Sitting up I could see Justin running around, chasing pigeons. Jill was keeping an eye on him, but not trying to keep up with him.
Bankole took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “I’m not boring you, am I?” He asked for the second time.
I had been trying not to look at him. I looked now, but he had not yet said what he had to say if he wanted to keep me with him. Did he know? I thought he did.
“I want to go with you,” I said. “But I’m serious about Earthseed. I couldn’t be more serious. You have to understand that.” Why did this sound strange to me?
It was the absolute truth, but I felt odd telling it.
“I know my rival,” he said.
Maybe that’s why it sounded strange. I was telling
him there was someone else— something else.
Maybe it would have sounded less strange if the something were another man.
“You could help me,” I said.
“Help you what? Do you have any real idea what you want to do?”
“Begin the first Earthseed Community.”
He sighed.
“You could help me,” I repeated. “This world is falling apart. You could help me begin something purposeful and constructive.”
“Going to fix the world, are you?” he said with quiet amusement.
I looked at him. For a moment I was too angry to let myself speak. When I could control my voice, I said, “It’s all right if you don’t believe, but don’t laugh. Do you know what it means to have something to believe in? Don’t laugh.”
After a while he said, “All right.”
After a longer while, I said, “Fixing the world is not what Earthseed is about.”
“The stars. I know.” He lay flat on his back, but turned his head to look at me instead of looking up.
“This world would be a better place if people lived according to Earthseed,” I said. “But then, this world would be better if people lived according to the teachings of almost any religion.”
“That’s true. Why do you think they’ll live according
to the teaching of yours?”
“A few will. Several thousand? Several hundred thousand? Millions? I don’t know. But when I have a home base, I’ll begin the first community. In fact, I’ve already begun it.”
“Is that what you need me for?” He didn’t bother to smile or pretend it was a joke. It wasn’t. I moved over closer to him and sat next to him so that I could look down into his face.
“I need you to understand me,” I said. “I need you to take me the way I am or go off to your land by yourself.”
“You need me to take you and all your friends off the street so you can start a church.” Again, he was altogether serious.
“That or nothing,” I said with equal seriousness. He gave me a humorless smile. “So now we know where we stand.”
I smoothed his beard, and saw that he wanted to move away from my hand, but that he did not move.
“Are you all that sure you want God as your rival?” I asked.
“I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?” He covered my caressing hand with one of his own.
“Tell me, do you ever lose your temper and scream and cry?”
“Sure.”
“I can’t picture it. In all honesty, I can’t.”
And that reminded me of something that I hadn’t told him, had better tell him before he found out and felt cheated or decided that I didn’t trust him— which I still didn’t, quite. But I didn’t want to lose him to stupidity or cowardice. I didn’t want to lose him at all.
“Still want me with you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I intend to marry you once we’ve settled.”
23
Your teachers
Are all around you.
All that you perceive,
All that you experience,
All that is given to you
or taken from you,
All that you love or hate,
need or fear
Will teach youŃ
If you will learn.
God is your first
and your last teacher.
God is your harshest teacher:
subtle,
demanding.
Learn or die.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2027
We had another battle to try to sleep through before dawn this morning. It began to the south of us out on or near the highway, and worked its way first toward, then away from us.
We could hear people shooting, screaming, cursing, running… . Same old stuff— tiresome, dangerous, and stupid. The shooting went on for over an hour, waxing and waning. There was a final barrage that seemed to involve more guns than ever. Then the noise stopped.
I managed to sleep through some of it. I got over being afraid, even got over being angry. In the end, I was only tired. I thought, if the bastards are going to kill me, I can’t stop them by staying awake. If that wasn’t altogether true, I didn’t care. I slept.
And somehow, during or after the battle, in spite of the watch, two people slipped into our camp and bedded down among us. They slept too.
We awoke early as usual so that we could start walking while the heat wasn’t too terrible. We’ve learned to wake up without prompting at the first light of dawn. Today, four of us sat up in our bags at almost the same time. I was crawling out of my bag to go off and urinate when I spotted the extra people— two gray lumps in the dawn light, one large and one small, lying against each other, asleep on the bare ground. Thin arms and legs extended like sticks from rags and mounds of clothing.
I glanced around at the others and saw that they were staring where I was staring— all of them except Jill, who was supposed to be on watch. We began trusting her to stand night watch last week with a partner. This was only her second solitary watch.
And where was she looking? Away into the trees.
She and I would have to talk.
Harry and Travis were already reacting to the figures on the ground. In silence, each man was peeling out of his bag in his underwear, and standing up. More fully clothed, I matched them, move for move, and the three of us closed in around the two intruders.
The larger of the two awoke all at once, jumped up, darted two or three steps toward Harry, then stopped. It was a woman. We could see her better now. She was brown-skinned with a lot of long, straight, unkept black hair. Her coloring was as dark as mine, but she was all plains and angles— a wiry, hawk-faced woman who could have used a few decent meals and a good scrubbing. She looked like a lot of people we’ve seen on the road.
The second intruder awoke, saw Travis standing nearby in his underwear, and screamed. That got everyone’s attention. It was the high, piercing shriek of a child— a little girl who looked about seven. She was a tiny, pinched image of the woman— her mother, or her sister perhaps.
I could see that. “Just take what we give you and nothing more than we give you,” I said. “That will be pay enough.”
“We won’t steal. We aren’t thieves.”
Of course they were thieves. How else could they live. Some stealing and scavenging, maybe some whoring… . They weren’t very good at it or they’d look better. But for the little kid’s sake, I wanted to help them at least with a meal.
“Wait, then.” I said. “We’ll put a meal together.”
They sat where they were and watched us with hungry, hungry eyes. There was more hunger in those eyes than we could fill with all our food. I thought I had probably made a mistake. These people were so desperate, they were dangerous. It didn’t matter at all that they looked harmless. They were still alive and strong enough to run. They were not harmless.
It was Justin who eased some of the tension in those bottomless, hungry eyes. Stark naked, he toddled over to the woman and the girl and looked them over. The little girl only stared back, but after a moment, the woman began to smile. She said something to Justin, and he smiled. Then he ran back to Allie who held on to him long enough to dress him. But he had done his work. The woman was seeing us with different eyes. She watched Natividad nursing Dominic, then watched Bankole combing his beard. This seemed funny to her and to the child, and they both giggled.