Parable of the Talents

As for Dan I couldn't really blame him for his attitude. But we couldn't afford a fight now. I was too close to my own edge. Leaving the rest of the kids, especially the little ones, was horrible. I had been willing to fight for Marcus if I had to, but I might have gotten him and others killed. I would have gotten someone killed. I don't know how to stop people like Cougar, but I don't think killing off their victims, their human property, is the best way.

Inside the truck, I hugged my brother. He was as unre­sponsive as a stick at first, but after a moment he held me away from him and stared at me for at least a full minute. He didn't say anything. He just shook his head. Then he hugged me. After a while, he put his hand to his throat. He felt all around his neck where the damned collar had been. Then he just kind of curled up on himself. He lay on his side in fetal position, and I sat beside him. He flinched when I touched him, so I just sat there.

And I told the others. 'He's my brother,' I said. 'I... for five years, I believed... that he was dead.' And then I couldn't say anything more. I just sat with him. I don't know what the others did apart from keeping watch and driving us home. If they talked, I didn't hear them. I didn't care what they did.

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In all, Bankole told me, my brother had three active venereal infections. Also, his upper back and shoulders, his left arm, and the outside of his left leg were covered with an ugly net­work of old burn scars. No wonder Cougar had wanted to get rid of him. He probably thought he'd cheated me, palmed a defective off on me. Someone might once have done the same to him. Marcus was so good-looking that Cougar might have been persuaded to buy him in a rush without stripping him to look him over. But Marcus had suf­fered terrible burns sometime in the past, and Bankole said he had been shot, too.

When Bankole had finished examining him, he gave him something to help him sleep. That seemed best. Marcus had not objected to being examined. I assured him before I left them together that Bankole was a doctor and my husband as well. He didn't say anything. I asked him what he wanted to eat.

He shrugged and whispered, 'Nothing. I'm okay.'

'He's far from okay,' Bankole told me later. But because Marcus wasn't in serious physical pain, we could keep him with us. We gave him a space behind screens—room di­viders—in our kitchen. It was warm there, and we had set up a bed, a dresser, a pitcher and basin, and a lamp. Like every other household in the community, we sometimes had to take people in—strangers who were visiting, new people joining us, or neighbors within the community who weren't getting along with others in their own households.

I worried that Marcus, in his present state of mind, might get up in the night and run away. How long must he have dreamed of running away from Cougar and his friends?

Now, waking up in a strange place, and not quite remembering how he had gotten there………….Just to be sure even after he had taken his sleeping pill, I went out and told our night watch—Beth Faircloth and Lucio Figueroa—to be careful. I told them Marcus might awake confused, and try to run away, and that they should be careful about shooting at a lone figure trying to get away from Acorn. Under normal circumstances such a figure would be thought a thief, and might be shot. We'd had great trouble with thieves during our first year, and we learned that if we were to survive, we couldn't afford to have much sympathy for them.

But Marcus must not be shot.

'You told me Zahra Balter saw your stepmother and your brothers shot down back in Robledo,' Bankole said to me as we lay in bed together. 'Well, he's been beaten, shot, and burned. I can't imagine how he survived. Someone must have taken care of him, and it wouldn't have been your friend Cougar.'

'No, it wouldn't have been Cougar,' I agreed. 'I want to know what happened. I hope he'll tell us. How was he with you when I left you two alone together?'

'Silent. Responsive and unembarrassed, but not speaking one unnecessary word.'

'You're sure you can cure his infections?'

'They shouldn't be a problem. Let alone, any one of them would have killed him sooner or later. But with treatment, he should be all right—physically, anyway.'

'He was 14 when I saw him last. He liked playing soccer and reading about the past and about foreign places. He was always taking things apart and sometimes getting them back together again, and he had a huge crush on Robin Balter, Harry's youngest sister. I don't know anything about him now. I don't know who he is.'

'You'll have plenty of time to find out. I've told him he's going to be an uncle, by the way.'

'Reaction?'

'None at all. At the moment, I don't think that even he knows who he is. He seems willing enough to be looked after; but I get