Fledgling

by Octavia E. Butler

“I suspect this kind of thing needs to be said more to my sons than to you, but you should hear it, at least once: treat your people well, Shori. Let them see that you trust them and let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions. Do that and they will willingly commit their lives to you. Bully them, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, and after a while, you’ll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, and stifling their resentment. Do you understand?”

“He had guns,” Celia said. “Iosif didn’t like guns, but Stefan did.” It hadn’t helped him survive.

“Before I saw what you did today, I figured we’d be the ones taking care of you.” “You will. Iosif called it ‘mutualistic symbiosis.’ I think it’s also called just ‘mutualism.’ ”

“Good and bad,” he said. “Human trials are often games to see which lawyer is best able to use the law,

the jury’s beliefs and prejudices, and his own theatrical ability to win. There’s talk about justice, of course, but if a murderer has a good lawyer, he might go unpunished even though his guilt is obvious. If an innocent person has a bad lawyer, he might lose and pay with his life or his freedom even though people can see that he’s innocent.

Do you understand?” I frowned. “I think so. I wonder, though, if the Ina way is so much better than the one the you say the humans have.” “It’s our way,” he said. “It’s the system you must work within if you’re to be safe, if you’re to keep your symbionts safe, and if, someday, you’re to keep our children safe.”

“I know what the grief is like!” “Of course you do. You stand there hugging yourself as though you were trying to hold yourself together.

I did not like Joan Braithwaite. But I thought I might eventually love her.

I cannot in good conscience base such a judgment on the words of someone as disabled as Shori is.” It was painful to listen to them. I wanted to scream at them. How could they blind all their senses so selectively? And how could they see me as so impaired? Maybe they needed to see me that way. Maybe it helped them deal with their conscience.