Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

“I’ve never in my life been able to change his mind once he’s made it up. His love … it lasts as long as I do what he tells me.”

“All right, then; you may not have any influence. But you’ll find out for sure, won’t you. You’ll try.”

I took a deep breath, nodded. “I’ll try anything within reason. But I don’t think anything less than my complete obedience will satisfy him. I’ve made him wary and uncomfortable. I’ve been moving too fast, and letting him see me too clearly.”

“It sounds as though you’re saying he’s afraid of you. And if you believe that, you’re deluding yourself. Dangerously.”

“No, not afraid. Cautious. He’s alive because he’s cautious. And I’m too powerful. Fifteen hundred people aren’t giving me any trouble at all. Whatever the Pattern is, I’m not likely to overload it soon. Doro isn’t worried that I can’t handle the thing I’m building. He’s worried that I can.”

Karl thought about that for a long moment. “If you’re right, if he is worried, it might not only be because you’re competing with him and taking his people.”

I looked at him questioningly.

“It might be because you could use those people against him. You can’t hurt him alone, but if you took strength from some of us—or all of us …”

“He made a point of telling Emma that wouldn’t work.”

“Did he convince you?”

“He didn’t have to. I already knew better than to try anything like that with him.”

“You had no reason to risk trying it before now. Now … you might have to try something. Or let us try. There should be enough Patternists now for us to overwhelm him without your help.”

“No way.”

“It’s never been tried. You don’t know—”

“I know. You couldn’t do it. Not even all fifteen hundred of you together, because, as far as he’s concerned, you wouldn’t really be together. He’d take you one at a time, but so fast you’d fall like dominoes. I know. Because that’s something I could do myself.”

He frowned. “That’s out, then. But I don’t understand why he’s so convinced that you couldn’t defeat him using our strength.”

“He said, ‘Strength alone isn’t enough to defeat me.’ And part of the reason he gave is

that I can’t change bodies. But that doesn’t hold up. I can kill his body with a thought, and

that same thought will force him to attack me on a mental level. My territory.”

“That sounds promising.”

“Yes, but he knows it as well as I do. That means he has some other reason for his confidence. The only thing I can think of is my own ignorance. I just don’t know how to take him. He’s not a Patternist, he’s not a mute—he’s bound to have some surprises for me. If I go after him, the chances are I’ll be dead before I can figure out how to kill him. He knows so much more than I do.”

“But he’s never faced anyone like you before. You’d be as new to him as he is to you.”

“But killing is a way of life to him, Karl. He’s damned good at it. And he has killed people who he thought were dangerous to him before. He claims I don’t even have the potential to be dangerous to him personally.”

“Do you imagine he’s never made a mistake?”

“He’s still alive.”

“No wonder. Look how good he is at scaring the hell out of his opponents before he faces them. If you accept him as all-knowing and invulnerable, you’d better be able to live without recruiting for as long as he says. Because you’ll be in no shape to face him. You’ll have already beaten yourself!”

We stared at each other for a long moment, and I could see that he was as worried as he sounded. “You know I’m not going to give him my life,” I said quietly. “Or the lives of my Patternists. If I have to fight him, it will be a battle, not a rout.”

“You’ll take strength from us.”

I winced, looked away. “Some of you at least.”

“The strongest of us. Beginning with me.”

I nodded. To protect them, I had to risk them. They could be killed even if I wasn’t. If I was desperate and rushed, as I probably would be, I might take too much of their strength. And I would be killing them. Not Doro. They were my people, and I would be killing them.

Doro stayed at Larkin House that night. We still kept his room ready for him though he didn’t use it much any more. He didn’t intend to use it that night. Instead he came across the hall to my room. I was sitting in the middle of my bed in the dark, thinking. He walked in without knocking.

He and I hadn’t made love for over a year, but he walked in as though there had been no break at all. Knowing him, I wasn’t surprised. He sat on the side of my bed, took off his shoes, and lay down beside me fully clothed. I was stark naked myself.

“I checked on a few of your searchers,” he said. “I see they’re starting for home.”

I didn’t say anything. I had mixed emotions about his just being there. I had promised Karl that I’d use my “lever,” try to change Doro’s mind. Now looked like a good time for that. But, since he was Doro, I wouldn’t get anything past him that I didn’t mean. If I was going to be able to reach him at all, it had to be with truth.

“I’m glad you’re cooperating,” he said. “I was afraid you might not.”

“I got the message you left with Emma,” I said. “Although I think you laid it on kind of thick.”

“I wasn’t acting. I wasn’t trying to scare you, either. I was honestly worried about you.”

“Why make impossible demands of me and then worry about me?”

“Impossible?”

“Hard, then. Too hard.”

He just looked at me—at what he could see of me in the light from the window.

“Hard on the others, too.”

He shrugged.

“You’ve stayed away from us too long,” I said. “It’s easy for you to hurt us, because you don’t really know us any more.”

“Oh, I know you, girl.”

That didn’t sound too good. “I mean you used to be one of us. You could be again, you know.”

“Your people don’t need me. Neither do you.”

“You’re our founder,” I said. “Our father. We teach the new Patternists about you, but that isn’t enough. They should get to know you.”

“And me them.”

“Yes.”

“It won’t work, Mary.”

I frowned down at him. He was lying flat on his back now, looking up at the ceiling. “If you get to know us as we are now, Doro, you might find that we really are the people, the race, that you’ve been working for so long to build. We already belong to you, and you can be one of us. We haven’t shut you out.”

“It’s surprising how eloquent you can become when you want something.”

I hung on to my temper. “You know I’m not just talking. I mean what I’m saying.”

“It doesn’t matter. Because it’s not going to change anything. The order I gave you is final. I’m not going to be talked out of it. Not by getting to know your people better. Not by renewing my relationship with you.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

“Oh, I intend to renew our relationship. I just don’t intend to let you charge me for it.”

I kicked him out of the bed. We were positioned perfectly for it. I just let him have it in the side with both feet. He fell, cursing, and got up holding his side.

“What the hell was that supposed to prove?” he demanded. “I thought you had outgrown that kind of behavior.”

“I have. I only give it to you because it’s what you want.”

He ignored that, sat down on the bed. “That was a stupid, dangerous thing to do.”

“No it wasn’t. You have some control. You can control your mouth too when you want to.”