Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

“You … you’re saying you’re a female Doro?”

“Not exactly, but that’s close enough.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh yes you do.”

He stared at me silently for a moment. “I didn’t want to believe you could read me through my shield either.”

“I can. That’s part of my ability, too.”

“You have enough abilities not to need my help.”

“I told you why I need you.”

“Yes. You don’t want to kill.”

“Not unless somebody is stupid enough to attack me.”

“But if hunger is what you feel, how can you avoid doing something about it eventually? You’ll have to kill.”

“It’s more like having an appetite—like being able to eat but not really being hungry.”

“But you will get hungry. It seems to me that’s why we’re here. We’re your food supply. You’re gathering people the way Doro does. It just isn’t as much work for you as it is for him.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I’ve been thinking things like that myself. They might be all wrong. But even if they aren’t, I don’t know what to do about it.”

He turned his head, stared at a bookcase. “Short of committing suicide, there’s not much you can do.”

“And I’m not about to do that. But I’ll tell you, as mad as these people make me sometimes, it would be almost as hard for me to kill one of them as it would be for me to commit suicide. I don’t want their lives.”

“For now.”

“And I don’t want anybody forcing me to change my mind. Because, if I do, I’m not sure I’ll be able to control myself. I might kill more of you than I mean to.” I got up to leave. “Karl, I’m not asking you to make up your mind now, or promise me anything. I just wanted you to know there was a choice to make.” I started for the door.

“Wait a minute.”

I stopped, waited.

“You’re closed, shielded all the time,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve unshielded once since you did it for me after your transition.”

“Would you if you were living with people who wanted to kill you?”

“What if I asked you to open for me? Just for me. Now.”

“Why?”

“Because you need me. And because I need to see the truth of what you’re telling me.”

“I thought that was settled.”

“I’ve got to see it for myself, Mary. I’ve got to be certain. I can’t … do what you’re asking until I’ve seen for myself that it’s necessary.”

I read him, saw that he was telling the truth. He was angry and bitter and he didn’t like himself much for even thinking about siding with me. But he knew it was his best chance for survival—for a while, at least.

I opened. I was more worried about accidentally taking him than I was about what he might find out. I was a little touchier about his rummaging through my memories than I had been before, but I put up with it. He didn’t go after anything more than verification of what I had told him. That was all he cared about.

“All right,” he said after a moment.

I shielded, looked at him.

“I’ll do what I can to help you,” he said. “And heaven help both of us.”

Chapter Seven

MARY

Winning Karl over gave me the courage to get right to work on the others. I called everybody together in the living room at around ten the next morning. Karl came in with Vivian, and Seth Dana came with Ada and Clay. Vivian and Clay didn’t really have to be there, of course, but it didn’t matter to me that they were.

Karl had to go and get Jan. She said she wasn’t about to take orders from me. I figured we’d have this meeting and then, if she still felt that way, I’d show her how gentle Doro had been with her.

And Doro had to get Jesse and Rachel. They were shacked up in Jesse’s room now, like they meant to stay together for a while. They were sure as hell together in their opinion of me. In fact, they were so close together and they hated me so much that I knew if I had to take anybody, it would probably be one of them. And the way they had been acting for the past few days, I didn’t see how I could get away with taking just one. Neither of them was going to sit by and watch the other killed.

That bothered me. I realized that their feelings for each other could be used against them—that, for a while at least, I could control one by threatening the other. But, somehow, I didn’t want to do that. I’d try it if I had to, rather than kill them both and make myself a liability to Doro, but I hoped they wouldn’t push me that far.

Once they were all in the room, with Doro sitting by himself off to one side, I made my speech. Doro told me later that I was too blunt, too eager to threaten and challenge. He was probably right.

I told everybody that the pattern was a permanent fixture binding them to me. It wasn’t going anywhere, I wasn’t going anywhere, and they weren’t going to do anything to me. I told them I could kill them, would kill them if they pushed me, but that I didn’t want to kill them if I could avoid it. I told them to follow the feelings I knew they were suppressing and accept the pattern. Get themselves some new interests or revive some old ones, get jobs if they wanted them, stop sitting around bitching like kids. I spoke quietly to them. I didn’t rant and rave. But they still didn’t like what I had to say.

And, of course, except for Karl, they didn’t want to believe me. I had to open to them. I had thought that might be necessary. I hadn’t been looking forward to it but I was ready to do it. First, though, I did what I could to throw a scare into them.

“Look,” I said quietly. “You all know me. You know I’ll do whatever I have to to defend myself. Try anything more than reading me now, and you’ve had it. That’s all.”

I opened. I could see that they were moving cautiously, trying to find out whether I had the power I claimed before they made any move against me—which was intelligent of them.

I had never opened my mind to anyone but Karl before. I had only the memories of the others to tell me what it was like to open to more than one person at a time. They had never done it deliberately. It was just that they couldn’t stay shielded all the time, the way I could. Their shields cut off their mental perception totally. In a way, for them, shielding

was like wandering around wearing a gag, a blindfold, and earplugs. None of them could put up with it for long. So sometimes they picked up things from each other. Sometimes two or three of them picked up something from one. They didn’t like it, but they were learning to live with it. Doro had said that in itself was more than he had dared to hope for. Actives had never been able to live with it before. He said it seemed much easier for my actives to keep out of each other’s minds than it had been for earlier generations. He gave my pattern the credit for that. Maybe my pattern deserved the credit for the way I was able to accept them all into my mind, too. Like them, I didn’t enjoy it. But I wasn’t nervous or afraid, because I knew I could defend myself if I had to, and I knew none of them meant to try anything—yet. I was just uncomfortable. Like I’d suddenly found myself stark naked in front of a lot of strangers, all of whom were taking a good look.

At least it was easy to keep track of them and know who was getting what. I hadn’t been sure it would be with so many. But I spotted Jesse the moment he decided to do a little snooping into matters other than the truth of what I had told them.

I reached out and contracted the muscle of his lower leg into a tight, hard knot.

I had taken Rachel’s advice and been working on my own to develop whatever healing ability I had. I was still a long way from being ready to call myself a healer, but I had learned a few things from viewing my body and other people’s bodies from the inside.