Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [423]

“No,” Dad said. “If we have to shoot someone, we’re together in it. After we’ve shot him we carry him into the nearest house. It’s still legal to shoot housebreakers. After that we do a little damage and get our stories straight.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 423

Note

The chapter’s coldest turn: a father answers a moral objection with a choreography of cover-up, delivered in flat procedural sequence (‘After we’ve shot him we carry him… After that we do a little damage’). The horror is in the calm — no hedging, no ‘if we’re caught’ — and in the way the passage’s grammatical evenness matches the family’s rehearsed unity (‘together in it’). The tenderness of the surrounding argument makes the logistics land harder.