Imago

by Octavia E. Butler

“Nothing will be able to live on what we leave,” I said. “If your people stay where they are and keep breeding, they’ll be destroyed. Every one of them. There’s life for them on Mars, and there’s life here with us. But if they insist on staying where they are… they won’t be allowed to keep having children. That way, by the time we break away from Earth, your people will have died of age.” She shook her head slowly as I spoke. “I don’t believe you. Even your people can’t destroy all the Earth.” “Not all of it, no. It’s like… when you eat a piece of fruit that has an inedible core or inedible seeds. There will be a rocky core of the Earth left—a great mass of material, useful for mining, but not for living on. We’ll be scattering in a great many ships. Each one will have to be self-sustaining in interstellar space perhaps for thousands of years.” “Self-sustaining in…?” “Just think of it as being beyond any possible help or dependable resupply.” “In space… between the stars. That’s what you mean. No sun. Almost nothing.” “Yes.” “The elders who raised us when our mother died… they knew about such things. One used to write about them before the war to help others understand.” I said nothing. Let her think for a while. She sat silent, frowning, sometimes