Seed to Harvest

  Everybody, stop what you’re doing. Be still.

  They could see what I saw. My eyes were open now, and my mind was open to them. They could see Doro watching me past Karl. They could know that Doro was the danger. It was too late for them to make suicidal mistakes.

  You won’t have time to leave. You’ll have to help me fight. Obey me, and we can kill him.

  That thought cut through their confusion, as I had hoped it would. Here was a way to destroy what threatened them. Here was Doro, whom they had been warned against, but whom most of them did not really fear.

  Sit down, or lie down. Wait. Do nothing. I’m going to need you.

  Doro started toward Karl. I sat up, scrambled over close to Karl, and laid a hand on his shoulder. He glanced at me.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s as okay as it’s ever going to be. Get out of here.”

  He relaxed a little, but, instead of going, he sat down on the end of the bed. I didn’t have time to argue with him. I began absorbing strength from my people. Not Karl. He would have collapsed and given me away. But the others. I had to collect from as many of them as I could before Doro attacked. Because I had no doubt that he was going to attack.

  Doro

  Doro stood still, gazing at the girl, wondering why he waited. “You have time to try again to get rid of Karl if you like,” he said.

  “Karl’s made his decision.” There was no fear in her voice. That pleased Doro somehow.

  “Apparently you’ve made yours, too.”

  “There was no decision for me to make. I have to do what I was born to do.”

  Doro shrugged.

  “What did you do with Vivian?”

  “Nothing at all after I thought about it,” he said. “Faithful little pet that she is now, Vivian hasn’t looked at me for well over a year. Karl’s women get like that when he stops trying to preserve their individuality—when he takes them over completely.” He smiled. “Karl’s mute women, I mean. So, when Vivian, who no longer had initiative enough to go looking for lovers other than Karl, suddenly came to me, I realized that she had almost certainly been sent. Why was she sent?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Doro gave her a sad smile. “No. Not really.” In his shadowy way, Doro was aware of a great deal of psionic activity going on around her. He felt himself drawn to her as he had been two years before, when she took Jesse and Rachel. Now, he guessed, she would be taking a great many of her people. As many as he gave her time to take. She remained still as Doro sat down beside her. She looked at Karl, who sat on her other side.

  “Move away from us,” she said quietly.

  Without a word, Karl got up and went to sit in the chair by the window. The instant he reached the chair he collapsed, seemed to pass out. Mary had finally taken him. An instant later, Doro took her.

  At once, Doro was housed with her in her body. But she was no quick, easy kill. She would take a few moments.

  She was power, strength concentrated as Doro had never felt it before—the strength of dozens, perhaps hundreds of Patternists. For a moment Doro was intoxicated with it. It filled him, blotted out all thought. The fiery threads of her Pattern surrounded him. And before him … before him was a slightly smaller replica of himself as he had perceived himself through the fading senses of his thousands of victims over the years. Before him, where all the threads of fire met in a wild tangle of brilliance, was a small sun.

  Mary.

  She was like a living creature of fire. Not human. No more human than he was. He had lied to her about that once—lied to calm her—when she was a child. And her major weakness, her vulnerable, irreplaceable human body, had made the lie seem true. But that body, like his own series of bodies, was only a mask, a shell. He saw her now as she really was, and she might have been his twin.

  But, no, she was not his twin. She was a smaller, much younger being. A complete version of him. A mistake that he would not make again. But, ironically, her very completeness would help to destroy her. She was a symbiont, a being living in partnership with her people. She gave them unity, they fed her, and both thrived. She was not a parasite, though he had encouraged her to think of herself as one. And though she had great power, she was not naturally, instinctively, a killer. He was.

  When he had had his look at her, he embraced her, enveloped her. On the physical level, the gesture would have seemed affectionate—until it was exposed as a strangle hold.

  When Mary struggled to free herself, he drank in the strength she spent, consumed it ecstatically. Never had one person given him so much.

  Alarmed, Mary struck at him, struggled harder, fed him more of herself. She fed him until her own strength and her borrowed strength were gone. Finally he tasted the familiar terror in her mind.

  She knew she was about to die. She had nothing left, no time to draw strength from more of her people. She felt herself dying. Doro felt her dying.

  Then he heard her voice.

  No, he sensed it, disembodied, cursing. She was so much a part of him already that her thoughts were reaching him. He moved to finish her, consume the final fragments of her. But the final fragments were the Pattern.

  She was still alive because she was still connected to all those people. The strength that Doro took now, the tiny amounts of strength that she had left, were replaced instantly. She could not die. New life flowed into her continually.

  Furiously, Doro swept her into himself, where she should have died. For the fifth time, she did not die. She seemed to slither away from him, regaining substance apart from him as no victim of his should have been able to.

  She was doing nothing on her own now. She was weak and exhausted. Her Pattern was doing its work automatically. Apparently it would go on doing that work as long as there were Patternists alive to support it.

  Then Mary began to realize that Doro was having trouble. She began to wonder why she was still alive. Her thoughts came to him clearly. And apparently his thoughts reached her.

  You can’t kill me, she sent. After all that, you can’t kill me. You may as well let me go!

  He was surprised at first that she was still aware enough to communicate with him. Then he was angry. She was helpless. She should have been his long ago, yet she would not die.

  If he could manage to leave her body—a thing he had never done before without finishing his kill—he would only have to try again. He couldn’t possibly let her live to collect more of his latents, to search until she found a way to kill him.

  He would jump to Karl, and perhaps from Karl to someone else. Karl would already be more dead than alive now that she had taken strength from him. Doro would move on, find himself an able body and come back to her in it. Then he would simply cut her throat—decapitate her if necessary. Not even a healer could survive that. She might be mentally strong, but physically she was still only a small woman. She would be easy prey.

  Mary seemed to clutch at him. She was trying to hold him as he had held her, but she had neither the technique nor the strength. She had learned a little, but it was too late. She was barely an annoyance. Doro focused on Karl.

  Abruptly Mary became more than an annoyance.

  She tore strength from the rest of her people. Not one at a time now. This time she took them all at once, the way Rachel had used to take from her congregations. But Mary stripped her Patternists as Rachel had never stripped her mutes. Then, desperately, Mary tried again to grasp Doro.

  For a moment, she seemed not to realize that she was strong again—that her act of desperation had gained her a second chance. Then her new strength brought her to life. It became impossible for Doro to focus on anyone but her. Her power drew him.

  Abruptly, she stopped clutching at him and threw herself on him. She embraced him.

  Startled, Doro tried to shake her off. For a moment, his struggles fed her as hers had fed him earlier. She was a leech, riding, feeding orgiastically.

  Doro caught himself, ceased his struggles. He smiled to himsel
f grimly. Mary was learning but there was still much that she didn’t know. Now he taught her how difficult it was to get strength from an opponent who not only refused to give it away by struggling but who actively resisted her efforts to take it. And there was only one way to resist. As she sought to consume him, he countered by trying to consume her.

  For long moments they strained against each other, neither of them gaining or losing power. They neutralized each other.

  Disgusted, Doro tried again to focus on Karl. Best to get away from Mary mentally and get back to her physically.

  Mary let him go.

  Startled, Doro brought his attention back to her. For a moment, he could not focus on her. There was a roar of something like radio static in his mind—“noise” so intense that he tried to twist away from it. It cleared slowly.

  Then he noticed that he had not drawn away from Mary completely. He was still joined to her. Joined by a single strand of fire. She had used her mental closeness with him to draw him into her web. Her Pattern.

  He panicked.

  He was a member of the Pattern. A Patternist. Property. Mary’s property.

  He strained against the seemingly fragile thread. It stretched easily. Then he realized that he was straining against himself. The thread was part of him. A mental limb. A limb that he could find no way to sever.

  The Patternists had told him how it felt at first—that feeling of being trapped, of being on a leash. They had lived to get over their feelings. They had lived because Mary had wanted them to live. Doro himself had helped Mary understand how thoroughly their lives were in her hands.

  Doro fought desperately, uselessly. He could feel Mary’s amusement now. He had nearly killed her, had been about to kill the man she had attached herself to so firmly. Now she took her revenge. She consumed him slowly, drinking in his terror and his life, drawing out her own pleasure, and laughing through his soundless screams.

  Epilogue

  Mary

  They cremated Doro’s last body before I was able to get out of bed. I was in bed for two days. A lot of others were there even longer. The few who were on their feet ran things with the help of the mute servants. One hundred and fifty-four Patternists never got up again at all. They were my weakest, those least able to take the strain I put on them. They died because it took me so long to learn how to kill Doro. By the time Doro was dead and I began to try to give back the strength I had taken from my people, the 154 were already dead. I had never tried to give back strength before, but I had never taken so much before, either. I managed it, and probably saved the lives of others who would have died. So that I only had to get used to the idea that I had killed the 154. …

  Emma died. The day Rachel told her about Doro, she decided to die. It was just as well.

  Karl lived. The family lived. If I had killed them, Emma’s way out could have started to look good to me. Not that I would have taken it. I wouldn’t have the freedom to consider a thing like that for about twenty years, no matter what happened. But that was all right. It wasn’t a freedom I wanted. I had already won the only freedom I cared about. Doro was dead. Finally, thoroughly dead. Now we were free to grow again—we, his children.

  Clay’s Ark

  The Patternist Series

  Octavia E. Butler

  In memory of Phyllis White

  Contents

  Part 1 Physician

  Past 1

  Present 2

  Past 3

  Present 4

  Past 5

  Present 6

  Past 7

  Present 8

  Past 9

  Present 10

  Part 2 P.O.W.

  Past 11

  Present 12

  Past 13

  Present 14

  Part 3 Manna

  Past 15

  Present 16

  Past 17

  Present 18

  Part 4 Reunion

  Past 19

  Present 20

  Past 21

  Present 22

  Part 5 Jacob

  Past 23

  Present 24

  Past 25

  Present 26

  Past 27

  Present 28

  Epilogue

  PART 1

  Physician

  Past 1

  THE SHIP HAD BEEN destroyed five days before. He did not remember how. He knew he was alone now, knew he had returned home instead of to the station as planned or to the emergency base on Luna. He knew it was night. For long stretches of time, he knew nothing else.

  He walked and climbed automatically, hardly seeing the sand, the rock, the mountains, noticing only those plants that could be useful to him. Hunger and thirst kept him moving. If he did not find water soon, he would die.

  He had hidden for five days and two nights, had wandered for nearly three nights with no destination, no goal but food, water, and human companionship. During this time he killed jack rabbits, snakes, even a coyote, with his bare hands or with stones. These he ate raw, splashing their blood over his ragged coverall, drinking as much of it as he could. But he had found little water.

  Now he could smell water the way a dog or a horse might. This was no longer a new sensation. He had become accustomed to using his senses in ways not normally thought human. In his own mind, his humanity had been in question for some time.

  He walked. When he reached rocks at the base of a range of mountains, he began to climb, rousing to notice the change only because moving began to require more effort, more of his slowly fading strength.

  For a few moments, he was alert, sensitive to the rough, eroded granite beneath his hands and feet, aware that there were people in the direction he had chosen. This was not surprising. On the desert, people would either congregate around water or bring water with them. On one level, he was eager to join them. He needed the company of other people almost as badly as he needed water. On another level, he hoped the people would be gone from the water when he reached it. He was able to distinguish the smell of women among them, and he began to sweat. He hoped at least that the women would be gone. If they stayed, if anyone stayed, they risked death. Some of them would surely die.

  Present 2

  THE WIND HAD BEGUN to blow before Blake Maslin left Needles on his way west toward Palos Verdes Enclave and home. City man that he was, Blake did not worry about the weather. His daughter Keira warned him that desert winds could blow cars off the road and that wind-driven sand could blast paint off cars, but he reassured her. He had gotten into the habit of reassuring her without really listening to her fears; there were so many of them.

  This time, however, Keira was right. She should have been. The desert had long been an interest of hers, and she knew it better than Blake did. This whole old-fashioned car trip had happened because she knew and loved the desert—and because she wanted to see her grandparents—Blake’s parents—in Flagstaff, Arizona, one last time. She wanted to visit them in the flesh, not just see them on a phone screen. She wanted to be with them while she was still well enough to enjoy them.

  Twenty minutes out of Needles, the wind became a gale. There were heavy, billowing clouds ahead, black and gray slashed by lightning, but there was no rain yet. Nothing to hold down the dust and sand.

  For a while Blake tried to continue on. In the back seat, Keira slept, breathing deeply, almost snoring. It bothered him when he could no longer hear her over the buffeting of the wind.

  His first-born daughter, Rane, sat beside him, smiling slightly, watching the storm. While he fought to control the car, she enjoyed herself. If Keira had too many fears, Rane had too few. She and Keira were fraternal twins, different in appearance and behavior. Somehow, Blake had slipped into the habit of thinking of the hardier, more impulsive Rane as his younger daughter.

  A gust of wind slammed into the car broadside, almost blowing it off the road. For several seconds, Blake could see nothing ahead except a wall of pale dust and sand.

  Frightened at last,
he pulled off the road. His armored, high-suspension Jeep Wagoneer was a hobby, a carefully preserved relic of an earlier, oil-extravagant era. It had once run on one-hundred-percent gasoline, though now it used ethanol. It was bigger and heavier than the few other cars on the road, and Blake was a good driver. But enough was enough—especially with the girls in the car.

  When he was safely stopped, he looked around, saw that other people were stopping too. On the other side of the highway, ghostly in the blowing dust and sand, were three large trucks—expensive private haulers, carrying God-knew-what: anything, from the household possessions of the wealthy, who could still afford the archaic luxury of moving across country, to the necessities of the few remaining desert enclaves and roadside stations, to illegal drugs, weapons, and worse. Several yards ahead, there was a battered Chevrolet and a new little electric something-or-other. Far behind, he could see another private hauler parked at such a strange angle that he knew it had come off the highway barely under control. Only a few thrill-seekers in aging tour buses continued on.

  From out of the desert over a dirt road Blake had not previously noticed came another car, making its way toward the highway. Blake stared at it, wondering where it could have come from. This part of the highway was bordered on both sides by some of the bleakest desert Blake had ever seen—worn volcanic hills and emptiness.

  Incongruously, the car was a beautiful, old, wine-red Mercedes—the last thing Blake would have expected to see coming out of the wilderness. It drove past him on the sand, traveling east, though the only lanes open to it carried westbound traffic. Blake wondered whether the driver would be foolish enough to try to cross the highway in the storm. He could see three people in the car as it passed but could not tell whether they were men or women. He watched them disappear into the dust behind him, then forgot them as Keira moaned in her sleep.