Everybody was settling in. But the others didn’t like it. It scared them that they were not only getting used to their leashes but starting to see benefits in them. It scared hell out of them that maybe they were giving in the way ordinary people gave in to them. That they were getting to be happy slaves like Karl’s servants. Their fear made them fight harder than ever against me. I could understand their feelings, but that wasn’t enough. I had to do something about them. I was fed up with hearing about them. I thought for a while, then went to talk to Doro.
I had come to depend on Doro more now than I ever had before. He was the only person in the house that I could talk to without getting blamed, cursed, or threatened. I had all but moved into his room. So, one night, about two weeks after my transition, I walked into his room, fell across his bed, and said, “Well, I guess this has gone on long enough.”
“What?” he asked. He was at his desk scribbling something that looked like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics in a notebook.
“Everybody sitting around waiting for something that isn’t going to happen,” I said. “Waiting for the pattern to just disappear.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get them all together and make them face a few facts. And then, after they stop screaming, get them thinking about what they can do with themselves in spite of the pattern.” I sat up and looked at him. “Hell, they’re all telepaths. They don’t have to be able to go miles from home to get work done. And God knows they need something to do!”
“Work?”
“Right. Jobs, interests, goals.” I had been thinking about it for days now. “They can make their own jobs. It will give them less time to bitch at me. Rachel can have a church if she wants one. The others can look around, find out what they want.”
“If they’re reasonable. They might not be, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“They might not stop screaming, as you put it, until they’ve tried to lynch you.”
“Yeah,” I repeated. I took a deep breath. “Want to sit in and see the blood?”
He smiled. “There might not be any blood if I’m there.”
“Then, by all means, sit in.”
“Oh, I will. But it will only be to let them know I’m acknowledging your authority over them. I’m going to turn them loose, Mary.”
I swallowed. “Already, huh?”
“They’re yours. It’s time you jumped in among them.”
“I guess so.” I really wasn’t surprised. I had seen him working up to this. He couldn’t read my mind, but he watched me as closely as I watched everybody else. He questioned me. I didn’t mind. He let the others complain to him about me, but he didn’t question them about me or make them promises. That, I appreciated. So now it was time for me to be kicked out of the nest.
“You’ll be leaving if this works, won’t you?” I asked.
“For a while. I’ll be back. I have a suggestion that might help you both before and after I leave, though.”
“What?”
“Let Karl in on what you’re going to do before you do it. Let him get over some of his anger with you and see the sense in what you’re saying. Then, if I understand him as well as I think I do, he’ll stand with you if any of the others threaten you.”
“Isn’t that just trading one protector for another? I’m supposed to be able to protect myself.”
“Oh, you can. But, chances are, you’ll have to do it by killing someone. I was trying to help you avoid that.”
I nodded. I knew he was still worried that my killing might be a chain-reaction thing. That if I took one of the actives, then, sooner or later, I’d have to take another. And another. I had a feeling that, when he left, he wouldn’t go any farther than Emma’s house. And from there, he’d keep whatever special senses he had trained on me.
“Is Karl alone now?” he asked.
I checked. “Yes, for a change.” Karl had been screwing around with Jan, of all people. He couldn’t have found a better way to disgust me.
“Then, go to him now. Talk to him.”
I gave Doro a dirty look. It was late, and I was in no mood to hear the things Karl would probably say to me. I just wanted to go to bed. But I got up and went to see Karl.
He was lying on his back interfering with the thoughts of some sleeping local politician. I hesitated for a moment to find out what he was doing. He was just making sure that a company he and Doro controlled got a zone variance it needed to erect a building. He had a job, anyway. I knocked at his door.
He listened silently to what I had to tell him, his face expressionless.
“So we’re here, we belong to you, and that’s that,” he said quietly.
“That wasn’t my point.”
“Yes it was. Along with the fact that we might as well find some way to live our lives this way and make the best of it.”
“All I want us to do is settle down and start acting like human beings again.”
“If that’s still what we are. What do you want from me?”
“Help, if you can give it. If you will.”
“Me, help you?”
“You’re my husband.”
“That wasn’t my idea.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. This wasn’t the time to fight with him.
“Doro will back you up,” he said. “He’s all you need.”
“He’s putting me on my own. He’s putting us on our own.”
“Why? What have you done?”
“Nothing, so far. It’s not punishment. He just thinks it’s time we found out whether we can survive without him—as a group.”
“Whether you can survive.”
“No, us, really. Because, if things go bad, I’m not about to let the others get me without taking as many of them as I can with me.” I took a deep breath. “That’s why I want your help. I’d like to get through this without killing anybody.”
He looked a little surprised. “Are you so sure you can kill?”
“Positive.”
“How can you know? You’ve never tried.”
“You don’t want to hear how I know, believe me.”
“Don’t be stupid. If you want my help at all, you’d better tell me everything.”
I looked at him. I made myself just look at him until I could answer quietly. “I know the same way you know how to eat when you’re hungry. I’m that kind of parasite, Karl. I suppose you and the others might as well face it the way I have.”
“You … you’re saying you’re a female Doro?”
“Not exactly, but that’s close enough.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Oh yes you do.”
He stared at me silently for a moment. “I didn’t want to believe you could read me through my shield either.”
“I can. That’s part of my ability, too.”
“You have enough abilities not to need my help.”
“I told you why I need you.”
“Yes. You don’t want to kill.”
“Not unless somebody is stupid enough to attack me.”
“But if hunger is what you feel, how can you avoid doing something about it eventually? You’ll have to kill.”
“It’s more like having an appetite—like being able to eat but not really being hungry.”
“But you will get hungry. It seems to me that’s why we’re here. We’re your food supply. You’re gathering people the way Doro does. It just isn’t as much work for you as it is for him.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I’ve been thinking things like that myself. They might be all wrong. But even if they aren’t, I don’t know what to do about it.”
He turned his head, stared at a bookcase. “Short of committing suicide, there’s not much you can do.”
“And I’m not about to do that. But I’ll tell you, as mad as these people make me sometimes, it would be almost as hard for me to kill one of them as it would be for me to commit suicide. I don’t want their lives.”
r /> “For now.”
“And I don’t want anybody forcing me to change my mind. Because, if I do, I’m not sure I’ll be able to control myself. I might kill more of you than I mean to.” I got up to leave. “Karl, I’m not asking you to make up your mind now, or promise me anything. I just wanted you to know there was a choice to make.” I started for the door.
“Wait a minute.”
I stopped, waited.
“You’re closed, shielded all the time,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve unshielded once since you did it for me after your transition.”
“Would you if you were living with people who wanted to kill you?”
“What if I asked you to open for me? Just for me. Now.”
“Why?”
“Because you need me. And because I need to see the truth of what you’re telling me.”
“I thought that was settled.”
“I’ve got to see it for myself, Mary. I’ve got to be certain. I can’t … do what you’re asking until I’ve seen for myself that it’s necessary.”
I read him, saw that he was telling the truth. He was angry and bitter and he didn’t like himself much for even thinking about siding with me. But he knew it was his best chance for survival—for a while, at least.
I opened. I was more worried about accidentally taking him than I was about what he might find out. I was a little touchier about his rummaging through my memories than I had been before, but I put up with it. He didn’t go after anything more than verification of what I had told him. That was all he cared about.
“All right,” he said after a moment.
I shielded, looked at him.
“I’ll do what I can to help you,” he said. “And heaven help both of us.”
Chapter Seven
Mary
Winning Karl over gave me the courage to get right to work on the others. I called everybody together in the living room at around ten the next morning. Karl came in with Vivian, and Seth Dana came with Ada and Clay. Vivian and Clay didn’t really have to be there, of course, but it didn’t matter to me that they were.
Karl had to go and get Jan. She said she wasn’t about to take orders from me. I figured we’d have this meeting and then, if she still felt that way, I’d show her how gentle Doro had been with her.
And Doro had to get Jesse and Rachel. They were shacked up in Jesse’s room now, like they meant to stay together for a while. They were sure as hell together in their opinion of me. In fact, they were so close together and they hated me so much that I knew if I had to take anybody, it would probably be one of them. And the way they had been acting for the past few days, I didn’t see how I could get away with taking just one. Neither of them was going to sit by and watch the other killed.
That bothered me. I realized that their feelings for each other could be used against them—that, for a while at least, I could control one by threatening the other. But, somehow, I didn’t want to do that. I’d try it if I had to, rather than kill them both and make myself a liability to Doro, but I hoped they wouldn’t push me that far.
Once they were all in the room, with Doro sitting by himself off to one side, I made my speech. Doro told me later that I was too blunt, too eager to threaten and challenge. He was probably right.
I told everybody that the pattern was a permanent fixture binding them to me. It wasn’t going anywhere, I wasn’t going anywhere, and they weren’t going to do anything to me. I told them I could kill them, would kill them if they pushed me, but that I didn’t want to kill them if I could avoid it. I told them to follow the feelings I knew they were suppressing and accept the pattern. Get themselves some new interests or revive some old ones, get jobs if they wanted them, stop sitting around bitching like kids. I spoke quietly to them. I didn’t rant and rave. But they still didn’t like what I had to say.
And, of course, except for Karl, they didn’t want to believe me. I had to open to them. I had thought that might be necessary. I hadn’t been looking forward to it but I was ready to do it. First, though, I did what I could to throw a scare into them.
“Look,” I said quietly. “You all know me. You know I’ll do whatever I have to to defend myself. Try anything more than reading me now, and you’ve had it. That’s all.”
I opened. I could see that they were moving cautiously, trying to find out whether I had the power I claimed before they made any move against me—which was intelligent of them.
I had never opened my mind to anyone but Karl before. I had only the memories of the others to tell me what it was like to open to more than one person at a time. They had never done it deliberately. It was just that they couldn’t stay shielded all the time, the way I could. Their shields cut off their mental perception totally. In a way, for them, shielding was like wandering around wearing a gag, a blindfold, and earplugs. None of them could put up with it for long. So sometimes they picked up things from each other. Sometimes two or three of them picked up something from one. They didn’t like it, but they were learning to live with it. Doro had said that in itself was more than he had dared to hope for. Actives had never been able to live with it before. He said it seemed much easier for my actives to keep out of each other’s minds than it had been for earlier generations. He gave my pattern the credit for that. Maybe my pattern deserved the credit for the way I was able to accept them all into my mind, too. Like them, I didn’t enjoy it. But I wasn’t nervous or afraid, because I knew I could defend myself if I had to, and I knew none of them meant to try anything—yet. I was just uncomfortable. Like I’d suddenly found myself stark naked in front of a lot of strangers, all of whom were taking a good look.
At least it was easy to keep track of them and know who was getting what. I hadn’t been sure it would be with so many. But I spotted Jesse the moment he decided to do a little snooping into matters other than the truth of what I had told them.
I reached out and contracted the muscle of his lower leg into a tight, hard knot.
I had taken Rachel’s advice and been working on my own to develop whatever healing ability I had. I was still a long way from being ready to call myself a healer, but I had learned a few things from viewing my body and other people’s bodies from the inside. And I had read medical books and I had read Rachel. I found that I learned best, though, by watching people who had things wrong with them—seeing how their bodies healed, understanding what had gone wrong in the first place. If I could understand it, I could make it happen.
A few days before, I had gotten a bad cramp in my leg.
So now Jesse had a bad cramp in his leg. He yelled, more surprised than hurt—although it did hurt. And, of course, he snapped his attention away from me like a released rubber band.
It was a very quick, very easy thing, to cause a cramp. By the time the others realized I had done it, I was finished and paying attention to them again. They dropped away from me almost all at once. Almost. Rachel hung on, shaped her thoughts into words for me.
Don’t think you can ever handle me that way!
Of course not, I sent back. Unfortunately for you, the only way I can handle you is by killing you.
She dropped away from me mad and scared and ashamed of herself for being scared.
As she broke contact, Jesse stood up. His cramp had faded away normally, since I hadn’t done anything to prolong it or make it worse. I could have used his own muscle to break his leg. He didn’t seem to realize that. He started toward me.
Karl got up quickly, stepped in front of Jesse. A distance runner facing a football player. They made a contrast. Karl spoke just as Jesse was about to knock him out of the way.
“A question, Jess,” he said quietly. “Only a question. What do you imagine you’ll do when you reach her—aside from letting her make an example of you, I mean.” And he stepped out of Jesse’s path and sat down again. Jesse stayed where he was, glaring first at Karl, then at me.
“One woman,” he said bitterly. “A woman, for Godsake! The biggest damn thing about
her is her mouth! And you’re all going to let her tell you you’re serving a life sentence in this place.” He looked around the room, his eyes accusing. “She couldn’t kill more than one or two of us if we all hit her at once. Don’t you see? Her only hold on us is that the rest of you are so afraid of being the one she gets that you’d rather stay on her Goddamn leash than stand up to her!”
He looked around the room again, this time challengingly. “I’m willing to take a chance. Who’ll stand with me? Who’s as sick of being in jail as I am?”
I was watching Rachel. She looked at me and I glanced from her to Jesse, then back to her. The threat was delivered that simply, for what it was worth. Rachel understood. She kept quiet. Jesse was turning toward her when Seth spoke up.
“Jess, it seems to me you’re forgetting about Doro.”
Jesse looked over at Doro. Doro looked back expressionlessly. “I’m not forgetting.” Jesse spoke to Seth, but kept his eyes on Doro. “I may have read a little more from Mary than you did—than any of the rest of you did. Maybe nobody but me noticed that Doro was about to dump her—put her on her own with us and let her sink or swim as best she could.”
Nobody said anything.
“Well?” said Jesse to Doro. “Weren’t you?”
“I was,” said Doro. “But I hadn’t done it yet.”
“As long as you were going to, what difference does it make?”
Doro leaned back in his chair. “You tell me.”