Parable of the Talents

the ground outside our window, was ignored.

The younger girls cried and quarreled and complained. The rest of us sat silent most of the time. We had all been through one kind of hell or another. We had all survived enough to know that crying, complaining, and quarreling did no good. We might forget that in time, but not yet.

Sometime around two or three o'clock, the door of our prison opened. A huge, bearded man filled the doorway, and we stared up at him. He wore the usual uniform—black tunic with white cross and black pants, and he was at least two meters tall. He stared down at us as though we smelled—which we did—and as though that were our fault.

'You and you,' he said, pointing to me and to Allie. 'Get out here and pick up this corpse.'

By reflex, Allie got a stubborn look on her face, but we both stood up. 'She's dead, too,' I said, pointing to Zahra.

I never saw his hand move, but he must have done some­thing. I screamed, convulsed, dropped to the floor from a jolt of agony that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. I was on fire. Then I wasn't. Searing agony. Then nothing.

The man waited until I was able to look up at him, until I did look up.

'You don't speak unless you're spoken to,' he said. 'You do what you're told when you're told to do it, and you keep your mouths shut!'

I didn't say anything. Somehow, I managed to nod. It oc­curred to me that I should do that.

Allie stepped toward me to help me up, her hands already out to help me. Then she doubled up in agony of her own. Echoes of her pain burned through me, and I froze, teeth clenched. I was desperate not to announce my extra vulner­ability, my sharing. If I was held captive long enough, they would find out. I knew that. But not now. Not yet.

The man didn't seem to take any special notice of me. He watched us both and waited in seeming patience until Allie looked up, bewildered and angry.

'You do what you're told and only what you're told,' he said. 'You don't touch one another. Whatever filth you're used to, it's over. It's time for you to learn to behave like de­cent Christian women—if you've got the brains to learn.'

So that was it, then. We were a dirty cult of free lovers, and they had come to straighten us out. Educate us.

I believe Allie and I were chosen because we were the biggest of the women. We were ordered to carry first Zahra, then Teresa, out to a patch of ground where we grew jojoba plants for their oil. There, we were given picks and shovels and ordered to dig graves—long, deep holes—among the jojobas. We had had no food and no water. All we got was a jolt of agony now and then when we slowed down more than our overseer was willing to permit. The ground was bad— rocky and hard. That was why we used it for jojoba plants. The plants are tough. They don't need much. Now, it seemed that we were the ones who didn't need much. I didn't think I could do it—dig the damned hole. It's been a long time since I've felt so bad in every possible way, so horrible, so scared. After a while, all I could think of was water, pain, and where was my baby? I lost track of everything else.

I was digging Zahra's grave, and I couldn't even think of that. I just wanted the digging to be over. She was my best friend, my Change-sister, and she lay uncovered, waiting beside the hole as I dug, and it didn't matter. I couldn't focus on it.

The other women were brought out of the school and made to watch us dig. I knew that because my attention was caught by the sudden movement of silent, approaching peo­ple. I looked up, saw the women shepherded toward us by three black-tunic-and-cross-wearing men. Sometime later, I realized that the men had also been marched out They were kept separate, and it seemed that some of them were digging too.

I froze, staring at them, looking for Bankole ... and for Harry.

The sudden pain tore a grunt from me. I fell to my knees in the hole I was digging.

'Work!' my slave driver said. 'It's time you heathens learned to do a little work.'

I had not seen whom the men were burying. I saw Travis, shirt off, swinging a pick into the hard ground. I saw Lucio Figueroa digging another hole and Ted Faircloth digging a third. So they had three dead to our two. Who were their dead? Which of our men had these bastards killed?

Where was Bankole?

I hadn't spotted him. I had had such a quick look. I man­aged to look again and again as I shoveled dirt out of the hole. In the cluster of men, I spotted Michael, then Jorge, then Jeff King. Then the pain hit again. I didn't fall this time. I held on to the shovel and leaned back against the side of the hole I was digging.

'Dig!' the son of a bitch above me said.