveness, and creativity to work doing the truly vast job of fulfilling the Destiny.

But first, somehow, I must find my child.

I am alone, and I know that's stupid. To travel alone is to make yourself more vulnerable than you need to be. I wish I could have talked Harry into working with me. He's en­dangering himself and wasting his time down in southern California and around the Bay Area. I don't believe there's any chance at all that our kids have been shipped down there. They're here. And his kids and mine are so young that they've surely been adopted. My Larkin could grow up be­lieving that she is the daughter of one her kidnappers. His kids were four and two when they were taken, so I suspect the same could happen to them—if we let it.

Tomorrow, I'll start walking toward Eureka. I'm armed. I've got the old .45 semiautomatic that made the trip up from Robledo with me. I had tucked it into one of the caches, thinking I wouldn't need it again. Also, I've done all that seemed reasonable to make myself look both poor and male. I'm big and plain. That's good camouflage, at least. It's not real protection, but it's the best I can do. If someone shoots me, I've got no backup, so chances are, I'm dead. But I'm not the only solitary walker out there, and maybe the robbers and the crazies will go for the smaller ones who look like less trouble. And there are fewer robbers and crazies. Or there were. At Georgetown and on my way here, I saw more and more men in military uniforms—or parts of uniforms. They helped fight Jarret's stupid Al-Can war. Now a lot of them are having a hard time earning a living—and they're often very well armed.

There are more slavers now that Jarret's Crusaders have joined Cougar and his friends in the game of collaring peo­ple and grabbing their kids. I'm hoping to be invisible to them. I want to keep quiet, do my work, and to look just crazy enough to encourage people to let me alone. As a man, though, I must be very careful how I follow up the few leads I have on small Black children who have appeared all of a sudden in families where no one was pregnant. I don't want to be mistaken for a lurking child molester or a kidnapper.

I hope to work for meals in Eureka and Arcata—a little yard work, some painting, some minor carpentry, wood that needs chopping.... If I stay away from the wealthier neigh­borhoods, I should be all right. Wealthy people wouldn't need to hire me anyway. They would keep a few servants— people working for room and board. I would be working for what was left of the middle class. I would be just one more day laborer working for his next meal.

Down south and in the Bay Area, a laborer's life would be harder. People are too distrustful of one another, too walled off from one another if they can afford walls. But up here, men are hired, and then at least decently fed. They might even be allowed to sleep in a shed, a garage, or a barn. And they might—often do—get a look at the kids of the family.  They might—often do—hear talk that later proves useful. For most laborers, useful means they might be steered to­ward other jobs or away from trouble or let in on where peo­ple keep their valuables. For me, useful might mean rumors of adoptions, fosterings, and children's homes.

I'll wander around the Eureka-Arcata complex and the surrounding towns for as long as I can. Allie has promised to go on collecting information for me, and she says I can crash in her rooms at Georgetown when I need a rest in a real bed. Also, if I'm picked up and collared, Dolores will vouch for me—for a fee, of course. She knows what I'm doing. She doesn't think I've got a chance in hell of suc­ceeding, but she's got kids and grandkids, so she knows I have to do this.

'I'd do the same thing myself,' she said when I talked to her. 'I'd do all I could. Goddamn these so-called religious people. Thieves and murderers—that's all they are. They should wear the collar.