The Self must create

Its own reasons for being. To shape God,

Shape Self.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2027

THERE IS STILL A little water in the San Luis Reservoir. It’s more fresh water than I’ve ever seen in one place, but by the vast size of the reservoir, I can see that it’s only a little compared to what should be there—what used to be there. The highway runs through the recreational area for several miles. That gave us a chance to travel through on the road until we spotted an area that

would make a good rest-day camp and that wasn’t occupied.

There are a lot of people in the area—people who have set up permanent camps in everything from rag-and-plastic tents to wooden shacks that look almost fit for human habitation. Where are so many people going to the bathroom? How clean is the water in the reservoir? No doubt cities that use it purify the water when it reaches them. Whether they do or not, I think it’s time for us to break out the water purification tablets.

Around several of the tents and shacks, there are small, ragged gardens— new plantings and remnants of summer vegetable gardens. There are a few things left to harvest: big squashes, pumpkins, and gourds still growing along with carrots, peppers, greens, and a little corn. Good, cheap, filling foods. Not enough protein, but perhaps the people hunt. There must be game around here, and I saw plenty of guns. People wear holstered handguns or carry rifles or shotguns. The men in particular go armed.

They all stared at us.

As we went past, people stopped their gardening, outdoor cooking, or whatever to stare at us. We had pushed ourselves, had been eager to arrive

ahead of the crowd I believe will soon come in from the Bay Area. So we didn’t arrive with the usual human river. Yet by ourselves we are enough of a crowd to make the local squatters nervous. They let us alone, though. Except during disaster-induced feeding frenzies like the ones after the earthquake, most people let one another alone. I think Dominic and Justin are making it easier for us to fit in. Justin, now tethered to Allie’s wrist, runs around staring at the squatters until they make him nervous. Then he runs back to Allie and demands to be carried. He’s a cute little kid. Lean, grim-faced people tend to smile at him.

No one shot at us or challenged us as we walked along the highway. No one bothered us later when we left the highway and headed into the trees toward what we thought might be a good area. We found old campsites and toilet places and avoided them. We didn’t want to be within sight of the highway or of anyone else’s tent or shack. We wanted privacy, not too many rocks to sleep on, and a way of reaching the water that didn’t put us too much on display. We looked for over an hour until we found an isolated old campsite, long abandoned and a little higher upslope than others we’d seen. It suited all of us. Then, with hours of daylight left, we rested in enormous comfort and laziness, knowing we had the rest of today and all of tomorrow to do almost nothing. Natividad fed Dominic and the two of them drifted off to sleep. Allie followed her example with Justin, although preparing him a meal was a little more complicated. Both women had more reason to be tired and to need sleep than the rest of us, so we left them out when we drew lots for a watch schedule—one for day and night. We shouldn’t get too comfortable. Also, we agreed that no one should go off exploring or getting water alone. I thought the couples would soon start going off together—And I thought it was just about time for Bankole and me to have that talk.

I sat with him and cleaned our new handgun while he cleaned the rifle.

Harry was on watch and needed my gun. When I went over to give it to him, he let me know he understood exactly what was going on between Bankole and me.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “Don’t give the poor old guy a heart attack.” “I’ll tell him you were worried,” I said.

Harry laughed, then sobered. “Be careful, Lauren. Bankole is probably all right. He seems to be. But, well… Yell if anything goes wrong.”

I rested my hand on his shoulder for a moment and said, “Thank you.”

The nice thing about sitting and working alongside someone you don’t know very well, someone you’d like to know much better, is that you can talk with him or be quiet with him. You can get comfortable with him and with the awareness that you’ll soon be making love to him.

Bankole and I were quiet for a while, a little shy. I sneaked glances at him and caught him sneaking glances at me. Then, to my own surprise, I began to talk to him about Earthseed—not preaching, just talking, testing I guess. I needed to see his reaction. Earthseed is the most important thing in my life. If Bankole were going to laugh at it, I needed to know now. I didn’t expect him to agree with it or even to be much interested in it. He’s an old man. I thought he was probably content with whatever religion he had. It occurred to me as I spoke that I had no idea what his religion was. I asked him.

“None at all,” he said. “When my wife was alive, we went to a Methodist church. Her religion was important to her, so I went along. I saw how it comforted her, and I wanted to believe, but I never could.”

“We were Baptists,” I said. “I couldn’t make myself believe either, and I couldn’t tell anyone. My father was the minister. I kept quiet and began to understand Earthseed.”

“Began to invent Earthseed,” he said.

“Began to discover it and understand it,” I said. “Stumbling across the truth isn’t the same as making things up.” I wondered how many times and ways I would have to say this to new people.

“It sounds like some combination of Buddhism, existentialism, Sufism, and I don’t know what else,” he said. “Buddhism doesn’t make a god of the concept of change, but the impermanence of everything is a basic Buddhist principle.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of reading. Some other religions and philosophies do contain ideas that would fit into Earthseed, but none of them are Earthseed. They go off in their own directions.”

He nodded. “All right. But tell me, what do people have to do to be good members of an Earthseed Community?”

A nice, door-opening question. “The essentials,” I answered, “are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families, and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.”

“And why should people bother about the Destiny, farfetched as it is?

What’s in it for them?”

“A unifying, purposeful life here on Earth, and the hope of heaven for themselves and their children. A real heaven, not mythology or philosophy. A heaven that will be theirs to shape.”

“Or a hell,” he said. His mouth twitched. “Human beings are good at creating hells for themselves even out of richness.” He thought for a moment. “It sounds too simple, you know.”

“You think it’s simple?” I asked in surprise.

“I said it sounds too simple.”

“It sounds overwhelming to some people.”

“I mean it’s too…straightforward. If you get people to accept it, they’ll make it more complicated, more open to interpretation, more mystical, and more comforting.”

“Not around me they won’t!” I said.

“With you or without you, they will. All religions change. Think about the big ones. What do you think Christ would be these days? A Baptist? A Methodist? A Catholic? And the Buddha—do you think he’d be a Buddhist now? What kind of Buddhism would he practice?” He smiled. “After all, if ‘God is Change,’ surely Earthseed can change, and if it lasts, it will.”

I looked away from him because he was smiling. This was all nothing to him. “I know,” I said. “No one can stop Change, but we all shape Change whether we mean to or not. I mean to guide and shape Earthseed into what it should be.”

“Perhaps.” He went on smiling. “How serious are you about this?”

The question drove me deep into myself. I spoke, almost not knowing what I would say. “When my father…disappeared,” I began, “it was Earthseed that kept me going. When most of my community and the rest of my family were wiped out, and I was alone, I still had Earthseed. What I am now, all that I am now is Earthseed.”

“What you are now,” he said after a long silence, “is a very unusual young woman.”

We didn’t talk for a while after that. I wondered what he thought. He hadn’t seemed to be bottling up too much hilarity. No more than I’d expected. He had been willing to go along with his wife’s religious needs. Now, he would at least permit me mine.

I wondered about his wife. He hadn’t mentioned her before. What had she been like? How had she died?

“Did you leave home because your wife died?” I asked.

He put down a long slender cleaning rod and rested his back against the tree behind him. “My wife died five years ago,” he said. “Three men broke in

—junkies, dealers, I don’t know. They beat her, tried to make her tell where the drugs were.”

“Drugs?”

“They had decided that we must have something they could use or sell. They didn’t like the things she was able to give them so they kept beating her. She had a heart problem.” He drew in a long breath, then sighed. “She was still alive when I got home. She was able to tell me what had happened. I tried to help her, but the bastards had taken her medicine, taken everything. I

phoned for an ambulance. It arrived an hour after she died. I tried to save her, then to revive her. I tried so damned hard…”

I stared down the hill from our camp where just a glint of water was visible in the distance through the trees and bushes. The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.

“I should have headed north when Sharon died,” Bankole said. “I thought about it.”

“But you stayed.” I turned away from the water and looked at him. “Why?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know what to do, so for some time I didn’t do anything. Friends took care of me, cooked for me, cleaned the house. It surprised me that they would do that. Church people most of them. Neighbors. More her friends than mine.”

I thought of Wardell Parrish, devastated after the loss of his sister and her children—and his house. Had Bankole been some community’s Wardell Parrish? “Did you live in a walled community?” I asked.

“Yes. Not rich, though. Nowhere near rich. People managed to hold on to their property and feed their families. Not much else. No servants. No hired guards.”

“Sounds like my old neighborhood.”

“I suppose it sounds like a lot of old neighborhoods that aren’t there any more. I stayed to help the people who had helped me. I couldn’t walk away from them.”

“But you did. You left. Why?” “Fire—and scavengers.”

“You, too? Your whole community?”

“Yes. The houses burned, most of the people were killed… The rest scattered, went to family or friends elsewhere. Scavengers and squatters moved in. I didn’t decide to leave. I escaped.”

Much too familiar. “Where did you live? What city?” “San Diego.”

“That far south?”

“Yes. As I said, I should have left years ago. If I had, I could have managed plane fare and resettlement money.”

Plane fare and resettlement money? He might not call that rich, but we would have.

“Where are you going now?” I asked. “North.” He shrugged.

“Just anywhere north or somewhere in particular?”

“Anywhere where I can be paid for my services and allowed to live among people who aren’t out to kill me for my food or water.”

Or for drugs, I thought. I looked into his bearded face and added up the hints I’d picked up today and over the past few days. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

He looked a little surprised. “I was, yes. Family practice. It seems a long time ago.”

“People will always need doctors,” I said. “You’ll do all right.”

“My mother used to say that.” He gave me a wry smile. “But here I am.”

I smiled back because, looking at him now, I couldn’t help myself, but as he spoke, I decided he had told me at least one lie. He might be as displaced and in distress as he appeared to be, but he wasn’t just wandering north. He wasn’t looking for just anywhere he could be paid for his services and not robbed or murdered. He wasn’t the kind of man who wandered. He knew where he was going. He had a haven somewhere—a relative’s home, another home of his own, a friend’s home, something—some definite destination.

Or perhaps he just had enough money to buy a place for himself in Washington or Canada or Alaska. He had had to choose between fast, safe, expensive air travel and having settling-in money when he got where he was going. He had chosen settling-in money. If so, I agreed with him. He was taking the kind of risk that would enable him to make a new beginning as soon as possible—if he survived.

On the other hand, if I were right about any of this, he might disappear on me some night. Or perhaps he would be more open about it—just walk away from me some day, turn down a side road and wave good-bye. I didn’t want that. After I’d slept with him I would want it even less.

Even now, I wanted to keep him with me. I hated that he was lying to me already—or I believed he was. But why should he tell me everything? He didn’t know me very well yet, and like me, he meant to survive. Perhaps I could convince him that he and I could survive well together. Meanwhile, best to enjoy him without quite trusting him. I may be wrong about all this, but I don’t believe I am. Pity.

We finished the guns, loaded them, and went down to the water to wash. You could go right down to the water, scoop some up in a pot, and take it away. It was free. I kept looking around, thinking someone would come to stop us or charge us or something. I suppose we could have been robbed, but no one paid any attention to us. We saw other people getting water in bottles, canteens, pots, and bags, but the place seemed peaceful. No one bothered anyone. No one paid any attention to us.

“A place like this can’t last,” I told Bankole. “It’s a shame. Life could be good here.”

“I suspect that it’s against the law to live here,” he said. “This is a State Recreation Area. There should be some kind of limit on how long you can stay. I’m certain that there should be—used to be—some group policing the place. I wonder if officials of some kind come around to collect bribes now and then.”

“Not while we’re here, I hope.” I dried my hands and arms and waited for him to dry his. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. He looked at me for a while, then reached for me. He took me by both arms, drew me to him, kissed me, and spoke into my ear. “Aren’t you?”

I didn’t say anything. After a while I took his hand and we went back to camp to pick up one of his blankets. Then we went to an isolated little spot that we’d both noticed earlier.

It felt natural and easy to lie down with him, and explore the smooth, hard, broad feel of his body. He’d kept himself fit. No doubt walking hundreds of miles in the past few weeks had burned off whatever fat he’d been carrying. He was still big—barrel-chested and tall. Best of all, he took a lot of uncomplicated pleasure in my body, and I got to share it with him. It isn’t often that I can enjoy the good side of my hyperempathy. I let the sensation take over, intense and wild. I might be more in danger of having a heart attack than he is. How had I done without this for so long?

There was an odd, unromantic moment when we both reached into crumpled clothing and produced condoms. It was funny because of the way it hit us both at once, and we laughed, then went on to the serious business of loving and pleasuring one another. That combed and trimmed beard that he’s so vain about tickles like mad.

“I knew I should have let you alone,” he said to me when we had made love twice and were still not willing to get up and go back to the others. “You’re going to kill me. I’m too old for this stuff.”

I laughed and made a pillow of his shoulder.

After a while, he said, “I need to be serious for a minute, girl.” “Okay.”

He drew a long breath, sighed, swallowed, hesitated. “I don’t want to give you up,” he said.

I smiled.

“You’re a kid,” he said. “I ought to know better. How old are you, anyway?”

I told him.

He jumped, then pushed me off his shoulder. “Eighteen?” He flinched away from me as though my skin burned him. “My god,” he said. “You’re a baby! I’m a child molester!”

I didn’t laugh, though I wanted to. I just looked at him.

After a while he frowned and shook his head. In a little more time, he moved back against me, touching my face, my shoulders, my breasts.

“You’re not just eighteen,” he said. I shrugged.

“When were you born? What year?” “Twenty oh nine.”

“No.” He drew the word out: “Nooo.”

I kissed him and said in the same tone, “Yesss. Now stop your nonsense. You want to be with me and I want to be with you. We’re not going to split up because of my age, are we?”

After a while he shook his head. “You should have a nice youngster like Travis,” he said. “I should have the sense and the strength to send you off to find one.”

That made me think of Curtis, and I cringed away from thinking of him. I’ve thought as little as possible about Curtis Talcott. He isn’t like my brothers. He may be dead, but none of us ever saw his body. I saw his brother Michael. I was terrified of seeing Curtis himself, but I never did. He may not be dead. He’s lost to me, but I hope he’s not dead. He should be here with me on the road. I hope he’s alive and all right.

“Who have I reminded you of?” Bankole asked me, his voice soft and deep.

I shook my head. “A boy I knew at home. We were going to get married this year. I don’t even know whether he’s still alive.”

“You loved him?”

“Yes! We were going to marry and leave home, walk north. We had decided to go this fall.”

“That’s crazy! You intended to walk this road even though you didn’t have to?”

“Yes. And if we had left earlier, he’d be with me. I wish I knew he was all right.”

He lay down on his back and drew me down beside him. “We’ve all lost someone,” he said. “You and I seem to have lost everyone. That’s a bond, I suppose.”

“A terrible one,” I said. “But not our only one.” He shook his head. “You’re really eighteen?”

“Yes. As of last month.”

“You look and act years older.” “This is who I am,” I said.

“You were the oldest kid in your family, weren’t you?” I nodded. “I had four brothers. They’re all dead.” “Yes,” he sighed. “Yes.”

Tuesday, August 31, 2027

I’ve spent all of today talking, writing, reading, and making love to Bankole. It seems such a luxury not to have to get up, pack, and walk all day. We all lay sprawled around the campsite resting aching muscles, eating, and doing nothing. More people flowed into the area from the highway and made their camps, but none of them bothered us.

I began Zahra’s reading lesson and Jill and Allie looked interested. I included them as though I had intended to from the first. It turned out that they could read a little, but hadn’t learned to write. Toward the end of the lesson, I read a few Earthseed verses to them in spite of Harry’s groans. Yet when Allie proclaimed that she would never pray to any god of change, Harry was the one who corrected her. Zahra and Travis both smiled at that, and Bankole watched us all with apparent interest.

After that, Allie began to ask questions instead of making scornful proclamations, and for the most part, the others answered her—Travis and Natividad, Harry and Zahra. Once Bankole answered, expanding on something I told him yesterday. Then he caught himself and looked a little embarrassed.

“I still think it’s too simple,” he said to me. “A lot of it is logical, but it will never work without a sprinkling of mystical confusion.”

“I’ll leave that to my descendants,” I said, and he busied himself, digging a bag of almonds out of his pack, pouring some into his hand, and passing the rest around.

Just before nightfall a gun battle began over toward the highway. We couldn’t see any of it from where we were, but we stopped talking and lay down. With bullets flying, it seemed best to keep low.

The shooting started and stopped, moved away, then came back. I was on watch, so I had to stay alert, but in this storm of noise, nothing moved near us except the trees in the evening breeze. It looked so peaceful, and yet people out there were trying to kill each other, and no doubt succeeding. Strange how normal it’s become for us to lie on the ground and listen while nearby, people try to kill each other.