Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

Page faced her. “Nothing!” Then, more softly, “Oh, God, everything. Everything.” She looked down at her arms. “I’m not sick. I’m not crazy, either. But if I tell you what … what she is,” she gestured sharply toward Ada, “you’d let me be locked up. You wouldn’t believe—”

“Tell her what I am, Page,” said Ada quietly. She could feel the girl’s terror bleating against her mind.

“You read people’s minds! You make them do things they don’t want to do. You’re not human!” She raised a hand to her mouth, muffling her next words slightly. “Oh, God, you’re not human … and neither am I!” She was crying now, working herself into hysterics. “Now go ahead and lock me up,” she said. “At least then I won’t be able to hurt anyone.”

Ada looked over at Helen Dietrich. “That’s it, really. She knows just enough about what’s happening to her to be frightened by it. She thinks she’s becoming something that will hurt you or your husband or one of the other children.”

“Oh, Page.” The mute woman tried to put her arms around the girl, but Page twisted away.

“You already knew! You brought me to her even though you knew what she was!”

“Be still, Page,” said Ada quietly. And the girl lapsed into terrified silence. To the mute, Ada said, “Leave now, Helen. She’ll be all right.” This time, no choice was offered and Helen Dietrich left obediently. The girl, attempting to flee with her, found herself seemingly rooted to the floor. Realizing that she was trapped, she collapsed, crying in helpless panic. Ada went to her, knelt beside her.

“Page …” She laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder and felt the shoulder trembling. “Listen to me.”

The girl continued to cry.

“You’re not going to be hurt. You’re certainly not going to be locked up. Now, listen.”

After a moment the words seemed to penetrate. Page looked up at her. Clearly still frightened, she allowed Ada to help her from the floor onto one of the chairs. Her tears slowed, stopped, and she wiped her face with tissue from a box on the principal’s desk.

“You should ask questions,” said Ada softly. “You could have saved yourself a lot of needless worrying.”

Page breathed deeply, trying to still her trembling. “I don’t even know what to ask. Except … what’s going to happen to me?”

“You’re going to grow up. You’re going to become the kind of adult your parents should have been but couldn’t become alone.”

“My parents,” said Page with quiet loathing. “I hope you locked them up. They’re animals.”

“They were. They aren’t now, though. We were able to help them—just as we’ve helped you, as we’ll go on helping you.” The girl should not have remembered enough about her parents to hate them. Rachel was always especially careful about that. But there was no mistaking the emotion behind the girl’s words.

“You should have killed them,” she said. “You should have cut their filthy throats!” She fell silent and stared down at her left arm. She touched the arm with her right hand, frowned at it. Ada knew then that the conditioning Rachel had imposed on the girl was still breaking down. From Page’s mind Ada took the memory of a twisted, useless left arm permanently bent at the elbow, the hand hanging from it rag-limp, dead. The whole arm had been dead, thanks to an early violent beating that Page had received from her father. A beating and no medical attention. But Rachel had repaired the damage. Page’s arm was normal now, but she was just remembering that it should not have been. And she was remembering more about her parents. Ada had to try to ease the knowledge.

“Our healers were able to do as much for your parents’ minds as they were for your body,” she said. “Your parents are different people now, living different lives. They’re … sane people now. They aren’t responsible for what they did when you knew them.”

“You’re afraid I’ll try to get even.”

“We can’t let you do that.”

“You can’t make me forgive them, either.” She stopped, frightened, suddenly realizing that Ada could probably do just that. “I hate them! I’d … I’d kill them myself if you sent me back to them.” But she spoke without conviction.

“You won’t be sent back to them,” said Ada. “And I think, once you find out for yourself what made them the way they were, you’ll know why we helped them instead of punishing them.”

“They’re … like you now?”

“They’re both telepaths, yes.” At thirty-seven, they were the oldest people to come through transition successfully. They had almost died in spite of everything Rachel could do. And they and three others who did die made Mary realize that most latents who hadn’t been brought through by the time they were thirty-five shouldn’t be brought through at all. To make their lives more comfortable, Mary had worked out a way of destroying their uncontrollable ability without harming them otherwise. At least then they could live the rest of their lives as normal mutes. But Page’s parents had made it. They were strong Patternists, as Page would be strong.

“I’ll be like you, too, then, won’t I?” the girl asked.

“You will, yes. Soon.”

“What will I be then to the Dietrichs?”

“You’ll be the first of their foster children to grow up. They’ll remember you.”

“But … they’re not like you. I can tell that much. I can feel a difference.”

“They’re not telepaths.”

“They’re slaves!” Her tone was accusing.

“Yes.”

Page was silent for a moment, startled by Ada’s willingness to admit such a thing.

“Just like that? Yes, you make slaves of people? I’m going to be part of a group that

makes slaves of people?”

“Page—”

“Why do you think 1 tried to die?”

“Because you didn’t understand. You still don’t.”

“I know about being a slave! My parents taught me. My father used to strip me naked, tie me to the bed, and beat me, and then—”

“I know about that, Page.”

“And I know about being a slave.” The girl’s voice was leaden. “I don’t want to be a part of anything that makes people slaves.”

“You have no choice. Neither do we.”

“You could stop doing it.”

“You’d still be with your parents if we didn’t do it. We couldn’t have cared for you.” She took a deep breath. “We don’t harm people like the Dietrichs in any way. In fact they’re healthier and more comfortable now than they were before we found them. And the work they’re doing for us is work they enjoy.”

“If they didn’t enjoy it, you’d change their minds for them.”

“We might, but they wouldn’t be aware of it. They would be content.”

The girl stared at her. “Do you think that makes it better?”

“Not better. Kinder, in a frightening sort of way, I know. I’m not pretending that theirs is the best possible way of life, Page—although they think it is. They’re slaves and I wouldn’t trade places with them. But we, our kind, couldn’t exist long without them.”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t exist! If our way is to enslave good people like the Dietrichs and let animals like my parents go free, the world would be better without us.”

Ada looked away from her for a moment, then faced her sadly. “You haven’t understood me. Perhaps you don’t want to; I wouldn’t blame you. The Dietrichs, Page, those good people who took you in, cared for you, loved you. Why, do you imagine, they did all that?”

And abruptly, Page understood. “No!” she shouted. “No. They wanted me. They told me so.”

Ada said nothing.

“They might have been taking in foster children, anyway.”