Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

You and 1 are going to have to talk later.

About what?

About making some kind of truce before you manage to goad me into hitting back at you.

He changed the subject. Do you realize you’re exactly the kind of parasite he’s described? Except, of course, you prey on actives instead of ordinary people.

1 can see what you’ve found. 1 do seem to be taking a tiny amount of strength from you and from the others. But it’s so small it’s not bothering any of you.

That’s not the point.

The point is, you don’t want me taking anything. Do you have to be told that 1 don’t know how to stop it any more than 1 know how it got started?

1 know. The thought carried overtones of weary frustration. He broke contact, spoke to Doro. “You’re right about her. She’s like Rachel.”

Doro nodded. “That’s best for all of you. Are you going to help her with her cousins?”

“Help her?”

“I’ve never seen a person born to be a latent suddenly pushed into transition. I’m assuming they’ll have their problems and need help.”

Karl looked at me. “Do you want my help again?”

“Of course I do.”

“You’ll need at least one other person.”

“Seth.”

“Yes.” He looked at Doro. “Are you finished with us?”

Doro nodded.

“All right.” He got up. “Come on, Mary. We may as well have that talk before you get back to Seth and Clay.”

DORO

Doro did not leave the Larkin house, as he had planned. Suddenly there was too much going on. Suddenly things were getting out of hand—or at least out of his hands.

Mary was doing very well. She was driven by her own need to enlarge the pattern and aided not only by Doro’s advice but by the experience of the six other actives. From the probing Doro had made her do and the snooping she had done on her own, she now had detailed mental outlines of the other actives’ lives. Knowing what they had done in the past helped her decide what she could reasonably ask them to do now. Knowing Seth, for instance, made her decide to take Clay from him, take charge of Clay herself.

“How necessary is the pain of transition?” she asked Doro before making her decision. “Karl said you told him to hold off helping me until I was desperate. Why?”

“Because, in earlier generations of actives, the more help the person in transition received, the longer it took him to form his own shield.” Doro grimaced remembering. “Before I understood that, I had several potentially good people die of injuries that wouldn’t have happened if their transitions had ended when they should have. And I had others who died of sheer exhaustion.”

Mary shuddered. “Sounds like it would be best to leave them alone completely.” She glanced at Doro. “Which is probably why I’m the only one out of the seven of us who had any help.”

“You were also the only one of the seven to have a seventeen-hour transition. Ten to twelve hours is more normal. Seventeen isn’t that bad, though, and since your predecessors died whenever I left them alone in transition, I decided that you needed

someone. Actually, Karl did a good job.”

“I think I’ll pass on the favor,” she said, “by doing a good job for Clay Dana before his brother helps him to death.” She went to Seth, told him what Doro had just told her, then told him that she, not Seth, would attend Clay at Clay’s transition. Later she repeated the conversation to Doro.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Seth had said. “No. No way.”

“You’re too close to Clay,” she had told him. “You’ve spent more than ten years shielding him from pain.”

“That doesn’t make any difference.”

“The hell it doesn’t! What’s your judgment going to be like when you have to hold off shielding him—when you have to decide whether he’s in enough trouble for you to risk helping him? How objective do you think you’re going to be when he’s lying in front of you screaming?”

“Objective … !”

“His life is going to depend on what you decide to do, man—or decide not to do.” She looked at Clay. “How objective do you think he can be? It’s your life.”

Clay looked uncomfortable, spoke to his brother. “Could she be right, Seth? Could this be something you should leave to somebody else?”

“No!” said Seth instantly. And then again, with a little less certainty, “No.”

“Seth?”

“Look, I can handle it. Have I ever let you down?”

And Mary broke in. “You probably never have, Seth, and I’m not going to give you a chance to ruin your record.”

Seth turned to look at her. “Are you saying you’re going to force me to stand aside?” His tone made the words more a challenge than a question.

“Yes,” said Mary.

Seth stared at her in surprise. Then, slowly, he relaxed. “You could do it,” he said quietly. “You could knock me cold when the time came. But, Mary, if anything happens to my brother, you’d better not let me come to.”

“Clay will be all right,” she said. “I plan to see to it. And I’m really not interested in knocking you out. I hope you won’t make me do it.”

“Then, tell me why. Make me understand why you’re interfering in something that shouldn’t even be any of your business.”

“I started it, man. I’m the reason for it. If it’s anybody’s business, it’s mine. Now, Clay has a better chance with me than he has with you because I can see what’s happening to him both mentally and physically. I’m going to know if he really needs help. I’m not going to have to guess.”

“What can you do but guess? You’re barely out of transition yourself.”

“I’ve got seven transition experiences to draw on. And you can believe I’ve studied all of them. Now it’s settled, Seth.”

Seth took it. Doro watched him with interest after Mary reported the conversation. And Doro caught Seth watching Mary. Seth did not seem angry or vindictive. It was more as though he was waiting for something to happen. He had accepted Mary’s authority as, years before, he had accepted Doro’s. Now he watched to see how she handled it. He seemed surprised when, days later, she gave him charge of her cousin Jamie, but he accepted the responsibility. After that, he seemed to relax a little.

Rachel was on her feet again two days after her attack on Mary. Jesse, more severely weakened, was in bed a day longer. Both became quieter, more cautious people. They, too, watched Mary—warily.

Mary sent Rachel to kidnap the Hansons. Forsyth was a small city; Rachel could go across town without much discomfort. She wouldn’t be staying long, anyway.

“Make their parents believe they’ve left home for good,” Mary told her. “Because, one way or another, they have. You shouldn’t have much tampering to do, though. The parents aren’t going to be sorry to lose them.”

Rachel frowned. “Even so, it seems wrong to just go in and take them—people’s children …”

“They’re not children. Hell, Jamie’s a year older than I am. And if we don’t take them, they probably won’t make it through transition. If they don’t manage to kill themselves by losing control at a bad time, somebody else will kill them by taking them to a hospital. You can imagine what it would be like to be a mental sponge picking up everything in a hospital.”

Rachel shuddered, nodded, turned to go. Then she stopped and faced Mary again. “I was talking to Karl about what you’re trying to do—the community of actives that you want to put together.”

“Yes?”

“Well, if I have to stay here, I’d rather live in a community of actives—if such a thing is possible. I’d like us to stop hiding so much and start finding out what we’re really capable of.”