the feeling he doesn't much care what happens to him. I think... I hope that that will change. You may be his best medicine.'
'He was my favorite brother—and always the best-looking person in the family. He's still one of the best-looking people I've ever seen.'
'Yes,' Bankole said. 'In spite of his scars, he's a good-looking boy. I wonder whether his looks have saved him or destroyed him. Or both.'
************************************
It seems that things can never go well for long.
Dan Noyer has run away. He slipped past the watch and out of Acorn at least in part because of the instructions I gave to the night watch. Beth Faircloth says she saw someone—a man or boy, she thought.
'I thought the figure was too tall to be Marcus,' she said when she phoned me. 'But I wasn't sure—so I didn't shoot' The running figure had been dressed in dark clothing with something dark over the head and face.
Not until I had verified that Marcus was still there did I think of Dan.
To tell the truth, I had forgotten about Dan. My mind had been filled with Marcus—getting him back, keeping him, wondering what had happened to him. I had paid no attention to Dan. Yet Dan had suffered a terrible disappointment. He was in real pain. I knew that, and I left him to the Balters, who, after all, have two energetic little kids of their own to deal with.
I got Zahra out of bed and asked her to check on Dan. He had been staying with them for four months now. Of course, he was gone. His note said, 'I know you'll think I'm wrong, but I have to find them. I can't let them be with someone like that Cougar. They're my sisters!' And after his signature, a postscript: 'Take care of Kassi and Mercy until I come back. I'll work for you and pay you. I'll bring Paula and Nina back and they'll work too.'
He's only 15. He saw Cougar and his crew. He saw my brother. He saw Georgetown. And seeing all that, he learned nothing!
No, that's not true. He's learned—or finally realized—all the wrong things. I had assumed he knew what his sisters' fate might be if they were alive—that they might be prostitutes, might wind up in some rich man's harem or working as slave farm or factory laborers. Or, I suppose, they might wind up with some pervert who likes cutting out female tongues. They might even wind up as the property of someone who cares for them and looks after them even as he makes sexual use of them. That would be the best possibility. The worst, perhaps, is that they might survive for a while as 'specialists'—prostitutes used to serve crazies and sadists. These don't live long, and that's a mercy. Theirs is a fate that could also befall a big, baby-faced, well-built boy like Dan. I wonder how much of this Dan understands. He is a good, brave, stupid boy, and I suspect he'll pay for it.
He might come back, of course. He might come to his senses and come home to help take care of Kassia and Mercy. Or we night find him through our outside contacts. I'll have to make sure that the word is out on him as well as on Nina and Paula. Problem is, finding him won't help if he's still intent on hunting for his sisters. We can't chain him here. Or rather, we won't If he insists on dying, he will die, damn him. Damn!
Chapter 7
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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
The child in each of us
Knows paradise.
Paradise is home.
Home as it was
Or home as it should have been.
Paradise is one's own place,
One's own people,
One's own world,
Knowing and known,
Perhaps even
Loving and loved.
Yet every child
Is cast from paradise—
Into growth and destruction,
