But in a way, I suppose that's normal. I mean, it had been done before. Bankole himself had been taken to a Black woman pediatrician when he was a child.
What I'm trying to do isn't quite normal. It's been done. New belief systems have been introduced. But mere's no standard way of introducing them—no way that can be depended on to work. What I'm trying to do is, I'm afraid, a crazy, difficult, dangerous undertaking. Best to talk about it only a little bit at a time.
Noriko, Michael's wife, spoke up. "I'm afraid for us to get involved in this new business," she said, "but I think we have to do it This is a good community, but how long can it last, how long can it grow before we begin to have trouble feeding ourselves?"
People nodded. Noriko has more courage than she gives herself credit for. She can be shaking with fear, but she still does what she thinks she should do.
"We can grow or we can wither," I agreed. "That's what Earthseed is about on a larger scale, after all."
"I wish it weren't," Emery Mora said. "I wish we could just hide here and stay out of everything else. I know we can't, but I wish It's been so good here." Before she escaped slavery, she'd had two young sons taken from her and sold. And she's a sharer. She and Gray and his daughter Doe and her daughter Tori and their sons Carlos and Antonio—
all sharers. No other family is so afflicted. No other family has more reason to want to hide.
We talked on for a while, Travis listening as people protested, then either answering their protests or letting others answer them. Then he asked for a vote: Should we expand our business? The vote was "yes" with everyone over 15 voting. Only Allie Gilchrist, Alan Faircloth, Ramiro Peralta, and Ramiro's oldest daughter Pilar voted "no." Aubrey Dovetree, who couldn't vote because she was not yet a member, made it clear that she would have voted "no" if she could have.
"Remember what happened to us!" she said.
We all remembered. But we had no intention of trading in illegal goods. We're farther from the highway than Dovetree was, and we couldn't refuse this opportunity just because Dovetree had been hit.
We would expand our business, then. Travis would put together a team, and the team would talk to our neighbors— those without cars or trucks first—and talk to more merchants in the cities and towns. We need to know what's possible now. We know we can sell more at street markets because now with the track we can go to more street markets. So even if we don't manage to get contracts at first, we'll be able to sell what we buy from our neighbors. We've begun.
When the Gathering was over, we shared a Gathering Day meal. We spread ourselves around the two large rooms of the school for food, indoor games, talk, and music. At the front of the room near the podium, Dolores Figueroa Castro was planning to read a story to a group of small children who would sit at her feet. Dolores is Lucio's niece, Marta's daughter. She's only 12, but she likes reading to the younger kids, and since she reads well and has a nice voice, the kids like to listen. For the adults and older kids, we were to have an original play, written by Emery Mora, of all people. She's too shy to act, but she loves to write and she loves to watch plays. Lucia Figueroa has discovered that he enjoys staging plays, shaping fictional worlds. Jorge and a few others are hams and love acting in plays. Travis and Gray provide any needed music. The rest of us enjoy watching. We all feed one another's hungers.
Dan Noyer came over to me as I helped myself to fried rabbit, baked potato, a mix of steamed vegetables with a spicy sauce, and a little goat cheese. There were also pine nut cookies, acorn bread, and sweet potato pie. On Gathering Day. the rule is, we eat only what we've raised and prepared. There was a time when that was something of a hardship. It reminded us that we were not growing or raising as much as we should. Now it's a pleasure. We're doing well.
"Can I sit with you?" Dan asked.
I said, "Sure," then had to fend off several other people who wanted me to eat with them. Dan's expression made me think it was time for him and me to have some version of the talk that I always seem to wind up having with newcomers. I thought of it as the "What the hell is this Earthseed stuff, and do I have to join?' talk.
Right on cue, Dan said, "The Balters say my sisters and I can stay here. They say we don't have to join your cult if we don't want to."
"You don't have to join Earthseed," I said. "You and your sisters are welcome to stay. If you decide to join us someday, we'll be glad to welcome you."
"What do we have to do—just to stay, I mean?"
I smiled. "Finish healing first. When you're well enough, work with us. Everyone works here, kids and adults. You'll help in the fields, help with the animals, help maintain the school and its grounds, help do some building. Building homes is a communal effort here. There are other jobs— building furniture, making tools, trading at street markets, scavenging. You'll be free to choose something you like. And you'll go to school. Have you gone to school before?"
"My folks taught us."
I nodded. These days, most educated poor or middle-class people taught their own children or did what people in my old neighborhood had done—formed unofficial schools in someone's home. Only very small towns still had anything like old-fashioned public schools. "You might find," I said, "that you know some things well enough to teach them to younger kids. One of the first duties of Earthseed is to learn and then to teach."
"And this? This Gathering?"
"Yes, you'll come to Gathering every week."
"Will I get a vote?"
"No vote, but you'll get a share of the profit from the sale of the crop, and from the other businesses if things work out. That's after you've been here for a year. You won't have a decision-making role unless you decide to join. If you do join, you'll get a larger share of the profit and a vote."
"It isn't really religious—your service, I mean. You guys don't believe in God or anything."
I turned to look at him. "Dan, of course we do."
He just stared at me in silent, obvious disbelief.
"We don't believe the way your parents did, perhaps, but we do believe."
"That God is Change?"
"Yes."
"I don't even know what that means."
"It means that Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God."
"But... what can you do with a God like that? I mean ... it isn't even a person. It doesn't love you or protect you. It doesn't know anything. What's the point?"
"The point is. it's the truth," I said. "It's a hard truth. Too hard for some people to take, but that doesn't make it any less true." I put my food down, got up, and went to one of our bookcases. There, I took down one of our several copies of Earthseed: The First Book of the Living. I self-published this first volume two years ago. Bankole had looked over my text when it was finished, and said I should copyright and publish for my own protection. At the time, that seemed unnecessary—a ridiculous thing to do in a world gone mad. Later, I came to believe he was right—for the future and for a reason in the present that Bankole had not mentioned.