She smiled, then stopped smiling. 'You seduce people. My God, you're always at it, aren't you?'
'People fascinate me,' I said. 'I care about mem. If I didn't, Earthseed wouldn't mean anything at all to me.'
'Are you really going to bring that poor woman children to look after?'
'I hope to.'
'She can barely look after herself. That house looks as though the next storm will knock it over.'
'Yes. I'll have to see what I can do about that, too.'
'Do you have that kind of money?'
'No, of course not. But someone does. I don't know how I'm going to do it, Len, but the world is full of needy people. They don't all need the same things, but they all need purpose. Even some of the ones with plenty of money need purpose.'
'What about Larkin?'
'I'll find her. If she's alive, I'll find her. I've sworn that.'
We walked in silence for a while. There were a few other walkers in clusters, passing us or walking far ahead or behind us. The broad highway was broken and old and stretched long in front of us, but it wasn't threatening, somehow. Not now.
After a while, Len caught my arm and I turned to look at her. It was good to be walking with someone. Good to have another pair of eyes, another pair of hands. Good to hear another voice say my name, another brain questioning, demanding, even sneering.
'What do you want of me?' she asked. 'What is it that you want me to do? You have to tell me that.'
'Help me reach people,' I said. 'Go on working with me, and helping me. There's so much to be done.'
thursday, june 21, 2035
As my father used to quote from his old King James Bible, 'Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall.' He liked to be accurate about his quotes.
I'm bruised and wounded about the pride, but not destroyed, at least.
I decided yesterday that things had worked out so well with Nia that I could go on recruiting people as we walked toward Portland. Walking through a roadside town that seemed big enough for people not to be alarmed at the sight of a stranger, I stopped to ask a woman who was sweeping her front porch whether we could do some yard work for a meal. With no warning, she opened her front door, called her two big dogs, and told them to get us. We barely got out of her yard in time to avoid being bitten. Interesting that neither of us drew a gun or uttered a sound. It turns out that Len's fear of dogs is as strong as mine. Last night, she showed me some scars given her by a dog that her former owners had allowed to get too close.
Anyway, the woman with the two dogs cursed us, called us 'thieves, killers, heathens, and witches.' She promised to call the cops on us.
'All that just because you asked for work,' Len said. 'Thank heavens you didn't try to tell her about Earthseed!' She was cleaning a long, deep scratch on her arm. It came from a nail that stuck out from the woman's wooden gate. I had spotted the dogs in time to shove her back through the gate, dive through myself, then slam the gate by grabbing a bottom slat and yanking. I only just let go in time to avoid a lot of long, sharp teeth, and damned if the dog didn't bite one of the wooden slats of the fence in frustration at not being able to get at me. I had skinned hands and a bruised hip. Len had her long scratch, which hurt and bled enough to scare me. Later, I treated us both to tetanus skin tabs. They cost more than they should, but neither of us is up-to-date on our immunizations anymore. Best not to take unnecessary chances.
'I wonder what happened to that woman to make her willing to do a thing like that,' I said as we walked this morning.
'She was out of her mind,' Len said. 'That's all.'
'That's rarely all,' I said.
Then early today, a farm woman drove us off with a rifle and I decided to quit trying for a day or two. A storekeeper told us that Jarret's Crusaders have been active in the area. They've been rounding up vagrants, singling out witches and heathens, and generally scaring the hell out of householders by warning them about the dangers and evils of strangers from the road.
