Seed to Harvest

by Octavia E. Butler

  Eventually the reason for Stephen’s presence became clear to her.

  The painting had been going on for a while when Lupe asked her if she wanted to help. She shook her head. She knew the request might really be a command, but she decided to wait and see. Lupe simply shrugged and turned back to the wall she was working on. The two men were on their way to work on the outside of the house. Stephen stopped, looked at her, then at Lupe. “Do you suppose she’ll be this lazy when she has her own house?” he asked.

  Lupe smiled. “That one isn’t lazy. She’s sitting there cooking up an escape plan.”

  Startled, Rane turned to look at her. Lupe laughed, but Stephen seemed concerned. He put down a can of paint and came over to Rane. He was a small, brown man, so heavily tanned that he and Rane were about the same color. He was clean-shaven and longhaired, his black hair pulled back and loosely bound with a rubber band. Under different circumstances, she would have welcomed attention from him, even been a little overwhelmed. He was as thin as everyone else on the ranch, but he was also one of the best-looking men Rane had ever seen. Somehow, his thinness did not detract from his good looks. Yet he had the disease. She braced herself against the renewed offense of his touch.

  But this time he did not touch her. He clearly wanted to, but he held back.

  “If you’ll come with me,” he said, “I won’t touch you.”

  “Do I have a choice?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I’d like you to come. I want to talk to you.”

  Rane glanced at Lupe, saw that she was paying no attention. Stephen did not seem fearsome. He was her size and not afflicted with any twitches or trembling. She sensed none of Ingraham’s quick temper behind the quiet, black eyes. More important, she was learning absolutely nothing sitting in Lupe’s living room and being stroked like an animal whenever someone thought of her. She needed to look around, find a way out of this place.

  She stood up, looked at Stephen, waiting for him to lead the way.

  “We’re going outside,” he said. “I’ll show you around while we talk. Don’t run, though. If you run, I’ll have to hurt you—and that’s the last thing I’d want to do.”

  There was no special warmth in his voice when he said these last words, but Rane was suddenly suspicious.

  Breaking his word, Stephen took her arm and led her out. She did not mind, really. At least this time he had a reason to touch her.

  He took her to a corral where two cows and a half-grown heifer were eating hay. Far off to one side, there was another corral from which a bull stared at the cows.

  “This place is full of babies and pregnant women,” he said. “We need plenty of milk.” The heifer came over to them and he rubbed its broad face.

  “You can get a disease from drinking raw milk,” Rane said.

  “We know that. We’re careful—although we’re not sure we have to be. We don’t seem to get other diseases once we have this one.”

  “It’s not worth it!”

  He looked surprised at her vehemence. “Rane, you’ll be all right. Young women don’t have anything to worry about. It’s older women and all men who take the risk.”

  “So I’ve heard. That means my father could die. And, young or not, my sister will probably die sooner than she would have without you people. And me. What do I do if I live? Give birth to one little animal after another?”

  He turned her around so that she faced him. “Our children are not animals!” he said. “We are not interested in hearing them called animals.”

  She pulled free of him, not at all surprised that he let her. “I never cared much for the idea of aborting children,” she said, “but if I thought for a moment that I was carrying another Jacob, I’d be willing to abort it with an old wire coat hanger!”

  She had managed to horrify him—which was what she had intended. She was completely serious, and he, of all people, had to know it.

  “You know they planned to give you to me,” he said softly.

  “I suspected. So I wanted you to know how I felt.”

  “Your feelings will change. Ours did. The disease changes you.”

  “Makes you like having four-legged kids?”

  “Makes you like having kids. Makes you need to have them. And when they come, you love them. I wonder … What’s the chemical composition of love? Human babies are ugly even when they’re normal, but we love them. If we didn’t the species would die. Our babies here—well, if we didn’t love them, if we weren’t damned protective of them, the Clay’s Ark organism on Earth would die. It isn’t intelligent, but, God, is it ever built to survive.”

  “I won’t change,” Rane said.

  He smiled and shook his head. “You’re a strong girl, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He paused. “You don’t have to come to me until you want to. We’re not rapists here. And you … Well, you’re interesting right now, but not as interesting as you will be.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He put his arm around her. She was surprised that the gesture did not offend her. “You’ll find out eventually. For now, it doesn’t matter.”

  They walked away from the heifer and she mooed after them.

  “Cows don’t seem to get the disease,” he commented. “Dogs get it and it kills them. It kills all the types of cold-blooded things that have bitten us—snakes, scorpions, insects … There may not be anything on Earth that can penetrate our flesh and come away unchanged. Except our own kind, of course. I can’t prove it, but I’ll bet those cows are carriers.”

  “The scope attachment of my father’s bag could probably tell you that,” Rane said. “Though he may not be in any mood to use it.”

  “I can use it,” he said.

  She looked at his face, lineless in spite of his thinness. He was the youngest person she had seen so far—in his early twenties, perhaps, or his late teens. “You were in school before, weren’t you,” she guessed.

  He nodded. “College. Music major. I got a little sidetracked taking biology and chemistry classes, though.”

  “What were you going to be?”

  “A concert violinist. I’ve been playing since I was four.”

  “And now you’re willing to give it all up and move back to the twentieth century?”

  He stopped at a large wooden bin, opened it, and watched as a couple of dozen chickens came running and gathered around, clucking. He opened one of the six large metal barrels, took out a handful of cracked corn, and threw it to them. This was clearly what they were waiting for. They began pecking up the corn quickly before the newcomers who came in from every direction could take it from them. Stephen threw a little more of the corn, then closed the bin.

  “It’s almost sunset,” he said. “You’d think they’d be too busy deciding where they were going to roost to watch the bin.”

  “Don’t you care that you’re never going to be a musician?” she demanded.

  He looked down at his hands, rubbed them together. “Yes.”

  His voice had dropped low into his own private pain. She stood silent, feeling awkward, for once not knowing what to say. Then he looked up at her, smiled faintly. “It was an old passion,” he said. “I haven’t touched a violin for months. I didn’t know what that would be like.”

  “What is it like?” she asked.

  He began to walk so that she almost missed his answer. “An amputation,” he whispered.

  She walked with him, let him lead her out to the garden, passing the Wagoneer on the way. The sight of it jarred her, reminded her that she should be watching for a way of escape.

  “Did you ever see food growing?” he asked, bending to turn a deep green watermelon over and look at its yellow bottom. “Ripe,” he commented. “You wouldn’t believe how sweet they are.” He was distracting. He moved from one subject to another, drawing her with him, keeping her emotionally involved in whatever he chose.

  “I don’t care about food growing,” she said. “Listen, Stephen, my father is
a good doctor. Let him examine you—maybe the disease can be cured. If he can’t help you himself, he’ll know who can.”

  “We don’t leave the ranch,” he said, “except to bring in supplies and converts.”

  “You’ll never be a violinist here!”

  “I’ll never be a violinist,” he said. “Don’t you think I know that?” He never raised his voice. His expression changed only slightly. But she felt as though he had shouted at her. She watched him with fascination.

  “Why?” she asked. “What’s holding you here?”

  “I belong here. These are my people now.”

  “Why? Because they gave you a disease?”

  “Yes.”

  “That doesn’t make sense!” she said angrily.

  “It will.”

  His apparent passivity infuriated her. “You were probably nothing as a violinist. You probably didn’t have anything to lose. That’s why you don’t care!”

  His face froze over. “If you want to get rid of me,” he said, “go on saying things like that.”

  In that moment, she realized she did not want to get rid of him. He seemed human and the others did not. Just a few minutes with him had made her want to cling to him and avoid the stick people and animal children who were her alternative. But she would not cling to him. She would not cling to anyone.

  “I don’t care what you do,” she said. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to stay here, and you haven’t said anything to help me understand.”

  “Nothing I say would really help.” He sighed. “When your symptoms start, you’ll understand. That’s all. But try this. I was married. My wife played the piano—played it maybe better than I played the violin. We had a son who was only a year old when I saw him last. If I stay here, my wife can go on playing the piano. The world will go on being a place where people have time for music and beauty. My son can grow up and do whatever he wants to. My parents have some money. They’ll see that he has his chance. But if I try to turn myself in, I know I’ll lose control and spread the disease. I would begin the process of turning the world into a place with no time for anything but survival. In the end, Jacob and his kind would inherit everything. My son … might never live to be a man.”

  She was silent for several seconds when he finished. She found herself wanting to say something comforting, and that was insane. “You’ve sacrificed my family to spare yours,” she said bitterly.

  He pulled an ear of corn from its stalk, husked it, and began eating it raw. He tore at it like an animal, not looking at her.

  “Someone sacrificed you, too,” she said finally. “I know that. But Jesus, isn’t it time to break the chain? You and I could get away together. We could get help.”

  “You haven’t heard me,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t. Listen! We’re infectious for as much as two weeks before we start to show symptoms—except for people like you who won’t have two weeks between infection and symptoms. How many people do you think the average person could infect in two weeks of city life? How many could his victims infect?—and with an extraterrestrial organism. There’s no cure, Rane, and by the time one is found—if one can be found—it will probably be too late. It isn’t only my family I’m protecting. It’s everyone. It’s the future. As Eli told me, the organism is a damned efficient invader.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “I know. Nobody believes it at first. I didn’t.”

  Rane walked away from him as he picked a tomato and began to eat. He never washed anything. Ate them as they grew out of the dirt. Rane had never seen food growing this way before, but it did not impress her. She wondered whether they fertilized it with the contents of the outhouse and the animal pens. It was just the sort of filthy anachronistic thing they might do.

  She climbed some rocks—huge, rough rounded mounds of granite—and stood on top, staring down. To her surprise, she saw the road winding below. Then Stephen was beside her. She started violently to find him there in a space that had been empty a second before. He must have leaped up, almost the way Jacob would leap.

  “We can all jump,” he said. “We can run pretty fast, too. You should remember that.”

  “I wasn’t trying to get away.”

  “Not yet. But remember anyway.” He paused. “Do you know how they caught me seven months ago?”

  “You’ve only been here seven months?”

  “I drove right into their settlement,” he said. “I’d gone to see my folks in Albuquerque and on my way home, I decided to do some exploring. I discovered a mountain road that wasn’t on my maps, and thought I’d find out where it led. I found out.”

  “Why were you driving?” Rane asked. “You should have flown.”

  “I loved to drive. It was a kind of hobby. I’ll bet your father has the same affliction.”

  “Yeah. He has a Porsche and a Mercedes at home. He won’t even drive them outside the enclave.”

  “A Porsche? You’re kidding. What year?”

  She looked at him, saw excitement on his face for the first time and laughed. Something familiar at last. Car craziness. “1982 Porsche 930 Turbo. My mother used to call it his other wife. My sister and I figured it was his other kid.”

  He laughed, too, then sobered. “It’s getting dark, Rane. We should go in.”

  She did not want to go in—back to Lupe and Ingraham. Back to hands that made her cringe. Stephen’s hands did not make her cringe any longer.

  “I don’t have a house, yet,” he said. “I have a room in Meda’s house.”

  She could not look at him now. She had never slept with a man. The thought of doing so now with a stranger—even a likable stranger—confused and frightened her. The thought of conceiving a child in this place—if you could call them children—terrified her.

  “Back to Lupe, then,” he said. He put his arm around her, and startled her by snatching her up and jumping off the rocks. They landed safe and unhurt amid stalks of corn. She thought she weighed at least as much as he did, but her weight did not seem to bother him.

  “You’re not a screamer,” he said. “Good.” He set her on her feet.

  “Am I like your wife?” she asked timidly as they walked back.

  “No,” he answered.

  “But … do you like me?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him uncertainly, wondering if he were laughing at her. “I wish you talked more,” she said.

  Later that night, Lupe tied Rane to a bed.

  “We don’t have bars yet,” Ingraham said. “You should have gone with Stephen.”

  “Shut up,” Lupe told him. “Tying people up is no joke. Neither is trying to send a kid to bed with a guy she doesn’t even know. We gotta find a better way. I’m sick of this.”

  Ingraham said nothing more.

  Rane found no comfort in Lupe’s sentiment. Tied as she was, she had to ask even to go to the bathroom. And she could not sleep on her side as was her custom. She lay miserable and sleepless, twisting her wrists in the hope of freeing at least one. The twisting hurt enough to make her stop after a while. Then she tried to reach one of her wrists with her teeth. And failed.

  By then she was crying tears of frustration and anger. She was totally unprepared for the sudden weight across her stomach that knocked the breath out of her. This time she would have screamed if she had been able to.

  She caught her breath, feeling as though she had been punched, then saw Jacob dim and shadowy in the darkness above her.

  “You can’t bite the rope,” he said. “Your teeth are too dull.”

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “Nothing.” He stared down at her from the pose of a seated cat. “I came in the window.”

  Rane sighed, closed her eyes. “I think I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. “Even you.”

  “Why don’t you like me?” he demanded.

  She shook her head, answered honestly because she was too tired to humor him. “Because you loo
k different. Because I’m afraid of you.”

  “You are? Of me?” He sounded pleased. He also sounded closer. She opened her eyes and saw that he had stretched out beside her. She tried to draw away, but could not.

  “You are afraid of me,” he said gleefully. “I’m going to sleep here.”

  She could have called Lupe. She made a conscious decision not to. The boy was harmless in spite of his appearance, and he did not understand that what she feared was not him personally, but what he represented. Most important, she did not think she could stand to be alone again.

  Sometime after midnight, when she had developed a headache from lack of sleep, he awoke and with unchildlike alertness, asked if her arms hurt.

  “They hurt,” she said. “And I can’t sleep and I’m cold.”

  To her surprise, he pulled her blankets up to her chin. “Bikers put a rope on me,” he said. “They pulled me and said, ‘Heel, heel!’”

  Rane shook her head in disgust. Jacob could not help what he was. He did not deserve such treatment.

  “Daddy hit some of them and they died.”

  “Good for him,” Rane muttered. Then she realized she was talking about Eli, who might even now be raping Keira. Confusion, frustration, and weariness set in heavily, and she could not stop the tears. She made no sound, but somehow, the child knew. He touched her face with one of his hard little hands, and when she turned her head away angrily, he turned his attention to her right wrist.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  As though in answer, she found her wrist suddenly free.

  “My teeth are sharp,” Jacob announced. He climbed over her and started on her left wrist. In seconds, it too was free.

  “Oh God,” she said, hugging herself with aching arms and numb hands. She made herself reach out to the child. “Thank you, Jacob.”

  “You taste good,” he said. “I thought you would. You smell like food.”

  She drew her hand back quickly, heard his gleeful laugh. Let him laugh. He had freed her. How the hell a four year old could have teeth that cut rope was beyond her, but she didn’t care. If he had been a little less strange, she would have hugged him.