Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

I had never spoken that bluntly to him before. He stared at me as though I’d surprised him—which was what I had set out to do.

“Hey,” I said softly. “You know what I am. You made me what I am. Don’t cut me off from the thing I was born to do. Just let me have the worst of the latents. Rachel’s kind. Okay that, and I won’t touch any of the others.”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Mary.”

“But why?” I yelled. “Why?”

“Let’s get back to the house. You can start calling your people in.”

I got out of the car, slammed the door, and walked around to the sidewalk. I couldn’t stay sitting there beside him for a minute longer. I would have done something stupid and useless—and probably suicidal. He called to me a couple of times, but, thank God, he had the sense not to come after me.

I walked home. Palo Alto wasn’t far. I needed to burn off some of my anger before I got home, anyway.

Chapter Eleven

MARY

Karl was settling some kind of dispute when I got home. He was standing between two Patternist men who were trying to glare each other to death. Their communication was all mental and easy for me to ignore as I walked through the living room. I went to the library and began to call in my searchers. As usual, they were scattered around the country—around the continent. Doro had begun planting the best of his families from Africa, Europe, and Asia in various parts of North America hundreds of years before. He had decided then that the North American continent was big enough to give them room to avoid each other and that it would be racially diverse enough to absorb them all. Now I had people in three countries demanding to know why they should stop their searches before they had found all the latents they sensed—why they should abandon potential Patternists. I didn’t blame them for being mad, but I wasn’t about to tell them, one by one, what the problem was. I pulled a “Do it because I said so!” on them and broke contact before they could argue more.

Karl came into the library as I was finishing and said, “What are you doing sitting in here in the dark?”

I was in contact with a Patternist in Chicago who was crying in anger and frustration at my “stupid, arbitrary, dictatorial orders …” On and on.

Just get your ass on the next plane to L.A., I told her. I broke contact with her and blinked as Karl turned on the light. I hadn’t realized it was so late.

“Uh-oh,” he said, looking at me. “I’ll listen if you want to talk about it.”

I just opened and gave it all to him.

“Twenty years,” he said, frowning. “But why? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Doro doesn’t have to make sense,” I said. “Although in this case I think he has his reasons. I think it’s interesting that he first denied that he and I were competitors.”

Karl looked hard at me. “I don’t think that’s a point you should emphasize to him.”

“I wasn’t emphasizing it. I was letting him know I understood it, and that because I understood it I was willing to accept a reasonable limitation—willing to settle for just the worst of the latents.”

“But it didn’t do any good.”

“No.”

“I wonder why. It sounds fairly harmless, and he would be able to check on you just by questioning you now and then.”

“Maybe it was something I said—although he knew it already.”

“What?”

“That the really bad latents turn out to be my best Patternists. They’re probably the victims that give him the most pleasure too, when he can catch them before they kill themselves or get themselves locked up. I’ll bet that half brother of mine was a mess before Doro took him.”

“Competition again,” said Karl. “Possible.” He looked at me curiously. “Does it

bother you that the body he’s wearing was your brother?”

“No. I never knew the man. Doro’s appetite in general bothers me. He warned me that it would. But I can keep quiet about it as long as he isn’t taking my Patternists.”

“For all we know, that could be next.”

“God! No, he wouldn’t do that while I’m still alive. The only Patternist he’s likely to take right now is me.” Something occurred to me suddenly. “Wait a minute! he may have left me more clues to whatever the hell he’s doing than I thought.”

“What?”

“I’ll get back to you in a minute.” I reached out to the old neighborhood, to Emma. I could reach her fast now, because she belonged to me. I had a kind of link with her that would let me know the minute some other Patternist touched her, and at the same time let the Patternist know she was mine. I had that kind of connection with Rina too, since she was too old for me to risk her life by trying to push her into transition.

I read Emma, saw that Doro had been to see her just a few hours before. And he’d talked a lot. Now since he knew Emma was mine, knew that anything he said to her I would eventually pick up, I assumed that he had been talking at least partly to me. Perhaps more to me than about me. I looked at Karl. “This morning, Doro told Emma he was afraid I’d disobey him in this and make him kill me.”

“Obviously he was wrong,” said Karl.

“But he seemed so sure about it—and Emma seemed so sure. I can discount Emma, I guess. She’s frightened enough of me—and jealous enough of me—to want me dead. But Doro …”

“Do you have any intention of defying him?”

“None … now.” I stared down at the table. “I wouldn’t risk the people, the Pattern, even if I were willing to risk myself. I’m wondering, though …”

“Wondering what?”

“Well, remember when we started this—when I pulled in Christine and Jamie Hanson?”

“Yes.”

“And you and Doro and I tried to figure out why I was so eager to bring in more people. Doro finally decided that I needed them for the same reasons he needed them. For sustenance.”

Karl smiled faintly, which had to be a mark of how much he had relaxed and accepted his place in the Pattern. “Don’t you think fifteen hundred people might be enough to sustain you?”

I looked at him. “You don’t know how much I’d like to say yes to that.”

His smile vanished. “For the sake of the fifteen hundred, you’d better say yes to it.”

“Yeah. I just wish I could be sure that saying yes was enough.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I might be too much like Doro.” I sighed. “I’m supposed to be like him. He finally admitted that to Emma this morning. Have you ever seen him when he needs a change really badly?”

“No. But I know that’s not a safe time to be near him.”

“Right. If he’s really in trouble, he’s liable to lose control—just take whoever’s closest to him. Usually, though, he prevents himself from getting into that situation by changing often and keeping to healthy, young bodies. I seem to prefer young minds—not

necessarily healthy.”

“But with so many young minds already here, there’s no reason for you to defy Doro and go after more.”

“There’s more of them out there, Karl. I’m afraid that might be reason enough. Now that I’m thinking about it …” I glanced at him. “You’ve felt how eager I am when I go after new people—the first ones two years ago, and the last ones this morning. I don’t like thinking about what my life will be like now that I can’t go after any more of them.”

He put one elbow on the table and rested his chin on his hand. “You know, in his way, I think Doro does love you.”

I stared at him in surprise. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Am I right?”

“He loves me. What passes for love with him.”

“Don’t belittle it. I think it’s the only lever you have that might move him—make him change his mind.”