Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

“What?”

“That you’re at least as dangerous to Rachel as she is to you. Since you can read her through her shield, she won’t be able to surprise you—unless you’re just careless. And if you see her coming, you should be able to stop her.”

“I don’t see how, unless I kill her. But it doesn’t matter. I was reading her again as you spoke. She’s not about to come after me, now that you’ve ordered her not to.”

“No, she wouldn’t. But I won’t always be standing between you and her. I’m giving you time—not very much time—to learn to handle yourself among these people. You’d better use it.”

She swallowed, nodded.

“Do you understand what Rachel does? Do you see that you are to her, and to the others, what she is to her congregations?”

“A kind of mental vampire draining strength … or something from people. Strength? Life force? I don’t know what to call it.”

“It doesn’t matter what you call it. She has to take it to do her healing, and healing is the only purpose she’s found for her life. Can you see that what she sets up at each of her services is a kind of temporary pattern?”

“Yes. But at least she doesn’t kill anybody.”

“She could, very easily. Ordinary people have no defense against what she does—the way she feeds. If she took too much from her crowds, she’d begin killing the very old, the very young, the weak, even the sick that she intended to heal.”

“I see.”

“See, too, that while you can take from her, she can’t take from you.”

“Because I can shield her out.”

“You don’t have to shield her out. Let her in if you like.”

“What do you mean?” She looked at him in horror.

“Exactly what you think I mean.”

She frowned. “Are you telling me it’s all right for me to kill now when, just a few hours ago, you said—”

“I know what I said. And I still don’t want anyone killed. But I’m gambling on you, Mary. If you survive among these people, I have a chance of winning.”

“Winning your empire. Is there anybody whose life you wouldn’t risk for your Goddamn empire?”

“No.”

For a moment, she glared at him angrily. Then the anger faded as though she didn’t have the energy to sustain it. Doro was accustomed to the look. All his people faced him with it at one time or another. It was a look of submission.

“What I’ve decided to do,” said Doro, “is give you the life of one of the actives if you need it. If you have to make an example of someone, I’ll let it pass as long as you keep control of yourself and don’t go beyond that one.”

She thought about that for a long moment. “Permission to kill,” she said finally. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“I hope you won’t have to use it. But I don’t want you totally handicapped.”

“Thanks. I think. God, I hope I’m like Rachel. I hope I don’t have to kill.”

“You won’t find out until you get started on someone.”

She sighed. “Since this is all your fault, will you stay around for a while? I won’t have Karl. I’ll need somebody.”

“That’s another thing.”

“What?”

“Stop telling the actives that the one show of power you’ve given them, the one thing you’ve done that they can’t resist or undo, is my fault.”

“But it is …”

“Of course it is. And the moment they realize I’m here, they’ll know it is. They don’t have to be told. Especially when your telling them sounds like whining for pity. There’s no pity in them, girl. They’re going to feel about as sorry for you as you do for Vivian, or for Rina.”

That seemed to sober her.

“You’re going to have to grow up, Mary,” he said quietly. “You’re going to have to grow up fast.”

She studied her hands, large, frankly ugly, her worst feature. They lay locked together in her lap. “Just stay with me for a while, Doro. I’ll do the best I can.”

“I had intended to stay.”

She didn’t bother hiding her relief. He got up and went to her.

MARY

There were incidents as my actives straggled in. I had pried through their minds and gotten to know all of them except Rachel before I even met them—so that none of them surprised me much.

Doro beat the holy shit out of Jan almost as soon as she arrived, because she’d done something stupid. I don’t think he would have touched her, otherwise. One of the two kids she’d had by him was dead and he wasn’t happy about it. She said it was an accident. He knew she was telling the truth. But she panicked.

He was talking to her—not very gently—and he started toward her for some reason. She ran out the front door. That, he doesn’t allow. Don’t run from him. Never run. He called her back, warned her. But she kept going. He would have gone after her if I hadn’t

stopped him.

“She’ll be back,” I said quickly. “Give her a chance. The pattern will bring her back.” I wondered why I bothered to try to help her. I shouldn’t have cared what happened to her. She had taken one look at Rachel and me and thought, Oh, God, niggers! And she was the one Doro had chosen to have kids by. Surely Rachel and Ada would have been better parents.

Anyway, Doro waited—more out of curiosity than anything else, I think. Jan came back in about thirty minutes. She came back cursing herself for the coward she was and believing that Doro would surely kill her now. Instead, he took her up to his room and beat her. Beat her for God knows how long. We could hear her screaming at first. I read the others and found what I thought I’d find. That every one of them knew from personal experience how bad Doro’s beatings could be. I knew myself, though, like the others, I hadn’t had one for a few years.

Now we just sat around not looking at each other and waiting for it to be over. After a while things were quiet. Jan was in bed for three days. Doro ordered Rachel not to help her.

Rachel had enough to do helping Jesse when he came in. He was the last to arrive, because he wasted two days trying to fight the pattern. He came in mad and tired and still pretty cut up from a fight he’d gotten into on the day I called him. I had found out about that by reading his mind. And I knew about the little town he owned in Pennsylvania, and the things he did to the people there, and the way he made them love him for it. I was all ready to hate his guts. Meeting him in person didn’t give me any reason to change my mind.

He said, “You green-eyed bitch, I don’t know how you dragged me here, but you damned well better let me go. Fast.”

I was in a bad mood. I had been hearing slightly different versions of that same song from everybody for two days. I said, “Man, if you don’t find something better to call me, I’m going to knock the rest of your teeth out.”

He stared at me as though he wasn’t quite sure he’d heard right. I guess he wasn’t very used to people talking back to him and making it stick. He started toward me. The two words he managed to get out were, “Listen, bitch—”

I picked up a heavy little stone horse statuette from the end table next to me and tried to break his jaw with it. My thoughts were shielded so that he couldn’t anticipate what I was going to do the way he did with the guy he beat up back in Donaldton. I left him lying on the floor bleeding and went up to Rachel’s room.

She answered my knock and stood in her doorway glaring down at me. “Well?”

“Come downstairs,” I said. “I have a patient for you.”

She frowned. “Someone is hurt?”

“Yeah, Jesse Bernarr. He’s the last member of our ‘family’ to come in. He came in a little madder than the rest of you.”

I could feel Rachel sweep the downstairs portion of the house with her perception. She found Jesse and focused in tight on him. “Oh, fine,” she muttered after a moment. “And me with nothing to draw on.”