Parable of the Talents

'And you think this wholesaling business is the way for us to go?' Grayson Mora asked.

I looked over at him with surprise. He sometimes man­ages to get through a whole Gathering without saying any­thing. He isn't shy at all, but he's quiet. He and his wife were slaves before they met. Each had lost family members to the effects and neglects of slavery. Now between them they have two girls and two boys. They're ferocious in guarding their children, and suspicious of anything new that might af­fect those children.

'I do,' I said. I paused, glanced up at Travis who stood at the big handsome oak podium that Allie had built Then I continued. “1 believe we can do it as long as the truck holds up. You're our expert there, Travis. You've said the truck is in good shape, but can we afford to maintain it? What new, expensive part will it be needing soon?'

'By the time it needs anything expensive, we should be making more money,' he said. 'As of now, even the tires are good, and that's unusual.' He leaned over the podium, look­ing confident and serious. 'We can do this,' he said. 'We should start small, study the possibilities, and figure out how we should grow. If we do this right, we should be able to buy another truck in a year or two. We're growing. We need to do this.''

Beside me, Bankole sighed. 'If we're not careful,' he said, 'our size and success will make us the castle on the hill—everyone's protector in this area. I don't think that's wise.'

I do mink it's wise, but I didn't say so. Bankole still can't see this place as anything more than a temporary stop on the way to a 'real' home in a 'real' town—that is, an already es­tablished town. I don't know how long it will take for him to see that what we're building here is as real and at least as im­portant as anything he's likely to find in a town that's been around for a century or two.

I foresee a time when our settlement is not only 'the cas­tle on the hill,' but when most or all of our neighbors have joined us. Even if they don't like every aspect of Earthseed, I hope they'll like enough of it to recognize that they're bet­ter off with us than without us. I want them as allies and as members, not just as 'friends.' And as we absorb them, I also intend to either absorb some of the storekeeper, restau­rant, or hotel clients that we'll have—or I want us to open our own stores, restaurants, and hotels. I definitely want to begin Gathering Houses that are also schools in Eureka, Ar­cata, and some of the larger nearby towns. I want us to grow into the cities and towns in this natural, self-supporting way.

I don't know whether we can do all this, but I think we have to try. I think this is what a real beginning for Earth-seed looks like.

I don't know how to do it That scares me to death some­times—always feeling driven to do something I don't know how to do. But I'm learning as I go along. And I've learned that I have to be careful how I talk about all this, even to Acorn. Bankole isn't the only one of us who doesn't see the possibility of doing anything he hasn't seen done by others. And... although Bankole would never say this, I suspect that somewhere inside himself, he believes that large, im­portant things are done only by powerful people in high positions far away from here. Therefore, what we do is, by definition, small and unimportant. This is odd, because in other ways, Bankole has a healthy ego. He didn't let self-doubt or the doubts of his family or the laughter of his friends stop him from going to college, and then medical school, surviving by way of a combination of scholarships, jobs, and huge debts. He began as a quietly arrogant Black boy of no particular distinction, and he ended as a physician.

But in a way, I suppose that's normal. I mean, it had been done before. Bankole himself had been taken to a Black woman pediatrician when he was a child.

What I'm trying to do isn't quite normal. It's been done. New belief systems have been introduced. But mere's no standard way of introducing them—no way that can be depended on to work. What I'm trying to do is, I'm afraid, a crazy, difficult, dangerous undertaking. Best to talk about it only a little bit at a time.

Noriko, Michael's wife, spoke up. 'I'm afraid for us to get involved in this new business,' she said, 'but I think we have to do it This is a good community, but how long can it last, how long can it grow before we begin to have trouble feeding ourselves?'

People nodded. Noriko has more courage than she gives herself credit for. She can be shaking with fear, but she still does what she thinks she should do.

'We can grow or we can wither,' I agreed. 'That's what Earthseed is about on a larger scale, after all.'

'I wish it weren't,' Emery Mora said. 'I wish we could just hide here and stay out of everything else. I know we can't, but I wish  It's been so good here.' Before she escaped slavery, she'd had two young sons taken from her and sold. And she's a sharer. She and Gray and his daughter Doe and her daughter Tori and their sons Carlos and Antonio—

all sharers. No other family is so afflicted. No other family has more reason to want to hide.

We talked on for a while, Travis listening as people protested, then either answering their protests or letting oth­ers answer them. Then he asked for a vote: Should we ex­pand our business? The vote was 'yes' with everyone over 15 voting. Only Allie Gilchrist, Alan Faircloth,