Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

“You’ve been thinking about it,” said Mary.

“I had time,” said Rachel dryly. “What I’m working up to is that I’m willing to help you. Help more than just going after these kids, I mean.”

Mary smiled, looked pleased but not surprised. “I would have asked you,” she said. “I’m glad I didn’t have to. I didn’t ask you to help anybody through transition because I wanted you standing by for all three transitions in case some medical problem comes up. Jan broke her arm during her transition and you probably know Jesse did some kind of damage to his back that could have been serious. It will be best if you’re sort of on call.”

“I will be,” said Rachel. She left to get the Hansons.

Mary looked after her for a moment, then walked over to the sofa nearest to the fireplace, where Doro was sitting with a closed book on his lap.

“You’re always around,” she said. “My shadow.”

“You don’t mind.”

“No. I’m used to you. In fact, I’m really going to miss you when you leave. But, then, you won’t be leaving soon. You’re hooked. You’ve got to see what happens here.”

She couldn’t have been more right. And it wasn’t just the three coming transitions that he wanted to see. They were important, but Mary herself was more important. Her people were submitting now, all but Karl. And she would overcome Karl’s resistance slowly.

Doro had wondered what Mary would do with her people once she had subdued them. Before she discovered Clay’s potential, she had probably wondered herself. Now, though … Doro had reworded Karl’s question. How many latents did she think she wanted to bring through? “All of them, of course,” she had said.

Now Doro was waiting. He didn’t want to put limits on her, yet. He was hoping that

she would not like the responsibility she was creating for herself. He was hoping that, before too long, she would begin to limit herself. If she didn’t, he would have to step in. Success his and hers—was coming too quickly. Worse, all of it depended on her. If anything happened to her, the pattern would die with her. It was possible that her actives, new and old, would revert to their old, deadly incompatibility without it. Doro would lose a large percentage of his best breeding stock. This quick success could set him back several hundred years.

Mary gave Karl charge of her bald girl cousin, Christine, and then probably wished she hadn’t. Surprisingly, Christine’s shaved head did not make her ugly. And, unfortunately, her inferior position in the house did not make her cautious. Fortunately, Karl wasn’t interested. Christine just didn’t have the judgment yet to realize how totally vulnerable she was. Mary had a private talk with her.

Mary gave Christine and Jamie a single, intensive session of telepathic indoctrination. They learned what they were, learned their history, learned about Doro, who had neglected their branch of Emma’s family for two generations. They learned what was going to happen to them, what they were becoming part of. They learned that every other active in the house had gone through what they were facing and that, while it wasn’t pleasant, they could stand it. The double rewards of peace of mind and power made it worthwhile.

The Hansons learned, and they believed. It wouldn’t have been easy for them to disbelieve information force-fed directly into their minds. Once the indoctrination was over, though, they were let alone mentally. They became part of the house, accepting Mary’s authority and their own pain with uncharacteristic docility.

Jamie went into transition first, about a month after he moved to Larkin House. He was young, strong, and surprisingly healthy in spite of having tried every pill or powder he could get his hands on.

He came through. He had sprained his wrist, blackened one of Seth’s eyes, and broken the bed he was lying on, but he came through. He became an active. Seth was as proud as though he had just become a father.

Clay, who should have been first, was next. He came through in a short, intense transition that almost killed him. He actually suffered heart failure, but Mary got his heart started again and kept it going until Rachel arrived. Clay’s transition was over in only five hours. It left him with none of the usual bruises and strains, because Mary did not try to restrain him with her own body or tie him down. She simply paralyzed his voluntary muscles and he lay motionless while his mind writhed through chaos.

Clay became an active, but not a telepathic active. His budding telepathic ability vanished with the end of his transition. But he was compensated for it, as he soon learned.

When his transition ended and he was at peace, he saw that a tray of food had been left beside his bed. He could just see it out of the corner of his eye. He was still paralyzed and could not reach it, but in his confusion and hunger, he did not realize this. He reached for it anyway.

In particular, he reached for the bowl of soup that he could see steaming so near him. It was not until he lifted the soup and drew it to him that he realized that he was not using his hands. The soup hovered without visible support a few inches above his chest.

Startled, Clay let it fall. At the same instant, he moved to get away from it. He shot about three feet to one side and into the air. And stayed suspended there, terrified.

Slowly, the terror in his eyes was replaced by understanding. He looked around his bedroom at Rachel, at Doro, and, finally, at Mary. Mary apparently released him then from his paralysis, because he began to move his arms and legs now like a human spider hanging in mid-air from an invisible web. Slowly, deliberately, Clay lowered himself to the bed. Then he drifted upward again, apparently finding it an easy thing to do. He looked at Mary, spoke apparently in answer to some thought she had projected to him.

“Are you kidding? I can fly! This is good enough for me.”

“You’re not a member of the pattern any more,” she said. She seemed saddened, subdued.

“That means I’m free to go, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. If you want to.”

“And I won’t be getting any more mental interference?”

“No. You can’t pull it in any more. You’re not even an out-of-control telepath. You’re not a telepath at all.”

“Lady, you read my mind. You’ll see that’s no tragedy to me. All that so-called power ever brought me was grief. Now that I’m free of it, I think I’ll go back to Arizona—raise myself a few cows, maybe a few kids.”

“Good luck,” said Mary softly.

He drifted close to her, grinned at her. “You wouldn’t believe how easy this is.” He lifted her clear of the floor, brought her up to eye level with him. She gazed at him, unafraid. “What I’ve got is better than what you’ve got,” he joked.

She smiled at him finally. “No it isn’t, man. But I’m glad you think it is. Put me down.”

He lowered both her and himself to the floor as though he had been doing it all his life. Then he looked at Doro. “Is this something brand-new, or have you seen it before?”

“Psychokinesis,” said Doro. “I’ve seen it before. Seen it several times in your father’s family, in fact, although I’ve never seen it come about this smoothly before.”

“You call that transition smooth?” said Mary.

“Well, with the heart problem, no, I guess not. But it could have been worse. Believe me, this room could be a shambles, with everyone in it injured or dead. I’ve seen it happen.”

“My kind throw things,” guessed Clay.

“They throw everything,” said Doro. “Including some things that are nailed down securely. Instead of doing that, I think you might have turned your ability inward a little and caused your own heart to stop.”