Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

So Karl and I sat around and probably bored him with talk about the baby. I was surprised when he said he wanted to see it.

“Why?” I asked. “Babies his age all look pretty much alike. What is there to see?”

Both men frowned at me.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s go see the baby. Come on.”

Doro got up, but Karl stayed where he was. “You two go ahead,” he said. “I was out to see him this morning. My head won’t take it again for a while.”

No wonder he could afford to be indignant at my attitude! He was setting me up. I wished Ada was around to take Doro in. August wasn’t at the school itself, but he was at one of the buffer houses surrounding the school. That was almost as bad. The static from the school and from children in general didn’t hit me as hard as it did most of the others, but it still wasn’t very pleasant.

We went in. Doro stared at August, and August stared back from the arms of Evelyn Winthrop, the mute woman who took care of him. Then we left.

“Drive somewhere far enough from the school for you to be comfortable, and park,” said Doro when we got back to the car. “I want to talk to you.”

“About the baby?”

“No. Something else. Although I suppose I should compliment you on your son.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t give a damn about him, do you?”

I turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street and parked. “He’s got all his parts,” I said. “Healthy mentally and physically. I saw to that. Watched him very carefully before he was born. Now I keep an eye on Evelyn and her husband to be sure they’re giving him the care he needs. Beyond that, you’re right.”

“Jan all over again.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not criticizing you. Telepaths are always the worst possible parents. I thought the Pattern might change that, but it hasn’t. Most actives have to be bulldozed into even having children. You and Karl surprised me.”

“Karl wanted a child.”

“And you wanted Karl.”

“I already had him by then. But the idea of having a child wasn’t that repulsive. It still isn’t. I’d do it again. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Your doing it again.”

“What?”

“Or at least having your people do it. Because that’s the only way I’m going to allow the Pattern to grow for a while.”

I turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m suspending your latent-gathering as of today. You’re to call your people in from their searches, and recruit no more new Patternists.”

“But—But why? What have we done, Doro?”

“Nothing. Nothing but grow. And that’s the problem. I’m not punishing you; I’m slowing you down a little. I’m being cautious.”

“For what? Why should you be cautious about our growth? The mutes don’t know anything about us, and they’d have a hard time hurting us if they did. We aren’t hurting each other. I’m in control. There’s been no unusual trouble.”

“Mary … fifteen hundred adults and five hundred children in only two years! It’s time you stopped devoting all your energy to growth and started figuring out just what it is you’re growing. You’re one woman holding everything together. Your only possible successor at this point is about two months old. There’d be a blood bath if anything happened to you. If you were hit by a car tomorrow, your people would disintegrate—all over each other.”

“If I were hit by a car and there were anything at all of me left alive, I’d survive. If I couldn’t put myself together again, Rachel would do it.”

“Mary, what I’m saying is that you’re irreplaceable. You’re all your people have got. Now, you can go on playing the part of their savior if you do as I’ve told you. Or you can destroy them by plunging on headlong as you are now.”

“Are you saying I have to stop recruiting until August is old enough to replace me if anything happens to me?”

“Yes. And for safety’s sake, I suggest that you not make August an only child.”

“Wait twenty years?”

“It only sounds like a long time, Mary, believe me.” He smiled a little. “Besides, not only are you a potential immortal as a descendant of Emma, but you have your own and Rachel’s healing ability to keep you young if your potential for longevity doesn’t work out.”

“Twenty Goddamn years … !”

“You would have something firm and well established to bring your people into by then, too. You wouldn’t be just spreading haphazardly over the city.”

“We aren’t doing that now! You know we aren’t. We’re growing deliberately into Santa Elena, because that’s where the living room we need is. Jesse is working right now to prepare a new section of Santa Elena for us. We’ve got the school in the most protected part of our Palo Alto district. We didn’t manage that by accident! The people don’t just move wherever they want to. They go to Jesse and he shows them what’s available.”

“And all that’s available is what you take from mutes. You don’t build anything of your own.”

“We build ourselves!”

“You will build yourselves more slowly now.”

I knew that tone of voice. I used it myself from time to time. I knew he was letting me argue so that I’d have time to get used to the idea, not because there was any chance of changing his mind. But twenty years!

“Doro, do you know what kind of work I’ve had Rachel doing for most of the past two years?”

“I know.”

“Have you seen the people she brings in—walking corpses most of them? That is if they can even walk.”

“Yes.”

“My people, so far gone they look like they’ve been through Dachau!”

“Mary—”

“They turn out to be my best telepaths when they’re like that, you know? That’s why they’re in such bad shape as latents. They’re so sensitive, they pick up everything.”

“Mary, listen.”

“How many of those people do you imagine will die, probably in agony, in twenty years?”

“It doesn’t matter, Mary. It doesn’t matter at all.”

End of conversation. At least as far as he was concerned. But I just couldn’t let go.

“You’ve been watching them die for thousands of years,” I said. “You’ve learned not to care. I’ve just been saving them for two years, but I’ve already learned the opposite lesson. I care.”

“I was afraid you would.”

“Is it such a bad thing?”

“It’s going to hurt you. It’s already started to hurt you.”

“You could let me go after just the worst ones. Just the ones who would die without me.”

“No.”

“Goddamnit, Doro, they’d die anyway. What could you lose?”

He looked at me silently for a long moment. “Do you remember what I told you on the day, two years ago, when you discovered Clay Dana’s potential?”

The crap about obeying. I remembered, all right. “I wondered when you’d get to that.”

“You know I meant it.”

I slumped back in the seat, wondering what I was going to do. I took his hand almost absently. “What a pity we had to become competitors!”

“We haven’t. There’s enough for both of us.”

I looked down at his hand, calloused, with fingers that were too long. It hit me how much like my own, big, ugly hands it was, and I took another look at the body he was wearing—green-eyed, blackhaired … “Who is this you’re wearing?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “A relative of your father—as you’ve probably already guessed.”

“What relation?”

His expression hardened. “A son. Your older half brother.” He wasn’t just giving me information. He was challenging me with it.

“Right,” I said. “Just the kind of person I would be looking for. A close relative, a potentially good Patternist, and a likely victim to ease your hunger. You know damn well we’re competitors, Doro.”