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Octavia E. Butler lives in the Seattle, Washington area. Shegrew up in California and attended courses in SF writingtaught by Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon, and theClarion SF Writing workshop. After years of work, culminatingin the early 1980s with two exceptional novels, Kindredand Wild Seed, her career began to peak. She won the1984 Hugo Award for the short story "Speech Sounds." Herstory "Bloodchild," about human male slaves who incubatetheir alien masters' eggs, won the 1985 Hugo Award and theNebula Award, and both are collected in Bloodchild andOther Stories (1995). Then, in 1995, she was awarded aMcArthur Grant, a large cash prize often called the "geniusgrant," given annually in the arts and sciences, whichbrought her worldwide notice. She also entered a new, strongphase of her career with the novel Parable of the Sower. Herearly stories are collected in Bloodchild. She is now certainlyone of the notable figures in the SF field and one ofour leading writers.
"Amnesty" was published electronically at SciFiction, theSCIFI.com website, which is now the highest paying marketfor SF and fantasy and so had some of the very best shortfiction in 2003. It is a return to the powerful themes of herfine novella, "Bloodchild," a story about finding the courageand strength to compromise and transcend in the face of anoppressive and horrible situation.
The stranger-Community, globular, easily twelve feet highand wide glided down into the vast, dimly lit food productionhall of Translator Noah Cannon's employer. Thestranger was incongruously quick and graceful, keeping tothe paths, never once brushing against the raised beds offragile, edible fungi. It looked, Noah thought, a little like agreat, black, moss-enshrouded bush with such a canopy ofirregularly-shaped leaves, shaggy mosses, and twisted vinesthat no light showed through it. It had a few thick, nakedbranches growing out, away from the main body, breakingthe symmetry and making the Community look in seriousneed of pruning.
The moment Noah saw it and saw her employer, a somewhatsmaller, better-maintained-looking dense, black bush,back away from her, she knew she would be offered the newjob assignment she had been asking for.
The stranger-Community settled, flattening itself at bottom,allowing its organisms of mobility to migrate upwardand take their rest. The stranger-Community focused its attentionon Noah, electricity flaring and zigzagging, makinga visible display within the dark vastness of its body. Sheknew that the electrical display was speech, although shecould not read what was said. The Communities spoke inthis way between themselves and within themselves, but thelight they produced moved far too quickly for her to even beginto learn the language. The fact that she saw the display,though, meant that the communications entities of the stranger-Community were addressing her. Communitiesused their momentarily inactive organisms to shield communicationfrom anyone outside themselves who was not beingaddressed.
She glanced at her employer and saw that its attention wasfocused away from her. It had no noticeable eyes, but its entitiesof vision served it very well whether she could seethem or not. It had drawn itself together, made itself lookmore like a spiny stone than a bush. Communities did thiswhen they wished to offer others privacy or simply disassociatethemselves from the business being transacted. Heremployer had warned her that the job that would be offeredto her would be unpleasant not only because of the usualhostility of the human beings she would face, but becausethe subcontractor for whom she would be working would bedifficult. The subcontractor had had little contact with humanbeings. Its vocabulary in the painfully created commonlanguage that enabled humans and the Communities tospeak to one another was, at best, rudimentary, as was its understandingof human abilities and limitations. Translation:by accident or by intent, the subcontractor would probablyhurt her. Her employer had told her that she did not have totake this job, that it would support her if she chose not towork for this subcontractor. It did not altogether approve ofher decision to try for the job anyway. Now its deliberateinattention had more to do with disassociation than withcourtesy or privacy. “You're on your own,” its posture said,and she smiled. She could never have worked for it if it hadnot been able to stand aside and let her make her own decisions.Yet it did not go about its business and leave her alonewith the stranger. It waited.
And here was the subcontractor signaling her with lightning.
Obediently, she went to it, stood close to it so that the tipsof what looked like moss-covered outer twigs and branchestouched her bare skin. She wore only shorts and a halter top.The Communities would have preferred her to be naked, andfor the long years of her captivity, she had had no choice.She had been naked. Now she was no longer a captive, and she insisted on wearing at least the basics. Her employer hadcome to accept this and now refused to lend her to subcontractorswho would refuse her the right to wear clothing.
This subcontractor enfolded her immediately, drawing herupward and in among its many selves, first hauling her upwith its various organisms of manipulation, then graspingher securely with what appeared to be moss. The Communitieswere not plants, but it was easiest to think of them inthose terms since most of the time, most of them looked soplantlike.
Enfolded within the Community, she couldn't see at all.She closed her eyes to avoid the distraction of trying to seeor imagining that she saw. She felt herself surrounded bywhat felt like long, dry fibers ...
Year's Best SF 9. Copyright © by David G. Hartwell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from Year's Best SF 9 by David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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