2027

! ! !

WE ARE EARTHSEED. We are flesh—self aware, questing, problem-solving flesh. We are that aspect of Earthlife best able to shape God knowingly. We are Earthlife maturing, Earthlife preparing to fall away from the parent world. We are Earthlife preparing to take root in new ground, Earthlife fulfilling its purpose, its promise, its Destiny.

14

! ! !

In order to rise

From its own ashes

A phoenix

First

Must

Burn.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2027—MORNING

LAST NIGHT, WHEN I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning. The houses, the trees, the people: Burning.

Smoke awoke me, and I shouted down the hall to Cory and the boys. I grabbed my clothes and emergency pack and followed Cory as she herded the boys out.

The bell never rang. Our watchers must have been killed before they could reach it.

Everything was chaos. People running, screaming, shooting. The gate had been destroyed. Our attackers had driven an ancient truck through it. They must have stolen a truck just to crash it through our gate. I think they must have been pyro addicts—bald people with painted heads, faces, and hands. Red faces; blue faces; green faces; screaming mouths; avid, crazy eyes, glittering in the firelight. They shot us and shot us and shot us. I saw Natalie Moss, running, screaming, then pitching backward, her face half gone, her body still impelled forward. She fell flat on her back, and did not move again. I fell with her, caught up in her death. I lay there, dazed, struggling to move, to get up. Cory and the boys, running ahead of me never noticed. They ran on.

I got up, felt for my pack, found it, and ran. I tried not to see what was happening around me. Hearing the gunfire and the screams didnʼt stop me. A dead body—Edwin Dunn—didnʼt stop me. I bent, snatched up his gun, and kept running.

Someone screamed near me, then tackled me, pulled me down. I fired the gun in reflexive terror, and took the terrible impact in my own stomach. A green face hung above mine, mouth open, eyes wide, not yet feeling all his pain. I shot him again, terrified that his pain would immobilize me when he did feel it. It seemed that he took a long time to die.

When I could move again, I pushed his body off me. I got up, still holding the gun, and ran for the wrecked gate.

Best to be in the darkness outside. Best to hide.

I ran up Meredith Street away from Durant Road, away from the fires and the shooting. I had lost track of Cory and the boys. I thought they would go toward the hills and not toward the center of town. Every direction was dangerous, but there was more danger where there were more people. In the night, a woman and three kids might look like a gift basket of food, money, and sex.

North toward the hills. North through the dark streets to where the nearby hills and mountains blotted out the stars.

And then what?

I didnʼt know. I couldnʼt think. I had never been outside the walls when it was so dark. My only hope of staying alive was to listen, hear any movement before it got too close to me, see what I could by starlight, be as

quiet as I could.

I walked down the middle of the street looking and listening and trying to avoid potholes and chunks of broken asphalt. There was little other trash. Anything that would burn, people would use as fuel. Anything that could be reused or sold had been gathered. Cory used to comment on that. Poverty, she said, had made the streets cleaner.

Where was she? Where had she taken my brothers? Were they all right? Had they even gotten out of the neighborhood?

I stopped. Were my brothers back there? Was Curtis? I hadnʼt seen him at all—though if anyone were going to survive this insanity, it would be the Talcotts. But we had no way of finding each other. Sound. Footsteps. Two pairs of running footsteps. I stayed where I was, frozen in place. No sudden moves to draw attention to me. Had I already been seen? Could I be seen—a figure of darker darkness in an otherwise empty street?

The sound was behind me. I listened and knew that it was off to one side, approaching, passing. Two people running down a side street, indifferent to the noise they made, indifferent to woman-shaped shadows. I let out a breath and drew another through my mouth because I could get more air with less sound that way. I couldnʼt go back to the fires and the pain. If Cory and the boys were there, they were dead or worse, captive. But they had been ahead of me. They must have gotten out. Cory wouldnʼt let them come back to look for me. There was a bright glow in the air over what had been our neighborhood. If she had gotten the boys away, all she had to do was look back to know that she didnʼt want to go back.

Did she have her Smith & Wesson? I wished I had it and the two boxes of ammunition that went with it. All I had was the knife in my pack and Edwin Dunnʼs old .45 automatic. And all the ammunition I had for it was in it. If it wasnʼt empty. I knew the gun. It held seven rounds. Iʼd fired it twice. How many times had Edwin Dunn fired it before someone shot him? I didnʼt expect to find out until morning. I had a flashlight in my pack, but I didnʼt intend to use it unless I could be certain I wouldnʼt be making a target of myself.

During the day the sight of the bulge in my pocket would be enough to make people think twice about robbing or raping me. But during the night the blue gun would be all but invisible even in my hand. If it were empty, I could only use it as a club. And the moment I hit someone with it, I might as well hit myself. If I lost consciousness for any reason during a fight, I would lose all my possessions if not my life. Tonight I had to hide.

Tomorrow I would have to try to bluff as much as possible. Most people wouldnʼt insist on my shooting them just to test whether or not the gun was loaded. For the street poor, unable to afford medical care, even a minor wound might be fatal.

I am one of the street poor, now. Not as poor as some, but homeless, alone, full of books and ignorant of reality. Unless I meet someone from the neighborhood, thereʼs no one I can afford to trust. No one to back me up.

Three miles to the hills. I kept to the starlit back streets, listening and looking around. The gun was in my hand. I meant to keep it there. I could hear dogs barking and snarling, fighting somewhere not far away. I was in a cold sweat. I had never been more terrified in my life. Yet nothing attacked me. Nothing found me.

I didnʼt go all the way to the hills. Instead I found a burned out, unwalled house a few blocks before the end of Meredith Street. Fear of dogs had made me keep an eye open for anything that might provide shelter. The house was a ruin, a plundered ruin. It wasnʼt safe to walk into with or without a light. It was a roofless collection of upright black bones. But it had been built up off the ground. Five concrete steps led up to what had been the front porch. There should be a way under the house.

What if other people were under it?

I walked around it, listening, trying to see. Then, instead of daring to crawl under, I settled in what was left of the attached garage. A corner of it was still standing, and there was enough rubble in front of that corner to conceal me if I didnʼt show a light. Also, if I were surprised, I could get out of the garage faster than I could crawl out from under a house. The concrete floor could not collapse under me as the wooden floor might in what was left of the house proper. It was as good as I was going to get, and I was exhausted. I didnʼt know whether I could sleep, but I had to rest.

Morning now. What shall I do? I did sleep a little, but I kept startling awake. Every sound woke me—the wind, rats, insects, then squirrels, and birds… I donʼt feel rested, but Iʼm a little less exhausted. So what shall I do?

How is it that we had never established an outside meeting place—somewhere where the family could reunite after disaster. I remember suggesting to Dad that we do that, but he had never done anything about it, and I hadnʼt pushed the idea as I should have. (Poor Godshaping. Lack of forethought.) What now!

Now, I have to go home. I donʼt want to. The idea scares me to death. Itʼs taken me a long time just to write the word: Home. But I have to know about my brothers, and about Cory and Curtis. I donʼt know how I can help if theyʼre hurt or being held by someone. I donʼt know what might be waiting for me back at the neighborhood. More painted faces? The police? Iʼm in trouble either way. If the police are there, Iʼll have to hide my gun before I go in—my gun, and my small amount of money. Carrying a gun can win you a lot of unwanted attention from the police if you catch them in the wrong mood. Yet everyone who has one carries it. The trick, of course, is not to get caught carrying it.

On the other hand, if the painted faces are still there, I canʼt go in at all. How long do those people stay

high on pyro and fire? Do they hang around after their fun to steal whateverʼs left and maybe kill a few more people?

No matter. I have to go and see.

I have to go home.

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2027—EVENING

I have to write. I donʼt know what else to do. The others are asleep now, but it isnʼt dark. Iʼm on watch because I couldnʼt sleep if I tried. Iʼm jittery and crazed. I canʼt cry. I want to get up and just run and run… Run away from everything. But there isnʼt any away.

I have to write. Thereʼs nothing familiar left to me but the writing. God is Change. I hate God. I have to write.

There were no unburned houses back in the neighborhood, although some were burned worse than others. I donʼt know whether police or firefighters ever came. If they had come, they were gone when I got there. The neighborhood was wide open and crawling with scavengers.

I stood at the gate, staring in as strangers picked among the black bones of our homes. The ruins were still smoking, but men, women, and children were all over them, digging through them, picking fruit from the trees, stripping our dead, quarreling or fighting over new acquisitions, stashing things away in clothing or bundles… Who were these people?

I put my hand on the gun in my pocket—it had four rounds left in it—and I went in. I was grimy from lying in dirt and ashes all night. I might not be noticed.

I saw three women from an unwalled part of Durant Road, digging through what was left of the Yannis house. They were laughing and throwing around chunks of wood and plaster.

Where were Shani Yannis and her daughters? Where were her sisters?

I walked through the neighborhood, looking past the human maggots, trying to find some of the people I had grown up with. I found dead ones. Edwin Dunn lay where he had when I took his gun, but now he was shirtless and shoeless. His pockets had been turned out.

The ground was littered with ash-covered corpses, some burned or half blown apart by automatic weapons fire. Dried or nearly dried blood had pooled in the street. Two men were prying loose our emergency bell. The bright, clear, early morning sunlight made the whole scene less real somehow, more nightmarelike. I stopped in front of our house and stared at the five adults and the child who were picking through the ruins of it. Who were these vultures? Did the fire draw them? Is that what the street poor do? Run to fire and hope to find a corpse to strip?

There was a dead green face on our front porch. I went up the steps and stood looking at him—at her. The green face was a woman—tall, lean, bald, but female. And what had she died for? What was the point of all this?

“Leave her alone.” A woman who had a pair of Coryʼs shoes in her hand strode up to me. “She died for all of us. Leave her alone.”

Iʼve never in my life wanted more to kill another human being. “Get the hell out of my way,” I said. I didnʼt raise my voice. I donʼt know how I looked, but the thief backed away.

I stepped over the green face and went into the carcass of our home. The other thieves looked at me, but none of them said anything. One pair, I noticed, was a man with a small boy. The man was dressing the boy in a pair of my brother Gregoryʼs jeans. The jeans were much too big, but the man belted them and rolled them up.

And where was Gregory, my clownish smartass of a baby brother? Where was he? Where was everyone? The roof of our house had fallen in. Most things had burned—kitchen, living room, dining room, my room… The floor wasnʼt safe to walk on. I saw one of the scavengers fall through, give a surprised yell, then climb, unhurt, onto a floor joist.

Nothing left in my room could be salvaged. Ashes. A heat-distorted metal bedframe, the broken metal and ceramic remains of my lamp, bunches of ashes that had been clothing or books. Many books were not burned through. They were useless, but they had been packed so tightly together that the fire had burned in deeply from the edges and the spines. Rough circles of unhurried paper remained, surrounded by ash. I didnʼt find a single whole page.

The back two bedrooms had survived better. That was where the scavengers were, and where I headed. I found bundled pairs of my fatherʼs socks, folded shorts and T-shirts, and an extra holster that I could use for the .45. All this I found in or under the unpromising-looking remains of Dadʼs chest of drawers. Most things were burned beyond use, but I stuffed the best of what I found into my pack. The man with the child came over to scavenge beside me, and somehow, perhaps because of the child, because this stranger in his filthy rags was someoneʼs father, too, I didnʼt mind. The little boy watched the two of us, his small brown face expressionless. He did look a little like Gregory.

I dug a dried apricot out of my pack and held it out to him. He couldnʼt have been more than six, but he wouldnʼt touch the food until the man told him to. Good discipline. But at the manʼs nod, he snatched the apricot, bit off a tiny taste, then stuffed the rest into his mouth whole.

So, in company with five strangers, I plundered my familyʼs home. The ammunition under the closet floor in my parentsʼ room had burned, had no doubt exploded. The closet was badly charred. So much for the money hidden there.

I took dental floss, soap, and a jar of petroleum jelly from my parentsʼ bathroom. Everything else was already gone.

I managed to gather one set of outer clothing each for Cory and my brothers. In particular, I found shoes for them. There was a woman scavenging among Marcusʼs shoes, and she glared at me, but she kept quiet. My brothers had run out of the house in their pajamas. Cory had thrown on a coat. I had been the last to get out of the house because I had risked stopping to grab jeans, a sweatshirt, and shoes as well as my emergency pack. I could have been killed. If I had thought about what I was doing, if I had had to think, no doubt I would have been killed. I reacted the way I had trained myself to react—though my training was far from up to date—more memory than anything else. I hadnʼt practiced late at night for ages. Yet my self-administered training had worked.

Now, if I could get these clothes to Cory and my brothers, I might be able to make up for their lack of training. Especially if I could get the money under the rocks by the lemon tree.

I put clothes and shoes into a salvaged pillow case, looked around for blankets, and couldnʼt find a one. They must have been grabbed early. All the more reason to get the lemon-tree money. I went out to the peach tree, and, being tall, managed to reach a couple of nearly-ripe peaches that other scavengers had missed. Then I looked around as though for something more to take, and surprised myself by almost crying at the sight of Coryʼs big, well-tended back garden, trampled into the ground. Peppers, tomatoes, squashes, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, melons, sunflowers, beans, corn… Much of it wasnʼt ripe yet, but what hadnʼt been stolen had been destroyed.

I scavenged a few carrots, a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds from flower heads that lay on the ground, and a few bean pods from vines Cory had planted to run up the sunflower stalks and corn plants. I took what was left the way I thought a late-arriving scavenger would. And I worked my way toward the lemon tree. When I reached it, heavy with little green lemons, I hunted for any with even a hint of paling, of yellow. I took a few from the tree, and from the ground. Cory had planted shade-loving flowers at the base of the tree, and they had thrived there. She and my father had scattered small, rounded boulders among these in a way that seemed no more than decorative. A few of these had been turned over, crushing the flowers near them. In fact, the rock with the money under it had been turned over. But the two or three inches of dirt over the money packet, triple wrapped and heat-sealed in plastic, was undisturbed.

I snatched the packet in no more time than it had taken to pick up a couple of lemons a moment before. First I spotted the hiding place, then I snatched up the money packet along with a hand full of dirt. Then, eager to leave, but terrified of drawing attention to myself, I picked up a few more lemons and hunted around for more food.

The figs were hard and green instead of purple, and the persimmons were yellow-green instead of orange. I found a single ear of corn left on a downed stalk and used it to stuff the money packet deeper into my blanket pack. Then I left.

With my pack on my back and the pillow case in my left arm, resting on my hip like a baby, I walked down the driveway to the street. I kept my right hand free for the gun still in my pocket. I had not taken time to put on the holster.

There were more people within the walls than there had been when I arrived. I had to walk past most of them to get out. Others were leaving with their loads, and I tried to follow them without quite attaching myself to any particular group. This meant that I moved more slowly than I would have chosen to. I had time to look at the corpses and see what I didnʼt want to see.

Richard Moss, stark naked, lying in a pool of his own blood. His house, closer to the gate than ours, had been burned to the ground. Only the chimney stuck up blackened and naked from the rubble. Where were his two surviving wives Karen and Zahra? Or had they survived? Where were all his many children?

Little Robin Baiter, naked, filthy, bloody between her legs, cold, bony, barely pubescent. Yet she might have married my brother Marcus someday. She might have been my sister. She had always been such a bright, sharp, great little kid, all serious and knowing. Twelve going on thirty-five, Cory used to say. She always smiled when she said it.

Russell Dory, Robinʼs grandfather. Only his shoes had been taken. His body had been almost torn apart by automatic weapons fire. An old man and a child. What had the painted faces gotten for all their killing? “She died for us,” the scavenger woman had said of the green face. Some kind of insane burn-the-rich movement, Keith had said. Weʼve never been rich, but to the desperate, we looked rich. We were surviving and we had our wall. Did our community die so that addicts could make a help the poor political statement? There were other corpses. I didnʼt get a close look at most of them. They littered the front yards, the street, and the island. There was no sign of our emergency bell now. The men who had wanted it had carried it away —perhaps to be sold for its metal.

I saw Layla Yannis, Shaniʼs oldest daughter. Like Robin, she had been raped. I saw Michael Talcott, one side of his head smashed in. I didnʼt look around for Curtis. I was terrified that I might see him lying nearby. I was almost out of control as it was, and I couldnʼt draw attention to myself. I couldnʼt be anything more than another scavenger hauling away treasure.

Bodies passed under my eyes: Jeremy Baiter, one of Robinʼs brothers, Philip Moss, George Hsu, his wife and his oldest son, Juana Montoya, Rubin Quintanilla, Lidia Cruz… Lidia was only eight years old. She had been raped, too.

I made it back through the gate. I didnʼt break down. I hadnʼt seen Cory or my brothers in the carnage.

That didnʼt mean they werenʼt there, but I hadnʼt seen them. They might be alive. Curtis might be alive. Where could I look for them?

The Talcotts had relatives living in Robledo, but I didnʼt know where. Somewhere on the other side of River Street. I couldnʼt look for them, though Curtis might have gone to them. Why hadnʼt anyone else stayed to salvage what they could?

I circled the neighborhood, keeping the wall in sight, then made a greater circle. I saw no one—or at least no one I knew. I saw other street poor who stared at me.

Then because I didnʼt know what else to do, I headed back toward my burned out garage on Meredith Street. I couldnʼt call the police. All the phones I knew of were slag. No strangers would let me use their phone if they had phones, and I didnʼt know anyone whom I could pay to call and trust to make the call. Most people would avoid me or be tempted to keep my money and never call. And anyway, if the police have ignored whatʼs been done to my neighborhood so far, if such a fire and so many corpses can be ignored, why should I go to them? What would they do? Arrest me? Take my cash as their fee? I wouldnʼt be surprised. Best to stay clear of them.

But where was my family!

Someone called my name.

I turned around, my hand in my pocket, and saw Zahra Moss and Harry Baiter—Richard Mossʼs youngest wife and Robin Baiterʼs oldest brother. They were an unlikely pair, but they were definitely together. They managed, without touching each other, to give the appearance of all but clinging together. Both were blood spattered and ragged. I looked at Harryʼs battered swollen face and remembered that Joanne had loved him— or thought she had—and that he wouldnʼt marry her and go with her to Olivar because he believed what Dad believed about Olivar.

“Are you all right?” he asked me.

I nodded, remembering Robin. Did he know? Russell Dory, Robin, and Jeremy…“They beat you up?” I asked, feeling stupid and awkward. I didnʼt want to tell him his grandfather, brother, and sister were dead. “I had to fight my way out last night. I was lucky they didnʼt shoot me.” He swayed, looked around. “Letʼs sit on the curb.”

Both Zahra and I looked around, made sure no one else was near by. We sat with Harry between us. I sat on my pillowcase of clothing. Zahra and Harry were fully dressed, in spite of their coating of blood and dirt, but they carried nothing. Did they have nothing, or had they left their things somewhere—perhaps with whatever was left of their families. And where was Zahraʼs little girl Bibi? Did she know that Richard Moss was dead?

“Everyoneʼs dead,” Zahra whispered as though speaking into my thoughts. “Everyone. Those painted bastards killed them all!”

“No!” Harry shook his head. “We got out. Thereʼll be some others.” He sat with his face in his hands, and I wondered whether he was more hurt than I had thought. I wasnʼt sharing any serious pain with him. “Have either of you seen my brothers or Cory?” I asked.

“Dead,” Zahra whispered. “Like my Bibi. All dead.”

I jumped. “No! Not all of them. No! Did you see them?”

“I saw most of the Montoya family,” Harry said. He wasnʼt talking to me as much as musing aloud. “We saw them last night. They said Juana was dead. The rest of them were going to walk to Glendale where their relatives live.”

“But—” I began.

“And I saw Laticia Hsu. She had been stabbed forty or fifty times.”

“But did you see my brothers?” I had to ask.

“Theyʼre all dead, I told you,” Zahra said. “They got out, but the paints caught them and dragged them back and killed them. I saw. One of them had me down, and he… I saw.”

She was being raped when she saw my family dragged back and killed? Was that what she meant? Was it true?

“I went back this morning,” I said. “I didnʼt see their bodies. Didnʼt see any of them.” Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no…

“I saw. Your mother. All of them. I saw.” Zahra hugged herself. “I didnʼt want to see, but I saw.” We all sat without talking. I donʼt know how long we sat there. Now and then someone walked past us and looked at us, some dirty, ragged person with bundles. Cleaner people in little bunches rode past us on bikes. A group of three rode past on motorcycles, their electric hum and whine strange in the quiet street. When I got up, the other two looked at me. For no reason except habit, I picked up my pillowcase. I donʼt know what I meant to do with the things in it. It had occurred to me, though, that I should get back to my garage before someone else settled there. I wasnʼt thinking very well. It was as though that garage was home now, and all I wanted in the world was to be there.

Harry got up and almost fell down again. He bent and threw up into the gutter. The sight of his throwing up grabbed at me, and I only just managed to look away in time to avoid joining him. He finished, spat, turned to face Zahra and me, and coughed.

“I feel like hell,” he said.

“They hit him in the head last night,” Zahra explained. “He got me away from the guy who was… Well, you know. He got me away, but they hurt him.”

“Thereʼs a burned out garage where I slept last night,” I said. “Itʼs a long walk, but he can rest there. We

can all rest there.”

Zahra took my pillowcase and carried it. Maybe something in it could do her some good. We walked on either side of Harry and kept him from stopping or wandering off or staggering too much. Somehow, we got him to the garage.

15

! ! !

Kindness eases Change

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2027

HARRY SLEPT MOST OF the day today Zahra and I took turns staying with him. He has a concussion, at least, and he needs time to heal. We havenʼt talked about what weʼll do if he gets sicker instead of healing. Zahra doesnʼt want to abandon him because he fought to save her. I donʼt want to abandon him because Iʼve known him all my life. Heʼs a good guy. I wonder if thereʼs some way to get in touch with the Garfields. They would give him a home, or at least see that he has medical care.

But he doesnʼt seem to be getting worse. He totters out to the fenced back yard to urinate. He eats the food and drinks the water that I give him. With no need for discussion, weʼre eating and drinking sparingly from my supplies. Theyʼre all we have. Soon weʼll have to risk going out to buy more. But today, Sunday, is a day of rest and healing for us.

The pain of Harryʼs headache and his bruised, beaten body are almost welcome to me. Theyʼre distractions. Along with Zahraʼs talking and crying for her dead daughter, they fill my mind. Their misery eases my own, somehow. It gives me moments when I donʼt think about my family. Everyone is dead. But how can they be? Everyone?

Zahra has a soft, little-girl voice that I used to think was phony. Itʼs real, but it takes on a sandpaper roughness when sheʼs upset. It sounds painful, as though itʼs abrading her throat as she speaks. She had seen her daughter killed, seen the blue face who shot Bibi as Zahra ran, carrying her. She believed the blue face was enjoying himself, shooting at all the moving targets. She said his expression reminded her of a man having sex.

“I fell down,” she whispered. “I thought I was dead. I thought he had killed me. There was blood. Then I saw Bibiʼs head drop to one side. A red face grabbed her from me. I didnʼt see where he came from. He grabbed her and threw her into the Hsu house. The house was burning everywhere. He threw her into the fire.

“I went crazy then. I donʼt know what I did. Somebody grabbed me, then I was free, then somebody shoved me down and fell on me. I couldnʼt get my breath, and he tore my clothes. Then he was on me, and I couldnʼt do anything. Thatʼs when I saw your mother, your brothers…

“Then Harry was there, and he pulled the bastard off me. He told me later that I was screaming. I donʼt know what I was doing. He was beating up the guy heʼd pulled off me when a new guy jumped him. I hit the new guy with a rock and Harry knocked the other one out. Then we got away. We just ran. We didnʼt sleep. We hid between two unwalled houses down the street away from the fire until a guy came out with an ax and chased us away. Then we just wandered until we found you. We didnʼt even really know each other before. You know, Richard never wanted us to have much to do with the neighbors—especially the white ones.”

I nodded, remembering Richard Moss. “Heʼs dead, you know,” I said. “I saw him.” I wanted to take the words back as soon as Iʼd said them. I didnʼt know how to tell someone her husband was dead, but there must be a better, gentler way than that.

She stared at me, stricken. I wanted to apologize for my bluntness, but I didnʼt think it would help. Iʼm sorry, I said in a kind of generic apology for everything. She began to cry, and I repeated, “Iʼm sorry.” I held her and let her cry. Harry woke up, drank a little water, and listened while Zahra told how Richard Moss had bought her from her homeless mother when she was only fifteen—younger than I had thought—and brought her to live in the first house she had ever known. He gave her enough to eat and didnʼt beat her, and even when her co-wives were hateful to her, it was a thousand times better than living outside with her mother and starving. Now she was outside again. In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing. “Do you have someplace to go?” she asked us at last. “Do you know anybody who still has a house?” I looked at Harry. “You might be able to get into Olivar if you can walk there from here. The Garfields would take you in.”

He thought about that for a while. “I donʼt want to,” he said. “I donʼt think thereʼs any more future in Olivar than there was in our neighborhood. But at least in our neighborhood, we had the guns.” “For all the good it did us,” Zahra muttered.

“I know. But they were our guns, not hired gunmen. No one could turn them against us. In Olivar, from what Joanne said, no oneʼs allowed to have a gun except the security force. And who the hell are they?” “Company people,” I said. “People from outside Olivar.”

He nodded. “Thatʼs what I heard, too. Maybe it will be all right, but it doesnʼt sound all right.” “It sounds better than starving,” Zahra said. “You guys have never missed a meal, have you?” “Iʼm going north,” I said. “I planned to go anyway once my family was back on its feet. Now I have no family, and Iʼm going.”

“North where?” Zahra demanded.

“Up toward Canada. The way things are now, I may not be able to get that far. But Iʼll get to a place where water doesnʼt cost more than food, and where work brings a salary. Even a small one. Iʼm not going to spend my life as some kind of twenty-first century slave.”

“North is where Iʼm headed, too,” Harry said. “Thereʼs nothing here. Iʼve tried for over a year to get a job here—any job that pays money. Thereʼs nothing. I want to work for money and get some college. The only jobs that pay serious money are the kind our parents had, the kind that require college degrees.”

I looked at him, wanting to ask something, hesitating, plunging. “Harry, what about your parents?” “I donʼt know,” he said. “I didnʼt see them killed. Zahra says she didnʼt. I donʼt know where anyone is. We got separated.”

I swallowed. “I didnʼt see your parents,” I said, “but I did see some of your other relatives—dead.” “Who?” he demanded.

I guess there really isnʼt any way to tell people that their close relatives are dead except to say it—no matter how much you donʼt want to. “Your grandfather,” I said, “and Jeremy and Robin.” “Robin and Jeremy? Kids? Little kids?”

Zahra took his hand. “They kill little kids,” she said. “Out here in the world, they kill kids every day.” He didnʼt cry. Or maybe he cried when we were asleep. First, though, he closed himself up, stopped talking, stopped responding, stopped doing anything until it was nearly dark. By then, Zahra had gone out and come back with my brother Bennettʼs shirt full of ripe peaches.

“Donʼt ask me where I got them,” she said.

“I assume you stole them,” I said. “Not from anyone around here, I hope. No sense making the neighbors mad.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “I donʼt need you to tell me how to live out here. I was born out here. Eat your peaches.”

I ate four of them. They were delicious, and too ripe to travel well anyway.

“Why donʼt you try on some of those clothes,” I said. “Take what fits you.” She fit not only into Marcusʼs shirt and jeans—though she had to roll the jeans legs up—but into his shoes. Shoes are expensive. Now she has two pair.

“You let me do it, Iʼll trade these little shoes for some food,” she said.

I nodded. “Tomorrow. Whatever you get, weʼll split it. Then Iʼm leaving.”

“Going north?”

“Yes.”

“Just north. Do you know anything about the roads and towns and where to buy stuff or steal it? Have you got money?”

“I have maps,” I said. “Theyʼre old, but I think theyʼre still good. No oneʼs been building new roads lately.” “Hell no. Money?”

“A little. Not enough, I suspect.”

“No such thing as enough money. What about him?” She gestured toward Harryʼs unmoving back. He was lying down. I couldnʼt tell whether he was asleep or not.

“He has to decide for himself,” I said. “Maybe he wants to hang around to look for his family before he goes.”

He turned over slowly. He looked sick, but fully aware. Zahra put the peaches she had saved for him next to him.

“I donʼt want to wait for anything,” he said. “I wish we could start now. I hate this place.” “You going with her?” Zahra asked, jabbing a thumb at me.

He looked at me. “We might be able to help each other,” he said. “At least we know each other, and… I managed to grab a few hundred dollars as I ran out of the house.” He was offering trust. He meant we could trust each other. That was no small thing.

“I was thinking of traveling as a man,” I said to him.

He seemed to be repressing a smile. “That will be safer for you. Youʼre at least tall enough to fool people. Youʼll have to cut your hair, though.”

Zahra grunted. “Mixed couples catch hell whether people think theyʼre gay or straight. Harryʼll piss off all the blacks and youʼll piss off all the whites. Good luck.”

I watched her as she said it, and realized what she wasnʼt saying. “You want to come?” I asked. She sniffed. “Why should I? I wonʼt cut my hair!”

“No need,” I said. “We can be a black couple and their white friend. If Harry can get a reasonable tan, maybe we can claim him as a cousin.”

She hesitated, then whispered, “Yeah, I want to go.” And she started to cry. Harry stared at her in surprise. “Did you think we were going to just dump you?” I asked. “All you had to do was let us know.” “I donʼt have any money,” she said. “Not a dollar.”

I sighed. “Where did you get those peaches?”

“You were right. I stole them.”

“You have a useful skill then, and information about living out here.” I faced Harry. “What do you think?” “Her stealing doesnʼt bother you?” he asked.

“I mean to survive,” I said.

“ʻThou shalt not steal,ʼ” he quoted. “Years and years—a lifetime of ʻThou shalt not steal.ʼ” I had to smother a flash of anger before I could answer. He wasnʼt my father. He had no business quoting scripture at me. He was nobody. I didnʼt look at him. I didnʼt speak until I knew my voice would sound normal. Then, “I said I mean to survive,” I told him. “Donʼt you?”

He nodded. “It wasnʼt a criticism. Iʼm just surprised.”

“I hope it wonʼt ever mean getting caught or leaving someone else to starve,” I said. And to my own surprise, I smiled. “Iʼve thought about it. Thatʼs the way I feel, but Iʼve never stolen anything.” “Youʼre kidding!” Zahra said.

I shrugged. “Itʼs true. I grew up trying to set a good example for my brothers and trying to live up to my fatherʼs expectations. That seemed like what I should be doing.”

“Oldest kid,” Harry said. “I know.” He was the oldest in his family.

“Oldest, hell,” Zahra said, laughing. “Youʼre both babies out here.”

And that wasnʼt offensive, somehow. Perhaps because it was true. “Iʼm inexperienced,” I admitted. “But I can learn. Youʼre going to be one of my teachers.”

“One?” she said. “Who have you got but me?”

“Everyone.”

She looked scornful. “No one.”

“Everyone whoʼs surviving out here knows things that I need to know,” I said. “Iʼll watch them, Iʼll listen to them, Iʼll learn from them. If I donʼt, Iʼll be killed. And like I said, I intend to survive.”

“Theyʼll sell you a bowl of shit,” she said.

I nodded. “I know. But Iʼll buy as few of those as possible.”

She looked at me for a long time, then sighed. “I wish Iʼd known you better before all this happened,” she said. “Youʼre a weird preacherʼs kid. If you still want to play man, Iʼll cut your hair for you.” MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2027

(from notes expanded SUNDAY, AUGUST 8)

Weʼre on our way.

This morning Zahra took us to Hanning Joss, the biggest secure store complex in Robledo. We could get all we needed there. Hanning vendors sell everything from gourmet food to debusing cream, prostheses to homebirthing kits, guns to the latest in touchrings, headsets, and recordings. I could have spent days just wandering through the aisles, staring at the stuff I couldnʼt afford. I had never been to Hanning before, had never seen anything like it in person.

But we had to go into the complex one at a time, leaving two outside to guard our bundles—including my gun. Hanning, as I had heard many times on the radio, was one of the safest places in the city. If you didnʼt like their sniffers, metal detectors, package restrictions, armed guards, and willingness to strip-search anyone they thought was suspicious on the way in or out, you could shop somewhere else. The store was full of people

eager to put up with the inconvenience and invasion of privacy if only they could buy the things they needed in peace.

No one strip-searched me, though I was required to prove that I wasnʼt a deadbeat.

“Show your Hanning disc or money,” an armed guard demanded at the massive gates. I was terrified that he would steal my money, but I showed the bills that I intended to spend, and he nodded. He never touched them. No doubt we were both being watched, and our behaviors recorded. Such a security conscious store wouldnʼt want its guards stealing the customersʼ money.

“Shop in peace,” the guard said with no hint of a smile.

I bought salt, a small tube of honey, and the cheapest of dried foods—oats, fruit, nuts, bean flour, lentils, plus a little dried beef—all that I thought Zahra and I could carry. And I bought more water and a few odd items: water purification tablets—just in case—and sun blocker, which even Zahra and I would need, some stuff for insect bites, and an ointment Dad used for muscle aches. We would have plenty of those. I bought more toilet paper, tampons, and lip balm. I bought myself a new notebook, two more pens, and an expensive supply of ammunition for the .45. I felt better once I had that.

I bought three of the cheap, multipurpose sleepsacks—big, tough storage bags, and the preferred bedding of all the more affluent homeless. The country was full of people who could earn or steal food and water, but could not rent even a cot. These might sleep on the street or in makeshift shacks, but if they could, they put a sleepsack between their bodies and the ground. The sacks, with their own strapping, fold to serve as packs during the day. Theyʼre light, tough, and able to survive most abuse. Theyʼre warm even if you have to sleep on the concrete, but theyʼre thin—more useful than comfortable. Curtis and I used to make love on a pallet of them.

And I bought three oversized jackets of the same thin, breathing synthetic as the sleepsacks. Theyʼll finish the job of keeping us warm at night as we moved north. They look cheap and ugly, and thatʼs good. They might not be stolen.

That was the end of my money—the money I had packed in my emergency pack. I havenʼt touched the

money I took from the foot of the lemon tree. That I had split in half and put in two of my fatherʼs socks. I kept it pinned inside my jeans, invisible and unavailable to pickpockets.

It isnʼt a lot of money, but itʼs more than Iʼve ever had before—more than anyone could expect me to have. I pinned it where it is, rewrapped in plastic and secure in the socks on Saturday night when I had finished writing and still couldnʼt stop thinking and remembering and knowing there was nothing I could do about the past.

Then I had a kind of tactile memory of grabbing the money packet and a handful of dirt and stuffing both into my pack. I had an incredible amount of nervous energy that was spending itself in jitteriness. My hands shook so that I could hardly find the money—by feel, in darkness. I made it an exercise in concentration to find the money, socks, and pins, divide the money in half, or as close to in half as I could without seeing, put it into the socks, and pin it in place. I checked it when I went out to urinate the next morning. Iʼd done a good job. The pins didnʼt show at all on the outside. Iʼd put them through the seams down near my ankles. Nothing dangling, no problems.

I took my many purchases out to what was once the ground floor of a parking structure, and was now a kind of semienclosed flea market. Many of the things dug out of ash heaps and landfills wind up for sale here. The rule is that if you buy something in the store, you can sell something of similar value in the structure. Your receipt, coded and dated, is your peddlerʼs license.

The structure was patrolled, though more to check these licenses than to keep anyone safe. Still, the structure was safer than the street.

I found Harry and Zahra sitting on our bundles, Harry waiting to go into the store, and Zahra waiting for her license. They had put their backs against a wall of the store at a spot away from the street and away from the biggest crowd of buyers and sellers. I gave Zahra the receipt and began to separate and pack our new supplies. We would leave as soon as Zahra and Harry finished their buying and selling.

We walked down to the freeway—the 118—and turned west. We would take the 118 to the 23 and the 23 to U.S. 101. The 101 would take us up the coast toward Oregon. We became part of a broad river of people walking west on the freeway. Only a few straggled east against the current—east toward the mountains and the desert. Where were the westward walkers going? To something, or just away from here?

We saw a few trucks—most of them run at night—swarms of bikes or electric cycles, and two cars. All these had plenty of room to speed along the outer lanes past us. Weʼre safer if we keep to the left lanes away from the on and off ramps. Itʼs against the law in California to walk on the freeways, but the law is archaic. Everyone who walks walks on the freeways sooner or later. Freeways provide the most direct routes between cities and parts of cities. Dad walked or bicycled on them often. Some prostitutes and peddlers of food, water, and other necessities live along the freeways in sheds or shacks or in the open air. Beggars, thieves, and murderers live here, too.

But Iʼve never walked a freeway before today. I found the experience both fascinating and frightening. In some ways, the scene reminded me of an old film I saw once of a street in mid-twentieth-century China— walkers, bicyclers, people carrying, pulling, pushing loads of all kinds. But the freeway crowd is a heterogenous mass—black and white, Asian and Latin, whole families are on the move with babies on backs or perched atop loads in carts, wagons or bicycle baskets, sometimes along with an old or handicapped person. Other old, ill, or handicapped people hobbled along as best they could with the help of sticks or fitter companions. Many were armed with sheathed knives, rifles, and, of course, visible, holstered handguns. The occasional passing cop paid no attention.

Children cried, played, squatted, did everything except eat. Almost no one ate while walking. I saw a couple of people drink from canteens. They took quick, furtive gulps, as though they were doing something shameful—or something dangerous.

A woman alongside us collapsed. I got no impression of pain from her, except at the sudden impact of her body weight on her knees. That made me stumble, but not fall. The woman sat where she had fallen for a few seconds, then lurched to her feet and began walking again, leaning forward under her huge pack.

Almost everyone was filthy. Their bags and bundles and packs were filthy. They stank. And we, who have slept on concrete in ashes and dirt, and who have not bathed for three days—we fitted in pretty well. Only our new sleepsack packs gave us away as either new to the road or at least in possession of new stealables. We should have dirtied the packs a little before we got started. We will dirty them tonight. Iʼll see to it.

There were a few young guys around, lean and quick, some filthy, some not dirty at all. Keiths. Todayʼs Keiths. The ones who bothered me most werenʼt carrying much. Some werenʼt carrying anything except weapons.

Predators. They looked around a lot, stared at people, and the people looked away. I looked away. I was glad to see that Harry and Zahra did the same. We didnʼt need trouble. If trouble came, I hoped we could kill it and keep walking.

The gun was fully loaded now, and I wore it holstered, but half covered by my shirt. Harry bought himself a knife. The money he had snatched up as he ran from his burning house had not been enough to buy a gun. I could have bought a second gun, but it would have taken too much of my money, and we have a long way to go.

Zahra used the shoe money to buy herself a knife and a few personal things. I had refused my share of that money. She needed a few dollars in her pocket.

The day she and Harry use their knives, I hope they kill. If they donʼt, I might have to, to escape the pain.

And what will they think of that?

They deserve to know that Iʼm a sharer. For their own safety, they should know. But Iʼve never told anyone. Sharing is a weakness, a shameful secret. A person who knows what I am can hurt me, betray me, disable me with little effort.

I canʼt tell. Not yet. Iʼll have to tell soon, I know, but not yet. Weʼre together, the three of us, but weʼre not a unit yet. Harry and I donʼt know Zahra very well, nor she us. And none of us know what will happen when weʼre challenged. A racist challenge might force us apart. I want to trust these people. I like them, and…theyʼre all I have left. But I need more time to decide. Itʼs no small thing to commit yourself to other people. “You okay?” Zahra asked.

I nodded.

“You look like hell. And youʼre so damned poker-faced most of the time…”

“Just thinking,” I said. “Thereʼs so much to think about now.”

She sighed her breath out in a near whistle. “Yeah. I know. But keep your eyes open. You get too wrapped up in your thinking, and youʼll miss things. People get killed on freeways all the time.”

16

! ! !

Earthseed

Cast on new ground

Must first perceive

That it knows nothing.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2027

(cont. from notes expanded AUGUST 8)

HERE ARE SOME OF THE things Iʼve learned today:

Walking hurts. Iʼve never done enough walking to learn that before, but I know it now. It isnʼt only the blisters and sore feet, although weʼve got those. After a while, everything hurts. I think my back and shoulders would like to desert to another body. Nothing eases the pain except rest. Even though we got a late start, we stopped twice today to rest. We went off the freeway, into the hills or bushes to sit down, drink water, eat dried fruit and nuts. Then we went on. The days are long this time of year.

Sucking on a plum or apricot pit all day makes you feel less thirsty. Zahra told us that. “When I was a kid,” she said, “there were times when I would put a little rock in my mouth. Anything to feel better. Itʼs a cheat, though. If you donʼt drink enough water, youʼll die no matter how you feel.” All three of us walked along with seeds in our mouths after our first stop, and we felt better. We drank only during our stops in the hills. Itʼs safer that way.

Also, cold camps are safer than cheery campfires. Yet tonight we cleared some ground, dug into a hillside, and made a small fire in the hollow. There we cooked some of my acorn meal with nuts and fruit. It was wonderful. Soon weʼll run out of it and weʼll have to survive on beans, cornmeal, oats—expensive stuff from stores. Acorns are home-food, and home is gone.

Fires are illegal. You can see them flickering all over the hills, but they are illegal. Everything is so dry that thereʼs always a danger of campfires getting away from people and taking out a community or two. It does happen. But people who have no homes will build fires. Even people like us who know what fire can do will build them. They give comfort, hot food, and a false sense of security.

While we were eating, and even after weʼd finished, people drifted over and tried to join us. Most were harmless and easily gotten rid of. Three claimed they just wanted to get warm. The sun was still up, red on the horizon, and it was far from cold.

Three women wanted to know whether two studs like Harry and me didnʼt need more than one woman. The women who asked this may have been cold, considering how few clothes they had on. Itʼs going to be strange for me, pretending to be a man.

“Couldnʼt I just roast this potato in your coals?” an old man asked, showing us a withered potato. We gave him some fire and sent him away—and watched to see where he went, since a burning brand could be either a weapon or a major distraction if he had friends hiding. Itʼs crazy to live this way, suspecting helpless old people. Insane. But we need our paranoia to keep us alive. Hell, Harry wanted to let the old guy sit with us. It took Zahra and me together to let him know that wasnʼt going to happen. Harry and I have been well fed and protected all our lives. Weʼre strong and healthy and better educated than most people our age. But weʼre stupid out here. We want to trust people. I fight against the impulse. Harry hasnʼt learned to do that yet.

We argued about it afterward, low voiced, almost whispering.

“Nobodyʼs safe,” Zahra told him. “No matter how pitiful they look, they can steal you naked. Little kids, skinny and big-eyed will make off with all your money, water, and food! I know. I used to do it to people. Maybe they died, I donʼt know. But I didnʼt die.”

Harry and I both stared at her. We knew so little about her life. But to me, at that moment, Harry was our most dangerous question mark.

“Youʼre strong and confident,” I said to him. “You think you can take care of yourself out here, and maybe you can. But think what a stab wound or a broken bone would mean out here: Disablement, slow death from infection or starvation, no medical care, nothing.”

He looked at me as though he wasnʼt sure he wanted to know me anymore. “What, then?” he asked. “Everyoneʼs guilty until proven innocent? Guilty of what? And how do they prove themselves to you?” “I donʼt give a piss whether theyʼre innocent or not,” Zahra said. “Let them tend to their own business.” “Harry, your mind is still back in the neighborhood,” I said. “You still think a mistake is when your father yells at you or you break a finger or chip a tooth or something. Out here a mistake—one mistake—and you may be dead. Remember that guy today? What if that happened to us?”

We had seen a man robbed—a chubby guy of 35 or 40 who was walking along eating nuts out of a paper bag. Not smart. A little kid of 12 or 13 snatched the nuts and ran off with them. While the victim was distracted by the little kid, two bigger kids tripped him, cut his pack straps, dragged the pack off his back, and ran off with it. The whole thing happened so fast that no one could have interfered if theyʼd wanted to. No one tried. The victim was unhurt except for bruises and abrasions—the sort of thing I had to put up with every day back in the neighborhood. But the victimʼs supplies were gone. If he had a home nearby and other supplies, he would be all right. Otherwise, his only way of surviving might be to rob someone else—if he could.

“Remember?” I asked Harry. “We donʼt have to hurt anyone unless they push us into it, but we donʼt dare let our guard down. We canʼt trust people.”

Harry shook his head. “What if I thought that way when I pulled that guy off Zahra?”

I held on to my temper. “Harry, you know I donʼt mean we shouldnʼt trust or help each other. We know each other. Weʼve made a commitment to travel together.”

“Iʼm not sure we do know each other.”

“I am. And we canʼt afford your denial. You canʼt afford it.”

He just stared at me.

“Out here, you adapt to your surroundings or you get killed,” I said. “Thatʼs obvious!”

Now he did look at me as though I were a stranger. I looked back, hoping I knew him as well as I thought I did. He had a brain and he had courage. He just didnʼt want to change.

“Do you want to break off with us,” Zahra asked, “go your own way without us?”

His gaze softened as he looked at her. “No,” he said. “Of course not. But we donʼt have to turn into animals, for godsake.”

“In a way, we do,” I said. “Weʼre a pack, the three of us, and all those other people out there arenʼt in it. If weʼre a good pack, and we work together, we have a chance. You can be sure we arenʼt the only pack out here.”

He leaned back against a rock, and said with amazement, “You damn sure talk macho enough to be a guy.”

I almost hit him. Maybe Zahra and I would be better off without him. But no, that wasnʼt true. Numbers mattered. Friendship mattered. One real male presence mattered.

“Donʼt repeat that,” I whispered, leaning close to him. “Never say that again. There are other people all over these hills; you donʼt know whoʼs listening. You give me away and you weaken yourself!” That reached him. “Sorry,” he said.

“Itʼs bad out here,” Zahra said. “But most people make it if theyʼre careful. People weaker than us make it —if theyʼre careful.”

Harry gave a wan smile. “I hate this world already,” he said.

“Itʼs not so bad if people stick together.”

He looked from her to me and back to her again. He smiled at her and nodded. It occurred to me then that he liked her, was attracted to her. That could be a problem for her later. She was a beautiful woman, and I would never be beautiful—which didnʼt bother me. Boys had always seemed to like me. But Zahraʼs looks grabbed male attention. If she and Harry get together, she could wind up carrying two heavy loads northward. I was lost in thought about the two of them when Zahra nudged me with her foot.

Two big, dirty-looking guys were standing nearby, watching us, watching Zahra in particular. I stood up, feeling the others stand with me, flanking me. These guys were too close to us. They meant to be too close. As I stood up, I put my hand on the gun.

“Yeah?” I said. “What do you want?”

“Not a thing,” one of them said, smiling at Zahra. Both wore big holstered knives which they fingered. I drew the gun. “Good deal,” I said.

Their smiles vanished. “What, you going to shoot us for standing here?” the talkative one said. I thumbed the safety. I would shoot the talker, the leader. The other one would run away. He already wanted to run away. He was staring, open-mouthed, at the gun. By the time I collapsed, he would be gone. “Hey, no trouble!” the talker raised his hands, backing away. “Take it easy, man.”

I let them go. I think it would have been better to shoot them. Iʼm afraid of guys like that—guys looking for trouble, looking for victims. But it seems I canʼt quite shoot someone just because Iʼm afraid of him. I killed a man on the night of the fire, and I havenʼt thought much about it. But this was different. It was like what Harry said about stealing. Iʼve heard, “Thou shalt not kill,” all my life, but when you have to, you kill. I wonder what Dad would say about that. But then, he was the one who taught me to shoot.

“Weʼd better keep a damn good watch tonight,” I said. I looked at Harry, and was glad to see that he looked the way I probably had a moment before: mad and worried. “Letʼs pass your watch and my gun around,” I told him. “Three hours per watcher.”

“You would have done it, wouldnʼt you?” he asked. It sounded like a real question.

I nodded. “Wouldnʼt you?”

“Yes. I wouldnʼt have wanted to, but those guys were out for fun. Their idea of fun, anyway.” He glanced at Zahra. He had pulled one man off her, and taken a beating for it. Maybe the obvious threat to her would keep him alert. Anything that would keep him alert couldnʼt be all bad.

I looked at Zahra, kept my voice very low. “You never went shooting with us, so I have to ask. Do you know how to use this?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Richard let his older kids go out, but he wouldnʼt let me. Before he bought me, though, I was a good shot.”

Her alien past again. It distracted me for a moment. I had been waiting to ask her how much a person costs these days. And she had been sold by her mother to a man who couldnʼt have been much more than a stranger. He could have been a maniac, a monster. And my father used to worry about future slavery or debt slavery. Had he known? He couldnʼt have.

“Have you used a gun like this before?” I asked. I reengaged the safety and handed it to her. “Hell, yeah,” she said, examining it. “I like this. Itʼs heavy, but if you shoot somebody with it, they go down.” She released the clip, checked it, reinserted it, rammed it home, and handed it back. “I wish I could have practiced with you all,” she said. “I always wanted to.”

Without warning, I felt a pang of loneliness for the burned neighborhood. It was almost a physical pain. I had been desperate to leave it, but I had expected it still to be there—changed, but surviving. Now that it was gone, there were moments when I couldnʼt imagine how I was going to survive without it.

“You guys get some sleep,” I said. “Iʼm too wound up to sleep now. Iʼll take the first watch.” “We should gather more wood for the fire first,” Harry said. “Itʼs burning low.”

“Let it go out,” I said. “Itʼs a spotlight on us, and it messes up our night vision. Other people can see us long before we see them.”

“And sit here in the dark,” he said. It wasnʼt a protest. At worst, it was grudging agreement. “Iʼll take the watch after you,” he said, lying back and pulling up his sleepsack and positioning the rest of his gear to serve as a pillow. As an afterthought, he took off his wrist watch and gave it to me. “It was a gift from my mother,” he said.

“You know Iʼll take care of it,” I told him.

He nodded. “You be careful,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I put the watch on, pulled the elastic of my sleeve down over it so that the glow of the dial wouldnʼt be visible by accident, and sat back against the hill to make a few quick notes. While there was still some natural light, I could write and watch.

Zahra watched me for a while, then laid her hand on my arm. “Teach me to do that,” she whispered. I looked at her, not understanding.

“Teach me to read and write.”

I was surprised, but I shouldnʼt have been. Where, in a life like hers, had there been time or money for school. And once Richard Moss bought her, her jealous co-wives wouldnʼt have taught her. “You should have come to us back in the neighborhood,” I said. “We would have set up lessons for you.” “Richard wouldnʼt let me. He said I already knew enough to suit him.”

I groaned. “Iʼll teach you. We can start tomorrow morning if you want.”

“Okay.” She gave me an odd smile and began ordering her bag and her few possessions, bundled in my scavenged pillowcase. She lay down in her bag and turned on her side to look at me. “I didnʼt think Iʼd like you,” she said. “Preacherʼs kid, all over the place, teaching, telling everybody what to do, sticking your damn nose in everything. But you ainʼt bad.”

I went from surprise into amusement of my own. “Neither are you,” I said.

“You didnʼt like me either?” Her turn to be surprised.

“You were the best looking woman in the neighborhood. No, I wasnʼt crazy about you. And remember a couple of years ago when you tried your hardest to make me throw up while I was learning to clean and skin rabbits?”

“Whyʼd you want to learn that, anyway?” she asked. “Blood, guts, worms… I just figured, There she goes again, sticking her nose where it donʼt belong. Well, let her have it!ʼ”

“I wanted to know that I could do that—handle a dead animal, skin it, butcher it, treat its hide to make leather. I wanted to know how to do it, and that I could do it without getting sick.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought someday I might have to. And we might out here. Same reason I put together an emergency pack and kept it where I could grab it.”

“I wondered about that—about you having all that stuff from home, I mean. At first I thought maybe you got it all when you went back. But no, you were ready for all the trouble. You saw it coming.” “No.” I shook my head, remembering. “No one could have been ready for that. But… I thought something would happen someday. I didnʼt know how bad it would be or when it would come. But everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didnʼt believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.” She turned again and lay on her back, staring upward at the stars. “I should have seen some of that stuff,” she said. “But I didnʼt. Those big walls. And everybody had a gun. There were guards every night. I thought… I thought we were so strong.”

I put my notebook and pen down, sat on my sleepsack, and put my own pillowcased bundle behind me. Mine was lumpy and uncomfortable to lean on. I wanted it uncomfortable. I was tired. Everything ached. Given a little comfort, I would fall asleep.

The sun was down now, and our fire had gone out except for a few glowing coals. I drew the gun and held it in my lap. If I needed it at all, I would need it fast. We werenʼt strong enough to survive slowness or stupid mistakes.

I sat where I was for three weary, terrifying hours. Nothing happened to me, but I could see and hear things happening. There were people moving around the hills, sometimes silhouetting themselves against the sky as they ran or walked over the tops of hills. I saw groups and individuals. Twice I saw dogs, distant, but alarming. I heard a lot of gunfire—individual shots and short bursts of automatic weapons fire. That last and the dogs worried me, scared me. A pistol would be no protection against a machine gun or automatic rifle. And dogs might not know enough to be afraid of guns. Would a pack keep coming if I shot two or three of its members? I sat in a cold sweat, longing for walls—or at least for another magazine or two for the gun.

It was nearly midnight when I woke Harry, gave him the gun and the watch, and made him as uncomfortable as I could by warning him about the dogs, the gunfire, and the many people who wandered around at night. He did look awake and alert enough when I lay down.

I fell asleep at once. Aching and exhausted, I found the hard ground as welcoming as my bed at home. A shout awoke me. Then I heard gunfire—several single shots, thunderous and nearby. Harry? Something fell across me before I could get out of my sleep-sack—something big and heavy. It knocked

the breath out of me. I struggled to get it off me, knowing that it was a human body, dead or unconscious. As I pushed at it and felt its heavy beard stubble and long hair, I realized it was a man, and not Harry. Some stranger.

I heard scrambling and thrashing near me. There were grunts and sounds of blows. A fight. I could see them in the darkness—two figures struggling on the ground. The one on the bottom was Harry. He was fighting someone over the gun, and he was losing. The muzzle was being forced toward him. That couldnʼt happen. We couldnʼt lose the gun or Harry. I took a small granite boulder from our fire pit, set my teeth, and brought it down with all my strength on the back of the intruderʼs head. And I brought myself down.

It wasnʼt the worst pain I had ever shared, but it came close. I was worthless after delivering that one blow. I think I was unconscious for a while.

Then Zahra appeared from somewhere, feeling me, trying to see me. She wouldnʼt find a wound, of course.

I sat up, fending her off, and saw that Harry was there, too.

“Are they dead?” I asked.

“Never mind them,” he said. “Are you all right?”

I got up, swaying from the residual shock of the blow. I felt sick and dizzy, and my head hurt. A few days before, Harry had made me feel that way and weʼd both recovered. Did that mean the man Iʼd hit would recover?

I checked him. He was still alive, unconscious, not feeling any pain now. What I was feeling was my own reaction to the blow Iʼd struck.

“The other oneʼs dead,” Harry said. “This one… Well, you caved in the back of his head. I donʼt know why heʼs still alive.”

“Oh, no,” I whispered. “Oh hell.” And then to Harry, “Give me the gun.”

“Why?” he asked.

My fingers had found the blood and broken skull, soft and pulpy at the back of the strangerʼs head. Harry was right. He should have been dead.

“Give me the gun,” I repeated, and held out a bloody hand for it. “Unless you want to do this yourself.” “You canʼt shoot him. You canʼt just…”

“I hope youʼd find the courage to shoot me if I were like that, and out here with no medical care to be had. We shoot him, or leave him here alive. How long do you think it will take him to die?” “Maybe he wonʼt die.”

I went to my pack, struggling to navigate without throwing up. I pulled it away from the dead man, groped within it, and found my knife. It was a good knife, sharp and strong. I flicked it open and cut the unconscious manʼs throat with it.

Not until the flow of blood stopped did I feel safe. The manʼs heart had pumped his life away into the ground. He could not regain consciousness and involve me in his agony.

But, of course, I was far from safe. Perhaps the last two people from my old life were about to leave me. I had shocked and horrified them. I wouldnʼt blame them for leaving.

“Strip the bodies,” I said. “Take what they have, then weʼll put them into the scrub oaks down the hill where we gathered wood.”

I searched the man I had killed, found a small amount of money in his pants pocket and a larger amount in his right sock. Matches, a packet of almonds, a packet of dried meat, and a packet of small, round, purple pills. I found no knife, no weapon of any kind. So this was not one of the pair that sized us up earlier in the night. I hadnʼt thought so. Neither of them had been long-haired. Both of these were.

I put the pills back in the pocket I had taken them from. Everything else, I kept. The money would help sustain us. The food might or might not be edible. I would decide that when I could see it clearly. I looked to see what the others were doing, and was relieved to find them stripping the other body. Harry turned it over, then kept watch as Zahra went through the clothing, shoes, socks, and hair. She was even more thorough than I had been. With no hint of squeamishness, she hauled off the manʼs clothing and examined its greasy pockets, seams, and hems. I got the feeling she had done this before.

“Money, food, and a knife,” she whispered at last.

“The other one didnʼt have a knife,” I said, crouching beside them. “Harry, what—?”

“He had one,” Harry whispered. “He pulled it when I yelled for them to stop. Itʼs probably on the ground somewhere. Letʼs put these two down in the oaks.”

“You and I can do it,” I said. “Give Zahra the gun. She can guard us.”

I was glad to see him hand her the gun without protest. He had not made a move to hand it to me when I asked, but that had been different.

We took the bodies down to the scrub oaks and rolled them into cover. Then we kicked dirt over all the blood that we could see and the urine that one of the men had released.

That wasnʼt enough. By mutual consent, we moved camp. This meant nothing more than gathering our bundles and sleepsacks and carrying them over the next low ridge and out of sight of where we had been. If you camped on a hill between any two of the many low, riblike ridges, you could have, almost, the privacy of a big, open-topped, three-walled room. You were vulnerable from hill or ridge tops, but if you camped on the ridges, you would be noticed by far more people. We chose a spot between two ridges, settled, and sat silent for some time. I felt set-apart. I knew I had to speak, and I was afraid that nothing I could say would help. They might leave me. In disgust, in distrust, in fear, they might decide that they couldnʼt travel with me any longer. Best to try to get ahead of them.

“Iʼm going to tell you about myself,” I said. “I donʼt know whether it will help you to understand me, but I have to tell you. You have a right to know.”

And in low whispers, I told them about my mother—my biological mother—and about my sharing. When I finished, there was another long silence. Then Zahra spoke, and I was so startled by the sound of her soft voice that I jumped.

“So when you hit that guy,” she said, “it was like you hitting yourself.”

“No,” I said. “I donʼt get the damage. Just the pain.”

“But, I mean it felt like you hit yourself?”

I nodded. “Close enough. When I was little, I used to bleed along with people if I hurt them or even if I saw them hurt. I havenʼt done that for a few years.”

“But if theyʼre unconscious or dead, you donʼt feel anything.”

“Thatʼs right.”

“So thatʼs why you killed that guy?”

“I killed him because he was a threat to us. To me in a special way, but to you, too. What could we have done about him? Abandon him to the flies, the ants, and the dogs? You might have been willing to do that, but would Harry? Could we stay with him? For how long? To what purpose? Or would we dare to hunt up a cop and try to report seeing a guy hurt without involving ourselves. Cops are not trusting people. I think they would want to check us out, hang on to us for a while, maybe charge us with attacking the guy and killing his friend.” I turned to look at Harry who had not said a word. “What would you have done?” I asked.

“I donʼt know,” he said, his voice hard with disapproval. “I only know I wouldnʼt have done what you did.” “I wouldnʼt have asked you to do it,” I said. “I didnʼt ask you. But, Harry, I would do it again. I might have to do it again. Thatʼs why Iʼm telling you this.” I glanced at Zahra. “Iʼm sorry I didnʼt tell you before. I knew I should, but talking about it is…hard. Very hard. Iʼve never told anyone before. Now…” I took a deep breath. “Now everythingʼs up to you.”

“What do you mean?” Harry demanded.

I looked at him, wishing I could see his expression well enough to know whether this was a real question. I didnʼt think it was. I decided to ignore him.

“So what do you think?” I asked, looking at Zahra.

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Then Zahra began to speak, began to say such terrible things in that soft voice of hers. After a moment, I wasnʼt sure she was talking to us.

“My mama took drugs, too,” she said. “Shit, where I was born, everybodyʼs mama took drugs—and whored to pay for them. And had babies all the time, and threw them away like trash when they died. Most of the babies did die from the drugs or accidents or not having enough to eat or being left alone so much…or from being sick. They were always getting sick. Some of them were born sick. They had sores all over or big things on their

eyes—tumors, you know—or no legs or fits or canʼt breathe right… All kinds of things. And some of the ones who lived were dumb as dirt. Canʼt think, canʼt learn, just sit around nine, ten years old, peeing in their pants, rocking back and forth, and dripping spit down their chins. Thereʼs a lot of them.”

She took my hand and held it. “You ainʼt got nothing wrong with you, Lauren—nothing worth worrying about. That Paracetco shit was baby milk.”

How was it that I had not gotten to know this woman back in the neighborhood? I hugged her. She seemed surprised, then hugged back.

We both looked at Harry.

He sat still, near us, but far from us—from me. “What would you do,” he asked, “if that guy only had a broken arm or leg?”

I groaned, thinking about pain. I already knew more than I wanted to about how broken bones feel. “I think Iʼd let him go,” I said, “and Iʼm sure I would be sorry for it. It would be a long time before I stopped looking over my shoulder.”

“You wouldnʼt kill him to escape the pain?”

“I never killed anyone back in the neighborhood to escape pain.”

“But a stranger…”

“Iʼve said what I would do.”

“What if I broke my arm?”

“Then I might not be much good to you. I would be having trouble with my arm, too, after all. But weʼd have two good arms between us.” I sighed. “We grew up together, Harry. You know me. You know what kind of person I am. I might fail you, but if I could help myself, I wouldnʼt betray you.”

“I thought I knew you.”

I took his hands, looked at their big, pale, blunt fingers. They had a lot of strength in them, I knew, but I had never seen him use it to bully anyone. He was worth some trouble, Harry was.

“No one is who we think they are,” I said. “Thatʼs what we get for not being telepathic. But youʼve trusted me so far—and Iʼve trusted you. Iʼve just put my life in your hands. What are you going to do?” Was he going to abandon me now to my “infirmity”—instead of me maybe abandoning him at some future time due to a theoretical broken arm. And I thought: One oldest kid to another, Harry; would that be responsible behavior?

He took his hands back. “Well, I did know you were a manipulative bitch,” he said.

Zahra smothered a laugh. I was surprised. Iʼd never heard him use the word before. I heard it now as a sound of frustration. He wasnʼt going to leave. He was a last bit of home that I didnʼt have to give up yet. How did he feel about that? Was he angry with me for almost breaking up the group? He had reason to be, I suppose.

“I donʼt understand how you could have been like this all the time,” he said. “How could you hide your sharing from everyone?”

“My father taught me to hide it,” I told him. “He was right. In this world, there isnʼt any room for housebound, frightened, squeamish people, and thatʼs what I might have become if everyone had known about me—all the other kids, for instance. Little kids are vicious. Havenʼt you noticed?” “But your brothers must have known.”

“My father put the fear of God into them about it. He could do that. As far as I know, they never told anyone. Keith used to play ʻfunnyʼ tricks on me, though.”

“So…you faked everyone out. You must be a hell of an actor.”

“I had to learn to pretend to be normal. My father kept trying to convince me that I was normal. He was wrong about that, but Iʼm glad he taught me the way he did.”

“Maybe you are normal. I mean if the pain isnʼt real, then maybe—”

“Maybe this sharing thing is all in my head? Of course it is! And I canʼt get it out. Believe me, Iʼd love to.” There was a long silence. Then he asked, “What do you write in your book every night?” Interesting shift. “My thoughts,” I said. “The dayʼs events. My feelings.”

“Things you canʼt say?” he asked. “Things that are important to you?”

“Yes.”

“Then let me read something. Let me know something about the you that hides. I feel as though…as though youʼre a lie. I donʼt know you. Show me something of you thatʼs real.”

What a request! Or was it a demand? I would have given him money to read and digest some of the Earthseed portions of my journal. But he had to be eased into them. If he read the wrong thing, it would just increase the distance between us.

“The risks you ask me to take, Harry… But, yes, Iʼll show you some of what Iʼve written. I want to. Itʼll be another first for me. All I ask is that you read what I show you aloud so Zahra can hear it. As soon as itʼs light, Iʼll show you.”

When it was light, I showed him this:

“All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God

Is Change.”

Last year, I chose these lines to the first page of the first book of Earthseed: The Books of the Living. These lines say everything. Everything!

Imagine him asking me for it.

I must be careful.

17

! ! !

Embrace diversity.

Unite—

Or be divided,

robbed,

ruled,

killed

By those who see you as prey.

Embrace diversity

Or be destroyed.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2027

(from notes expanded AUGUST 8)

THEREʼS A BIG FIRE in the hills to the east of us. We saw it begin as a thin, dark column of smoke, rising into an otherwise clear sky. Now itʼs massive—a hillside or two? Several buildings? Many houses? Our neighborhood again?

We kept looking at it, then looking away. Other people dying, losing their families, their homes… Even when we had walked past it, we looked back.

Had the people with painted faces done this, too? Zahra was crying as she walked along, cursing in a voice so soft that I could hear only a few of the bitter words.

Earlier today we left the 118 freeway to look for and finally connect with the 23. Now weʼre on the 23 with charred overgrown wilderness on one side and neighborhoods on the other. We canʼt see the fire itself now. Weʼve passed it, come a long way from it, put hills between it and us as we head southward toward the coast. But we can still see the smoke. We didnʼt stop for the night until it was almost dark and we were all tired and hungry.

Weʼve camped away from the freeway on the wilderness side of it, out of sight, but not out of hearing of the shuffling hoards of people on the move. I think thatʼs a sound weʼll hear for the whole of our journey whether we stop in Northern California or go through to Canada. So many people hoping for so much up where it still rains every year, and an uneducated person might still get a job that pays in money instead of beans, water, potatoes, and maybe a floor to sleep on.

But itʼs the fire that holds our attention. Maybe it was started by accident. Maybe not. But still, people are losing what they may not be able to replace. Even if they survive, insurance isnʼt worth much these days. People on the highway, shadowy in the darkness, had begun to reverse the flow, to drift northward to find

a way to the fire. Best to be early for the scavenging.

“Should we go?” Zahra asked, her mouth full of dried meat. We built no fire tonight. Best for us to vanish into the darkness and avoid guests. We had put a tangle of trees and bushes at our backs and hoped for the best.

“You mean go back and rob those people?” Harry demanded.

“Scavenge,” she said. “Take what people donʼt need no more. If youʼre dead, you donʼt need much.” “We should stay here and rest,” I said. “Weʼre tired, and it will be a long time before things are cool enough over there to allow scavenging. Itʼs a long way off, anyway.”

Zahra sighed. “Yeah.”

“We donʼt have to do things like that, anyway,” Harry said.

Zahra shrugged. “Every little bit helps.”

“You were crying about that fire a while ago.”

“Uh-uh,” Zahra drew her knees up against her body. “I wasnʼt crying about that fire. I was crying about our fire and my Bibi and thinking about how much I hate people who set fires like that. I wish they would burn. I wish I could burn them. I wish I could just take them and throw them in the fire…like they did my Bibi.” And she began to cry again, and he held her, apologizing and, I think, shedding a few tears himself.

Grief hit like that. Something would remind us of the past, of home, of a person, and then we would remember that it was all gone. The person was dead or probably dead. Everything weʼd known and treasured was gone. Everything except the three of us. And how well were we doing?

“I think we should move,” Harry said sometime later. He was still sitting with Zahra, one arm around her, and she seemed to welcome the contact.

“Why?” she asked.

“I want to be higher, closer to the level of the freeway or above it. I want to be able to see the fire if it jumps the freeway and spreads toward us. I want to see it before it gets too close. Fire moves fast.” I groaned. “Youʼre right,” I said, “but moving now that itʼs dark is risky. We could lose this place and find nothing better.”

“Wait here,” he said, and got up and walked away into the darkness. I had the gun, so I hoped he kept his knife handy—and I hoped he wouldnʼt need it. He was still raw about what had happened the night before. He had killed a man. That bothered him. I had killed a man in a much more cold-blooded way, according to him, and it didnʼt bother me. But my “cold-bloodedness” bothered him. He wasnʼt a sharer. He didnʼt understand that to me pain was the evil. Death was an end to pain. No Bible verses were going to change that as far as I was concerned. He didnʼt understand sharing. Why should he? Most people knew little or nothing about it.

On the other hand, my Earthseed verses had surprised him, and, I think, pleased him a little. I wasnʼt sure whether he liked the writing or the reasoning, but he liked having something to read and talk about. “Poetry?” he said this morning as he looked through the pages I showed him—pages of my Earthseed notebook, as it happened. “I never knew you cared about poetry.”

“A lot of it isnʼt very poetical,” I said. “But itʼs what I believe, and Iʼve written it as well as I could.” I showed him four verses in all—gentle, brief verses that might take hold of him without his realizing it and live in his memory without his intending that they should. Bits of the Bible had done that to me, staying with me even after I stopped believing.

I gave to Harry, and through him to Zahra, thoughts I wanted them to keep. But I couldnʼt prevent Harry from keeping other things as well: His new distrust of me, for instance, almost his new dislike. I was not quite Lauren Olamina to him any longer. I had seen that in his expression off and on all day. Odd. Joanne hadnʼt liked her glimpse of the real me either. On the other hand, Zahra didnʼt seem to mind. But then, she hadnʼt known me very well at home. What she learned now, she could accept without feeling lied to. Harry did feel lied to, and perhaps he wondered what lies I was still telling or living. Only time could heal that—if he let it.

We moved when he came back. He had found us a new campsite, near the freeway and yet private. One of the huge freeway signs had fallen or been knocked down, and now lay on the ground, propped up by a pair of dead sycamore trees. With the trees, it formed a massive lean-to. The rock and ash leavings of a campfire showed us that the place had been used before. Perhaps there had been people here tonight, but they had gone away to see what they could scavenge from the fire. Now weʼre here, happy to get a little privacy, a view of the hills back where the fire is, and the security, for what it was worth, of at least one wall.

“Good deal!” Zahra said, unrolling her sleepsack and settling down on top of it. “Iʼll take the first watch tonight, okay?”

It was okay with me. I gave her the gun and lay down, eager for sleep. Again I was amazed to find so much comfort in sleeping on the ground in my clothes. Thereʼs no narcotic like exhaustion. Sometime in the night I woke up to soft, small sounds of voices and breathing. Zahra and Harry were making love. I turned my head and saw them at it, though they were too much involved with each other to notice me.

And, of course, no one was on watch.

I got caught up in their lovemaking, and had all I could do to lie still and keep quiet. I couldnʼt escape their sensation. I couldnʼt keep an efficient watch. I could either writhe with them or hold myself rigid. I held rigid until they finished—until Harry kissed Zahra, then got up to put his pants on and began his watch.

And I lay awake afterward, angry and worried. How in hell could I talk to either of them about this? It would be none of my business except for the time they chose for doing it. But look when that was! We could all have

been killed.

Still sitting up, Harry began to snore.

I listened for a couple of minutes, then sat up, reached over Zahra, and shook him.

He jumped awake, stared around, then turned toward me. I couldnʼt see more than a moving silhouette. “Give me the gun and go back to sleep,” I said.

He just sat there.

“Harry, youʼll get us killed. Give me the gun and the watch and lie down. Iʼll wake you later.” He looked at the watch.

“Sorry,” he said. “Guess I was more tired than I thought.” His voice grew less sleep-fogged. “Iʼm all right. Iʼm awake. Go back to sleep.”

His pride had kicked in. It would be almost impossible to get the gun and the watch from him now. I lay down. “Remember last night,” I said. “If you care about her at all, if you want her to live, remember last night.”

He didnʼt answer. I hoped I had surprised him. I supposed I had also embarrassed him. And maybe I had made him feel angry and defensive. Whatever Iʼd done, I didnʼt hear him doing any more snoring. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2027

Today we stopped at a commercial water station and filled ourselves and all our containers with clean, safe water. Commercial stations are best for that. Anything you buy from a water peddler on the freeway ought to be boiled, and still might not be safe. Boiling kills disease organisms, but may do nothing to get rid of chemical residue—fuel, pesticide, herbicide, whatever else has been in the bottles that peddlers use. The fact that most peddlers canʼt read makes the situation worse. They sometimes poison themselves.

Commercial stations let you draw whatever you pay for—and not a drop more—right out of one of their taps. You drink whatever the local householders are drinking. It might taste, smell, or look bad, but you can depend on it not to kill you.

There arenʼt enough water stations. Thatʼs why water peddlers exist. Also, water stations are dangerous places. People going in have money. People coming out have water, which is as good as money. Beggars and thieves hang around such places—keeping the whores and drug dealers company. Dad warned us all about water stations, trying to prepare us in case we ever went out and got caught far enough from home to be tempted to stop for water. His advice: “Donʼt do it. Suffer. Get your rear end home.”

Yeah.

Three is the smallest comfortable number at a water station. Two to watch and one to fill up. And itʼs good to have three ready for trouble on the way to and from the station. Three would not stop determined thugs, but it would stop opportunists—and most predators are opportunists. They prey on old people, lone women or women with young kids, handicapped people… They donʼt want to get hurt. My father used to call them coyotes. When he was being polite, he called them coyotes.

We were coming away with our water when we saw a pair of two-legged coyotes grab a bottle of water from a woman who was carrying a sizable pack and a baby. The man with her grabbed the coyote who had taken the water, the coyote passed the water to his partner, and his partner ran straight into us.

I tripped him. I think it was the baby who attracted my attention, my sympathy. The tough plastic bubble that held the water didnʼt break. The coyote didnʼt break either. I set my teeth, sharing the jolt as he fell and the pain of his scraped forearms. Back home, the younger kids hit me with that kind of thing every day.

I stepped back from the coyote and put my hand on the gun. Harry stepped up beside me. I was glad to have him there. We looked more intimidating together.

The husband of the woman had thrown off his attacker, and the two coyotes, finding themselves outnumbered, scampered away. Skinny, scared little bastards out to do their daily stealing. I picked up the plastic bubble of water and handed it to the man.

He took it and said, “Thanks man. Thanks a lot.”

I nodded and we went on our way. It still felt strange to be called “man.” I didnʼt like it, but that didnʼt matter. “All of a sudden youʼre a Good Samaritan,” Harry said. But he didnʼt mind. There was no disapproval in his voice.

“It was the baby, wasnʼt it?” Zahra asked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “The family, really. All of them together.” All of them together. They had been a black man, a Hispanic-looking woman, and a baby who managed to look a little like both of them. In a few more years, a lot of the families back in the neighborhood would have looked like that. Hell, Harry and Zahra were working on starting a family like that. And as Zahra had once observed, mixed couples catch hell out here.

Yet there were Harry and Zahra, walking so close together that they couldnʼt help now and then brushing against each other. But they kept alert, looked around. We were on U.S. 101 now, and there were even more walkers. Even clumsy thieves would have no trouble losing themselves in this crowd.

But Zahra and I had had a talk this morning during her reading lesson. We were supposed to be working on the sounds of letters and the spelling of simple words. But when Harry went off to the bushes of our designated toilet area, I stopped the lesson.

“Remember what you said to me a couple of days ago?” I asked her. “My mind was wandering and you warned me. ʻPeople get killed on freeways all the time,ʼ you said.”

To my surprise, she saw where I was headed at once. “Damn you,” she said, looking up from the paper I

had given her. “You donʼt sleep sound enough, thatʼs all.” She smiled as she said it.

“You want privacy, Iʼll give it to you,” I said. “Just let me know, and Iʼll guard the camp from someplace a short distance away. You two can do what you want. But no more of this shit when youʼre on watch!” She looked surprised. “Didnʼt think you said words like that.”

“And I didnʼt think you did things like last night. Dumb!”

“I know. Fun, though. Heʼs a big strong boy.” She paused. “You jealous?”

“Zahra!”

“Donʼt worry,” she said. “Things took me by surprise last night. I… I needed something, someone. It wonʼt be like that no more.”

“Okay.”

“You jealous?” she repeated.

I made myself smile. “Iʼm as human as you are,” I said. “But I donʼt think I would have yielded to temptation out here with no prospects, no idea whatʼs going to happen. The thought of getting pregnant would have stopped me cold.”

“People have babies out here all the time.” She grinned at me. “What about you and that boyfriend of yours.”

“We were careful. We used condoms.”

Zahra shrugged. “Well Harry and me didnʼt. If it happens, it happens.”

It had apparently happened to the couple whose water we had saved. Now they had a baby to lug north. They stayed near us today, that couple. I saw them every now and then. Tall, stocky, velvet-skinned, deep black man carrying a huge pack; short, pretty, stocky, light-brown woman with baby and pack; medium brown baby a few months old—huge-eyed baby with curly black hair.

They rested when we rested. Theyʼre camped now not far behind us. They look more like potential allies than potential dangers, but Iʼll keep an eye on them.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2027

Late today we came within sight of the ocean. None of us have ever seen it before, and we had to go closer, look at it, camp within sight and sound and smell of it. Once we had decided to do that, we walked shoeless in the waves, pants legs rolled up. Sometimes we just stood and stared at it: the Pacific Ocean—the largest, deepest body of water on earth, almost half-a-world of water. Yet, as it was, we couldnʼt drink any of it.

Harry stripped down to his underwear and waded out until the cool water reached his chest. He canʼt swim, of course. None of us can swim. Weʼve never before seen water enough to swim in. Zahra and I watched Harry with a lot of concern. Neither of us felt free to follow him. Iʼm supposed to be a man and Zahra attracts enough of the wrong kind of attention with all her clothes on. We decided to wait until after sundown and go in fully clothed, just to wash away some of the grime and stink. Then we could change clothes. We both had soap and we were eager to make use of it.

There were other people on the beach. In fact, the narrow strip of sand was crowded with people, though they managed to stay out of each otherʼs way. They had spread themselves out and seemed far more tolerant of one another than they had during our night in the hills. I didnʼt hear any shooting or fighting. There were no dogs, no obvious thefts, no rape. Perhaps the sea and the cool breeze lulled them. Harry wasnʼt the only one to strip down and go into the water. Quite a few women had gone out, wearing almost nothing. Maybe this was a safer place than any weʼd seen so far.

Some people had tents, and several had built fires. We settled in against the remnants of a small building. We were always, it seemed, looking for walls to shield us. Was it better to have them and perhaps get trapped against them or to camp in the open and be vulnerable on every side? We didnʼt know. It just felt better to have at least one wall.

I salvaged a flat piece of wood from the building, went a few yards closer to the ocean, and began to dig into the sand. I dug until I found dampness. Then I waited.

“Whatʼs supposed to happen?” Zahra asked. Until now she had watched me without saying anything. “Drinkable water,” I told her. “According to a couple of books I read, water is supposed to seep up through the sand with most of the salt filtered out of it.”

She looked into the damp hole. “When?” she asked.

I dug a little more. “Give it time,” I said. “If the trick works, we ought to know about it. It might save our lives someday.”

“Or poison us or give us a disease,” she said. She looked up to see Harry coming toward us, dripping wet. Even his hair was wet.

“He donʼt look bad naked,” she said.

He was still wearing his underwear, of course, but I could see what she meant. He had a nice, strong looking body, and I donʼt think he minded our looking at it. And he looked clean and he didnʼt stink. I couldnʼt wait to get into the water.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Itʼs sundown. Iʼll watch our stuff. Go.”

We got our soap out, gave him the gun, took off shoes and socks, and went. It was wonderful. The water was cold and it was hard to stand up in the waves and the sand kept being drawn away from our feet, even drawn from under our feet. But we threw water on each other and washed everything—clothing, bodies, and hair—let the waves knock us around, and laughed like crazy people. Best time Iʼve had since we left home.

Quite a lot of water had seeped into the hole I dug by the time we got back to Harry. I tasted it—took a little up in my hand while Harry criticized me.

“Look at all the people in this damned place!” he said. “Do you see any bathrooms? What do you think they do out here. You ought to at least have the sense to use a water purification tablet!” That thought was enough to make me spit out the mouthful of water that I had taken. He was right, of course. But that one mouthful had told me what I wanted to know. The water had been a little brackish, but not bad—drinkable. It should be boiled or a water purification tablet should be added to it, as Harry had said, and before that, according to my book, it could be strained through sand to get rid of more of the salt. That meant if we stayed near the coast, we could survive even if we ran short of water. That was good to know. We still had our shadows. The couple with the baby had camped near us, and the woman was now sitting on the sand nursing her baby while the man knelt beside his pack, rummaging through it. “Do you think they want to wash?” I asked Harry and Zahra.

“What are you going to do?” Zahra responded. “Offer to babysit?”

I shook my head. “No, I think that would be too much. Do either of you mind if I invite them over?” “Arenʼt you afraid theyʼll rob us?” Harry demanded. “Youʼre afraid of everyone else.”

“They have better gear than we do,” I said. “And they have no natural allies around here except us. Mixed couples or groups are rare out here. No doubt thatʼs why theyʼve kept close to us.”

“And you helped them,” Zahra said. “People donʼt help strangers too much out here. And you gave them back their water. That means you have enough so you donʼt have to rob them.”

“So do you mind?” I asked again.

They looked at each other.

“I donʼt mind,” Zahra said. “Long as we keep an eye on them.”

“Why do you want them?” Harry asked, watching me.

“They need us more than we need them,” I said.

“Thatʼs not a reason.”

“Theyʼre potential allies.”

“We donʼt need allies.”

“Not now. But weʼd be damned fools to wait and try to get them when we do need them. By then, they might not be around.”

He shrugged and sighed. “All right. Like Zahra says, as long as we watch them.”

I got up and went over to the couple. I could see them straighten and go tense as I approached. I was careful not to go too close or move too fast.

“Hello,” I said. “If you two would like to take turns bathing, you can come over and join us. That might be safer for the baby.”

“Join you?” the man said. “Youʼre asking us to join you?”

“Inviting you.”

“Why?”

“Why not. Weʼre natural allies—the mixed couple and the mixed group.”

“Allies?” the man said, and he laughed.

I looked at him, wondering why he laughed.

“What the hell do you really want?” he demanded.

I sighed. “Come join us if you want to. Youʼre welcome, and in a pinch, five is better than two.” I turned and left them. Let them talk it over and decide.

“They coming?” Zahra asked when I got back.

“I think so,” I said. “Although maybe not tonight.”

FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 2027

We built a fire and had a hot meal last night, but the mixed family did not join us. I didnʼt blame them. People stay alive out here by being suspicious. But they didnʼt go away either. And it was no accident that they had chosen to stay near us. It was a good thing for them that they were near us. The peaceful beach scene changed late last night. Dogs came onto the sand.

They came during my watch. I saw movement far down the beach and I focused on it. Then there was shouting, screams. I thought it was a fight or a robbery. I didnʼt see the dogs until they broke away from a group of humans and ran inland. One of them was carrying something, but I couldnʼt tell what it was. I watched them until they vanished inland. People chased them for a short distance, but the dogs were too fast. Someoneʼs property was lost—someoneʼs food, no doubt.

I was on edge after that. I got up, moved to the inland end of our wall, sat there where I could see more of the beach. I was there, sitting still with the gun in my lap when I spotted movement perhaps a long city block up the beach. Dark forms against pale sand. More dogs. Three of them. They nosed around the sand for a moment, then headed our way. I sat as still as I could, watching. So many people slept without posting watches. The three dogs wandered among the camps, investigating what they pleased, and no one tried to drive them away. On the other hand, peoples oranges, potatoes, and grain meal couldnʼt be very tempting to a dog. Our small supply of dried meat might be another matter. But no dog would get it.

But the dogs stopped at the camp of the mixed couple. I remembered the baby and jumped up. At the same moment, the baby began to cry. I shoved Zahra with my foot and she came awake all at once. She could

do that.

“Dogs,” I said. “Wake Harry.” Then I headed for the mixed couple. The woman was screaming and beating at a dog with her hands. A second dog was dodging the manʼs kicks and going for the baby. Only the third dog was clear of the family.

I stopped, slipped the safety, and as the third dog went in toward the baby, I shot it.

The dog dropped without a sound. I dropped, too, gasping, feeling kicked in the chest. It surprised me how hard the loose sand was to fall on.

At the crack of the shot, the other two dogs took off inland. From my prone position, I sighted on them as they ran. I might have been able to pick off one more of them, but I let them go. I hurt enough already. I couldnʼt catch my breath, it seemed. As I gasped, though, it occurred to me that prone was a good shooting position for me. Sharing would be less able to incapacitate me at once if I shot two-handed and prone. I filed the knowledge away for future use. Also, it was interesting that the dogs had been frightened by my shot. Was it the sound that scared them or the fact that one of them had been hit? I wish I knew more about them. Iʼve read books about them being intelligent, loyal pets, but thatʼs all in the past. Dogs now are wild animals who will eat a baby if they can.

I felt that the dog I had shot was dead. It wasnʼt moving. But by now a lot of people were awake and moving around. A living dog, even wounded, would be frantic to get away.

The pain in my chest began to ebb. When I could breathe without gasping, I stood up and walked back to our camp. There was so much confusion by then that no one noticed me except Harry and Zahra. Harry came out to meet me. He took the gun from my hand, then took my arm and steered me back to my sleepsack.

“So you hit something,” he said as I sat gasping again from the small exertion.

I nodded. “Killed a dog. Iʼll be okay soon.”

“You need a keeper,” he said.

“Dogs were after the baby!”

“Youʼve adopted those damned people.”

I smiled in spite of myself, liking him, thinking that Iʼd pretty much adopted him and Zahra, too. “Whatʼs wrong with that?” I asked.

He sighed. “Get in your bag and go to sleep, will you. Iʼll take the next watch.”

“Some people just came and carried off the dog you killed,” Zahra said. “We should have got it.” “Iʼm not ready to eat a dog yet,” Harry told her. “Go to sleep.”

The names of the members of the mixed family are Travis Charles Douglas, Gloria Natividad Douglas, and six-month-old Dominic Douglas, also called Domingo. They gave in and joined us tonight after we made camp. Weʼve detoured away from the highway to make camp on another beach, and theyʼve followed. Once we were settled, they came over to us, uncertain and suspicious, offering us small pieces of their treasure: milk chocolate full of almonds. Real milk chocolate, not carob candy. It was the best thing Iʼd tasted since long before leaving Robledo.

“It was you last night?” Natividad asked Harry. The first thing she had told us was to call her Natividad. “It was Lauren,” Harry said, gesturing toward me.

She looked at me. “Thank you.”

“Is your baby all right?” I asked.

“He had scratches and sand in his eyes and mouth from being dragged.” She stroked the sleeping babyʼs black hair. “I put salve on the scratches and washed his eyes. Heʼs all right now. Heʼs so good. He only cried a little bit.”

“Hardly ever cries,” Travis said with quiet pride. Travis has an unusual deep-black complexion—skin so smooth that I canʼt believe he has ever in his life had a pimple. Looking at him makes me want to touch him and see how all that perfect skin feels. Heʼs young, good looking, and intense—a stocky, muscular man, tall, but a little shorter and a little heavier than Harry. Natividad is stocky, too—a pale brown woman with a round, pretty face, long black hair bound up in a coil atop her head. Sheʼs short, but it isnʼt surprising somehow that she can carry a pack and a baby and keep up a steady pace all day. I like her, feel inclined to trust her. Iʼll have to be careful about that. But I donʼt believe she would steal from us. Travis has not accepted us yet, but she has. Weʼve helped her baby. Weʼre her friends.

“Weʼre going to Seattle,” she told us. “Travis has an aunt there. She says we can stay with her until we find work. We want to find work that pays money.”

“Donʼt we all,” Zahra agreed. She sat on Harryʼs sleepsack with him, his arm around her. Tonight could be tiresome for me.

Travis and Natividad sat on their three sacks, spread out to give their baby room to crawl when he woke up. Natividad had harnessed him to her wrist with a length of clothesline.

I felt alone between the two couples. I let them talk about their hopes and rumors of northern edens. I took out my notebook and began to write up the dayʼs events, still savoring the last of the chocolate. The baby awoke hungry and crying. Natividad opened her loose shirt, gave him a breast, and moved over near me to see what I was doing.

“You can read and write,” she said with surprise. “I thought you might be drawing. What are you writing?” “Sheʼs always writing,” Harry said. “Ask to read her poetry. Some of it isnʼt bad.”

I winced. My name is androgynous, in pronunciation at least—Lauren sounds like the more masculine

Loren. But pronouns are more specific, and still a problem for Harry.

“She?” Travis asked right on cue. “Her?”

“Damn it, Harry,” I said. “We forgot to buy that tape for your mouth.”

He shook his head, then gave me an embarrassed smile. “Iʼve known you all my life. It isnʼt easy to remember to switch all your pronouns. I think itʼs all right this time, though.”

“I told you so!” Natividad said to her husband. Then she looked embarrassed. “I told him you didnʼt look like a man,” she said to me. “Youʼre tall and strong, but… I donʼt know. You donʼt have a manʼs face.” I had, almost, a manʼs chest and hips, so maybe I should be glad to hear that I didnʼt have a manʼs face— though it wasnʼt going to help me on the road. “We believed two men and a woman would be more likely to survive than two women and a man,” I said. “Out here, the trick is to avoid confrontation by looking strong.” “The three of us arenʼt going to help you look strong,” Travis said. He sounded bitter. Did he resent the baby and Natividad?

“You are our natural allies,” I said. “You sneered at that last time I said it, but itʼs true. The baby wonʼt weaken us much, I hope, and heʼll have a better chance of surviving with five adults around him.” “I can take care of my wife and my son,” Travis said with more pride than sense. I decided not to hear him. “I think you and Natividad will strengthen us,” I said. “Two more pairs of eyes, two more pairs of hands. Do you have knives?”

“Yes.” He patted his pants pocket. “I wish we had guns like you.”

I wished we had guns—plural—too. But I didnʼt say so. “You and Natividad look strong and healthy,” I said. “Predators will look at a group like the five of us and move on to easier prey.”

Travis grunted, still noncommittal. Well, I had helped him twice, and now I was a woman. It might take him a while to forgive me for that, no matter how grateful he was.

“I want to hear some of your poetry,” Natividad said. “The man we worked for, his wife used to write poetry. She would read it to me sometimes when she was feeling lonely. I liked it. Read me something of yours before it gets too dark.”

Odd to think of a rich woman reading to her maid—which was who Natividad had been. Maybe I had the wrong idea of rich women. But then, everyone gets lonely. I put my journal down and picked up my book of Earthseed verses. I chose soft, non-preachy verses, good for road-weary minds and bodies.

18

! ! !

Once or twice

each week

A Gathering of Earthseed

is a good and necessary thing.

It vents emotion, then

quiets the mind.

It focuses attention,

strengthens purpose, and

unifies people.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2027

“YOU BELIEVE IN ALL this Earthseed stuff, donʼt you?” Travis asked me.

It was our day off, our day of rest. We had left the highway to find a beach where we could camp for the day and night and be comfortable. The Santa Barbara beach we had found included a partly burned park where there were trees and tables. It wasnʼt crowded, and we could have a little daytime privacy. The water was only a short walk away. The two couples took turns disappearing while I watched their packs and the baby. Interesting that the Douglases were already comfortable trusting me with all that was precious to them. We didnʼt trust them to watch alone last night or the night before, though we did make them watch. We had no walls to put our backs against last night so it was useful to have two watchers at a time. Natividad watched with me and Travis watched with Harry. Finally, Zahra watched alone.

I organized that, feeling that it was the schedule that would be most comfortable to both couples. Neither would be required to trust the other too much.

Now, amid the outdoor tables, firepits, pines, palms, and sycamores, trust seems not to be a problem. If you turn your back to the burned portion which is barren and ugly, this is a beautiful place, and itʼs far enough from the highway not to be found by the ever-flowing river of people moving north. I found it because I had maps—in particular, a street map of much of Santa Barbara County. My grandparentsʼ maps helped us explore away from the highway even though many street signs were fallen or gone. There were enough left for us to find beaches when we were near them.

There were locals at this beach—people who had left real homes to spend an August day at the beach. I eavesdropped on a few fragments of conversation and found out that much.

Then I tired talking to some of them. To my surprise, most were willing to talk. Yes, the park was beautiful except where some painted fools had set fires. The rumors were that they did it to fight for the poor, to expose or destroy the goods hoarded by the rich. But a park by the sea wasnʼt goods. It was open to everyone. Why burn it? No one knew why.

No one knew where the fad of painting yourself and getting high on drugs and fire had come from, either. Most people suspected it had begun in Los Angeles where, according to them, most stupid or wicked things began. Local prejudice. I didnʼt tell any of them I was from the LA. area. I just smiled and asked about the local job situation. Some people said they knew where I could work to earn a meal or a “safe” place to sleep, but no one knew where I could earn money. That didnʼt mean there werenʼt any such jobs, but if there were, they would be hard to find and harder to qualify for. Thatʼs going to be a problem wherever we go. And yet we know a lot, the three of us, the five of us. We know how to do a great many things. There must be a way to put it all together and make us something other than domestic servants working for room and board. We make an interesting unit.

Water is very expensive here—worse than in Los Angeles or Ventura Counties. We all went to a water station this morning. Still no freeway watersellers for us.

On the road yesterday, we saw three dead men—a group together, young, unmarked, but covered with the blood they had vomited, their bodies bloated and beginning to stink. We passed them, looked at them, took nothing from their bodies. Their packs—if theyʼd had any—were already gone. Their clothes, we did not want. And their canteens—all three still had canteens—their canteens, no one wanted.

We all resupplied yesterday at a local Hanning Joss. We were relieved and surprised to see it—a good dependable place where we could buy all we needed from solid food for the baby to soap to salves for skin chafed by salt water, sun, and walking. Natividad bought new liners for her baby carrier and washed and dried a plastic bag of filthy old ones. Zahra went with her into the separate laundry area of the store to wash and dry some of our filthy clothing. We wore our sea-washed clothing, salty, but not quite stinking. Paying to wash clothes was a luxury we could not often afford, yet none of us found it easy to be filthy. We werenʼt used to it. We were all hoping for cheaper water in the north. I even bought a second clip for the gun—plus solvent, oil, and brushes to clean the gun. It had bothered me, not being able to clean it before. If the gun failed us when we needed it, we could be killed. The new clip was a comfort, too. It gave us a chance to reload fast and keep shooting.

Now we lounged in the shade of pines and sycamores, enjoyed the sea breeze, rested, and talked. I wrote, fleshing out my journal notes for the week. I was just finishing that when Travis sat down next to me and asked his question:

“You believe in all this Earthseed stuff, donʼt you?”

“Every word,” I answered.

“But…you made it up.”

I reached down, picked up a small stone, and put it on the table between us. “If I could analyze this and tell you all that it was made of, would that mean Iʼd made up its contents?”

He didnʼt do more than glance at the rock. He kept his eyes on me. “So what did you analyze to get Earthseed?”

“Other people,” I said, “myself, everything I could read, hear, see, all the history I could learn. My father is —was—a minister and a teacher. My stepmother ran a neighborhood school. I had a chance to see a lot.” “What did your father think of your idea of God?”

“He never knew.”

“You never had the guts to tell him.”

I shrugged. “Heʼs the one person in the world I worked hard not to hurt.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. My parents, too.” He shook his head. “People donʼt live long these days.”

There was a period of silence. After a while, he said, “How did you get your ideas about God?” “I was looking for God,” I said. “I wasnʼt looking for mythology or mysticism or magic. I didnʼt know whether there was a god to find, but I wanted to know. God would have to be a power that could not be defied by anyone or anything.”

“Change.”

“Change, yes,”

“But itʼs not a god. Itʼs not a person or an intelligence or even a thing. Itʼs just… I donʼt know. An idea.”

I smiled. Was that such a terrible criticism? “Itʼs a truth,” I said. “Change is ongoing. Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking, whatever. Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way. I donʼt claim that everything changes in every way, but everything changes in some way.”

Harry, coming in dripping from the sea, heard this last. “Sort of like saying God is the second law of thermodynamics,” he said, grinning. He and I had already had this conversation.

“Thatʼs an aspect of God,” I said to Travis. “Do you know about the second law?”

He nodded. “Entropy, the idea that the natural flow of heat is from something hot to something cold—not the other way—so that the universe itself is cooling down, running down, dissipating its energy.” I let my surprise show.

“My mother wrote for newspapers and magazines at first,” he said. “She taught me at home. Then my father died and she couldnʼt earn enough for us to keep the house. And she couldnʼt find any other work that paid money. She had to take a job as a live-in cook, but she went on teaching me.”

“She taught you about entropy?” Harry asked.

“She taught me to read and write,” Travis said. “Then she taught me to teach myself. The man she worked for had a library—a whole big room full of books.”

“He let you read them?” I asked.

“He didnʼt let me near them.” Travis gave me a humorless smile. “I read them anyway. My mother would sneak them to me.”

Of course. Slaves did that two hundred years ago. They sneaked around and educated themselves as best they could, sometimes suffering whipping, sale, or mutilation for their efforts.

“Did he ever catch you or her at it?” I asked.

“No.” Travis turned to look toward the sea. “We were careful. It was important. She never borrowed more than one book at a time. I think his wife knew, but she was a decent woman. She never said anything. She was the one who talked him into letting me marry Natividad.”

The son of the cook marrying one of the maids. That was like something out of another era, too. “Then my mother died and all Natividad and I had was each other, and then the baby. I was staying on as gardener-handyman, but then the old bastard we worked for decided he wanted Natividad. He would try to watch when she fed the baby Couldnʼt let her alone. Thatʼs why we left. Thatʼs why his wife helped us leave. She gave us money. She knew it wasnʼt Natividadʼs fault. And I knew I didnʼt want to have to kill the guy. So we left.”

In slavery when that happened, there was nothing the slaves could do about it—or nothing that wouldnʼt get them killed, sold, or beaten.

I looked at Natividad who sat a short distance away, on spread out sleepsacks, playing with her baby and talking to Zahra. She had been lucky. Did she know? How many other people were less lucky—unable to escape the masterʼs attentions or gain the mistressʼs sympathies. How far did masters and mistresses go these days toward putting less than submissive servants in their places?

“I still canʼt see change or entropy as God,” Travis said, bringing the conversation back to Earthseed. “Then show me a more pervasive power than change,” I said. “It isnʼt just entropy. God is more complex than that. Human behavior alone should teach you that much. And thereʼs still more complexity when youʼre dealing with several things at once—as you always are. There are all kinds of changes in the universe.” He shook his head. “Maybe, but nobodyʼs going to worship them.”

“I hope not,” I said. “Earthseed deals with ongoing reality, not with supernatural authority figures. Worship is no good without action. With action, itʼs only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind.” He gave me an unhappy smile. “Praying makes people feel better even when thereʼs no action they can take,” he said. “I used to think that was all God was good for—to help people like my mother stand what they had to stand.”

“That isnʼt what God is for, but there are times when thatʼs what prayer is for. And there are times when thatʼs what these verses are for. God is Change, and in the end, God prevails. But thereʼs hope in understanding the nature of God—not punishing or jealous, but infinitely malleable. Thereʼs comfort in realizing that everyone and everything yields to God. Thereʼs power in knowing that God can be focused, diverted, shaped by anyone at all. But thereʼs no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you. You know that. You knew it when you took your family and got the hell out of your bossʼs house. God will shape us all every day of our lives. Best to understand that and return the effort: Shape God.”

“Amen!” Harry said, smiling.

I looked at him, wavered between annoyance and amusement, and let amusement win. “Put something on before you burn, Harry.”

“You sounded like you could use an ʻamen,ʼ” he said as he put on a loose blue shirt. “Do you want to go on preaching or do you want to eat?”

We had beans cooked with bits of dried meat, tomatoes, peppers, and onions. It was Sunday. There were public firepits in the park, and we had plenty of time. We even had a little wheat-flour bread and the baby had real baby food with his milk instead of mashed or mother-chewed bits of whatever we were eating.

Itʼs been a good day. Every now and then, Travis would ask me another question or toss me another challenge to Earthseed, and I would try to answer without preaching him a sermon—which was hard. I think I

managed it most of the time. Zahra and Natividad got into an argument about whether I was talking about a male god or a female god. When I pointed out that Change had no sex at all and wasnʼt a person, they were confused, but not dismissive. Only Harry refused to take the discussion seriously. He liked the idea of keeping a journal, though. Yesterday he bought a small notebook, and now heʼs writing, too—and helping Zahra with her reading and writing lessons.

Iʼd like to draw him into Earthseed. Iʼd like to draw them all in. They could be the beginning of an Earthseed community. I would love to teach Dominic Earthseed as he grows up. I would teach him and he would teach me. The questions little children ask drive you insane because they never stop. But they also make you think. For now, though, I had to deal with Travisʼs questions.

I took a chance. I told Travis about the Destiny.

He had asked and asked me what the point of Earthseed is. Why personify change by calling it God? Since change is just an idea, why not call it that? Just say change is important.

“Because after a while, it wonʼt be important!” I told him. “People forget ideas. Theyʼre more likely to remember God—especially when theyʼre scared or desperate.”

“Then theyʼre supposed to do what?” he demanded. “Read a poem?”

“Or remember a truth or a comfort or a reminder to action,” I said. “People do that all the time. They reach back to the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, or some other religious book that helps them deal with the frightening changes that happen in life.”

“Change does scare most people.”

“I know. God is frightening. Best to learn to cope.”

“Your stuff isnʼt very comforting.”

“It is after a while. Iʼm still growing into it myself. God isnʼt good or evil, doesnʼt favor you or hate you, and yet God is better partnered than fought.”

“Your God doesnʼt care about you at all,” Travis said.

“All the more reason to care about myself and others. All the more reason to create Earthseed communities and shape God together. ʻGod is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay.ʼ We decide which aspect we embrace—and how to deal with the others.”

“Is that what you want to do? Set up Earthseed communities?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

There it was. The opening. I swallowed and turned a little so that I could see the burned over area. It was so damn ugly. Hard to think anyone had done that on purpose.

“And then what?” Travis insisted. “A God like yours wouldnʼt have a heaven for people to hope for, so what is there?”

“Heaven,” I said, facing him again. “Oh, yes. Heaven.”

He didnʼt say anything. He gave me one of his suspicious looks and waited.

“The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars,ʼ” I said. “Thatʼs the ultimate Earthseed aim, and the ultimate human change short of death. Itʼs a destiny weʼd better pursue if we hope to be anything other than smooth-skinned dinosaurs—here today, gone tomorrow, our bones mixed with the bones and ashes of our cities, and so what?”

“Space?” he said. “Mars?”

“Beyond Mars,” I said. “Other star systems. Living worlds.”

“Youʼre crazy as hell,” he said, but I like the soft, quiet way he said it—with amazement rather than ridicule.

I grinned. “I know it wonʼt be possible for a long time. Now is a time for building foundations—Earthseed communities—focused on the Destiny. After all, my heaven really exists, and you donʼt have to die to reach it. ʻThe Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars,ʼ or among the ashes.” I nodded toward the burned area.

Travis listened. He didnʼt point out that a person walking north from LA. to who-knows-where with all her possessions on her back was hardly in a position to point the way to Alpha Centauri. He listened. He laughed a little—as though he were afraid to get caught being too serious about my ideas. But he didnʼt back away from me. He leaned forward. He argued. He shouted. He asked more questions. Natividad told him to stop bothering me, but he kept it up. I didnʼt mind. I understand persistence. I admire it.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2027

I think Travis Charles Douglas is my first convert. Zahra Moss is my second. Zahra has listened as the days passed, and as Travis and I went on arguing off and on. Sometimes she asked questions or pointed out what she saw as inconsistencies. After a while, she said. “I donʼt care about no outer space. You can keep that part of it. But if you want to put together some kind of community where people look out for each other and donʼt have to take being pushed around, Iʼm with you. Iʼve been talking to Natividad. I donʼt want to live the way she had to. I donʼt want to live the way my mama had to either.”

I wondered how much difference there was between Natividadʼs former employer who treated her as though he owned her and Richard Moss who purchased young girls to be part of his harem. It was all a matter of personal feeling, no doubt. Natividad had resented her employer. Zahra had accepted and perhaps loved Richard Moss.

Earthseed is being born right here on Highway 101—on that portion of 101 that was once El Camino Real, the royal highway of Californiaʼs Spanish past. Now itʼs a highway, a river of the poor. A river flooding north.

Iʼve come to think that I should be fishing that river even as I follow its current. I should watch people not only to spot those who might be dangerous to us, but to find those few like Travis and Natividad who would join us and be welcome.

And then what? Find a place to squat and take over? Act as a kind of gang? No. Not quite a gang. We arenʼt gang types. I donʼt want gang types with their need to dominate, rob and terrorize. And yet we might have to dominate. We might have to rob to survive, and even terrorize to scare off or kill enemies. Weʼll have to be very careful how we allow our needs to shape us. But we must have arable land, a dependable water supply, and enough freedom from attack to let us establish ourselves and grow.

It might be possible to find such an isolated place along the coast, and make a deal with the inhabitants. If there were a few more of us, and if we were better armed, we might provide security in exchange for living room. We might also provide education plus reading and writing services to adult illiterates. There might be a market for that kind of thing. So many people, children and adults, are illiterate these days… We might be able to do it—grow our own food, grow ourselves and our neighbors into something brand new. Into Earthseed.